To complete this brief account of the organisation of the Lancashire textile industry before the coming of the factory and the rise of the new cotton manufacture, it is necessary to say something of the ways in which the manufacturers were connected with their workpeople, and also of their connections with the markets for raw materials and for finished products.
As regards the first point, it must be borne in mind that, while Manchester was the centre where the greater number of manufacturers were situated, a large number, particularly in the fustian branch, lived in the surrounding smaller towns and country districts. A glance at the following tables and the accompanying map will show that the country fustian manufacturers formed an outer semicircle of Manchester, with three outstanding points at Leigh, Bolton and Oldham. The country check-makers formed an inner circle, while the crofters (bleachers) were distributed in another circle, with a tendency to concentrate in the neighbourhood of the town.
Owing to this distribution of manufacturers, it is evident that most of the workpeople would be within easy reach of an employer, and probably the most usual thing was for them to fetch their materials from his house, or warehouse, and after working upon them, to return the product. The smaller manufacturers no doubt performed the “putting-out” function themselves, but the larger manufacturers employed men for this purpose, as the frequent advertisements for “putters-out” show. Also we can gather from the same source that in some cases “putters-out” for the town manufacturers lived in the country, and that country manufacturers sometimes worked on commission for men in the towns.[181] That some of the manufacturers were men of considerable wealth may be surmised from the frequent mention of their marriages into prominent families, and to ladies possessing “genteel fortunes.” In this way it is not unlikely that much capital found its way into the Lancashire textile industry, and proved useful in enabling the manufacturers to extend their concerns.[182]
In the seventeenth and the early eighteenth centuries, as at the present day, little of the raw material used in the Lancashire textile industry was produced in the county; one way in which wool reached the worsted manufacturers is given in a quotation below.[183] But more important than wool were linen-yarn and cotton. Until the West Indian colonies and South America became important sources of the supply of cotton, it was chiefly imported through London, indeed it was not until cotton-growing had developed in the United States that London lost its position to Liverpool as the chief port of entry.[184] Early in the eighteenth century, however, much was imported by Liverpool merchants, and it was also imported through Whitehaven and Lancaster, both these ports having an important trade with the West Indies in the eighteenth century and into the nineteenth.[185]
Of the linen-yarn used, some was spun in this country, and Scotland also contributed to the supply, and, as already noticed, in the reign of Henry VIII., merchants from Ireland carried on a trade in linen-yarn with Manchester, which they sold to the inhabitants on credit.[186] In the eighteenth century, that country with the Continental towns of Hamburg, Bremen, Dantzig, and Königsberg had become the important sources of supply, so far as the Manchester district was concerned, where English and Scotch yarn were little used.[187] The finest quality was Irish web-yarn, which was used in the Blackburn manufacture, Drogheda yarn and Sligo yarn occupying the second and third places, with Hamburg and Bremen yarn as substitutes; fine Sligo yarn was also used as weft for African goods and for handkerchiefs.[188] The yarn from Dantzig and Königsberg (known as Ermland yarn from the bishopric of Ermland) was used in the manufacture of sheeting, and this yarn and Derry tow yarn were also made into checks and other goods for exportation.[189]
Both cotton and yarn reached the manufacturers through cotton merchants and yarn merchants, of whom there were many in Manchester.[190] Trading connections with Germany were maintained through travellers who sought orders from Manchester merchants and manufacturers, and German houses had branches in the town; also, Manchester tradesmen went to Germany themselves.[191] In addition, both cotton and yarn were sold by Manchester shopkeepers, who advertised these commodities along with such incongruous articles of merchandise as Dr. Daffey’s elixir, Anderson’s pills, tea, toys, jewellery, fiddle-strings, etc.[192]
As the raw materials reached the manufacturers through Manchester merchants, so did the finished products reach their markets.[193] In the case of the Chethams at the beginning of the seventeenth century, as we have seen, one part of their establishment was in Manchester and the other in London, and the same system was in vogue with firms in the eighteenth century. The Chethams appear to have confined themselves to home trade, mainly to that with the London market, although they had dealings with Irish manufacturers and sent goods to the Irish markets.[194] In the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries, however, Manchester goods were exported to foreign countries, and during the first part of the next century considerable progress appears to have been made particularly in trade to the British Plantations.[195]
The statement of Aikin that in the first decades of the eighteenth century the trade was carried on through wholesale dealers at London, Bristol, and other ports, is probably correct, and there is also evidence of the accuracy of his later statement that, during the twenty or thirty years before he wrote (1795), “the increase of foreign trade has caused many of the Manchester manufacturers to travel abroad, and agents and partners to be fixed for a considerable time on the continent, as well as foreigners to reside in Manchester.”[196] The fact that, in 1770, a group of Manchester merchants were sufficiently interested in the effects of a destructive fire at Antigua Island to open a subscription for the relief of the sufferers, suggests important trading connections with the West Indies, and in considering how these connections were maintained, an announcement in the previous year of the death of a Manchester merchant at Jamaica is significant.[197]
As already noticed, cotton goods were manufactured for the African trade about the middle of the eighteenth century, and Guest informs us that about that time fustians began to be exported in considerable quantities to Italy, Germany and North America.[198] Writing of the time prior to the great changes in the cotton industry, Radcliffe states that the Manchester manufacturing merchants either themselves, or through merchants at London, Bristol, or Hull, carried on a large trade with the Levant, sending goods as “adventures” to the fairs of Asiatic Turkey which afterwards reached the markets in the interior of Asia. But, according to Radcliffe, the most important trade, particularly in fustians, “the old staple, by which these manufacturing merchants were raised to their princely rank,” was that with the North of China, carried on through Russia, a portion being “sent up the Black Sea, or overland from Smyrna by the Turkey Company,” and “another portion found its way, in modern times, through Leipsic to Moscow, and down the Volga to the Caspian Sea.”[199]
An indication of how Manchester goods were distributed about the country at the beginning of the eighteenth century is given in two petitions presented to the House of Commons from some of the inhabitants of Manchester and Stockport in 1704.[200] The petitioners protested against their being regarded as hawkers and pedlars under an Act passed a few years previously, whereas in reality they were wholesale dealers who distributed goods to many parts of the kingdom by means of horse carriage. Aikin’s account of the position at this time supplements their statement: “When the Manchester trade began to extend, the chapmen used to keep gangs of pack-horses, and accompany them to the principal towns with goods in packs, which they opened and sold to shopkeepers, lodging what was unsold in small stores at the inns. The pack-horses brought back sheep’s wool which was bought on the journey and sold to the makers of worsted yarn at Manchester, or to the clothiers at Rochdale, Saddleworth, and the West Riding of Yorkshire.”[201]