SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY 



and numerous branches to supply its industry with vital warmth and circula- 

 tion, as also to open up channels of commercial intercourse with the Eastern 

 and Western seas.' '*' Other canal systems followed ; that of Manchester to 

 Bolton and on to Bury was commenced in 1791, and next year a cutting was 

 made connecting Manchester with Ashton under Lyne and with Oldham. 

 Two years later Rochdale was joined by the Oldham route through Fox 

 Denton, Chadderton, Middleton, and Hopwood to Manchester.'" 



Not merely was a cheap and powerful method of transporting raw cotton 

 and the finished goods essential to the success of the trade, but the use of 

 machinery and the application of steam power required large quantities of 

 two great mineral products of exceeding bulk and weight ; these were, of 

 course, coal and iron. The coal, as has been already pointed out, was close at 

 hand. The canal just mentioned, which joined the Bridgewater cutting at 

 Manchester, and went by way of Oldham through Chadderton and Middle- 

 ton to the east of Rochdale into Yorkshire, passed through the coal country ; '*' 

 so did the Worsley Canal towards Leigh, and other branches of it. This 

 facilitated the supply of an indispensable and heavy fuel necessary for the 

 generation of steam. Iron, on the other hand, not indigenous to the county, 

 had to be brought, by other canal systems which were started in emulation of 

 the Bridgewater scheme, from the Staffordshire beds where it abounded.'" 



With the application of power to spinning machinery it had seemed 

 likely there would follow a glut of yarn, and an insufficiency of looms and 

 weavers to use it up. This apprehension was, however, almost immediately 

 dissipated by the invention of the* power-loom, which, though designed as 

 early as 1803, was only brought to perfection ten years later.''" This inven- 

 tion multiplied the speed and quality of the weaving process to such a degree 

 that, in spite of the usual demonstrations against it, it became almost univer- 

 sally adopted by the leading manufacturers. In 1833 there were, we are 

 told, 85,500 power-looms at work in England.'" Henceforth many spinning 

 and weaving sheds were built side by side, especially in the districts of Bury, 

 Bolton, and Ashton under Lyne,"' because the invention of Horrocks in 1803, 

 being built entirely of iron, occupied so little space that hundreds of machines 

 could be worked in one mill-room. The manufacture of these looms, which 

 could scarcely be turned out fast enough for the demand, and a variety of depen- 

 dent industries that were bound up with the machine-making business, gave a 

 tremendous impetus to the iron trade and iron-working industry ; thus iron 

 foundries became a marked feature of the coalfields in the midst of which 

 they were situated, because of the difficulty of transporting such heavy 

 materials from one place to another. 



At the very time when the difficulty of rapid transport for heavy goods 

 had become crucial it was solved by the application of steam power for 

 purposes of traction. In 1830 the first railway in England was opened in 

 Lancashire, and as might have have been expected from the imperative 

 necessity of supplying the raw material of the cotton trade, was constructed 

 from Manchester to Liverpool. Thus was Manchester connected both by 



'«* Ure, Cotton Manuf. 215-16. 



^' Baines, Hist, of Lanes, (ed. Harland, 1868), i, 338, 339, 350. '^ Ibid. 339. 



''^ Ure, op. cit. Z16. 'The waterways of England now radiate from six central points — Manchester, 

 Liverpool, Birmingham, Hull, London, and Bristol.' 



'" Baines, Hist, of Cotton Manuf 234. '" Ibid. 235. ='> Ibid. 236. 



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