The Evolution of Modern Capitalism: A Study of Machine ProductionHobson, J. A. (John Atkinson)
History
The Evolution of Modern Capitalism: A Study of Machine Production
Hobson, J. A. (John Atkinson)
Capitalism; Industries -- History; Machinery in the workplace
In this application they determined and strictly limited not only the
quantity but the nature of the international trade. The export trade
of England, for example, in 1730 was practically confined to woollen
goods and other textile materials, a small quantity of leather, iron,
lead, silver, and gold plate, and a certain number of re-exported
foreign products, such as tobacco and Indian calicoes. The import
trade consisted of wine and spirits, foreign foods, such as rice,
sugar, coffee, oil, furs, and some quantity of foreign wool, hemp,
silk, and linen-yarn, as material for our specially favoured
manufactures. Having regard to the proportion of the several
commodities, it would not be much exaggeration to summarise our
foreign trade by saying that we sent out woollen goods and received
foreign foods. These formed the great bulk of our foreign trade.[15]
Excepting the woollen goods and a small trade in metals, leather is
the only manufactured article which figured to any appreciable extent
in our export of 1730. At that time it is clear that in the main
English manufacture, as well as English agriculture, was for the
supply of English wants. The same was true of other industrial
countries. Holland and France, who divided with England the shipping
supremacy, had a foreign trade which, though then deemed considerable,
bore no greater proportion to the total industry of these countries
than in the case of England. Germany, Italy, Russia, Spain, and even
Portugal were almost wholly self-sustained.
Regarding, then, the known and related world of that time in the light
of an industrial organism, we must consider it as one in which the
processes of integration and of differentiation of parts has advanced
but a little way, consisting as yet of a number of homogeneous and
incoherent national cells.
This homogeneity is of course qualified by differences in production
and consumption due to climate, natural products, national character
and institutions, and the development of industrial arts in the
several nations.
§ 5. This consideration of the approximate homogeneity of the national
units of world-industry gives a higher scientific value to the
analysis of a single typical industrial nation such as England, than
would be the case in modern times, when the work of differentiation of
industrial functions among the several nations has advanced much
further.
Taking, therefore, the national industry of England as the special
subject of analysis, we may seek to obtain a clear conception of the
size, structure, and connections, of the several branches of industry,
paying special regard to the manufactures upon which the new
industrial forces were chiefly to operate.
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