526

LAISSEZ FAIRE

a by This unexampled expansion of the industry opened up a
nd there very much larger field for employment than had been availwas
 an i able before the era of these inventions. The abundance of
ny for yarn, especially after 1788, when mule yarns became available,
was such that the services of weavers were in great demand’,
and considerable quantities of yarn were sent abroad for use
on foreign looms. The kinds of labour needed were not very
different from those required in the old days of hand spinning
and carding, but girls and women were concentrated in factories
to tend the machines, instead of spinning with their wheels
in cottages. This case affords an excellent illustration of an
important principle in regard to labour-saving machinery ;
when the improvement renders the article cheaper and thereby
 stimulates the demand, it is quite likely that there will be
an increased call for labour? because the machine has come
into use’. The artisans, who thought that such inventions
must necessarily deprive them of their occupation, were mistaken;
 the number of hands engaged in the cotton trade
to-day is undoubtedly very much larger than it was in the
time of Arkwright. Much remains to be said about the conditions
 and terms of employment, but there can be no doubt
whatever that the introduction of machinery did not diminish
the numbers occupied in the cotton trade.
but the The only check to the indefinite expansion of the trade
pi os lay in the limited supply of water-power available ; that cause
| for apprehension was removed, however, by the invention of
Boulton and Watt, and the application of steam as the motive
power in cotton mills. Though steam engines had long been
in use for pumping water from mines, the improvements,

1 Radcliffe, Origin of the New System of Manufacture, p. 65.
3 Arkwright asserted that when power-spinning was introduced, the spinners
were not left idle, but were “almost immediately engaged” in weaving or other
branches of the business. Anstie, Observations, 12 n.
3 On one of the limiting conditions, see below, pp. 661, 662. Other illustrations
are furnished by the railways, which by rendering intercommunication cheap have
developed intercourse of every sort. It is probable that more horses are required
now, as subsidiary to railway traffic, than were needed in the eighteenth century
to do all the baunlage by road: there can be no doubt that there is far larger
employment for men. Other illustrations of an increased demand for labour in
consequence of the introduction of labour-saving implements are afforded by the
type-writer and the sewing-machine.