and small-ware industries. Subscriptions were solicited from citizens of the town for "securing and maintaining its manufactures." About seventeen months later (on December 10, 1782), the committee reported that it had met more than thirty times and had carried on varied activities. From this report, it appears that the purposes of the organization included taking steps to oppose the patent system, particularly in the case of Arkwright's patents, and to devise other methods of encouraging and rewarding inventors; to secure the repeal of restrictions on the use of cotton goods; to obtain larger and cheaper supplies of raw materials by modifications of restrictions on imports; to facilitate the punishment of buyers and receivers of stolen goods; to aid employers in their dealings with employees, by preventing alleged abuses and sabotage, checking emigration of workmen abroad, and fighting combinations of workers; and to bring the manufacturers into more effective relations with other industrial centers and with public officials.87

It is apparent, therefore, that the organization and objects of the committee put it distinctly in the category of modern business men's associations. Furthermore, there were organizations for special branches of industry, as the fustian manufacturers, the dyers and crofters, and the calico manufacturers and printers. These special committees, however, gave evidence of the difficulties of maintaining a general and harmonious organization at Manchester. The city's industries early developed a diversity of interests as well as an excess of individualism and ambition accompanied by frequent controversies.

37

Owen MSS., LXXX, 3, 4; Manchester Misc. Papers, 1784-1791 (MSS.), 149, 149a; Manchester Mercury, June 23, 1781, April 20, May 11, Sept. 21, Oct. 5, Dec. 14, 1784, and passim; Commons Journals, XXXVII, 773, XXXIX, 250, 455. See also Daniels, Early English Cotton Industry, 100, 101; Chapman, Lancashire Cotton Industry, 206; Helm, Chapters in the History of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce (extremely deficient as to the earlier organizations).

There is a curious document in the national archives which picturesquely illustrates this tendency. In 1788 the calico and muslin manufacturers and printers sought the aid of the government against the competition of the East India Company. This aroused the jealousy and hostility of the fustian manufacturers, whose stronger competitive position in the markets perhaps accounts for their more rapid advance toward ideas of economic liberalism.38 At a meeting of both groups, “Mr. Thomas Walker (fond of popularity) took the lead,” we are told, "and speeched away for the fustian makers; Mr. Robert Peel and others for the printers; at last they were so warm that Mr. Lawrence Peel and Mr. Walker collared each other, and all was violence." 39 But the eruptive tendencies were at least occasionally quieted by the pressure of a common external danger, and after 1794 a continuous and more or less general organization was maintained.

Birmingham, following the example set by Manchester, organized a "general commercial committee” in 1783. The occasion for its formation was furnished by the proposed repeal of the laws against the exportation of brass. This committee gave such satisfaction to its constituents that at a public meeting presided over by “one of the leading manufacturers,” it was “resolved that it is the sense of this meeting that it is highly expedient to establish a standing General Commercial Committee for the purpose of watching over and conducting the public interest of this town and neighborhood.” It might be inferred, from their own statement of their purpose, that they intended to assume the functions of the town government. Their activities in their organized capacity were to be sure more modest, but the characteristic and perhaps naïve way in which they identified their own group interests with the interests of the entire community is not without significance. The work of the committee was so similar to that of the Manchester Committee, already described, that further details are unnecessary.

5. The early history of the General Chamber of

Manufacturers

In these and other local organizations there was at first no clear distinction between merchants and manufacturers. But circumstances arose in 1785 which led to a differentiation and to the formation by the manufacturers of a national organization—the General Chamber of Manufacturers of Great Britain. Their individualistic tendencies, and the diversities among them, raised up serious obstacles, and the stimulus necessary for organized unity was the desire to ward off what were believed to be common dangers. These dangers, which the manufacturers persuaded themselves were threatening them with ruin, were the tax laws and the Irish policies of the government of William Pitt. United by common opposition, they utilized their organization successfully for the defeat of the policies in question. The first triumph of union was the repeal of the cotton tax of 1784.

Among the urgent and difficult problems confronting the youthful Pitt when the magic of his father's name and his own ambition elevated him to the premiership in 1783 was the reorganization of finance. As a part of his fiscal policy, he secured the enactment in 1784 of a new excise by which the taxes on dyed stuffs of cotton and linen mixed or of cotton were considerably increased. Bleachers and dyers were required to purchase licenses. The taxes were to be collected by special excise commissioners. Manufacturers were required, under heavy penalties, to give detailed information concerning their utensils and methods; excisemen might enter a plant day or night to secure information, and any obstruction offered subjected the manufacturer to a fine of £200. Requirements as to marking the cloth at different stages of the manufacture for identification by the excisemen were rendered obsolete, it was claimed, by changes in technique. Counterfeiting of the exciseman's stamps was punishable by death; and the seller of goods marked in counterfeit incurred the double penalty of a fine of £100 and two hours in the pillory. Arrears of taxes might be collected by confiscating the machin

ery. 41

The administrative features of the law, minute and inquisitorial, were similar to those of earlier excise laws. These older methods were no longer applicable to the more complicated and advanced technique of manufacturing then being introduced, nor did the government in attempting to utilize them take into account the fact that many of the manufacturers, in wealth and influence, were far superior even as early as 1784 to those of former generations. The government of William Pitt, like political governments generally, responded slowly to eco

" 24 Geo. III, c. 40; Baines, History of the Cotton Manufacture, 279-281. Dowell's History of Taxation contains (IV, 343, ff.) a brief summary of early laws as well as a discussion of the law of 1784. See also Wright, Address to Parliament on the Late Tax Laid on Fustian and Other Cotton Goods, an exhaustive though somewhat biased analysis, and Percival, Short View of the Grounds and Limits of the Obligation to Pay Taxes.

nomic changes, and the old system of excise, once looked upon as a natural and unavoidable part of fiscal policy and public control, was now considered by the manufacturers to be so meddlesome and mischievous as to be intolerable. Nor were they slow to inform the government as to their sentiments.

The new excise (called the fustian tax because it applied primarily to the various fabrics known as fustians 42) aroused the united opposition of the cotton interests, led by the fustian manufacturers, who appointed a special committee to go to London for the purpose of conducting negotiations with the government. An appeal for funds in August of 1784 soon resulted in 350 subscriptions in support of the committee's work. The dyers and bleachers voted to shut down their plants till parliament should grant relief, but this threat of direct action (to use more recent terminology) was vigorously opposed by the fustian manufacturers, who favored “constitutional” methods in place of attempts "to inflame the minds of the public," and who began to erect dyeing plants of their own.

At Glasgow, similar opposition developed, subscriptions were raised, and decision was made "to join the powerful opposition at present forming in Lancashire and elsewhere." Nor was the movement confined to the cotton men. Others, taking alarm, and fearing an extension of new excises, joined the forces of opposition. The iron founders and manufacturers of the counties of Salop, Worcester, Stafford, and Warwick, at their quarterly meeting at Stourbridge, January 7, 1785, passed vigorous

The term fustian comprehended a large variety of fabrics. See Board of Trade Papers, 6/112, two documents endorsed "Dyed fustians R/30th May 1786 from Mr. Hilton," and "White fustians R/30th May 1786 from Mr. Hilton," the former containing samples of twentyfour types, including velvets, denims, satinettes, etc., and the latter containing samples of twenty-three types, in plain and figured weaves, including muslinettes, sateens, etc.