520 INDUSTRIAL INSTITUTIONS. 



lated workers under the same roof than systematically to unite their 

 efforts for the accomplishment of single purposes.&quot; 

 Limiting further illustration to our own country, we find 

 that in sundry cases there is traceable a preceding stage, in 

 which these like workers were scattered about in the neigh 

 bourhood of some centre with which they maintained indus 

 trial relations. There were at first numerous solitary weav 

 ers who had their looms in their own houses, and worked 

 independently; often, at intervals, devoting part of their 

 energies to agriculture. Out of this stage grew another. 

 Early in the last century in Lancashire 



&quot;The weavers, who were dispersed in cottages throughout the dis 

 trict, purchased the materials, worked them up, and then sold them on 

 their own account to the dealers. But towards the middle of the 

 century the business began to take a new form ; the masters or prin 

 cipal dealers of Manchester giving out cotton-wool to the weavers, and 

 linen yarn for the warp. The preparation and spinning of the cotton 

 were then done either by the weaver s own family, or by persons 

 employed and paid by him ; while he received from his employer a 

 fixed price for the labour bestowed.&quot; 



Here we see the weaver passing from the condition in which 

 he was at once master and worker, to the condition in which 

 he worked for a master, though not under the master s roof. 

 In some industries this system still continues, coexisting 

 with the more developed system. It is thus not only in 

 the weaving of wool and cotton, but in the making of 

 stockings, of nails, and in the stitching of clothes. A step 

 in the transition was seen in the cloth-districts in the latter 

 part of the last century, when master-clothiers, buying wool 

 wholesale, &quot; gave it to workmen to work up, partly in their 

 own houses, partly in the masters .&quot; Evidently the con 

 flict between the systems of detached cottage-industry and 

 industry carried on by many like workers in one building, 

 has been slowly resulting in the great predominance of the 

 latter. For some occupations, as glass and china-making in 

 France, and in England the making of lace, large numbers 

 were, more than a century ago, collected together under sin- 



