Page:Readings in European History Vol 2.djvu/646

 6o8 Readings in European History 497. Effi- ciency of modern industrial methods. (From C. A. Beard's The Industrial Revolution.) II. Applied Science While Bacon, Newton, and Laplace were engaged, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in pro- found scientific research, practical inventors, like New- comen, Arkwright, Crompton, Watt, and Cartwright, were availing themselves, often unconsciously, of the great principles of natural law. The result was a series of mechanical devices which were later greatly increased and perfected through the aid of science, and which have served to revolutionize industry and commerce and fun- damentally to alter social and political conditions. The central economic facts of this revolution have been the increase in man's productive powers and the vast im- provement in the means of transportation. Human progress depends on the ability of mankind to do more work and to accomplish greater tasks ; to supply the necessaries of life with less expenditure of time and strength and thus to secure leisure for thought, invention, and artistic development of every kind. To show the expansion of trade following the new inven- tions it is necessary to give a few statistics. When machin- ery was introduced into the textile industries the output of manufactured goods increased by leaps and bounds. In 1764 the cotton imported into England amounted to about 4,000,000 pounds; in 1841 it had increased to nearly 500,000,000 pounds. In 1792 the amount of cotton imported into Lancashire alone from the United States was 138,000 pounds; in 1800 it was 18,000,000 pounds. The wool im- ported into England in 1766 was only about 2,000,000 pounds; in 1830 the amount had risen to more than 32,000,000 pounds. In 1788 the iron output was 61,000 tons ; in 1839 it was over 1,250,000 tons. One hundred years after Crompton invented his spinning mule there were in Lancashire 2655 cotton mills running a total of nearly