English Economic History: Select Documents

by Unknown

Bibliographies are given by Cunningham, op. cit., Part II; Unwin, op. cit.; Mantoux, op. cit.; Social England; Hutchins and Harrison, History of Factory Legislation; Webb, op. cit.; Cambridge Modern History, Vol. X.

Contemporary.—(1) The chief printed documentary evidence is to be found in the numerous reports of Committees and Commissions. For children's employment see the following Reports: on the State of Children in Manufactories, 1816 (III); on the Bill to regulate the labour of Children, 1832; on Children in Factories, 1833 (XX and XXI); on Children in Mines and Manufactories, 1842 (XV, XVI, XVII); on Children's Employment, 1843 (XII-XV). On conditions of wages and employment see Reports on Petitions; of Framework Knitters, 1778-1779; of Woolcombers, 1794; of Calico Printers, 1804 (V) and 1806 (III); of Hand-loom Weavers: 1834 (X) and 1835 (XIII), 1839 (XIII) and 1840 (XXII and XXIV); also Reports on the Apprenticeship Laws, 1813 (IV); on the Woollen Manufacture, 1806 (III); on Silk and Ribbon Weavers, 1818 (X). The organisation of the Coal Industry is described in Reports on the Coal Trade. See also the Letter Books of Holroyd and Hill (ed. Heaton, Halifax Bankfield Museum Notes, Series II, No. 3).

(2) Contemporary literary evidence for the earlier part of the period is to be found in Defoe, A Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain, and The Complete English Tradesman; Smith, Memoirs of Wool (a collection); Young, Tour through the North of England, gives a brief survey of the Country in 1770. The changes in industrial methods are described in W. Radcliffe, Origin of the New System of Manufacture, commonly called Power-loom Weaving, Memoir of Edmund Cartwright, and Histories of the Cotton Manufactures by Ure and Baines. Life under the new conditions is described by Gaskell, The Manufacturing Population, and Artizans and Machinery, and Owen, Observations on the Manufacturing System. See also G. Dyer, The Complaints of the Poor People of England; C. Hall, The Effects of Civilisation; J. Brown, Memoir of Robert Blincoe (a child factory-worker); and, for public health, Kay, Moral and Physical Condition of the Working Classes; Richardson, The Health of Nations (Chadwick's writings); Reports 1800 (X) and 1830 (VII); Sanitary Conditions in large towns are described in Reports on Health of Towns, 1840 (XI) and 1845 (XVIII), and on Sanitary Conditions, 1844 (XVII).

1. Defoe's Account of the West Riding Cloth Industry [D. Defoe, A Tour Through Great Britain, Vol. III, pp. 144-146, Ed. 1769], 1724.

From Blackstone Edge to Halifax is eight miles; and all the way, except from Sowerby to Halifax, is thus up hill and down; so that, I suppose, we mounted up to the clouds, and descended to the water-level, about eight times in that little part of the journey.

But now I must observe to you, that after we passed the second hill, and were come down into the valley again; and so still the nearer we came to Halifax, we found the houses thicker, and the villages greater in every bottom; and not only so, but the sides of the hills, which were very steep every way were spread with houses; for the land being divided into small inclosures, from two acres to six or seven each, seldom more, every three or four pieces of land had an house belonging to them.

In short, after we had mounted the third hill we found the country one continued village, though every way mountainous, hardly an house standing out of a speaking distance from another; and as the day cleared up, we could see at every house a tenter, and on almost every tenter a piece of cloth, kersie, or shalloon; which are the three articles of this country's labour.

In the course of our road among the houses, we found at every one of them a little rill or gutter of running water; if the house was above the road, it came from it, and crossed the way to run to another; if the house was below us, it crossed us from some other distant house above it; and at every considerable house was a manufactory; which not being able to be carried on without water, these little streams were so parted and guided by gutters or pipes, that not one of the houses wanted its necessary appendage of a rivulet.

Again, as the dyeing-houses, scouring-shops, and places where they use this water, emit it tinged with the drugs of the dyeing vat, and with the oil, the soap, the tallow, and other ingredients used by the clothiers in dressing and scouring, etc., the lands through which it passes, which otherwise would be exceeding barren, are enriched by it to a degree beyond imagination.