A HISTORY OF LANCASHIRE 



land and water with her great seaport, and the railway was continually fed 

 with the shipments of cotton which America sent over. 



The ' Chat-Moss line' was followed by other developments. In 1840 

 the Manchester to Leeds railway was opened — the beginning of the great 

 Lancashire and Yorkshire system — and this was followed in 1842 by exten- 

 sions to Bolton, Stockport, and Birmingham, and shortly afterwards to other 

 places.'" Within twenty years the county was intersected with railways in 

 all directions which afforded facilities for the spread of industry even to the 

 remoter country places, and tended to restore to the villages that rustic 

 employment which the town factory system had compelled them to abandon. 



While all this revolution in industrial processes was going on at the 

 close of the eighteenth and the opening of the nineteenth century there was, 

 it may be well imagined, no small stir and ferment among the working 

 population at large, many of whom saw themselves deprived of their 

 accustomed means of livelihood by the new inventions. The destruction 

 of the new spinning machinery was their first reply, but finding the task 

 fruitless and endless this class of malcontents had to be satisfied with an 

 attitude of sullen resentment and disapproval. A more intelligent section of 

 them went with the times, realizing that increased spinning facilities would 

 bring with it increased demand for cloth and workmen. 



The French war proved popular in so far as the stagnation and confusion 

 of foreign markets enabled English exporters to profit at the foreigner's 

 expense."* Another element of pacification was that the wages of the 

 spinners were attractively high, ranging between Ss. and 19J. in Man- 

 chester,"* and possibly rather less in the districts round. There was a great 

 and increasing demand for spinners, and they were in full employment 

 everywhere. So, indeed, were the handloom weavers in the first decade of 

 the nineteenth century, and even in the year 1814a weaver was earning 

 ys. bd. for one piece of ' Second Seventy-four Calico.' '" A clever weaver 

 could turn out at least one piece per week, sometimes one and a half pieces, 

 or with the help of his wife working a second loom he could make 14J. a 

 week. A family of three, two parents and a boy or girl, could earn as much 

 as iqs. a week,'" and money went, of course, somewhat further a hundred 

 years ago than it does to-day. Most of the weaving of cloth for calico 

 printing was done in the parts of Blackburn and Preston at this time 

 \c. 1800-20).'" The new inventions, coinciding as they did with the 

 stagnation of foreign trade, gave a tremendous impetus to Lancashire's 

 prosperity, but the close of the war and the restoration of foreign markets 

 caused subsequent depression. During the eighteenth and at the opening of 

 the nineteenth century Manchester and the adjacent parts were overrun 

 with poor Irish weavers who helped to lower the rate of wages in the 

 fustian weaving trade. About this time the poor rates all over the county 

 were so high that some alleviation was imperative. The ranks of the poor 



^ Baines, Hist, of Lanes, i (ed. Harland), 346, 350, 351. 



"" Cf. Rep. of Evidence befire the Select Com. on Manufacture, Commerce, and Shipping, 223. 



^ Pari. Rep. 179 ; Rep. of Select Com. on Poor Laws, 181 7, p. 47 (18 1 6). 



^ Table of average earnings of weavers at Barrovi'ford, near Colne, furnished by Jas. Grimshaw, before 

 the Select Committee on Manufacture, &c. 1833, Rep. 605. 



»" Table of average earnings of weavers in the paru of Blackburn and Preston, 1833, Porl- Rep. on 

 Handloom Weaving, 130. 



*" Ibid. 142-50. 



308 



