Why do you think Britain industrialized first????

[Zues33]

   What encouraged this in Britain?
What of the factors were less prevalent of that of Europe?? Why was Europes industrialization slowed???

      Need some supporting facts or refs for a LONG research paper... Would help out a great deal ladies and gents.

[skiguy]

Don't know if I can help you with length, but I'll throw some things out there.
 
Markets, the British had a ready outlet for manufactured goods.
Resources: Britain had an ample supply of coal and iron
Favorable (to business) government, a big thing was probably the laws that protected private property
The creation of factories.
Transportation (railroads, etc)
Entrepreneurship:  Arkwright (spinning frame for cotton), Hargreave (increased yarn production with his spinning jenny), Crompton (water mule), and IMO the most important inventors were Boulton and Watt who invented the steam engine.

[Wally]

Along the same lies as Ski...
1. Labor supply; unskilled workers in abundance due to the second ag. revolution
2. Resources, the coal and iron ore he mentioned
3. Investment capital from wealthy land owners and merchants rich (already) from trade
4. Entrepreneurs that could organize and manage money (that of the investors and their own)... this is how you get the facories Ski mentioned
5.Transportation... given that they lived on an effing island they took advantage of their harbors (created merchant and military navies) and rivers, built canals (connecting the rivers) good work, eh?
6. Markets and 7. Gov't support both per Ski.

Wouldn't have flown w/o the ag. rev. though IMHO

[Aetheling]

What about enclosures ?

The Inclosure Acts (between 1760 and 1820s) were a series of United Kingdom Acts of Parliament which enclosed open fields and common land in the country. This meant that the rights that people once held to graze animals on these areas were denied.
It was frequently believed that Parliamentary enclosures contributed to a proletarianization of a workforce that was primed for work in the factories of the industrial revolution.

[scout1067]

What about enclosures ?

The Inclosure Acts (between 1760 and 1820s) were a series of United Kingdom Acts of Parliament which enclosed open fields and common land in the country. This meant that the rights that people once held to graze animals on these areas were denied.
It was frequently believed that Parliamentary enclosures contributed to a proletarianization of a workforce that was primed for work in the factories of the industrial revolution.

I have heard this before and cannot wrap my head around how the enclosure movement contributed to the Industrialization of Britain.  Was there a similar enclosure movement in the rest of Europe as they industrialized later?  Not that I have heard of.

[Wally]

Inclosure made it unprofitable for the small farmers; only the large landowners that could (and would) afford to use the inovations of the 2nd Ag Rev could really continue to farm. They needed less help to farm the same (or more) ground hence a bunch of underskilled and unemployed former ag qworkers become cheap labor for the factories. History at work... 

[scout1067]

Something about the enclosure argument rings false with me.  It takes a surprisingly small amount of land to make a farm work and be sustainable.  I think the overpopulation argument behind British industrialization makes more sense.  The theory holds that there was not enough AG work to go around and this led to the exploitation of cheap labor.  Handicrafts in the home were nothing new, the manufacturing methods of industrialism however were.  Add to that the markets needed by the factory owners,  they exploited them to the hilt but also had to pay them enough to live if not much more.

[Wally]

The big guys took the market with lower prices since they used the more advanced methods that the little guys couldn't afford. Labor was cheap, machines that reduced the laborers needed not so much.

[scout1067]

Then who bought the goods the factories produced?  This has always been the disconnect in the capitalist/worker paradigm for me.  Somebody was buying it and the capitalist class just did not have the wherwithal to purchase the majority of the cheap products the factories were producing. 

It is kind of like the fact that underwear and its wearing is a by product of the industrial age.  Factory methods made it cost effective to produce underwear, which people had not worn before.  Underwear made it possible for clothes to stay clean longer.  Factory production also made it possible to produce cheap cotton in bulk rather than linen which still to this day requires had work in its production.  Prior to about the 1810's cotton fabric was a luxury item, the factory made it the clothing of the masses.

The fact is that industrialization was not an either or proposition.  The working classes benefited, if not to the level that the capitalist classes did.  Modern AG methods made it possible, without them the workers would have starved as a class.

[Wally]

This was part of the puzzle that is also the part that makes it impossible for communism to really get traction in an industrial society.

Those unskilled laborers that are so exploited aren't all stupid; many can and do move up in the company. Sure if the guy can only run the machine he's just another part and replaceable but if he can maintain the machine you give him some tools and a raise and get another "part" to replace him on the line. If he can teach others to maintain machines... another raise and he's middle mgt. If, perhaps, the individual is smart and creative about what it takes to get the material flow going or the packages shipped better / faster, a raise and promotion are in order. Hard to sell communism when a mechanism for the worker to advance is built right into the capitalist system. This is the rise of a technical and managerial class.

As for your question "who buys the products?" It starts out that they are exports and for the very rich but if you follow the scenario above... at some point more money and a title aren't getting it for these upwardly mobile types... they need time off. What we see here is the birth of the consumer society; these folks have disposable income (surplus after the basics of feeding, clothing, and housing their family)... what they needed was time off to spend that money on the products they produced. Hence shorter work weeks and later shorter work days. Hard to swallow?

Consider Henry Ford (much later) kept the union at bay for a long time by paying his people more that "scale", in fact, enough that the average worker could afford a Ford. 

This is a quick and dirty explaination, I admit, but indeed the basis of a lecture on how we get to be a consumer society. The next day would be the rational of the labor union.