The textile industries originally established in the eastern counties by refugees from the Netherlands and France afterwards spread through the southern and western counties, attaining in each district to a very considerable growth long before they were of any importance in those northern counties with which they were afterwards mainly to be associated. The migration to the north occurred at a time when the woollen industries were paramount and the cotton industries had still to attain their subsequent stupendous growth. It occurred, also, long before the Aire and the Calder were made navigable, so that, in this case, we cannot say the industrial centres already mentioned as being situated on or near to those two Yorkshire rivers were set up there, as the towns on the river Severn had mainly been, in order to secure the convenience of river transport.
The chief reason why the bleak and barren moorlands of the north were preferred to the fair and fertile plains of the south for the further expansion of these great national industries was that, in the days when the steam-engine of James Watt was as yet far off, the heavier rainfall in the English Highlands of the north and north-west, together with the more numerous streams pouring down mountain sides both of greater height and of greater extent than in the south, gave to the cloth-makers, not only the abundant water supply they wanted, but, also, the particular kind of motive power, through the use of water-wheels, on which they then mainly relied for the working of their machinery.
It was in the interests of this power derived from falling water that the textile industries first migrated from the eastern counties—where the streams flow but slowly, and from comparatively slight elevations—to the western counties, where there are streams coming from hills of from 800 to 1000 feet in height. These, for a time, answered better the desired purpose, though only to be more or less discarded, in turn, for northern or north-western streams which, with a greater rainfall, had their rise on heights of from 1500 to 2000 feet, and were so numerous that almost every one of the "small" manufacturers who set up business for himself on the otherwise cheerless slope of a Yorkshire hill-side could have a brook, a rivulet, or a mountain torrent of his own, or, at least, make abundant use of one before it passed on to serve the purposes of his neighbour.
In alluding to the woollen trade as affected by these conditions, Dr Aikin remarks in his "Description of the Country from Thirty to Forty Miles round Manchester" (1795), "It would seem as if a hilly country was particularly adapted to it, since it almost ceases where Yorkshire descends into the plain"; though the position has, of course, been entirely changed by the general resort to steam in preference to water power.
Other industries, besides those relating to textiles, whether woollen or, at a later period, cotton, took advantage of the same favourable conditions, as shown in the case of Sheffield, where the earliest of the cutlers who were to make Hallamshire goods famous throughout the world settled down at the confluence of the Sheaf and the Don because those streams afforded them the best available means of operating their tilt-hammers.[[23]]
In the early stage of this transition period the streams were desired and utilised solely as an aid to manufacturing purposes. As the towns or the industrial centres developed, however, there grew up increasing need for improved means of transport—supplementary to the roads of that day—in order, more especially, to facilitate the better distribution of the commodities then being produced in ever-increasing quantities. It was this need that led to the Act of 1699, giving powers for rendering the Aire and the Calder navigable. Petitions in favour thereof were presented by the "clothiers" (as cloth-makers were then called) of various towns likely to derive advantage from the scheme, and some of these petitions afford an interesting insight into the conditions under which the cloth industry was carried on in Yorkshire and Lancashire in the closing years of the seventeenth century.
A petition from the "clothiers" of Leeds said, "That Leeds and Wakefield are the principal towns in the north for cloth; that they are situated on the rivers Ayre and Calder, which have been viewed, and are found capable to be made highways which, if effected, will very much redound to the preservation of the highways and a great improvement of trade; the petitioners having no conveniency of water carriage within sixteen miles of them, which not only occasions a great expense, but many times great damage to their goods, and sometimes the roads are not passable."
The clothiers of "Ratchdale" (Rochdale) stated that they were "forty miles from any water carriage"; those of Halifax said they "have no water carriage within thirty miles, and much damage happens through the badness of the roads by the overturning of carriages"; and those of Wakefield said of the scheme:—
"It will be a great improvement of trade to all the trading towns of the north by reason of the conveniency of water carriage, for want of which the petitioners send their goods twenty-two miles by land carriage (to Rawcliffe) the expense whereof is not only very chargeable but they are forced to stay two months sometimes while the roads are impassable to market, and many times the goods receive considerable damage, through the badness of the roads by overturning."
The general conditions of life in Yorkshire towns in Defoe's day, when the Aire and Calder had been made navigable, but when bad roads still dominated the situation from a social and domestic standpoint, are shown in the account he gives of his visit to Halifax. After explaining how the people devoted themselves mainly to cloth production and imported most of their household requirements, he says:—