# data[].attributes.body
The Industrial Revolution began in Great Britain in the late 1700s. Many of the first innovations that enabled the Industrial Revolution began in the textile industry. Making cloth moved from homes to large factories. Britain also had plenty of coal and iron which was important to power and make machines for the factories.

HOW LONG DID IT LAST?
The Industrial Revolution lasted for over 100 years. After beginning in Britain in the late 1700s it spread to Europe and the United States. The Industrial Revolution can be divided into two phases:
The first wave of the Industrial Revolution lasted from the late 1700s to the mid-1800s. It industrialized the manufacture of textiles and began the move of production from homes to factories. Steam power and the cotton gin played an important role in this period.

# data[].attributes.body
One of the defining and most lasting features of the Industrial Revolution was the rise of cities. In pre-industrial society, over 80% of people lived in rural areas. As migrants moved from the countryside, small towns became large cities. By 1850, for the first time in world history, more people in Great Britain lived in cities than in rural areas. As other european and north american countries industrialized, they continued along this path of urbanization as well.

The city of London grew from a population of two million in 1840 to five million forty years later.

The small town of Manchester also grew rapidly and famously to become an important industrial city. Its cool climate was ideal for textile production. And it was located close to the Atlantic port of Liverpool and the coalfields of Lancashire. The first railroads in the world later connected the textile town to Liverpool. As a result, Manchester quickly became the textile capital of the world, drawing huge numbers of migrants to the city. In 1771, the town had a population of 22,000. Over the next fifty years, Manchester’s population exploded and reached 180,000.

This process of urbanization stimulated the booming new industries by concentrating workers and factories together. And the new industrial cities became sources of wealth for the nation.

Despite the growth in wealth and industry urbanization also had some negative effects. On the whole, working-class neighborhoods were bleak, crowded, dirty and polluted.

# data[].attributes.body
As well as the debate over preconditions, there has been a closely related discussion over the causes of the revolution. A wide range of factors is generally considered to have worked together, including:

the end of feudalism changes economic relationships, with feudalism used as a useful catch-all term and not a claim there was classic style feudalism in Europe at any point;

the Agricultural Revolution frees people from the soil, allowing – or driving – them into cities and manufacturing;

proportionally large amounts of spare capital were available for investment;

inventions and the scientific revolution allowed for new technology to increase and cheapen production.

# data[].attributes.headline
SO WHAT CAUSED THIS INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION?

# data[].attributes.subject
SO WHAT CAUSED THIS INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION?

# data[].attributes.body
Britain especially was growing rich off of its large empire. While losing the American colonies in 1783 was a considerable setback, it had finally managed to gain control over much of the trade coming out of India. With this increase in trade, people were growing wealthier, and they wanted to spend that money on new things. As a result, demand for all sorts of goods shot up considerably.
Meanwhile, the groups that were best positioned to profit off of this increased trade were the colonies themselves. Britain was already seeing the results of letting colonies grow too rich in North America and was determined not to make the same mistakes twice. This was especially true since India was able to produce textiles at a very low cost. Meanwhile, much of the small business throughout the English countryside had long been textile production. If Britain was going to save its industry, it would have to increase its efficiency.

# data[].attributes.body
Rapid urbanization led to dense, cramped housing and living conditions, which spread disease, created vast new city dwelling populations, and a new sort of social order

New city and factory cultures affecting family and peer groups

Debates and laws regarding child labor, public health and working conditions

Anti-technology groups such as the Luddite

# data[].attributes.body
The invention of steam power, which replaced horses and water, was used to power factories and transport and allowed for deeper mining.

The improvement of iron making techniques allowing for vastly higher production levels and better material.

The textile industry was transformed by new machines—such as the Spinning Jenny—and factories, again allowing for much higher production at a lower cost.

Better machine tools allowed for more and better machines.

Developments in metallurgy and chemical production affected many industries.

New and quicker transport  networks were created thanks to first canals and then railways, allowing products and materials to be moved cheaper and more efficiently.

The banking industry developed to meet the needs of entrepreneurs, providing the sorts of finance which allowed the industries to expand.

The use of coal, and coal production, soared, replacing wood.

# data[].attributes.body
As a result, the new factory owners could set the terms of work because there were far more unskilled laborers, who had few skills and would take any job, than there were jobs for them. Desperate for work, the migrants to the new industrial towns had no bargaining power to demand higher wages, fairer work hours, or better working conditions. In 1799 and 1800, the British Parliament passed the Combination Acts, which made it illegal for workers to unionize, or combine, as a group to ask for better working conditions. Many of the unemployed or underemployed were skilled workers, such as hand weavers, whose talents and experience became useless because they could not compete with the efficiency of the new textile machines.

# data[].attributes.body
What were the working conditions like during the Industrial Revolution? The working class - who made up 80% of society - had little or no bargaining power with their new employers. Since population was increasing in Great Britain at the same time that landowners were enclosing common village lands, people from the countryside flocked to the towns and the new factories to get work. This resulted in a very high unemployment rate for workers in the first phases of the Industrial Revolution. Henry Mayhew, name his title or role, studied the London poor in 1823, and he observed that “There is barely sufficient work for the regular employment of half of our labourers, so that only 1,500,000 are fully and constantly employed, while 1,500,000 more are employed only half their time, and the remaining 1,500,000 wholly unemployed’’.

# data[].attributes.body
For the first generation of workers—from the 1790s to the 1840s—working conditions were very tough, and sometimes tragic. Most laborers worked 10 to 14 hours a day, six days a week, with no paid vacation or holidays. Each industry had safety hazards too; the process of purifying iron, for example, demanded that workers toiled amidst temperatures as high as 130 degrees in the coolest part of the ironworks (Rosen 155). Under such dangerous conditions, accidents on the job occurred regularly. Workers were often abandoned from the moment that an accident occurs; their wages are stopped, no medical attendance is provided, and whatever the extent of the injury, no compensation is afforded" (Sadler). As the Sadler report shows, injured workers would typically lose their jobs and also receive no financial compensation for their injury to pay for much needed health care.
Life in the factory was most challenging for the first generation of industrial workers who still remembered the slower and more flexible pace of country life. Workers could not wander over to chat with their neighbours or family as they would have done while working in the country. They could not return to the village during harvest time to help their families, unless they wanted to lose their jobs.