1. Class 32: Industrial Revolution
Dr. Ann T. Orlando
10 April 2019

2. Introduction Defining the Industrial Revolution
Social and Economic Developments
Rise of Workers Movements

3. Industrial Revolution
Narrowly defined, transformation of England in 18th C from agricultural to manufacturing as something that employs majority of population
Improved agricultural methods in 17th and 18 C
Application of scientific discoveries: Invention of steam engine and cotton gin
Huge economic and social impact in 19th C
But comes to include and define the difference between first world and third world countries

4. Adam Smith (1723-1790) Born in Scotland, close friend with David Hume
Father of modern economics
Does for economics what Locke did for political philosophy
Wealth of Nations (1776)
Discover the natural (scientific) principles of economics
Each person seeks to maximize his own gain
Enters into agreements to ‘barter’ skills for wages
In a market of perfect freedom, each person and nation can bargain to own advantage
Through free trade the invisible hand of supply and demand ensures that no one is taken advantage of
When governments attempt to regulate free trade, then the public welfare and prosperity are threatened

5. Social Changes Wrought by Industrial Revolution
Generalization: before Industrial Revolution
Families and small towns fundamental economic as well as social unit; Economic self-sufficiency in small geographic areas
Family farms or farming in common, family artisans; hand-produced small quantities; what is sold is crops or crafts
Majority of population is rural
Large towns and cities: seats of ecclesial and civil government
Generalization: after Industrial Revolution
Fundamental economic units are large private farms and mercantile organizations
Economic units become very specialized and very large; what the individual sells is his labor (remember John Locke)
Majority of people live around new economic centers: cities
Being rural poor is horrible; being urban poor is worse

6. Energy for Industrial Revolution
Steam Engine
James Watt patented in 1769
Efficient way to turn coal into energy; England has lots of coal
Inventions using steam engines very quickly follow and dramatically change manufacturing
But the most visible, and symbolic, immediate invention was the railroad
To build railroad required lots of technology, masses of cheap labor directed toward a common economic goal
Opened way for mass migration
Connected previously independent areas into common economic units

7. Rail Lines England 1850 www. mtholyoke
Rail Lines England

8. So Why Is a Map of England’s Railroads part of Church History?
Because Pope Gregory XVI ( ) banned railroads from the Papal States
Concerned about disruption to social life in Papal States
Concerned about monopoly and materialism of railroads
Railroad tried to bribe the Pope
Inequality between workers and capitalists,
Leads to workers revolts of 1848,
New political movements, Communism

9. Background to Revolutions of 1848
Industrial Revolution had created a class of urban poor laborers
Barely able to survive on subsistence wages
Disruption of family (child labor in industry very different from working family farm)
Survival of the fittest (Malthus, Essay on Principle of Population, 1789)
Disruption in basic social patterns leads to disillusionment with society, including established religions
Efforts to change conditions for laborers often united with atheism, or at least separate from religion
Reread Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol, 1843
Religious response
St. Vincent de Paul Society (1833)
YMCA (1844): In 1844, industrialized London was a place of great turmoil and despair. For the young men who migrated to the city from rural areas to find jobs, London offered a bleak landscape of tenement housing and dangerous influences. From YMCA website;
Salvation Army (1865)

10. Gustav Dore Scripture Reader in a Night Shelter groups. msn
Gustav Dore Scripture Reader in a Night Shelter groups.msn.com/HOMELESSinbaltimoremd/gustavedore.msnw?action=ShowPhoto&PhotoID=13

11. Socialism and Communism
Associated with ‘free thinkers’
Specifically targeted economic and social models (unlike philosophes a century earlier who attacked political models)
Opposed to private property
Criticized religious response as basically one of keeping the laborer in his place
Friedrich Engels, Conditions of Working Class in England (1844)

12. Prolog Communist Manifest 1848 www.gutenberg.org/dirs/6/61/61.txt
A spectre is haunting Europe -- the spectre of communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and Tsar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies.
Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as communistic by its opponents in power? Where is the opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of communism, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries?
Two things result from this fact:
I. Communism is already acknowledged by all European powers to be itself a power.
II. It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the spectre of communism with a manifesto of the party itself.
To this end, Communists of various nationalities have assembled in London and sketched the following manifesto, to be published in the English, French, German, Italian, Flemish and Danish languages.

13. What is a Liberal?
Based on 17th C word, libertine, meaning one of loose morals; a free thinker
In 19th C, liberals are heirs of philosophes,
Individual freedom, rights and right to property
Fundamental function of government was to safeguard those rights; minimalist governments
Notion of a meritocracy
Free market economies; ‘invisible hand of market place’

14. John Stuart Mill ( )
Father, James Mill, was an historian and student of Jeremy Bentham
John raised without any religious instruction
Was instructed in classical Greek and Roman literature
Studied in France and became part of French liberal philosophical scene
Elected to House of Commons in 1865 as a liberal
Champion of women’s rights
Philosophical works include
Logic and language
Scientific method
Psychology
Politics
Moral philosophy of Utilitarianism

15. Utilitarianism
Based on work by Jeremy Bentham to find a new basis for morality after the ‘overthrow’ of religion
Utility is equated with Epicurean happiness
Maximize pleasure for greatest numbers, minimize pain
Actions should be governed by “The Greatest Happiness” as their ends
But it is the greatest happiness in this life
Dominant moral perspective today

16. Assignments
1. Karl Marx, Scientific Socialism, available at
2. John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, Chapters 2 and 5, available at