CHAPTER I. The Eve of the Revolution

THE EVE OF THE REVOLUTION

§ 1. INDUSTRY AND POLITICS. LAND-OWNERS AND MERCHANT PRINCES--We are, of course, mainly concerned in this book with industrial facts; but as these underlie all politics and national history, we must pause for a moment to see how the growth of commerce had by this time affected the relations of two great classes: the land-owners and their new rivals, the great merchants and the commercial classes generally. Up to the time of the deposition of James II., or the Whig Revolution of 1688, as it is sometimes called, the land-owning class had been practically supreme in social and political influence. But from that time forward, although they still held this high position, their influence was heavily counterbalanced by that of the mercantile classes. The capitalist and the commercial magnates were all favoured by the great movement which divided the nation into the two historic parties of Whigs and Tories, for it was that movement which first accentuated their importance in the political life of the nation. That importance was still more accentuated by a series of significant economic events which took place shortly after the Revolution; namely, the foundation of the Bank of {145} England (1694), the new and extended Charter granted to the East India Company in 1693, the beginning of the National Debt in the same year, and the Restoration of the Currency in 1696. The commercial and industrial section of the community was becoming more and more prominent, and the great Whig families who occupied themselves with endeavouring to rule England in the eighteenth century, relied for their support upon the middle and commercial classes. The old reverence, however, for the position of a land-owner had not yet died out, and the men who had gained their wealth by commerce strove for a higher social position by buying land in large quantities. The time had not yet come when a merchant was on equal terms with a landlord.

In fact there has always been an extraordinary sentimentalism as regards land among all classes of the English people; and for some reason that has never been fully explained a man who has merely inherited a large amount of land (even if he has never attempted to cultivate it) is regarded as being superior to one who has amassed a fortune in the industrial or commercial world. And this feeling was stronger in the eighteenth century than it is at the present time. Hence commercial magnates bought land, and with it social prestige. The James Lowther who was created Earl of Lonsdale in 1784 was the descendant of a merchant engaged in the Levant trade; the first Earl of Tilney was the son of that eminent man of business, Sir Josiah Child. The daughters of merchant princes were even allowed to marry--and maintain--the scions of a needy aristocracy. Defoe actually discovered the amazing and revolutionary fact that a man engaged in commerce might be a gentleman, though no doubt this {146} bold supposition of his was at first looked upon with incredulity. He says: “Trade is so far from being inconsistent with a gentleman that in England trade makes a gentleman; for, after a generation or two, the tradesman’s children come to be as good gentlemen, statesmen, parliament men, judges, bishops, and noblemen as those of the highest birth and the most ancient families.” Dean Swift remarked “that the power which used to follow land had gone over to money.” Dr Johnson announced oracularly that “an English merchant was a new species of gentleman.”

Now, the Industrial Revolution went still further to gain social and political influence for the commercial classes. It succeeded in destroying the foolish idea that the land-owners alone were to be looked upon as the leaders of the nation. It gave the capitalists and manufacturers a new accession of power by enormously increasing their wealth. Moreover, it helped to undermine the landed interest by making the manufactures of England at first equal, and afterwards superior, to her agriculture, so that a rich mill-owner or ironmaster became as important as a large land-owner. The monopoly of the landed interest was broken by capital. Nowhere is the contrast between the old and new classes in the last century seen more closely than in Scott’s Rob Roy, where the old Tory squire who held fast to Church and king is contrasted with the new commercial magnate who supported the House of Hanover. One good we enjoyed from the rise of the commercial classes, and that was the final overthrow of the Stuarts, with all the follies which that unfortunate race represented.

§ 2. THE COMING OF THE CAPITALISTS--Now, although the commercial capitalist was fast coming into prominence as the rival of the land-owner, he was becoming still more {147} prominent as the master of the workmen whom he employed. For before the Industrial Revolution the capitalist had occupied a comparatively subordinate place. The vast enterprises of modern industry, such as railways or mills, which often require so large an expenditure of capital before they can begin to be in any way remunerative, were practically unknown a century ago. The industrial system was, moreover, far less complicated, far less international, far less subdivided. Instead of the great capitalist manufacturers of to-day, who can control the markets of a nation, England possessed numbers of smaller capitalists, with far less capital, both individually and in the aggregate, than what is now required by a man who undertakes even a moderate business. The large capitalists of the last century were chiefly the foreign trading companies. For English home manufactures, although greatly developed, were still largely conducted upon the domestic system, and the small capitalist-artisan was a conspicuous feature of that time, just as the large mill-owner or ironmaster is of our own day. Manufactures were carried on by a number of small master-manufacturers, who gave out work to be done in the homes of their employés; and who often combined agricultural with manufacturing pursuits. But nevertheless there were signs of the approach of modern capitalist methods, of production upon a large scale. It was becoming increasingly the custom to employ a large number of workpeople together under one roof, or at least under the direction and supervision of one great manufacturer. Arthur Young, for instance, mentions a silk mill at Sheffield with 152 hands--a large number in the eighteenth century; a factory at Boynton with 150 hands; and a master-manufacturer at Darlington who ran above fifty looms. Work was also {148} given out by capitalist manufacturers or merchants to workmen to do at home in the villages and towns. These workmen were, like the employés of the present day, entirely dependent upon their employer for work and wages. Thus, at Nottingham in 1750 we find fifty master-manufacturers who “put out” work in this way for as many as 1200 looms in the hosiery trade.

§ 3. THE CLASS OF SMALL MANUFACTURERS--But although the coming of the capitalists was now near at hand the old order of things was not seriously disturbed till the application of steam power to machinery some years later. There were still many small manufacturers who lived on their own land and worked with their workpeople in their own houses. Defoe in his Tour through Great Britain (made in 1724–26) gives an interesting account of this class at a time when they were in the height of their prosperity, before machinery and steam had even begun to cause their disappearance. Speaking of the land near Halifax, in Yorkshire, he says: “The land was divided into small enclosures from two acres to six or seven each, seldom more, every three or four pieces of land having a house belonging to them; hardly a house standing out of speaking distance from another. We could see at every house a tenter, and on almost every tenter a piece of cloth or kersie or shalloon. At every considerable house there was a manufactory. Every clothier keeps one horse at least to carry his manufactures to the market; and every one generally keeps a cow or two or more for his family. By this means the small pieces of enclosed land about each house are occupied, for they scarce sow corn enough to feed their poultry. The houses are full of lusty fellows, some at the dye-vat, some at the looms, others dressing the cloths; the women and children carding or spinning; being all employed, from the {149} youngest to the oldest.” And Defoe adds a remark which is certainly not applicable either to Halifax or any other manufacturing town of the present day, for he concludes his description with the words: “not a beggar to be seen, or an idle person.”

§ 4. THE CONDITION OF THE MANUFACTURING POPULATION--For it is a significant fact that under the old domestic system, simple and cumbrous as it was, the manufacturing population was very much better off than it was for some time after the Industrial Revolution. For one thing, they still lived more or less in the country and were not crowded together in stifling alleys and courts, or long rows of bare smoke-begrimed streets, in houses like so many dirty rabbit-hutches. Even if the artisan did live in a town at that time, the town was very different from the abodes of smoke and dirt which now prevail in the manufacturing districts. There were no tall chimneys, belching forth clouds of evil smoke; no huge, hot factories with their hundreds of windows blazing forth a lurid light in the darkness, and rattling with the whir and din of ceaseless machinery by day and night. There were no gigantic blast furnaces rising amid blackened heaps of cinders, or chemical works poisoning the fields and trees for miles around. These were yet to come. The factory and the furnace were almost unknown. Work was carried on by the artisan in his little stone or brick house, with the workshop inside, where the wool for the weft was carded and spun by his wife and daughters, and the cloth was woven by himself and his sons. He had also, in nearly all cases, his plot of land near the house, which provided him both with food and recreation, for he could relieve the monotony of weaving by cultivating his little patch of ground, or feeding his pigs and poultry. Work too was more regular than it {150} often is at present, for there were fewer commercial fluctuations; fashions did not change so quickly, and the market for home-spun fabrics was always steady and assured. The relations between employers and employed were far closer; even the distribution of wealth was comparatively more equal. Wages were of course less in money value than at present, but then prices of food and rent were only about half what they are now. Arthur Young gives 9s. 6d. as the average weekly wages of an artisan in the North and Midland counties, while the average rent for a cottage in the same counties he puts at 28s. 2d. a year, or only 6⁠½d. per week. And it must be remembered that this included a piece of land round the cottage. Meat, also, was cheap, being from 2⁠½d. to 3⁠¼d. per pound; and bread 1⁠¼d. a pound. In fact we may confidently say that artisans, especially spinners and weavers, were well off about 1760. Adam Smith testifies to this in the Wealth of Nations. “Not only has grain become somewhat cheaper,” he says, “but many other things from which the industrious poor derive an agreeable and wholesome variety of food have become a great deal cheaper.” And the healthy condition of industry in general is shown by the fact that at the close of the wars with France by the Peace of 1763, when more than 100,000 men accustomed to war were thrown upon the country and had to find work or else be supported somehow or other, “not only no great convulsion, but no sensible disorder arose.”

§ 5. CONDITION OF THE AGRICULTURAL POPULATION--Nor was that convenient plenty which was the lot of the manufacturing portion of the people confined only to that section. The condition of the agricultural labourer, who was generally the worst off of all classes from being so much under the direct supervision of his master, had {151} considerably improved, together with the general improvement of agriculture spoken of in a previous chapter. The price of corn had fallen, while wages had risen, though these were less than an artisan’s, being, according to Arthur Young’s average estimate for the North and Midland counties, about 7s. a week. But it was generally 8s. or 10s., while the board of a working man may be placed at about 5s. or 6s. a week. Cottages were occasionally rent free, or at any rate only paid a low rent, never more than 50s. or 60s. per year. There was an abundance of food, clothing, and furniture. Wheat-bread had entirely superseded rye-bread. Every poor family now drank tea, which had formerly been a costly luxury. The consumption of meat was, says Arthur Young, “pretty considerable,” and that of cheese “immense.” Indeed he states that the labourers “by their large wages and the cheapness of all necessaries enjoyed better dwellings, diet, and apparel in England than the husbandmen or farmers did in other countries.” Certainly Arthur Young must have been struck with the difference between the agricultural population of England and that of France, which latter country he visited shortly before the Revolution, when the misery of the labourers was at its lowest depth, thanks to the extortions of the privileged noblesse.

§ 6. GROWTH OF POPULATION--But not only had the condition of the industrial population improved in the period 1700–1750, but their numbers had also considerably increased. And now too was beginning that great shifting of the centres of population from the South to the North of England, which is so important a feature in the new industrial epoch. The most suggestive fact of this period is the growth of the population of Lancashire and of the West Riding of Yorkshire, which were rapidly becoming {152} the seats of the cotton and coarse woollen manufactures. Similarly also Staffordshire and Warwickshire, the pottery and hardware centres, were growing in numbers, and so, too, were Durham and Northumberland, whose coal-fields were now far more developed than before. On the other hand, the population of the Western and Eastern counties, still large manufacturing centres, had increased very little. But in the North and North-west the increase was enormous. Between 1685 and 1760 the people of Liverpool had increased tenfold, of Manchester fivefold, of Birmingham and Sheffield sevenfold. The total population of England had increased from the five millions or so of Elizabeth’s time, to not much less than eight millions in Arthur Young’s time, and far more of these were in the northern portions of the country than was the case even in Defoe’s time. Defoe said in 1725, “the country south of the Trent is by far the largest, as well as the richest and most populous.” But forty or fifty years later the shifting towards the North had already made itself felt. The cause of the great increase of population between 1700 and 1760 is to be found in the rapid increase of national wealth gained by foreign commerce, in the progress of home manufactures and of agriculture. Increased wealth means increased comfort in living, increased command of food, and consequently better chances of survival among children born of poor parents. And in this period the increase in national wealth was, in spite of foreign wars, enormous; for if England had to pay heavily for these wars other countries had to pay more heavily still, and were, moreover, the battle-grounds of contending armies, while our own land was at least free from invasion.

§ 7. ENGLAND STILL MAINLY AGRICULTURAL--Of the population of the country at this time the majority were still {153} engaged in agriculture, and the agricultural labourers alone formed one-third of the working classes, and a large number even of the manufacturing classes still worked in the fields for a portion of the year, especially in harvest-time. In 1770 England was still mainly an agricultural country, and Arthur Young estimates that the income of the agricultural portion of the nation was larger than that of all the rest of the community. But it must be remembered that by far the largest portion of this income was in the hands of large land-owners and the farmers, the share of the labourer being of course much smaller. Arthur Young’s estimates must be taken with a certain amount of caution, but they are probably approximately correct, and are certainly interesting as giving us a very fair idea of the distribution of occupations and national wealth just before the Industrial Revolution. Hence I append a small table, giving in round numbers the figures of his estimates. It will be noticed that the number of the population is rather too high, but the proportion of one class to another is probably correct.

INCOMES OF VARIOUS CLASSES IN MILLION POUNDS

Interest on capital 5 Paupers 1·5 Military and official 5 Professions 5 Commercial 10 Manufacturing 27 Agricultural 66 Total = £119,500,000.

{154}

POPULATION IN MILLIONS [Illustration]

Paupers ·5 Military and official ·5 Professional ·2 Commercial ·7 Manufacturing 3 Agricultural 3·6 Total = 8,500,000.

It will be perceived that the agriculturists, though only about half a million more in numbers than the manufacturing classes, had a far larger proportionate income, in fact more than double. This was of course partly due to the agricultural improvements of this period, and to the fact that manufactures were still carried on almost solely by hand, thus giving only a small production from a good many workmen. But the Industrial Revolution rapidly changed all this, and now agriculture is no longer the staple industry of the country. We may here refer to what has been previously mentioned in regard to the agricultural development on enclosed land, and to the superiority of the results of enclosures over common fields. Those farmers and large owners who understood the best ways of raising crops prospered, and more and more land was enclosed every year to grow corn (which by the way was rapidly rising in price), clover, turnips and other root-crops. No less than 700 Enclosure Acts were passed between 1760 and 1774. The old common fields were beginning to disappear, and the working classes also lost their rights of pasturing cattle on the wastes, for wastes now were enclosed. It must be admitted that the old common-field system produced very poor results (cf. p. 41), but the loss of his common rights was very {155} disastrous to the labourer, for it drove him off the land at the same time as the growth of manufactures attracted him off from it, and thus the labourer became in a few years completely divorced from the soil. At present attempts are being made to attract him back to it by offering him small strips of inferior land at a high rent. This is known as the allotment system. It need scarcely be said that, as at present carried out, it is hardly likely to succeed.

§ 8. THE DOMESTIC SYSTEM OF MANUFACTURE--But in the period we are now speaking of, the period before the great inventions, neither the agricultural labourer nor the manufacturing operative was quite divorced from the land. The weavers, for instance, often lived in the country, in a cottage with some land attached to it. There had certainly been changes in the industrial system before 1760. At first the weaver had furnished himself with warp and weft, worked it up, and brought it to the market himself; but by degrees this system grew too cumbersome, and the yarn was given out by merchants to the weaver, and at last the merchant got together a certain number of looms in a town or village, and worked them under his own supervision. But even yet the domestic system, as it is commonly called, retained in many if not in most cases the distinctive feature that the manufacturing industry was not the only industry in which the artisan was engaged, but that he generally combined with it a certain amount of agricultural work in the cultivation of his own small plot of land. This fact explains to some extent the comparative comfort of the operative in this cottage industry, for that they were fairly well off is the testimony of Adam Smith, in 1776. Commercial fluctuations were few; the home market was steady; {156} employer and employed were more closely knit together than at present; wealth was more equally distributed, and capital existed in smaller amounts but in a larger number of hands. The poet’s vision of “contentment spinning at the cottage door” was not altogether imaginary, for women and children shared in the common task brought home by the head of the family. Nor, after all, was trade so restricted and hampered as some writers have seemed to suppose. On the contrary, there was, in spite of bad roads, very frequent and considerable internal communication for manufacturing purposes, and this was facilitated by means of the local markets, the importance of which in those days cannot be easily overrated. Manufacturers would ride a long way to buy wool from the farmers or at the great fairs already mentioned, such as that of Stourbridge (p. 63), which was sufficiently considerable even a hundred years ago, or those of Lynn, Boston, Gainsborough, and Beverley, all four of which were celebrated for their wool-sales. This wool was then brought home and sorted; then sent out to the hand-combers, and on being returned combed was again sent out, often to long distances, to be spun. It was, for instance, sent from remote parts of Yorkshire to Lancashire, or even farther; or again from near London to Kendal and back. When spun, the tops, or fine wool, were entrusted to some shopkeeper to “put out” among the neighbours. Then the yarn was brought back and sorted by the manufacturer himself into hanks, according to the counts and twist. The hand-weavers would next come for their warp and weft, and in due time bring back the piece, which often was sent elsewhere to be dyed. Finally, the finished cloth was sent to be sold at the fairs, or at the local “piece halls” of such central towns as Leeds or Halifax. {157}

Hence it will be seen that there was a considerable diffusion of work under the old system, and it was not necessary for great numbers of people to live close together, or work in factories upon a large scale. Things were done with greater leisure, and more time was taken over them. But with the Industrial Revolution came all the hurry and stress of modern manufacturing life, and a complete change took place in the manner and methods of manufacture. And now, having seen how things stood immediately before this great change, we can proceed at once to the means by which it was brought about.