Profit by working up wooll.
Poor idle.
Poor get Money if Imployed
I shall now endeavor to give some particular account, but very briefly, of the Profits arising to England, by working up our Wooll into Cloth: every two pounds of Wooll which is worth about twenty pence, will make a yard of Karsey, worth five or six shillings; and every four pounds of Wooll, worth about three shillings four pence, will make a yard of broad-cloth, worth eleven or twelve shillings: so that two thirds, is the least profit, that doth arise by putting our Wool into Manufactures; which doth amount to above 230 pounds sterling profit, in every Tun of Wooll so wrought up, accounting twenty hundred English wait to the Tun; so that if we should suppose, but an hundred Tuns of Wooll transported, out of the Kingdome, in a year to France unwrought, it will amount to 22400 ll. sterling, which is so much clear loss to the Kingdome, and trebble so much profit to France, by their working up three times so much of their own, with ours, as hath been formerly intimated: besides, it is worthy of consideration, that so many of our poor lye idle, and lose their imployment, being ready to perish for want of necessary food, notwithstanding the great plenty in the Land; and no Kingdome hath the like advantages, for the imployment of the poor, in any Trade or occupation (within doors) whatsoever, as we have for the poor in his Majesties dominion of England, about the old and new Drapery: and yet those poor, that had their hands full of work, in one kind or another, according to what they were most accustomed, either by sorting of wooll, mixing, breaking, carding, spinning, spoling, quilling, weaving, making of cards, picking of Tesels, and many other imployments, concerning the working up wooll into cloth, which have kept many thousands of men women and children at work, who knew not how to get a penny another way; but by this way of working, could in some comfortable manner live. When the trade of clothing was driven roundly, one family, that doth not get twelve pence a week now, have then received twelve, fifteen or eighteen shillings a week, which money went round to the Farmer for provision, or to the Shopkeeper for necessaries for their Families, and this again to the Merchant, or to the Landlords, according to each man’s Trade, and correspondence.
So that the profit arising, by the working up of our Wooll into cloth or Stuffs here in England, by our own people is almost unspeakable, and is the great and chief wheel in the Kingdome, to set all others at work, as hath been already in several Trades mentioned, and more do attend upon it, when it is made into cloth, as the Clothworkers, Drawers, Dyers, Fullers, Packers, Merchants and Seamen.
Exporting wooll.
Fall of Rents.
The poors labor profit to the Nation.
But then to enter into the consideration of the contrary, what an unspeakable loss is it to the Kingdome, to have such a Trade fall to decay, and so many thousands of poor must of necessity be multiplyed in the Land, which must beg, steal or starve, for want of imployment. But what think you if three or four hundred Tuns of Wooll in a year be exported out of the Kingdome (for so I have been informed) what a stroke doth that give, to the beating down of our Trade in England, and what a vast loss comes thereby to the Kingdome; and may we not justly be induced to believe, that the decay of our Trade in this respect, doth occasion the fall of the rents of Lands in the Countrey, and houses in the City of London and else where; so that the Nobility, and Gentry of the Kingdome, have a sensible feeling of the decay of this Trade of clothing, for all that the poor do get for their labour about this Imployment, goes from them again to others, as hath been already intimated, and so the money goeth round according to its figure, and passeth from one to another, according as one trade hath dependance upon another.
Fullers Earth carried out of the Land.