INDUSTRIES 



INTRODUCTION 



INDUSTRIAL Dorset, at first sight seems 

 a contradiction, the county being pre- 

 eminently agricultural. The real value 

 of the composite wage of its labourers 

 has formed the subject of economic dis- 

 cussion again and again. The curious method 

 by which cows are let out to the dairy-farmers 

 has received as much commendation as it has 

 provoked criticism ; few persons, however, could 

 tell what industries flourished between Poole and 

 Lyme Regis ; and if the famous quarries of 

 Purbeck and Portland were left out of account, 

 most would probably assert that the chief trade 

 of Dorset was in butter and cheese. Yet 

 political economists point out that had not the 

 burgesses of Bridport insisted on maintaining 

 their monopoly for rope-making in the reign 

 of Henry VIII, their town might have become 

 a great manufacturing centre.^ If this had 

 come to pass, the advantages offered by the 

 coal-bearing north would probably have been 

 outweighed by the facts that for long years 

 Dorset produced the finest hemp in the English 

 market, and that this manufacture is dependent 

 to a great extent on skilled labour, an aptitude 

 for which is transmitted from parent to child. 

 But the burgesses ' stabbed themselves with 

 their own dagger,' " and instead of a mighty 

 city with suburbs stretching out to include 

 Burton and Beaminster, Powerstock and Toller 

 Porcorum, there remains one of the most pic- 

 turesque parts of this beautiful county, ' which 

 has often been styled the garden of England.'' 



However, although the hemp industry was un- 

 doubtedly injured at the time by the short- 

 sighted policy of the burgesses of Bridport, it was 

 by no means destroyed ; and after passing 

 through various vicissitudes it is still the pride 

 and mainstay of Bridport. 



As regards manufactured goods, the county is 

 to a great extent in the first stage of industrial 

 development. It has scarcely been affected by 

 the industrial revolution which has been so 

 admirably described by Mr. Arnold Toynbee.'' 



' Gibbins, Industrial Hist. Engl, i o i . 

 ' Bohn, Coll. of Proverbs, 202. 

 ' England Displayed (1769), 64. 

 * Toynbee, Industrial Revolution, 5. 



There are factories and mills, but a great many 

 of the workers work in their own homes ; the 

 most important operations, both in the hemp and 

 gloving industry, are performed by hand ; a con- 

 siderable proportion of the work is done by 

 women, while the children often take their turn 

 as soon as school hours are over. 



Dorset was well equipped to take its stand as 

 an industrial county in the seventeenth and 

 eighteenth centuries. But its equipment is now 

 old-fashioned, and much of it obsolete. In all 

 the descriptions of Dorset, and of these there are 

 many, great stress is laid on the excellence and 

 abundance of raw material : of wool, of hemp, 

 of stone, and of clay. Leland, Camden, 

 Cosmo III, duke of Tuscany, and a host of 

 others join in dwelling on the quantity and 

 quality of the sheep reared on the ' beautiful 

 pastures' of the downs.' Time has made no 

 impression on the truth of Camden's description 

 of Dorset, 'garnished with many a green hill 

 whereon feed flocks of sheep in great number 

 with pleasant pastures likewise and fruitful 

 valleys.' ^ Defoe was told ' that there were six 

 hundred thousand sheep fed on the downs within 

 six miles of the town ' of Dorchester. He writes, 

 ' I do not affirm this to be true, but when I view 

 the country round I confess I could not but 

 incline to believe it.' ' Gilpin quotes and objects 

 to a poetical description of the 



Dorseti.in Downs 

 In boundless prospect spread, here shagged wilh 



woods, 

 There rich with harvest, and there white with 



flocks.' 



He holds that even poetical licence is not 

 warrant enough to call red sheep white. His 

 observation held good until late in the nineteenth 

 century, for the * r\iddle-man ' went his rounds 

 year by year and dipped the sheep in red ochre. 

 Great quantities of sheep are still raised in 



' Cosmo III, Travels in Engl. (Magalotti, 1668), 

 46, 47. 



' Camden, Britannia (ed. Holland, 1610), i, 51. 



' Defoe, Tour Through Gt. Brit. (1724), i, 64. 



' Gilpin, Observations on the Western Parts of Engl. 

 292. 



325 



