ing the closing decades of the eighteenth century, to the reorganization of economic society.38

Unlike the changes in iron and coal, the contemporaneous transformation of pottery making had no vital connection with other industries. Its main distinctive contribution was in developing the artistic side of manufacturing; and its esthetic influence on other industries was

negligible. But pottery making was of great importance - in itself: by means of improved processes and formulas

it developed into a leading branch of English industry; and its rise involved a reorganization of economic society characteristic of modern large-scale enterprises. In technical progress, in volume of business, in concentration of capital and labor, and in the newly acquired wealth and influence of its leading representatives, it became one of the three principal modern-type manufacturing indus'tries which emerged immediately out of the era of invention. Though intrinsically less important than either of the other two,—the cotton and the iron and ironwares industries,-pottery making, on account largely of the active genius of Josiah Wedgwood, acquired at times an equal and even a superior influence.

In each of these groups of industries,-cottons, iron and ironwares, pottery,—the new technique and organization gained ascendancy by the time of the wars with the French revolutionists; and by virtue of their new methods, these industries by that time acquired a dominating, decisive influence in the industrial life of the country. The superiority of the new system was so obvious, and the position of these transformed industries was so commanding, that the rapid transition from the old to the new in other branches of industry was assured. The decisive period, therefore, in the revolutionizing of industry, was the generation preceding the French wars. * See below, pp. 98-100.

3. The creative powers of the new technique

In seeking the causes of interest in mechanical im/ provements, we found that new methods of production were needed because old methods were failing to produce enough goods to meet increasing demands. The new instruments of production, when devised, became the means not only of increasing the supply of consumption goods but of controlling the fluid wealth of the country, of attracting it through various channels into the regions and industries where improved methods were in vogue, and of converting it in large part into industrial capital. As the end of the century drew near, the triumph of the machine became more and more apparent in the shifting :of capital and also of energy and population into the newer industrial centers. Among these centers the most prominent were Birmingham, the Staffordshire potteries, and Manchester with its satellite towns. But there should also be included the forges and foundries particularly of Shropshire, the more progressive woollen manufacturing towns of Yorkshire, the cotton industries of Glasgow and Paisley, the port of Liverpool, and midland and north-country collieries.

There was a certain tendency, it is true, for capital to flow into these regions, particularly the cloth-making centers of Lancashire and the West Riding of Yorkshire, long before the era of invention. There was also in the

. north a readier flow of capital from industry to industry than in the country generally. This was due in part to the relative freedom of these regions from monopolistic restrictions such as were generally imposed by the chartered towns, the gilds, and the commercial companies. 39 By the time of the transition from primitive to modern

methods of production in the midlands and the north, the removal of restrictions on the flow of capital had become more general throughout the country, and conditions therefore were favorable for the unprecedented mobility of capital when subjected to the attractive forces of the technical innovations in those regions.

Manufactures “are leaving the southern counties and 'traveling to the north,” wrote Joseph Townsend in 1786; and hiş observation was confirmed by many of his contemporaries, but by none more vividly than by Arthur Young, who stated in 1793 that “all the activity and • industry in this kingdom is fast concentrating in the northern industrial regions, and that the whole kingdom is seeking “as immediate a connection with coals and manufactures, by means of inland navigation, as possible.” 40

The wealth and energy already in those regions, but previously devoted largely to agriculture, were now, by “the prospect of a quicker return and greater gain,' diverted in considerable part into industrial enterprises. It was asserted in 1792 that in the Lancashire region "the whole stock of hands, money, and intellectual abilities (in all of which powers this part of the country does greatly abound) are employed in working up iron, flax, hemp, and cotton, and in the matters immediately connected with them; and only the dregs and inefficient scraps are employed on the lands.” Even more emphatic was the testimony of the Board of Agriculture reporter who collected data for Lancashire in 1793. He complained that “capital, labor, ingenuity, and attention are in this country diverted from agriculture. . . . Never inquire about the cultivation of land or its produce within ten or twelve miles of Manchester; the people know nothing about it: speak of spinning jennies, and mules, and carding machines, they will talk for days with you." Similar observations were made by various men in respect to the neighboring counties, the industrial regions of the midlands, and the valley of the Clyde.41

Technical improvements in the newly developing industries of these regions served as magnets to attract not only capital but population as well. In the controversies preceding the first census of 1801 concerning the question as to whether population was increasing or declining, there seems to have been common agreement that there had been a rapid increase in the population of the northern industrial centers. Even Dr. Price in his famous Essay on the Population of England, in which he tried to prove that population was decreasing, conceded that there had been "a great increase of people as well as of houses" in the industrial centers, the increase having been "derived from the population of country parishes and villages." It is "allowed on all hands," wrote one of Dr. Price's critics, “that the principal manufacturing and trading towns have increased, and some of them, as Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, Sheffield, Liverpool, and Bristol, most amazingly.” Another of Dr. Price's critics wrote concerning "the north, that most growing and populous part of our community," as having had a recent increase in numbers so rapid as to be "altogether astonishing," "amazing," "unparalleled.” 42

Aside from the increase by excess of births over deaths, "J. H. Campbell, in Annals of Agriculture, XX, 123; Holt, General View of the Agriculture of the County of Lancaster, 12 (ed. 1794), 210, 211 (ed. 1795); Brown, General View, Derbyshire, 13; Wedge, General View, Cheshire, 71, 72; Naismith, General View, Clydesdale, 79; Martin, General View, Renfrewshire, 20; Annals of Agriculture, VII, 463, 464.

"Price, Essay on the Population of England, 27; Wales, Inquiry into the Present State of Population,, 5; Howlett, Examination of Dr. Price's Essay, 129, 132, 151, 153.

there were several important sources from which the

northern industrial centers drew their population. Large 1. numbers were attracted from the surrounding agricul

tural regions. Workers in the cotton industries were disdainfully described as "herds of Lancashire boors” who had come from neighboring farms. There was very general complaint by farmers and landlords that farm laborers, especially those of the more efficient types, were being drawn into industrial pursuits. 48

But large numbers came from regions more remote from the factories, the foundries, and the mines, and their coming was often due to expulsive forces in their old homes as well as to the attractive forces of the new industrialism. In the south of England, two economic phenomena,-agricultural enclosures and declining industries,—while radically different in nature, were nevertheless producing the same result, namely, a decrease of economic opportunity for the workers. The consequent natural northward trend of population was stimulated by handbills and advertisements calling attention in southern counties to northern opportunities. But in general there seems to have been little occasion for such methods of promoting the shifting of workers. Officials in the growing industrial centers often became alarmed, in fact, by the rapid influx of laborers, and because of their fear of increasing poor rates they even made attempts, especially by means of the settlement acts, to check the flow from the vast reservoirs of unemployed in other regions.44

North of the industrial regions, particularly in Scotland, conditions were the reverse of those in the south of

* Calico Printer's Assistant, Retrospect, n. 11 (not paged); Wedge, General View, Cheshire, 26. See also below, p. 253, ff.

" Davis, General View of the Agriculture of Wilts, 87, 88; Historical and Political Remarks upon the Tariff of the Commercial Treaty (1786), 167, 168; [Mackenzie], Woollen Draper's Letter, 27, 28; Annals of Agriculture, IX, 660, X, 280, 281. See also below, ch. IV, pp. 240, 259 and passim.

9