Pre-industrial society was characterized by a mixed work and social life where children learned skills on family farms. Families grew their own crops for subsistence and diets were poor, consisting mainly of bread with little meat or vegetables. Healthcare was also poor, with beliefs that illness was divine and the reliance on practices like bloodletting. Mortality rates were very high, with over 50% of children dying before age 10, and epidemics regularly killed around a third of the population. Wealth was concentrated among the few, with most living in poverty. The cottage industry allowed some agricultural families to earn extra income by spinning and weaving at home. However, this system was slow and inefficient. The beginnings of industrialization in

1. What was pre-industrial society like?
• From 1300 to 1750: work and social life
mixed
• Children learnt to milk cows, churn
butter & farm animals
• Farmers relied on tools that changed
little over time such as wooden plows.

2. Wooden Plow

3. Diet in pre-industrial society
• Families grew crops for home
consumption
• English diet consisted mostly of dark rye
bread and porridge, with very little meat.

4. Diet and healthcare
• Few fruits or vegetables, believed to cause
disease, depression, and flatulence
• Rarely bathed.
• Belief that physical suffering from illness was
divine way of purifying soul.
• Medieval and early modern physicians relied
on astrology and bloodletting.

5. Population growth
• Low growth rate
Poverty
War
Plague
Poor hygiene
High death rates among
young people
• In the 1600s 25% of newborn children died
before their first birthday
• and another 25% died before their tenth.
• « I lost two or three children as nurslings not
without regret, but without great grief. » (Cipolla
127)

6. High mortality rates
• Epidemics of influenza, typhoid fever, typhus,
dysentery, and plague common.
• Black Death killed 25 million Europeans from
1348 to 1351 out of a total population of 80
million = in just 3 years, almost 1/3 of the
population of Europe died.

7. Development of the world population

8. Wealth
• Wealth concentrated in the hands of the few.
• Most people lived on a subsistence level with
little or no savings.
• Most peasants struggled simply to meet their
basic needs.
• In England between the 15th and 18th centuries,
70 to 80% of household income went to buying
food. As opposed to 25% nowadays
• Buying even one piece of clothing was a luxury.

9. However
• Society depended on peasants for
- food and
- taxes (a percentage of personal income paid
to the nobles or the government).
• Though they controlled wealth in the form of
land, the clergy and the nobility not taxed,
a further burden on peasants and
craftsmen.

10. The Cottage industry
• Agricultural families worked at night in their cottages
to spin or weave cloth with rudimentary machines,
such as old spinning wheels.
• The merchants:
- provide raw materials (wool or cotton) to the families,
- pay the workers for the finished product (such as
woven or spun cloth),
- take the goods to market, and
- keep the profit from the sale, reinvesting in his or her
trade

11. The Cottage industry
Typical domestic system home: single room dominated by a spinning wheel
which is being worked by a young lady - the spinster. Food is being cooked in
the same room. A ladder on the left of the picture will take the workers to
their bedrooms once work for the day is finished and a window allows for
light and ventilation.

12. Stengths of the Domestic System
• Workers could work at their own speed while at home
or near their own home.
• Children better treated than in the factory system.
• Mothers work at home = someone to look after the
children.
• Conditions of work better as windows could be open,
• people worked at their own speed and
• rested when they needed to.
• Meals could be taken when needed.
• Tension at work minimal as family worked as a unit.

13. And Weaknesses
• production slow and not enough to meet the demand.
• A better and faster system of production needed.
• Loss of time as materials taken from cottage to cottage
(production was done in several stages)
• Small cottages could not take advantage of new
sources of power. (such as water)
• No quality lifestyle :
- Four year old children work in the domestic system
- Waste gathered around country cottages
- Small wages

14. The Beginnings of
Industrialization

15. Why did it start in England
• large population of workers,
• extensive natural resources:
water power and coal to fuel the new machines
iron ore to construct machines, tools, and
buildings
 rivers for inland transportation
harbors from which merchant ships set sail

16. Why did it start in England
• An expanding economy to support industrialization:
Businesspeople invested in the manufacture of new
inventions.
• Highly developed banking system: availability of bank
loans to invest in new machinery and expand
operations.
• Growing overseas trade & economic prosperity led to
the increased demand for goods.
• Political stability : Britain took part in many wars in the
1700s, none occurred on British soil.
• Parliament also passed laws to help encourage and
protect business ventures.

17. Inventions
• The Textile Industry modernizes.
• In 1733, a machinist named John Kay made a shuttle that sped back and
forth on wheels. Which doubled the work a weaver could do in a day.

18. Textile
• Richard Arkwright invented the water frame in 1769. This
machine used the waterpower from rapid streams to drive
spinning wheels

19. Improvements in Transportation
• The steam engine
• Road transport
• Railways
• …
• BACK TO YOUR BOOKLETS p. 12 