A history of commerce

by Clive Day

240. (2) Development of production, explaining the growth of the export trade. Agriculture.—Turning our attention now, not to the foreign commerce of England but to the conditions at home which made this commerce possible, we find that during the two centuries following 1600 there was a steady development of internal resources. The growth of population stimulated improvement in agriculture; and cultivators managed, by new crops and methods, to increase largely the output in spite of the disadvantages of soil and climate. Root crops (turnips and carrots) and clover were grown on fields which before had been allowed to lie fallow, and the produce, converted into meat and manure, was almost pure gain. By better feeding and breeding the weight of a head of stock was increased twofold or even more. Potatoes and other vegetables were introduced from America and the Continent. Capitalist farmers effected such a revolution in the methods of agriculture, that pasture farming became relatively much less important, and the production of cereals increased so that there was a food supply to maintain a manufacturing population, and sometimes a surplus for export.

241. Internal commerce and means of transportation.—The conditions of internal commerce, measured by the difficulties and dangers of road transportation, were still bad at the beginning of this period, but improved rapidly in the eighteenth century. A writer said in 1767: “There never was a more astonishing Revolution accomplished in the internal system of any country than has been within the compass of a few years in that of England. The Carriage of Grain, Coals, Merchandize, etc., is in general conducted with little more than half the Number of Horses with which it formerly was. Journies of Business are performed with more than double Expedition. Improvements in Agriculture keep pace with those of Trade.” The canals, which were extended rapidly after the success of the Bridgewater Canal, constructed in 1758 to connect Manchester with coal mines seven miles distant, lowered the cost of transportation to one quarter or less, in the districts which they served. As a result manufacturers could rely on a steady supply of raw material for their works, and of food for their employees, and had also a chance to put their finished goods on the market. The eighteenth century, moreover, was a period of great development in English banking, and the extension of credit operations was at the same time an effect and a cause of the growth of trade.

242. Manufactures; advance from the gild to the domestic system and its significance.—We turn now to the history of English manufactures, a topic which is not only, as we have intimated, of great importance for the growth of English commerce, but which is of general interest as showing the stages of development through which other countries passed later.

Gilds still persisted in England, but they had lost the power of control which they had formerly had and which they still maintained on the Continent. The more important industries had passed into the stage known as the “domestic system.” The change, at first view, is not striking, for the manufacturing was still done by petty artisans working at home with their own tools. The ownership of the raw material, however, had passed from the artisans to an employer, who took the risk of the manufacture and reaped profits corresponding to his success in conducting it.

Brain power now took a place in manufactures above hand power. The new class of employers were men who could devote their energy entirely to studying the larger questions of production. They had the chance to look away from the petty details of work, which had for centuries absorbed men’s attention, and to become both broad-sighted and far-sighted. They studied the needs of the market, at home and abroad; they bought the raw material wherever it could be had best and cheapest; and then marketed the product, wherever it would bring them the best returns.

243. The new employers aided by the immigration of foreign laborers.—Success in manufacture still depended largely on the quality of labor, and one great advantage which England owed to her political and religious freedom was the immigration of skilled laborers seeking refuge from the persecutions of the Continent. Refugees, of whom the Huguenots from France were the most important, brought with them improvements in the woolen manufacture and stimulated the development of other industries: silk, linen, cotton, calico, paper, etc. It is, however, hard to see how the labor of these people could have had a great effect in extending foreign trade if they had not been guided by their employers, who were men of considerable capital, with broad views and wide acquaintance, willing to take large contracts and eager to extend the market for their goods. An English pamphlet of the period says that the towns in which the silk and cotton manufactures developed owed their industries “to the public spirit of two or three men in each.” The development of this process, by which artisans lost their former independence and came to work for an employer, can be seen from a statement of the economist Adam Smith, who wrote in 1776. “In every part of Europe,” he said, “twenty workmen serve under a master for one that is independent.” This was not yet true of “every part” of Europe, and even in the western states of the Continent the process had not advanced so far as in England, where the author had made most of his observations.

244. Dependence of technical progress on the new class of employers.—It is noteworthy that the great inventions to which the modern development of manufactures has often been ascribed could not have been made of practical importance unless this system of organization had developed previously. The gilds were bitterly opposed to any changes in their system of routine, and independent artisans would not find it worth their while to introduce costly improvements. Many inventions had been made before the eighteenth century which would have been of the greatest importance in manufacture if there had been any one to take them up and put them through; they fell dead, however, on the world of their time, or were killed by the opposition of petty producers. An illustration of the way in which premature inventions disappeared can be given from the experience of a man who, to all appearances, had devised a repeating firearm before the end of the sixteenth century. A German recommended to an English statesman “one of his countrymen, who had invented a harquebuse, that shall containe ten balls or pelletes of lead, all the which shall goe off, one after another, having once given fire, so that with one harquebuse one may kill ten theeves or other enemies without recharging.” The importance of such an invention needs only to be suggested, but, so far as the writer knows, nothing further was heard of it.

245. The domestic system preparatory to the great revolution in manufactures in the eighteenth century.—Not until the latter part of the eighteenth century were the times ripe for the great technical changes in manufacture, which the introduction of machinery implied. Then the advance came with the speed of revolution. In the lifetime of an ordinary man (1770-1840) the whole face of England changed; the great textile towns and the “black country” of the coal and iron industry grew up; canals and railroads cut through the agricultural districts to connect the industries with each other and with the outside world; a social and political revolution accompanied the economic. No attempt can here be made to describe the changes in detail, and the discussion of the factory system and other features of the present organization to which they gave rise can better be postponed. The following paragraphs will suggest the development in some of England’s chief export industries.

246. Progress of the cotton manufacture.—The cotton manufacture was the first to show the possibilities of the application of machinery. Two main processes are to be distinguished in the manufacture of cotton, as in that of other textiles; first, the spinning of the yarn from the fiber, and second, the weaving of the yarn into cloth. The first great improvement was the invention by Kay in 1738 of the fly-shuttle, which saved the time and energy of the weaver and enabled him to double his output of cloth. Still, the industry was small and grew slowly. The amount of raw cotton imported from Turkey and the West Indies would seem now perfectly insignificant, and was exceeded by the amount of linen yarn imported from Ireland alone. The cotton manufacture was hampered especially by the slowness of cotton spinning (six spinners working with the old-fashioned wheel were needed to supply yarn to one weaver); and by the weakness of the yarn, which required linen to be used for the warp of cloth. Inventions which met these difficulties were the spinning-jenny of Hargreaves, patented 1770, which enabled a spinner to make eight threads at once instead of one (later, twenty, thirty, even one hundred and twenty); and Arkwright’s roller spinning frame, patented 1769, which made cotton yarn strong enough for warp, by stretching the strand before it was twisted. Improvements followed in other processes (carding, printing, etc.); water-power was used more generally, and a mere beginning made with the application of steam. A Kentish clergyman, Cartwright, invented a power loom which greatly increased the possibilities of weaving but which did not become a practical success until the nineteenth century; long after 1800 the hand-loom weavers kept up a hopeless struggle in competition with it.

The full effect of all these changes was not felt until the nineteenth century, but their importance in this period can be measured by the imports of raw cotton. In the forty-three years, 1741-1784, the annual imports rose from 4,000 to 28,000 bales, while in the sixteen years following they increased to 150,000 bales (1800).