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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342 LAISSEZ FAIRE but at all events, the incident brings out a special form of injury to which labour might be exposed by the adoption of machines, through the shifting of employment from one class of labourers to another, and the loss which fell on the skilled workman. The So far as this and other branches of the cotton trade was puality of concerned, the introduction of machinery had tended not oo by only to an immense increase of the quantities produced, but the dnire- ; to an improvement of the quality. A machine can go on machinery turning out a perfectly regular yarn, in a way that very few in fingers are capable of doing, and the possibilities of error wades: in power weaving and steam printing are reduced to a minimum. There are many wares which lose all artistic interest, when they are turned out by machinery, but cotton yarn is not one of them; the deftest spinners had cultivated a mechanical precision, and the new machinery carried the spinners’ art to a high degree of perfection. From every point of view the economic advantage of the new develop- ments was incontestable. Lyon 251. The conditions of the woollen trades were in many the 5, respects very different from those of the cotton manufacture. ik 0 As a consequence, the effects of the introduction of machinery of the were very dissimilar in the two great branches of textile trad= industry. It is also true that the course of the transition in A.D. 1776 —=1850. London, but that a due proportion of journeymen were employed there. In ourteen shops there were 37 apprentices to 216 journeymen (Reports, 18034, y. 596). It is still more startling to find that the Manchester calico printers in (815 had a very strong combination and were able to insist on the trade being managed as they desired. One of the employers thus addressed the men: “ We have by terms conceded what we ought all manfully to have resisted, and you slated with success have been led on from one extravagant demand to another, till the burden is become too intolerable to be borne. You fix the number of our apprentices, and oftentimes even the number of our journeymen. You dismiss certain proportions of our hands, and will not allow others to come in their stead. You stop all Surface Machines, and go the length even to destroy the rollers before our face. You restrict the Cylinder Machine, and even dictate the kind of pattern it is to print. You dismiss our overlookers when they don’t suit you, and lorce obnoxious servants into our employ. Lastly, you set all subordination and good order at defiance, and instead of showing deference and respect to your smployers, treat them with personal insult and contempt.” Considerations addressed to the Journeyman Calico Printers by one of their Masters, quoted by 8. and B. Webb, History of Trade Unionism, 67. On the support which this combination received from other trades, see a pamphlet, to which Mr Webb kindly salled my attention, by W. DD. Evans, entitled Charge to the Grand Jury, pp. b, 17

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