George W. Daniels

“ From the thirties of the eighteenth century until the coming of the great inventions the cotton industry made slow but steady progress. The import of cotton-wool which in 1730 amounted to 1,545,472 lbs. reached 3,870,392 lbs. in 1764, but it was not until the eighties that a startling increase was seen; the average import in the last two years of that decade amounted to 32,000,000 lbs. [93] At that time the organisation of the industry, the methods of manufacture, and the character of its products, were undergoing the changes which mark the early stages of the industry in its present form. ”

“ In view of the evidence, it can safely be said that among the first effects of the developments in the Lancashire textile industry in the eighteenth century was an improvement in the position of the workpeople, especially of the weavers, and that, after the cancellation of Arkwright’s patent, and the fuller utilisation of the mule, there was a great burst of prosperity. As is well known, this period of prosperity was not of long duration; soon the weavers were plunged into a longer period of distress. Weavers formerly engaged in other branches of trade turned to cotton. ”

“ At the beginning of the eighteenth century, in this country, the only thing that could be called a machine used in the operations necessary in transforming raw cotton into yarn was the spinning-wheel. ”

“ The Machine for Spining cotton so well known by the name of the Hall-oth-wood wheele, to which name succeded that of the Mule, is well known in this country to be my Invention, to complet which to my satisfaction cost me years of study and personall labour, and at the expence of every Shilling I had in the world, unaided by any one and unknown to all. ”

“ In the eighteenth century, as in the early nineteenth, those who were associated with both agriculture and industry have to be sought in country districts such as that to which Radcliffe refers.
But a careful reading of what Radcliffe says will show that, even in Mellor, a distinction has to be drawn between the small farmers who “got their rent partly in some branch of trade, such as weaving woollen, linen, or cotton,” and the cottagers who “were employed entirely in this manner, except for a few weeks in the harvest.” ”

“ The county of Lancashire and other counties have got a deal of employ through it, but the country in generall has had the real benefit. It has brought Millions into the exchequer, it has increased the trade of Merchants immensely, it has increased the value of the landed property, of course, and I think it fit and right where it has given Wealth there is the most proper place to apply for remuneration. If Mr. Crompton had only a Bankers commision upon what (in my humble opinion) has gone into the exchequer, created as it were by his invention, he would be a very rich man. ”

“ All that is known of his career supports the view. It was pre-eminently this characteristic which distinguished him from his less fortunate contemporaries. Whether the idea of spinning by rollers was his own or not, it is clear that when he left Preston for Nottingham in 1768, he realised that he had in his possession an invention which, with the aid of capital, would bring him material success, and he was able to convince others of the fact. His association with Samuel Need and Jedediah Strutt [312] —particularly with the latter—was the tactical point in his career in the cotton industry. ”

“ But in addition, and far more important, was the war, as a consequence of which the natural expansion of markets was impeded and the course of trade marked by violent fluctuations and crises. During this period even the mule-spinners, whose career as the “aristocracy” of labour in the cotton trade had now commenced, had to undergo severe privation, but their higher skill and superior organisation prevented them from sinking into the depths of distress which was the lot of the weavers. ”

“ The fact is, of course, that the domestic system was a system of capitalist employers, and the typical workpeople were in every essential respect related to these employers in the same way as after the factory made its appearance. In the domestic system the employer’s capital was mainly embodied in the materials that were given out to workpeople, and they received a wage remuneration from him for the operations they performed upon them. ”

“ It is not too much to say that the outbreak of the Seven Years’ War in 1756 marks the beginning of a century of unrest in England, in which economic causes have to be regarded as the effects of political causes. ”

“ In the meantime the use of the machines and engines worked by water and horses for the carding, roving, and spinning of cotton had been suspended. Still further, it was claimed that the goods thus produced were inferior to those produced by hand, and this, it was feared, would diminish trade still more, as the reduction of price was not equal to the difference of quality. Moreover, the machines were a monopoly for the advantage of patentees and proprietors, to the loss and detriment of the public, and Parliament therefore was asked to grant relief. ”

“ In considering the development which took place from the middle of the seventeenth century to the last quarter of the eighteenth as regards other textile commodities [Page 25] produced in the Manchester district, a useful starting-point is given by a writer about 1650, who described the trade of the town as “not inferior to that of many cities in the kingdom, chiefly consisting in woollen frizes, fustians, sack-cloths, mingled stuffs, caps, inkles, tapes, points, etc., whereby not only the better sort of men are employed, but also the very children by their own labour can maintain themselves.” ”

“ In addition to the stoppage of trade from these causes, an evil of great magnitude had arisen in the cotton industry through the introduction of patent machines and engines, which, with the other events, threatened the workpeople with total loss of employment, and had reduced them to despair. ”

“ I proceed to another visible increase of trade, which spreads daily among us, and affects not England only, but Scotland and Ireland also, though the consumption depends wholly upon England, and that is, the printing or painting of linen. The late Acts prohibiting the use and weaving of painted callicoes either in clothes, equipages, or house furniture, were without question aimed at improving the consumption of our woollen manufacture, and in part it had an effect that way. ”

“ With the weavers the case was different, owing, they asserted, to their own conduct in taking too many apprentices on any terms, and for any length of time, and also, for a small sum of money, taking persons into the trade who were immediately recognised as journeymen. As a result, the trade had become overcrowded with labour, and many who had entered it had gone back to their old occupations, while others had turned to day labouring in the summer and returned to the loom only in the winter, when they were content to work on any terms, which soon became the general rule. ”

“ If, to this group, we add Jonathan Pollard, and the Houldsworths, of whom Thomas and John were spinners in Manchester, while Henry left Manchester for Glasgow in 1799, and established a concern there, we have comprehended the principal spinners of fine yarn in the British cotton industry in the early years of the nineteenth century. [399] All these men commenced in business within a few years of each other, those of whom we have definite information having little capital, and, like Robert Owen, most of them commenced not so much as spinners as makers of cotton machinery. ”

“ The frequent mention of cotton wool and yarn as articles of commerce makes it probable that fabrics containing cotton were produced in Flanders during the fourteenth century. At the same time a fustian manufacture began to grow up around Ulm and Augsburg, deriving its cotton supplies through Venice, which acquired a European reputation in the sixteenth century. [4]
Of the great range of new social classes engaged in, or concerned with, the textile industries that were built up during the Middle Ages by the creative energy of free fellowship, it is impossible here to attempt any account. ”

“ With the publication of an authentic life of Humphrey Chetham it has become apparent that he was more than this. In the Manchester district he bought “friezes, fustians, coattons, and haberdasherye,” which he not only sent in large quantities to the London market, but sold them by retail in Manchester. He was a general merchant who purchased a large variety of goods in all parts of the Manchester district. In addition he was a “manufacturer” employing people over an extensive area in spinning yarn, and in weaving and finishing cloth, and other members of the family were similarly engaged. ”

“ This is clearly shown in the instructive case of William Radcliffe, whose account of the transition of the cotton industry to the factory system has been critically discussed and set in a new light by Mr. Daniels. William Radcliffe commenced working life as a hand-loom weaver at Mellor. Any young man, he tells us, of moderate ability and self-confidence could have got on at that time. The capital accumulating in his hands enabled him to give out work, exactly as a sixteenth-century clothier would have done, to all the villages round. ”

“ At any rate, so far as the cotton industry is concerned, from the moment that we can take hold of anything that may be called a cotton industry a continuous development can be traced in all directions. ”

“ Capitalist employers and even, to some extent, our wage-earning proletariat were to be found as early as the close of the thirteenth century in the chief urban centres of the textile industries in Flanders and Italy; and at first sight there seems little to distinguish the industrial conditions and the class relations prevailing in those centres from those described as existing in Lancashire between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries. ”

“ From the year 1770 to 1788 a complete change had gradually been effected in the spinning of yarns. That of wool had disappeared altogether, and that of linen was also nearly gone; cotton, cotton, cotton was become the almost universal material for employment. The hand wheels, with the exception of one establishment, were all thrown into lumber-rooms, the yarn was all spun on common jennies, the carding for all numbers up to 40 hanks in the pound was done on carding-engines ”

“ In Gaskell’s opinion the number of machines thus thrown back into the market facilitated the growth of factories. Although a machine was obsolete before a domestic spinner had time to cover the first cost, yet, worked along with others and driven by water-power, such a machine was a profitable investment. Thus many of the members of the yeomen class lost their position in agriculture, and later became incapable of maintaining their position in industry. ”

“ The method of spinning by it soon became well known “from the circumstance of the high wages that could be obtained by those working on it, above the ordinary wages of other artisans, such as shoemakers, joiners, hat-makers, &c. who on that account left their previous employment.... By their industry, skill, and economy, these men first becoming proprietors of perhaps a single mule, and persevering in habits so intimately connected with success, were afterwards the most extensive spinners in the trade.” ”

“ A brief consideration, therefore, of the earlier phases in the organisation of labour and capital in the textile industries as a whole may serve to place the modern cotton industry on the right historical perspective and help to account for the unique rapidity of its expansion. ”

“ In the meantime, Arkwright had brought the method of spinning by rollers to a stage at which he could apply for a patent, which he obtained in 1769. When the two methods of spinning are compared, it may be seen that spinning by rollers was the greater departure from the customary method of spinning cotton.
When cotton has been carded, its transformation into yarn consists in gradually attenuating the cotton and twisting it into a thread. In the eighteenth century, the whole process could be definitely divided into two stages. ”

“ It is unnecessary to enumerate here the particular economic advantages of one machine compared with the other, [491] but in explanation of the international position it has to be borne in mind that, for spinning the higher qualities of yarn, the mule is superior to the ring-frame, also, that it is a much more complicated machine, and requires more highly skilled labour for its construction and operation. [492] As regards such labour, this country has been highly favoured compared with most of the other countries where the cotton industry is carried on. ”

“ Even so, it appears that in British cotton mills ring-spindles are increasing at a greater rate than mule-spindles, and in the mills of other countries the fact is more pronounced. Whether the above figures represent a permanent tendency a longer period will be required to show, but, in any [Page 165] case, it is certain that the development of the cotton industry during the past century and a half, particularly in the United Kingdom, cannot be fully understood apart from the service which has been rendered by the invention of Samuel Crompton. ”