Wyatt L.T. III The Industrial Revolution
Подождите немного. Документ загружается.
German families in the court. It was an eminently Irish sugges-
tion that the two German families were to blame for the necessity
of police surveillance; but a Chinaman whom I questioned as he
hurried past the iron gate of the alley was evidently of a different
opinion, though he prudently hesitated to express it.
...
Perhaps this may be put down as an exceptional case; but
one that came to my notice some months ago. In a Seventh
Ward tenement was typical enough to escape that reproach.
There were nine in the family: husband, wife, an aged grand-
mother, and six children; honest, hard-working Germans, scru-
pulously neat, but poor! All nine lived in two rooms, one about
ten feet square that served as parlor, bedroom, and eating room,
the other a small hall made into a kitchen. That rent was seven
dollars and a half, more than a week’s wages for the husband
and father. That day the mother had thrown herself out the win-
dow, and was carried up from the street dead. She was ‘‘dis-
couraged,’’ said some of the other women from the tenement,
who had come to look after the children while a messenger car-
ried the news to the father of the shop.
...
That pure womanhood should blossom in such an atmos-
phere of moral decay is one of the unfathomable mysteries of
life. And yet, it is not an uncommon thing to find sweet and
innocent girls, singularly untouched by the evil around them,
true wives and faithful mothers, literally like ‘‘jewels in a swine’s
snout’’ in these infamous barracks.
...The problem of the children becomes in these swarms,
to the last degree perplexing. It is not unusual to find half a
hundred in a single tenement. I have counted as many as one
hundred and thirty-six in two adjoining houses in Crosby Street.
There was a big tenement in the Sixth Ward, now happily
in the process of being appropriated by the beneficent spirit of
business that blots out so many foul spots I New York—it fig-
ured not long ago in the official reports as ‘‘an out-and-out hog-
pen’’—that had a record of one hundred and two arrests in four
years among its four hundred and seventy-eight tenants, fifty-
seven of them for drunken and disorderly conduct.
...
It is said that nowhere else in the world are so many peo-
ple crowded together on a square mile as here. The average five-
story tenement adds a story or two to its stature in Ludlow
Street, and an extra building on the rear lot, and yet the sign
‘‘To Let’’ is the rarest of all there.
...
Through dark hallways and
filthy cellars, crowded, as is every foot of the street, with half-
naked children, the settlements in the rear are reached. Thieves
know how to find them when pursued by the police, and the
tramps that sneak in on chilly nights to fight for the warm spot
in the yard over some baker’s oven.
...
Life in the tenements in July and August spells death to an
army of little ones whom the doctor’s skill is powerless to
237
Primary Documents
save.
...
Fifty ‘‘summer doctors,’’ especially trained to this work,
are then sent into the tenements by the Board of Health, with
free advice and free medicine for the poor ... but despite all
efforts the grave-diggers in Calvary work overtime, and little cof-
fins are stacked mountain-high on the deck of the Charity Com-
missioners’ boat when it makes its semi-weekly trips to the city
cemetery.
...
...But one tremendous factor for evil in the lives of the
poor has been taken by the throat, and something has unques-
tionably been done, where that was possible, to lift those lives
out of the rut where they were equally beyond the reach of hope
and of ambition. It is no longer lawful to construct barracks to
cover the whole of a lot. Air an sunlight have a legal claim, and
the day of the rear tenement is past .
...
The dark, unventilated
bedroom is going with them, and the open sewer. The day is not
far distant when the greatest of all evils that now curses life in
the tenements—the dearth of water in the hot summer days—
will also have been remedied, and a long step taken toward the
moral and physical redemption of their tenants.
These are the bright spots in the dreary picture; bright
only by comparison.
Source: J. A. Riis, ‘‘How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tene-
ments,’’ Scribner’s Magazine (Vol. VI, No. 6, December 1889), 643, 644,
647, 654, 657, 658, 660, 661.
Merry Christmas in the Tenements
Across the narrow yard, in the basement of the rear house, the
lights of a Christmas tree show against the grimy window-pane.
The hare would never have gone around it. It is so very small.
The two children are busily engaged fixing the goldfish upon
one of its branches. Three little candles that burn there shed
light upon a scene of utmost desolation. The room is black with
smoke and dirt. In the middle of the floor oozes an oil-stove
that serves at once to take the raw edge off the cold and to cook
the meals by. Half the window-panes are broken, and holes
stuffed with rags. The sleeve of an old coat hangs out of one,
and beats drearily upon the sash when the wind sweeps over the
fence and rattles the rotten shutters. The family wash, clammy
and gray, hangs on a clothes-line stretched across the room.
Under it, at a table set with cracked and empty plates, a discour-
aged woman sits eying the children’s show gloomily. It is evident
that she has been drinking. The peaked faces of the little ones
wear a famished look. There are three—the third an infant, put
to bed in what was once a baby-carriage. The two from the
street are pulling it around to get the tree in range. The baby
238
Primary Documents
sees it, and crows with delight. The boy shakes a branch, and
the goldfish leaps and sparkles in the candle-light.
...
Outside
the snow is falling. It sifts silently into each nook and corner,
softens all the hard and ugly lines, and throws the spotless man-
tle of charity over the blemishes, the shortcomings. Christmas
morning will dawn pure and white.
...
Source: Riis, ‘‘Merry Christmas in the Tenements,’’ The Century Maga-
zine (Vol. 55, No. 2, December 1897), 166, 182.
The Tenant
We have considered the problem of the tenement. Now about
the tenant. How much of a problem is he? And how are we to
go about solving his problems. The government ‘‘slum inquiry,’’
of which I have spoken before, gave us some facts about him. In
New York it is found 62.58 per cent of the population of the
slums to be foreign-born, whereas of the whole city the percent-
age of foreigners was only 43.23. While the proportion of illiter-
acy in all was only 7.69 to 100, in the slum it was 46.65 per
cent. That, with nearly twice as many saloons to a given num-
ber, there should be three times as many arrests in the slum as
in the city at large need not be attributed to nationality, except
indirectly in its possible responsibility for the saloons.
...
Jealousy, envy, and meanness wear no fine clothes and mas-
querade under no smooth speeches in the slums. Often enough it
is the very nakedness of the virtues that makes us stumble in our
judgment. I have in mind the ‘‘difficult case’’ that confronted some
philanthropic friends of mine in a rear tenement on Twelfth
Street, in the person of an aged widow, quite seventy I should
think, who worked uncomplainingly for a sweater all day and far
into the night, pinching and saving and stinting herself with black
bread and chicory coffee as her only fare, in order that she might
carry her pitiful earnings to her big, lazy lout of a son in Brook-
lyn. He never worked. My friends’ difficulty was a very real one,
for absolutely every attempt to relieve the widow was wrecked
upon her mother heart. It all went over the river. Yet one would
not have had her different.
Sometimes it is only the unfamiliar setting that shocks.
When an East Side midnight burglar, discovered and pursued,
killed a tenant who blocked his way of escape, a few weeks ago,
his ‘‘girl’’ gave him up to the police. But it was not because he
had taken a human life. ‘‘He was good to me,’’ she explained to
the captain whom she told where to find him, ‘‘but since he
robbed the church I had no use for him.’’ He had stolen, it seems,
the communion service in a Staten Island church. The thoughtless
laughed. But in her ignorant way she was only trying to apply the
239
Primary Documents
standards of morality as they had been taught her. Stunted,
bemuddled, as they were, I think I should prefer to take my chan-
ces with her rather than with the woman of wealth and luxury
who, some years ago, gave a Christmas party to her lapdog, as on
the whole the sounder of the two, and by far the more hopeful.
All of which is merely saying that the country is all right,
and the people are to be trusted with the old faith in spite of
the slum. And it is true, if we remember to put it that way, - in
spite of the slum. There is nothing in the slum to warrant that
faith save human nature as yet uncorrupted.
...
Source: Riis, ‘‘The Tenant,’’ Atlantic Monthly (Vol. 84, Issue 502, August
1899), 153, 161–162.
Document 21: Efficiency of Modern Industrial
Methods
This selection by Charles A. Beard, the noted early 20th-century
economic historian, praises the advent of modern machinery to har-
ness power and increase the productivity of the work force. Citing
statistics that emphasized the dramatic growth of the British econ-
omy, Beard argued that the inventions of the Industrial Revolution
had reduced the amount of time humans devoted to sheer labor. This
new paradigm thus allowed more opportunity for the pursuit of
activities that would provide new meaning and satisfaction to life.
To show the expansion of trade following the new inventions
is necessary to give a few statistics. When machinery was intro-
duced into the textile industries the output of manufactured
goods increased by leaps and bounds. In 1764 the cotton
imported into England amounted to about 4,000,000 pounds; in
1841 it had increased to nearly 500,000,000 pounds. In 1792
the amount of cotton imported into Lancashire alone from the
United States was 138,000 pounds; in 1800 it was 18,000,000
pounds. The wool imported into England in 1766 was only
about 2,000,000 pounds; in 1830 the amount had risen to more
than 32,000,000 pounds. In 1788 the iron output was 61,000
tons; in 1839 it was over 1,250,000 tons. One hundred years af-
ter Crompton invented his spinning mule there were in Lanca-
shire 2655 cotton mills running a total of nearly 38,000,000
spindles and 463,000 power looms; in the twenty-two years
from 1793-1815 English exports, according to official valuation,
rose from 17,000,000 pounds annually to 58,000,000, in spite of
the depression caused by the Napoleonic wars.
240
Primary Documents
These figures give an inkling of the industrial transforma-
tion which followed the great inventions. Now let us turn to the
real increase in the productive capacity of the individual. In
other words, let us see whether productive capacity has grown
more rapidly than the population. Unfortunately careful statistics
are only of recent date, but we know that Hargreaves jenny
worked, originally, only eight spindles. The number was gradu-
ally increased to one hundred and twenty, and by the beginning
of the nineteenth century to two hundred. The jenny now has
more than a thousand spindles, each revolving at the rate of ten
thousand revolutions per minute. A man and two boys can tend
to two thousand spindles.
The hand-loom weaver used to make from sixty to eighty
throws of the shuttle per minute. Fifty years ago the best power
loom made only one hundred throws; to-day the highest grade
loom runs at the rate of about four hundred per minute, and
along with the increase of the productive capacity of the
machine there is a decrease in the amount of human labor
required in the operations. Formerly one weaver tended but one
loom; now one worker tends from two to ten looms, according
to the grade of the goods. So great has been the increase in the
efficiency of textile machinery that a single operative can supply
two hundred and fifty persons with the necessary cotton gar-
ments, or three hundred persons with woolen clothing.
In every branch of industry attention has been devoted to
increasing productive power, until almost marvelous results have
been attained. In the continuation of the construction of the Co-
logne cathedral in 1870, two men with a steam crane lifted as
much stone in a day as three hundred and sixty men could have
done in the same time in the Middle Ages. The old craftsman
produced at best a couple of pairs of shoes per day; the modern
worker with machinery can turn out five hundred pairs a day. In
one year six English workmen can produce enough bread to
supply a thousand people for the same length of time. This
includes all the labor from the breaking up of the soil to the
delivery of bread to the consumer.
The extent to which mechanical power can be substituted
for hand labor depends upon the ability of man to contrive ma-
chinery. Here is [sic] the material keys to the man’s spiritual
progress. The plowing of a furrow, the sowing of the seed, the
reaping of the grain, its transportation from one market to
another, the weaving of the fabric, and the making of a coat,
all represent in the final analysis the application of so much
power to matter. The past achievements of inventors have
shown us that there are no limits to the ways in which the
exhaustless forces of nature can be applied to do man’s work. If
we look back, we can see man struggling to maintain life by
sheer strength of muscle; but if we look forward along the
241
Primary Documents
centuries of the future, w e see the struggle for existence taking
only a small portion of man’s energy, leaving all the remainder
of his powers of heart and brain free for the enlargement and
enriching of life.
Source: Beard, The Industrial Revolution (London, 1901), as quoted in
Robinson & Beard, Readings in Modern European History, Vol. II (New
York: Ginn & Company, 1909), 71–72.
242
Primary Documents
ANNOTATED
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The sources listed below provide only a brief summary of the rich
and large body of literature concerning the Industrial Revolution.
Books
General and Great Britain
Ashton, T. S. The Industrial Revolution, 1760–1830. Oxford: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1971. Stresses a definitive, sharp turn in economic activity
in Great Britain after 1760.
Anderson, M. Family Structure in Nineteenth Century Lancashire. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1971. Emphasizes the role that industri-
alization played in changing the nature of family life in this important
early center of British manufacturing.
Beaudoin, S. M. Problems in European Civilization: The Industrial Revolution.
New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2003. A recommended collec-
tion of brief but scholarly essays covering a variety of topics related to
the Industrial Revolution.
Bentham, M., ed. Arthur Young’s Travels in France during the Years 1787,
1788, 1789. London: George Bell and Sons, 1909. A fascinating compi-
lation of Arthur Young’s observations of French political, social, and
economic life on the eve of the French Revolution.
Bland, C. The Mechanical Age: The Industrial Revolution in England.NewYork:
Facts on File, 1995. Rich blend of themes, short biographical sketches,
and key events in the first century of British industrialization.
Crouzet, F. The First Industrialists: The Problems of Origins. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1985. A detailed account of the social and
economic origins of the new men who founded the factories and mills
that became the basis for the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain.
Clapham, J. H. An Economic History of Modern Britain. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1930. Argues that no revolutionary develop-
ment regarding economic and industrial growth took place in Great
Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Crafts, N. F. R. British Economic Growth during the Industrial Revolution.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985. Relies on national economic
statistics not available to 18th and 19th century observers of British
industrial growth.
Dale, H., & Dale, R. The Industrial Revolution. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1992. A short but highly readable work that describes the most
significant inventors and inventions during the Industrial Revolution.
Deane, P. The First Industrial Revolution. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1979. Revision of earlier 1969 work but still sup-
ports contention of a specific era that can be labeled as the Industrial
Revolution.
Doty, C. S. The Industrial Revolution. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Win-
ston, 1969. General survey of the causes and course of the industrial
revolution.
Dublessis, R. S. Transformation to Capitalism in Early Modern Europe. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Examines the role of
consumer demand on the course of the Industrial Revolution.
Engels, F. Translated by W.O. Henderson and W.H. Chalons. The Condition
of the Working Class in England. Stanford: Stanford University Press,
1968. An important contemporary work based on observations of the
working class environment in Manchester during the middle of the
19th century, one that led to his famous collaboration with Karl Marx.
Flaherty, T. H., ed. Time Frame
AD 1800–1850: The Pulse of Enterprise . Alex-
andria, Va: Time-Life Books, 1990. A brief, readable summary of the
key industrial developments in the first half of the 19th century.
Flinn, M. W. Origins of the Industrial Revolution. London: Longman, 1966.
An excellent treatment of the emerging Industrial Revolution in Great
Britain with an emphasis on statistical analysis such as the standard of
living, real wages, etc.
Hammond, J. L., & Hammond, B. The Rise of Modern Industry. London:
Methuen, 1925. Addresses the enigma of the Industrial Revolution—
the rise of great wealth and at the same time the appearance of unima-
gined poverty.
Hartwell, R. M. The Industrial Revolution. New York: Barnes and Noble,
1970. Stresses that while the growth of wealth and increase in poverty
were obvious trends, in real terms the misery of the Industrial Revolu-
tion was no worse than the agrarian world preceding it.
244
Annotated Bibliography
Hays, W. P. Samuel Morse and the Electronic Age. New York: F. Watts, 1966.
Examination of the impact of Morse’s telegraph on the new age of
communication.
Henderson, W. O. The Industrial Revolution in Europe, 1815–1914. Chicago:
Quadrangle Books, 1961. General survey of the growth and spread of
the Industrial Revolution in Europe in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Hill, C. Reformation to Industrial Revolution: The Making of Modern English
Society, 1530–1780, Vol. 1. New York, Pantheon Books, 1965. Excel-
lent survey of British political, social, and economic picture in the
two centuries leading to the Industrial Revolution.
Hobsbawm, E. The Age of Capital. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1962.
Important work by a Marxist historian who traces the development of
capitalism from the riotous days of 1848 until 1875.
King, S., & Timmins, G. Making Sense of the Industrial Revolution: English
Economy and Society, 1700–1850. Manchester: Manchester University
Press, 2001. Analyzes the Industrial Revolution from technological
and theoretical conception and provides a number of primary docu-
ments for more detailed study.
Lampard, E. E. The Industrial Revolution: Interpretations and Perspectives .
Washington, D.C.: W ashington Service Center for Teachers, 1957. An
older but still useful guide for new teachers of the Industrial Revolution.
Landes, D. The Unbound Prometheus: Technological Change and Industrial De-
velopment in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1965. A classic work that emphasizes the role
of technological change to the transformation of economies in Great
Britain and Western Europe.
Leone, B. The Industrial Revolution: Opposing Views. San Diego, Calif: Green-
haven Press, 1998. An engaging collection of pro and con opinions on
economic change as stated by American observers such as Thomas
Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, Andrew Carnegie, and Eugene V. Debs.
Lipson, E. The Economic History of England. London: Longman, 1934.
Emphasizes that the Industrial Revolution was another example of the
natural flow of continuity and change in history.
Mantoux, P. The Industrial Revolution in the Eighteenth Century: An Outline of
the Beginnings of the Modern Factory System. London: Cape, 1961.
Early proponent of statistical analysis to argue for a series of long-
term changes that prepared Great Britain for major economic growth
in the last thirty years of the 18th century.
Marx, K. Translated by Samuel Moore and Edward Averling. Capital. Vol. 1.
New York: International Publishing, 1967. Famous indictment of capi-
talism and the exploitation of labor in the 19th century.
Miller, J. H. Charles Dickens: The World of his Novels. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1958. Review of Dickens’ contributions to make
245
Annotated Bibliography
public the ills of British society that emerged during the Industrial
Revolution.
Mokyr, J. The British Industrial Revolution: An Economic Perspective. 2nd ed.
Boulder, Colo: Westview Press, 1999. Argues for a revolutionary inter-
pretation of the Industrial Revolution because technological change
and economic growth were clearly visible during the era.
Nardinelli, C. Child Labor in the Industrial Revolution. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1990. Separates fact from fiction regarding the issue
of child labor and traces British legislative efforts to reform the use of
children in factories.
Nef, J. U. The Rise of the British Coal Industry. 2 vols. Freeport, NY: Books
for Libraries Press, 1922. Opines that the Industrial Revolution’s ori-
gins date to the middle of the 16th century.
O’Brien, P. K., & Quinalt, R., eds. The Industrial Revolution and British Soci-
ety. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Collection of
essays regarding issues in the Industrial Revolution such as women’s
roles, parliamentary reform, crime and labor movements.
Rostow, W. W. The Stages of Economic Growth. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1991 (reprint). Important work that stresses the five
stages of economic change associated with industrialization.
Stalcup, B., ed. The Industrial Revolution. San Diego, CA: Greenhaven Press,
2002. An excellent work that compiles historical commentaries, selected
biographies, and contested issues regarding the Industrial Revolution.
Stearns, P. The Industrial Revolution in World History. Boulder, CO: Westview
Press, 1993. An important work that places the Industrial Revolution
in a larger context as it spread its influence and had markedly differ-
ent impacts across the globe.
Taylor, P. A. M. The Industrial Revolution in Britain: Triumph or Disaster. Bos-
ton: Boston Heath, 1958. Work debates the historical tension between
those who embrace the positive aspects of the Industrial Revolution
and those who emphasize its attendant economic and social ills.
Thomas, B. The Industrial Revolution and the Atlantic Economy: Selected Essays.
New York: Routledge, 1993. Dismisses the revisionist views of the Indus-
trial Revolution and emphasizes Great Britain’s ability to sustain her
economic growth in the latter half of the 19th century by dominating
world trade and exchanging manufactured goods for needed foodstuffs.
Thompson, E. P. The Making of the English Working Class. London: Penguin,
1968. Work on the origins and growth of the British proletariat is rep-
resentative of how in the 1960s the study of the Industrial Revolution
split into smaller elements for examination.
Toynbee, A. The Industrial Revolution. London: Green & Company, 1894.
The classic work on the Industrial Revolution, which places the start-
ing point at 1760.
246
Annotated Bibliography