Businesses During the Industrial Revolution

[Arcane_Snowman]

so I'm setting up a iron Kingdoms campaign where the players are gang members who are trying to make their mark on a city, and as part of it I'm setting up an entire metropolis map with businesses for the players to interact with and benefit from.

But what businesses should I realistically be looking at having?

[Koo Rehtorb]

Textiles, ironworks, furniture, railroads. Those would be some big period businesses.

[nrg89]

Financial institutions were far more numerous and similar to what we know today than in the Middle Ages. Industrialists often issued stock, bonds and got a loan in order to finance their canals, factories and railroads so your metropolis would have banks and a stock exchange. Many states tried to make it illegal to spread rumors about the competition to hurt their value, but it had mixed results.

Ships in port need more coal for the next trip so there will be businesses who got them covered.
And if you are just expanding to the international market you need a ship, so shipyards on the shores.

And insurance companies, because that's an expensive boat/factory/rail road you've got there and it would be a shame if something happened to it.

The press became much more similar to what we know today too because of steam driven printing presses, so news papers could manage a very large, daily readership. There would be newsies trying to sell their papers at the most trafficked street corners and reporters looking for scoops about the movers and shakers in town.

Also, the luddites as we call them have been very simplified in history, they were more or less the precursors to unions rather than anti-progression. Some factory owners invested in an armed force to protect their machines from angry mobs, some of them cottage industry workers but also many actual factory workers.
In my country the saw mills wielded a lot of power over half the country, the forested Norrland. Try to think about what natural resources are close by, or are up river. Manchester was very close to a coal mine which they connected to with a canal and it contributed a lot to making Manchester a manufacturing super power.

[Mr Blobby]

It depends on what country you're in, and what phase of industrialisation you're in.

Early period [1770 - 1820]. Poster boy - Adam Smith.

Financial instruments were primitive to the extreme, agriculture was still the largest employer and most things were still produced by labour-intensive methods. While Adam Smith gave his famous description of a pin factory in the Wealth of Nations [though it's suspected Smith actually stole the description rather then visiting himself], said pin factory wasn't one by the term we'd use; it was a workshop where manpower made said items.

Sunrise businesses: mining, textiles, agricultural land reclamation, canal-building, iron, pottery.

Middle period [1820 - 1870]. Poster boy - Karl Marx.

Steam power is now here in force. Railways appear everywhere. Industrial cities swell with people, housed in shoddily-built housing around the dark satanic mills. People realise that they're truly in a new age, and start agitating and planning for reforms [from public heath to politics]. Financial institutions develop, to learn from the mistakes of banking collapses, stock-market bubbles and investor scams. The telegraph system grows alongside the new railways, allowing instant communications across [increasingly] the globe.

Sunrise businesses: steel, railways, shipbuilding, construction.

Late period [1870 - 1900]. Poster boy - HG Wells.

The belief that scientific advance was a given and not a fluke start around now. The first industrial combines appear. As the industrial world becomes more complex and the state starts funding more projects [schools etc] a sturdy middle-class 'salariat' appears to run said enterprises. Companies start to actually look to these and even the richer working class as 'consumers'; the first chain stores and department stores appear. Many of the modern brands we know now start in this era; advertising becomes commonplace. Cheap reliable communications and mass literacy allow the first modern media; high-circulation newspapers and magazines. The world of 1900 would feel both utterly alien and oddly familiar to us.

Sunrise businesses: Chain stores, electrical companies, chemicals, food processing.

Lastly, you need to decide whether the country/city you've set it in is a 'winner' or 'loser' in the industrial race. Nations such as the Ottoman Empire and Russia didn't have much of an organic industrial class; they simply imported the plant from overseas and bolted it on to a pre-industrial city. Not all cities thrived within the country either; in the UK places while cities like Liverpool and Newcastle boomed, others like Gloucester, Chester and Plymouth declined or stagnated.

[nrg89]

Late period [1870 - 1900]. Poster boy - HG Wells.

...

Sunrise businesses: Chain stores, electrical companies, chemicals, food processing.

I would call electrical companies a sunrise industry as a whole in the 1900s but as I understand it, this is an important metropolis the OP is describing (such as London, Paris or New York City) so it would very likely have a power grid by this time complete with street lights so for cosmopolitan city dwellers power is something the upper-middle classes definitely can take for granted. Engineers, accountants, doctors and managers in 1880s New York City were working late at night with a light bulb around this time. This is also by the time diesel engines start development and Iron Kingdoms is very much a steam powered setting so this far into the 19th century I think would lose the feel of the setting.

[Kami2awa]

This might be of use:

http://www.worldthroughthelens.com/family-history/old-occupations.php

[nrg89]

This might be of use:

http://www.worldthroughthelens.com/family-history/old-occupations.php

Awesome list! I'll use it myself whenever I can get a steampunk group together (I envy the OP somewhat).

[Mr Blobby]

Well, I did say '1870 - 1900'. And the growth of the whole electrical business required the invention and refinement [so it would become reliable enough for mass use] of the lightbulb. Lightbulbs drove the introduction of mains electricity. This then directly created the market of other electrical devices which will boom in the early 20th century; hoovers, cookers, toasters etc.

However, development was uneven. The UK, for example lagged seriously in electrical development [when compared to say the USA and Germany]. The mentality was all to often 'who needs this - steam and gas is enough for us!'

[Berenger]

Breweries.

[Knaight]

The chemical industry* was also expanding during this period. The Solvay process (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solvay_process) was invented in the 1860's, and remains a big deal. There's also the beginning of industrial processing of agricultural products, with things like the introduction of the Multiple-effect evaporator (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple-effect_evaporator) into the sugar industry. I'm not super familiar with Iron Kingdoms, but I think it has a bit of a magitech feel, so looking at the early chemical industry with an eye towards alchemy and alchemical engineering could be a lot of fun.

*Which is to say the industry dedicated to the bulk production of pellets, powders, liquid phase chemicals, and eventually pressurized gases comprised of a wide variety of distinct and usually purified compounds, not all industries involving chemicals.

[The Glyphstone]

The setting peculiarities should be mentioned or noted here, since they'll likely affect people's answers. Steam-power is significantly advanced, in large part to enable the steam-powered giant robots that feature as the principal war-weapons. Said robots also have civilian-market versions, making them extremely good at carrying very heavy loads around. Electricity exists, but is restricted primarily to military applications as tesla-style weaponry rather than having any civilian application. Alchemy is also a thing.

[dps]

I would call electrical companies a sunrise industry as a whole in the 1900s but as I understand it, this is an important metropolis the OP is describing (such as London, Paris or New York City) so it would very likely have a power grid by this time complete with street lights so for cosmopolitan city dwellers power is something the upper-middle classes definitely can take for granted.

Street lights pre-dated the electric light. Many cities had gas streetlights installed during the mid-1800s, and even before that, there were lanterns used as streetlights.

[nrg89]

Street lights pre-dated the electric light. Many cities had gas streetlights installed during the mid-1800s, and even before that, there were lanterns used as streetlights.

I know, I was talking about the power grid and electrical street lights. :)

[veti]

In a metropolis: a lot of very small businesses. Independent traders are the norm. Global merchant companies exist, but they stick to large-scale shipping and wholesaling, and even in these fields there are still plenty of independents around. Most of the people you do business with will be relatively small firms, with a total of a dozen employees or fewer. Chain stores and franchises have yet to be invented.

There are large factories, and they're very important to the economy - but as a proportion of the population, they shouldn't be overstated.

This applies both to poor (street vendors, most shopkeepers) and "professional" occupations (lawyers, doctors, architects, publishers etc.).

Poster boy that Mr Blobby omitted: Charles Dickens.

[Mr Blobby]

There's so many poster-boys I could have mentioned. The ones I did were simply the ones who first appeared in my head.