The Industrial Revolution

Bibliographic data

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

Usage license:: Get license information via the feedback formular.

MOTIVES FOR AND RESULTS OF ENCLOSURE 553 trace, and it is not easy at this distance of time to strike a A.D. 1689 balance between the evil and the good. That natural economy and subsistence farming appear to have practically,’ es died out altogether, and that there was much more of a groeJarm: national market for farm produce, and therefore of effective competition between different districts in the country, are the two points to be chiefly noticed. There were three classes, at the beginning of the seven- on the part teenth century who practised subsistence farming, either as of artisans their sole avocation, or as an adjunct to some other means of earning a living. Among the last were comprised all village artisans; not only those who, as smiths, wheelwrights or shoemakers, supplied the needs of their neighbours, but also the domestic weavers who were found in large numbers? especially in the West of England. They had the opportunity of leading an independent and comfortable life, in healthy surroundings? such as would be greatly prized by the manu- facturing population of the present day“, but they did not have a very good reputation for industry®. They were not a welcome element in the rural districts, and it seemed that they would do better if they devoted themselves ex- clusively to manufacturing. With the progress of enclosure, they seem to have been more cut off from opportunities of eking out their subsistence with the help of small holdings or pasture rights. Thus these manufacturers became mere wage earners who were wholly dependent on the state of trade for their daily bread. When trade was slack they had no resource but to come upon the rates, and in periods of depression they were not unlikely to break out in riots® Besides these manufacturers, there was a large class of cottiers. cottiers and squatters on the waste who, had no obvious means of subsistence, besides the supplies they got from the land’. In the fens, they must have been a sturdy people, leading an 1 H. Levy, op. cit. 9. 3 On the growth of this class in the seventeenth century see BR. F. Butler in Victoria County Ilistory, Gloucester, 11. 165. $3 See below p. 564. 4 On the desirability and practicability of reintroducing * subsistence-farming* hy wage-earners see my article on Back to the Land. in the Economic Review, October 1907. 5 Rowland Vauchan. ». 81. © See below p. 562 n.1. 7 H. Levy, op. cit. &

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