THE STRUCTURE OF INDUSTRY BEFORE MACHINERY.
Sec. 1. _Dimensions of International Commerce in early Eighteenth
Century._
Sec. 2. _Natural Barriers to International Trade._
Sec. 3. _Political, Pseudo-economic, and Economic Barriers--
Protective Theory and Practice._
Sec. 4. _Nature of International Trade._
Sec. 5. _Size, Structure, Relations of the several Industries._
Sec. 6. _Slight Extent of Local Specialisation._
Sec. 7. _Nature and Conditions of Specialised Industry._
Sec. 8. _Structure of the Market._
Sec. 9. _Combined Agriculture and Manufacture._
Sec. 10. _Relations between Processes in a Manufacture._
Sec. 11. _Structure of the Domestic Business: Early Stages of
Transition._
Sec. 12. _Beginnings of Concentrated Industry and the Factory._
Sec. 13. _Limitations in Size and Application of Capital--
Merchant Capitalism._
Sec. 1. In order to get some clear understanding of the laws of the
operation of the new industrial forces which prevail under
machine-production it is first essential to know rightly the structure
and functional character of the "industrial organism" upon which they
were destined to act. In order to build up a clear conception of
industry it is possible to take either of two modes of inquiry. Taking
as the primary cell or unit that combination of labour and capital
under a single control for a single industrial purpose which is termed
a Business, we may examine the structure and life of the Business,
then proceed to discover how it stands related to other businesses so
as to form a Market, and, finally, how the several Markets are
related locally, nationally, internationally so as to yield the
complex structure of Industry as a whole. Or reversely, we may take
Industry as a whole, the Industrial Organism as it exists at any given
time, consider the nature and extent of the cohesion existing between
its several parts, and, further, resolving these parts into their
constituent elements, gain a close understanding of the extent to
which differentiation of industrial functions has been carried in the
several divisions.
Although in any sociological inquiry these two methods are equally
valid, or, more strictly speaking, are equally balanced in virtues and
defects, the latter method is here to be preferred, because by the
order of its descent from the whole to the constituent parts it brings
out more definitely the slight cohesiveness and integration of
industry beyond the national limits, and serves to emphasise those
qualities of nationalism and narrow localism which mark the character
of earlier eighteenth century industry. We are thus enabled better to
recognise the nature and scope of the work wrought by the modern
industrial forces which are the central object of study.
While the Market or the Trade is less and less determined or confined
by national or other political boundaries in modern times, and
nationalism is therefore a factor of diminishing importance in the
modern science of economics, the paramount domination of politics over
large commerce in the last century, acting in co-operation with other
racial and national forces, obliges any just analysis of eighteenth
century industry to give clear and early emphasis to the slight
character of the commercial interdependency among nations. The degree
of importance which statesmen and economists attached to this foreign
commerce as compared with home trade, and the large part it played in
the discussion and determination of public conduct, have given it a
prominence in written history far beyond its real value.[3]
It is true that through the Middle Ages a succession of European
nations rose to eminence by the development of navigation and
international trade, Italy, Portugal, Spain, France, Holland, and
England; but neither in size nor in character was this trade of the
first importance. Even in the case of those nations where it was most
developed it formed a very small proportion of the total industry of
the country, and it was chiefly confined to spicery, bullion,
ornamental cloths, and other objects of art and luxury.
It is important to recognise that in the first half of the eighteenth
century international trade still largely partook of this character.
Not only did it bear a far smaller proportion to the total industry of
the several countries than does foreign trade to-day, but it was still
engaged to a comparatively small extent with the transport of
necessaries or prime conveniences of life. Each nation, as regards the
more important constituents of its consumption, its staple foods,
articles of clothing, household furniture, and the chief implements of
industry, was almost self-sufficing, producing little that it did not
consume, consuming little it did not produce.
In 1712 the export trade of England is officially estimated at
L6,644,103,[4] or considerably less than one-sixth of the home trade
of that date as calculated by Smith in his _Memoirs of Wool_. Such an
estimate, however, gives an exaggerated impression of the relation of
foreign to home trade, because under the latter no account is taken of
the large domestic production of goods and services which figure in no
statistics. A more instructive estimate is that which values the total
consumption of the English people in 1713 at forty-nine or fifty
millions, out of which about four millions covers the consumption of
foreign goods.[5] In 1740 imports amounted to L6,703,778, exports to
L8,197,788. In 1750 they had risen respectively to L7,772,339 and
L12,699,081,[6] and ten years later to L9,832,802 and L14,694,970.
Macpherson, whose _Annals of Commerce_ are a mine of wealth upon the
history of foreign commerce in the eighteenth century, after
commenting upon the impossibility of obtaining a just estimate of the
value of home trade, alludes to a calculation which places it at
thirty-two times the size of the export trade. Macpherson contents
himself with concluding that it is "a vast deal greater in value than
the whole of the foreign trade."[7] There is every reason to believe
that in the case of Holland and France, the only two other European
nations with a considerable foreign trade, the same general conclusion
will apply.
[Illustration: PROGRESS OF FOREIGN TRADE IN ENGLAND.]
The smallness of the part which foreign trade played in industry
signifies that in the earlier part of the eighteenth century the
industrial organism as a whole must be regarded as a number of
tolerably self-sufficing and therefore homogeneous national forms
attached to one another by bonds which are few and feeble. As yet
there was little specialisation in national industry, and therefore
little integration of national parts of the world-industry.
Sec. 2. Since the breaking-down of international barriers and the
strengthening of the industrial bonds of attachment between nations
will be seen to be one of the most important effects of the
development of machine-industry, some statement of the nature of these
barriers and their effect upon the size and character of international
trade is required.
Though considerable advances had been made by England and Holland at
the beginning of the eighteenth century in the improvement of
harbours, the establishment of lighthouses, and the development of
marine insurance,[8] navigation was still subject to considerable
risks of the loss of life and of investments, while these "natural"
dangers were increased by the prevalence of piracy. Voyages were slow
and expensive, commerce between distant nations being necessarily
confined to goods of a less perishable character which would stand the
voyage. Trade in fresh foods, which forms so large a part of modern
commerce, would have been impossible except along the coasts of
adjoining nations. With these natural barriers to commerce may be
reckoned the defective knowledge of the position, resources, and
requirements of large parts of the earth which now fill an important
place in commerce. The new world was but slightly opened up, nor could
its known resources be largely utilised before the development of more
adequate machinery of transport. We can scarcely realise the
inconveniences, costs, and risks entailed by the more distant branches
of foreign trade at a time when the captain of a merchant-ship still
freighted his vessel at his own expense, and when each voyage was a
separate speculation. Even in the early nineteenth century the
manufacturer commonly shipped his surplus produce at his own risk,
employing the merchant upon commission, and in the trade with the
Indies, China, or South America he had frequently to lie out of his
money or his return freight of indigo, coffee, tea, etc., for as long
as eighteen months or two years, and to bear the expense of
warehousing as well as the damage which time and tide inflicted on his
goods.
Sec. 3. Next come a series of barriers, partly political, partly
pseudo-economic, in which the antagonism of nations took shape, the
formation of political and industrial theories which directed the
commercial intercourse of nations into certain narrow and definite
channels.
Two economic doctrines, separate in the world of false ideas, though
their joint application in the world of practice has led many to
confuse them, exercised a dominant influence in diminishing the
quantity, and determining the quality of international trade in the
eighteenth century. These doctrines had reference respectively to the
construction and maintenance of home industries and the balance of
trade. The former doctrine, which was not so much a consciously-evolved
theory as a short-sighted, intellectual assumption driven by the urgent
impulse of vested interests into practical effect, taught that, on the
one hand, import trade should be restricted to commodities which were
not and could not with advantage be produced at home, and to the
provision of cheap materials for existing manufactures; while export
trade, on the other hand, should be generally encouraged by a system of
bounties and drawbacks. This doctrine was first rigidly applied by the
French minister, Colbert, but the policy of France was faithfully
copied by England and other commercial nations and ranked as an
orthodox theory of international trade.
The Balance of Trade doctrine estimated the worth of a nation's
intercourse with another by the excess of the export over the import
trade, which brought a quantity of bullion into the exporting country.
This theory was also widely spread, though obviously its general
application would have been destructive of all international commerce.
The more liberal interpretation of the doctrine was satisfied with a
favourable balance of the aggregate export over the aggregate import
trade of the country, but the stricter interpretation, generally
dominant in practice, required that in the case of each particular
nation the balance should be favourable. In regarding England's
commerce with a foreign nation, any excess in import values over
export was spoken of as "a loss to England." England deliberately cut
off all trade with France during the period 1702 to 1763 by a system
of prohibitive tariffs urged by a double dread lest the balance should
be against us, and lest French textile goods might successfully
compete with English goods in the home markets. On the other hand, we
cultivated trade with Portugal because "we gain a greater balance from
Portugal than from any other country whatever." The practical policy
prevalent in 1713 is thus summarised by one of its enthusiastic
upholders--"We suffer the goods and merchandises of Holland, Germany,
Portugal, and Italy to be imported and consumed among us; and it is
well we do, for we expect a much greater value of our own to those
countries than we take from them. So that the consumption of those
nations pays much greater sums to the rents of our lands and the
labour of our people than ours does to theirs. But we keep out as much
as possible the goods and merchandises of France, because our
consumption of theirs would very much hinder the consumption of our
own, and abate a great part of forty-two millions which it now pays to
the rents of our lands and the labour of our people."[9] Thus our
policy was to confine our import trade to foreign luxuries and raw
materials of manufacture which could not be here produced, drawn
exclusively from countries where such trade would not turn the balance
against us, and, on the other hand, to force our export trade on any
country that would receive it. Since every European nation was largely
influenced by similar ideas and motives, and enforced upon their
colonies and dependencies a like line of conduct, many mutually
profitable exchanges were prevented, and commerce was confined to
certain narrow and artificial grooves, while the national industrial
energy was wasted in the production of many things at home which could
have been more cheaply obtained from foreign countries through
exchange.
The following example may suffice to illustrate the intricacy of the
legislation passed in pursuance of this policy. It describes a change
of detailed policy in support and regulation of textile trade:--
"A tax was laid on foreign linens in order to provide a fund for
raising hemp and flax at home; while bounties were given on these
necessary articles from our colonies, the bounty on the exportation of
hemp was withdrawn. The imposts on foreign linen yarn were withdrawn.
Bounties were given on British linen cloth exported; while the making
of cambricks was promoted, partly by prohibiting the foreign and
partly by giving fresh incentives, though without success, to the
manufacture of cambricks within our island. Indigo, cochineal, and
logwood, the necessaries of dyes, were allowed to be freely
imported."[10]
The encouragement of English shipping (partly for commercial, partly
for political reasons) took elaborate shape in the Navigation Acts,
designed to secure for English vessels a monopoly of the carrying
trade between England and all other countries which sent goods to
English or to colonial shores. This policy was supported by a network
of minor measures giving bounties to our colonies for the exportation
of shipping materials, pitch, tar, hemp, turpentine, masts, and spars,
and giving bounties at home for the construction of defensible ships.
This Navigation policy gave a strong foundational support to the whole
protective policy. Probably the actuating motives of this policy were
more political than industrial. Holland, the first to apply this
method systematically, had immensely strengthened her maritime power.
France, though less successfully, had followed in her wake. Doubtless
there were many clear-thinking Englishmen who, though aware of the
damage done to commerce by our restrictive regulations about shipping,
held that the maintenance of a powerful navy for the defence of the
kingdom and its foreign possessions was an advantage which outweighed
the damage.[11]
The selfish and short-sighted policy of this protective system found
its culminating point in the treatment of Ireland and the American
plantations. The former was forbidden all manufacture which might
either directly or indirectly compete with English industry, and was
compelled to deal exclusively with England; the American colonies were
forbidden to weave cloth, to make hats, or to forge a bolt, and were
compelled to take all the manufactured goods required for their
consumption from England.
The freedom and expansion of international commerce was further
hampered by the policy of assigning monopolies of colonial and foreign
trade to close Chartered Companies. This policy, however, defensible
as an encouragement of early mercantile adventure, was carried far
beyond these legitimate limits in the eighteenth century. In England
the East Indian was the most powerful and successful of these
companies, but the assignment of the trade with Turkey, Russia, and
other countries to chartered companies was a distinct hindrance to the
development of foreign trade.
Our foreign trade at that period might indeed be classed or graded in
accordance with the degree of encouragement or discouragement offered
by the State.
Imports would fall into four classes.
1. Imports forbidden either (_a_) by legislative prohibition,
or (_b_) by prohibitive taxation.
2. Imports admitted but taxed.
3. Free imports.
4. Imports encouraged by bounties.
Exports might be graded in similar fashion.
1. Prohibited exports (_e.g._, sheep and wool, raw hides,
tanned leather, woollen yarn, textile implements,[12]
certain forms of skilled labour).
2. Exports upon which duties are levied (_e.g._, coals[13]).
3. Free exports.
4. Exports encouraged by bounties, or by drawbacks.
The unnatural and injurious character of most of this legislation is
best proved by the notable inability to effectively enforce its
application. The chartered companies were continually complaining of
the infringement of their monopolies by private adventurers, and more
than one of them failed through inability to crush out this illegal
competition. A striking condemnation of our policy towards France
consisted in the growth of an enormous illicit trade which, in spite
of the difficulties which beset it, made a considerable part of our
aggregate foreign trade during the whole of the century. The lack of
any clear perception of the mutuality of advantage in foreign and
colonial trade was the root fallacy which underlay these restrictions.
Professor Cunningham rightly says of the colonial policy of England,
that it "implied that each distinct member should strengthen the head,
and not at all that these members should mutually strengthen each
other."[14]
So, as we tried to get the better of our colonies, still more
rigorously did we apply the same methods to foreign countries,
regarding each gain which accrued to us as an advantage which would
have wholly gone to the foreigner if we had not by firmness and
enterprise secured it for ourselves.
The slight extent of foreign intercourse was, however, partly due to
causes which are to be regarded as genuinely economic. The life and
experience of the great mass of the population of all countries was
extremely restricted; they were a scattered and rural folk whose wants
and tastes were simple, few, home-bred, and customary. The customary
standard of consumption, slowly built up in conformity with local
production, gave little encouragement to foreign trade. Moreover, to
meet the new tastes and the more varied consumption which gradually
found its way over this country, it was in conformity with the
economic theory and practice of the day to prefer the establishment of
new home industries, equipped if necessary with imported foreign
labour, to the importation of the products of such labour from abroad.
So far as England, in particular, is concerned, the attitude was
favoured by the political and religious oppression of the French
government which supplied England in the earlier eighteenth century
with a constant flow of skilled artisan labour. Many English
manufacturers profited by this flow. Our textile industries in silk,
wool, and linen, calico-printing, glass, paper, and pottery are
special beholden to the new arts thus introduced.
Among the economic barriers must be reckoned the slight development
of international credit, and of the machinery of exchange.
Sec. 4. These barriers, natural, political, social, economic, against
free international intercourse, throw important light upon the general
structure of world-industry in the eighteenth century.
In this application they determined and strictly limited not only the
quantity but the nature of the international trade. The export trade
of England, for example, in 1730 was practically confined to woollen
goods and other textile materials, a small quantity of leather, iron,
lead, silver, and gold plate, and a certain number of re-exported
foreign products, such as tobacco and Indian calicoes. The import
trade consisted of wine and spirits, foreign foods, such as rice,
sugar, coffee, oil, furs, and some quantity of foreign wool, hemp,
silk, and linen-yarn, as material for our specially favoured
manufactures. Having regard to the proportion of the several
commodities, it would not be much exaggeration to summarise our
foreign trade by saying that we sent out woollen goods and received
foreign foods. These formed the great bulk of our foreign trade.[15]
Excepting the woollen goods and a small trade in metals, leather is
the only manufactured article which figured to any appreciable extent
in our export of 1730. At that time it is clear that in the main
English manufacture, as well as English agriculture, was for the
supply of English wants. The same was true of other industrial
countries. Holland and France, who divided with England the shipping
supremacy, had a foreign trade which, though then deemed considerable,
bore no greater proportion to the total industry of these countries
than in the case of England. Germany, Italy, Russia, Spain, and even
Portugal were almost wholly self-sustained.
Regarding, then, the known and related world of that time in the light
of an industrial organism, we must consider it as one in which the
processes of integration and of differentiation of parts has advanced
but a little way, consisting as yet of a number of homogeneous and
incoherent national cells.
This homogeneity is of course qualified by differences in production
and consumption due to climate, natural products, national character
and institutions, and the development of industrial arts in the
several nations.
Sec. 5. This consideration of the approximate homogeneity of the national
units of world-industry gives a higher scientific value to the
analysis of a single typical industrial nation such as England, than
would be the case in modern times, when the work of differentiation of
industrial functions among the several nations has advanced much
further.
Taking, therefore, the national industry of England as the special
subject of analysis, we may seek to obtain a clear conception of the
size, structure, and connections, of the several branches of industry,
paying special regard to the manufactures upon which the new
industrial forces were chiefly to operate.
It is not possible to form a very accurate estimate of the relative
importance of the different industries as measured either by the money
value of their products, or by the amount of labour engaged in
producing them. Eighteenth century statistics, as we saw, furnished no
close estimate of the total income of the nation or of the value of
home industries. Since no direct census of the English population was
taken before 1805, the numbers were never exactly known, and
eighteenth century economists spent much time and ingenuity in trying
to ascertain the growth of population by calculations based upon the
number of occupied houses, or by generalising from slender and
unreliable local statistics, without in the end arriving at any close
agreement. Still less reliable will be the estimates of the relative
size and importance of the different industries.
Two such attempts, however, one slightly prior to the special period
we are investigating, and one a little later, may be taken as general
indications of the comparative importance of the great divisions of
industry, agriculture, manufacture, distribution or commerce.
The first is that of Gregory King in the year 1688. King's
calculation, however, can only be regarded as roughly approximate. The
quantity of combined agriculture and manufacture, and the amount of
domestic industry for domestic consumption, renders the manufacturing
figures, however carefully they might have been collected, very
deceptive. The same criticism, though to a less degree, applies to the
estimate of Arthur Young for 1769.
[Illustration]
If to Young's estimate of the population dependent upon agriculture we
add the class of landlords and their direct dependents and a proper
proportion of the non-industrious poor, who, though not to be so
classed in a direct measurement of occupations, are supported out of
the produce of agriculture, we shall see that in 1769 we are justified
in believing that agriculture was in its productiveness almost
equivalent to the whole of manufactures and commerce.
In turning to the several branches of manufacture, the abnormal
development of one of them, viz. the woollen, for purposes of foreign
trade, marks the first and only considerable specialisation of English
industry before the advent of steam machinery. With the single
exception of woollen goods almost the whole of English manufactures
were for home consumption. At the opening of the eighteenth century,
and even as late as 1770, no other single manufacture played any
comparable part in the composition of our export trade.
According to Chalmers,[16] in the period 1699-1701, the annual value
of woollen exports was over two and a half million pounds, or about
two-fifths of the total export trade, while in 1769-71 it still
amounted to nearly one-third of the whole, giving entire or partial
employment to no fewer than "a million and a half of people," or half
of the total number assigned by Young to manufacture.
Next to the woollen, but far behind in size and importance, came the
iron trade. In 1720 England seems to have developed her mining
resources so imperfectly as to be in the condition of importing from
foreign countries 20,000 out of the 30,000 tons required for her
hardware manufactures.[17] Almost all this iron was destined to home
consumption with the exception of hardware forced upon the American
colonies, who were forbidden to manufacture for themselves. In 1720 it
is calculated that mining and manufacture of iron and hardware
employed 200,000 persons.[18]
Copper and brass manufactures employed some 30,000 persons in
1720.[19]
Silk was the only other highly developed and considerable
manufacture. It had, however, to contend with Indian competition,
introduced by the East India Company, and also with imported
calicoes.[20] In 1750 there were about 13,000 looms in England, the
product of which was almost entirely used for home consumption. Cotton
and linen were very small manufactures during the first half of the
eighteenth century. At the beginning of the century the linen trade
was chiefly in the hands of Russia and Germany, although it had taken
root in Ireland as early as the close of the seventeenth century, and
was worked to some extent in Lancashire, Leicestershire, and round
Darlington in Yorkshire, which districts supplied the linen-warp to
the cotton weavers.[21] As for cotton, even in 1760 not more than
40,000 persons were engaged in the manufacture, and in 1764 the cotton
exports were but one-twentieth of the value of the woollen
exports.[22] The small value of the cotton trade and an anticipatory
glance at its portentous after-growth is conveyed in the following
figures:--
Home Market. Export Trade.
1766 L379,241 L220,759 (Postletwayte)
1819-21 13,044,000 15,740,000 }
1829-31 13,351,000 18,074,000 } (Ellison[23])
The many other little manufactures which had sprung up, such as glass,
paper, tin-plate, produced entirely for home consumption, and employed
but a small number of workers.
Sec. 6. If we turn from the consideration of the size of English industry
and the several departments to the analysis of its structure and the
relation to the several trades, we shall find the same signs of
imperfect organic development which we found in the world-industry,
though not so strongly marked. Just as we found each country in the
main self-sufficing, so we find each district of England (with a few
significant exceptions) engaged chiefly in producing for its own
consumption. There was far less local specialisation in industry than
we find to-day. The staple industries, tillage, stock-raising, and
those connected with the supply of the common articles of clothing,
furniture, fuel, and other necessaries were widespread over the whole
country.
Though far more advanced than foreign intercourse, the internal trade
between more distant parts of England was extremely slight. Defective
facilities of communication and transport were of course in large
measure responsible for this.
The physical obstructions to such freedom of commerce as now subsists
were very considerable in the eighteenth century. The condition of the
main roads in the country at the opening of the century was such as to
make the carriage of goods long and expensive. Agricultural produce
was almost entirely for local consumption, with the exception of
cattle and poultry, which were driven on foot from the neighbouring
counties into London and other large markets.[24] In the winter, even
round London, bad roads were a great obstacle to trade. The
impossibility of driving cattle to London later than October often led
to a monopoly of winter supply and high prices.[25] The growth of
turnpike roads, which proceeded apace in the first half of the
century, led to the large substitution of carts for pack horses, but
even these roads were found "execrable" by Arthur Young, and off the
posting routes and the neighbourhood of London the communication was
extremely difficult. "The great roads of England remained almost in
this ancient condition even as late as 1752 and 1754, when the
traveller seldom saw a turnpike for two hundred miles after leaving
the vicinity of London."[26]
Rivers rather than roads were the highways of commerce, and many Acts
were passed in the earlier eighteenth century for improving the
navigability of rivers, as the Trent, Ouse, and Mersey, partly in
order to facilitate internal trade and partly to enable towns like
Leeds and Derby to engage directly in trade by sea,[27] and to connect
adjoining towns such as Liverpool and Manchester. In 1755 the first
canal was constructed, and in the latter part of the century the part
played by canals in the development of the new factory system was
considerable. But in spite of these efforts to improve methods of
transport in the earlier eighteenth century, it is evident that the
bulk of industry was engaged in providing articles for local
consumption, and that the area of the market for most products was
extremely narrow.
The facile transport of both capital and labour, which is essential to
highly specialised local industry, was retarded not merely by lack of
knowledge of the opportunities of remunerative investment, but also by
legal restrictions which had the influence of checking the free
application and migration of labour. The Statute of Apprentices by
requiring a seven years' apprenticeship[28] in many trades, and the
Law of Settlement by impairing mobility of labour, are to be regarded
as essentially protective measures calculated to prevent that
concentrated application of capital and labour required for
specialisation of industry.
Within the nation we had for the most part a number of self-sufficing
communities, or, in other words, there was little specialisation of
function in the several parts, and little integration in the national
industry. With the single exception of Holland, whose admirable
natural and artificial water communication seemed to give unity to its
commerce, the other countries of Europe, France, Germany, Italy,
Spain, Russia, were still more disintegrated in their industry.
Sec. 7. In regarding those districts of England in which strong
indications of growing industrial specialisation showed themselves, it
is important to observe the degree and character of that
specialisation.
We find various branches of the woollen, silk, cotton, iron, hardware,
and other manufactures allocated to certain districts. But if we
compare this specialisation with that which obtains to-day we shall
observe wide differences.
In the first place, it was far less advanced. The woollen industry of
England, though conveniently divided into three districts--one in the
Eastern Counties, with Norwich, Colchester, Sandwich, Canterbury,
Maidstone, for principal centres; one in the West, with Taunton,
Devizes, Bradford (in Wilts), Frome, Trowbridge, Stroud, and Exeter;
and the third, in the West Riding, is in reality distributed over
almost the whole of England south of the Thames, and over a large part
of Yorkshire, to say nothing of the widespread production, either for
private consumption or for the market, in Westmoreland, Cumberland,
and indeed all the North of England. Where the land was richer in
pasture or with easier access to large supplies of wool, the clothing
manufactures were more flourishing and gave more employment, but over
all the southern and most of the northern counties some form of
woollen manufacture was carried on.
[Illustration: INDUSTRIAL ENGLAND IN 1830.]
The only part of England which Defoe regarded as definitely
specialised in manufacture is part of the West Riding, for though
agriculture is carried on here to some extent, the chief manufacturing
district is dependent upon surrounding districts for its main supply
of food.[29]
Iron, the industry of next, though of far inferior importance, was of
necessity less widely distributed. But in 1737 the fifty-nine furnaces
in use were distributed over no fewer than fifteen counties, Sussex,
Gloucester, Shropshire, Yorkshire, and Northumberland taking the
lead.[30] So too the industries engaged in manufacturing metal goods
were far less concentrated than in the present day. Though Sheffield
and Birmingham even in Defoe's time were the great centres of the
trade, of the total consumption of the country the greater part was
made in small workshops scattered over the land.
Nottingham and Leicester were beginning to specialise in cotton and
woollen hosiery, but a good deal was made round London, and generally
in the woollen counties of the south. Silk was more specialised owing
to the importation of special skill and special machinery to
Spitalsfield, Stockport, Derby, and a few other towns. In Coventry it
was only the second trade in 1727.[31]
The scattered crafts of the wheelwright, the smith, carpenter, turner,
carried on many of the subsidiary processes of building, manufacture
of vehicles and furniture, which are now for the most part highly
centralised industries.
When we come presently to consider the structure of the several
industries we shall see that even those trades which are allocated to
certain local areas are much less concentrated within these areas than
is now the case.
But though stress is here laid upon the imperfect differentiation of
localities in industry, it is not to be supposed that the eighteenth
century shows England a simple industrial community with no
considerable specialisation.
Three conditions of specialised industry are clearly discernible in
the early eighteenth century--conditions which always are among the
chief determinants.
1. _Physical aptitudes of soil_--_e.g._, since timber was still used
almost entirely for smelting, iron works are found where timber is
plentiful or where river communication makes it easily procurable. So
the more fertile meadows of Gloucester and Somerset led these
districts to specialise in the finer branches of the woollen trade. A
still more striking example is that of South Lancashire. By nature it
was ill-suited for agriculture, and therefore its inhabitants employed
themselves largely in the cotton and woollen trades. The numerous
little streams which flowed from the hills to the neighbouring sea
gave plenty of water-power, and thus made this district the home of
the earlier mills and the cradle of machine-industry.[32] The "grit"
of the local grindstones secured the supremacy of Sheffield cutlery,
while the heavy clay required for the "seggars," or boxes in which
pottery is fired, helped to determine the specialisation of
Staffordshire in this industry.[33]
2. _Facility of Market._--The country round London, Bristol, and other
larger towns became more specialised than the less accessible and more
evenly populated parts, because the needs of a large town population
compelled the specialisation in agriculture of much of the surrounding
country; cottagers could more easily dispose of their manufactures;
improved roads and other facilities for conveyance induced a
specialisation impossible in the purely rural parts.
3. _The Nature of the Commodity._--When all modes of conveyance were
slow the degree of specialisation depended largely upon the keeping
quality of the goods. From this point of view hardware and textiles
are obviously more amenable to local specialisation than the more
perishable forms of food. Where conveyance is difficult and expensive
a commodity bulky for its value is less suitable for local
specialisation in production than one containing a high value in small
weight and bulk. So cloth is more suitable for trade than corn;[34]
and coal, save where navigation is possible, could not be profitably
taken any distance.[35]
The common commodities consumed, as food, fuel, and shelter, were thus
excluded from any considerable amount of specialisation in their
production.
Sec. 8. Turning from consideration of the attributes of goods and of the
means of transport which served to limit the character of internal
trade and determine the size of the market, let us now regard the
structure of the market, the central object in the mechanism of
internal commerce.
The market, not the industry, is the true term which expresses the
group of organically related businesses. How far did England present a
national market? How far was the typical market a district or purely
local one?
The one great national market town was London. It alone may be said to
have drawn supplies from the whole of England, and there alone was it
possible to purchase at any season of the year every kind of produce,
agricultural or manufactured, made anywhere in England or imported
from abroad. This flow to and from the great centre of population was
incessant, and extended to the furthermost parts of the land. Other
large towns, such as Bristol, Leeds, Norwich, maintained close and
constant relations with the neighbouring counties, but exchanged their
produce for the most part only indirectly with that of more distant
parts of the country.
The improving communication of the eighteenth century enabled the
clothiers and other leading manufacturers to distribute more of their
wares even in the remotest parts of the country, but the value paid
for their wares reached the vendors by slow and indirect channels of
trade, passing for the most part through the metropolis.
But while London was the one constant national market-place, national
trade was largely assisted by fairs held for several weeks each year
at Stourbridge, Winchester, and other convenient centres. At the most
important of these the large merchants and manufacturers met their
customers, and business was transacted between distant parts of the
country, including all kinds of wares, English and foreign. Thus we
had one constant and two or three intermittent avenues of free
national trade. The great bulk of markets, however, were confined
within far smaller areas.
In the more highly developed and specialised textile trades certain
regular market-places were established of wide local importance. The
largest of these specialised district markets were at Leeds, Halifax,
Norwich, and Exeter. Here the chief local manufacturers of cloth,
worsted, or crape met the merchants and factors and disposed of their
wares to these distributing middlemen.
It was, however, in the general market-places of the county town or
smaller centres of population that the mass of the business of
exchange was transacted. There the mass of the small workers in
agriculture and manufacture brought the product of their labour and
sold it, buying what they needed for consumption and for the pursuance
of their craft. Only in considerable towns were there to be found in
the earlier eighteenth century any number of permanent shops where all
sorts of wares could be bought at any time. The weekly market in the
market-town was the chief medium of commerce for the great mass of the
population.
Regarding the general structure of Industry we see that not only are
international bonds slight and unessential, but that within the nation
the elements of national cohesion are feeble as compared with those
which subsist now. We have a number of small local communities whose
relations, though tolerably strong with other communities in their
immediate neighbourhood, become greatly weakened by distance. For the
most part these small communities are self-sufficing for work and
life, producing most of their own necessaries, and only dependent on
distant and unknown producers for their comforts and luxuries.
Trade is for the most part conducted on a small steady local basis
with known regular customers.
Outside of agriculture the elements of speculation and fluctuation are
almost entirely confined to foreign trade. Capital and labour are
fixed to a particular locality and a particular business.[36]
Sec. 9. Turning to the structure of the several industries we find that
different employments are not sharply separated from one another. In
the first place, agriculture and manufacture are not only carried on
in the same locality but by the same people. This combined agriculture
and manufacture took several forms.
The textile industries were largely combined with agriculture. Where
spinning was carried on in agricultural parts there was, for the most
part, a division of labour within the family. The women and children
spun while the men attended to their work in the fields.[37] Every
woman and child above the age of five found full employment in the
spinning and weaving trades of Somerset and the West Riding.[38]
This method prevailed more largely in the spinning than in the weaving
trades, for before the introduction of the spinning-jenny the weaving
trade was far more centralised than the other. For example, a large
quantity of weaving was done in the town of Norwich while the earlier
process was executed in the scattered cottages over a wide district.
But even these town workers were not specialised in manufacture to the
extent which prevails to-day. Large numbers of them had allotments in
the country to which they gave their spare time, and many had pasture
rights and kept their cattle on the common lands. This applied not
merely to the textile but to other industries. At West Bromwich, a
chief centre of the metal trade, agriculture was still carried on as a
subsidiary pursuit by the metal workers.[39] So too the cutlers of
Sheffield living in the outskirts of the town had their plot of land
and carried on agriculture to a small extent, a practice which has
lasted almost up to the present day. The combined agriculture and
manufacture often took the form of a division of labour according to
season. Where the weaving was not concentrated in towns it furnished a
winter occupation to many men who gave the bulk of their summer time
to agriculture. Generally speaking, we may take as fairly
representative of the manufacturing parts of England the picture which
Defoe gave of the condition of affairs in the neighbourhood of
Halifax. He found "the land divided into small enclosures from two
acres to six or seven acres each, seldom more; every three or four
pieces of land had a house belonging to it--one continued village,
hardly a house standing out of speaking distance from another--at
every house a tenter, and on almost every tenter a piece of cloth or
kersie or shalloon--every clothier keeps a horse--so every one
generally keeps a cow or two for his family."[40]
Not only were agriculture and many forms of manufacture conjoined, but
the division of labour and differentiation of processes within the
several industries was not very far advanced. The primitive tillage of
the common-fields which still prevailed in the early eighteenth
century, though the rapid enclosure of commons was effecting a
considerable, and from the wealth-producing point of view, a very
salutary change, did not favour the specialisation of land for pasture
or for some particular grain crops. Each little hamlet was engaged in
providing crops of hay, wheat, barley, oats, beans, and had to fulfil
the other purposes required by a self-subsisting community. This
partly arose from the necessity of the system of land tenure, partly
from ignorance of how to take advantage of special qualities and
positions of soil, and partly from the self-sufficiency improved by
difficulties of conveyance. As the century advanced, the enclosure of
commons, the increase of large farms, the application of new science
and new capital led to a rapid differentiation in the use of land for
agricultural purposes. But in the earlier part of the century there
was little specialisation of land except in the West Riding and round
the chief centres of the woollen trade, and to a less extent in the
portions of the counties round London whose position forced them to
specialise for some particular market of the metropolis.
Sec. 10. As the small agriculturist on a self-sufficing farm must perform
many different processes, so the manufacturer was not narrowed down to
a single process of manufacture. A large part of the ruder
manufactures were home productions for home consumption, and the same
hands tended the sheep which furnished the wool, and spun and wove the
wool for family use. The smith was in a far fuller sense the maker of
the horse-shoe or the nail or bolt than he is to-day; the wheelwright,
the carpenter, and other handicraftsmen performed a far larger number
of different processes than they do now. Moreover, each household, in
addition to its principal employments of agriculture and manufacture,
carried on many minor productive occupations, such as baking, brewing,
butter-making, dressmaking, washing, which are now for the most part
special and independent branches of employment.
In the more highly-developed branches of the textile and metal trades
the division of processes appears at first sight more sharply marked
than to-day. The carder, spinner, weaver, fuller in the cloth trade
worked in the several processes of converting raw wool into finished
cloth, related to one another only by a series of middlemen who
supplied them with the material required for their work and received
it back with the impress of their labour attached, to hand it out once
more to undergo the next process.[41] But though modern
machine-production will show us these various processes drawn together
into close local proximity, sometimes performed under the same roof
and often making use of the same steam power, we shall find that a
chief object and effect of this closer local co-ordination of the
several processes is to define and narrow more precisely the labour of
each worker and to make the spinner and the weaver confine himself to
the performance of a fractional part of the full process of spinning
or weaving. Thus we find that English industry in the early eighteenth
century is marked on the one hand by a lack of clear differentiation
as regards industries, and on the other hand by a lack of minute
differentiation of processes within the industry.
Sec. 11. We must now descend from the consideration of the Industry and
the Market, or group of related businesses, to examine the character
and structure of the unit of industry--the Business.
In a study of the composition or co-operation of labour and capital in
a Business before the era of machine-production there are five points
of dominant importance--(1) The ownership of the material; (2) the
ownership of the tools; (3) the ownership of the productive power; (4)
the relations subsisting between the individual units of labour; (5)
the work-place.
English manufacturing industry in the first half of the eighteenth
century furnishes a variety of different forms of business of widely
different nature and complexity. The simplest form of manufacturing
industry is that in which an industrial family owning the raw material
and the requisite tools, and working with the power of their own
bodies in their own homes, produce commodities for their own
consumption. This private production for private consumption survived
largely in the eighteenth century, not merely in the case of
agriculturists who produced the more necessary articles of food for
themselves as well as for the market, but also in the case of farmers
and cottagers in the remotest parts of the country who produced their
own wool and flax, and spun and wove it for their own use.[42]
From this primitive form which required no commerce and no industrial
organisation we may trace the growth of various forms of higher
industrial development, many of which co-existed in eighteenth century
England.
The simplest structure of "domestic" manufacture is that in which the
farmer-manufacturer is found purchasing his own material, the raw wool
or flax if he is a spinner, the warp and weft if he is a weaver, and,
working with his family, produces yarn or cloth which he sells
himself, either in the local market or to regular master-clothiers or
merchants. The mixed cotton weaving trade was in this condition in the
earlier years of the eighteenth century. "The workshop of the weaver
was a rural cottage, from which, when he was tired of sedentary
labour, he could sally forth into his little garden, and with the
spade or the hoe tend its culinary productions. The cotton-wool which
was to form his weft was picked clean by the fingers of his younger
children, and was carded and spun by the older girls assisted by his
wife, and the yarn was woven by himself assisted by his sons."[43]
Following as the central point the ownership of the requisites of
production, we find in the next stage that the ownership of the
material has passed from the workman into the hands of the organising
merchant or middleman, who usurps the title "manufacturer." The
workman, however, still retains the ownership of the implements of his
craft and works in his own house. The condition of the worsted trade
later in the century, about 1770, well illustrates this industrial
form.
"The work was entirely domestic, and its different branches widely
scattered over the country. First, the manufacturer had to travel on
horseback to purchase his raw material among the farmers, or at the
great fairs held in those old towns that had formerly been the
exclusive markets, or, as they were called, 'staples' of wool. The
wool, safely received, was handed over to the sorters, who rigorously
applied their gauge of required length of staple and mercilessly
chopped off by shears or hatchet what did not reach the standard as
wool fit for the clothing trade. The long wool thus passed into the
hands of the combers, and, having been brought back to them into the
combed state, was again carefully packed and strapped on the back of
the sturdy horse, to be taken into the country to be spun.... Here, at
each village, he had his agents, who received the wool, distributed it
amongst the peasantry and received it back as yarn. The machine
employed was still the old one-thread wheel, and in summer weather on
many a village green might be seen the housewives plying their busy
trade, and furnishing to the poet the vision of contentment spinning
at the cottage door. Returning in safety with his yarn, the
manufacturer had now to seek out his weavers, who ultimately delivered
to him his camblets or russels, or tammies or calimancoes (such were
the leading names of the fibres) ready for sale to the merchant or
delivery to the dyer."[44]
The condition of the cotton-trade in Lancashire about 1750
illustrates most clearly the transition from the independent weaver to
the dependent weaver. So far as the linen warp of his fabric was
concerned he had long been in the habit of receiving it from the
larger "manufacturer" in Bolton or in Manchester, but the cotton yarn
he had hitherto supplied himself, using the yarn spun by his own
family or purchased by himself in the neighbourhood. The difficulty of
obtaining a steady, adequate supply, and the waste of time involved in
trudging about in search of this necessary material, operated more
strongly as the market for cotton goods expanded and the pressure of
work made itself felt.[45] It was this pressure which we shall see
acting as chief stimulus to the application of new inventions in the
spinning[46] trade. In the interim, however, the habit grew of
receiving not only linen warp but cotton weft from the merchant or
middleman. Thus the ownership of the raw material entirely passed out
of the weaver's hands, though he continued to ply his domestic craft
as formerly.[47] This had grown into the normal condition of the trade
by 1750. The stocking-trade illustrates one further encroachment of
the capitalist system upon domestic industry. In this trade not only
was the material given out by merchants, but the "frames" used for
weaving were likewise owned by them, and were rented out to the
workers, who continued, however, to work in their own homes.[48]
Sec. 12. Two further steps remained to be taken in the transition from
the "domestic" to the "factory" system, the one relating to the
ownership of "power," the other to the work-place, (_a_) The
substitution of extra-human power owned by the employer for the
physical power of the worker; (_b_) the withdrawal of the workers from
their homes, and the concentration of them in factories and
work-places owned by the capitalists.
Although these steps were not completely taken until the age of steam
had well set in, before the middle of the eighteenth century there
were found examples of the factory, complete in its essential
character, side by side and in actual competition with the earlier
shapes of domestic industry.
Capitalist ownership of extra-human industrial "power" was of course
narrowly restricted before the age of steam. Water-power, horse-power,
and to a much smaller extent, wind-power, were utilised. But the most
important services water rendered to industry prior to the great
inventions were in facilitating the transport of goods, and in certain
subsidiary processes of manufacture such as dyeing. Though a
considerable number of water-mills existed early in the century, they
played no large part in manufacture. A natural force so strictly
confined in quantity and in local application, and subject to such
great waste from the backward condition of mechanical art, was not
able to serve to any great extent as a substitute for or aid to the
muscular activity of man.
But although the economy of mechanical power was not yet operative to
any appreciable extent in concentrating labour, certain other notable
economics of large-scale production were beginning to assert
themselves in all the leading manufactures. Indeed so powerful are
some of the economies of division of labour and co-operation even in a
primitive condition of the industrial arts, that Professor Ashley
considers it not improbable that the great manufactory might have
become an important or even a dominant feature of the woollen trade as
early as the sixteenth century, if legislative enactments had not
stood in the way.[49] As it was, these earlier centralising forces,
while they drove the workers to work and live in closer and compacter
masses, did not at first dispose them in factories to any great
extent. They continued for the most part to work in their own houses,
though for material and sometimes for the implements of their craft
they were dependent upon some merchant or large master-manufacturer.
This was the condition of industry in the neighbourhood of Leeds in
1725. "The houses are not scattered and dispersed as in the vicarage
of Halifax, one by one, but in villages, and those houses thronged
with people and the whole country infinitely populous."[50] In the
more highly-developed branches of the cloth trade, however, where the
best looms were a relatively costly form of capital, the foundation of
the factory system was clearly laid. In Norwich, Frome, Taunton,
Devizes, Stourbridge, and other clothing centres, Defoe found the
weaving industry highly concentrated, and rich employers owning
considerable numbers of looms. Some of this work was put out by the
master-manufacturers, but other work was done in large sheds or other
premises owned by the master. This large organised "business," half
factory, half domestic, continued to prevail in the important West of
England clothing industry up to the close of the eighteenth century.
"The master clothier of the West of England buys his wool from the
importer, if it be foreign, or in the fleece if it be of domestic
growth; after which, in all the different processes through which it
passes, he is under the necessity of employing as many distinct
classes of persons; sometimes working in their own houses, sometimes
in that of the master clothier, but none of them going out of their
proper line. Each class of workman, however, acquires great skill in
performing its particular operation, and hence may have arisen the
acknowledged excellence, and, till of late, the superiority of the
cloths of the West of England."[51]
So again, in the cotton industry of Lancashire, the hold which the
merchants had got over the weavers by supplying them with warp and
weft led in some cases, before the middle of the century, to the
establishment of small factories containing a score or two of looms,
in which hired men were employed to weave. A little later, though long
before steam power, Arthur Young finds a factory at Darlington with
over fifty looms, a factory at Boynton with 150 workers, and a silk
mill at Sheffield with 152 workers. Even where the final step of
substituting the factory for the home had not been taken the
subordination of the handicraftsman to the master who provided the
materials and paid the wages was tolerably complete. By the middle of
the century the free artisan was gradually passing into the condition
of a hired "hand." Improved means of communication were beginning to
expand the area of the market, enlarged businesses enabled labour to
be profitably divided, and required a more effective control over the
workers than could be obtained over a scattered population of
agricultural manufacturers.
Sec. 13. Regarding the Business as a combination of Labour and Capital,
we perceive that one strongly distinctive characteristic of the
pre-machinery age is the small proportion which capital bears to
labour in the industrial unit. It is this fact that enabled the
"domestic" worker to hold his own so long in so many industries as the
owner of a separate business. So long as the mechanical arts are
slightly developed and tools are simple, the proportion of "fixed
capital" to the business is small and falls within the means of the
artisan who plies his craft in his home. So long as tools are simple,
the processes of manufacture are slow, therefore the quantity of raw
material and other "circulating capital" is small and can also be
owned by the worker. The growing divorcement in the ownership of
capital and labour in the industrial unit will be found to be a direct
and most important result of those improvements in mechanical arts
which, by continually increasing the proportion of capital to labour
in a business, placed capital more and more beyond the possession of
those who supplied the labour power required to co-operate in
production.
In the middle of last century there were very few instances of a
manufacturing business in which a large capital was engaged, or in
which the capital stood to the labour in anything like modern
proportion. It was indeed the merchant and not the manufacturer who
represented the most advanced form of Capitalism in the eighteenth
century. Long before Dr. Johnson's discovery that "an English merchant
is a new species of gentleman," Defoe had noted the rise of
merchant-princes in the Western clothing trades, observing that "many
of the great families who now pass for gentry in these counties have
been originally raised from and built out of this truly noble
manufacture."[52] These wealthy _entrepreneurs_ were sometimes spoken
of as "manufacturers," though they had no claim either upon the old or
the new signification of that name. They neither wrought with their
hands nor did they own machinery and supervise the labour which worked
with it. They were, as has been shown above, merchant-middlemen. The
clothing trade being the most highly developed, evolved several
species of middlemen, including under that term all collectors and
distributors of the raw material or finished goods.
(_a_) One important class of "factors" engaged themselves in buying
wool from farmers and selling it to clothiers, and appear to have
sometimes exercised an undue and tyrannous control over the latter by
an unscrupulous manipulation of the credit system which was growing up
in trade.[53]
(_b_) The "clothiers" themselves must be regarded in large measure as
middleman-collectors, analogous in function to the distributors, who
still rank as one of the grades of middlemen in the cheap clothing
trade of London to-day.[54]
(_c_) After the cloth was made three classes of middlemen were engaged
in forwarding it to the retailer--(1) travelling merchants or
wholesale dealers who attended the big fairs or the markets at Leeds,
Halifax, Exeter, etc., and made large purchases, conveying the goods
on pack-horses over the country to the retail trader; (2) middlemen
who sold on commission through London factors and warehousemen, who in
their turn disposed of the goods to shopkeepers or to exporters; (3)
merchants directly engaged in the export trade.
With the exception of shipping and canal transport (which became
important after the middle of the century) there were no considerable
industries related to manufacture where large capitals were laid down
in fixed plant. Even the capital sunk in permanent improvements of
land, which played so important a part in the development of
agriculture, belonged chiefly to the latter years of the eighteenth
century. Almost the only persons who wielded large capitals within the
country were those merchants, dealers, or middlemen, whose capital at
any given time consisted of a large stock of raw material or finished
goods. Even the latter were considerably restricted in the magnitude
of their transactions by the imperfect development of the machinery of
finance and the credit system. In 1750 there were not more than twelve
bankers' shops out of London.[55] Until 1759 the Bank of England
issued no notes of less value than L20.
Joint-ownership of capital and effective combination of the labour
units in a business were only beginning to make progress. The Funded
Debt, the Bank of England, the East India Company were the only
examples of really large and safe investments at the opening of the
eighteenth century. Joint-ownership of large capitals for business
purposes made no great progress before the middle of the eighteenth
century, except in the case of chartered companies for foreign trade,
such as the East India Company, the Hudson's Bay Company, the Turkish,
Russian, Eastland, and African companies. Insurance business became a
favourite form of joint-stock speculation in the reign of George I.
The extraordinary burst of joint-stock enterprise culminating in the
downfall of the South Sea Company shows clearly the narrow limitations
for sound capitalist co-operation. Even foreign trade on joint-stock
lines could only be maintained successfully on condition that the
competition of private adventurers was precluded.
Joint-capital had yet made no inroad into manufacture, one of the
earliest instances being a company formed in 1764 with a capital of
L100,000 for manufacturing fine cambrics.[56]
The limits of co-operative capitalism at the opening of the period of
Industrial Revolution are indicated by Adam Smith in a passage of
striking significance:--"The only trades which it seems possible for a
joint-stock company to carry on successfully, without an exclusive
privilege, are those of which all the operations are capable of being
reduced to what is called a routine, or to such a uniformity of method
as admits of little or no variation. Of this kind is, first, the
banking trade; secondly, the trade of insurance from fire and from sea
risk and capture in time of war; thirdly, the trade of making and
maintaining a navigable cut or canal; and fourthly, the similar trade
of bringing water for the supply of a great city."[57]
In other words, the businesses amenable to joint-stock enterprise are
those where skilled management can be reduced to a minimum, and where
the scale of the business or the possession of a natural monopoly
limits or prohibits competition from outside.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] A. Smith, _Wealth of Nations_, Bk. iv., chap. i.
[4] Macpherson, _Annals of Commerce_, vol. ii. p. 728.
[5] Smith, _Memoirs_, vol. ii., chap. iii. As the approximate
calculation of a very competent business man these figures are more
reliable than the official figures of imports and exports, the value
of which throughout the eighteenth century is seriously impaired by
the fact that they continued to be estimated by the standard of values
of 1694.
[6] Whitworth's _State_ quoted, Macpherson, vol. iii. p. 283.
[7] _Annals_, vol. iii. p. 340.
[8] Cunningham, _History of English Industry_, vol. ii. p. 287, etc.
[9] Smith, _Memoirs of Wool_, vol. ii. p. 113.
[10] Chalmers, _Estimates_, p. 148.
[11] Cf. Cunningham, _Growth of English Industry_, vol. ii. p. 292.
[12] Smith, _Wealth of Nations_, Bk. iv., chap. viii.
[13] _Ibid._
[14] _Growth of English Industry_, vol. ii. p. 303.
[15] Macpherson, _Annals_, vol. iii. pp. 155, 156.
[16] Chalmers, _Estimate_, p. 208. See, however, Baines, who gives a
slightly smaller estimate, _History of the Cotton Manufacture_, p.
112.
[17] Macpherson, _Annals_, vol. iii. p. 114.
[18] _Ibid._, vol. iii. p. 73.
[19] _Ibid._, vol. iii. p. 73.
[20] Smith, _Memoirs of Wool_, vol. ii. pp. 19, 45.
[21] Smith, _ibid._, vol. ii. p. 270; cf. also Cunningham, _Growth of
English Industry_, vol. ii. p. 300.
[22] Toynbee, _Industrial Revolution_, p. 50.
[23] Schulze-Gaevernitz, _Der Grossbetrieb_, p. 77.
[24] Defoe, _Tour_, vol. ii. p. 371.
[25] _Ibid._, vol. ii. p. 370.
[26] Chalmers, pp. 124, 125.
[27] Defoe, _Tour_, vol. iii. p. 9, etc.
[28] Smith, _Wealth of Nations_, vol. i., chap. x., part 2.
[29] Defoe, _Tour_, vol. iii. p. 84.
[30] Scrivener, _History of the Iron Trade._
[31] Defoe, _Tour_, vol. ii. p. 323.
[32] Schulze-Gaevernitz, _Der Grossbetrieb_, p. 52.
[33] Cf. Marshall, _Principles_, p. 328. In the case of Staffordshire,
however, there existed an early trade in wooden platters dependent on
quality of timber and traditional skill. When the arts of pottery came
in, the new trade taken up in the same locality ousted the old, though
there was no particular local advantage in materials.
[34] Smith, _Wealth of Nations_, Book III., chap. iii.
[35] Westmoreland coal did not compete in the Newcastle
market,--_Wealth of Nations_, Book I., chap. xi. p. 2.
[36] Adam Smith, writing later in the century, observes with some
exaggeration, "A merchant, it has been said very properly, is not
necessarily the citizen of a particular country. It is in a great
measure indifferent to him from what place he carries on his trade,
and a very trifling disgust will make him remove his capital, and
together with it all the industry which it supports, from one country
to another."--Book III., chap. iv.
[37] Defoe, vol. ii. p. 37.
[38] _Ibid._, vol. ii. p. 17.
[39] _Annals of Agriculture_, chap. iv. p. 157.
[40] Defoe, vol. iii. pp. 78, 79.
[41] Cf. Burnley, _Wool and Wool-combing_, p. 417.
[42] Smith, _Memoirs of Wool_, vol. ii. p. 297.
[43] Ure, _History of the Cotton Manufacture_, vol. i. p. 224.
[44] James, _History of the Worsted Manufacture_, p. 323 (quoted
Taylor, _The Modern Factory System_, p. 61).
[45] Baines, _History of the County Palatine of Lancashire_, vol. ii.
p. 413.
[46] Ure, _History of Cotton Manufacture_, vol. i. p. 224, etc.
[47] Dr. Aikin, _History of Manchester_ (quoted Baines, p. 406).
[48] Taylor, _The Modern Factory System_, p. 69.
[49] _Economic History_, vol. ii. p. 237.
[50] Defoe, _Tour_, vol. iii. p. 89.
[51] _Report from the Committee on the Woollen Manufacture of
England_, (1806).
[52] _Tour_, vol. ii. p. 35.
[53] For an interesting account of the cunning devices of "factors"
see Smith's _Memoirs of Wool_, vol. ii. p. 311, etc.
[54] Cf. Booth, _Labour and Life of the People_, vol. i. p. 486, etc.
[55] Toynbee, _Industrial Revolution_, p. 55.
[56] Cunningham, vol. ii. p. 350.
[57] _Wealth of Nations_, Bk. V., chap. i., part 3.