2 - The Precursore

Summary

The industrialist was undoubtedly a new man, who emerged with the factory system during the Industrial Revolution. But, one might wonder, was he completely new? Or did he have some forerunners before the mid eighteenth century? Were there any individuals who might be called ‘pre-industrialists’, or rather ‘paleo-industrialists’ (‘proto-industrialist’ is tempting, but would be misleading, because the leaders of ‘proto-industrialization’ were merchant-manufacturers, who put out work to domestic workers and were therefore quite different from industrialists)?

Although the basic unit of production in most of traditional industry was the domestic workshop, there were a number of branches in which ‘centralized’, non-domestic production prevailed, basically for technical reasons: one cannot have a blast-furnace or a glass-oven in a cottage's backyard. Such were the furnace industries, where intense heat was needed (the increasing use of coal in English industry from the sixteenth century onwards worked towards greater centralization), and the mill industries, which required the use of water (or wind) power. The primary iron industry is both a furnace and a mill industry; it is typical of this small, but not unimportant, sector.

However, the word ‘centralized’ must not delude. In the overwhelming majority of cases such establishments were very small affairs: the state of demand did not warrant large-scale production, for which in any case the necessary technology was not available and few economies of scale were possible. In the charcoal iron industry, the problems of wood and water power supplies severely limited the size of ironworks.