V

THE MANUFACTURING PERIOD-THE TWO

NATIONS

WHILE the country gentlemen were busy establishing, as if for all time, their dominion over men and things, events were taking place in their midst which at first furthered their projects and seconded their efforts, before long operated in opposition to them, and ended by destroying their work just when it seemed complete and permanent-I refer to the rise and development of the great mechanical industries.

I have endeavoured to show that England entered later than is generally supposed, and even then not without hesitation, upon that contest for trade in which she has since outstripped her competitors. From the end of the seventeenth century we find united in her many of the conditions which are essential to industrial progress. The English possessed in 1700 a powerful trading fleet, the result of the Navigation Act, and they controlled a vast colonial market whence they could derive raw produce in plenty, and where they were able to dispose upon exceptional terms of their own manufactured goods. From this time forward manufac

turers might count upon abundant outlets for their wares; they were encouraged and stimulated to produce. Various institutions, the necessary adjuncts and infallible signs of increasing production, had already made their appearance. The letter post was in full operation, the Bank of England had been founded in 1694. During the same year facilities were given, with the creation of the permanent debt, for the undertaking of public enterprises which were of a remunerative and lasting character, but which at the same time imposed no too heavy burden on the present; both the State and individuals showed a more far-seeing care for and confidence in the future. The currency had just been reformed and placed upon a correct basis. Associations of capitalists were organized; commercial companies multiplied and their fleets covered the seas. The country had already been smitten with the fever of great speculations and yielded to the enticements of colossal ventures. Still these favourable circumstances and these exciting causes acted upon manufacturing activity merely as a reasonable stimulant; they did not extend so far as to bring about any sensible modification in the balance of the various economic forces. I have quoted many proofs of this; there is one which sums up the whole case. The rapid increase of manufacturing wealth engenders as a rule a spirit of energy and enterprise which shows itself in an increase in the birthrate. But the population of England and Wales, according to the most favourable estimate, only rose from 5,134,516 to 6,039,684 between 1700 and 1750-in other words it increased in fifty years by less than a million, by

17 to 18 per cent. on the original number.1 This is identical with the feeble rate of increase maintained in France at the present time (1831-1851).

The ignorance of true economic principles, the indolent security fostered by protection, the slow growth of science and of the scientific methods in manufacturesall these were so many obstacles to progress. After 1750 six great discoveries which were destined to transform altogether the conditions of labour followed each other in rapid succession. In 1769, Arkwright invented his water-frame; in 1770, Hargreaves his spinningjenny; in 1776, Crompton invented his mule; in 1792, Kelly his self-acting mule. The working power of these inventions was multiplied by the steam-engine, which was patented by Watt in 1769, and was applied to the cotton manufacture in 1785, the same year in which Cartwright constructed his power loom. These improvements were not to yield all their results before the present century. Arkwright's patent fell in about 1790. Cartwright's power loom was not employed upon a large scale before 1815, and the self-acting mule with the improvements added by Roberts, not before 1825.

On the other hand, the system of smelting by coal was discovered between 1740 and 1750, and that of steam blasts in 1788. The manufacture of iron and the working of mines developed rapidly. For the distribution of the resulting products fresh lines of communication were opened up. In 1777 the Grand Trunk Canal between the Trent and the Mersey was finished; other canals connected Hull with Liverpool, and both with

Toynbee (quoting Finlaison), Industrial Revolution, p. 33.

Bristol. In 1792, a canal ninety miles long was constructed between London and the Midland towns by. way of Oxford, and in 1810 the system of canals was almost complete. Roads increased in number still more rapidly, and were carefully kept in order. Railways were of later date, and their effects were only felt when a third part of our century had passed; but we may put it that from 1780 the industrial revolution was fairly in progress.

Its effects were soon apparent. Everything, even the sustenance and exertions of man, resolves itself into the production of so much heat and is capable of being measured in foot-pounds. It has been calculated that the annual output of the coal mines alone, expressed as so much working power, equalled in amount the horse provender which could be produced from 36,000,000 acres of land or the food for human workers which could be produced from 252,000,000 acres. It was as if a new territory of vast extent and extreme fertility had been opened up by the side of the old. Under circumstances of so much promise the birthrate rose rapidly. We have seen that the population increased by about a sixth only during the first fifty years of the eighteenth century; between 1750 and 1800 it increased by more than half; between 1800 and 1850 by more than 90 per cent.; and by more than 50 per cent. during the thirty years which followed. Since the beginning of the century the agricultural population has remained stationary or has diminished. Thus the gigantic increase which each decennial census shows is due to the growth of the manufacturing and

trading community. A little later than 1860, the two divisions of the population, the agricultural and the industrial, stood to each other in the numerical relation of 1,000 to 2,675, and the values of the goods produced by them respectively in the proportion of 3,500 to 5,800 millions of francs; an actual excess of the one over the other could probably be traced back as far as the beginning of the century. That swarm of human beings suddenly and artificially generated in the heat of countless furnaces, possessed from the very outset the characteristics of a second nation. They neither mingled intimately with the nation which already existed, nor shared the surface of the soil in equal proportion with it. They filled the empty spaces which surrounded the new mining centres and established themselves in insignificant towns, places unknown to the annals of municipalities and as yet of no account in the commercial statistics of the country. It was the north of England, a district till then scarcely peopled, which profited almost exclusively by the increase of inhabitants. In 1700 the ten counties which surpassed the others, excluding the metropolitan counties, in the density of their population, all lay to the south of the latitude of Birmingham. In 1750, of the ten most thickly populated counties, there were four, and at the present time, there are at least six, lying to the north of that limit.

It was above all in the towns that the influx of population was apparent. In 1680 London formed the only considerable mass of dwellings which existed in the kingdom. Other great towns shot up and spread with the rapidity of a conflagration, "shooting up like