19th century

The Industrial Revolution, laissez-faire and the Christian response to the social crisis (19th century)

Shelley: the Industrial Revolution – the rapid changes in European and American society in the nineteenth century linked to new methods of production: factories meant cities, cities meant people, and people meant problems. Workers were herded into factories, while the philosophy of laissez-faire left the social evils uncorrected; the churches, deprived of a political platform, long stayed off the arena where decisions were made. In the second half of the century more and more Christians – Catholics and Protestants – pursued four paths: to challenge laissez-faire in the name of Christian principles, to create Christian institutions of relief, to support trade unions and to ask the state for laws on behalf of labour

Key points

• Shelley: Watt’s steam engine (1730–1819) gave rise to factories: twelve- to fifteen-hour days, women’s and children’s labor, no sanitation. Laissez-faire philosophy (Adam Smith) justified non-interference; socialism first challenged it, demanding cooperation over competition. Churches were sidelined by separation from the state, the 1830s reforms and anticlericalism; workers found the Christian message powerless. In Protestant England workers were backed chiefly by Nonconformists, esp. Primitive Methodists; unions were illegal until mid-19th century. Many labor leaders trained under Methodists as lay preachers and brought zeal, administrative talent and preaching experience into the movement. Nonconformists led the temperance “crusade” and founded orphanages: Müller, Spurgeon, Stephenson. In the 19th century English workers slowly gained both political power and better conditions, as England moved step by step away from the laissez-faire doctrine. Children could work only from ten, the day for women and children was cut to ten hours, and inspectors began checking factories; England gave workers much before the US even admitted there was a crisis.
• Holmes: in his ‘St. John’s experiment’ Thomas Chalmers sought a self-sufficient Christian community in a Glasgow parish; his ideal: a ‘godly commonwealth’.

People

• James Watt
• Adam Smith
• George Müller
• Charles Haddon Spurgeon
• Thomas Stephenson
• Thomas Chalmers

Place

England, USA, Western Europe