THE SUPPLY OF WOOL, IRELAND AND AUSTRALIA 643 
the woollen manufacture is very much harder to trace. a 
Cotton spinning had been, on the whole, concentrated in ’ 
the Lancashire district, and the introduction of spinning 
machinery, with the consequent development of the trade, 
aroused a great deal of interest, and was written about at the 
time. The spinning of wool, on the other hand, was widely as spinning 
diffused through all parts of the country in the latter part of ned: ¥ 
the eighteenth century; the course of the change in one 
district was in all probability very different from the transition 
in others, and as the revolution did hot bring about an 
immediate expansion of the trade, it did not attract any 
special attention ; we are very badly off for accurate informa- 
tion on the whole subject. 
The cotton trade, in the first half of the eighteenth 
century, had been exposed to fierce competition from manu- 
facturers on the continent; it was only by obtaining a start 
in the introducing of mechanical spinning that England 
secured for a time a very great advantage over all her rivals 
in this industry. With the woollen trade it was different; il 0st 
the supply of raw material had given the English clothiers a werelargely 
position of great economic strength, if not of actual monopoly, engi. 
all through the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centu- 
ries; the anxiety of the traders was directed not to gaining, 
but to maintaining their advantage over competitors. 
These various differences are, however, connected with the 
fundamental distinction that the clothiers were engaged in 
working up native materials, while the cotton manufacturers 
were not. Considerable quantities of Spanish and German 
wool were imported, especially for use in certain classes of 
goods; but the English product was the main basis of the 
trade!, From this it followed that there was not the same 
danger of violent fluctuations in the woollen, as in the cotton 
trade; the supply of raw material was less likely to be cut off 
suddenly? but on the other hand there was less possibility of 
expansion. The cotton manufacturers could look to practi- Lhe rupely 
cally unlimited areas in distant parts of the globe for an rs a 
increased supply of raw material; while the quantity of Biot, 
English wool obtainable was limited. The clothiers had a 
1 See above, p. 495. 2 See above, p. 625, and below, p. 689. 
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