COTTON-SPINNING 627 
which reduced the cost of working and rendered it possible wa 
bo apply steam power to industry, were an immense advance. 
At Papplewick in Nottinghamshire a steam cotton mill ion 
was erected in 1785; and the new power was utilised for of steam 
spinning at Manchester in 1789, and at Glasgow in 1792. %°“¢ 
Its full effect was only gradually felt, and water continued to 
be economically the better agent during the first quarter of 
the nineteenth century; but eventually as a consequence of 
Watt's invention, water-falls became of less value. Instead 
of carrying the people to the power, employers found it 
preferable to place the power among the people at the most 
convenient trading centres. The factory system is older than 
the application of steam to the textile trades; but the intro- 
duction of the new mechanical power tended to destroy the 
advantage of factory villages on streams, and rendered possible 
the gradual concentration of the population in factory towns. 
The cotton trade, as depending on imported materials 
and supplying foreign markets’, was probably a capitalistic 
trade from the very first; the suggestion that it was planted 
by immigration from abroad harmonises with this view; and 
though the weavers were cottagers, it is likely that they 
were wage earners’ and not men who worked on the domestic 
1 See p. 518 above. 
2 The conditions of life during this period of expansion are fully described by 
Radcliffe. “These families, up to the time I have been speaking of, whether as 
cottagers or small farmers, had supported themselves by the different occupations 
I have mentioned in spinning and manufacturing, as their progenitors from the 
earliest institutions of society had done before them. But the mule-twist now 
coming into vogue, for the warp as well as the weft, added to the water-twist and 
common jinny yarns, with an increasing demand for every fabric the loom could 
produce, put all hands in request of every age and description. The fabrics made 
from wool or linen vanished, while the old loom-shops being insufficient every 
lumber-room, even old barns, carthouses, and outbuildings of any description 
were repaired, windows broke through the old blank walls and all fitted up for 
loom-shops. This source of making room being at length exhausted, new weavers 
cottages with loom-shops rose up in every direction; all immediately filled, and 
when in full work the weekly circulation of money as the price of labour only rose 
to five times the amount ever before experienced in this sub-division, every family 
bringing home weekly 40, 60, 80, 100 or even 120 shillings per week.” Origin of 
the New System of Manufacture, 66. Radcliffe had personal knowledge of these 
times, for as he says, “I always attended Manchester Market on Tuesdays, 
bringing from the bank my cash for the wages of the week. Next morning, soon 
after six, I entered the warehouse to serve the weavers of whom there were 
generally ten to twenty waiting behind the counter, on which I placed the money 
to count into the drawer before I began business.” Ib. p. 68. 
10— 
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