THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION. The Industrial Revolution is the name given to the movement in which machines changed people's way of life as well as their methods of manufacture. About the time of the American Revolution, English People began to use machines to make cloth and steam engines to run the machines. Sometime later they invented locomotives. Productivity began a steep climb. By 1850 most Englishmen were laboring in industrial towns and Great Britain had become the workshop of the world. From Britain the Industrial Revolution spread gradually throughout Europe and to the United States. The most important of the changes that the Industrial Revolution brought were: 1. The invention of machines to do the work of hand tools. 2. The use of steam, and later of other kinds of power, in place of the muscles. 3. The adoption of the factory system After centuries of the craft guilds and the government having controlled commerce and industry, began the belief that it was better to let business be regulated by the free play of supply and demand rather than by laws The English government started to leave business free to adopt the new inventions and the methods of production which were best suited to them. The new methods increased the amount of goods produced and decreased the cost. British merchants no longer found it a problem to obtain enough goods to supply their markets and, at times, the markets were flooded with more goods than could be sold. As conditions in industry changed, social and political conditions changed with them. Cities grew rapidly, and the percentage of farmers in the total population declined. A person had to have a lot of capital to buy machines and open a factory. The men who controlled these enterprises formed a powerful new class in England called industrial capitalists. Due to the "laissez-faire, factory owners could arrange working conditions in whatever way they pleased. Grave difficulties arose for the wor...