The Industrial Bourgeoisie and the Rise of the Working Class 1700-1914 [antikvár]

The Industrial Bourgeoisie and the Rise of the Working Class I. INTRODUCTION 1769: two apparently insignificant events occur within a few months of one another. Nobody alive at the time could have any inkling of their importance ; but they were to have a share in completely changing the face of the world. On January 5, an undistinguished Scots 'technician' obtained a patent for an improvement of the Newcomen steam engine commonly used for pumping water out of mines. In the space of a few decades, Watt's perfected machine modified profoundly the technical and social structures of industrial production; for the introduction of a new power source superseding that of man, wind, or running water soon wrought a clear distinction between the industrialist, who owned this comparatively expensive machine and the looms it drove, and the worker, who was paid to run it. A few months later, on August 15, Napoleon was born, the son of a family of such modest nobility that it seemed almost bourgeois : during his reign, the bourgeoisie, not merely in France but throughout western Europe, took up the reins of government and business. The purpose of the following pages will be to give an outline of the reasons underlying this twofold phenomenon : the rise to power of the bourgeoisie via the economic, social, and political revolution that it brought about with an increasing awareness of its role and its strength; and the parallel formation of the working mass, which, created by the industrial activity of the bourgeoisie, gradually acquired the forms and values of a social class by attaining self-consciousness in its turn. Though partners in the growth of the economy, the bourgeois class and the worker class soon clashed over the radical opposition in their material interests and their social, political, or cultural aspirations. But, caught up as they both were in the irreversible trend of [5]