UNIT SEVEN
INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
Introduction
The term "Industrial Revolution" refers to those changes that took place in the manufacture and distribution of goods in the eighteenth century. The changes basically were that goods were made by machine instead of by hand, and that they were made in the factory instead of at home. The Industrial Revolution profoundly influenced the economy and society. The Industrial Revolution began in Britain around 1730 in the textile industry (textiles, for those who don't know, is cloth) with a series of inventions that made it a lot easier to produce cloth than it had been before.
Why did the Industrial Revolution begin in Britain?
The Industrial Revolution began and flowered in Britain for economic, political, social, geographical and historical reasons. We will look at each category of reasons.
Economic: Industrialization requires a tremendous outlay of cash, at least in its beginning stages. If you think about it, you will know why this is so. You have to buy raw materials, either buy or construct the machines, buy or build the place where you are going to put the machines, you have to either transport the raw materials to the place where you will have the machines or pay someone to transport them for you, and you have to hire workers - and all this is just the beginning. You probably won’t make much profit for awhile; there is the risk you won’t make any at all. Britain had a large and prosperous middle class who had the money to invest in industrialization and to take the risks involved.
Britain also had a "cheap labor supply". A "cheap labor supply" means that you have poor people in your society who will work for minimal wages just to have a job at all. Obviously, such a supply saves the business or factory owner money, therefore cutting the cost of operating the business or factory, and giving the business or factory owner more money to invest in the business or factory. Why did Britain have this cheap labor supply? Recently, Parliament had passed the Enclosure Acts. These acts gave large landowners the right to take the "commons" away from the villagers, include that land in their holdings, and to put up fences so the villagers could not use the land. Poor peasant farmers in Britain depended on the commons to have a place to graze their animals; the commons had existed since medieval times; to have it taken away was a big shock to them and a major economic hardship. Many of the poor farmers had to give up their farms and move to the cities, where they hoped to find work. Well, there wasn’t enough work to go around. Competition for jobs was fierce, and one of these poor people would take any job at whatever pay just to be working and not have to starve to death.
Britain had made a specialty of cloth making years and years ago. She had been a leader in this field since the Middle Ages. It was natural that Britain would pursue advances in cloth making in order to keep her number one status in this field.
Geographic: Geography helps to explain why the Industrial Revolution began in Britain. There are several geographical advantages that Britain had that helped it develop industrially before other countries. The climate was cool and wet; this was perfect for the manufacture of cotton thread. Early factories were not climate controlled. The machines created static electricity as they worked from the friction and heat caused by the moving parts. As you worked with cotton, lint and fluff flew through the air. If you could not keep the factory fairly cool and damp, the cotton lint and fluff could self ignite from the static electricity, and cause fires. The cool, wet climate made it easier to keep the factories damp.
Britain has many fast flowing streams. These streams provided a source of power with which to run the machines once they got too big for man or animal or even wind to make them go.
Britain was fortunate enough to have the right kind of natural resources for industry. Mainly these resources were coal, iron and tin. Coal was used as a fuel; the tin and iron together are the building blocks of steel, the material that most machines are made of.
Britain was becoming deforested. This means she was using up her trees faster than she could grow them. Wood was the primary fuel used in Britain at this time; this was why Britain was becoming deforested. A new fuel was needed. The new fuel turned out to be coal, but it had to be mined. In the process of digging the mines to get the coal, people found they needed a way to pump water out of coal mines faster than a person could do it with a hand pump. The steam engine was developed to answer this need.
Sociological: There were several sociological reasons why the Industrial Revolution began in Britain. These were characteristics of British society that encouraged the growth of the Industrial Revolution. One of these characteristics was that British society was fairly mobile. This meant that a person, by hard work or lack thereof, could change his rank in society. The fact that you could improve yourself gave people an incentive to work hard, and work never acquired the stigma it had in other, more feudal societies where the upper classes looked down on work as being something only trashy poor people did. In such societies, the middle class was not respected. In Britain, if you improved your rank in society it was admired, and the work you had done to get there was respected.
Britain, therefore had a large, prosperous, creative and inventive middle class who had every incentive to try new things and take risks. The middle class was the one which would experiment with the new machines and take the risks of changing Britain to an industrial society.
Britain, because of its higher standard of living, was becoming overpopulated. Britain is a small island with a climate not too conducive to growing a variety of food. The British had always had to find ways to import foodstuffs; however, now you not only had the problem of the climate, but also the problem of too many people per square foot of land. The British could not possibly on that little island grow enough food to feed its population. That meant that importing food was a dire necessity if the people weren’t to starve. That meant having manufactured goods to sell so the food could be bought. The need for these manufactured goods stimulated the growth of factories.
Political: Britain’s government did not interfere in business. In fact the government encouraged business because it knew the more money the businesses made, the more taxes it would get. Factory owners and business owners could do pretty much what they wanted as long as they paid the tax. There was no limit on profit, and there was no government regulation such as their saying what a minimum wage had to be or what price you had to sell your goods for. No one said what your factory had to look like or have in it. Your goods didn’t even have to pass a quality control in those times. This lack of regulation made business more attractive to investors (quicker profits). The government also encouraged scientific discovery through its creation of and interest in the Royal Society, a group of scientists who were always inventing things.
Historical: During the early years of industrialization, Britain fought about three wars with France. The need for weapons and ammunition to be produced quickly and cheaply spurred the growth of the factories.
Why did the Industrial Revolution begin in the textile industry?
To see why there would be such an incentive to do something about the making cloth more efficiently, let’s examine how cloth and cloth products were made before the Industrial Revolution.
First, there were only natural fibers to make cloth of - there were no synthetics. Synthetics came about in World War II, when the West was unable to get some of the fibers they wanted because of the Japan’s having taken the places where the fibers grow. There were four natural fibers that could be used to make cloth: cotton, linen, wool and silk. Cotton and silk were both very expensive then, so most people used wool and linen. No matter which fiber you chose, there was a lot of work to do before you even got close to having thread or yarn. How much work depended on the fiber, but generally speaking, all fibers had to be cleaned, carded and combed, dyed if you wanted a color other than the natural color of the fiber, and then spun into thread or yarn. Before the Industrial Revolution all the spinning was done with a little machine called a spinning wheel. It was an ongoing task that the women and girls in the home did all the time. It had to be an ongoing task in order to get enough thread or yarn to begin to make the cloth. It took hours. After you had the thread or yarn, you could decide whether to knit or weave the fabric. Whether you wanted to knit or weave depended on what you were making. Sweaters, socks, gloves, mittens, underwear were better knitted because you want the fabric to stretch and then go back into shape. Dresses, shirts, pants, tablecloths, sheets, curtains needed to be made of woven cloth. However, there’s an extra step in the process of making something of woven cloth - you have to find a pattern, cut it out of the cloth and then sew it. To weave cloth you needed a loom. First it had to be strung. Thread or yarn was tied onto the loom and stretched tight and tied at the other end. These were the vertical threads on the loom. They were called the warp threads. To get the cloth a person had to sit in front of the loom, take the thread, which was wrapped around something called a shuttle, and go under a thread and over a thread all the way across the loom. There are hundreds of threads to go over one and under one to make the cloth. Threads going across were the woof or weft threads. Since you had to be able to reach across the loom, it could not be but about 18 inches wide. That meant that the maximum width of your cloth was also about eighteen inches. If you wanted to make curtains or sheets, you’d have to sew the strips of cloth together. If you wanted plaid cloth or some kind of design in the fabric itself, you had to plan that before you strung the loom. Lace and embroidered designs were added after the item you were making was finished. It took quite awhile to get together enough cloth to make clothes, bed linens, curtains and so on. It took another long while to sew all these things. Girls started young to make the bed clothes, curtains, blankets, napkins, tablecloths and so on they’d need when they married because it took so long to get the stuff together. No one had many clothes to wear except maybe the rich. Most people had the clothes they wore to work in and those they went to church in and that’s all. Clothes were made to last, rather than to be fashionable. Too much of peoples’ lives were taken up with this cloth-making thing - this is why the Industrial Revolution began in the textile industry.
The Industrial Revolution had three aspects that we need to look at and study. First, there was the technological aspect of it. This was the inventions themselves. Second, there is the social aspect, or the changes the Industrial Revolution made in society. Third, there is the economic aspect, the changes the Industrial Revolution made in our economic system, capitalism. At the end of this chapter we will study responses to the Industrial Revolution and the problems it caused.
Technological Aspects of the Industrial Revolution
Cloth making machines
The following machines were invented to make the process of cloth making easier and quicker.
1. Flying shuttle loom (invented by John Kay)- made it a lot easier to weave cloth. The flying shuttle loom had a device which alternately raised and lowered odd and even threads so you could just slide the shuttle across instead of having to go over and under each thread. You could make the cloth faster and a second advantage was you could make a piece of cloth wider than about 18 inches, because you didn’t have to reach across the piece of cloth you were working on.
2. Spinning jenny (invented by James Hargreaves and named for his wife Jenny)- was a very simple machine but it made it possible to spin eight spools of yarn at once. It also had the advantage of being easy to make and it didn’t take up much room in a house. It was easily operated and it spun thread quickly and cheaply.
3. Spinning mule (invented by Samuel Crompton)- was a larger spinning machine. It made a hundred spools of thread at one time. It had one problem, though. The thread it made was uneven and not strong enough to be used on the warp.
4. Water frame (invented by Richard Arkwright)-was another spinning machine. It was very big! but it corrected the problem the mule had of not making the thread strong enough. The water frame was a turning point. This machine was so big it would not fit in a person's house, and it could not be run by human or animal power-it was too heavy. The inventor, Richard Arkwright, solved this problem by thinking up the factory. He built huge buildings that looked like barns, put his machines in them and brought his workers to the barn to work. The factory had certain advantages for Mr. Arkwright. He had all his workers in one place. He had all the machines in one place, and he has to have only one waterwheel to use the source of power to turn all the machines. All early factories had to be built by streams because they used water power to run the machines. This was not totally satisfactory for Mr. Arkwright because he didn't necessarily want to have all his factories by streams; also, the stream was unpredictable, sometimes it flowed quickly, sometimes it didn't, so Mr. Arkwright never knew how much work he could get done, and he didn't like that. We'll see what he did about that, but we need to learn more about these factories first.
You need to pretend that you are a middle class businessman like Mr. Arkwright to understand this. In order to build the "barn" (factory) and buy the machines(or have them made), you had to have a LOT of money(capital). You spent this money (invested it) on the machines and the factory in the expectation that you would get products made which you could sell. When you sold your products you expected to get your original money (investment) back plus some more, which you called "profit". Unless you made profit, the business wasn't really doing you any good. To produce the goods required an outlay of money, too. You had to buy the raw materials, in Mr. Arkwright's case, this was cotton, wool or flax. You had to transport the raw materials to your factory somehow, which also cost money. You had to hire workers to run the machines. There were also lots of little incidentals, like upkeep of the machines, lighting the factory somehow, heating it, taxes, little goodies like that that cost you even more money. It was HARD to make a profit, especially at first. To make profits, you cut costs (overhead) however you could. One of the ways you did this was you paid the workers as little as you thought you could get by with-you might pay them 25 cents an hour to work, for example. You made the workers work long hours; that way they produced more goods. Fourteen hours a day was nothing unusual in an early factory, 6 days a week. To get an idea how long that is, you are in school about 6 hours. It would be at least double the time you spend here. Another way you cut costs was to spend no extra money on the factory-to make it a better place to work. Factories, as I said , looked like huge barns. There were few windows in them. Windows cost money when you are building; the more windows, the more costly the building. Remember, this is before electricity-factories were lighted by candles, or later, gas lamps. We will see that this was a tremendous fire hazard. The spinning machines, as they worked, produced tremendous amounts of lint and fluff. As they got hotter from friction produced by the moving parts, they also produced static electricity. If you think about this carefully, you'll see why fires were common in early factories-the lint and fluff would self-ignite from the static electricity. To try to reduce this hazard, factories were kept as humid and damp as possible, and you certainly used as few candles or lamps as you could. Your workers spent 14 hours a day in this environment-they were inhaling this lint and fluff all day-after awhile this wasn’t too good for your lungs-and anyone who has ever lived here in Washington through a summer knows how uncomfortable humidity is. As if this were not bad enough, the factory worker got paid so little (see above) that all members of the family had to work, including the children, to make ends meet. Children as young as six years old worked in factories. There were no concessions made to the child's age. He worked the same hours as his parents and got paid even less! Often the really young children got so tired they fell asleep working and got hurt because the machine went on running. Factory owners liked to hire children, though. They didn't have to pay them as much, the kid wouldn't complain, and he could do some things bigger people couldn't, like clean the lint out of and under the machines. An interesting tidbit here: the next time you hate school, remember that compulsory school laws were made in this country as a way to prevent parents from putting their children in factories.
To go back to Mr. Arkwright now - he doesn’t like having to have all the factories by fast flowing streams. That really limits him and cuts his profits. What he needs is a new source of power.
Sources of Power
Trying to make his work easier has been something man has tried to do since the beginning of his existence. Men have used animals, invented wheels, harnessed the wind, floated things on water to find easier ways to get work done - to make something else work and not himself. All these things worked pretty well but they were not going to work well in the modern industrial age. This is because the machines men invented got too heavy for most of these other things to work. The water frame, for example, could not be moved by man or animal. It was too big and too heavy. Other than wind, the first source of power other than men and animals was water power. This uses the power created by water falling on a waterwheel to run a machine. If you have never seen a waterwheel, visualize a giant Ferris wheel such as they might have at an amusement park, only instead of seats for people, there would be slats such as are on a stepladder. The water falls against the slats, thus turning the wheel. Water had advantages over men and animals in that it didn’t get tired or have to be fed, but it wasn’t perfect as a power source. We have already seen, that as a source of power, it has limitations for a factory owner like Mr. Arkwright.
In 1712, Thomas Newcomen invented the first steam engine. Steam power is based on the scientific fact that heat is a form of energy. An engine is a device that converts heat energy into mechanical energy; don't confuse engines with machines. Engines produce power for machines. The first steam engines were developed to pump water out of coal mines. This was necessary because they hadn’t figured out how to build a mine properly yet and the mines would fill up with water. Pumping this out with a hand pump took too long. This first steam engine didn't work too well. It was grossly inefficient-this means that it produced very little power compared to the resources-coal and water-that it used up producing the power. If you're paying for the coal and water, I think you can see this was also not cost-effective either. The reason the engine was inefficient like this was that it leaked steam because its parts didn't fit together precisely. They tried to make early steam engines out of wood and this just didn't work! In 1789, James Watt and Matthew Boulton finished an improved steam engine; it was better, but still not very good.
Machine Tools
These engines needed to made out of metal, and another invention was needed to deal with this-the lathe that could cut metal. A lathe is a machine tool that cuts and shapes wood or metal to a mold. If you don't know what a lathe is, the closest thing to it that I expect you've seen is one of those machines that makes duplicate keys. With a lathe the parts of the engine could be cut so that they would fit together precisely enough to prevent leakage. Henry Maudslay is the person who invented the lathe to cut metal. The lathe that cut metal was an important invention because it meant that now, duplicates could be made of things like nails, screws, parts to machines and so on. Without the invention of the lathe, there could not have been the invention of standardized parts later.
The steam engine was originally invented because they needed a way to run pumps to get the water out of coal mines. Soon, however, factory owners saw that it could be used to run factories, too, and the advantage would be that the factory could be anywhere , not just near streams. This meant that there got to be a lot more factories.
Now we need to go back to our factory conditions and see what the steam engine added to the badness of the conditions as they already were. First, a steam engine big enough to run a factory would be about as tall as the ceiling in an average room-10 or 12 feet; it would have a diameter of about 6 feet and you can imagine how heavy it was. It took gallons and gallons of water and tons of coal to run it. Obviously, to get the steam, you must burn the coal-and you get ashes and soot as a result. The ashes and soot floated through the air of industrial cities; it was so thick you could see the cities from a long way away from the pollution hanging over them. The ashes and soot also created a fire hazard. If you were the worker inside, you were now inhaling all this pollution along with the lint and fluff. The owner of the factory, though, was so happy! He now had a predictable source of power, and he could plan better how much work you were going to do, and there would be no lazing off on the part of the workers while you waited for the stream to flow quickly enough!
Standardized parts
When engines and machines first began to be made, every machine or engine was made individually by hand. No two engines or machines were exactly alike. This is because a human being is not capable of that kind of precision. Therefore, when a machine or engine broke down, it had to be discarded. There would have been no way to get another part for it to repair it since no two machines or engines were identical. An American inventor, who is more famous for another of his inventions, the cotton gin, solved this problem. His name was Eli Whitney. He called his invention "interchangeable or standardized parts" and his invention was one of the most important made to industry. Without standardized parts, there could be no mass production. This is how it works. Read this carefully and make sure you understand.
Let’s say Mr. Wright goes into business to make bicycles. He’s going to use the standardized parts approach. First, he thought up two or three models of bicycles. He labeled his models, A, B, and C. He had his factory make thousands of handlebars for Model A, thousands of pedals for model A, thousands of gearshift assemblies for Model A, and so on, until all parts of the bicycle were made. The last stage of the process of making the bicycle was to assemble all the parts and put the bicycle together at the end. All thousands of handlebars for Model A were exactly alike. All the thousands of pedals were exactly alike. All the thousands of nuts and bolts that held Model A’s pedals on were exactly alike. What this meant for Mr. Wright was that a) he could make a profit selling bicycles and b) he could make a profit selling parts to bicycles. He was also happy that when his machines break down, he didn’t have to replace the machine; he can just replace the broken part. His customers were happy because they did not have to replace the bike when the handlebars rusted. They could just buy new handlebars. The invention of standardized parts was a real boost to industry.
Better ways to make iron and steel
Early machines and engines were made of wood, but the shortcomings of wood as a material for machines and engines soon showed themselves. We have already learned what happened when engines were made of wood.
Soon, engines and machines were being made of iron. In 1828, the blast furnace was developed. This furnace used fans to provide a blast of hot air to intensify the action of hot coke(a form of coal) on the iron. This made iron strong enough to use for things like machines, engines and bridges. However, steel is better than iron; it’s stronger and doesn’t rust as quickly. Yet in the early 1800’s it was ruinously expensive to make. In 1856, Henry Bessemer invented the converter. The converter made it possible to make steel more quickly by accelerating the purifying process by shooting jets of compressed air into the molten metal. (To make steel, you have to melt the iron and cook it, so to speak, until all the impurities are out of the iron. You also add tin. The converted speeded up the "cooking" process). With an easier way to make steel, engines and machines were soon made of that instead.
Changes in transportation
Before the industrial age, man traveled on foot, rode an animal or in a carriage pulled by an animal or sailed using the wind as a power source. All of these had serious drawbacks as the number of goods to be carried increased. Basically, the old ways of transportation took too long, were too dangerous in terms of goods getting ruined and didn’t carry enough.
It didn’t take too much imagination to see that a steam engine might be able to be used for transport as well as to run factories. All you had to do was rearrange the parts somewhat. Thus you put the boiler on its side instead of vertically, put the firebox behind the boiler, add wheels and axles, and brakes and you’ve got a locomotive. George Stephenson and others developed this locomotive in the early 1800’s. Alexander Darby invented the tracks. The locomotive did not go very fast at first, but it did carry a lot more goods. Eventually the train went faster, too, as they made improvements on the engine.
Soon, inventors were applying the knowledge of steam engine technology to making ships. People laughed at the idea of a steamship, saying that the engine would be so heavy it would make the ship sink. Robert Fulton proved them wrong when he built the Clermont and sailed it on the Hudson River. Steamboats quickly became a success in America because of the large number of navigable rivers and the distances between places; however, the engine had to be improved a lot before steamships could go across the ocean because of the amount of coal they’d have to take would take up half the space on the ship!
Better means of communication
Up until the industrial age, communication was poor. News traveled slowly, often being way out of date before people received it. One of the problems for the British and the Americans in their misunderstandings before the War for Independence was the slow communication. It took three months for the communication to get across the ocean and another three months to get a reply back across the ocean. By the time the letters or orders or whatever reached their destination, they were out of date and no longer suited what was going on.
Obviously something better was needed. In 1837, there was a breakthrough in communication with the invention of the electric telegraph. In this type of communication, signals could be sent along electric cables. Telegraph lines soon linked cities and by 1869 there was a submarine cable between the United States and Europe. In 1876, the telephone was invented and it quickly became a necessity. By 1895, the wireless telegraph or radio was invented. This added still greater speed and efficiency to communication. In the 1870’s, linotype had been invented. With the invention of linotype, the cheap daily newspaper came into being. Great newspaper chains were founded. They spread news everywhere in a matter of hours of the happening.
Economic aspects of the Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution made a big impact on our economic system, which was called capitalism. The Industrial Revolution expanded capitalism greatly, offering many more opportunities to invest and it also aggravated certain bad things about the system.
The name "capitalism" comes from "capital" or money that you invest in something in order to make more money. Capitalism is based on individual ownership of business and on investment of capital in business. To understand how it works, let's go back to Mr. Arkwright and his factory. The chances are that Mr. Arkwright did not have enough capital (money) on his own to start his factory; he needs more cash. He could perhaps borrow it, but that isn't really a good idea, because paying back the loan on the loaner's terms would seriously cut into his profits. What he does instead is find some rich folks who want to be his partners. They invest their money with Mr. Arkwright's and together they start the business, which is called a corporation. They will, of course, split the profits! To get more money they divide the corporation into shares; they can make as many shares as they want as long as they keep 51% of them at least (so they retain ownership). They then sell the shares for so much money a share. Anyone who has the price of a share can buy one, or however many they can afford. What's in it for you if you buy? Several things. One, you are a part owner in the corporation; how much influence you would have would depend on how many shares you owned. Two, you get a little check in the mail ever so often called a dividend; this is your share of the profits. You get so much profit per share. Third, if you invest wisely, and the corporation does well, the shares will become more valuable with time, and you'll become richer, and you haven't basically done a thing to earn that money! Looks real appealing, doesn't it. The problem is, there's a down side to this - a catch, you might say. The corporation doesn't always do well; sometimes it even goes bankrupt, in which case you get no little dividend check because there weren't any profits; and the value of your investment goes down. You can even lose all you invested. In other words, there are no guarantees. One little light in the darkness: there is something called limited liability. This means that even though you lose money, you will not have to pay the corporation's debts.
Let's see how this thing works using some real numbers. You will need your calculator - makes computations easier. You go out to buy some shares of a business because you got a check from your aunt for $500.00. The shares collectively are called stock, by the way. Most corporations don't sell their shares to you directly. You have to buy through a stockbroker. He makes his living charging you commission for getting you the shares. Let's say you want to buy some stock in Coca-Cola. You need to know how much it costs per share. You can ask the stockbroker or you can find out in the financial section of the newspaper. Stock prices are quoted like this: 1 1/2. This means $1.50. 1 1/4 would be $1.25 and so on. Let's say the Coke stock is $1.50 per share. How many shares can you buy with your $500.00? You begin by paying your stockbroker his commission of 10% of the sale. 10% of 500.00 is $50.00. That leaves you $450.00 to spend. Divide $450.00 by $1.50 and you'll see how many shares you can buy. O.K. you're on your way to getting rich! If the price of Coca Cola stock goes up to $1.75 a share, you just made .25 on each share. Multiply that by the number of shares you have and you'll see how much money you made! Not bad, especially if the price of the stock continues to rise. After a while, you get your first dividend. It's for $1.25 per share. Multiply that by the number of shares you have and you'll see what your dividend check would be. You can either spend that or reinvest it. Remember, though, that the price of the stock can go down instead of up. If the price goes down .25 a share you have lost .25 times the number of shares you have. Whether the price of a share of stock goes up or down depends on whether or not people want the stock. If demand for it is high, then the price of it goes up. The demand for the stock goes up when the products the company makes are in demand. If they’re not selling well, then pretty soon, the stock won’t sell well either.
Is it possible for one corporation to buy stock in another? Certainly. It doesn't matter who buys the shares as long as they have the money. This fact opens the doors for a number of abuses of the system. One corporation can buy another and become a huger corporation. One corporation can buy so much stock in another that they have almost as much say as the original owners. Banks can buy stock in corporations until they practically own the corporation. If a corporation gets rich enough, it can buy out all its competitors. We call this a monopoly.
Competition is central to the capitalistic system. Without it, the system does not work. This is why monopolies are not what we want. How do corporations compete? They compete on things like prices, quality, thinking up new things to sell, advertising, promotions, sales, things like that. The competition is fierce, and not everyone wins.
How do you get ahead in a capitalistic system? By investing more than the next guy, of course. The more you invest, the better you will do. You need to think carefully about this. Who has money to invest? Who doesn't? Think about why they don't, and whether, if capitalism is allowed to run its course, they ever will have money to invest. This is one of the serious drawbacks of the system.
Why do we have a capitalistic system? It has certain good points, that's why, and we like the way it functions better than other systems we know about. That is not to say it is perfect. Here are its good points:
It, also, as I have said, has a down side. Here it is:
The Industrial Revolution seemed to make the bad points of capitalism worse at first. As machines were invented to replace certain jobs, men were laid off. They couldn't get new jobs. The Industrial Revolution provided many more opportunities for the investor to get rich. The sheer numbers of corporations made it difficult for governments to see that they obeyed the law. In the United States, this problem was made worse by the fact that private property is protected by the Constitution-a business is considered an individual with rights- and there wasn't much the government could do to stop abuses.