The Industrial Revolution

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 1027928145

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-159926

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Cunningham, William http://d-nb.info/gnd/128907487

Title:: The Industrial Revolution

Place of publication:: Cambridge

Publisher:: The University Press

Year of publication:: 1922

Scope:: xxii S., S. 404-886

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

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198 PARLIAMENTARY COLBERTISM part, by examining evidence of this kind that we can hope to ‘race in any way the gradual progress of capitalism in super- seding the domestic system throughout the country. There are some trades which had in all probability been organised on a capitalist basis from the first. It is likely enough that John Kemp and other Flemish immigrants of his time were large employers?, and there is no reason to suppose that all English trades were originally domestic, and were recast by degrees on the other model. It is apparent that the capitalist and domestic system existed side by side in the staple trade of the country for centuries. It seems not improbable that circumstances, during the seventeenth century, favoured the domestic system, and that it developed at the expense of the other; but as the capitalist was better able than the domestic worker to take advantage of the expanding commerce of the eighteenth century, and of the mechanical appliances of the nineteenth, he has won the day. and each The contest between these two systems would hardly had ad- : ; antages of have continued so long, unless each had had its own ad- ‘sown. vantages. Under the domestic system, the merchant formed the intermediary between the independent weaver and the London market to which the product of his loom was carried. There was much to be said for this arrangement; the weaver sould not but prefer to be his own master, rather than to work under supervision, and at the times his employer desired. Public authorities also looked on the domestic system with favour; it had many social advantages, as there was less danger of the weavers being reduced to destitution A.D. 1689 —1776. In the clothing rade the sapitalist and domestic gy stems existed side by side S.P.D.C.I ccuvir. 6. Ordinances of Clothworkers, 1639 (Brit. Mns. 8248. e. 26), p. 127, also Letter on Lawes and Orders (Brit. Mus. 1103, f. 33), p. 14. See p. 511 below. 1 Vol. 1. 806. P. Methwin who introduced fine weaving in Bradford (Wilts.) in the seventeenth century was also a wealthy man: W. H. Jones in Wilts. Arch. Magazine, v. 48. The weaving trade when introduced into Florence in the thir- seenth century had a capitalist character. Doren, Studien aus der Florentiner Wirtschaftsgeschickte (1901), pp. 22, 23. 2 There is a parallel in the contest between farming on a large and on a small scale in the present day. On the whole the small holding has passed away, but there have been circumstances recently, which have favoured the breaking up of large farms in some districts, especially where land is required for a by-occupation, and as subsidiary to some other employment. Small farms may continue to exist side by side with large ones; and a certain amount of re-arrangement is likely to secur according to changing conditions.

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