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.

COTTON-SPINNING 627 which reduced the cost of working and rendered it possible wa bo apply steam power to industry, were an immense advance. At Papplewick in Nottinghamshire a steam cotton mill ion was erected in 1785; and the new power was utilised for of steam spinning at Manchester in 1789, and at Glasgow in 1792. %°“¢ Its full effect was only gradually felt, and water continued to be economically the better agent during the first quarter of the nineteenth century; but eventually as a consequence of Watt's invention, water-falls became of less value. Instead of carrying the people to the power, employers found it preferable to place the power among the people at the most convenient trading centres. The factory system is older than the application of steam to the textile trades; but the intro- duction of the new mechanical power tended to destroy the advantage of factory villages on streams, and rendered possible the gradual concentration of the population in factory towns. The cotton trade, as depending on imported materials and supplying foreign markets’, was probably a capitalistic trade from the very first; the suggestion that it was planted by immigration from abroad harmonises with this view; and though the weavers were cottagers, it is likely that they were wage earners’ and not men who worked on the domestic 1 See p. 518 above. 2 The conditions of life during this period of expansion are fully described by Radcliffe. “These families, up to the time I have been speaking of, whether as cottagers or small farmers, had supported themselves by the different occupations I have mentioned in spinning and manufacturing, as their progenitors from the earliest institutions of society had done before them. But the mule-twist now coming into vogue, for the warp as well as the weft, added to the water-twist and common jinny yarns, with an increasing demand for every fabric the loom could produce, put all hands in request of every age and description. The fabrics made from wool or linen vanished, while the old loom-shops being insufficient every lumber-room, even old barns, carthouses, and outbuildings of any description were repaired, windows broke through the old blank walls and all fitted up for loom-shops. This source of making room being at length exhausted, new weavers cottages with loom-shops rose up in every direction; all immediately filled, and when in full work the weekly circulation of money as the price of labour only rose to five times the amount ever before experienced in this sub-division, every family bringing home weekly 40, 60, 80, 100 or even 120 shillings per week.” Origin of the New System of Manufacture, 66. Radcliffe had personal knowledge of these times, for as he says, “I always attended Manchester Market on Tuesdays, bringing from the bank my cash for the wages of the week. Next morning, soon after six, I entered the warehouse to serve the weavers of whom there were generally ten to twenty waiting behind the counter, on which I placed the money to count into the drawer before I began business.” Ib. p. 68. 10— )

Access restriction

Copyright

fullscreen: The Industrial Revolution

Monograph

Table of contents

Download

Monograph

This page

Image fragment

Citation links

Citation recommendation