Bear with me a little longer: I am not forgetting that of the subject of our story is bridges. As promised, we are simply going to shift our focus a little here in order to, as much as is possible for someone living in our day, to comprehend the impact of those pervasive and comprehensive changes that were taking place in all aspects of their life for the generation who built the iron bridges. You will remember that it is my thesis that by demonstrating the potential of iron as a structural material, the bridges were manifestations of the process that we today refer to as the Dawn of the Industrial Revolution. You will also remember that I mentioned that we would be addressing a more subtle and intriguing question: how did it came about that, of all the European nations, it was Britain that led the way into our modern era ? Many, many books have been written on that subject, but I think you will be able to answer that question for yourself once you are better acquainted with the generation of men who effectively created the world we live in today.
During the period that the infant iron industry was being transformed by technical improvements and private stock companies were building the new transportation system, Britain was also experiencing changes in agriculture, in finance and banking, in law, in politics, even in the very attitude of people toward progress and change. All these changes taking place in seemingly unrelated enterprises would converge by the end of the 18th century and would enable the iron industry to grow exponentially. These different endeavors, in the fortuitous timing of their confluence, stimulated and fortified the changes in each other.
Let us begin with money: a commodity essential to the working of our modern world. Capital was crucial to the expansion of the new iron industry. It was now feasible, as well as practical, to concentrate all the various processes of refining iron on one site and to vertically integrate the business. The iron masters also saw an advantage in owning their own coal mines for coke production and to controlling the distribution system with their own barges and ships. Machinery such as steam engines and pumps, stamping mills and slitting mills, larger furnaces, workmen's housing - all these were now considered essential to doing business. The problem was how to raise the capital to pay for them.
The role of the then existing banking system had never been that of financing private enterprise. There was no capital market such as the one our economy depends on today. The Bank of England in the 1700's was occupied solely with the handling of large sums for governmental purposes, facilitating loans to and from other countries, and meeting the foreign exchange needs of international trade. The Bank of England was, indeed, The Bank of London. It had no provincial branches and no mechanism for making loans to private enterprises or even for providing them coinage in small denominations for payroll purposes. Retail banking as we know it today did not yet exist.
To meet their cash flow needs on a day-to-day basis, the new industrial businessmen improvised by issuing their own paper money or "bills of exchange" and resorted to rotating paydays when coinage was short or even to minting their own coins. Basically, they created their own in-house banks. When they needed cash they sold their bills of exchange (or IOU's in the common parlance) at a discount to those City banks that had an established relationship with the Bank of England. A number of today's financial institutions such as Barclay's and Lloyd's began as iron company in-house banks of this type.
To finance their capital improvements, they improvised several methods. They would self-finance improvements through the retention of earnings, paying the partners interest on their share of the deferred distribution. They borrowed from each other and from successful merchants in other businesses with profits to invest and experience in long term financing such as the tea merchants whose money backed the iron industry's growth in South Wales or the tobacco merchants who invested in the iron industry of the Clyde Valley.
Private retail banking on the local level was becoming available in the early 1800's, but these banks were prohibited from selling stock to raise capital for reserves. Because there was no limited liability available for private banks, their partners were personally liable for all funds received so that they often failed when faced with a liquidity crisis. However, the surviving banks continued to receive savings from, and make loans to, the prospering middle class and to small businesses.
At this time, Parliament itself was financing its Continental and American wars by issuing government-backed bonds called Consols. These proved to be very popular investments both domestically and abroad. In addition, new investment opportunities such as joint stock companies and Turn Pike Trusts were being created. The increasingly prosperous and growing middle class was learning to put its savings to work earning interest from such stocks and bonds. The opening of the stock exchange in 1803 greatly increased the liquidity of shares and consequently the number of investors who bought and sold them. This new source of private capital became available to the enterprising young business ventures.
Do you see a pattern developing in this new entrepreneurial world ? An unmet need is encountered and immediately the solution is being improvised. A very modern way of thinking is emerging. Old barriers to new ways of doing business were falling as well.
From early in the mid 18th century, business concerns in the iron and mining and textile industries were avoiding the strict medieval regulation of most trades through guilds and royal charters and monopolies by simply locating their new enterprises in rural places where such restrictions were not in effect such as Lancaster, Yorkshire, Wales and Scotland or in unincorporated towns such as Birmingham and Manchester. The medieval restrictions such as those prohibiting laborers from leaving their own parish had ceased being enforced and by the 18th century the resulting mobility of the labor force made industrial expansion in these "remote" but unregulated locations possible.
A hitherto little-used legal incentive to innovation now proved to be crucial in this entrepreneurial environment. Chief Justice Coke's rulings during the Tudor dynasty had protected property rights at the expense of historic vested interests and privileged monopolies. The Statute of Monopolies of 1624 codified these and also contained provisions for a patent law. The new generation of inventors and entrepreneurs found that they were entitled to the exclusive rights to their invention for a set period of time, although piracy and patent lawsuits were common. Parliament offered awards to those who were willing to make their inventions available to all.
Also contributing to the growth of the young iron and textile industries as well as the factory system in general was the exponential growth of the British population. This was not the result of a rise in the birth rate which actually had declined. An increased longevity was due to a lower death rate resulting from a better understanding of the importance of sanitation in preventing infectious disease and from the health benefits of a much better diet for the entire population.
New agricultural experiments and reforms were based on political actions and scientific discoveries that had begun in the previous century. The ancient and inefficient practice of subsistence farming in the "open fields" in which each family owned a narrow strip of land among many other family strips (like today's community or allotment garden) had gradually, over the last two centuries, as the controversial Enclosure Acts came into effect, been succeeded by large hedge-row fenced fields used as pasture for cattle or sheep or devoted to raising a particular crop. The waste or common lands which the villagers had once all shared as pasture for their horse or cow were now also being enclosed and brought into production. The result was much more acreage under cultivation. The efficiency of farming in large fields when added to the benefits of land drainage, of crop rotation, and the use of fertilizers resulted in higher yields and in lower food prices. The new practice of growing root crops like turnips as winter feed for livestock meant that animals no longer had to be slaughtered in the autumn for lack of winter forage. Fresh meat was now available to everyone year around.
A well-nourished population enjoying a longer life expectancy meant that a larger and more mobile work force was available to fill the demand for labor in all kinds of work. In fact, T.S. Ashton argues that because the Industrial Revolution occurred there first, Britain was able to successfully absorb this population growth and thereby was spared the economic upheavals and political revolutions that were currently devastating other European nations where the population was also growing but whose people could find no employment. (T.S. Ashton, The Industrial Revolution)
We have now touched on a number of conditions in Britain which, taken together, made an Industrial Revolution there possible. The key factor - the igniting spark if you will - that actually made it happen was the enterprise and the vision of those men in Britain leading these new ventures and the new ways of thinking; men who had recognized the potential and had seized the opportunity. It was their ingenuity coupled with the possibilities available only in Britain at that particular time that guaranteed that the birth of the Industrial Revolution would occur there first.
Why that came about and how that came about in Britain, instead of one of the other great powers of that day, is a subject that has fascinated several generations of political scientists and historians. I will leave you to research that subject on your own (you will especially enjoy the biographies of those remarkable men). I will simply offer two of my favorite of the many theories put forth.
Michael Rix believes that it was two quintessentially British traits that made the difference:
"One is her (Britain's) tradition of toleration which made unfettered speculation possible. ... I believe that two national characteristics contributed strongly to the coming of the machine age exclusively in Britain. One is lack of snobbishness and the second is doggedness. The first can be well illustrated by the Lunar Society. ... Without any precedents to guide them they pioneered factory discipline, material flow, industrial chemistry, team research, marketing techniques, laboratory design. Its membership included country gentlemen, ministers of religion, doctors, scientists, instrument makers, inventors and industrialists. ...
"Secondly, the quality of doggedness. ... Decades of persistent research, trial and error and disappointment went into the work of Newcomen, Watt, Murdock, and Tevithick before a really efficient steam engine and reliable locomotive came into being. It is no coincidence that Newcomen was a Dartmouth man and a Baptist and that Watt was the son of a Presbyterian ship's-chandler at Greenock. The resourceful, questing mind and wide horizons of a seafaring background combined with the doggedness that never admits defeat must be counted high in the reasons for the Industrial Revolution originating in Britain." (Michael Rix "the Origins of the Machine Age" Industrial Archaeology Vol. 4, #2 May 1967 p. 159-161)
Rix's term "Unfettered speculation" is a wonderful phrase. Today, we would call it "thinking out of the box" or "free association of ideas", but by whatever name it is indeed the essential ingredient of innovation.
The economist A.S. Aston offers a different perspective on why Britain led the way:
"many explanations have been offered for this close association between industry and Dissent. It has been suggested that those who sought out new forms of worship would also naturally strike out new paths in secular fields. It has been argued that there is an intimate connection between the tenets peculiar to Nonconformity and the rules of conduct that lead to success in business. And it has been asserted that the exclusion of Dissenters from the universities, and from office in government and administration forced many to seek an outlet for their abilities in industry and trade. There may be something in each of these contentions, but a simpler explanation lies in the fact that broadly speaking, the Nonconformists constituted the better educated section of the middle classes." (T.S. Ashton "The Industrial Revolution 1760-1830" p. 14-15)
Ashton then goes on to note the contribution of men educated in the dissenting primary academies and the Universities of Edinburgh and of Glasgow in Presbyterian Scotland who came south to England to found industries and to pioneer new technologies such as James Watt, John Roebuck, Joseph Priestly, Matthew Boulton, Thomas Telford, John McAdam to name only a few of those remarkable men whose life stories would intrigue you.
Dissenting academies were established by nonconformist sects in Bristol, Manchester, Northampton, and elsewhere which were open to students of all creeds and from all social levels. Their curriculum included religion, as at orthodox Cambridge and Oxford, but in addition it also covered mathematics, history, geography and "natural philosophy" or science. These academies embraced the new methods of disciplined research and became the incubators of scientific thought.
Although some of the landed gentry were involved, for the most part the innovators were ordinary men who had been raised in such traditional trades as wheelwright, stone mason, instrument maker, pharmacist, and so forth, but who, self-educated in the new scientific ventures, became proficient in specialties known today as civil engineer, chemist, mathematician, and physicist. The unique quality of the British Industrial Revolution was this unprecedented collaboration between the pragmatic tradesmen and the university-educated beneficiaries of the "natural philosophy" experiments and teachings of Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626) and of Sir Isaac Newton (1643-1727).
The spirit of discovery and invention was furthered by associations such as the Royal Society, the Society of Arts, and the Lunar Society where like-minded men, regardless of wealth or standing, came together to share scientific discoveries, improved methods of production, and new ideas in general. All kinds of opportunities existed for an enterprising man to educate himself in the sciences and the latest discoveries through free lectures. A best seller for 100 years after its publication in 1751 was "The Tutor's Assistant" a mathematics textbook. Journals were available noting the latest theories in any number of trades and agricultural practices. One could learn as much or more in the coffee houses of London, where many of these associations met, as at any of the universities.
An uniquely British aspect of this search for scientific knowledge was the implicit understanding that it was to be applied to some practical purpose. As A.E. Musson says of Dr. William Lewis (1708-1781) "His work marks the arrival of the professional chemist, applying scientific knowledge systematically to industrial problems." ("Science and Technology in the Industrial Revolution" Musson & Robinson p. 53)
This new scientist was in an equal partnership with the tradesman and craftsman, each hoping to learn something from the other. A very modern spirit of confidence that anything was possible and that man could understand and control Nature was abroad in Britain. In this most traditional of nations, attitudes in general were becoming favorable to progress, to expanding trade, to new ideas and discoveries. Three-times-Great Grandfather may have been skeptical of such untraditional attitudes, but they most certainly were the attitudes of his grandson and are universally embraced today.
The new business ventures had in place just what they needed for expansion. Capital was available at a low interest rate to finance expansion. Government restrictions on trade and business were bypassed by doing business in locations where they were not in effect. A mobile labor force was available and anxious to work. Property rights and patents protected innovation for long enough to allow investors to recoup their investment. A scientifically educated and increasingly prosperous middle class was eager to contribute to progress either by adding their own scientific contribution or by investing their savings in this explosion of innovation. A century of improvements in the refining of iron at ever decreasing cost meant that the British iron industry was very competitive world wide. The Industrial Revolution was in full swing and Three-times-Great Grandfather's grandson was flourishing.
In the mid 1880's, when the new railroads began to make the once pioneering British canal system obsolete, the iron foundries began producing more steel than iron. Steel is superior in tensile strength to the iron of our story. Using the 1856 process first invented by Sir Henry Bessemer (18134-1898) and continuously improved since then, steel mills would cast steel into ingots and then roll them into the desired shape. They were now able to produce steel in large quantities at a competitive price. Steel rapidly became the metal of choice for all heavy construction purposes, especially bridges.
Our iron bridges enjoyed such a brief moment of fame precisely because of the irresistible momentum of innovative and entrepreneurial energy that had been harnessed to create them. Their very success spawned their successors. In the beginning, the Industrial Revolution was based on iron. The true significance of these once audacious and pioneering bridges is that they were the first demonstration of iron's great potential.
For me, these old iron bridges still have an edge on modern bridges in several respects: in their intimacy of scale, in their airy Georgian grace and flair, in their touches of Regency decorative detail, and in their retained sense of audacity. I love their precedence: that they were the first and that they provide the link between the bridges of our era and those all the previous eras back to the Clapper bridges of the Bronze Age.