From these accounts it is evident that Chetham dealt in cotton (Cypress wool) and also in linen yarn (Irish yarn), the two principal materials for the manufacture of fustians. The next fact has reference to the economic relationships which existed between him and those who worked the materials. A popular view is that in Lancashire up to the coming of the factory, in the latter years of the eighteenth century, the majority of the workpeople were more or less independent producers who usually bought their materials, and after working them into cloth sold it to traders such as Chetham. That this was not generally the case in the first half of the eighteenth century is certain, and that it obtained as a general rule in the previous century is seriously open to question. As already mentioned, Chetham employed spinners and weavers, and the above accounts suggest that when he sold cotton and yarn, much of it was sold in small quantities, and also that it was sold on credit. This means that Chetham, if he did not employ the buyers in the ordinary sense, financed them to the extent of the cost of their raw materials, and if so to this extent they were economically dependent upon him, as they probably were for the disposal of the product. The probability is that, in his day, Chetham’s position in the economic organisation was little different, if any, from that of the typical capitalist “clothier” of the domestic system who gave out work to workpeople, and paid them for their labour when its product was returned to him.[132] [Footnote 132: _Cf._ Unwin, _Industrial Organisation in the XVIth and XVIIth Centuries_, pp. 235-236, where a classification of clothiers is given from a State document, 1615.]