LAISSEZ FAIRE 
were reduced to a starvation point. But the practice of 
setting labourers to work in their cottages was not convenient 
gave 75h to the capitalists. The cottage system gave in many ways 
supervision Opportunity for inefficient work’, and the employers preferred 
to have the men under their own eyes. This was the only 
method by which they could secure punctuality in the de- 
livery of goods?, and could exercise an effective supervision 
all the time®. One circumstance which specially impressed 
Mr Hickson was “that the factory system is beginning to be 
extensively applied to the labour of hand-loom weaving, and 
that the weavers who now maintain, and may continue to 
maintain, a suceessful competition with the power-loom, will 
not be cottage weavers?, but weavers assembled in factories 
to work under the eye of a master. There are now many 
192 
! Mr Hickson reported: “One hundred webs, therefore, in a factory of hand. 
loom weavers, would be finished even in Manchester, in the time in which 50 
would not be finished by an equal number of domestic weavers. But in Ireland 
the disparity is much more striking. I was assured by Mr M’Cauley of Belfast, 
that it would be necessary for him to employ 400 country weavers to get him 
through the same quantity of work in a given time which he could produce from 
100 hand-looms employed in his factory, under his immediate superintendence. 
Reports, 1840, xxIv. 648. 
2 Mr Hickson writes: ‘The cotton-weavers, in most cases, work at home; 
but the practice is beginning to extend itself of assembling them in factories. 
There are hand-loom factories, as well as power-loom factories. In large manu- 
facturing towns, a saving of time is regarded as a saving of money. One thousand 
pounds capital, if it can be returned four times in the year, is equal to a capital of 
£4,000 returned once; and the interest on £3,000 is the saving effected. Hence 
the anxiety of every good man of business to despatch his orders quick, and hence 
the urgency of merchants, when writing to the manufacturer, to ship without 
delay. In fact, promptitude of execution is often a more important consideration 
than price. A merchant, not limited by his foreign correspondents, but left to his 
own discretion, will give his orders to the manufacturer, who, on a given day and 
month, will engage to have his goods on board a ship in the export docks, and will 
disregard the offer of another manufacturer less punctual, and more dilatory in 
the conduct of his business, although cheaper, perhaps by five per cent. On this 
account factory labour is much more advantageous to the manufacturer than 
domestic labour. The domestic weaver is apt to be irregular in his habits, 
because he does not work under the eye of a master. At any moment the 
domestic weaver can throw down his shuttle, and convert the rest of the day into 
a holiday; or busy himself with some more profitable task; but the factory 
weaver works under superintendence; if absent a day, without sufficient cause, he 
is dismissed, and his place supplied by one of greater power of application.” 
Reports, 1840, xxv. 647-8. 
8 Tt was difficult to guard against the embezzlement of materials and the 
fraud of weaving thin. Accounts, 1839, xn. 599. 
4 Mr Hickson speaks of them as * domestic weavers.” I have ventured to 
alter this phrase so as to bring it into accord with the terminology adopted in this 
volume. See above. pn. 497.