Unlike Europe, trading throughout the British Empire was toll free. In Europe tolls would be charged to trade between countries, this prevented trade growing as much. However Britain did have to pay to transport goods when using roads, canals, or railways.
Transportation played a big part in the development of Britain as the world-centre of industry. All materials raw or otherwise after being manufactured needed to be transported, to be sold. At first horse drawn carriages were used on roads to transport goods. However as trade developed, it was found that many roads were in ill repair and there wasn’t the money to put them back into working order. To solve this problem in 1750 turnpike trusts were set up, which charged a toll - with the amount depending on what the cargo was – every time someone used the road. These tolls were then used to renovate the road. In 1825 there were 20,000 miles of road with turnpikes on, so therefore that’s 20,000 miles of well-kept roads. This had quite a large affect on transport; it shortened the length of time in which goods took to travel, hence increasing trade. Yet the influence that turnpikes had on transport was incomparable to that of canals.
In 1776 the first canal or water way was constructed in Bridgewater. The waterway was an alternative transport for goods of trade. The majority of traders found that canals were cheaper to transport vast quantities of raw material such as iron, due to the fact that they did not have to pay a toll on what they carried, only a fee for the transport. In fact the first Bridgewater canal brought down the price of coal in Manchester form twelve shillings a ton to six shillings. This fifty percent reduction was a great help to the people living Manchester, who used coal to cook and keep their houses warm. It also allowed factories to introduce steam engines to replace waterpower. Eventually railways proved to be the best form of transport, and they gradually destroyed horse-drawn transport and canals.
As water transport faced many problems, due to great demand for a form of even faster transport, in 1820 railways were introduced to enable industry to grow further. Many traders complained about canal transport, much of their goods were pilling up in the docks, and they wanted more barges to be available. The period of 1844-48 was known as ‘Railway Mania’; due to the success of the Liverpool and Manchester railway hundreds of companies were set up to build railway lines; and thousands of miles of track was laid. This required Britain to become a well-organised country due to train timetables; and probably led to Greenwich Mean Time being introduced. Compared to canals, railway was even faster. This made it possible for fresher foods to be available for towns, and also the commuter trains allowed factory workers of industrial towns to live further out of town, thus suburbs were created. It is very evident that railways enabled Britain to reach on optimum in industrial development, and without the innovations of the 18th and 19th centuries this would of not been possible.
Mechanisation also played a role, quite a large role in stimulating change. Many new inventions were being were being created, maybe due to the demand as transport was faster the supply of materials such as cotton increased. For textile production new machines kicked into action. The first significant invention, which pushed the production of cotton spinning forward, was the Spinning Jenny. In 1764 James Hargraves invented this machine small enough to fit in the domestic household. However it wasn’t till 1769 when Richard Arkwright invented the Spinning Frame sometimes called the Water Frame, that the mechanisation of spinning processes dramatically affected the cotton industry. The Spinning Frame instead of using hand power, converted water into a rotary motion, which powered spinning machines on a large scale. Therefore the spinning cotton was no longer suited to domestic use, and so many factories were built close to water supplies. This increased Britain’s output of processed cotton, and as better quality thread was produced, and with the growing development of transport, there was an even greater demand for a machine, which involved the weaving and spinning of cotton. In 1779 Samuel Crompton invented the Mule, which produced good quality cotton and increased quality cotton production further. Eventually cotton became Britain’s leading industry.
Throughout the industrial revolution as changes were being made, it was always impossible to improve on a factor which influenced change. For example many railway companies used different gauges (widths) of track, therefore through or non-stop travel was difficult. If all the train lines were the same then Britain would of reached an even higher level of industry. Today we see that the same train lines throughout the country does prove to be easier. However there are still and will always is some problem with transport. Or maybe not problems but more improvements could be made. This is really what is happening to the world around us all the time, and all the time, and in the industrial revolution mass change and development happened all at once in a very small space of time.
Britain was able to become the ‘workshop of the world’ by many other factors as well as trade, transport, and mechanisation. Some of which included population growth; however the factors mention in this essay are the biggest influential factors. Britain managed to sustain its supremacy of the world throughout the 134 years of the industrial revolution. Still Britain inevitably before the First World War lost its wealth advantage over the other countries of the world, mainly due to the cost of war and was most industry workers went away to fight for their country, not many people were left to run the factories. Eventually women took over the work of men, but with less pay and also Britain was able to sustain enough wealth to keep the country running.
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