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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LAISSEZ FAIRE 56 A.D. 1778 =1850. Henry VIII and James I had arisen in connection with weaving, and the remedy adopted had been that of putting pressure on the capitalists to give employment. But this principle could not be applied in the wool famine at the close of the eighteenth century. The failure of spinning was a more widely diffused and serious evil than the distress among tn 1798 the the weavers had been. The art had been very successfully orien. introduced into most parts of the country, and offered a by- ranted occupation for women and children, which was an essential rom the part of the domestic economy. Spinning had been the main- stay of many households, and when it declined, numbers of families, which had hitherto been independent, were unable bo support themselves without help from the rates’. The Berkshire justices, whose example in dealing with the difficulty was widely followed, did not see their way to set higher rates for agricultural labour or artisan employments, but tried to grant allowances in lieu of the receipts from spinning, and thus supplemented the wages of the labourers. This ex- pedient might have answered if the depression had been merely temporary ; but it could not stay the course of progress which was making itself felt. Indeed, the allowance system probably accelerated the changes. By relieving distress and preventing agitation it smoothed the way for the introduction of jennies and power spinning. The idler part of the women were quite content to receive parochial relief as a regular thing, and even destroyed their wheels”. Hand-jennies did the work well, and they were not very costly, as they did not involve the use of water or to spinning Steam power; employers could have the spinning done under by emet supervision on their own premises, and the new implements steadily superseded the immemorial methods of work in cottages. This was the most important step, so far as its social effects were concerned, in the introduction of machinery in the cloth manufacture. So long as the spindle, or the wheel, was in vogue, spinning was practised as a by-occupation 1 The occasional dependence of spinners on aid from the rates had heen noticed in 1766 at Chippenham and Calne, Arthur Young (Annals, vo. 66). He also remarks that spinning was regarded as a manufacture which brought ‘ the burthen of enormous poor charges.” Ib. v. 221, also 420, and see above, p. 638. 3 Annals of Agriculture, 3Xv. 635.

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