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<v Speaker 1>Hello, and welcome to Western Sieve Episode five hundred and sixteen.

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<v Speaker 1>The Industrial Revolution. All right, so we've covered a lot

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<v Speaker 1>of specific political events, but we are of course in

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<v Speaker 1>a time period now where there are broad changes sweeping society,

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<v Speaker 1>and I think it's important to stop now and to

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<v Speaker 1>start to address probably one of those most important changes,

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<v Speaker 1>which is the Industrial Revolution. Now, I want you to

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<v Speaker 1>imagine Britain in the middle of the eighteenth century. Most

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<v Speaker 1>people still live on the land, according to the rhythm

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<v Speaker 1>of the seasons, work when does you know, we would

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<v Speaker 1>think manufacturing on a small scale is in the home

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<v Speaker 1>or in a very small workshop, you know, less than

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<v Speaker 1>ten people. For sure, power still comes from human muscle

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<v Speaker 1>or animal muscle, possibly from wind and water. And yet slowly, quietly,

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<v Speaker 1>at first, the world starts to shift and the shift

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<v Speaker 1>is permanent. Now, this today is the story of the

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<v Speaker 1>Industrial Revolution. It's not a single event, but it's a

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<v Speaker 1>long and uneven transformation that reshaped how people worked, where

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<v Speaker 1>they lived, how wealth was created, and how power was distributed.

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<v Speaker 1>It unfolded over decades, even centuries, and it left behind

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<v Speaker 1>both incredible prosperity and change, and to a large extent,

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<v Speaker 1>extraordinary suffering as we will see, all right. So why

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<v Speaker 1>Britain is always the first question. While Britain didn't industrialize

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<v Speaker 1>first by accident by the early seventeen hundreds, it possessed

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<v Speaker 1>a rare combination of advantages. It had a liberal political system,

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<v Speaker 1>shaped by the glorious Revolution that we've talked about in

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<v Speaker 1>sixteen eighty eight, which protected private property and therefore encouraged investment.

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<v Speaker 1>Its expanding empire supplied raw materials and markets overseas. Its

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<v Speaker 1>rivers and coastlines made transportation relatively cheap, and beneath its

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<v Speaker 1>soil lay vast seams of coal, dense, reliable energy that

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<v Speaker 1>was just waiting to be unlocked. Agriculture had already begun

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<v Speaker 1>to change. The agricultural revolution, which didn't talk about but

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<v Speaker 1>has happened over really the last millennium, which involves things

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<v Speaker 1>like crop rotation selective and the enclosure of common lands,

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<v Speaker 1>dramatically increased food production. Because fewer people were now needed

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<v Speaker 1>to farm, more food meant a growing population. More of

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<v Speaker 1>those people were available to work in other occupations. These

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<v Speaker 1>are the sorts of things that drove us out of

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<v Speaker 1>the hunter gatherer societies thousands upon thousands of years ago.

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<v Speaker 1>They're just happening now on a larger scale throughout European society,

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<v Speaker 1>but particularly in parts of the Low Countries, France, and

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<v Speaker 1>especially in Great Britain. These displaced rural laborers would soon

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<v Speaker 1>become the workforce of a new industrial age. But technology,

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<v Speaker 1>of course, here was the spark. The early breakthrough came

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<v Speaker 1>in textiles. Spinning and weaving cloth had traditionally been done

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<v Speaker 1>by hand in cottages, but inventors began to mechanize these tasks.

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<v Speaker 1>The spinning jenny, the water frame, and the power loom

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<v Speaker 1>dramatically increased output. Let's just take for one of these examples,

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<v Speaker 1>the spinning jenny. Spinning, which is the transformation of predominantly

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<v Speaker 1>wolks we're talking about Great Britain here was done by hand,

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<v Speaker 1>so we're talking about the transformation of wool into cloth.

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<v Speaker 1>Spinning was slow, it was rhythmic, and it was totally

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<v Speaker 1>limited by what the human hand could do. A single

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<v Speaker 1>spinner sat at a spinning wheel, drawing fibers out and

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<v Speaker 1>twisting them into a thread, one strand at a time.

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<v Speaker 1>It didn't matter how skilled the worker was. The pace

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<v Speaker 1>of the production was capped by muscle and patience. The

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<v Speaker 1>textile industry, even as demand for cloth continued to grow,

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<v Speaker 1>was bottlenecked by the spinning wheel. But that bottleneck snapped

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<v Speaker 1>in the seventeen sixties with the invention of the spinning

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<v Speaker 1>jenny by James Hargreaves. Now. Legend has it that Hargreaves

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<v Speaker 1>was watching a spinning wheel tip over in his home

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<v Speaker 1>and he noticed that the spindle continued to turn upright.

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<v Speaker 1>Whether this is true or not, the insight was real.

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<v Speaker 1>What if one worker could actually spin many threads at

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<v Speaker 1>the same time. The spinning jenny answered that question decisively.

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<v Speaker 1>Instead of one spindle, which again is what's turning the

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<v Speaker 1>wool into cloth, it had eight, then sixteen, and then

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<v Speaker 1>eventually more. They were all mounted vertically on a frame

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<v Speaker 1>and turned by a single wheel. Now, with a single

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<v Speaker 1>motion of a hand, a spinner could produce multiple threads simultaneously.

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<v Speaker 1>The immediate effect was staggering. Yarn production absolutely exploded overnight.

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<v Speaker 1>What had once taken several workers an entire day could

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<v Speaker 1>now be done by one person in a fraction of

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<v Speaker 1>the time. This shift didn't just make spinning faster, of course,

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<v Speaker 1>it fundamentally rebalanced the textile industry. Weaving, which had previously

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<v Speaker 1>raised ahead of spinning, finally found itself no longer waiting

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<v Speaker 1>for yarn to be produced into cloth. Cloth production accelerated,

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<v Speaker 1>prices fell, and textiles became much more widely available than

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<v Speaker 1>they had been before. But the spinning jenny did something

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<v Speaker 1>more profound than just increasing output, because it changed how

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<v Speaker 1>work itself was organized. This is part of the important

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<v Speaker 1>parts of the industrial revolution. Although early jennies were small

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<v Speaker 1>enough to be used in homes, their logic favored scale.

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<v Speaker 1>Multiple jennies under one roof, powered by coordinated labor, produced

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<v Speaker 1>far more efficiently than scattered household spinners throughout the countryside.

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<v Speaker 1>This pushed textile production out of cottages and into workshops

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<v Speaker 1>and eventually we're not there yet, but eventually into factories. Now,

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<v Speaker 1>there of course, were social consequences for this. We'll talk

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<v Speaker 1>about those in a bit now. The spinning jenny didn't

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<v Speaker 1>create factories and didn't create the factory movement. That's going

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<v Speaker 1>to be a combination of factors. As I mentioned, there's

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<v Speaker 1>a number of inventions going on here. There's the water loom,

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<v Speaker 1>there's the power frame. All of this comes down to

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<v Speaker 1>one final change, and that is that cloth could now

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<v Speaker 1>be produced faster, cheaper, and in larger quantities than ever

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<v Speaker 1>before in human history. Now, as I mentioned, these machines

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<v Speaker 1>required centralized power sources, and that meant factories. But of course,

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<v Speaker 1>at the height of all of this transformation was the

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<v Speaker 1>steam engine. The steam engine was u pun intended, the

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<v Speaker 1>engine that drove the entire industrial revolution. It is by

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<v Speaker 1>far and away the most important invention of the eighteenth century.

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<v Speaker 1>It's going to drive the railroad expansion, it's going to

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<v Speaker 1>drive mining, it's going to drive textiles, it's going to

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<v Speaker 1>drive the factory movement. Everything comes back to the steam engine.

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<v Speaker 1>So where did it come from. Well, in the early

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<v Speaker 1>eighteenth century, Britain was digging deeper and deeper into the ground.

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<v Speaker 1>Coal mines pushed deeper each year, chasing the fuel that

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<v Speaker 1>warmed homes and fed ever steadily growing iron furnaces. But

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<v Speaker 1>the deeper miners went, they had a problem the more

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<v Speaker 1>that the water rushed in. Because of course the deeper

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<v Speaker 1>you go, the closer that you get to the water table.

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<v Speaker 1>Flooding suddenly became the great enemy, the great impediment of

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<v Speaker 1>industrial ambition. Horses strained it, pumps Men literally just hauled

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<v Speaker 1>buckets out of mines and endless shifts, and it didn't

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<v Speaker 1>matter because the water it's still won. The industrial revolution,

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<v Speaker 1>still really in its embryonic stage, was in danger of

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<v Speaker 1>drowning before it even started. The answer then came not

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<v Speaker 1>from a grand vision of industry, but desperation. In seventeen twelve,

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<v Speaker 1>Thomas Newcombing, a blacksmith and ironmonger, produced a machine that

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<v Speaker 1>looked ungainly and worked inefficiently, but it solved a critical problem.

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<v Speaker 1>His atmospheric steam engine used steam to create a vacuum,

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<v Speaker 1>allowing atmospheric pressure to drive a piston downward. The result

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<v Speaker 1>was a crude but effective mechanical pump that could lift

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<v Speaker 1>vast amount of water out of these deep mines. Newcomb's

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<v Speaker 1>engine wasn't elegant, It devoured coal, and it wasted heat

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<v Speaker 1>with every s michael. It could not power machinery directly,

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<v Speaker 1>and was tethered basically exclusively to mining operations. But for

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<v Speaker 1>the first time, human and animal muscle were no longer

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<v Speaker 1>the sealing of mechanical power. Steam heated water had been

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<v Speaker 1>harnessed to do steady repetitive labor. Mines stayed dry. Coal

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<v Speaker 1>production surged, and with more coal available, the conditions for

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<v Speaker 1>further industrial growth quietly fell into place. The true transformation

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<v Speaker 1>came decades later in the workshops and lecture rooms of Scotland.

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<v Speaker 1>In the seventeen sixties, a young instrument maker named James

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<v Speaker 1>Watt was asked to repair a model Newcomen engine at

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<v Speaker 1>the University of Glasgow. As Watt was studying the machine,

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<v Speaker 1>he saw its fatal flaw. It wasted enormous amounts of

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<v Speaker 1>energy repeatedly heating and cooling the same cylinder. His solution

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<v Speaker 1>was simple, there would be a separate condenser. This was

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<v Speaker 1>deceptively simple but utterly revolutionary. By condensing steam in a

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<v Speaker 1>separate chamber, Watt's engine dramatically increased its efficiency, and this

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<v Speaker 1>improvement changed everything. Steam engines were no longer confined to

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<v Speaker 1>coal rich mines. They could now be used economically in mills,

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<v Speaker 1>factories and workshops. Wherever you needed a piston driven up

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<v Speaker 1>and down, you could now use a steam engine. With

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<v Speaker 1>the backing of industrialist Matthew Bolton, Watt refined and commercialized

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<v Speaker 1>his design. Together they sold not just engines, but power itself,

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<v Speaker 1>leasing machines and charging customers based on the work performed.

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<v Speaker 1>It was a new way of thinking about energy as

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<v Speaker 1>a commodity. As Watt's engines spread, the geography of industry

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<v Speaker 1>was quickly rewritten. Factories didn't need fast flowing rivers any

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<v Speaker 1>longer to power water wheels. Now factories could be built

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<v Speaker 1>in cities much closer to both labor pools, ports, and

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<v Speaker 1>domestic markets. Steam power severed industries dependence on nature's rhythm.

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<v Speaker 1>Production could continue day and night, winter and summer, rain

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<v Speaker 1>or shine. It was now clock that replaced the river

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<v Speaker 1>and the seasons as the regulator of work. Now, as

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<v Speaker 1>of course I mentioned, the steam engine will also reshape

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<v Speaker 1>labor in society. But as I mentioned before, we'll get

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<v Speaker 1>to that in a moment. Now, want to turn to

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<v Speaker 1>iron production. Iron production followed a similar path. New smelting

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<v Speaker 1>techniques using coke instead of charcoal, made iron quickly cheaper

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<v Speaker 1>and more abundant. Stronger iron, of course, meant better machines,

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<v Speaker 1>better tools, and eventually better railways. Now one city came

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<v Speaker 1>to symbolize it all, Manchester. In the early eighteenth century.

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<v Speaker 1>Manchester was relatively unremarkable. It was a modest market town

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<v Speaker 1>in Lancashire, surrounded by damp fields and vast streams known

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<v Speaker 1>locally for wolves, but little else. No great court met there,

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<v Speaker 1>no cathedral dominated its skyline, and no king ruled. Yet.

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<v Speaker 1>Within a century, Manchester became the beating heart of the

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<v Speaker 1>cotton industry, the global cotton industry, so dominant, so productive

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<v Speaker 1>that it earned a new nickname whispered with both awe

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<v Speaker 1>and anxiety alike cotton opolists. The transformation began quietly, almost invisibly,

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<v Speaker 1>with cotton itself imported from the Americas and then eventually India.

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<v Speaker 1>Cotton was lighter, softer, and easier to wash than wool

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<v Speaker 1>or linen. Demand almost immediately soared across Britain and Europe.

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<v Speaker 1>Manchester's early advantage was not power or capital, but people.

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<v Speaker 1>The region had a long tradition of textile skills spinners,

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<v Speaker 1>weavers and dyers working in cottages under the so called

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<v Speaker 1>putting out system. Merchants supplies raw cotton, families spun it

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<v Speaker 1>and just wove it at home. By the mid seventeen hundreds,

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<v Speaker 1>Manchester had become a commercial hub, linking rural labor to

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<v Speaker 1>distant markets. And then technology arrived. Everything changed, and everything accelerated.

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<v Speaker 1>Inventions like the spinning jenny, the water frame, and later

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<v Speaker 1>the power loom shattered the old limits of production. These

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<v Speaker 1>machines demanded space, coordinated and energy. At first, fast flowing

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<v Speaker 1>rivers provided power necessary to run all the equipment, but

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<v Speaker 1>water alone just couldn't keep up with the demand and

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<v Speaker 1>with the ambitions of Manchester's growing commercial elite. And so

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<v Speaker 1>the decisive shift came with the steam engine. As coal

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<v Speaker 1>fired engines spread, factories were no longer tied to rivers.

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<v Speaker 1>They clustered instead along canals, railways, and streets, packed with

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<v Speaker 1>the labor necessary to run them. Manchester proved perfectly positioned

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<v Speaker 1>for this new industrial geography. There was a lot of

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<v Speaker 1>coal in Lancashire. The damp climate, once an inconvenience, turned

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<v Speaker 1>out to be ideal for cotton spinning, keeping fibers from snapping.

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<v Speaker 1>Engineers carved canals, the Bridgewater Canal chief among them, slashing

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<v Speaker 1>the cost of shipping coal and raw cotton into the city.

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<v Speaker 1>Warehouses rose, and mills quickly multiplied. Brick chimneys pierced the skyline,

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<v Speaker 1>pouring smoke into the air as the engines thumped day

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<v Speaker 1>and night. By the early nineteenth century, Manchester had become

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<v Speaker 1>something truly unprecedented, a city built almost exclusively around a

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<v Speaker 1>single industry. Cotton mills towered over the rows of workers,

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<v Speaker 1>housing thousands of men, women and children labored in spinning

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<v Speaker 1>rooms and weaving sheds, drawn by wages, but then ultimately

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<v Speaker 1>trapped by necessity. Observers struggled to describe what they saw.

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<v Speaker 1>The city seemed alive, with motion belts, turning looms, chattering,

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<v Speaker 1>wagons rolling, and steam hissing from every direction. To the

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<v Speaker 1>people of the early nineteenth century, I'm sure this felt

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<v Speaker 1>like sci Fi does today. Visitors, honestly from across Europe

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<v Speaker 1>came to witness the industrial marvel that was Manchester. Some

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<v Speaker 1>admired it, others recoiled. Alexey de Destoukville, touring England in

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<v Speaker 1>the eighteen thirties, wrote of Manchester as a place quote

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<v Speaker 1>where civilization works its miracles, and a civilized man is

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<v Speaker 1>turned back almost into a savage end quote. Wealth accumulated rapidly,

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<v Speaker 1>but so did poverty. Fackery owners built fortunes, but workers

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<v Speaker 1>crowded into slums with little sanitation or fresh air. Disease

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<v Speaker 1>spread as fast as industry. But of course, cottonopolis didn't

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<v Speaker 1>exist in isolation. Manchester's mills were part of a global system.

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<v Speaker 1>But one part. Raw cotton arrived generally and largely from

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<v Speaker 1>the American South, grown by enslaved labor. Finished cloth flowed

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<v Speaker 1>outward to Africa, Asia, and the Americas, shaping and reshaping

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<v Speaker 1>economies and cultures far beyond Britain. Manchester was not just

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<v Speaker 1>a city. It was just a node in a world

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<v Speaker 1>wide web of extraction, production and consumption, and the city

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<v Speaker 1>also quickly became a crucible of ideas. Industrial capitalism was

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<v Speaker 1>visible here in its rawest form, and so it was

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<v Speaker 1>the resistance to it. Manchester witnessed early labor organizing, political

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<v Speaker 1>reform movements, and fierce debates over free trade versus workers' rights.

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<v Speaker 1>And then there was the event that's called the Peterloo Massacre.

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<v Speaker 1>On a warm August morning in eighteen nineteen, tens of

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<v Speaker 1>thousands of people gathered for a peaceful political gathering at

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<v Speaker 1>Saint Peter's Field, just outside the growing industrial town of Manchester.

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<v Speaker 1>They all came in their Sunday best men, women and

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<v Speaker 1>children alike, drawn by one simple demand political reform. In

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<v Speaker 1>an age where when booming industrial cities had little or

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<v Speaker 1>no sometimes representation in parliament, working people wanted a voice

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<v Speaker 1>equal to their numbers At the center of this crowd

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<v Speaker 1>stood the radical order Henry Hunt, a celebrity reformer known

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<v Speaker 1>for his booming voice and his theatrical flare. Hunt was

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<v Speaker 1>to speak on parliamentary reform, universal male suffrage, and the

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<v Speaker 1>abolition of corrupt in what were called rotten boroughs. These

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<v Speaker 1>were tiny medieval villages who were once decent sized, maybe

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<v Speaker 1>five six hundred years ago, but which nowadays had hardly

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<v Speaker 1>anyone at all. However, under the existing system, thanks to

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<v Speaker 1>old medieval dues that still existed, these tiny villages oftentimes

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<v Speaker 1>had more political representation and power than industrial giants like Manchester.

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<v Speaker 1>Now the crowd was orderly marching information, carrying banners, and

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<v Speaker 1>many of them had taken oaths to perform any protests

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<v Speaker 1>in a non violent fashion, but local magistrates watched with

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<v Speaker 1>fear to them. The French Revolution wasn't a distant memory,

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<v Speaker 1>and Napoleon had finally been put away about four years ago,

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<v Speaker 1>but it was still a warning siren. As Hunt rose

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<v Speaker 1>to speak, the magistrates made their decision, Declaring the assembly illegal,

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<v Speaker 1>They ordered the arrest of the speakers. The task fell

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<v Speaker 1>to the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry, local part time cavalrymen

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<v Speaker 1>poorly trained and deeply hostile to the radical crowd. As

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<v Speaker 1>the yeomanry charged into the densely packed field, panic spread instantly.

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<v Speaker 1>Horses plunged into bodies, sabers flashed, people fell and were trampled.

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<v Speaker 1>Within minutes, chaos reigned. The regular army followed, disbursing the

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<v Speaker 1>remaining crowd with bayonets. When it was over, at least

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<v Speaker 1>fifteen people lay dead and hundreds were injured, many of

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<v Speaker 1>them women and children. The name Peterloo coined in bitter

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<v Speaker 1>irony after Waterloo captured the public outrage. It wasn't a

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<v Speaker 1>foreign battlefield this time, but a massacre of civilians just

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<v Speaker 1>demanding political representation. The government's only response was to deepen

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<v Speaker 1>the wound, rather than condemning the violence. Parliament passed the

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<v Speaker 1>quote unquote six Acts, tightening controls on public meetings and

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<v Speaker 1>the press. But Peterloo could not be erased. News of

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<v Speaker 1>the bloodshed spread through radical newspapers, poems, and pamphlets, most

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<v Speaker 1>famously in Percy blythe Shelley's The Massacre of Anarchy. Over time,

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<v Speaker 1>Peterloo became a symbol of the moment when the industrial

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<v Speaker 1>working class paid in blood for the idea that political

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<v Speaker 1>power should follow the people, not property. Now. As we'll

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<v Speaker 1>find out, Manchester's long march towards reform was not nearly over,

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<v Speaker 1>but it was the moment when the movement made it

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<v Speaker 1>clear that the cost of silence would be impossible to ignore.

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<v Speaker 1>By the mid nineteenth century, Manchester stood as the symbolic

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<v Speaker 1>like a capital of industrial modernity. Its cotton powered Britain's economy,

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<v Speaker 1>its factories set the model for the world, and its

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<v Speaker 1>social problems exposed the cost of rapid industrial glowth smoke, blackened, overcrowded,

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<v Speaker 1>and astonishingly productive. Cottonopolis embodied both the promise and the

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<v Speaker 1>peril of the industrial Revolution. Manchester did not merely grow

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<v Speaker 1>because of cotton, it was remade by it. In turning

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<v Speaker 1>fiber into fabric on an unprecedented scale, the city spun

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<v Speaker 1>itself into history, proof that industry could build empires, transform landscapes,

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<v Speaker 1>and redefine what a city could be now for workers,

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<v Speaker 1>industrialization throughout Britain was a brutal shock. Families poured into

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<v Speaker 1>cities looking for wages, and they found overcrowded housing, polluted air,

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<v Speaker 1>and streets thick with mud and waste. Tenements packed multiple

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<v Speaker 1>families into single rooms. Clean water was scarce basically everywhere,

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<v Speaker 1>and disease rapidly, especially cholera and second and third typhoid

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<v Speaker 1>and tuberculosis. Now inside the factories, conditions were harsh. Worked

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<v Speaker 1>days stretched from twelve to fourteen hours. Machines were dangerous,

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<v Speaker 1>they were unguarded, and they were relentless. The pace of

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<v Speaker 1>labor was no longer set by daylight custom were the

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<v Speaker 1>church's calendar, but it was set by the never ending

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<v Speaker 1>grinding of the gears and the belts. Children were, of course,

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<v Speaker 1>especially vulnerable. They were cheap, small, and easily controllable. Boys

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<v Speaker 1>and girls worked in textile mills and coal mines, crawling

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<v Speaker 1>under machines or hauling loads in darkness. Reformers later recalled

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<v Speaker 1>children quote stunted in growth, pale and prematurely aged end quote.

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<v Speaker 1>And yet factory wages, however low they might be, were,

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<v Speaker 1>oftentimes for everyone, just better than simply starving to death

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<v Speaker 1>in the countryside. For many, industrial labor wasn't they made freely.

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<v Speaker 1>It was accepted because there simply were no alternatives. But

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<v Speaker 1>not everyone accepted this new world quietly. In the early

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<v Speaker 1>nineteenth century, groups of skilled workers called Luodites, smashed machines

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<v Speaker 1>that they believed threatened their livelihoods. They weren't anti technology

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<v Speaker 1>in principle, but anti exploitation. You're actually starting to see

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<v Speaker 1>some similar patterns emerging here today in twenty twenty six,

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<v Speaker 1>as people talk about perhaps how to resist the encroachment

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<v Speaker 1>of AI into now white collar professions. At the time,

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<v Speaker 1>when facing the Luodites, the government responded with troops, executions,

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<v Speaker 1>and harsh laws, but at the same time new ideas

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<v Speaker 1>were taking shape. Classical economists like Adam Smith argued that markets, competition,

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<v Speaker 1>and specialization would over time generate wealth for society as

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<v Speaker 1>a whole. His vision of the division of labor, epitomized

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<v Speaker 1>by the pin factory, described the logic driving industrial growth,

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<v Speaker 1>but critics emerged as well. Karl Marx, observing industrial capitalism

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<v Speaker 1>in Britain, argued that factories concentrated wealth in the hands

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<v Speaker 1>of owners while alienating workers from the products of their labor.

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<v Speaker 1>Industrial society, he claimed, was built on exploitation that would

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<v Speaker 1>ultimately collapse under its own contradictions. Between these polls, reformers

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<v Speaker 1>pushed for much more gradual change. Parliament eventually passed the

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<v Speaker 1>Factory acts limiting child labor and shortening workdays. Overall sanitation

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<v Speaker 1>reforms slow as they were eventually improved urban health trade unions,

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<v Speaker 1>once illegal as we know, slowly gained recognition, giving workers

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<v Speaker 1>collective bargaining power. Industrialization didn't soften overnight, but it did

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<v Speaker 1>slowly but surely evolve. Now. Look, I've talked a lot

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<v Speaker 1>about Britain here, and the United Kingdom was the first

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<v Speaker 1>country to industrialize, but it wasn't alone for very long.

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<v Speaker 1>Industrial technology quickly spread to Europe and North America in

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<v Speaker 1>the nineteenth century. Belgium, France, and the German States built

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<v Speaker 1>railways and factories. In the United States, abundant land resources

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<v Speaker 1>and immigrant labor fueled rapid industrial growth after eighteen twenty.

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<v Speaker 1>Railroads talk more about them later quickly stitched nations together.

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<v Speaker 1>Steamships shrank oceans. Telegraph wires could now carry information at

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<v Speaker 1>unprecedented speed. The world became more connected and more unequal.

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<v Speaker 1>The industrial powers extracted raw materials from colonies and sold

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<v Speaker 1>back manufactured goods, locking many regions into dependent economic rules.

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<v Speaker 1>The industrial Revolution was, at the end of the day,

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<v Speaker 1>not just a story of machines. As I'll keep coming

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<v Speaker 1>back to an eluding in future episodes, it was a

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<v Speaker 1>story of empire, global trade and honestly, really uneven development.

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<v Speaker 1>By the late nineteenth century, industrialization had totally changed daily life.

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<v Speaker 1>Mass production lowered the cost of goods. Urbanization now had

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<v Speaker 1>become the dominant pattern of human settlement, and time itself

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<v Speaker 1>was now standardized, regulated by clocks, schedules and the factory whistle.

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<v Speaker 1>The modern world emerged from the smoke filled workshop and

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<v Speaker 1>crowded streets, and the industrial Revolution wasn't done. It kept evolving. Eventually,

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<v Speaker 1>Electricity will replace steam, oil will replace coil, Automation will

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<v Speaker 1>replace what remains of muscle. But the core tensions the

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<v Speaker 1>industrial Revolution created between labor and capital growth in inequality

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<v Speaker 1>remain with us still today. And maybe that's the greatest legacy, honestly,

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<v Speaker 1>of the industrial revolution, not the machines that it built,

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<v Speaker 1>but the questions that it continues to force humanity to

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<v Speaker 1>confront about work, justice, value, and honestly, what progress truly

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<v Speaker 1>and actually means. These are questions we debate still today.

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<v Speaker 1>All Right, next time, it's back to more political history

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<v Speaker 1>in Europe, and we'll see how the European nations dealing

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<v Speaker 1>with the changes of industrialization were confronting a post French

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<v Speaker 1>Revolution and Napoleonic world