Second Industrial Revolution

BASF chemical factory in Ludwigshafen, Germany, 1881.

A German railway from 1895.

A telegraph used to broadcast in morse code.

The transatlantic SS Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse, a steamship. As the main medium of transoceanic travel for two centuries (from the XIX to the XXX) transatlantic travels were essential for the transport needs of national governments, commercial companies and the general public.

The Second Industrial Revolution refers to the interrelated changes that occurred from approximately 1870 to 1914, when World War I began. During this time the changes underwent a strong acceleration. The industrialization process changed its nature and economic growth changed its pattern. Technical changes continued to occupy a central position, together with technical innovations concentrated, essentially, in new sources of energy such as gas or electricity, new materials such as steel and oil; and new transportation systems (planes, automobiles, and new steam engines) and communication (telephone and radio) induced chain transformations that affected the labor factor and the educational and scientific system; to the size and management of companies, to the way work is organized, to consumption, until it also leads to politics.

This process occurred within the framework of the so-called first globalization, which meant a progressive internationalization of the economy, and which was increasingly operating on a global scale due to the transport revolution. This led to its extension to more territories than the first revolution, limited to Great Britain, and which would reach almost all of Western Europe, Anglo-Saxon America and the Empire of Japan.

Among the changes that occurred in the countries that experienced industrialization during this period, technological innovations, organizational changes in companies and markets and the birth of what could be considered the first globalization stand out.

Use of the term "revolution"

The title of Second Industrial Revolution. Originally referred to the second technical revolution experienced in the industrialization process, although today this meaning has been expanded to designate the set of transformations that characterize this new phase of the process.

There is no single definition for the term "industrial revolution" and various meanings can be attributed to the term depending on the approach and the context in which it is expressed. According to David Landes, there are at least three meanings or ways of using the term: a) the one that refers to the set of technological innovations that replace human ability with machinery and animal power with energy, and that cause the production step artisanal to the factory; b) that which is used to highlight a rapid and important technological change in a specific historical period or as sequences of specific innovations; and c) it makes specific reference to the period of the XVIII century in which an economic and social change occurred from agrarian production and artisan to another mechanized or industrial started in England and spread unevenly to continental Europe.

Technical and scientific progress.

The process of technical change during the Second Industrial Revolution was one of the most momentous changes from the historical point of view, when technological innovations acquired the character of modernity, which laid the technological foundations of the 20th century and distanced itself from the foundations of the first revolution.

Science and technology in this period was characterized by the greater complexity of machines and equipment and by a closer relationship between the two that required a higher qualification for its implementation, which made its diffusion difficult. The core of technical change diversified into more sectors and expanded geographically, throughout Europe and the United States. Some of these inventions appeared in the 1850s and 1860s, but the most radical innovations arose in the period between 1870 and 1913 mainly in the United States and Germany, where most of the inventions that would be developed later in life were concentrated. throughout the XX century. All these discoveries ended up forming a new technological system.

The result of this new system was the expansion of available natural resources, the development of other complementary technological innovations, labor savings that generated a huge increase in productivity, higher benefits, higher wages, lower consumer prices. low prices and a range of new products. The new technological system, in short, can be considered the engine of growth at the end of the XIX century and the first century XX.

There are three main sources of technological progress in this period:

• The appearance of new materials, the list of new discovered materials is long:
  • New metals are discovered as
    • Steel (1856), already used before but converted by its baratura into the star metal of the time, replacing the iron.
    • Zinc (c. 1830), it will have a certain importance since by mixing with iron stops its oxidation.
    • Aluminium whose story is linked to the advance of electricity. It is a very light and resistant metal. It was discovered by Wökler in 1845 but until 1886 it is not generalized, when Hall applied the electrolysis process.
    • The nickel (1861) was mainly used to mix it with steel and thus achieve stainless steel. By mixing it with copper, an alloy called “alpaca” was created that had many applications in the domestic field.
    • Manganese and chrome (c. 1900)
    • Copper It will also be of great importance, in perfecting its production, it will be devoted almost exclusively to the electric industry, either as a driver or as a component of the electric motors.
  • Chemicals, the chemical industry is going to experience an unprecedented expansion and progress is going to be found practically for all fields of production, already known but now produced through new procedures:
    • Sosa is going to be produced profitably after the discoveries of the Belgian Solvay, it passed ammonia by salt water, so it generates sodium bicarbonate that can easily become sosa; this multiplied the world production of this product.
    • The artificial dyes will replace the previous natural dyes and will be obtained from products derived from the pot such as tar and benzol. The research in this field was very intense due to the great demand of the textile industry and in less than 20 years were found substitutes for all natural dyes.
    • Explosives acquire great development. The gunpowder was the only known and exploded by ignition (fire), new chemical explosives are to be discovered that explode by percussion such as nitrocellulose and nitroglycerin, the latter of the Italian Enro. In 1866 Alfred Nobel, also known for the prizes that bear his name, invented the dynamite, mix of nitroglycerin and a type of clay called Kieselguhr, this will generate a great explosives industry. The dynamite would have important applications in mining and in the military field thanks to its great power and stability.
    • In the field the demand for fertilizers will result in the development of chemical fertilizers or synthetic fertilizers. Sodium superphosphates and nitrate are to be developed, the latter is made from mineral nitrates from Peru and Chile. Europe was the area that consumed the most sodium nitrate. Other mineral elements indispensable for plants were also chemically synthesized as potassium fertilizer.
  • The cement portland (c. 1840) associated with the phenomenon of the growing urbanization of the period
  • The centuryXIX It's the big invention. In 1800 Volta invents the electric battery. In 1814 the first gas lamps were installed for street lighting and in 1819 a first steamship, the “Savannah”, crossed the Atlantic. Nicephore Niepce made the first cameras in 1827. In 1828 William Austin Burt built the first typewriter in Detroit. The first railway line between Liverpool and Manchester was opened in 1830. In 1835 Morse performed the first experience of the electric telegraph. Goodyear in 1839 performs the vulcanization of the rubber. In 1850 the first submarine cable was installed in the Pass of Calais. And the first exhibition of the first steam locomotive is performed. Fernando Lessenps in 1853 began the construction of the Suez Canal. In 1854 Otis invents the first hydraulic lift. In 1856 Bessemer invents the converts to obtain industrial steel. In 1860 the French engineer Ferdinand Corre puts to the point the first cooling device to produce ice. In 1867 Alfred Nobel invented the dynamite and founded the Nobel Prizes with the fortune he won for his invention and the American Sholes invented the typewriter. In 1876 the electric phone of Graham Bell and Grey appears. In 1878 Edison invented the electric bulb. In 1880 the bicycle was invented. In 1885 Daimler and Benz built a car driven by gasoline In 1895 Peugeot circulated a vehicle on tyres and the Lumière brothers invented a cinematographic apparatus. In 1897 the marriage Curie discovered the radio.

• Energy has historically constituted a fundamental element of any transcendent technical change and it was also at this time. The energy supply increased and diversified, due to the refinement of known techniques, such as the Watt machine, the turbine or the gas industry, and on the other hand thanks to new forms of energy, such as electricity and oil, with great advantages in its use.
• Mechanization continued with a progressive process of progress, due to the growing scale of production units, facilitated by the use of steel and other metals and new energy sources.

Metal

Rail iron bridge over the Thames River rebuilt in 1895.

Iron was still the most widely used metal and important innovations were applied to it. Thomas in 1878 invented a system to exploit iron rich in phosphorus, until then these deposits had not been taken into consideration due to the brittle nature of the metal. The Siemens-Martin procedure made it cheaper to obtain this same product.

During the First Industrial Revolution, iron was applied almost exclusively to the railway, now it will find new applications such as construction and weapons. In the construction field, iron bridges, train stations, markets, monuments such as the Eiffel Tower in 1889 will be built, and it would be the basis for the construction of the first skyscrapers in Chicago by making these buildings with an iron structure.

Steel (iron alloy with a small amount of carbon) was a very expensive metal to produce and its use was limited to a few products: cutlery, precision devices... The panorama changed with the appearance of new procedures such as the converter of Bessemer in 1856 that allowed to increase the production of steel at a reasonable price. In the field of weapons, steel will be used more than iron, new applications include the construction of battleships or submarines completely clad in steel.

Transportation revolution

Locomotive of 1874 on the railway of Pennsylvania

During this period, the cost of transport experienced a great decrease that allowed the integration of the markets until then very disconnected, this is evident, for example, in the price of wheat and corn in England and the United States, while that in 1860 the price of wheat in Liverpool was almost twice that of the Chicago market; by 1915 prices were almost the same. This reduction in prices promoted international trade, the integration of national and international markets, the union of producing and consuming areas of all kinds of resources and the generalized migration of people.

The change in the railway was spectacular and it continued to be the most widely used means of land communication. Thus, while in 1840 rail development was still scant, in Europe only nine countries had built any rail lines, with a continent-wide network of less than 4,000 kilometers and only four countries (Great Britain, Germany, France and Belgium) that had exceeded 300 kilometers, in the United States on that same date 4,510 kilometers had been built. Thirty years later, in 1870, this medium had been consolidated and in Europe it exceeded 100,000 km in extension and in the United States 70,000.

Spain in 1848 was the tenth country in the world to inaugurate a railway line, the one from Barcelona to Mataró, although in 1837 the railway between Havana and Güines in Spanish Cuba had already started operating; these were followed in 1851 by the line between Madrid and Aranjuez. Railroads continued to be built from the places where they had originated (Western Europe and the northeastern US) to places farther away, thus creating the great transcontinental networks of North America (circa 1870) and Eurasia, as for example the Trans-Siberian and the Orient Express around 1900.

The development of naval transport was also very notable. On the one hand, the clippers that came from England to the Pacific and Australia represented the swan song of sailing. But most important was the systematic application to ships of much more efficient triple and quadruple expansion steam boilers, the introduction of the iron hull in 1860 and later steel in 1879 and the application of the steam turbine in 1894. These Innovations lowered the costs of maintaining and operating the ships and increased the space reserved for merchandise and passengers. Around 1880 the crews and costs were also reduced with the disappearance of the auxiliary sails that steam boats still had. All these changes made it possible to reduce Atlantic transport freight rates by 45%.

Population growth and large migrations

During the 18th century, the rate of growth of the European population experienced a spectacular increase generated by multiple factors. In the first place, the transformations in agricultural production; With the incorporation and application of new technologies and techniques that allowed obtaining a higher yield from cultivated land, the introduction of crops from the American continent (potato, corn), as well as the exploitation of arable land in the colonized continents, contributed to the increase in population by increasing the capacity to produce food. Likewise, advances in medicine produced a considerable reduction in mortality rates and a sustained increase in birth rates. In this way, between the 18th and 19th centuries the European continent experienced a spectacular growth in its population, which went from 208 to 430 million (207%), in the aforementioned period.

Demographic changes, as well as the rapid urbanization of the population and a surplus of the active population, as a consequence of the productive capacity of agriculture promoted by the Industrial Revolution, motivated large-scale migratory movements of the European population towards countries in the process of industrialization. In addition to the above, another factor that contributed to boosting migratory flows was the revolution in transportation, with the application of steam in land transportation and navigation, through ocean liners powered by steam turbines, which facilitated the transportation of passengers and goods, by considerably reducing the cost and time spent traveling between Europe and America. It is estimated that between the period between 1850 and 1940 about 55 million Europeans moved, most of them settled in the United States, a country that became the main pole of attraction for European emigrants from the British Isles. Italy, Germany, among others, although migratory movements were also directed towards countries such as Argentina, Venezuela, Brazil and Canada.

Capitalism

The development of monopoly capitalism in the second half of the 19th century occurred within the framework of a new cycle of general expansion and was accompanied by a new growth of the productive forces of several countries. In this way, capital was centralized and production was concentrated by forming the monopoly with the agreement and union of capitalists. Thus, the monopolies were able to determine the conditions of sale of a large part of the products, fixing the prices and thus obtaining higher profits. However, the monopolies, although they tended to achieve greater or better control of the markets, did not completely eliminate the fight for competition, which occurred both between the monopoly corporations themselves and between the companies that remained outside the monopolies. cartels and trusts. On the contrary, they made it more violent in both domestic and international markets. In this scenario, banks played a new decisive role for the transformation of capitalism into a phenomenon that would characterize the second part of the XIX century, as well as the first of the XX century: imperialism (i.e. attempts to establish or maintain sovereign formal status of a given power over other societies subordinate to it).

During this period, the German Empire rivaled or superseded that of Great Britain and Ireland as the primary industrial nation in Europe. This occurred as a result of several factors. Germany, having industrialized after Britain, was able to model her factories after Britain's, thus saving a substantial amount of capital, effort, and time. While Germany made use of the latest technological concepts, the British continued to use expensive and outdated technology. In the development of science and pure research, the Germans invested more heavily than the British, especially in the chemical industry. The German cartel system (known as the Konzerne), being significantly concentrated, was able to make more efficient use of fluid capital. Some believe that the reparation payments demanded of France after its defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and 1871 would have provided the necessary capital to allow massive public investment in infrastructure such as railways. This provided a large market for innovative steel products and facilitated transportation. The annexation by the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine caused a part of what had been the French industrial base to pass to Germany. In the United States the Second Industrial Revolution is commonly associated with electrification as pioneered by Nikola Tesla, Thomas Alva Edison, and George Westinghouse and with scientific management as applied by Frederick Winslow Taylor.

Birth of new powers

Although, in the First Industrial Revolution, England became the first economic power, during the Second Industrial Revolution this situation changed radically with the emergence of new powers: Germany, which after its unification had an outstanding economic development and industrial, as well as the United States and Japan. On the other hand, Japan from the second half of the XIX century, began to follow a process of modernization. The Meiji Restoration undertook a series of reforms whose purpose was to break the isolation in which the country had remained and eliminate the obstacles to economic growth imposed by the predecessor government regime, taking Western countries, mainly the United States, as reference models., who had entered their territory. In this way, the Meiji government promoted the creation of sources for heavy industry with technology imported from Europe, as well as the expansion of military power. By the beginning of the XX century, Japan had managed to consolidate significant industrial growth and emerged as an economic power.

The main factors in the establishment of new powers:

Germany

• It began its industrial process in 1840, and in 1914 it became the main industrial power.
• It was the main power thanks to its technological advances and the good use of the economy.
• At the beginning of the centuryXIX The obstacles to industrial production were institutional: it was fragmented in 39 small states (independent political units). This hinders the industrializing process due to customs barriers, the existence of a different currency and the commercial monopoly. There is difficulty in launching a unified domestic market.
• Pervival of feudal traits that limit geographical mobilization, discourage innovations and personal initiative. All these feudal traits disappear with the invasion (1810).
• 1834. State Customs Union Single Market, which is commercial, not political. Successful industrializing process across the continent due to the disposition of natural resources and the long industrial tradition at home (artesanal).
• Influencing the Russian model. It addresses the competitiveness of English products that impoverish domestic markets.
• Tip sector: steel, chemical and electrical industry.
• Important educational role: promotion of professional, scientific and technical education.
• The fundamental role of the liberalization of the social economic structure inherited from the old regime; the modernization of communication systems; protectionist policy that promotes the industrializing process.
• Importance of bank credit and large enterprise, characterized by a trend of expansion and vertical integration.

United States

• Availability of natural resources (cotton, oil, gold, minerals, leather, etc.).
• Demographic evolution.

The demographic process in the United States had three essential features that characterized it. Regarding the population, this country did not exceed four million inhabitants in the first period; however, it doubled every 23 years, until on the eve of the Civil War it managed to reach 32 million. However, in the last third of the XIX century, there would be a relative decrease in said growth.