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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526 LAISSEZ FAIRE a by This unexampled expansion of the industry opened up a nd there very much larger field for employment than had been avail- was an i able before the era of these inventions. The abundance of ny for yarn, especially after 1788, when mule yarns became available, was such that the services of weavers were in great demand’, and considerable quantities of yarn were sent abroad for use on foreign looms. The kinds of labour needed were not very different from those required in the old days of hand spinning and carding, but girls and women were concentrated in factories to tend the machines, instead of spinning with their wheels in cottages. This case affords an excellent illustration of an important principle in regard to labour-saving machinery ; when the improvement renders the article cheaper and there- by stimulates the demand, it is quite likely that there will be an increased call for labour? because the machine has come into use’. The artisans, who thought that such inventions must necessarily deprive them of their occupation, were mis- taken; the number of hands engaged in the cotton trade to-day is undoubtedly very much larger than it was in the time of Arkwright. Much remains to be said about the con- ditions and terms of employment, but there can be no doubt whatever that the introduction of machinery did not diminish the numbers occupied in the cotton trade. but the The only check to the indefinite expansion of the trade pi os lay in the limited supply of water-power available ; that cause | for apprehension was removed, however, by the invention of Boulton and Watt, and the application of steam as the motive power in cotton mills. Though steam engines had long been in use for pumping water from mines, the improvements, 1 Radcliffe, Origin of the New System of Manufacture, p. 65. 3 Arkwright asserted that when power-spinning was introduced, the spinners were not left idle, but were “almost immediately engaged” in weaving or other branches of the business. Anstie, Observations, 12 n. 3 On one of the limiting conditions, see below, pp. 661, 662. Other illustrations are furnished by the railways, which by rendering intercommunication cheap have developed intercourse of every sort. It is probable that more horses are required now, as subsidiary to railway traffic, than were needed in the eighteenth century to do all the baunlage by road: there can be no doubt that there is far larger employment for men. Other illustrations of an increased demand for labour in consequence of the introduction of labour-saving implements are afforded by the type-writer and the sewing-machine.

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