516 LAISSEZ FAIRE 
Riding and other areas where water-power could be had, 
and the comparative desertion of low lying and level districts. 
The application of steam-power caused a farther readjust- 
ment in favour of the coal-producing areas; but this new 
development did not resuscitate the decaying industries of 
the Eastern Counties, since they were as badly off for coal as 
they were for water-power. 
945. The introduction of machinery rendered it necessary 
10 concentrate the labourers in factories where the machines 
were in operation; the new methods of work were incoms- 
patible with the continued existence of cottage industry. 
The man who worked in his own house, whether as a wage- 
sarner under the capitalist system or as an independent 
tradesman under the domestic system, was no longer required, 
50 soon as it was proved that machine production was econo- 
mically better. In the same way, the concentration of spinning 
in factories deprived the women of a by-employment in their 
cottages. During the greater part of the eighteenth century 
industrial occupations were very widely diffused, and the 
interconnection between the artisan population and rural 
occupation was close’. The severance had already begun; 
but under the influence of the introduction of machinery 
nd in, [6 went on with greater rapidity, till the differentiation of 
iifferentia- town from country employment was practically complete. 
od The divorce of the industrial population from the soil 
ounty tended on the one hand to the impoverishment of the rural 
districts, from which manufactures were withdrawn, and on 
the other to a notable change in the position of the workman; 
he came to be wholly dependent on his earnings, and to have 
no other source to which he could look for support. The 
cottage weavers, whether wage-earners or independent men, 
had had the opportunity of work in the ficlds in harvest and 
of supplementing their income from their gardens or through 
their privileges on the common wastes. When the industrial 
population was massed in factory towns®they were necessarily 
deprived of these subsidiary sources of income, and their 
terms of employment were affected by the state of trade. 
1 See pp. 502 and 564 above. 
2 A Committee of the House of Commons insisted the advantages of allotments 
to the artisan population and had evidence of a widespread anxiety to obtain them. 
Reports 1843, vir. 203. 
A.D. 1776 
—1850. 
The con- 
centration 
of labour 
involved 
the decay 
of cottage 
smploy- 
ment