Europe Transformed

Author:      Jewsbury, Lewis

Date:        1992

Industrialization: The First Phase

     While Europe's "great men" plotted grand schemes to pursue their

political and intellectual ambitions during the crisis of the Old Regime,

French Revolution, and Napoleonic wars, obscure British inventors designed

machines whose impact would dwarf their efforts. They industrialized textile

making by using machines and new power sources to accomplish a task formerly

done by human and animal power. They began what has been called by some the

Industrial Revolution.

     The huge increase in productivity made possible by using machines can be

shown in the amount of raw cotton Britain imported in 1760 and 1850. In 1760

the British imported a bit over 1000 tons; in 1850 the number had risen to

over 222,000 tons. The story behind the growth of the textile industry is one

of a continual "catch-up" game between the spinners and weavers to respond to

a growing market. After the 1707 Act of Union with Scotland, Britain possessed

an expanding population with a larger per capita income than that of any other

European state. The population growth stemmed from a gradual decline in death

rates and an increase in the birth rate. ^14 It provided more customers and

workers.

[Footnote 14: J. D. Chambers, "Enclosures and the Labour Supply in the

Industrial Revolution," Economic History Review, 2nd series, V, 1953, pp.

318-343, as cited in David Landes, The Unbound Prometheus: Technological

Change and Industrial Development in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), p. 115.]

The Revolution In Making Cloth

     Practical people seeing the need for greater output solved the practical

problems of production. In the many steps from the raw cotton to the finished

cloth, there were bottlenecksprimarily in making yarn and weaving the strands

together. In 1733, John Kay (1704-1764), a spinner and mechanic, patented the

first of the great machines - the flying shuttle. This device made it possible

for one person to weave wide bolts of cloth by using a spring mechanism that

sent the shuttle across the loom. This invention upset the balance between the

weavers of cloth and the spinners of yarn: ten spinners were required to

produce enough yarn needed by one weaver. James Hargreaves (d. 1778), a weaver

and carpenter, eliminated that problem in 1764 with his spinning jenny, a

mechanical spinning wheel that allowed the spinners to keep up with the

weavers.

     Five years later, a barber named Richard Arkwright (1732-1792) built the

water frame that made it possible to spin many threads into yarn at the same

time. Ten years after that Samuel Crompton (1753-1827), a spinner, combined

the spinning jenny and water frame into the water mule, which, with some

variations, is used today. By this time the makers of yarn were outpacing the

weavers, but in 1785 Edmund Cartwright (1743-1823) invented the power loom

that mechanized the weaving process. In two generations what had once been a

home-based craft became an industry.

     The appetite of the new machines outran the supply of cotton. Since most

of the material came from the United States, the demand exceeded the

capability of the slave-based southern economy to fill the supply. The best

worker could not prepare more than five or six pounds of cotton a day because

of the problems of the seeds. American inventor Eli Whitney (1765-1825), among

others, devised the cotton gin, a machine that enabled a worker to clean more

than fifty times as much cotton a day. This device coincidentally played a

major role in the perpetuation of slavery in the United States.

     Finally, the textile industry became so large that it outgrew the

possibilities of its power source: water power. Steam came to drive the

machines of industrializing Britain. In the first part of the eighteenth

century a mechanic, Thomas Newcomen (1663-1729), made an "atmospheric engine"

in which a piston was raised by injected steam. As the steam condensed, the

piston returned to its original position. Newcomen's unwieldy and inefficient

device was put to use pumping water out of mines. James Watt (1736-1819), a

builder of scientific instruments at the University of Glasgow, perfected

Newcomen's invention. Watt's steam engine also was first used to pump water

out of mines. It saved the large amounts of energy lost by the Newcomen engine

and led to an increase in coal productivity. After 1785 it was also used to

make cloth and drive ships and locomotives. The application of steam to

weaving made it possible to expand the use of cloth-making machines to new

areas, and after 1815 hand looms began to disappear from commercial textile

making, replaced by the undoubted superiority of the cloth-making machines.

     These inventors made their contributions in response to the need to solve

a particular problem. Their machines and the new power sources expanded

productivity and transformed society in ways never before dreamed of. The

transition from a rural agrarian to an urban lifestyle merits applying the

term revolutionary to the process of industrialization. The steps in

increasing textile production were repeated and continue to be repeated in

other goods as well. The liberation from the productive limitation of human

and animal power to satisfy essentially unlimited demand is the great gift of

industrialization.

Britain's Dominance

     Industrialization began in Britain in the eighteenth century for a number

of reasons. Neither the richest nor the most populous country in western

Europe, it did, nevertheless, possess at virtually all levels of society a

hard-working, inventive, risk-taking private sector that received strong

support from the government. Industrialization could not begin and grow

without individual business owners who took a chance on something new. The

British kept this close tie between private initiative and creative

governmental support throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

     Thanks to early governmental support of road improvements and canal

construction, Britain had a better transportation network than any other

country in Europe. The British also had mastery of the seas, excellent ports,

and a large merchant fleet. They enjoyed the advantage of living safely on

their island, away from the carnage of war, even during the Napoleonic wars.

The chance to industrialize in stable conditions gave them the opportunity to

profit from war contracts between 1792 and 1815. They developed their

industrial capacity without fear of battle damage or loss of life.

     Probably the most important factor was the relative flexibility of the

British social and political systems. Members of the elite, unlike their

colleagues on the continent, pursued their wealth in the new industrial

framework with great energy. They worked closely with the middle classes and

workers, even to the point during the nineteenth century of sponsoring gradual

reform efforts to stifle any chance of revolution from below.

     The combination of inventiveness, growing markets, governmental support,

and social flexibility made Britain the world's dominant economic power until

the end of the nineteenth century. Napoleon's interference had hurt economic

growth, but had also spurred the British to look for new manufacturing methods

and markets. Once the wars were over, Britain flooded the continent and the

Americas with high-quality, inexpensive goods. No nation could compete against

British efficiency. When Britain began industrializing before 1789, there were

isolated areas on the continent such as the French Le Creusot works that could

have served as the base for a similar growth. Twenty-six years of revolution

and mercantile policies made that competition impossible. ^15

[Footnote 15: E. J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution, 1789-1848 (New York: New

American Library, 1964), pp. 44-73.]

     Cotton production continued to increase and was supplemented by the

arrival of the modern Iron Age. In 1800 Russia and Sweden had exported iron to

Britain. By 1815 Britain exported more than five times as much iron as it

imported. By 1848 the British produced more iron than the rest of the world

combined. As in textile production, in ironmaking a number of inventions

appeared to respond to problems. Refining of the brittle cast iron was

improved to make it more malleable and tougher. At the same time more

efficient mining processes for both coal and iron ore were used to ensure a

constant supply of raw materials.

     To further dominate the metals market, in the 1850s Henry Bessemer

(1813-1898) developed a process to make steel, a harder and more malleable

metal, quickly and cheaply. So effective was the process that between 1856 and

1870 the price of British steel fell to one half the amount formerly charged

for the best grade of iron. The drastic reduction in price, a mark of

industrialization, had a positive impact on all areas of the economy.

     In the period after midcentury Britain produced more than two-thirds of

the world's coal and more than half of the world's iron and cloth. Industrial

development encouraged urbanization and by 1850 more than half of the

population lived in cities and worked in industries. The British continued to

enjoy the highest per capita income in the world, and the island nation stood

head and shoulders above the world in terms of economic and material strength.

Industrialization: The Second Phase

     The second phase of industrialization brought new products and power

sources to the continent. Increased food production and improved health

standards and diet led to a population explosion that promised both economic

gains and bureaucratic burdens. The rapid and massive growth of cities brought

with it the social problems of urbanization. Workers united to fight for their

interests, while the middle classes extended their wealth and influence. Both

groups changed the nature of social and political life.

Food And Population Increases

     Liberated from many of the restraints of the past by the French,

Napoleonic, and Industrial revolutions, most Europeans made the transition

from a society based on agriculture to a modern urban society. The spectacular

growth of the industrial sector makes it easy to overlook the great strides in

food production during the nineteenth century. Because of the improved global

transportation network and better farming methods, the expanding number of

city dwellers had more and better food to eat in 1914 than they had had in

1815.

     It is estimated that in 1815 around 60 percent of the money and 85

percent of the Europeans were tied to farming. These large quantities of

capital and labor were not effectively used, because the advances made in

Holland and Britain in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had not spread

to the continent. However, progressive landowners gradually introduced these

improved methods when they saw the money to be made feeding the growing

population of the cities.

     By the end of the nineteenth century farmers on the continent were

plowing new lands and using higher yielding crop varieties to survive in the

worldwide agricultural competition. Industrial nations such as Britain, in

which only 10 percent of the population was engaged in farming, imported more

than a fourth of their food. Farmers in the Americas, Australia, and New

Zealand competed with each other in the cutthroat export market. The peasants

of Ireland and southern and eastern Europe were unable to produce efficiently

enough to prosper in this new setting. Russia, where the peasantry comprised

70 percent of the population, had to export to bring in foreign capital to

finance industrialization. When the country had to compete with efficient

foreign farmers, the tsarist minister of finance stated, "we may go hungry,

but we will export." ^16

[Footnote 16: I. Vyshnegradsky, quoted in William L. Blackwell, The

Industrialization of Russia: An Historical Perspective (New York: Thomas Y.

Crowell, 1970), p. 24.]

     The expanded food supply supported the growth in European population from

175 million to 435 million. ^17 This 130 percent increase between 1800 and

1910 partially disproved the views the British clergyman Thomas Robert Malthus

(1766-1834) set forth in his Essay on Population. Malthus asserted that human

reproduction could easily outrun the earth's ability to produce food. ^18 In

his own day he could point to the limited food supply and rapidly increasing

population. From this evidence he concluded that the inevitable fate of

humanity was misery and ruin, since the number of people would rise

geometrically while food supply would grow only arithmetically. The experience

of the next two centuries has at least temporarily disproved Malthus' thesis.

[Footnote 17: Fernand Braudel, Capitalism and Material Life: 1400-1800 (New

York: Harper & Row, 1975), p. 11; William Langer, "Checks on Population

Growth: 1750-1850," Scientific American 226 (1972), pp. 92-99.]

[Footnote 18: Thomas Malthus, "An Essay on Population," in Introduction to

Contemporary Civilization in the West, vol. II (New York: Columbia University

Press, 1955), p. 196.]

     A gradual decline in mortality rates, slightly better medical care, more

food, earlier marriages, and better sanitary conditions contributed to the

population increase. The number of people grew so rapidly in Europe that

although 40 million Europeans emigrated throughout the world, the continent

still showed a population increase in one century that was greater than that

of the previous two thousand years. Where the economies were advanced, such as

in northern and western Europe, the population growth could be absorbed. But

in the poorer countries of southern and eastern Europe, the masses faced the

choices of overcrowding and starvation or emigration.

The Ties That Bind: New Networks

     To bring the increased food supply to the growing population, to

distribute new resources to larger markets, and to connect augmented capital

with essential information, Europeans built the most complete and far-reaching

transportation and communication networks ever known. Without rapid and

dependable transport and contact the Industrial Revolution could not have

occurred, cities would not have grown, factories could not have functioned,

and the new millions of Europeans would not have been fed. The new networks

became the arteries and nervous system of Europe.

     The Duke of Bridgewater made a major step forward in water transportation

in 1759 when he built a seven and one-half mile long canal from his mines to

Manchester. Water transport cut the price of his coal in half and gave Britain

a vivid lesson in the benefits of canals. Nearly four thousand miles of

improved rivers and canals were built, with strong governmental support by the

1830s, making it possible to ship most of the country's products by water.

Following the British example, canal building spread through Europe and North

America and then to Egypt with the Suez Canal in 1869 and Latin America with

the Panama Canal in 1914. The first project cut the sailing time between

London and Bombay India by nearly half, while the second did away with the

need to sail around South America to reach the Pacific Ocean.

     Until 1815 most roads were muddy, rutted paths that were impassable

during spring thaws and autumn rains. In that year a Scotsman, John McAdam,

created the all-weather road by placing small stones in compact layers

directly on the road bed. The pressure of the traffic moving over the highway

packed the stones together to give a fairly smooth surface. This practical

solution cut the stagecoach time for the 160 miles from London to Sheffield

from four days in the 1750s to 28 hours.

     Steam-powered vessels replaced the graceful though less dependable

sailing ships in ocean commerce. Clipper ships are among the most beautiful

objects ever built, but they could not move without wind. Sturdy,

awkward-looking steamships carried larger cargo with greater regularity and

revolutionized world trade. The price of American wheat on the European market

dropped by three-fourths in the last part of the century, thanks to a

considerable degree to the savings made possible by the large, reliable steam

ships. Transatlantic passenger and mail services were also improved by the use

of steam to power seagoing vessels.

     The most important element in the European arterial network was the

railroad. Between 1830 and 1860 rails linked every major market in Europe, and

the United States. By 1903 the Russians had pushed the Trans-Siberian railroad

to the Pacific Ocean. Railroads cheaply and efficiently carried large amounts

of material and people long distances and knit countries and continents closer

together. Within cities, urban rail lines and trolleys were widespread by the

end of the century; these had an impressive effect on housing and business

patterns by permitting a wider diffusion of workers. London established

subways first in the 1860s, followed by Budapest in 1896 and Paris in 1900.

[See English Royal Train: This English Royal train was built in the early

1840s for the special use of Queen Victoria in her travels over the nation's

rapidly expanding railway system. courtesy L'Illustration, December 9, 1843]

     Connected with the growth of the transportation networks and

technological innovation, major improvements came in the area of

communications. Postal agreements among the various countries made cheap and

dependable mail service possible. The modern postage stamp and improved

transportation brought astronomical increases in the amount of letters and

packages mailed after 1850. ^19 Starting in the 1840s the electric telegraph,

undersea cable, telephone, wireless telegraph, and typewriter expanded

humanity's ability to exchange ideas and information. No longer would distance

be a critical obstacle after the transportation and communications

revolutions. The world became a smaller, if not more unified, place.

[Footnote 19: Eugen Weber, A Modern History of Europe (New York: W. W. Norton,

1971), p. 988.]

The Continent Industrializes

     The continent faced many hurdles to economic growth after 1815. Obstacles

to mobility, communication, and cooperation among the classes prevented the

social structures there from adapting as easily to change as had the British.

The farther south and east the social system, the more repressive was the

structure. In many parts of the continent, the restored nobilities reclaimed

their power, and they were neither intellectually nor financially prepared to

support industrial development. Fragmented political boundaries, geographical

obstacles, and toll-takers along primary river and road systems hampered

growth, especially in central Europe. In eastern Europe, the middle classes

were weaker and more isolated than in the west.

     At the end of the Napoleonic wars, the initial stages of

industrialization could be found in Belgium, France, and Germany. In Sweden,

Russia, and Switzerland there were pockets of potential mechanized production,

but the total of all of these activities was tiny compared to Britain's

economy. In 1850 only Belgium could compete with British products in its own

markets. There a combination of favorable governmental policies, good

transportation, and stability brought some success.

     Governments and businesses sent officials and representatives to Britain

to try to discover the secrets of industrialization. The British tried to

protect their advantage by banning the export of machines and processes and

limiting foreign access to their factories. Industrial espionage existed then

as now, and continental competitors did uncover some secrets. Britain's

success could be studied, components of it stolen, and its experts hired, but

no country on the continent could combine all the factors that permitted

Britain to dominate.

     After midcentury, a long period of peace, improved transportation, and

strategic government assistance encouraged rapid economic growth in France and

the German states. Population increased 25 percent in France and nearly 40

percent in the Germanies, providing a larger market and labor supply. Two

generations of borrowed British technology began to be applied and improved

upon; but the two most important developments came in banking and customs and

toll reforms.

     After 1815, aggressive new banking houses appeared across Europe,

strengthened by the profits they had made extending loans to governments

during the Napoleonic wars. They saw the money to be made investing in new

industries such as railroads and worked with both governments and major

capitalists. Firms such as Hope and Baring in London, the Rothschilds in

Frankfurt, Paris, Vienna, and London, and numerous Swiss bankers were

representative of the private financiers who had well-placed sources and

contacts throughout the state and business communities. ^20

[Footnote 20: Sidney Pollard, European Economic Integration: 1815-1970 (New

York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974), pp. 56-62.]

     Banking changed radically during this period to satisfy the growing

demands for money. Long-range capital needs were met by the formation of

investment banks, while new institutions were created to fill the need for

short-term credit. The ultimate source of financial liquidity was the middle

classes - the thousand of little people who put their money in banks to make

their own profits on interest earned. More money could be gained from the many

small investors than from the few rich families who used to dominate banking.

     The Germans led the way in the other major development, the Zollverein

(customs union), that began under Prussian leadership in 1819. This

arrangement helped break down the trade barriers erected by state boundaries

and in the next twenty-three years came to include most of central and

northern Germany. Instead of the more than 300 divisions fragmenting the

Germans in 1800, there was a virtual free trade market, something Britain had

enjoyed since the union of Scotland and England in 1707 - and which the

European Economic Community will create after 1992. The significance of the

Zollverein was that it allowed goods to circulate free of tolls and tariffs,

thus reducing prices and stimulating trade.

     In the second half of the century, industrialization grew rapidly, aided

by the increased flow of credit and elimination of many internal barriers.

Tariff walls throughout the area fell to a degree not matched until after

World War II. Major firms such as the German Krupp works and the French silk

industries controlled portions of the European market and competed effectively

with Britain throughout the world.

Technological Growth And Advances

     Another reason for the continent's economic emergence was a wide range of

new technologies using new materials, processes, and transportation. New

competitors began with state-of-the-art factories that allowed them to

outproduce Britain, whose older factories were less productive.

     The basic change in the second phase of industrialization was the use of

electricity in all aspects of life. Scientists had discovered electricity's

basic principles a century earlier, but it was difficult to generate and

transmit power across long distances. When the first dependable dynamo, a

device that changed energy from mechanical into electrical form, was perfected

in 1876, it became possible to generate electricity almost anywhere. Inventors

such as the American Thomas A. Edison began to use the new resource in

industry, transportation, entertainment, and the home. Humanity had finally

found a source of power that could be easily transported and used. The British

took the lead in bringing electricity to home use. The Germans made the most

advanced application of electric technology to industry.

[Hear P. T. Barnum]

Edison's early recording of PT Barnum

     Another fundamental change came in the use of gas and oil in the newly

devised internal combustion engine. Steam power's use was limited by its

appetite for huge amounts of fuel and its sheer bulk. Gottleib Daimler

perfected the internal combustion engine used in most automobiles today. In

1892 Rudolf Diesel invented the engine that bears his name. It burned fuel

instead of harnessing the explosions that drove the Daimler engine.

     These new developments led directly to the search for and use of

petroleum and the beginning of the passenger car industry. By 1914 the making

of cars was a key part of the Italian, Russian, German, French, and American

economies. Automobile manufacturing called for a number of "spinoff"

industries such as tires, ball bearings, windshields - the list extends to

hundreds of items. Leaving aside the passenger car's economic contribution,

the world's cities and people felt the complex impact of this new form of

transportation, with consequences extending from the range of an individual's

world to the increased noise level and pollution that changed the character of

urban areas.

     Other new machines changed life. Bicycles became commonplace in the

1890s, as did sewing machines, cameras, and typewriters, to name a few. Never

had people had the ability to transform ideas almost instantly into products

accessible to the average person. This was another dividend of

industrialization and a symbol of a rapidly changing Europe.

The Human Costs Of Industrialization

     Industrialization drove society from an agricultural to an urban way of

life. The old system in which peasants worked the fields during the summer and

did their cottage industry work in the winter to their own standards and at

their own pace, slowly disappeared. In its place came urban life tied to the

factory system. The factory was a place where people did repetitive tasks

using machines over long hours to process large amounts of raw materials. This

was an efficient way to make a lot of high-quality goods at cheap cost. But

the factories were often dangerous places and the lifestyle connected to them

had a terrible effect on the human condition.

     In the factory system the workers worked and the owners made profits. The

owners wanted to make the most they could from their investment and to get the

most work they could from their employees. The workers, in turn, felt that

they deserved more of the profits because their labor made production

possible. This was a situation guaranteed to produce conflict, especially

given the wretched conditions the workers faced in the first stages of

industrialization.

     The early factories were miserable places, featuring bad lighting, lack

of ventilation, dangerous machines, and frequent breakdowns. Safety standards

were practically nonexistent and workers in various industries could expect to

contract serious diseases - workers with lead paint suffered lung problems,

pewter workers fell ill to palsy, miners suffered black lung disease, and

primitive machines claimed many fingers, hands, and even lives. Not until late

in the century did health and disability insurance come into effect. In some

factories workers who suffered accidents were deemed to be at fault, and since

there was little job security, a worker could be fired for virtually any

reason.

     The demand for plentiful and cheap labor led to the widespread employment

of women and children. Girls as young as six years old were used to haul carts

of coal in Lancashire mines, and boys and girls of four and five years of age

worked in textile mills - their nimble little fingers could easily untangle

jammed machines. When they were not laboring, the working families lived in

horrid conditions in such wretched industrial cities as Lille, France, and

Manchester, England. There were no sanitary, water, or medical services for

the workers and working families were crammed twelve and fifteen to a room in

damp, dark cellars. Bad diet, alcoholism, cholera, and typhus led to a

reduction of life span in the industrial cities. Simultaneous with, and

perhaps part of, the industrialization process was the vast increase in

illegitimate births. Up to midcentury, corresponding to the time of maximum

upheaval, continent-wide figures indicate that at least one-third of all

births were out of wedlock. ^21

[Footnote 21: Edward Shorter, "Illegitimacy, Sexual Revolution, and Social

Change in Modern Europe," in Theodore K. Rabb and Robert I. Rotber, eds., The

Family in History (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), pp. 48-84.]

     Later generations profited from the sacrifices made by the first workers

in the industrialization, and factory owners came to understand that they

could make more profit from an efficient factory staffed by contented workers.

Urban Crises

     Huge population increases and industrialization prompted a massive growth

of European cities in the nineteenth century, as can be seen in the following

table. ^22

     CITY                1800           1910

     London              831,000        4,521,000

     Paris               547,000        2,888,000

     Berlin              73,000         2,071,000

     Vienna              247,000        2,030,000

     St. Petersburg      220,000        1,907,000

[Footnote 22: Heinz Gollwitzer, Europe in the Age of Imperialism: 1880-1914

(New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1969), p. 20.]

In addition, new towns sprang up throughout the continent and soon reached the

level of over 100,000 inhabitants. Even in agrarian Russia, where 70 percent

of the population worked on the land, there were seventeen cities of more than

100,000 by the end of the century.

     Political leaders faced serious problems dealing with mushrooming city

growth. The factory system initially forced families to live and work in

squalor, danger, and disease, a condition to be found today in countries

undergoing the first stages of industrialization. City leaders had to maintain

a clean environment, provide social and sanitation services, enforce the law,

furnish transportation, and - most serious of all - build housing. They

uniformly failed to meet the radical challenges of growth.

     Until midcentury human waste disposal in some parts of Paris was taken

care of by dumping excrement in the gutters or the Seine or through

street-corner manure collections. Not until Haussman's urban renewal in the

1850s and 1860s did the city get an adequate garbage, water, and sewage

system. Police protection remained inadequate or corrupt. Other cities shared

Paris' problems to a greater or lesser degree. The new industrial towns were

in even worse condition than the older centers.

[See London Slum: This illustration, Over London - By Rail, vividly depicts

the problems that accompanied urbanization - cramped living spaces, crime, and

air and water pollution. courtesy From Gustav Dore and Blanchard Jerrold,"

London: A Pilgrimage" Grant and Co. London, 1872.]

     The terrible life in the industrial towns touched observers like novelist

Charles Dickens, who in his book Hard Times described a typical British

factory town:

          It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have

          been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it; but as

          matters stood, it was a town of unnatural red and black,

          like the painted face of a savage. It was a town of machinery

          and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of

          smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got

          uncoiled. It had a black canal in it, and a river that ran

          purple with ill-smelling dye, and vast piles of building

          full of windows where there was a rattling and trembling

          all day long, and where the piston of the steam engine

          worked monotonously up and down, like the head of an elephant

          in a state of melancholy madness. It contained several large

          streets all very like one another, and many small streets

          still more like one another, inhabited by people equally

          like one another, who all went in and out at the same hours,

          with the same sound upon the same pavement, to do the same

          work, and to whom every day was the same as yesterday and

          tomorrow, and every year the counterpart of the last and

          the next. ^23

[Footnote 23: Charles Dickens, Hard Times (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons,

n.d.), p. 26.]

     By the end of the century, however, governments began to deal effectively

with urban problems. By 1914, most major European cities began to make clean

running water, central heat, adequate street lighting, mass public education,

dependable sewage systems, and minimal medical care available for their

people.