The agents mentioned by Gaskell were evidently employees of the manufacturers, but, as frequent advertisements show, there were also men in the country districts who described themselves as “putters-out,” and others, who apparently differed very little from them, who were ready to undertake work on commission. Then there were the country fustian manufacturers, some of whom, indeed, probably occupied a position little different from the others, as they too sometimes declared themselves ready to make goods on commission.[439] The relation of these men to the workpeople is indicated in the statement of one of them that he had “a quantity of approved weavers at command.”[440] In the country districts of Lancashire in the eighteenth century there is ample reason for saying that the great majority of workpeople in the textile industry were employed by these various types of men. Generally their position was little, if any, different from the position of the workpeople in the towns--indeed, as we have seen, the smallware weavers’ combination in 1758 extended to country districts such as Ashton and Royton. [Footnote 439: See _infra_, p. 197.] [Footnote 440: _Manchester Mercury_, 5th October 1779.] In view of the evidence, it can safely be said that among the first effects of the developments in the Lancashire textile industry in the eighteenth century was an improvement in the position of the workpeople, especially of the weavers, and that, after the cancellation of Arkwright’s patent, and the fuller utilisation of the mule, there was a great burst of prosperity. As is well known, this period of prosperity was not of long duration; soon the weavers were plunged into a longer period of distress. Weavers formerly engaged in other branches of trade turned to cotton.[441] Great numbers of agricultural labourers became weavers, with the effect of raising wages in their former occupation.[442] But in addition, and far more important, was the war, as a consequence of which the natural expansion of markets was impeded and the course of trade marked by violent fluctuations and crises. During this period even the mule-spinners, whose career as the “aristocracy” of labour in the cotton trade had now commenced, had to undergo severe privation, but their higher skill and superior organisation prevented them from sinking into the depths of distress which was the lot of the weavers.[443] [Footnote 441: Gaskell, _ibid._, p. 46-47. _Report of Committee on Cotton Weavers’, etc., Petitions (1803)._, p. 16.] [Footnote 442: _Report of Committee on Cotton Weavers’ Petitions_ (1808), p. 24.]