Transferring labour from agriculture to armaments & industry

[Tony Gosling]

Britain was the first country to industrialize and used her 
manufacturing muscle to become the great empire in the 19th century. 
It wasn't just technology, like the invention of the steam engine, 
but a national policy of mass urbanization, transferring labor from 
agriculture to armaments and industry that put Britain ahead of the 
world. Mass evictions of the peasantry, known as enclosures, kept the 
wheels turning in the factories, William Blake's 'Dark Satanic Mills' 
were filled with hundreds of thousands of homeless men with hungry 
families to house and feed, desperate for money for rent and food.

The wider empire was built on one particular invention, the railway. 
Moving coal, iron ore, wool and other raw materials as well as 
manufactured goods off the canals and uphill, down dale, cheaply and 
at speed gave Britain the edge as a massive shipbuilding program 
projected Queen Victoria's power across the globe.



'Atomic Bomber Beeching': Undo his vandalism & get Britain back on track

http://rt.com/op-edge/205547-beeching-railway-network-britain/





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