Victorian Scotland

[Delbáeth]

The Industrial Revolution

‘The state of society now leads so much to great accumulations of humanity that we cannot wonder if it ferment and reek like a compost dunghill. Nature intended that population should be diffused over the soil in proportion to its extent. We have accumulated in huge cities and smothering manufacturies the numbers which should be spread over the face of a country and what wonder that they should be corrupted? We have turned healthful and pleasant brooks into morasses and pestiferous lakes.’
Sir Walter Scott’s Journal on the Industrial Revolution
thin one life time the Industrial Revolution transformed Scotland completely. In 1750, Scotland was a rural, agricultural economy which was suddenly propelled into the modern, capitalist world through scientific and technological breakthrough. The Industrial Revolution was based upon the efficient exploitation of nature’s raw materials and labour as new scientific theories developed by the Enlightenment thinkers were quickly transformed into practical, money-making applications.

The Chemical Revolution
Joseph Black (1728-99), the son of a Bordeaux wine merchant and Professor of Chemistry at both Glasgow and Edinburgh, made one of the most significant breakthroughs in the history of chemistry. In 1756 he published a thesis which postulated that air contained another gas, which he called ‘Fixed Air’, and which extinguished candles when isolated. Black had discovered Carbon Dioxide, one of the building blocks of commercial chemistry. His experiments demonstrated to the scientific community that identifying the constituent elements of any substance was the first step towards actually producing a pure form of that substance, that people could create these gasses for themselves. Other scientists followed in his footsteps and soon a whole array of gases had been identified, including Oxygen, Hydrogen, Nitrogen and Chlorine. The elements of the Earth were being revealed and they formed the basic chemistry which sparked the Industrial Revolution.

The Commercial Revolution
Rapidly the knowledge of the chemical revolution was adapted to commercial use. Black and his fellow professor, William Cullen, went on to develop an alkali using the newly discovered element, Chlorine, which made the process of linen bleaching far more efficient. Weaving linen had been an old industry which had employed mostly men working on handlooms. However, with the greater efficiency brought through the use of chemicals, Scottish linen became more competitive and grew to form the backbone of a commercial revolution. Further transformations in the industry came through a series of English inventions which the Scots were quick to adopt: Hargreave’s Spinning Jenny, Arkwright’s Waterframe and Crompton’s Mule all accelerated the weaving process and improved competitiveness. It was boom time for the few who held the capital.

New Lanark
England’s financial entrepreneurs found the cheaper labour in Scotland attractive and many moved north to make their fortunes. One such man was Richard Arkwright (1732-92), a hairdresser by trade, whose waterframe made cotton spinning such a profitable business. In 1784 he went into partnership with David Dale (1739-1806), a Scots weaver who had made his money trading linen. Arkwright, however, lost the patent to his marvellous machines in 1785 and the partnership was dissolved, with Dale continuing the business using the machines patent-free. Dale needed a plentiful water supply to power his business and in 1786 he found it at New Lanark, near the Falls of Clyde. Water was taken from the river by tunnel and canal to drive the massive water wheels which, in turn, powered the spinning machines. The machines and the people composed a brand new form of labour organisation: the factory.

The Factory System
The factory system used labour in a new systematic fashion. The most common workers were often women and children, who had to work long hours, often through the night, for very low wages. Traditional workers like the handloom weavers couldn’t compete with such high output and were quickly put out of business. It was ruthless capitalism but it was profitable. Within a few years six mills were operating at New Lanark.

Everything relied on the exploitation of natural resources, and where water power was sufficient factories sprang up. The wealth accumulated further when a new raw material called cotton was imported from India or from the slave plantations of Britain’s American colonies. Cotton could be worked into finer material than the flax which made linen, and these products were shipped to markets in Europe or back across the Atlantic as Scotland’s trade networks expanded beyond the traditional markets in the Low Countries and France.

The Tobacco Trade
Much of Scotland’s new-found wealth rested upon the Atlantic trade, particularly in tobacco. Glasgow’s famous Tobacco Lords were some of the great innovators of capitalism and accumulated vast sums of money. They sent agents out to the Chesapeake in Virginia or Carolina to trade with the small plantation owners, to give them credit, and to sell them tools from the Scottish iron and linen industry on credit against their future crop. As the plantations expanded, so did Glasgow’s grip on the trade.

The Tobacco Lords were behind new innovations and systems of crop harvesting. They stored tons of tobacco in warehouses, run by Glasgow agents, so that there was always plenty when a ship arrived for a quick turnaround. These developments and Glasgow’s easier access to transatlantic shipping routes gave the Tobacco Lords important commercial advantages over their southern rivals in Bristol and London.

Scotland and the Atlantic Trade
The Atlantic trade and the Industrial Revolution combined to transform the Scots economy. Trade now turned West towards an ever-expanding America, and tobacco was just part of a global trading system known as the Three Way Trade. Ships sailed from Scotland to Africa to pick up slaves, who were then transported to the sugar plantations of the West Indies or the tobacco plantations of America, from there raw materials like sugar and tobacco were then brought back to Scotland. The wealth of slave-produced goods poured through Glasgow’s banks and quays leaving huge profits which were used to further advance Scotland’s rapid industrialisation.

In 1747 the French Government gave Glasgow a monopoly in the supply of tobacco to France. It brought a glut of money to Scotland’s new banks, such as the Royal Bank, the Thistle Bank and the British Linen Company Bank, who went on to invent new methods of credit, like the overdraft. A paper economy, not unlike the one we know today, was developing for a nation on the brink of industrialisation.

James Watt, the Artisan Inventor
James Watt (1736-1819) was an artisan inventor and producer of mathematical instruments for Glasgow University. After becoming acquainted with Joseph Black’s scientific breakthrough on latent heat capacity, Watt was able to calculate accurately the size of boiler required for a steam engine and how to efficiently transfer energy from steam back into water. He put the theory into practice with an invention which had a dramatic effect on the Scottish economy. Watt didn’t, as is popularly believed, invent the steam engine, which had been around since the early 18th century, but he did invent the Separate Condenser - a simple device which massively increased the power and efficiency of the steam engine. Along with his other improvements to the design of steam engines, he revolutionised industrial production: freeing factories from the requirements of water supply and hugely increasing the power available. Watt’s newly-improved steam engines were also used as powerful water pumps, allowing for the first time in history deep mine shafts to be sunk to exploit coal and mineral reserves below Ayrshire and Lanarkshire. His inventions allowed the expansion of new industries.

New Inventions and New IndustriesIn 1812 another Scot, Henry Bell (1767-1830), built the Comet: the world’s first successful passenger steamship, which sailed between Glasgow and Greenock and ushered the rise of the Clyde shipbuilding industry. The engine was soon put on wheels, creating the first steam locomotives and the vitally important railway industry.

In the early phase of the Industrial Revolution old industries had been made more efficient, but in the second phase Scotland was now at the cutting edge of new technology. The modern industrial age had arrived.