Other of the buyers on the Leeds market sent their purchases to London, either carrying out commissions from London traders or forwarding on consignment to factors and warehousemen who themselves supplied wholesale and retail dealers in London, besides despatching great quantities of coarse goods abroad, especially to New England, New York, Virginia, etc. The Russian merchants in London also sent "an exceeding quantity" to St Petersburg, Riga, Sweden, Dantzic and Pomerania.
Still another group of buyers was represented by those who had commissions direct from traders in Holland, Germany and Austria, the business done by the members of this group being "not less considerable" than that done by the others.
It was mainly on account of this London and foreign trade that the Act for making the rivers Aire and Calder navigable was obtained, there being secured a waterway communication by means of which the cloth could be sent direct from Leeds, Wakefield and other industrial centres to Hull, there to be shipped to London or to Continental ports, as desired.
The facilities for navigation thus afforded subsequently had a still greater influence on the development of the Yorkshire coal trade, coal being taken from Wakefield or Leeds to the Humber, and thence conveyed up the Ouse to York, or to the numerous towns situate on the Trent or other rivers. By the same navigation the Yorkshire towns received most of their supplies, either as imported into Hull from abroad, or as received there from London or the eastern counties, these supplies including butter, cheese, salt, sugar, tobacco, fruit, spices, oil, wine, brandy, hops, lead, and all kinds of heavy or bulky goods. For the merchants of Hull this meant a business to be compared only with that of the merchants of Lynn and Bristol.
Some of the many river improvement Acts passed in the period here under review were not secured without a certain amount of opposition, and the case of the Don, more especially, offers a striking example of that conflict of rival interests, even in the case of rivers, which later on was to give rise to many a Parliamentary battle in the days, first of canals, and then of railways.
How the cutlers of Sheffield and the steel manufacturers and others of Hallamshire in general had been accustomed to forward their goods by road to the inland port of Bawtry, thence to be sent down the Idle and on by the Trent and the Humber to Hull, has already been told. (See pp. [123]-4.) There came a time, however, when this preliminary land journey of twenty miles from Sheffield to Bawtry was found of great disadvantage to the trade of the district; and in 1697 leave was given to bring in a Bill to allow of the Don, already navigable to Doncaster, being rendered navigable to Sheffield, in order that merchandise might be sent by that stream direct from Sheffield to the Ouse, and so on to the Humber and the port of Hull. But the opposition offered by representatives of the Bawtry, Trent and other interests—who rightly foresaw in the scheme impending ruin for most of the traffic on the Idle—was so powerful that the Bill was thrown out. A further Bill, with a like object, was introduced, and strongly supported, in the following Session. It was still more vigorously opposed, there being what Hunter describes as "a war of petitions," and it was not proceeded with.
For a time nothing further was done; but in the meanwhile Sheffield was rapidly advancing to the position of one of the leading industrial centres in the country, and the compulsory twenty-mile journey by road to the chief port of consignment for Sheffield goods sent to London or abroad when there was a river flowing through Sheffield itself, was felt to be an intolerable infliction, as well as a serious prejudice to the local industries.
In 1722, therefore—twenty-four years after the last of the earlier attempts—the Master Cutler of Sheffield and the Cutlers' Company petitioned Parliament to allow the improvement of the Don navigation to proceed. The corporation of Doncaster sent a like petition, and so did the corporations of Manchester, Stockport and several other places. But the established interests still controlled the situation, and the design once more failed.
Four years later (1726) the Sheffield cutlers made still another effort, and this time, although the opposition was again very powerful, it was agreed in Committee of the House of Commons that power should be given to the Cutlers' Company to make the Don navigable from Doncaster, not to Sheffield itself, but to Tinsley, three miles from Sheffield; and, also, to maintain a turnpike road from Sheffield to Tinsley. A Bill to this effect was passed, and in 1727 the corporation of Doncaster obtained powers to remove certain obstructions from the Don; but, under an Act of 1732, the carrying out of the whole scheme was transferred to an independent body, the Company of Proprietors of the River Don Navigation. It proved, says Hunter, writing in 1828, "eminently beneficial to the country"; but the reader will see that the Sheffield cutler or manufacturer still had to forward his goods three miles by road before they could be sent, first along the Don, then along the Ouse, then down the Humber to Hull, and then (if they were consigned to London) by sea along the east coast, and finally up the Thames to the Metropolis. These were the conditions until the year 1821, when the three-mile journey by road was saved by the opening of a canal between Sheffield and the Don at Tinsley, affording, as was said, "easy accommodation with the coast and London."