ABSTRACT

Industrial revolution is the name given to those economic and technological developments which gathering strength and speed during the eighteenth century produced modern industrialism. Blanqui in 1837 declared that by the revolution industrial conditions in England had been more profoundly transformed than at any period since the beginnings of social life. Toynbee put the industrial revolution into the series of historical phases. The rapidity of the modernization of Japan seems to make the phrase industrial revolution particularly applicable in its case; but it is significant that the commercial and financial transformations have been more far-reaching than the strictly industrial. The industrial revolution increased rather than decreased the material welfare of the mass of the population; but some sections suffered from the transition, war, and business fluctuations disturbed wages and prices and the dangers latent in the employee's lot became apparent.