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Clydesdale region. "Adventurers without stock or experience," aided by the numerous banks that were springing up, eager to share in the profits of industry, were enabled to contend with “people of capital and established credit,” and manufacturing enterprises increased immensely in numbers, in size, and in extent of country affected. "The numbers of people already engaged in the manufacturing occupations being insufficient, new ones flocked to the different works, from all quarters and all employments, . . . so that there were perhaps few families in the county [Clydesdale) some part of which was not employed in this extensive manufacture.” From England, “all the new machinery necessary for the cotton manufacture were introduced into the county; large quantities of the raw material were imported; and not only all the different kinds of goods formerly made of linen, but imitations of the various manufactures of India (particularly the various muslins, were] formed from that material. The art of dyeing was much improved; and a durable tincture, of various hues, given to cotton. The printing of cloth, too, made great advancement, and large quantities of cotton garments of elegant patterns were executed and exported, with other goods, to the different markets of Europe and America." 76

These bright pictures of the rise of the new industry were not without darker colors. The reports from which the accounts are taken were written during the period of industrial depression accompanying the outbreak of war with France, and the authors contrasted the period of depression with the immediately preceding period of expansion. The point of view was that of the landlords and farmers, who had suffered, so they believed, from high wages and loss of efficient labor due to industrial competition, and who, at the time of the great depression in 1793, were forced to aid the unemployed. This depression was viewed by some, indeed, as the inevitable collapse of an unsound structure. But the structure was soon repaired. The cotton industry, though destined to meet with recurring vicissitudes due to internal causes as well as to external disturbances, was nevertheless able rapidly to recover the ground lost in 1793 and to enter in Scotland as well as in England upon a new stage of expansion.

7o Fullarton, General View, Ayrshire, 79, 80; Naismith, General View, Clydesdale, 74-76.

The concentration and increase of capital, energy, and population in the relatively new industrial centers constituted a triumph of mechanical technique the more significant because it was a victory won not by destructive but by creative forces. These forces could not be measured simply by increase of machine-made commodities. They called forth new enterprise in various fields. They put into productive use incalculable resources and energies hitherto idle or used merely for current consumption. They found expression "in the creation of new capital, in the increase of buildings and machinery, in the improvement of the soil, and in the opening up of new roads and canals.” 77 They increased the demand for farm products and stimulated rural progress, and, though attracting countrymen to the towns, nevertheless increased the population as well as the wealth of country districts, just as emigration from England to the colonies, instead of impoverishing and depopulating England, added to the economic opportunities and therefore ultimately to the wealth and population of England, by creating a colonial demand for English commodities.78 They opened up new sources of revenue, and enabled the government to meet even the financial demands of war and extravagant administration. “The genius of Watt, " Wilson, Letter to William Pitt, 24. ** Howlett, Examination of Dr. Price's Essay, 6, 15, 16, 153.

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Wedgwood, and Arkwright,” it was declared, "has counteracted the expense and folly of the American war.” The vast increase of wealth and revenue observed by William Pitt in 1792 was attributed mainly by him to the same cause.79 "A rude country," a witness of the early changes asserted, “in which the operations of industry are carried on by mere manual labor, said to be a Hydra, with more mouths than hands. In the modern improved state of manufactures and commerce, produced chiefly by machinery, society is a Briareus; it has more hands than mouths.” 80

This multiplied creative power has been obstructed or perverted by war, by excessive or misdirected human passion, by defective sharing of the things created by the modern Briareus, by maladjustment to the rapid changes involved; but its essential beneficence is attested by the fact that its victory has been attended not by a diminution but by an incalculable increase of life-nourishing resources and of life itself.

4. The competitive advance of machine-armed industries

By means of human ingenuity, runs an observation made in 1792, the manufactured commodities of human consumption "can be multiplied to any extent, and by the improvements in mechanism are continually falling in value.” 81 It was because of this simultaneous multiplication of quantity and decline in price that constantly increasing amounts of commodities were consumed. In this way the demands for goods were indefinitely enlarged. The manufacturers who continued to depend on

"Wilson, Letter to William Pitt, 6, 7; Parl. Hist., XXIX, 833 (speech by Pitt); Increase of Manufactures, Commerce and Finance, 99; (Hamilton), Enquiry into the Principles of Taxation, 205-230.

Eden, State of the Poor, I, 443. * Hamilton, Letter to the People of England, 7, 8.

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the old methods suffered the inevitable consequences of seeing their old and relatively static markets, as well as the newly created markets, absorbed by the manufacturers who adopted the new methods. Nor was this competitive force applicable alone to English markets. It extended as far as the territories that owed allegiance to the English crown; as far as English diplomacy could open the way by treaty rights; as far as English merchants could penetrate the innumerable tariff barriers; as far, indeed, as English adventurers could survive the ( perils of smuggling. This irresistible competitive ad

vance of English trade was for eighteenth-century England the culminating triumph of the machine.

The competitive power of machinery in the domestic markets naturally found expression mainly in the textile industries. The more conservative potters, iron-masters, and makers of ironwares were soon outstripped and even forced out of business by those who utilized the technical improvements in their respective industries; and their aggregate importance was slight as compared with the manufacturers of woollens and other textiles who tried to maintain their hold by means of the older methods. The most impressive manifestation of the competitive power of the new machines was the outrivaling of old, established, protected, distinctly national textile industries by the cottons, exotic, laboring against tradition, . monopoly, and various legal disadvantages, and supported only by superiority of method. The principal sufferers were the woollen manufacturers; they were by far the most important, and in most manufacturing centers they were the least progressive.

A factor other than the conservatism of the woollen manufacturers that has been emphasized 82 was the relative difficulty of expansion in the woollen industry as

* For example, by Cunningham, in Growth of English Industry and Commerce, II, Pt. II, 642-649.

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compared with the cotton industry. It is true that woollen goods already occupied most of the field, whereas cotton goods had practically the whole market to conquer from the woollens. It has also been said that there was greater difficulty in securing added supplies of wool, necessary for expansion, than of cotton; but the point seems to have been overemphasized. The adoption of machinery in woollens would undoubtedly on the one hand have held in check the expansion in cottons and on the other hand have stimulated incalculably the expansion in woollens. For machinery in the woollen industry would have created an effective demand for raw wool available in various parts of the world, and would have opened up inexhaustible markets for English-made woollens by stimulating home consumption and by outrivaling foreign manufacturers. Such were exactly the processes by which the cotton industry expanded, securing its raw materials entirely from abroad and conquering markets strongly entrenched. Granting the adoption by the woollen manufacturers of improvements similar to those which transformed the cotton industry, there seems to have been no insuperable obstacle in the way of a phenomenal expansion of their industry.

But there was an insuperable obstacle in the way of their adopting machinery, and that was their own monopoly-bred inertia. It was “the spirit of monopoly," directing the manufacturers to seek advancement "not 'by their own improvement” but “by putting an end as much as possible to the troublesome competition of ... rivals,” that called forth Adam Smith's repeated attacks on the manufacturers. Why is it, asked Arthur Young, that the "invention, intelligence, and exertion" that have given to the cotton manufacturers and others an acknowledged superiority, are not to be found in the woollen industry? It is because the woollen manufacturers have too long been fed on “the sweets of monopoly.” “What

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