The Napoleonic War thus becomes the dominant factor in the social and economic history of the later Industrial Revolution period. Owing to its occurrence, the economic movement in this country was distorted, and the increased power of production, instead of improving the material welfare of the community, had to be devoted to the prosecution of the war; social development was thwarted and thrown back; and the relationships between employers and workpeople, with which the latter, in the middle of the eighteenth century, in Lancashire, had shown their dissatisfaction and were striving through combination to modify, were continued and solidified, and left as a heritage to the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. In view of the growth and activity of trade unions during the eighteenth century, is it too much to say that, had not the war broken out, and had they been allowed to develop as they certainly were developing, problems of industrial relationships which have yet to be solved would have been faced a century ago, and possibly solutions found which would have meant that the present system would have been a considerable modification on that which now exists? However this may be, it may be said that the social retrogression and evils which mark the Industrial Revolution period are only in a very secondary sense to be attributed to the economic movement: the primary cause is to be found in the war in which the country was engaged. CHAPTER VI CONCERNING THE AFFAIRS OF SAMUEL CROMPTON It now remains to follow the fortunes of Samuel Crompton to the time when he wrote the following letters. Some time before 1785 he left Hall-i’-th’-Wood and went to live at Oldhams, in the township of Sharples, about three miles north of Bolton, where he combined the business of a small farmer with that of a spinner.[445] [Footnote 445: French, _ibid._, p. 90.] During his residence at this place, Robert Peel is said to have visited him with the object of persuading him to enter his employment, or even to become a partner with him. French suggests that the main reason for Crompton’s refusal was a dislike of Peel, which was maintained to the end of his life. This may have been the case, of course, but his references to Sir Robert (as he then was) in the following letters do not betray any animosity, and Peel certainly appears to have exerted himself on his behalf.[446] In the last year of his residence at Oldhams, Crompton occupied the office of overseer of the poor for the township of Sharples, a fact in which there is nothing surprising. Crompton can only be regarded as a working man, but that he had fully utilised his limited opportunities of education, his letters and other attainments show.[447] [Footnote 446: _Infra_, pp. 175, 176, 184, 193.]