[Footnote 215: _J.H.C._, xl., p. 1026.] This appears to have been the case with a member of “The Society of Travelling Scotchmen of Bridgnorth” who claimed to have £5000 employed in the trade.[216] His method was to buy goods from manufacturers in different parts of Great Britain and Ireland, and to supply them to the chapmen on credit, and, at the time, he had £3000 owing to him, while they had £1500 owing to them. Two members of a similar society at Shrewsbury, who pursued the same method, claimed to have £20,000 in the trade, with outstanding debts to the amount of £16,000, while the chapmen whom they supplied were in a similar position to the amount of £10,000.[217] Even allowing for some exaggeration in the petitions, there can be little doubt of the importance of the trade thus carried on at this time.[218] Possibly it was of more importance than some branches of trade of a more spectacular character, which, for that reason, often attract more attention. [Footnote 216: _Ibid._, pp. 1017-1018.] [Footnote 217: _Ibid._, p. 1020.] [Footnote 218: The hawkers and pedlars of London and Westminster stated that they composed part of a body which numbered 1400 in England alone (_ibid._, p. 1007).] In the preceding chapter it has been shown that a textile manufacture, which could be called a cotton manufacture, had become established in Lancashire certainly by the beginning of the seventeenth century. From what has been said so far, it will be apparent that the manufacture was by no means in a state of stagnation during the century and a half before 1770. Economically and politically, the period was a favourable one for development. The turmoil of the seventeenth century had an economic as well as a political significance. It marks the time when the opportunist regulations of industry and commerce, which are sometimes regarded as constituting part of a positive policy to further the welfare of the national community, definitely failed, notwithstanding much futile effort which continued into the next century.[219] [Footnote 219: The year 1623 marks an important date in this connection. Unwin, _ibid._, p. 190, also _The Gilds and Companies of London_, ch. xvii. Professor W. R. Scott’s _Joint-Stock Companies to 1720_, is a storehouse of fundamental facts relating to the economic history of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.]