new machinery, undisturbed by internal war, were able to supply the nations of Europe with clothing at a time when these nations were far too much occupied in internecine conflicts on their own soil to produce food and clothing for themselves. Even Napoleon, in spite of all his edicts directed against English trade, was fain to clothe his soldiers in Yorkshire stuffs when he led them to Moscow. It was no wonder that the growth of capital was rapid and enormous. Other results followed. The formerly widespread cottage industry was now aggregated into a few districts, nearly all in Lancashire and Yorkshire, for the sake of the coal which was there so readily available. Not only that, but the workpeople themselves were more closely concentrated in the conditions of their work than they had been before. The factory had become the dominant feature in industry, and that for obvious reasons. For steam can only be generated in a fixed spot, and the motive power furnished thereby can only be distributed over a small area, and thus it became necessary to have all the work people close together in one large building. That is the raison d'être of the factory system, but even if the necessity for concentration could be obviated by the use of some other motive power, such as electricity, it is doubtful whether manufacturers would alter their arrangements in this respect. For there are also, besides the question of the supply of power, various economies of administration and management, to say nothing of manufacture or purchase and sale, which make the system of working with a number of people together in factories exceedingly advantageous; 2 and these considerations would continue to have weight even if some other motive power than steam were to be in future introduced.

But factories have their disadvantages as well as their uses, and in the early days of the factory system these evils were painfully apparent, at any rate as far as they affected the comfort of the workers. Persons of all ages and both

1 Rogers, Economic Interpretation, p. 292.

2 Cf. L. L. Price on Domestic Industry in Palgrave's Dictionary of Political Economy.

sexes were collected together in huge buildings, under no moral control, with no arrangements for the preservation of health, comfort, or decency. The enormous extension of trade rendered extra work necessary, and the mills ran all night long as well as by day. There was as yet no legislation as to the hours or conditions of work. The machines made "to shorten labour" resulted in many cases in vastly extending it; while in others again they took away all the means of livelihood from the old class of hand-workers with terrible and surprising suddenness.

§ 228. Machinery and Hand Labour.

The substitution of machinery for hand labour progressed, however, with considerable irregularity. In some cases it took place very rapidly, and caused great distress; in others it came more slowly and with less misery to the worker. In the hand wool-combing industry, machinery was introduced very slowly, and it was contended that a machine could never accomplish this branch of manufacture with the excellence achieved by manual effort. It was not till 1840 that the wool-combing machine seriously threatened the hand-comber, and even then many believed it would never supplant him.2 But this was an exceptional case; in most branches of manufacture machinery was introduced very quickly, and the workmen bitterly resented its introduction. It was useless for economists to point out the ultimate advantages it would confer upon labour; the workman only saw that it threw him out of employment or lessened his wages. From his own point of view he was undoubtedly right. The advantages so praised by economists could not accrue to him immediately, and it was but a poor consolation to reflect that the next generation would reap them, while his own pocket was empty and his cottage bare. Hence came that fierce, but natural, revolt against the new order of things, which found expression in riots and outrage. The labourers sought to destroy 1 Taylor, Modern Factory System, pp. 88 (immorality), 169 (insanitary conditions).

* Burnley, Wool and Woolcombing, p. 166.

the new machinery; and the struggle of what were called "the iron men," against human beings of flesh and blood, long continued to be a source of controversy and complaint, more especially as the workmen saw that the profits1 made by these iron men went almost entirely into the hands of their masters. In 1812 occurred the Luddite Riots, when much machinery was destroyed in Nottingham and the Midland counties; in 1816 they broke out again, and in 1826 there were riots in Lancashire to destroy the power looms. 2 Besides these there were numerous other acts of violence committed at various times in other parts of the country. But it is a remarkable fact that the greatest of the various riots that occurred at the beginning of this century had a political rather than industrial origin. The agitation for the Reform Bill produced far more violence than the introduction of machinery. The reasons for this are easily perceived; for machines were not introduced simultaneously in all trades, or in all parts of the country,3 and therefore the introduction of single machines here and there only affected a small portion of the working-classes at any given time; whereas the political issues involved in the question of Reform were brought before the country as a whole, and at the same period, and affected everybody equally. Perhaps, also, the half-unconscious good sense, which has at various times been visible among the working classes, led them to perceive that in the end they would gain far more by the acquisition of political power than by the destruction of industrial improvements.

This substitution of machinery for manual labour proceeded, as has been noted in wool-combing, with somewhat unequal steps. It occurred far more rapidly and more markedly in spinning than in weaving; and, even in spinning, the cotton manufacture was affected sooner than the woollen. In framework knitting the application of steam

1 Even Porter (in his Progress of the Nation, iii. 3) remarks how great is the "inequality in the division among the people of the produce of the national industry"; though he tries to take the most favourable view of the case. Cf. Taylor, Modern Factory System, pp. 157-158. 3 Cf. above, p. 341, note. Above, p. 383. Cf. generally, Taylor, Modern Factory System, pp. 81, 82.

2

power was long delayed by the great cheapness of labour in that trade, owing to which manufacturers were slow to adopt machinery worked by steam, since it seemed to them that they could not thereby make more profit than they did already.1 On a general survey of the manufacturers of the country, we may, in fact, say that machinery was used in all branches for spinning 2 by the earlier part of the century, but not for weaving, and it was not till between 1830 and 1840 that the use of weaving machines seriously threatened the hand-looms.3 The factory system, however, had from the first an indirect influence over the

weaver, because the new spinning machines supplied yarn so quickly that weavers no longer used the yarn spun by their wives and children, but bought it from the factories. Hence there was a tendency for them to collect round the new mills, where yarn was so readily obtainable, although they did not actually work in them.

§ 221. Loss of Rural Life and of Bye-Industries.

Thus from the first there was that tendency towards concentration of population which is so marked a feature of the Industrial Revolution. This implied also two other changes, both of the utmost importance to the working classes. In the first place their life lost that rural character which had distinguished the domestic system of industry when the weaver worked in his cottage in some village or country town, and varied his manufacturing work with rural occupations. Now he had to live close by the factory, where he and his family worked all day long amid iron machines and stone walls, and the garden and allotment were things of the past. The freedom and independence, too, of the old life were gone, and the sound of the factory bell and the rigidity of the factory hours now formed an unpleasant contrast, which the workers at first

1 Cunningham, Growth of Industry, ii. 620.

2 Reports, 1833, xx. 336.

3 Cunningham, Growth of Industry, ii. 635; Taylor, Modern Factory System, p. 81.

4

Reports, Miscellaneous, 1806, iii. 577.

5

Above, p. 327.

greatly disliked.1 Restraint and regularity were the features of the new system, and though they are undoubtedly conducive to increased work, they are not always relished by the workman. That is, however, perhaps only a minor point. The second great effect of the concentration of population under the factory system was the loss of byeemployments. We have seen already how important these were 2 in increasing wages; but now they were quite cut off. Spinning had been practised by the female members of almost every household, whether the family was engaged in agriculture or manufactures; but now the agriculturist could no longer find a buyer for his homespun yarn, and the weaver no longer used the produce of his wife's spinning wheel, but bought it from the factory. Conversely the manufacturing artisan no longer went out into the fields for a little harvest work or supplemented his earnings at the loom by the produce of his leisure time in his allotment. The artisan was now confined strictly to the factory, and the agriculturist strictly to the fields. There was no overlapping of employments; the hum of the spinning-wheel grew silent in the cottage, and the weaver no longer breathed the fresh scents of hay and harvest in the country air. The village lost the artisan, and the artisan lost the village, while the workers both of country and of town lost a very real addition to their wages. Their earnings were now only what they actually brought home in money from the mill or farm, and the useful supplements which they had formerly been able to gain by other work no longer helped to fill the family purse. In more ways than one it was a very real loss, and as even money wages were decreasing,* their lot under the new system could not seem to them particularly bright. It is not, therefore, surprising that men showed their discontent by resisting the introduction of new machines.

1 At Ipswich especially, there was a great dislike to factory work; Reports (1840), xxiii. 196.

2 Above, pp. 328-330.

3 Cf. also Taylor, Modern Factory System, p. 92.

From 1811 to 1842 wages declined, it is said, about 35 per cent.; cf. Reports, 1845, xv. 51 (Muggeridge's figures). See also Porter, Progress of the Nation, ii. 252, Tables, where spinners, weavers, and labourers show a marked decrease in wages.