UNTIL RECENTLY the term industrial revolution was employed to
characterize what was believed to have been a sudden transition
from hand industry to machine manufacture in Great Britain during
the second half of the eighteenth century. Careful research and
sober reflection have resulted in a complete disavowal of this view
and the establishment in its place of a belief that the mechanization
of industry was accomplished over a period of at least three cen-
turies, and that the process was important in other places besides
England. All that remains of the earlier concept is the admission
that there was a notable acceleration in the invention of machines
in the eighteenth century and in their adoption in industry during the
nineteenth century, and that England led the way.

It is important for understanding recent history not only to place
the industrial revolution in its correct perspective but also to try to
explain why, for the first time in recorded history, there was an in-
dustrial revolution. An explanation of this remarkable fact is to be
found in a consideration of the main factors that contributed to the
change and in a study of the circumstances under which these factors
were combined.

There appear to have been six fundamental prerequisites for the
creation of a machine society: (1) capital; (2) the capitalist spirit
or the urge to make profit; (3) markets, which imply means of
transportation; (4) wage workers; (5) raw materials; and (6)
machines. In the first part of this book attention has been called to
each of these matters, but it will not be amiss to review them briefly
here in an effort to appreciate their dynamism in effecting industrial
change. For the moment consideration will be given only to con-
ditions in France and England, for these two countries met the
prerequisites for industrialization more adequately than any of the
other large states. The Netherlands, which in the seventeenth cen-

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