Scientific management, also called Taylorism,[1] is a theory

of management that analyzes and synthesizes workflows. Its main objective is improving economic

efficiency, especially labor productivity. It was one of the earliest attempts to apply science to
the engineering of processes and to management.
Its development began with Frederick Winslow Taylor in the 1880s and 1890s within
the manufacturing industries. Its peak of influence came in the 1910s; [2] by the 1920s, it was still influential
but had entered into competition and syncretism with opposing or complementary ideas.
Although scientific management as a distinct theory or school of thought was obsolete by the 1930s, most
of its themes are still important parts of industrial engineering and management today. These include
analysis; synthesis; logic; rationality; empiricism; work ethic; efficiency and elimination of
waste; standardization of best practices; disdain for tradition preserved merely for its own sake or to
protect the social status of particular workers with particular skill sets; the transformation of craft
production into mass production; and knowledge transfer between workers and from workers into tools,
processes, and documentation.

Pursuit of economic efficiency

While the terms "scientific management" and "Taylorism" are commonly treated as synonymous, the work
of Frederick Taylor marks only the first form of scientific management, followed by other approaches; thus
in today's management theory, Taylorism is sometimes called, or considered a subset of, the classical
perspective on scientific management. Taylor's own names for his approach initially included "shop
management" and "process management". When Louis Brandeis popularized the term "scientific
management" in 1910,[3] Taylor recognized it as another good name for the concept, and adopted it in his
1911 monograph.
Taylor rejected the notion, which was universal in his day and still held today, that the trades, including
manufacturing, were resistant to analysis and could only be performed bycraft production methods. In the
course of his empirical studies, Taylor examined various kinds of manual labor. For example, most bulk
materials handling was manual at the time;material handling equipment as we know it today was mostly
not developed yet. He looked at shoveling in the unloading of railroad cars full of ore; lifting and carrying
in the moving of iron pigs at steel mills; the manual inspection of bearing balls; and others. He discovered
many concepts that were not widely accepted at the time. For example, by observing workers, he decided
that labor should include rest breaks so that the worker has time to recover from fatigue, either physical
(as in shoveling or lifting) or mental (as in the ball inspection case). Workers were allowed to take more
rests during work, and productivity increased as a result. [4]
Subsequent forms of scientific management were articulated by Taylor's disciples, such as Henry Gantt;
other engineers and managers, such as Benjamin S. Graham; and other theorists, such as Max Weber.
Taylor's work also contrasts with other efforts, including those of Henri Fayol and those of Frank Gilbreth,
Sr. and Lillian Moller Gilbreth (whose views originally shared much with Taylor's but later diverged in
response to Taylorism's inadequate handling of human relations). Taylorism, in its strict sense, became
obsolete by the 1930s, and by the 1960s the term "scientific management" was no longer favored in
contemporaneous management theory. However, called by other names, many aspects of scientific
management have persisted in later management theories. In blending art, academic science, and
applied science, modern management practice includes Taylorism as one of its ancestors. The process of
improving on Taylorism's view of human resources began as soon as Taylor's works had been published
(as evidenced by, for example,James Hartness's motivation to publish his Human Factor in 1912,[5] or the
Gilbreths' work), and each subsequent decade brought further evolution.
Flourishing in the late 19th and early 20th century, scientific management built on earlier pursuits
of economic efficiency. While it was prefigured in the folk wisdom of thrift, it favored empirical methods to
determine efficient procedures rather than perpetuating established traditions. Thus it was followed by a
profusion of successors in applied science, including time and motion study, the Efficiency
Movement (which was a broader cultural echo of scientific management's impact on business managers
specifically), Fordism,operations management, operations research, industrial engineering, manufacturing
engineering, logistics, business process management, business process reengineering, lean
manufacturing, and Six Sigma. There is a fluid continuum linking scientific management with the later
fields, and the different approaches often display a high degree of compatibility.
In management literature today, the term "scientific management" mostly refers to the work of Taylor and
his disciples ("classical", implying "no longer current, but still respected for its seminal value") in contrast
to newer, improved iterations of efficiency-seeking methods. [citation needed] In political and sociological terms,
Taylorism can be seen as the division of labor pushed to its logical extreme, with a consequent de-skilling
of the worker and dehumanisation of the workers and the workplace[citation needed]. Taylorism is often
mentioned along with Fordism, because it was closely associated with mass production methods in
factories, which was its earliest application. Today, task-oriented optimization of work tasks is nearly
ubiquitous in industry.

Soldiering[edit]
Scientific management requires a high level of managerial control over employee work practices and
entails a higher ratio of managerial workers to laborers than previous management methods. Such detail-
oriented management may cause friction between workers and managers.
Taylor observed that some workers were more talented than others, and that even smart ones were often
unmotivated. He observed that most workers who are forced to perform repetitive tasks tend to work at
the slowest rate that goes unpunished. This slow rate of work has been observed in many industries and
many countries[6] and has been called by various terms, including "soldiering", [6][7] a term that reflects the
way conscripts may approach following orders. Other names, some of which are confined to certain
regions and eras, include "dogging it",[8] "goldbricking",[9] "hanging it out",[6] and "ca canae".[6] Managers
may call it by those names or "loafing"[10] or "malingering"; workers may call it "getting through the day" or
"preventing management from abusing us". Taylor used the term "soldiering" and observed that, when
paid the same amount, workers will tend to do the amount of work that the slowest among them does. [11]
This reflects the idea that workers have a vested interest in their own well-being, and do not benefit from
working above the defined rate of work when it will not increase their remuneration. He therefore
proposed that the work practice that had been developed in most work environments was crafted,
intentionally or unintentionally, to be very inefficient in its execution. He posited that time and motion
studies combined with rational analysis and synthesis could uncover one best method for performing any
particular task, and that prevailing methods were seldom equal to these best methods. Crucially, Taylor
himself prominently acknowledged that if each employee's compensation was linked to their output,
their productivity would go up.[11] Thus his compensation plans usually included piece rates. In contrast,
some later adopters of time and motion studies ignored this aspect and tried to get large productivity
gains while passing little or no compensation gains to the workforce, which contributed to resentment
against the system.

A machinist at the Tabor Company, a firm where Frederick Taylor's consultancy was applied to practice,
about 1905

Relationship to mechanization and automation[edit]

Scientific management evolved in an era when mechanization and automation were still in their infancy.
The ideas and methods of scientific management extended the American system of manufacturing in the
transformation from craft work (with humans as the only possible agents) to mechanization and
automation, although proponents of scientific management did not predict the extensive removal of
humans from the production process. Concerns over labor-displacing technologies rose with increasing
mechanization and automation.
By factoring processes into discrete, unambiguous units, scientific management laid the groundwork for
automation and offshoring, prefiguring industrial process control and numerical control in the absence of
any machines that could carry it out. Taylor and his followers did not foresee this at the time; in their
world, it was humans that would execute the optimized processes. (For example, although in their era the
instruction "open valve A whenever pressure gauge B reads over value X" would be carried out by a
human, the fact that it had been reduced to an algorithmic component paved the way for a machine to be
the agent.) However, one of the common threads between their world and ours is that the agents of
execution need not be "smart" to execute their tasks. In the case of computers, they are not able(yet) to
be "smart" (in that sense of the word); in the case of human workers under scientific management, they
were often able but were not allowed. Once the time-and-motion men had completed their studies of a
particular task, the workers had very little opportunity for further thinking, experimenting, or suggestion-
making. They were forced to "play dumb" most of the time, which occasionally led to revolts.
The middle ground between the craft production of skilled workers and full automation is occupied by
systems of extensive mechanization and partial automation operated by semiskilled and unskilled
workers. Such systems depend on algorithmic workflows and knowledge transfer, which require
substantial engineering to succeed. Although Taylor's intention for scientific management was simply to
optimize work methods, the process engineering that he pioneered also tends to build the skill into the
equipment and processes, removing most need for skill in the workers. Such engineering has governed
most industrial engineering since then. It is also the essence of successful offshoring. The common
theme in all these cases is that businesses engineer their way out of their need for large concentrations of
skilled workers, and the high-wage environments that sustain them. This creates competitive advantage
on the local level of individual firms, although the pressure it exerts systemically
on employment and employability is an externality.

Effects on labor relations in market economies[edit]

Taylor's view of workers[edit]
Taylor often expressed views of workers that may be considered prejudiced or insulting. [4] While he
recognized differences between workers, stressed the need to select the right person for the right job, and
championed the workers by advocating frequent breaks and good pay, [11] he often failed to conceal his
condescending attitude and would call less intelligent workers "stupid", comparing them to draft animals.
[12]

Other thinkers soon offered less prejudiced ideas on the roles that workers play in mature industrial
systems. James Hartness published The Human Factor in Works Management[5] in 1912, while Frank
Gilbreth and Lillian Moller Gilbreth offered their own alternatives to Taylorism. The human relations school
of management evolved in the 1930s to complement rather than replace scientific management, with
Taylorism determining the organisation of the work process, and human relations helping to adapt the
workers to the new procedures.[13] Today's efficiency-seeking methods, such as lean manufacturing,
include respect for workers and fulfillment of their needs as integral parts of the theory. (Workers slogging
their way through workdays in the business world do encounter flawed implementations of these methods
that make jobs unpleasant; but these implementations generally lack managerial competence in matching
theory to execution.) Clearly a syncretism has occurred since Taylor's day, although its implementation
has been uneven, as lean management in capable hands has produced good results for both managers
and workers, but in incompetent hands has damaged enterprises.
Taylor's implementations of scientific management[edit]
Implementations of scientific management often failed to account for inherent challenges such as the
individuality of workers and the lack of shared economic interest between workers and management. As
individuals are different from each other, the most efficient way of working for one person may be
inefficient for another. As the economic interests of workers and management are rarely identical, both
the measurement processes and the retraining required by Taylor's methods were frequently resented
and sometimes sabotaged by the workforce.
Taylor himself recognized these challenges and sought to address them. Nevertheless, his own
implementations of his system (e.g., Watertown Arsenal, Link-Belt corporation, Midvale, Bethlehem) were
never really very successful. <citation needed> They made unsteady progress and eventually failed,
usually after Taylor had left. The countless managers who later esteemed or imitated Taylor did even
worse jobs of implementation. Typically, they were less analytical managers who had adopted scientific
management as a fashionable way of cutting the unit cost of production, often without any deep
understanding of Taylor's ideas. Taylor knew that scientific management could only last if the workers
benefited from the profit increases it generated. Taylor had developed a method for generating the
increases, for the dual purposes of owner/manager profit and worker profit, realizing that the methods
relied on both of those results in order to work correctly. But many owners and managers seized upon the
methods thinking (wrongly) that the profits could be reserved solely or mostly for themselves and the
system could endure indefinitely merely through force of authority.
Workers are necessarily human: they have personal needs and interpersonal friction, and they face very
real difficulties introduced when jobs become so efficient that they have no time to relax, and so rigid that
they have no permission to innovate.
Early decades: making jobs unpleasant[edit]
Under scientific management, the demands of work intensified. Workers became dissatisfied with the
work environment and became angry.[citation needed] During one of Taylor's own implementations at
the Watertown Arsenal in Massachusetts, a strike led to an investigation of Taylor's methods by a U.S.
House of Representatives committee. The committee reported in 1912, concluding that scientific
management did provide some useful techniques and offered valuable organizational suggestions, [need
quotation to verify]
 but that it also gave production managers a dangerously high level of uncontrolled power.
[14]
 After an attitude survey of the workers revealed a high level of resentment and hostility towards
scientific management, the Senate banned Taylor's methods at the arsenal. [14]
Scientific management lowered worker morale and exacerbated existing conflicts between labor and
management. As a consequence, the method inadvertently strengthened labor unions and their
bargaining power in labor disputes,[15] thereby neutralizing most or all of the benefit of any productivity
gains it had achieved. Thus its net benefit to owners and management ended up as small or negative. It
took new efforts, borrowing some ideas from scientific management but mixing them with others, to
produce more productive formulas.
Later decades: making jobs disappear[edit]
Scientific management may have exacerbated grievances among workers about oppressive or greedy
management. It certainly strengthened developments that put workers at a disadvantage: the erosion of
employment in developed economies via both offshoring and automation. Both were made possible by
the deskilling of jobs, which was made possible by the knowledge transfer that scientific management
achieved. Knowledge was transferred both to cheaper workers and from workers into tools. Jobs that
once would have required craft work first transformed to semiskilled work, then unskilled. At this point the
labor had been commoditized, and thus the competition between workers (and worker populations)
moved closer to pure than it had been, depressing wages and job security. Jobs could be offshored
(giving one human's tasks to others—which could be good for the new worker population but was bad for
the old) or they could be rendered nonexistent through automation (giving a human's tasks to machines).
Either way, the net result from the perspective of developed-economy workers was that jobs started to
pay less, then disappear. The power of labor unions in the mid-twentieth century only led to a push on the
part of management to accelerate the process of automation,[16] hastening the onset of the later stages
just described.
In a central assumption of scientific management, "the worker was taken for granted as a cog in the
machinery."[17] While scientific management had made jobs unpleasant, its successors made them less
remunerative, less secure, and finally nonexistent as a consequence of structural unemployment.
Successors to scientific management such as 'corporate reengineering' and 'business process
reengineering' envisage as a distant goal the elimination of all unskilled, or even most skilled human
labor, an aspiration that stems from scientific management's reduction of process to discrete units. As the
resultant commodification of work advances, no skilled profession, not even medicine, is immune to the
efforts of scientific management's successors, the 'reengineers' often derided as 'bean counters' and
'PHBs'.

Effects on disruptive innovation[edit]

Scientific management arose in an era of rapid technological change. The goal of increasing efficiency
within an existing technological context by formalizing the details of a process always carries the risk of
fossilizing one moment's technological state, thereby stifling disruptive innovation and preventing further
technological progress. For example,John Parsons may not have been able to incubate the earliest
development of numerical control if he were a worker in a red-tape-laden organization being told from
above that the best way to mill a part had already been perfected, and therefore he had no business
experimenting with his own preferred methods.
Most implementations of scientific management worked within the implicit context of a particular
technological moment and did not envisage transcending that moment in acontinuous improvement
process. Embracing the notion of a "one best way", such implementations treated the immediate context
as a long-term constant rather than a variable. Later methods such as lean manufacturing overcame this
limitation by including continual innovation as part of their process and by recognizing the iterative nature
of development.

Relationship to Fordism[edit]
It is often assumed that Fordism derives from Taylor's work. Taylor apparently made this assumption
himself when visiting the Ford Motor Company's Michigan plants not too long before he died, but it is
likely that the methods at Ford were evolved independently, and that any influence from Taylor's work
was indirect at best.[18] Charles E. Sorensen, a principal of the company during its first four decades,
disclaimed any connection at all.[19] There was a belief at Ford, which remained dominant until Henry Ford
II took over the company in 1945, that the world's experts were worthless, because if Ford had listened to
them, it would have failed to attain its great successes. Henry Ford felt that he had succeeded in spite of,
not because of, experts, who had tried to stop him in various ways (disagreeing about price points,
production methods, car features, business financing, and other issues). Sorensen thus was dismissive of
Taylor and lumped him into the category of useless experts. [19] Sorensen held the New England machine
tool vendor Walter Flanders in high esteem and credits him for the efficient floorplan layout at Ford,
claiming that Flanders knew nothing about Taylor. Flanders may have been exposed to the spirit of
Taylorism elsewhere, and may have been influenced by it, but he did not cite it when developing his
production technique. Regardless, the Ford team apparently did independently invent modern mass
production techniques in the period of 1905-1915, and they themselves were not aware of any borrowing
from Taylorism. Perhaps it is only possible with hindsight to see the zeitgeist that (indirectly) connected
the budding Fordism to the rest of the efficiency movement during the decade of 1905-1915.

Influence on planned economies[edit]

Scientific management appealed to managers of planned economies because central economic
planning relies on the idea that the expenses that go into economic production can be precisely predicted
and can be optimized by design. The opposite theoretical pole would be laissez-faire thinking in which
the invisible hand of free markets is the only possible "designer". In reality most economies today are
somewhere in between.
Soviet Union[edit]
In the Soviet Union, Taylorism was advocated by Aleksei Gastev and nauchnaia organizatsia truda (the
movement for the scientific organisation of labor). It found support in bothVladimir Lenin and Leon
Trotsky. Gastev continued to promote this system of labor management until his arrest and execution in
1939.[20] In the 1920s and 1930s, the Soviet Union enthusiastically embraced Fordism and Taylorism,
importing American experts in both fields as well as American engineering firms to build parts of its new
industrial infrastructure. The concepts of the Five Year Plan and the centrally planned economy can be
traced directly to the influence of Taylorism on Soviet thinking. As scientific management was believed to
epitomize American efficiency,[21] Joseph Stalin even claimed that "the combination of the Russian
revolutionary sweep with American efficiency is the essence of Leninism."[22]
Sorensen was one of the consultants who brought American know-how to the USSR during this era,
[23]
 before the Cold War made such exchanges unthinkable. As the Soviet Union developed and grew in
power, both sides, the Soviets and the Americans, chose to ignore or deny the contribution that American
ideas and expertise had made: the Soviets because they wished to portray themselves as creators of
their own destiny and not indebted to a rival, and the Americans because they did not wish to
acknowledge their part in creating a powerful communist rival. Anti-communism had always enjoyed
widespread popularity in America, and anti-capitalism in Russia, but after World War II, they precluded
any admission by either side that technologies or ideas might be either freely shared or clandestinely
stolen.
East Germany[edit]
East German machine tool builders, 1953.

By the 1950s, scientific management had grown dated, but its goals and practices remained attractive
and were also being adopted by theGerman Democratic Republic as it sought to increase efficiency in its
industrial sectors. In the accompanying photograph from the German Federal Archives, workers discuss
standards specifying how each task should be done and how long it should take. The workers are
engaged in a state-planned instance of process improvement, but they are pursuing the same goals that
were contemporaneously pursued in capitalist societies, as in the Toyota Production System.

Legacy[edit]
Scientific management was one of the first attempts to systematically treat management and process
improvement as a scientific problem. It may have been the first to do so in a "bottom-up" way and found a
lineage of successors that have many elements in common. With the advancement of statistical
methods, quality assurance and quality control began in the 1920s and 1930s. During the 1940s and
1950s, the body of knowledge for doing scientific management evolved into operations
management, operations research, and management cybernetics. In the 1980s total quality
management became widely popular, and in the 1990s "re-engineering" went from a simple word to a
mystique. Today's Six Sigma and lean manufacturing could be seen as new kinds of scientific
management, although their evolutionary distance from the original is so great that the comparison might
be misleading. In particular, Shigeo Shingo, one of the originators of the Toyota Production System,
believed that this system and Japanese management culture in general should be seen as a kind of
scientific management.[citation needed]
Peter Drucker saw Frederick Taylor as the creator of knowledge management, because the aim of
scientific management was to produce knowledge about how to improve work processes. Although the
typical application of scientific management was manufacturing, Taylor himself advocated scientific
management for all sorts of work, including the management of universities and government. For
example, Taylor believed scientific management could be extended to "the work of our salesmen". Shortly
after his death, his acolyte Harlow S. Person began to lecture corporate audiences on the possibility of
using Taylorism for "sales engineering"[24] (Person was talking about what is now called sales process
engineering—engineering the processes that salespeople use—not about what we call sales
engineering today.) This was a watershed insight in the history of corporatemarketing.
Today's militaries employ all of the major goals and tactics of scientific management, if not under that
name. Of the key points, all but wage incentives for increased output are used by modern military
organizations. Wage incentives rather appear in the form of skill bonuses for enlistments.
Scientific management has had an important influence in sports, where stop watches and motion studies
rule the day. (Taylor himself enjoyed sports, especially tennis and golf. He and a partner won a national
championship in doubles tennis. He invented improved tennis racquets and improved golf clubs, although
other players liked to tease him for his unorthodox designs, and they did not catch on as replacements for
the mainstream implements).[25]
Modern human resources can be seen to have begun in the scientific management era, most notably in
the writings of Katherine M. H. Blackford, who was also a proponent ofeugenics.
Practices descended from scientific management are currently used in offices and in medicine
(e.g. managed care) as well.[26]

Strategic human resource management is designed to help companies best meet the needs of their
employees while promoting company goals. Human resource management deals with any aspects of a
business that affects employees, such as hiring and firing, pay, benefits, training, and
administration. Human resources may also provide work incentives, safety procedure information, and
sick or vacation days.
Strategic human resource management is the proactive management of people. It requires thinking
ahead, and planning ways for a company to better meet the needs of its employees, and for the
employees to better meet the needs of the company. This can affect the way things are done at a
business site, improving everything from hiring practices and employee trainingprograms to assessment
techniques and discipline.
Companies who work hard to meet the needs of their employees can cultivate a work atmosphere
conducive to productivity. Human resource management is the best way to achieve this. Being able to
plan for the needs of employees by thinking ahead can help to improve the rate of skilled employees who
chose to remain working for a company. Improving the employee retention rat

When creating a human resources plan, it is important to consider employees may want or need and what
the company can reasonably supply. A larger company can usually afford training and benefit programs
that smaller companies cannot afford to offer. This does not mean that a smaller company should not
engage in strategic human resource management. Providing specialized on-site training, even if provided
by senior members of the company, and offering one-on-one assessment and coaching sessions, can
help employees reach peak performance rates.
An important aspect of strategic human resource management is employee development. This process
begins when a company is recruiting and interviewing prospective employees. Improved interviewing
techniques can help to weed out applicants that may not be a good match for the company.
After being hired on, a strong training and mentoring program can help a new member of the staff get up
to speed on company policies and any current or ongoing projects they will be working on. To help
employees perform at their best, a company can follow up with continual training programs, coaching, and
regular assessment. Investing in the development of its employees can allow a company to turn out more
consistent products.
Strategic human resource management is essential in both large and small companies. In small
companies, this may be as simple as the owner or manager taking a little time every day to observe,
assist, and assess employees, and provide regular reviews. Larger companies may have a whole
department in charge of human resources and development. By meeting the needs of the employees in a
way that also benefits the company, it is possible to improve the quality of staff members. Taking the
effort to provide employees with the tools they need to thrive is worth the investment.
The Industrial Revolution, which took place from the 18th to 19th centuries, was a period during which
predominantly agrarian, rural societies in Europe and America became industrial and urban. Prior to the
Industrial Revolution, which began in Britain in the late 1700s, manufacturing was often done in people’s
homes, using hand tools or basic machines. Industrialization marked a shift to powered, special-purpose
machinery, factories and mass production. The iron and textile industries, along with the development of
the steam engine, played central roles in the Industrial Revolution, which also saw improved systems of
transportation, communication and banking. While industrialization brought about an increased volume
and variety of manufactured goods and an improved standard of living for some, it also resulted in often
grim employment and living conditions for the poor and working classes.

BRITAIN: BIRTHPLACE OF THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

Before the advent of the Industrial Revolution, most people resided in small, rural communities where
their daily existences revolved around farming. Life for the average person was difficult, as incomes were
meager, and malnourishment and disease were common. People produced the bulk of their own food,
clothing, furniture and tools. Most manufacturing was done in homes or small, rural shops, using hand
tools or simple machines.

A number of factors contributed to Britain’s role as the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution. For one, it
had great deposits of coal and iron ore, which proved essential for industrialization. Additionally, Britain
was a politically stable society, as well as the world’s leading colonial power, which meant its colonies
could serve as a source for raw materials, as well as a marketplace for manufactured goods.

As demand for British goods increased, merchants needed more cost-effective methods of production,
which led to the rise of mechanization and the factory system.

INNOVATION AND INDUSTRIALIZATION

The textile industry, in particular, was transformed by industrialization. Before mechanization and
factories, textiles were made mainly in people’s homes (giving rise to the term cottage industry), with
merchants often providing the raw materials and basic equipment, and then picking up the finished
product. Workers set their own schedules under this system, which proved difficult for merchants to
regulate and resulted in numerous inefficiencies. In the 1700s, a series of innovations led to ever-
increasing productivity, while requiring less human energy. For example, around 1764, Englishman
James Hargreaves (1722-1778) invented the spinning jenny (“jenny” was an early abbreviation of the
word “engine”), a machine that enabled an individual to produce multiple spools of threads
simultaneously. By the time of Hargreaves’ death, there were over 20,000 spinning jennys in use across
Britain. The spinning jenny was improved upon by British inventor Samuel Compton’s (1753-1827)
spinning mule, as well as later machines. Another key innovation in textiles, the power loom, which
mechanized the process of weaving cloth, was developed in the 1780s by English inventor Edmund
Cartwright (1743-1823).

Developments in the iron industry also played a central role in the Industrial Revolution. In the early 18th
century, Englishman Abraham Darby (1678-1717) discovered a cheaper, easier method to produce cast
iron, using a coke-fueled (as opposed to charcoal-fired) furnace. In the 1850s, British engineer Henry
Bessemer (1813-1898) developed the first inexpensive process for mass-producing steel. Both iron and
steel became essential materials, used to make everything from appliances, tools and machines, to ships,
buildings and infrastructure.

The steam engine was also integral to industrialization. In 1712, Englishman Thomas Newcomen (1664-
1729) developed the first practical steam engine (which was used primarily to pump water out of mines).
By the 1770s, Scottish inventor James Watt (1736-1819) had improved on Newcomen’s work, and the
steam engine went on to power machinery, locomotives and ships during the Industrial Revolution.
TRANSPORTATION AND THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
The transportation industry also underwent significant transformation during the Industrial Revolution.
Before the advent of the steam engine, raw materials and finished goods were hauled and distributed via
horse-drawn wagons, and by boats along canals and rivers. In the early 1800s, American Robert Fulton
(1765-1815) built the first commercially successful steamboat, and by the mid-19th century, steamships
were carrying freight across the Atlantic. As steam-powered ships were making their debut, the steam
locomotive was also coming into use. In the early 1800s, British engineer Richard Trevithick (1771-1833)
constructed the first railway steam locomotive. In 1830, England’s Liverpool and Manchester Railway
became the first to offer regular, timetabled passenger services. By 1850, Britain had more than 6,000
miles of railroad track. Additionally, around 1820, Scottish engineer John McAdam (1756-1836)
developed a new process for road construction. His technique, which became known as macadam,
resulted in roads that were smoother, more durable and less muddy.

COMMUNICATION AND BANKING IN THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

Communication became easier during the Industrial Revolution with such inventions as the telegraph. In
1837, two Brits, William Cooke (1806-1879) and Charles Wheatstone (1802-1875), patented the first
commercial electrical telegraph. By 1840, railways were a Cooke-Wheatstone system, and in 1866, a
telegraph cable was successfully laid across the Atlantic.The Industrial Revolution also saw the rise of
banks and industrial financiers, as well as a factory system dependent on owners and managers. A stock
exchange was established in London in the 1770s; the New York Stock Exchange was founded in the
early 1790s. In 1776, Scottish social philosopher Adam Smith (1723-1790), who is regarded as the
founder of modern economics, published “The Wealth of Nations.” In it, Smith promoted an economic
system based on free enterprise, the private ownership of means of production, and lack of government
interference.

QUALITY OF LIFE DURING INDUSTRIALIZATION

The Industrial Revolution brought about a greater volume and variety of factory-produced goods and
raised the standard of living for many people, particularly for the middle and upper classes. However, life
for the poor and working classes continued to be filled with challenges. Wages for those who labored in
factories were low and working conditions could be dangerous and monotonous. Unskilled workers had
little job security and were easily replaceable. Children were part of the labor force and often worked long
hours and were used for such highly hazardous tasks as cleaning the machinery. In the early 1860s, an
estimated one-fifth of the workers in Britain’s textile industry were younger than 15. Industrialization also
meant that some craftspeople were replaced by machines. Additionally, urban, industrialized areas were
unable to keep pace with the flow of arriving workers from the countryside, resulting in inadequate,
overcrowded housing and polluted, unsanitary living conditions in which disease was rampant. Conditions
for Britain’s working-class began to gradually improve by the later part of the 19th century, as the
government instituted various labor reforms and workers gained the right to form trade unions.

INDUSTRIALIZATION MOVES BEYOND BRITAIN

The British enacted legislation to prohibit the export of their technology and skilled workers; however, they
had little success in this regard. Industrialization spread from Britain to other European countries,
including Belgium, France and Germany, and to the United States. By the mid-19th century,
industrialization was well-established throughout the western part of Europe and America’s northeastern
region. By the early 20th century, the U.S. had become the world’s leading industrial nation.