La Revolucion Industrial(En Ingles)

Chapter VII
The Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution is a phrase invented by Arnold Toynbee, and
now generally used to indicate those economic changes which turned
England from an agricultural into an industrial community. The period
during which these changes took place cannot from the nature of things
be definitely fixed; but usually it is taken to extend from about the
middleof the eighteenth century to the close of the reign of George
III. Two points, however, must be remembered: first, that there was a
commercial as well as an agricultural and an industrial stage of
development; and secondly, that this period contains merely the central
and crucial years of a process of specialization and expansion which
occupied centuries of English economic history. Therewas also before
the agricultural stage a pastoral stage; but that lies beyond the scope
of English history, because both the English people and the Celts they
conquered had passed out of the pastoral stage before recorded English
history begins. Each of these stages corresponds to a different social
organization: the pastoral stage was patriarchal, the agricultural
stage was feudal, thecommercial stage was plutocratic, and the
industrial stage leads towards democracy. The stages, of course,
overlap one another, and every national community to-day is partly
pastoral, partly agricultural, partly commercial, and partly
industrial. We can only call a nation any one of these things in the
sense that they denote its dominant characteristic.
This evolution has been the result of man'sincreasing control over
nature. In the pastoral stage he takes of the produce of nature,
providing little or nothing himself. In the agricultural stage he
manipulates the soil and subdues it, he harnesses the wind and the
streams to grind his corn, and to water his land; Providence may have
placed all things under his feet, but he takes long to discover their
use and the means to use them.In the commercial and industrial stages
he employs the wind and water, steam and electricity, for transport,
communications, and manufactures. But he can only develop this mastery
by the interdependent processes of specialization, co-operation, and
expansion. A lonely shepherd can live on his flocks without help; a
single family can provide for its own agricultural subsistence, and the
normalholding of the primitive English family, the "hide" as it was
called, was really a share in all the means of livelihood, corn-land,
pasture-land, rights of common and of cutting wood. This family
independence long survived, and home-brewing, home-baking, homewashing,
are not even now extinct. Each family in the primitive village
did everything for itself. When its needs and standard ofcomfort grew,
increased facilities beyond the reach of the individual household were
provided by the lord of the manor, as, for instance, a mill, a
bakehouse, a wine-press. Indeed, the possession of these things may
have helped him into the lordship of the manor. Certainly, some of them
are mentioned in early Anglo-Saxon days among the qualifications for
thegnhood, and when the lord possessedthese things, he claimed a
monopoly; his tenants were bound to grind their corn at his mill, and
so forth. But there were things he did not care to do, and a villager
here and there began to specialize in such trades as the blacksmith's,
carpenter's, and mason's. This specialization involved co-operation and
the expansion of household economy into village economy. Others must do
theblacksmith's sowing and reaping, while he did the shoeing for the
whole village.
Thus village industries grew up, and in unprogressive countries, such
as India, where, owing to distance and lack of communications, villages
were isolated and self-sufficing, this village economy became
stereotyped, and the village trades hereditary. But in western Europe,
as order was slowly evolved after the chaos of...