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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THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION IN ENGLAND 611 novelties, and inventors could reasonably hope to reap ad- 49, 1m vantage themselves from the improvements they suggested. ’ In the seventeenth century such an expansion had hardly been possible at all; the dominant principles were still in favour of a well-ordered trade, to be maintained by securing The well- special concessions ; the interlopers, who were prepared to con- big the test such privileges and to force their business on any terms Seni they could, were still regarded as injurious to the sound and healthy development of commerce. But after the Revolution England entered on a new phase of mercantile life; and the keen competition, which had been allowed free play temporarily during the Interregnum, with disastrous results, came to be accepted as the ordinary atmosphere of trade. The principles, which the interlopers had practised, were being more generally adopted, and all merchants became agreed that it was by pushing their wares, and selling goods that were better and cheaper than those of other countries, that new markets could be opened up and old ones retained. The “ well-ordered trade ” of the Merchant Companies would hardly have afforded sufficient scope for the introduction of mechanical improve- ments in manufacturing. In the civic commerce of the Middle Ages, and during the seventeenth century, merchants had looked to well-defined and restricted markets, in which they held exclusive rights. So long as this was the case attempts were made to carry on industrial production so as just to meet these limited requirements, and to secure favourable conditions for the artisan, by guarding him from competition and authoritatively assessing his wages. As merchants and manufacturers realised that they could best gain, and keep, foreign markets, not by special privileges, but by supplying the required goods at low rates, they aimed at introducing the conditions of manufacture under which in- dustrial expansion is possible. This opinion commended itself and the old more and more to men of business and legislators, but it tee penetrated slowly among the artisans, who preferred the ee stability of the life they enjoyed under a system of regulation and restriction. Workmen were inclined to oppose the intro- duction of machinery in so far as it tended to upset the old- established order of the realm®, while others seem to have hoped 1 See below, pp. 638, 652. 29

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