value of all cotton goods manufactured in Great Britain at § 204. The Revolution in Manufactures and the Factories. But although the Industrial Revolution was at first most marked in the manufacture of cotton, it rapidly extended to that of woollen and linen fabrics. It is impossible here, as well as unnecessary, to describe all the various modifications and adaptations that were made in the various machines; we can only refer to the general features of the great change. The most remarkable of these was the sudden growth of factories, chiefly, of course, at first for spinning cotton or woollen yarn. The old factories had perforce been planted by the side of some running stream, often in a lonely and deserted spot, very inconvenient for markets and the procuring of labour; but necessarily so placed for the sake of the water.3 Hence at first there was no reason to concentrate large numbers of mill-hands in towns, as is necessary now. Those of my readers who know Yorkshire or Lancashire fairly well, may remember how frequently, in the course of some long country walk near Bradford, Halifax, Leeds, or Manchester, they come upon the ruins of some old mill, crumbling beside a rushing stream, a silent relic of the old days before the use of steam. How wonderful must the first rude inventions have seemed to the workers in those old factories, as the strange new machinery rattled and shook in the quiet country 1 Estimated by Dr Percival, of Manchester; M'Culloch, u. s., p. 430. 2 Tables in M'Culloch's Commercial Dictionary, p. 432 (ed. 1844). * Above, p. 345; cf. Taylor, Modern Factory System, p. 85. ? hollows, and the becks and streamlets ran down to turn the new spindles and looms that were to revolutionise the face of agricultural England. But the old water-mills gave way to others worked by steam power, and now it was no longer necessary to choose any particular site for the works, if only plenty of coal was available. So the new race of manufacturers made haste to run up steam-factories wherever they could. "Old barns and cart-houses," says Radcliffe,' who wrote on the new manufactures, "outbuildings of all descriptions were repaired; windows broke through the old blank walls, and all were fitted up for loom-shops; new weavers' cottages arose in every direction." The merchants, too, who did not run factories on their own account, but merely purchased yarn, began to collect weavers around them in great numbers, to get looms together in a workshop, and to give out warp themselves to the workpeople.2 And now the workers began to feel the difference between the old system and the new. Formerly they often used to buy for themselves the yarn they were to weave, and had a direct interest in the cloth they made from it, which was their own property. They were, in fact, economically independent. The new system made them dependent upon the merchant or upon the mill-owner. At first, it is true, they gained a rise in wages, for the increase in production was so great that labour was continually in demand, and every family, says Radcliffe, brought home forty to one hundred and twenty shillings per week. But this did not last very long. The new machinery soon threw out of employment a number of those who had worked only by hand; it enabled women and children to do the work of 5 4 1 Quoted by Baines, Cotton Manufacture, pp. 338, 339. W. Radcliffe's book is entitled, "The Origin of the New System of Manufacture, commonly called 'Power Loom Weaving,' and the purposes for which this system was invented and brought into use fully explained in a Narrative." It was published in 1828. • Toynbee, Industrial Revolution, p. 91. 3 Ib. (p. 91). "The system meant a change from independence to dependence" In Baines, Cotton Manufacture, p. 339. 5 Lecky, History of the Eighteenth Century, vi. 205, remarks that the condition of the labourers began to deteriorate about 1792. grown men; it made all classes of workers dependent upon capitalist employers; and it introduced an era of hitherto unheard-of competition. The coming of the capitalists had become an accomplished fact, and with it began also the exploitation of labour. Of this we shall speak in another chapter.1 Other national changes now demand our attention. § 205. The Growth of Population and the Development of the Northern Districts. Two of the most striking facts of the Industrial Revolution are the great growth and the equally great shifting of the population. These have been already briefly alluded to, but a few further details must now be added. Before 1751 the largest decennial increase of population had been about 5 or 6 per cent.2 But for each of the next three periods of ten years the increase became rapidly greater, till in 1801 it was 14 per cent. on the previous ten years, and reached even 21 per cent.3 in the period 1801 to 1811. This last was the highest rate ever reached in England, and is more than double that recorded in the The population of England 4 census of 1881 or 1891. had been under 7,000,000 in 1760;5 by 1821 it had risen to about 12,000,000, and at the present moment it is rather more than double that number.7 At the same time, the great migration to the North, already begun before the Revolution, was now accelerated and completed. The main cause of it was the utilisation of the coalfields for fuel to turn the new machinery in the factories. Hitherto the counties which contained the vast 1 Below, p. 381 sqq. 2 Cf. the figures for each decennium in the Statistical Journal, xliii. 462 ; also cf. Toynbee, Industrial Revolution, p. 87, but he is inaccurate. * See the careful tables in M'Culloch's Commercial Dictionary (1844), 8. v. Population; also Lecky, History of the Eighteenth Century, vi. 201. It was 10.8 per cent. in 1871-81, and in 1881-91 only 8.2 per cent. (United Kingdom) Census Returns, 1891. Exact figure 6,736,000 (England and Wales). xliii. 462. Exact figure 12,000,236. Ib. Statistical Journal, 7 Exact figure 27,482,104 (England only) in 1891; Census Returns. coal deposits, to which England owes so much of her progress, had been neglected, but now that the wealth that underlay them was understood, they became the natural home of manufacturing industries.2 But it may be noticed that, even previously to the utilisation of coal, industry had been attracted to Lancashire and Yorkshire because these counties, with the numerous streams running down from their moors, offered a better supply of water power than the Southern or Eastern districts. There is little doubt also that the rainy climate of the North-West of England offered greater facilities for certain branches of the cotton and woollen trades than the drier Eastern counties, at any rate, possessed. The considerations of physical geography as well as of geology show us that, under the new conditions of manufacture, the North-Western counties were obviously fitted for the great industrial part they were now to play in the life of the nation. These districts, which in the Middle Ages and even later had, as we saw, been comparatively deserted, now became and have since remained the most populous and flourishing of all. The centres of the new factory system were now naturally in the North, and thither flocked the workers who had formerly been distributed over England in a much more extensive manner, or who had clustered round the great Eastern and South-Western centres of industry, which before 1760 had excelled the other centre, the West Riding, in prosperity.5 But now this was changed. Before the Revolution, the Eastern counties, more especially about Norwich and the surrounding districts, had been famous for their manufactures of crapes, bombazines, and other fine, slight stuffs. In the West of England the towns of Brad 1 Macaulay, History, ch. iii., rightly calls them "a source of wealth more precious than the gold mines of Peru." 2 We may here compare Ramsay's remarks in his Physical Geology and Geography of Great Britain, pp. 305, 306 (ed. 1872). 3 For statistics of rainfall, cf. Ramsay, u. 8., pp. 197-199. 4 Above, p. 107; cf. also Macaulay's well-known but rather exaggerated description of the North of England, History, ch. iii. " Defoe's Tour, iii. 57 (ed. 1769). Macaulay, History, ch. iii., “ A constant stream of emigrants began to roll northward." "Toynbee, Industrial Revolution, p. 47, summarises these well-known facts, ford-on-Avon, Devizes, and Warminster had been manufacturing centres noted for their fine serges; Stroud had been the centre of the manufacture of dyed cloth,1 and so was Taunton, for even in Defoe's time (1725) it had 1100 looms; 2 and the excellence of the Cotswold wool, together with the water power derived from its mountain streams, had done much for the industry of the district. These centres and their productions, then, were far more famous than the third, the West Riding, including the towns of Halifax, Leeds, and Bradford, where chiefly coarse cloths were made.1 The cotton trade of Lancashire, too, had previously been insignificant, for it is only incidentally mentioned by Adam Smith,5 though Manchester and Bolton were then, as now, its headquarters. In 1760 only 40,000 persons were engaged in it, while in 1764 the value of our cotton exports was only one-twentieth of our woollen, and only strong cottons, such as dimities and fustians, were made. But now the cotton cities of Lancashire, and the woollen and worsted factories of Yorkshire, far surpass the older seats of industry in wealth and population, while the cotton export has risen to be the first in the kingdom, and the vast majority of the industrial population is now found North of the Trent. These great industrial changes were the direct consequence of the introduction of new manufac 8 1 Toynbee, Industrial Revolution, p. 47, and see note 5 on p. 339. 2 Tour, ii. 19 (ed. 1769). 'This is pointed out by Toynbee, Ind. Rev., p. 48. ▲ Ib., 5 Wealth of Nations, Bk. I. ch. x. (Vol. I. 127, Clarendon Press edn.). "Toynbee, Industrial Revolution, p. 49. 7 Ib., p. 50. 8 "Woollen cloths, kerseymeres, blankets, etc., formed [in Wiltshire] for a long period a principal manufacture. From the reign of Elizabeth to the close of the eighteenth century, the towns of Wiltshire lying in the valley of the Avon, on the north-west, and in that of the Wily in the southwest, Malmesbury, Chippenham, Bradford, Trowbridge, Westbury, Warminster, Heytesbury, and Wilton, with all the circumjacent villages, were largely employed in the weaving of various kinds of woollen fabrics, and the clothiers were men of wealth and position. This manufacture declined in Wiltshire very rapidly owing to the general adoption of machinery and the power-loom in the great factories of Yorkshire and Lancashire, and to the increasing consumption, throughout England and the Continent, of cotton and linen textures. John Aubrey held that the clothiers suffered in his day, because 'men would take to silk and Indian ware.' Daniell, History of Warminster (1879), p. 130. |