The early English cotton industryDaniels, George W. (George William)
History
The early English cotton industry
Daniels, George W. (George William)
Cotton machinery; Cotton trade -- Great Britain
This is clearly shown in the instructive case of William Radcliffe,
whose account of the transition of the cotton industry to the factory
system has been critically discussed and set in a new light by Mr.
Daniels. William Radcliffe commenced working life as a hand-loom
weaver at Mellor. Any young man, he tells us, of moderate ability
and self-confidence could have got on at that time. The capital
accumulating in his hands enabled him to give out work, exactly as a
sixteenth-century clothier would have done, to all the villages round.
Within about fifteen years he was finding employment for one thousand
hand-looms; he had £11,000 invested in the business; a bank gave him
credit for £5000. Most of this capital and credit was employed, not
in the manufacture itself, but in trade. It was represented by large
quantities of piece goods on their way to the consumer, but still
unsold. The new captain of industry could not extend his enterprise
unless he used his capital to find a new market. For this purpose
Radcliffe took as his partner a young Scot with more education than
himself, who brought another Scot into the business, and who regularly
visited Frankfort and Leipzig to open a market for the firm’s muslins.
Or let us take the case of David Dale, the father-in-law of Robert
Owen and the founder of the New Lanark Mills. He commenced life, like
Radcliffe, as a hand-loom weaver, but soon became clerk to a mercer
who very likely found work for weavers. Then we find him importing
foreign yarns to set weavers at work on his own account and taking in
a partner to help him. With the capital thus acquired he started a
whole series of spinning mills--the first in Scotland--and the need
of finding an outlet for his yarns led him to extend his operations
to weaving and dyeing. Finally, as he was getting on in years, he
disposed of his manufacturing interests to younger and more energetic
men like his son-in-law, and withdrew his own capital and organising
ability into the less speculative field of banking. In the cases of
Dale and Radcliffe we see capital accumulated in industry flowing over
into commerce and banking. But all were not so successful as Dale.
Even Radcliffe came to grief in his later years and was dependent on
the capital of others. And in many cases capital and credit are to be
observed flowing in the opposite direction. The merchant who imported
cotton enabled the young manufacturer to set up for himself by giving
him three months’ credit, whilst the exporting merchant rendered
similar assistance by paying for the manufacturer’s output week by
week. It was in this way, by a flow of capital inwards from commerce,
that most of the early industrial enterprises of Lancashire got
started and the immense expansion of the cotton industry was rendered
possible. One other example will serve to complete the account and to
show the international significance of the development at the moment
when Radcliffe was sending out his partner to Germany.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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