of self-interest as well as because of the legal penalties, to refrain from taking abroad their skill and mechanical knowledge. It was proposed by Josiah Wedgwood, whose views were usually more liberal, to enter into a secret arrangement with the government for opening letters of working men in order to secure evidence against them. Writers and inventors sometimes refrained from making detailed descriptions of inventions from fear of furnishing information to foreign rivals. The government was urged to provide proper rewards for inventors in order to remove occasion for their going abroad to seek recognition; and the same motive was prominent in non-governmental efforts to reward inventive activity. Manufacturers closed their plants against visitors, keeping the outer doors locked in order to prevent the entrance of foreign · agents and spies. Mutual warnings were issued by the manufacturers against the approach of suspicious persons. Local and national organizations of manufacturers, then springing up in the new industrial centers, undertook concerted measures

of various kinds.94

But the curiosity of foreigners, instead of abating, seems to have increased as each new obstacle was thrown in the way of its gratification. Foreign manufacturers

1

resorted to expedients beyond number to secure knowledge of English improvements in iron smelting and manufacturing and in pottery making as well as in the cotton industry. They induced English working men and even master manufacturers and capitalists to go abroad. They offered inducements to English inventors as well as artisans to seek their fortunes in other countries. They sent agents to England with letters of introduction, and secured similar letters from prominent Englishmen, by means of which they tried to secure access to English industrial plants; and when this failed, they sent spies who, under various disguises, attempted to secure drawings and first-hand knowledge. They employed draftsmen to copy drawings and specifications from the official patent records. They offered to purchase English goods on condition that samples of the instruments with which the goods were made were sold with the goods. They resorted to various subterfuges to conceal the smuggling of machinery and tools. They spread a knowledge of English inventions such as they were able to secure by means of public exhibits of models (a policy naturally not encouraged by manufacturers themselves, however). They even used public funds for subsidizing manufacturers who succeeded in securing English machines.

The principal countries involved were France, Austria and the Empire, Prussia, Holland, and the United States. But to Englishmen the chief, or at least the most successful, of sinners against their attempted monopoly of their inventions was France. The French early acquired and put into operation the new cotton machinery in particular. Rouen was called by Englishmen "the Manchester of France," and factories there and elsewhere were established and conducted under the supervision of Englishmen. It was reported, too, that the French were profiting by the skill of Englishmen in metal-working. Iron works were established by

Englishmen; and there was a copper-plate factory "for bottoming the king's ships, the whole an English colony.” 95

Englishmen, formerly less advanced than various Continental peoples, had from time to time resorted to similar methods of stealth and subterfuge to obtain foreign inventions, as when the Lombes made theft of the Italian silk-making machinery. In the absence of international patent laws, or of a system for internationalizing inventions, such methods were perhaps inevitable. It was natural, too, that Englishmen, having learned the competitive advantages of their inventions, should seek to preserve them for their own exclusive use. This, it is true, was difficult, and indeed ultimately impossible, but the policy was long pursued, possibly not without temporary advantages. It was modified, to be sure, by a system of licenses, and in 1825 certain pro. hibitions were removed. But as late as 1841 a parliamen. tary committee reported that in respect to spinning and weaving machinery, the original policy had been retained,

*5 Wendeborn, View of England, I, 233-235; Owen, Life, I, 31; Sheffield, Observations on Ireland, 200, 201; Young, Travels in France, 523-530, 553; Corresp. of Wedgwood, 17-19, 104, 105; Wedgwood, Address to the Workmen in the Pottery; Journal and Corresp. of Auckland, I, 516; Complete Investigation of Mr. Eden's Treaty, 80; Manchester Mercury, June 14, July 19, 1785, Sept. 5, Oct. 3, 1786, and passim; Lloyd's Evening Post, XX, 243; Commons Journals, XLVII, 559, 560; Parl. Hist., XXVI, 544, 552; Parliamentary Register, X, 214; Min. of the Evidence, Com. of H. of L., 1785 (on Irish Resolutions), 148, 149, 249, 250; Manchester Misc. Papers, 1784-1791 (MSS.), No. 125; Foreign Office Papers, 27/17, Hailles to Carmarthen, Aug. 25, 1785, 27/18, Dorset to Carmarthen, Apr. 6, 1786; Board of Trade Papers, 6/113, Min. of Mch. 11, 1786, 6/140, Doc. 23, Mitchell to Fraser, Mch. 24, 1788; Letter of Boulton to Watt, June 25, 1787 (on visit of a foreigner to Albion Mill), in Boulton and Watt MSS., Birmingham Free Library; French, Life of Crompton, 191, 192 (2d ed.); Wheeler, Manchester, 171; Meteyard, Life of Wedgwood, II, 551, 552; Axon, Echoes of Old Lancashire, 119-126; Dumas, Étude sur le Traité de Commerce (1786), 70, 152-157; White, Memoir of Samuel Slater, 36, 37, 71, 283-298.

licenses for the export of such machinery never having been granted.96

But while England adopted and long tried to maintain a policy of monopolizing her inventions, the influence of this policy in the establishing of her industrial supremacy was probably slight. A sufficient explanation of her supremacy is found in the advantages of originating and first applying the inventions, under the peculiarly favor

able conditions of a dominant commercial and maritime . position, the possession of immense tributary regions, and

the relative freedom of her people from the quartercentury of war that absorbed the energies and ravaged the industries of the Continent. The attempts of England to maintain her monopoly, and of her rivals to destroy it, are significant because they afford cumulative evidence of the early triumph of the machine in the world of competitive industry.

First Report, and Second Report from the Select Committee on the Laws Affecting the Export of Machinery, 1841, particularly Second Report, iv, xx. See also Report from the Select Committee on the Laws Relating to the Export of Tools and Machinery, 1825, 2-9, 47-51. It is necessary seriously to modify the view expressed by Dean Cunningham that "the policy of endeavoring to retain the advantages of machinery for England alone was mooted, but never very seriously pursued, and it was abandoned in 1825.” (Growth of English Industry and Commerce, II, Pt. II, 609.)

CHAPTER III

THE GREAT INDUSTRIALISTS

1. Origins of the great industrialists

WHEN George III began his reign, in the year 1760, . the productive resources of Britain were dominated by landlords and merchants. Manufacturing was carried on by a multitude of petty manufacturers who retained a large measure of control of the processes, but their raw materials were supplied and their output was controlled for the most part by men who were primarily merchants. The power of the landlords was based upon monopoly of land; the power of the merchants, upon monopoly of trade. The great manufacturers, who, toward the end of the century, rose rapidly to a sense of unity and a position of power, were possessed of neither commercial monopoly nor a monopoly of natural resources. Their origin was in the transition to mechanical production; their economic basis was in the productive and competitive power of machines.

The explanation of their remarkable success in utilizing for their individual aggrandizement the productive and competitive power of machines invented by others and • invented as a result of influences distinctly social in 'character, is to be found in the contemporaneous rise of the spirit of laissez-faire. During the early stages of the organization of mechanical production, the forces of, individualism and private gain prevailed with slight restraint. The latent disadvantages developed somewhat later under the influence of the policy of reaction and

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