A Beginner's Guide to the Industrial Revolution: Part Two

The second part of A Beginner's Guide to the Industrial Revolution will focus on the state of proto-industry before the actual Industrial Revolution. It will also look at how Britain was an ideal place for the Industrial Revolution to begin. As you recall in the first part of A Beginner's Guide to the Industrial Revolution, I covered the Agricultural Revolution. Its effects on population and demographic shift will be alluded to in this section as well.

The Industrial Revolution did not create industry out of thin air. Even before the eighteenth century there were already small-scale modes of production taking place in Britain. These small-scale industries are collectively called by three common names-the domestic system, the putting-out system, or cottage industry. For the sake of consistency we will call it the putting-out system. The way this system worked was that a merchant would go out into the countryside and provide certain households with raw materials and the means to produce a product. Generally when we're talking about the British putting-out system we are talking about textiles. Villagers would get raw cotton from the merchant and would spin thread, or would receive thread and would weave cloth. In this way, rural families were able to earn a little extra income in addition to their full-time occupation of farming.