33.3 Europe: a.d. 1801 to 1900  (Page 20/27)

By 1810 still some 3/4 of the agricultural laborers in Great Britain were illiterate, but then there were more people working in trade, manufacturing and handicrafts than on the farms. In 1812 there was an insurrection in Yorkshire over the cotton loom. Thomas (Ref. 213 ) says that if the government had taken labor's side there would have been no Industrial Revolution. It was not until 1870 that a national system of elementary schools, separate from the church, was established in England, although Scotland had initiated this earlier. In general the British commoners were still quite coarse in their daily living. Even in 1820 the sewers in London were inferior to those of Rome in the first century of the Christian era. As late as 1897 sailors in the British navy were forbidden to use knives and forks, as this was felt to be unmanly and apt to compromise discipline.

Great Britain, France and Germany all faced agricultural crises in this century. Railroads, steamships and refrigeration had made it possible for the vast new areas in Russia, North America, and Australia to sell their grain and meat in European markets at relatively low prices and the economy became displaced. In Britain, the fall of wheat and meat prices speeded the break-up of rural society and undermined the economic foundations of the landed oligarchy. A disastrous cattle epidemic between 1863 and 1867 added to the agricultural problems so that initially local meat prices soared and imports rose from 16,000 pounds in 1866 to 22,000,000 pounds by 1871. Later the manufacture of ice led to the fish and chips industry. Between 1870 and 1900 land devoted to grain diminished by 1/4 as dairy farming, fruits and vegetables became more common. But even in 1890 83% of children had no solid food except bread and all people tended to get scurvy, rickets and tuberculosis.

As we noted in the last chapter, modern industrialism began in England and involved coal and iron, with a technology which f lowered about the midpoint of this 1 9th century. 30,000,000 tons of coal were mined in 1840 and by 1850 Great Britain owned more net tons of commercial shipping than France, the United States and the German states all put together. The importance of military procurement in the promotion of the Industrial Revolution is of ten overlooked. Mass production of small-arms and a decisive stimulus to new techniques in artillery were by-products of the Crimean War, in which deficiencies of the British and French forces became the source of public scorn. A further byproduct was the discovery of the Bessemer process for making steel, as Henry Bessemer experimented with artillery design