The early English cotton industry

by George W. Daniels

The pack-horse method of carriage was not peculiar to Manchester trade, but obtained generally. The system of travelling merchants was, however, especially characteristic of the Lancashire and Yorkshire cloth area, and these merchants were known as “Manchester men.”[202] In view of the fact that they were frequently men of considerable wealth, it is easy to understand why they disliked being regarded as hawkers and pedlars subject to duties on account of their particular kind of trade. From Leeds these “‘Manchester men’ used to go with Droves of Pack-horses loaden with ... goods to all the fairs and Market-towns almost all over the Island, not to sell by Retale, but to the shops by Wholesale, giving large credit. It was ordinary for one of these men to carry a thousand pounds worth of Cloth with him at a Time; and, having sold that, to send his Horses back for as much more; and this very often in a Summer.”[203] In all probability the description is generally true of Manchester in the early eighteenth century. But, at this time, the public carrier was beginning to displace the pack-horse,[204] and consequent upon his emergence, the particular class of merchants referred to ceased to travel with their goods, instead, they carried patterns and solicited orders, and afterwards dispatched the goods by the carriers. Thus there arose a class of men known as “riders-out,” and after the middle of the century advertisements for them become very frequent in The Manchester Mercury. “It was during the forty years from 1730 to 1770 that (Manchester) trade was greatly pushed by sending these riders all over the kingdom.”[205]

But this system could not develop fully until improvements in communications had been effected. So far as Lancashire was concerned, a start was made in 1720 with the Mersey and Irwell Navigation Act, though the contemplated scheme for a navigable waterway between Manchester and Liverpool was not completed until nearly twenty years later.[206] In the early fifties, road improvements were attracting much attention in Manchester, and the next twenty years witnessed a great advance in this direction in all parts of the country.[207] This development in road communication was accompanied by further development in water communication, the Act for the construction of the canal from Worsley to Manchester in 1759 marking a new starting-point. In 1762 the Act was passed for the canal from Manchester to Runcorn, where it joined the Mersey to Liverpool, and when it was completed the two towns were doubly linked by the old and the new navigations. The extent to which Manchester was connected with the rest of the country by road in 1772 may be seen from the number and the destination of the regular carriers in the town at that time.[208]

With these developments the system of travelling about the country with goods, although it had changed its character somewhat, had not lost its importance, nor did it lose it for a long time. It was carried on by “petty chapmen,” and it was to such men that the terms hawkers and pedlars now applied. In the eighties of the eighteenth century a controversy arose, or rather one that had been simmering through the century reached the boiling point, which shows that men, thus designated, were still of great importance in inland trade.

As a result of the Seven Years’ War, and the American War of Independence,[209] the country was faced with a financial crisis out of which the egregious “Sinking Fund” emerged, and many new taxes were levied to raise the required revenue. None raised such opposition in Manchester as the “fustian-tax” and the successful efforts to obtain its repeal were celebrated by an annual dinner for many years afterwards.[210] But the agitation against this tax was local, compared with that which arose in 1785 in connection with a tax on shops, and a proposal to repeal the licences of hawkers and pedlars, which was intended to make the shop-tax palatable. The proposal was carried into effect to the extent that additional duties were levied on hawkers and pedlars and their trade was regulated.

Before the proposal had taken the form of a Bill the manufacturers of Manchester entered a vigorous protest against it, as they did on other occasions after the Bill had become an Act.[211] For four years petitions and counter-petitions rained upon the House of Commons from all parts of the country, occupying a considerable portion of its Journals until 1789, when the shop-tax was repealed, and the Act relating to hawkers and pedlars amended.[212] The chief arguments of the shopkeepers against the itinerant tradesmen do not require recapitulation as they are still vigorously maintained. The minor arguments, that they dealt in smuggled and stolen goods and that they corrupted the minds and morals of the younger part of the community, may be attributed to the shopkeepers’ zeal in controversy.[213] What the hawkers and pedlars—or petty chapmen—did, in fact, was to perform the useful function of linking up the country districts with the manufacturing and trading centres. In the first Manchester petition the chapmen were described as carrying goods from house to house in the country villages and districts remote from towns. It also referred to their great number in Lancashire, Staffordshire, Derbyshire, Yorkshire and Cheshire, and stated that their purchases were more considerable than had been apprehended, which no doubt was true. The manufacturers of Glasgow attributed to the chapmen no small part in the extension of manufactures in England and Scotland, through their introducing goods into places where otherwise they would not have been sent.[214] The best witness to their importance at this time is the multitude of petitions presented in their favour from the manufacturers and traders in every considerable town.

From these petitions the organisation of the trade can be clearly visualised. The custom was for the chapmen to obtain their goods from manufacturers and traders on credit, and then to sell them on credit. In this way a considerable amount of capital was used in the trade. The hawkers and pedlars of Halifax and neighbourhood asserted that they had outstanding debts to the amount of £40,000, and that they again were indebted for large sums to merchants and manufacturers in London, Glasgow, Manchester, Leicester, Nottingham, Carlisle, etc.[215] But there were also capitalist traders in some parts of the country who, apparently, were solely engaged in supplying the chapmen with goods on credit.

This appears to have been the case with a member of “The Society of Travelling Scotchmen of Bridgnorth” who claimed to have £5000 employed in the trade.[216] His method was to buy goods from manufacturers in different parts of Great Britain and Ireland, and to supply them to the chapmen on credit, and, at the time, he had £3000 owing to him, while they had £1500 owing to them. Two members of a similar society at Shrewsbury, who pursued the same method, claimed to have £20,000 in the trade, with outstanding debts to the amount of £16,000, while the chapmen whom they supplied were in a similar position to the amount of £10,000.[217] Even allowing for some exaggeration in the petitions, there can be little doubt of the importance of the trade thus carried on at this time.[218] Possibly it was of more importance than some branches of trade of a more spectacular character, which, for that reason, often attract more attention.

In the preceding chapter it has been shown that a textile manufacture, which could be called a cotton manufacture, had become established in Lancashire certainly by the beginning of the seventeenth century. From what has been said so far, it will be apparent that the manufacture was by no means in a state of stagnation during the century and a half before 1770. Economically and politically, the period was a favourable one for development. The turmoil of the seventeenth century had an economic as well as a political significance. It marks the time when the opportunist regulations of industry and commerce, which are sometimes regarded as constituting part of a positive policy to further the welfare of the national community, definitely failed, notwithstanding much futile effort which continued into the next century.[219]

Consequently, the cotton manufacture was comparatively unhampered by such regulations, and it is not surprising that, particularly from the early years of the eighteenth century, development was taking place in all directions. Quite apart from the remarkable inventions of machinery and the discovery of a new source of power, it is more than probable that the latter years of the century would have witnessed considerable changes. Before these events, the developments in industrial and commercial organisation, and in communications, pointed to the fact that a wider economy was emerging. It was in such conditions that a new cotton manufacture made its appearance in Lancashire.

ANALYSIS OF CERTAIN TRADES IN MANCHESTER IN 1772