Why the Nineteenth Century Shaped Who Americans Are Today: Part 2, the Industrial Revolution

A coal clinker from a railroad bed

The Industrial Revolution transformed the world. Even the parts of the world that it never touched directly have been shaped by it. Our world today is a wholly shaped by the Industrial Revolution and its implications. It's important to take a look at the background.

In the late 18th century the British engineer James Watt developed the modern steam engine, which transformed the way products were made. Prior to this development machinery was run by water power or power generated by humans or animals. Watt’s engine made it possible to run machinery using a furnace to hear water, create steam, and power a steam engine which in turn could power looms, presses, and other industrial machinery. Initially steam engines burned wood, but by the later 1700’s the mining of coal took on a sense of urgency as Britain’s forests continued to disappear.

Coal has been a major source of fuel since this time, and for over a century concerns have been raised about the environmental effect of burning coal. Not only does it contribute to climate change but the mining process destroys the area in which the mining takes place. I’m not going to rehearse the environmental effects of the use of coal right now.

There are four main types of coal—anthracite, bituminous, subbituminous, and lignite. Anthracite is the hardest, and most desirable because it produces more heat. It is also low sulfur. Bituminous has more sulfur and is softer but still produces a good amount of heat. Subbituminous is softer yet, and lignite is sometimes compared to hardened peat because it hasn’t undergone the same level of development under the ground.

When coal is burned it is not completely consumed by fire. Instead, impurities such as coke, slag and grit are left behind and coalesce into chunks called ‘clinkers.”  My father remembered his first job in the early 1930’s sifting clinkers in people’s basements to sort out any good pieces of coal.

Clinkers are actually a useful byproduct. When crushed they are often called “cinders” and they make a good pavement material.

Coal was also used to heat homes, the effects of which made the air in large cities in Britain and elsewhere toxic to breathe. Coal mining also necessitated (and still does) unsafe working conditions.  A black pall would constantly hang over cities.

The clinker pictured here came from an old railroad bed in New York where I lived a number of years ago. It is a reminder for me of the impact this mineral had on the development of industry.

It is clear that the goal of industry was to make inexpensive products that would create a ready market, an advantage over handmade products that were more expensive. We’ll get back to this in a minute.

What industry did in Britain, and later in the United States and Europe during the nineteenth century was to create the modern city. People left farms to work in a city in a factory. Public transportation did not exist until the advent of the railroad in the 1830’s and 40’s so workers had to live near the factories. Some factory owners built affordable housing nearby for workers to live in. What nobody took into account was the effect this had on society. People lived in close proximity to one another, and when disease made an appearance it tor through poor sections of a city. The 1854 cholera outbreak in London led to the development of the science of epidemiology, the study of how infectious disease spreads.

Many took notice of the effects of poverty and hardship on the poor laboring class in Britain. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels co-wrote The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845). They, and many other authors, wrote of the working conditions of factory workers which endangered their health and contributed to an early death. In addition, there were no laws regarding the employment of children, and children who started work in factories at an early age did not develop properly, and they suffered the loss of extremities because their smaller hands made them useful in particular jobs.


The manufacture of inexpensive cloth in the United States required the technology to make it. Robert Slater, a mill worker in England, memorized the plans for mill machinery and fled to Rhode Island with the plans in his head. He built a textile mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island in 1793, the same year as an important invention appeared in Connecticut.

Two of the most significant developments in the American Industrial Revolution came from the same person—Eli Whitney (1765-1825). Whitney ingeniously developed the idea of interchangeable parts, and famously demonstrated to government agents how he could put together a musket from parts picked out of barrels of identical parts. He also invented the cotton gin in 1793 which made it possible to grow cotton profitably. I have no idea if he understood the implications of this invention for the revival of the institution of slavery. The institution of slavery in its second phase was a violent and brutal partner to the Industrial Revolution. More on that next time.