Good news and bad

Low food prices were good news for most workers. For those with jobs, the standard of living rose between 1870 and 1900. But not everyone had a job. And spells of unemployment brought hunger and misery.

It was the age of coal. Steam engines drove machines in factories and mills. Every home had a coal fire. Railways, with steam engines, were the main form of transport. Towns and cities were blackened with smoke. All this was good for miners and mine-owners - coal output almost doubled between 1870 and 1900.

A lot of coal was sold abroad, but the chief export was still cotton cloth. Britain, though, was no longer the only country with cotton mills. Now there were competitors in Europe and the U.S.A. And most of these foreign makers of cotton were using new machines. The British mills kept to their old machines, which were starting to become out-of-date.

A worse sign was that Britain no longer led the world with new inventions and ideas. The Germans were the leaders in the chemical industry (making dyes for textiles, for example). And it was a German who invented the petrol engine and the first car. Until 1896 cars were allowed on British roads only if a man with a red flag walked in front.

In the late nineteenth century, inventors found ways of making steel in large amounts. Steel took over from iron in machines, bridge girders, and ships. Some of the steel-making inventions were British. But more steel was made in Germany and the U.S.A. than in Britain.

Walter Robson: Britain 1750 – 1900; Oxford University Press, 1993/2002, page 60 f.