Chapter 22 The Revolution

in Energy and Industry, ca 1780–1860

A colorful timetable poster lists the trains from London to Folkstone, the English Channel’s gateway port to the European continent, and proudly proclaims the speed of the journey.

A colorful timetable poster lists the trains from London to Folkstone,

Private Collection / The Bridgeman Art Library

The loose cotton strands on the slanted bobbins passed up to the sliding carriage and then on to the spindles in back for fine spinning. The worker, almost always a woman, regulated the sliding carriage with one hand, and with the other she turned the crank on the wheel to supply power. By 1783 one woman could spin by hand a hundred threads at a time on an improved model.

Woman Working a Hargreaves’s Spinning Jenny

Mary Evans Picture Library

Railroad construction presented innumerable challenges, such as the building of bridges to span rivers and gorges. Civil engineers responded with impressive feats, and their profession bounded ahead. This painting portrays the inauguration of I. K. Brunel’s Saltash Bridge, where the railroad crosses the Tamar River into Cornwall in southwest England. The high spans allow large ships to pass underneath.

The Saltash Bridge

Elton Collection, Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust

Industry concentrated in the rapidly growing cities of the north and the Midlands, where rich coal and iron deposits were in close proximity.

The Industrial Revolution in England, ca 1850

This midcentury painting provides a rich visual representation of the new concepts of social class that became common by 1850. The central figures are the colorful laborers, endowed by the artist with strength and nobility. Close by, a poor girl minds her brother and sister for her working mother. On the right, a middle-class minister and a social critic observe and do intellectual work. What work does the couple on horseback perform?

Ford Maddox Brown: Work

Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery/ The Bridgeman Art Library

Jedediah Strutt (ca 1790), by Joseph Wright of Derby.

Jedediah Strutt (ca 1790),

Derby Museum & Art Gallery/ The Bridgeman Art Library

This 1833 engraving shows adult women operating power looms under the supervision of a male foreman, and it accurately reflects both the decline of family employment and the emergence of a gender-based division of labor in many English factories. The jungle of belts and shafts connecting the noisy looms to the giant steam engine on the ground floor created a constant din.

Workers at a Large Cotton Mill

Time Life Pictures/Getty Images

This handsome engraving embellished the membership certificate of the British carpenters union, one of the leading “new model unions” that represented skilled workers effectively after 1850. The upper panel shows carpenters building the scaffolding for a great arch; the lower panel captures the spirit of a busy workshop.

Celebrating Skilled Labor

HIP/Art Resource, NY