In 1851, London hosted an industrial fair called the Great Exhibition in the newly built Crystal Palace. The building was made entirely of glass and iron, both of which were now cheap and abundant. Sponsored by the British royal family, the exhibition celebrated the new era of industrial technology and the kingdom’s role as world economic leader.

Britain’s claim to be the “workshop of the world” was no idle boast because it produced two-thirds of the world’s coal and more than half of all iron and cotton cloth. More generally, in 1860, Britain produced a remarkable 20 percent of the entire world’s output of industrial goods, whereas it had produced only about 2 percent of the total in 1750.2 As the British economy significantly increased its production of manufactured goods, the gross national product (GNP) rose roughly fourfold at constant prices between 1780 and 1851. At the same time, the population of Britain boomed, growing from about 9 million in 1780 to almost 21 million in 1851. Thus growing numbers consumed much of the increase in total production.

Based on the lessons of history, many contemporaries feared that the rapid growth in population would inevitably lead to disaster. In his Essay on the Principle of Population (1798), Thomas Malthus (1766–1834) concluded that the only hope of warding off “positive checks” to population growth such as famine and disease was “prudential restraint.” That is, young men and women had to limit the growth of population by marrying late in life. But Malthus was not optimistic about this possibility. The powerful attraction of the sexes, he feared, would cause most people to marry early and have many children.

Economist David Ricardo (1772–1823) spelled out the pessimistic implications of Malthus’s thought. Ricardo’s depressing iron law of wages posited that, because of the pressure of population growth, wages would always sink to subsistence level over an extended period of time. That is, wages would be just high enough to keep workers from starving.

Malthus, Ricardo, and their followers were proved wrong in the long run, largely because industrialization improved productivity beyond what they could imagine. However, until the 1820s or even the 1840s, contemporary observers might reasonably have concluded that the economy and the total population were racing neck and neck, with the outcome very much in doubt. There was another problem as well. Perhaps workers, farmers, and ordinary people did not get their rightful share of the new wealth. Perhaps only the rich got richer, while the poor got poorer or made no progress. We will turn to this great issue after looking at the process of industrialization beyond the British Isles.