114 CAUSES OF THE DECLINE 



men and apprentices, and united in his own person 

 functions of artisan, capitalist, and organizer on a smal 

 scale, could no longer compete. He had neither capital 

 enough nor the necessary gifts or knowledge ; nor did 

 industry on a small scale allow of the division of labour 

 which is possible in a large manufactory. He therefore 

 fell into the class of paid artisans, the servants of these 

 new masters, to be followed by many of those who, whether 

 in town or country, had supplemented their wage by small 

 domestic industries industries which were being destroyed 

 by the factory system. In his place arose the capitalist 

 entrepreneur sometimes an inventor himself. More often 

 an organizer of labour and man of commercial knowledge, 

 he stood altogether apart from the labouring classes, and 

 took his position beside the great merchant and the 

 financier. 



There is, indeed, nothing absolutely new in all this. 

 Capitalism is not the product of the industrial revolution 

 of the eighteenth century ; it had existed before. Nay, 

 capital ere this had been applied to industry, witness the 

 great drapers of the sixteenth century and the iron-masters 

 of Sussex, 1 while already the position of the master workman 

 had been assailed. It is always impossible to fix an exac 

 date for the commencement of an economical change, n 

 was the revolution by any means complete by the close 

 the eighteenth century. Nevertheless, it is very clear th 

 from the middle of the eighteenth century the capitali; 

 who had hitherto chiefly devoted his attention to finance, to 

 the buying and selling of goods, now definitely turned his 

 attention to the making of them. In a word, the merchant 

 prince of the past becomes, in many cases, the great 

 manufacturer of the future, and the great army of labour 

 depending entirely on its daily wage is definitely formed. 



1 Cf. Mantoux, pp. 10, 272, 377. 



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