CAPITAL AND THE PLANTING OF NEW INDUSTRIES 519 
industriest. The migration of the silk industry, from Canter- 4D. 1689 
bury to London, is not improbably connected with the greater 
freedom for capitalist organisation which seems to have by the 
characterised the trade in Spitalfields. There is evidence jon or 
a8 to a certain amount of capitalist oppression in the fact capitalists 
that systematic protection was accorded by the Spitalfields 
Acts?; but on the other hand, the industry in the country 
advanced through the enterprise of those who introduced and intro. 
: v . ss. duction of 
machinery driven by water-power for silk-throwing®; the machinery. 
silk-weaving in Cheshire appears to have been benefited by 
these facilities for obtaining materials. The infusion of new 
trades was a very striking industrial development at this 
date, and it certainly gave an increased importance to 
capitalist manufacturers as a class. 
The importance of capitalist employers in this connection 
comes out in the story of the linen manufacture, in its 
various branches. The manufacture of sailcloth, in which Gopity 
. . . was sub- 
Burleigh had been particularly interested, was at last scribed for 
aaturalised through the energy of M. Bonhomme¢, who had Te 
recently started the trade on French soil. Capital for his “ot 
undertaking was provided by the elders of the French 
Church in Threadneedle Street. A joint-stock Company® 
was created, with Dupin® at its head, to carry on the linen 
industry, which had never flourished in England’. The new 
i In Holland the old trades maintained their domestic character and gild 
organisation all through the seventeenth century, but the trades which were 
introduced by immigrants were for the most part established on capitalist lines. 
Pringsheim, Beitrage, pp. 32, 40. 
2 18 Geo. III. ¢. 68. It is possible that the migration of silk-weaving to 
Taunton was due to an attempt on the part of employers to evade these Acts. 
Cunningham, Alien Immigrants, 236. As regards the silk-manufacture in the 
Essex district, which fell within the Spitalfields Act, it appears that the employers 
would be able to obtain the services of weavers on easy terms in districts where 
woollen weaving had decayed. 
8 Sir T. Lombe’s machine was copied from an Italian model and attracted 
much interest when it was set up at Derby in 1718. Rees, Encyclopedia, 8.v. 
Brlk manufacture. ¢ Cunningham, Alien Immigrants, 239. 
5 Its failure, like that of the Royal Lustring Company, was attributed to Stock 
Exchange speculation (Angliae Tutamen, 24). A joint-stock company with a capital 
of £100,000 was formed to carry on the manufacture of fine cambries in England 
in 1764. 4 Geo. III. ¢c. 37. 
+ See Molyneux’ Letters to Locke, in Locke's Works, vim. 389, 436, 448. 
i “The Linen Manufacture has been attempted at different Times and Places 
in Great Britain. as well as most of the Counties in England, on the North Side of