CHAPTER X 



THE INTERRUPTION OF INDUSTRY: FAMINES 



Almost every industry is, from some cause or other, 

 liable to interruption. Some industries, such as build- 

 ing, can only be followed in certain conditions of 

 weather; for this reason the building trade in England 

 is always slack in the winter. In other industries the 

 supply of raw material is precarious, and therefore 

 these industries are liable to interruption for want of 

 material to manufacture. Such an industry is that of 

 cotton-spinning and weaving in Lancashire, which 

 was almost totally suspended during the American 

 War of 1 861-66, and was more recently seriously 

 crippled by speculative manipulations of the raw 

 cotton market. Owing to the interdependence of 

 modern industries, suspensions of work are very 

 frequent. Any cause which arrests the output of coal, 

 for instance, almost immediately suspends work in 

 all the manufacturing industries which make use of 

 steam-power ; or again, a railway strike necessarily 

 suspends scores of industries which are in no way 

 allied to the railway industry ; if the means of com- 

 munication are interrupted, the supplies of raw 

 material cannot be brought to the mills, nor can the 

 manufactured commodity be carried away to the 

 markets. Even the labourer cannot, in certain con- 

 ditions of modern towns, travel from his home to the 

 mill at which he wants to work. From whatever cause 

 the interruption of industry is due, it has one in- 



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