Industrial Location Theory Is Dead: Part 2
Industrial Cities
Some towns’ locations were ideally suited for certain
industries to develop. Those near the coalfields tended to specialise in iron
and, after importing some clever knowhow from a Henry Bessemer in the middle of
the 19th Century, steel as the coal (How
the Bessemer Process works). Coal was the scarcest ingredient required for
the smelting process as limestone, being similarly laid down as a sedimentary
deposit, is often found nearby and iron ore of varying quality is fairly ubiquitous
across our isles. Towns in the Midlands which were near to coal and not far
from the upland regions where sheep farming was the main economic activity,
were quick to develop a thriving textiles industry. Those with excellent clay
nearby tended to found a plethora of potteries.
Ports such as Liverpool and London’s Docklands which were
already important conduits for goods from the expanding British Empire, grew
rapidly as Britain became the most industrialised nation. The ports facilitated
the export of manufactured goods from Britain around the world and the
importing of new and exotic raw materials from around the world. Some of these
were becoming the mainstays of not only polite society, but for everybody: namely
tea and coffee. There was intense competition from our European neighbours to
source new products from overseas and it was considered important to secure a
constant supply for our domestic market and so the process of colonisation increased
apace and the trading empire developed rapidly. Iron, textiles and other
manufactured goods were taken from Britain to the Gold Coast of Africa and
beyond, round the Cape of Good Hope and to Kenya, India and the Far East. Each
of these places had goods which could be traded: tea, coffee, spices, silks and,
unfortunately, slaves. The slaves were shipped from Western Africa back across
the Atlantic to the Caribbean archipelago where they were used to set up more plantations
to produce the volume of luxury goods that the increasingly wealthy urban upper
classes demanded.
Industrialisation meant that sail power could be replaced by
steam power and ships that were formerly constrained by the eccentricities of
the capricious wind, could reliably follow a timetable. The large fleet of
ships meant that the cost of transporting goods became cheaper. This meant that
not just goods but people too began to move around the world more freely. The
invention of steel-hulled ships meant that the seas wrecked fewer craft but
also they were harder to attack. The flipside of this was of course that they
were better to attack with and a fleet of steel-hulled ships soon became the
vital tool in any country’s arsenal.
Also, the mass-production of precise steel and iron work meant that
firearms could be made quickly and in huge numbers. They also could be made
bigger, giving them a greater range and accuracy. The nation with the biggest
and best guns generally won through.
Britain’s towns began to grow, attracting unskilled workers
from the fields with the promise of well-paid employment and a higher quality
of life: the ‘Dick Whittington’ effect. In reality, the majority of jobs were
poorly paid, dangerous and had no security.
The new factory workers worked extremely long hours for very little
remuneration. Many swapped rural poverty for urban poverty. There were
exceptions, such as Cadbury who took
a philanthropic interest in his workforce, building a whole town for them,
ensuring that their families had healthcare and education. The successful
factory owners became incredibly wealthy, investing their profits into other
enterprises and multiplying their assets still further. They bought huge
estates in the country to be away from the industrial noise and grime that
funded their luxurious lifestyles.
As the technology developed throughout the early 19th
Century, the skilled labour that was required was gradually replaced by
cheaper, low-skilled labour. Around
1811, in the Nottingham textile mills, a group of handloom workers took matters
into their own hands and began burning and smashing the new mechanised looms
that threatened their job security. The group, known as ‘Luddites’, grew in size
and organisation, and over the next two years they caused significant damage to
mills across the North Ridings of Yorkshire (1812) and Lancashire (1813). The
army was sent in to quell the uprising and several pitched battles most
noticeably at Burton's Mill in Middleton and at Westhoughton Mill, in
Lancashire. Eventually, Parliament took action making machine breaking a
capital crime in the Frame
Breaking Act in March 1812. There was a mass trial in York in 1813 and many
of the 60 men tried were hanged or deported to penal colonies.
The fear of new technology replacing skilled jobs was not
confined to the Luddite attacks on textile mills. The mechanisation was forcing
change on the pattern of labour and, despite the Luddites and their ilk raging
against the machines, the change was unstoppable.
In the middle of the 19th Century, the workers
began to get more organised. They formed Unions which argued for a reasonable
wage and fair treatment for their members. If the Unions were upset, then they
withdrew their labour en masse and went on strike. The Trade Union Movement was formalised in
1871 and the Unions continued to grow in power through to the middle of the 20th
Century.
