THE RISE OF AN EMPLOYING CLASS 619
body and mind, devoted themselves to remedying other con- A005
ditions with a perseverance certain to be successful. Joining ’
to this determination a practical acquaintance with the details
 of manufactures, personal superintendence and industry,
several of the most eminently successful steam-manufacturers
have sprung from this class of people, and have long since
become the most opulent of a wealthy community.” The
Peels and the Strutts were examples of families which of the
emerged from the ranks of the yeomen and acquired great Sn
wealth in the cotton trade. Many of the rich manufacturers
in such towns as Stockport, Hyde, Duckenfield and Staleybridge
 had in early life worked as “hatters, shoemakers,
carters, weavers, or some other trade®” Some of these selfmade
 men were not disinclined to be proud of their own
success, and to be at once hard and contemptuous towards
the man who had shown so little energy as to remain in the
labouring class, as if it was less his misfortune than his fault.
It was not unnatural that, as the cotton manufacture The im.
continued to increase, Manchester should become the centre uments
of a school of men who were deeply imbued with the belief Zxction led
that in industrial affairs the battle was to the strong and the option of
race to the swift. The system, which the Mercantilists had Eolioy for
built up with the view of stimulating industry, seemed to industry,
this new race only to stifle and hamper it. Under somewhat
different circumstances the capitalist employers might have
been eager to secure protection. The nouveaux riches of the
fourteenth century were eager to protect English municipalities
 against the intrusion of aliens; the merchant
princes of the seventeenth century organised a restrictive
system by means of which they hoped to foster the English
industry at the expense of the French and the Dutch.
American millionaires have found their protective tariff an
assistance in building up gigantic trusts. It is at least con- not by
ceivable that the cotton manufacturers of the early part of recasting
the nineteenth century should have endeavoured to retain
for a time a monopoly of industrial power, and have forced
other peoples to pay such prices as would have enabled them
bo remodel the conditions of production in a satisfactory
1 Gaskell, 25. p. 32. 3 7b. 96.