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

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374 PARLIAMENTARY COLBERTISM A.D. 1689 —1776. were tried in many towns. The estab- lishment 1705, but no general Act was passed: though an important experiment was tried in Bristol}, and the different parishes in the city were incorporated and proceeded to erect a workhouse for employing their poor. The Bristol scheme appears to have been carried through by Mr Cary, who was then a well-known writer on commercial subjects; within a very few years the example, which had been set at Bristol, was followed at Exeter, Hereford, Colchester, Hull, Shaftes- bury, Lynn, Sudbury, Gloucester, Plymouth, and Norwich? The Bristol experiment was not, however, a pecuniary success; and in 1714 the Corporation found themselves in great difficulties, as they had entirely lost the fund with which they had started. As a matter of fact, it was extremely difficult to organise an undertaking of this kind in such a manner that it should be a commercial success. This had not been easy, even in the Elizabethan period ; but the more industrial organisation and industrial skill developed, the more difficult must it have been to set the casual and untrained poor on remunerative work. According to Defoe® the whole attempt was illusory, and could only result in diverting occupation from the frugal and industrious who were employed in the ordinary course of trade, and subsidising the lazy and inefficient. His criticism sufficed to kill the magnificent scheme of that ingenious projector Sir Humphry Mackworth, whose Bill for establishing a factory in every parish, after being passed by the House of Commons, was dropped in the House of Lords. But the advocates of providing employment were not daunted: a much humbler plan of a similar kind® was 1 John Cary, An Account of the Proceedings of the Corporation of Bristol :1700). The children could not spin woollen yarn so as to pay for their own keep til they learned to spin it specially fine, p. 13. 3 Eden, 1. 257. 8 Giving Alms no Charity, in Genuine Works, It. 435. ‘ i TL. Braddon, Particular Answers to the most Material Objections made to the proposal...for Relieving, Reforming and Employing the Poor of Great Britain (1722). Brit. Mus. 1027. i. 18 (7). 6 A mass of very interesting information on the workhouses in England, their history and management, will be found in An account of several workhouses for employing and maintaining the poor (1725), Brit. Mus. 1027. i. 18 (9). It appears that there were about 124 workhouses known to the writer in different parishes in England at this date. The distribution is very curious. They were mostly con- centrated in Essex, Hertfordshire, Northamptonshire, Bucks. and Bedfordshire—

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