Pros And Cons Of Industrial Revolution

The term ‘Industrial Revolution’ evinces a sudden, violent and unparalleled mechanisation of the entire production procedure of an economy. This description is represented by the likes of the historians T. S. Ashton and David S. Landes. In Ashton's memorable phrase, for instance, during the Industrial revolution, “a wave of gadgets swept over England” (Ashton 42). However, serried ranks of statistics now contrarily suggest that the transformation of the production procedure was, to a great extent, gradual. Thus, challenging the very coinage of the term ‘Revolution.’ In particular, historian Nicholas F. R. Crafts argues that “the acceleration of growth was a more gradual process than metaphors such as 'take- off' imply,” so that “the phrase
To give an example, T. S. Ashton's classic exposition clearly described a general change in the British economy and society. Expanding the aforementioned statement about “a wave of gadgets,” Ashton said, “It was not only gadgets, however, but innovations of various kinds- in agriculture, transport, manufacture, trade, and finance- that surged up with a suddenness for which it is difficult to find a parallel at any other time or place” (Ashton 42). Crafts, nonetheless, invalidated this premise by asserting that most British manufacturing was inefficacious. As maintained by him, the industrializing Britain had a comparative advantage in its agricultural, cotton and iron industries but not in manufacturing as a
Refuting the more modern view, according to Temin none of the myriad other British manufacturing exports were imported at all. For him, the spirit that motivated cotton manufactures extended also to activities as varied as hardware, haberdashery, arms, and apparel; since there existed no corroboration that these other commodities were being pushed off the list of exports by the growth of cotton exports. An exception to the claim was the Napoleonic War period, where they kept pace with cotton exports (Temin