Source of Power

Except in mining and in a few big waterworks, where pumping engines were coming more and more into use, the chief source of power was water - that of streams and rivers which either had a natural fall or could be dammed up to make one. Factories, where they existed and workshops which needed power were nearly all located by running water; and sites which gave command of suitable water-power were much in demand. This limited urban concentration: the industrialist had to go to the water, and this meant placing most establishments away from the towns. İt also gave an advantage to the hilly country of the north, which had many streams with a good natural fall. Thes streams mostly had th efurther advantage to the manufacturer of not being navigable; for on navigable rivers there was often sharp conflict between those who wished to use them for boats and barges transporting goods and those who proposed to dam them for the supply of power. Even after 1750, the erlier phases of the İndustrial Revolution wer based largely on the use of water-power.




İn the nineteenth century advanced economic systems existed only on a basis of privatte ownership and enterprise.................İt remains to be seen whether Marx was correct in prophesying that capitalism, having served its purpose, would prove incapable of controlling the expanding powers of production and would in due course be everywhere superseded by some form of collective organisation of industry.

....These devices have made it possible to concentrate the control of capital resources in bigger and bigger concerns under unified direction, without the concentration of ownership in correspondingly few hands. They have also, to an increasing extent, transferred the function of saving for investment from the individual recipient of income to the directors of this massed capital, who can hold back from distribution to the shareholders such part of the profit as they think it wise to retain in the business in order to provide for its expansion......


G.D.H.Cole, (1953), İntroduction to Economic History 1750-1950, Macmillan & Co. Ltd