A HISTORY OF LANCASHIRE 



application of the term 'Industrial Revolution' to 

 the extraordinary economic development which 

 took place, than from that of Lancashire. First 

 among the circumstances which led up to the 

 factory system we must notice the invention of 

 new machinery and the improvement of old 

 machinery, which previously had been of a very 

 rudimentary type, remembering that the use 

 of specialized appliances was conditional upon 

 the division of labour which can frequently be 

 secured by means of group production only. So 

 far as the new contrivances related to textiles, 

 they were as a rule employed first in the cotton 

 industry, but before the end of the eighteenth 

 century the factory system was being intro- 

 duced into the Lancashire woollen industry. 

 Another cause leading to the establishment of 

 the factory system was the increased use of 

 water power, especially in cotton-spinning. In 

 early years roller-spinning was almost always 

 effected by water power, and the economies of 

 the use of water power proved to be a strong 

 decentralizing force, as the small Lancashire 

 streams could not supply sufficient power for a 

 group of mills in any given spot. But far more 

 important for the development of the factory 

 system in Lancashire than the increased use of 

 water power was the application of the steam 

 engine to driving machinery. The old atmo- 

 spheric engine of Newcomen had been in use 

 since early in the eighteenth century for pump- 

 ing water out of mines, and Baines asserts that an 

 atmospheric engine was used in a cotton mill in 

 Manchester in 1783. James Watt had taken 

 out the patent for his steam engine in 1769. 

 His chief improvements on Newcomen consisted 

 in the separate condenser and in the arrangement 

 for dispensing with the need of atmospheric 

 pressure. It was several years before the steam 

 eni^ine was first employed in production proper. 

 The first engine of this type known to have been 

 set up in a cotton mill was that constructed by 

 Boulton and Watt, at Soho Iron Works, Birming- 

 ham, in 1785, and used at Papplewick in 

 Nottinghamshire. It was not till 1789 that a 

 Lancashire cotton mill was driven by a Watt 

 steam engine. In the same year a steam engine 

 was erected at St. Helens to grind and polish 

 plates of glass made by the British Cast Plate- 

 glass Manufactory. By 1795 steam engines 

 were being put to yet another use, for Aikin, 

 writing in that year, mentions that they were 

 employed in the neighbourhood of Manchester 

 ' for winding up coals firom a great depth in the 

 coal pits.' 



Improvements in the process of manufacture, 

 quite apart fi-om mechanical inventions, are 

 another cause which led to the development of 

 the factory system. An improvement, which 

 particularly affected Lancashire at the time, was 

 the substitution of chlorine bleaching for the old 

 process of ' grassing.' The bleaching properties 



possessed by chlorine were discovered by a French 

 chemist, BerthoUet, in 1785, and the process 

 was further developed by other chemists, includ- 

 ing the Manchester chemist Henry. Prior to 

 the discovery of the new method, bleaching was 

 carried on in the neighbourhood of Manchester 

 and Bolton by whitsters doing business on a 

 small scale. After the discovery of the new 

 system bleach-works on a large scale were 

 established in various towns of the county. 



Towards the end of the eighteenth century 

 improvements in the process of smelting iron led 

 to the disappearance of the small forges which 

 had previously predominated in the industry. In 

 1784 Henry Cort, a Lancashire inventor, took 

 out a patent for refining iron by puddling witli 

 mineral coal, and four years later a steam engine 

 was first applied to blast furnaces.^ Both these 

 inventions tended to increase the scale on which 

 the iron industry was conducted. It is uncertain 

 how soon they were adopted in Lancashire, 

 though it seems likely that coal was being used 

 for smelting purposes in the Wigan iron industry 

 at the end of the eighteenth century. 



Another advance which led to the growth of 

 Lancashire industries and to the spread of the 

 factory system was the great development of 

 transport facilities which took place during the 

 eighteenth century. In 1 720 the River Douglas 

 was rendered navigable as far as Wigan, which 

 assisted materially in aiding the expansion of the 

 coal industry of that town. Shortly afterwards 

 the Mersey and Irwell were canalized as far as 

 Manchester. Two canals which contributed to 

 the use made of the Haydock and the Worsley 

 coalfields respectively were the Sankey and the 

 Bridgewater canals, both finished about 1760. 

 Another aspect of the development of transport 

 facilities, quite apart from the new waterways, 

 was the improvement eflFected in the condition of 

 the highways. The direct consequence was a 

 great augmentation of commerce. Another out- 

 come of the improved transport facilities was the 

 attraction of new industries to their routes. 

 Thus the banks of the Sankey Canal at St. Helens 

 offered a home to two new industries : the one 

 was the plate-glass works established at Raven- 

 head in 1773, and the other was the copper- 

 smelting works which commenced business at 

 Greenbank in 1780. To the latter works copper 

 for smelting was brought by water from Paris 

 Mountain in Anglesey. 



If we turn to the nineteenth century and seek 

 reasons for the rapid progress of Lancashire 

 industries during that period, we discover that 

 the process of the substitution of the factory 

 system for the domestic system, and the large- 

 scale for the small-scale system, continued long 

 after it began, and that the new economies of 

 specialization and co-ordination rendered possible 



352 



^Toynbee, Industrial Revolution, 91 



