ABSTRACT
Industrialisation was the dominant economic feature of the period 1815–1939 and comprised three inter-related elements. First, there were technological advances in manufacturing and mining – cotton spinning machines, new blast furnaces, steam power – which raised labour productivity, lowered costs and raised sales of industrial products. Second, steam power made possible huge advances in rail transport and shipping which, in conjunction with the application of electricity to telegraph transmissions, revolutionised communications. Bigger markets emerged at home and abroad and the supply chain of raw materials and energy for industry lengthened. Third, there was urbanisation. Populations were generally rising and the labour force in agriculture did not fall (except in the first industrialisers, Belgium and Britain) until after the First World War (WWI) but its share of national labour forces did decline with migration from farming and cottage industry to factories. The huge increase in town populations called for new housing, urban transport, water supplies, lighting and heating which, for the large part, were slow to materialise so that congestion, ill health and rising urban mortality followed.
