Iron In The Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution began in Britain because the traditional methods of the cottage industry could not keep up with the growing demand for cotton clothes throughout Britain and its vast colonial empire. This problem led British cloth manufacturers to seek and adopt the new methods of manufacturing that a series of inventions provided. In doing so, these individuals ignited the Industrial Revolution (Duiker and Spielvogel). The dictionary defines the Industrial Revolution as the rapid development of industry that took place in Britain in the late 18th and 19th centuries, brought about by the introduction of machinery. It was characterized by the use of steam power, the growth of factories, and the mass production of goods (Merriam-Webster).

Since the Middle Ages, it depended heavily on charcoal, thus producing a low-quality iron ore that wasn’t very strong. A better quality of iron was developed in the 1780s, and this new high-quality wrought iron ensued a boom in the iron industry (Duiker and Spielvogel). Iron, indeed, was one of the reasons why the revolution even took place there, because it made everything they created possible (Macleod). Britain was now producing more iron than the rest of the world, and it was being used to build new machines, and at the same time, new industries. By the 1840s, almost 2 million tons of iron had been produced, which eventually led to the production of railroads, and locomotives for those railroads. The railroad was important to the success and maturing of the Industrial Revolution. Railway construction created new job opportunities, especially for farm laborers and peasants who had long been accustomed to finding work outside their local villages (Duiker and Spielvogel). The world was drastically changing due to the Industrial Revolution, and because of such inventions as the railroad, the spread of industrialization was made even easier (Allen). From Great Britain, industrialization spread throughout the continental countries, and eventually even made its way into America. Railroads were even more popular in the United States than in Britain, with more than 35,000 miles of railroad track. This transportation revolution turned America into a single massive market for the manufactured goods of the Northeast, the early center of American industrialization (Duiker and Spielvogel). Europe and the United States had become a powerhouse and were changing the world as everyone knew