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
This movement was accelerated by the vices of our land tenure. In
France and Germany, where the agricultural workers had a stronger
interest and property in their land, they were less easily detached
for factory purposes. But in England, where the labourer had no
property in the land, reformed methods of agriculture and the
operation of the Poor Law combined to incite the large proprietors and
farmers to rid themselves of all superfluous population in the rural
parts and accelerated the migration into the towns. Here the
population bred with a rapidity hitherto unknown. The increase of
population in England and Wales during the thirty years from 1770 to
1800 is placed at 1,959,590, or 27-1/10 per cent., while during the
next thirty years, 1800 to 1830, it amounted to 5,024,207, or 56-3/5
per cent.[89] This large supply of cheap labour in the towns enabled
the Lancashire and Yorkshire factories to grow with startling
rapidity. The exhaustion left by the Napoleonic wars, the political
disorder and insecurity which prevailed on the Continent, retarded
until much later the effective competition of other European nations
who were behind England in skill, knowledge, and the possession of
markets. The American manufactures which had sprung up after the
revolution had made considerable strides, but the conquest and
settlement of vast new areas of land, and the immense facilities
afforded for the production of raw material, retarded their rate of
growth until long after the opening of this century. It was, indeed,
not until about 1845 that the cotton manufacture made rapid strides in
the United States. During the twenty years previous the progress had
been very slight, but between 1845 and 1859 a very substantial and,
making allowance for fluctuations in the cotton crops, a very steady
growth took place.[90]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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