IMPROVING CONDITIONS.
The Act of Union was exceedingly unpopular, but, as it turned out, it was not an unmixed evil, for it placed Scottish traders on the same footing as the English in respect to trading with the Colonies, from which they had been debarred for fifty years. It also gave Scottish ships free entry to English ports and Scottish goods free entry to English markets, and so marked the beginning of the increasing prosperity which has come to Scotland since then.
In particular the opening up of trade with the Southern Colonies had much to do with laying the foundation of the proud commercial position which Glasgow holds to-day. Merchants from the little town on the banks of the Clyde began to trade with these Colonies, bringing back in exchange for their wares tobacco and other products, including cotton. During the same period there was introduced from Holland the art of fine spinning, and on these two articles of Colonial produce—tobacco and cotton—were built up many fortunes. Later in the century the invention of the spinning jenny, the carding frame, and the power-loom, and the discovery by Watt of how to harness the power of steam to production all gave an impetus to the commercial growth of Scotland. With the application of the power of steam the foundation of Scotland’s pre-eminent position in the manufacture of iron and steel and in the building of ships was laid, for by the application of steam-power to pumping machinery and to haulage it was found possible to keep her coal pits free from water and to dig vertical shafts to the coal seams.
Thus the eighteenth century, which had begun with the Scottish people in the direst poverty, ended with many of them in comparative comfort and with the standard of living for all definitely raised. Never since then, not even in the period of deep poverty which followed the close of the Napoleonic war nor in the “hungry ’forties,” have the whole people fallen back into the depths of misery in which they were sunk at the beginning and all through the seventeenth century and well into the “’twenties” of the eighteenth. At times since then progress seemed to be at a standstill; at times it seemed even to be on the down grade; but the impetus has always been recovered; the standard of living has been rising gradually, and although we are still far removed from the rude profusion which has caused the century in English history which followed the “Black Death” to be spoken of as “the golden age of labour,” the trend of our march is in the direction of a condition which, measured by the different standards of to-day, will approximate to that long past happy period.
THE FACTORY SYSTEM.
While it is admitted that the inventions and discoveries of Sir Joseph Arkwright (partner of David Dale at Lanark), Hargreaves, Crompton, and Cartwright revolutionised industry, and in the long run brought a higher standard of living to the people, yet the first results of their application were not wholly good. For centuries spinning and weaving had been carried on in the homes of the people, but with the invention of the spinning jenny, the carding frame, and the power-loom the weaving industry was removed to larger buildings. At first these were merely makeshifts. A disused stable or cowshed, any building, in fact, which would house a number of looms was good enough for the new industry. The hand-loom weavers soon found that they were unable to compete with the new methods. To make matters worse, where they did not themselves give up and take service under the new regime, their wives and their children did, and became competitors in driving the husbands and fathers out of the industry.
Soon the millowners discovered that in the new methods with the new cheap labour there was a mine of wealth and, their greed growing by what it fed on, they sought for even cheaper labour than that of the poorly paid wage-slave women and children. This cheaper labour they found in the thousands of pauper children under the care of the supervisors of the poor. The story of the cruel treatment of these poor little mites, who were often chained to the frames of the looms and whipped to keep them awake, is one of the blackest pages in the whole history of the growth of the capitalist system in Great Britain.
In the weaving trades the entry of women and children changed the whole economy of the weavers’ homes. Formerly the work had been done by the male members of the families, assisted to some extent by the women, but under the new system the factory owner found that he could get as much work done by the mother at a considerable reduction on the wages paid to her husband, and so the husband found himself workless. Then it was found that the children soon became as expert as their elders, and so a further reduction in wages took place.
The net result was that it became a case of equal pay for equal work, but the standard of pay was that of the women and not of the men, and soon the whole family had to work to provide the necessaries of life for the home which should have been provided by the wages of the husband alone. Even to-day, while the women of the cotton mills who are members of their unions are probably the best paid female workers in the country, the standard for men is much below that for male workers in other trades; so that, in the case of the factory workers, “equal pay for equal work” has meant a general lowering of the standard of pay.