ABSTRACT
Nature of the Revolution.—The ‘Industrial Revolution’ is the term applied to the aggregate of changes which during the last hundred and fifty years have made industry instead of agriculture the principal occupation of the leading nations. The primary cause of this transformation was the notable expansion of overseas commerce in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which, as already explained, was the outcome of the geographical discoveries of Columbus and Vasco da Gama. The enlargement of the market for European commodities, more especially the extension of the demand for simple, easily standardized goods suitable for manufacture by machinery (like the cotton loin-cloths, worn by the natives of India), reacted on industry and produced what is the most striking external feature of the Revolution, the rapid expansion of machine methods of production. Hitherto, as already explained, the use of machinery in industry, though not unknown, was exceptional and occasional. It now became the normal mode of industrial production. Hand in hand with this industrial development went a phenomenal increase in the number and size of towns, the traditional seats of industry. The countryside was swept bare to provide recruits for the huge labour armies of industrialism. In the eighteenth century, 9 Englishmen out of every 10 lived in the country. In the twentieth century, 4 out of every 5 were inhabitants of towns. There have been few more momentous social changes than this transformation of the average Englishman from a countryman to a town-dweller.
