SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY 



this direction, for a certain Lewis Roberts, writing in 1641, criticizes their 

 attempt as distinctly noteworthy : — ' The town of Manchester, in Lancashire,' 

 he says, 



must be also herein remembered, and worthily for their encouragement commended, who 

 buy the yarn of the Irish in great quantity, and weaving it, return the same again into 

 I Ireland to sell : Neither does their industry rest here, for they buy cotton wool in London 



that comes first from Cyprus and Smyrna and at home work the same, and perfect it into 

 fustians, vermillions, dimities, and such other stuils and then return it to London, whence 

 the same is vented and sold, and not seldom sent into foreign parts . . . 



Yet ' fustians ' were not genuine cottons, and the problem before the 

 Lancashire manufacturer from the middle of the seventeenth century to the 

 middle of the eighteenth was how to produce a pure cotton fabric ; and above 

 all how to rival the surpassing fineness of the Indian calicoes. 



The economic history of the latter half of the eighteenth century, during 

 which period this problem was actually solved, is that of one of the most 

 crucial periods in the life story not merely of the county, but of Great Britain 

 itself. After the year 1750 the main burden of the nation's wealth as we 

 know it to-day has hung upon the single hinge of Lancashire : with its fate 

 has been linked the commercial fate of Britain."" It is scarcely too much to 

 affirm that upon the solution of the problem which the county had, how- 

 ever unconsciously, to face, depended the ultimate expansion of that gigantic 

 world-commerce which had been initiated and kept going by the fertile brains 

 and busy hands employed in the teeming hives of northern industry. That 

 Lancashire and not another county should have become the first of British 

 trade and industry is no accident, but the result of a natural process of gradual 

 evolution from a very early period to the present day. 



All the evidence points to the conclusion that Lancashire beyond any county 

 in England has a natural aptitude for the cotton manufacture, largely 

 derived from a spirit of industry practised for generations in hand spinning and 

 weaving in farm-houses and cottages during hours of cessation from farm work 

 and other labour, and that during a period of nearly two hundred years before 

 the actual weaving of a pure cotton cloth was achieved it had been extending 

 its utmost endeavour it that direction. The particular stumbling-block was not 

 merely the deficiency of cotton or woollen weft, but its ill quality, and what 

 ' Mr. Ure calls the ' mongrel ' character of the fabric resulting from the use of 

 a linen warp. The spinners could not produce enough weft to keep the 

 weavers going, and in spite of improvements in ' carding ' and other processes 

 the woven material did not as yet attain in any degree the soft fineness of 

 the Indian fabrics that were the despair of the Lancashire manufacturers. 



Yet Lancashire determination succeeded in finding a solution to the 

 problem. This was of course the invention of the Hargreaves spinning jenny 

 in 1764, by a Blackburn weaver. This invention, wonderful as it was, was 



'" Cf. Leader on the Cotton Trade in the Manch. Evening News (Thursday, 17 May, 1906). 'Without 

 cotton the county would be an inconsiderable place ; without cotton England would have no claim to pre- 

 eminence in the commercial world.' Again, Sir. W. Houldsworth in a deputation to the Premier (Sir Henry 

 Campbell-Bannerman) observed that the whole country depended on the prosperity of the cotton trade, and 

 the Premier in reply emphasized the national character of the question of ' the cotton industry, which affected 

 the whole of the people of this country.' The trade of Lancashire was a benefit to every part of the kingdom. 

 (Ibid.) ' Anything that caused misfortune to Lancashire would cause misfortune to other parts of the country 

 . . . every man and every woman, every labourer, and every employer in all the industries of the country are 

 affected directly by any misfortune happening to the great industry of cotton. This is therefore a national 

 question'; Manch. Guardian, 18 Mar. 1906. 



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