The Napoleonic War thus becomes the dominant factor in the social and economic history of the later Industrial Revolution period. Owing to its occurrence, the economic movement in this country was distorted, and the increased power of production, instead of improving the material welfare of the community, had to be devoted to the prosecution of the war; social development was thwarted and thrown back; and the relationships between employers and workpeople, with which the latter, in the middle of the eighteenth century, in Lancashire, had shown their dissatisfaction and were striving through combination to modify, were continued and solidified, and left as a heritage to the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries.

In view of the growth and activity of trade unions during the eighteenth century, is it too much to say that, had not the war broken out, and had they been allowed to develop as they certainly were developing, problems of industrial relationships which have yet to be solved would have been faced a century ago, and possibly solutions found which would have meant that the present system would have been a considerable modification on that which now exists? However this may be, it may be said that the social retrogression and evils which mark the Industrial Revolution period are only in a very secondary sense to be attributed to the economic movement: the primary cause is to be found in the war in which the country was engaged.

CHAPTER VI
CONCERNING THE AFFAIRS OF SAMUEL CROMPTON

It now remains to follow the fortunes of Samuel Crompton to the time when he wrote the following letters. Some time before 1785 he left Hall-i’-th’-Wood and went to live at Oldhams, in the township of Sharples, about three miles north of Bolton, where he combined the business of a small farmer with that of a spinner.[445]

During his residence at this place, Robert Peel is said to have visited him with the object of persuading him to enter his employment, or even to become a partner with him. French suggests that the main reason for Crompton’s refusal was a dislike of Peel, which was maintained to the end of his life. This may have been the case, of course, but his references to Sir Robert (as he then was) in the following letters do not betray any animosity, and Peel certainly appears to have exerted himself on his behalf.[446] In the last year of his residence at Oldhams, Crompton occupied the office of overseer of the poor for the township of Sharples, a fact in which there is nothing surprising. Crompton can only be regarded as a working man, but that he had fully utilised his limited opportunities of education, his letters and other attainments show.[447]

In 1791 he removed to a house in King Street, Bolton, where in the attics, and in those of the two adjoining houses, he carried on his spinning business, in which he was assisted by two of his sons. One of the strongest proofs that Crompton was not a man of business is that, at this time, he did not establish himself as a successful spinner, as did others with whom he was acquainted. It can hardly have been lack of capital which prevented him, for he must have possessed as much as his friend John Kennedy, who, in this very year, began in business with James M‘Connel, and it is known that between them they only raised £250.[448]

The next interesting event in Crompton’s career, so far as the following letters are concerned, occurred in 1802-1803, and, as regards this event, French stands in need of considerable correction. He informs us that “In 1800 some gentlemen of Manchester, sensible that Mr. Crompton had been ill used and neglected, agreed without his previous knowledge to promote a subscription on such a scale as would result in a substantial reward for his labours, a provision for his family, and a sufficient security for his comfort during life. The principal promoters of this scheme were Mr. George Lee and Mr. Kennedy.”[449]

As a matter of fact, this subscription was only in its initial stages at the very end of 1802, and, as Crompton states, must have just got under way[450] when the war broke out again in May, 1803, after a short pause of little more than eighteen months. Further, if French’s suggestion is that Crompton did not know of the subscription until after it was launched, the necessary correction is supplied in one of the letters, in which we see that Crompton himself was active in striving to make it a success.[451]

As a consequence of French’s imperfect knowledge of the exact time of the subscription, the explanation which he offers of the comparatively small sum raised is clearly wide of the mark: “But this hopeful scheme, generous and noble in its intention, followed the usual course of Crompton’s evil fortune. Before it could be carried out the country was suffering from a failure in the crops and consequent high price of food, a lamentable war broke out, the horrors of the French Revolution approached their crisis, trade was all but extinguished—and the result was a sum quite inadequate to the proposed purpose or to his deserts.”[452]

It is true that the year 1800 was a terrible year, with high food prices, as was the greater part of the next year, but before the end food prices had fallen considerably, and the cotton trade was entering upon somewhat of a boom, the spinning branch was increasing, and in the following summer a large number of new factories were erected in Manchester.[453] Thus the time could not have been more propitious for the promotion of the subscription, and it is more than probable that a far larger sum than the £300 to £400 which Crompton mentions would have been raised had not, as he says, the war broken out again.