IV
The importance for the expansion of British industry of the subsequent removal of those restrictions can be best understood if we compare the conditions under which English woollen industry was developing at the close of the sixteenth century with those that prevailed in the cotton industry at the close of the eighteenth century. In the earlier period, of course, there was nothing to correspond to the jenny, the mule, and the steam-engine. But certain conditions quite as essential to the development of the industry are common to both cases—above all, a rapid accumulation of new capital and a simultaneous expansion of organising ability. It was a vital factor in both these developments that the capital and ability accumulating in one field should be free to flow over into and fertilise other fields.
This is clearly shown in the instructive case of William Radcliffe, whose account of the transition of the cotton industry to the factory system has been critically discussed and set in a new light by Mr. Daniels. William Radcliffe commenced working life as a hand-loom weaver at Mellor. Any young man, he tells us, of moderate ability and self-confidence could have got on at that time. The capital accumulating in his hands enabled him to give out work, exactly as a sixteenth-century clothier would have done, to all the villages round. Within about fifteen years he was finding employment for one thousand hand-looms; he had £11,000 invested in the business; a bank gave him credit for £5000. Most of this capital and credit was employed, not in the manufacture itself, but in trade. It was represented by large quantities of piece goods on their way to the consumer, but still unsold. The new captain of industry could not extend his enterprise unless he used his capital to find a new market. For this purpose Radcliffe took as his partner a young Scot with more education than himself, who brought another Scot into the business, and who regularly visited Frankfort and Leipzig to open a market for the firm’s muslins. Or let us take the case of David Dale, the father-in-law of Robert Owen and the founder of the New Lanark Mills. He commenced life, like Radcliffe, as a hand-loom weaver, but soon became clerk to a mercer who very likely found work for weavers. Then we find him importing foreign yarns to set weavers at work on his own account and taking in a partner to help him. With the capital thus acquired he started a whole series of spinning mills—the first in Scotland—and the need of finding an outlet for his yarns led him to extend his operations to weaving and dyeing. Finally, as he was getting on in years, he disposed of his manufacturing interests to younger and more energetic men like his son-in-law, and withdrew his own capital and organising ability into the less speculative field of banking. In the cases of Dale and Radcliffe we see capital accumulated in industry flowing over into commerce and banking. But all were not so successful as Dale. Even Radcliffe came to grief in his later years and was dependent on the capital of others. And in many cases capital and credit are to be observed flowing in the opposite direction. The merchant who imported cotton enabled the young manufacturer to set up for himself by giving him three months’ credit, whilst the exporting merchant rendered similar assistance by paying for the manufacturer’s output week by week. It was in this way, by a flow of capital inwards from commerce, that most of the early industrial enterprises of Lancashire got started and the immense expansion of the cotton industry was rendered possible. One other example will serve to complete the account and to show the international significance of the development at the moment when Radcliffe was sending out his partner to Germany. Nathan Meyer Rothschild was buying Manchester goods at Frankfort for transmission to more easterly markets. Some quarrel with a Manchester merchant led him to think that he could make better use of his capital by settling in Manchester himself. His father supplied him with £20,000, and he arrived to take part in an almost feverish expansion of the industry. He found there were three separate profits to be made in the manufacture: one upon the supply of the raw material, one upon the manufacturing, and one upon the dyeing and spinning. His capital and organising ability enabled him to combine all three. In half-a-dozen years he had turned his £20,000 to £60,000, and then, obeying the instinct of his race and following the signs of the times, he withdrew his capital to banking and became one of the leading figures in the London money market.[23]
Enough has been written—perhaps too much—by way of introduction to the new and valuable chapters which the researches of Mr. Daniels have added to the history of the Lancashire cotton industry—enough if I have succeeded in indicating the historical background of the industry and the world-wide character of the development—too much if I have anticipated here and there some of the more important conclusions that Mr. Daniels has drawn from his investigations.
G. Unwin.
THE EARLY ENGLISH
COTTON INDUSTRY