century brought a great number of these strangers to Manchester, and it can scarcely be doubted that the infusion of such new blood has had a tendeney to exalt the character of English merchants.

The progress of manufactures has thus been briefly traced to the middle of the eighteenth century. Woollens had hitherto been considered as "the grand British staple of commerce." The historians of those days dwell with astonishment on the fact, that at Manchester and Bolton alone goods to the amount of £600,000 were annually manufactured; they advert with a trembling pen to the encroachments which Spain, France, and even Portugal are making on this, the sole stay of the nation, as they seem to consider it; and the manufacturers of Ireland are regarded as such dangerous rivals, that it is proposed to prohibit them from exporting their goods to foreign countries or to England. A noted writer, frighted from his propriety by the then recent invention of machines to facilitate manufacturing processes, questions whether it be "good policy for a commercial state to make use of machines to lessen the price of labour!" It is scarcely surprising that an epoch so fruitful of invention should have given rise, among ill-informed men, to doubts such as these, since it was impossible to foresee that in proportion as the means of production increased new avenues for profitable adventure should successively have presented themselves.

Before entering upon the field of modern commerce, the opening greatness of which caused so much apprehension, it may be desirable to present the following table of cotton wool imported and cotton goods exported during the latter years of the old, and the early years of the new system. Contrasted with similar tables of more recent date, ît is an extraordinary and amusing record:

In 1760 oats were 2s. the bushel of 45lbs.; wheat 5s. the bushel of 70lbs.; meal was 20s. the load; "jannock" 15lbs. for Is.; malt 23s. the load; a goose cost 15d.; cheese 24d. the pound; beef was 2d. the pound; a neck of mutton cost 9d.; land was sold at 40s. or 45s. the Cheshire acre; and a weaver's cottage, with a two-loom shop, rented at 40s, or 50s. the year! The "merchants" of those days travelled through the country to retail their own goods, which were carried by pack horses,* and the state of society, as well as the mode of conducting business, was the most primitive which it is possible to conceive. "It is probable (says Dr. Aikin) that few or no capitals of £3,000 or £4,000, acquired by trade, existed here before 1690. However, towards the latter end of the last [seventeenth] century and the beginning of the present, [eighteenth] the traders had certainly got money beforehand, and began to build modern brick houses, in place of those of wood and plaster. For the first thirty years of the present century, the old-established houses confined their trade to the wholesale dealers in London, Bristol, Norwich, Newcastle, and those who frequented Chester fair. The profits were thus divided between the manufacturer, the wholesale and the retail dealer; and those of the manufacturer were probably (though this is contrary to the received opinion) less per cent. upon the business they did than in the present times. The improvement of

*The roads through Manchester were single-horse lanes, such as Garrettlane, Newton-lane, or Market-'street)-lane.

their fortunes was chiefly owing to their economy in living, the expense of which was much below the interest of the capital employed. Apprentices at that time were now and then taken from families which could pay a moderate fee. By an indenture dated 1695, the fee paid appears to have been sixty pounds, the young man serving seven years. But all apprentices were obliged to undergo a vast deal of laborious work, such as turning warping mills, carrying goods on their shoulders through the streets, and the like. An eminent manufacturer in that age used to be in his warehouse before six in the morning, accompanied by his children and apprentices. At seven they all came in to breakfast, which consisted of one large dish of waterporridge, made of oat-meal, water and a little salt, boiled thick, and poured into a dish. At the side was a pan or basin of milk, and the master and apprentices, each with a wooden spoon in his hand, without loss of time, dipped into the same dish, and thence into the milk pan; and as soon as it was finished they all returned to their work. In George the First's reign many country gentlemen began to send their sons apprentices to the Manchester manufacturers; but though the little country gentry did not then live in the luxurious manner they have done since, the young men found it so different from home that they could not brook this treatment, and either got away before their time, or, if they staid till the expiration of their indentures, they then, for the most part, entered into the army or went to sea. The little attention paid to rendering the evenings of apprentices agreeable at home, where they were considered rather as servants than pupils, drove many of them to taverns, where they acquired habits of drinking that frequently proved injurious in after-life."

The increase of the cotton manufacture effected great changes in the town and its inhabitants. Hitherto there had been, in fact, only one branch of trade-the woollen

pursued in these districts; but since the middle of the last century the cotton trade has almost superseded the ancient fabric, whilst the recent migration of the silk manufacture has tended still more to diminish the importance of that which was once regarded as the "grand staple of commerce." It will be desirable, therefore, to take a separate view of these branches of industry.

CHAPTER I.

Mention has already been made of the great impediment to the extension of cotton weaving which existed in the scarcity of yarn. Until the eighteenth century, the machinery for conducting every process of manufacture was rude in structure and slow in operation; workmen were not then, as now, collected in factories under the eye of vigilant superintendents; but the house of each man was his workshop, and, wages being high in proportion to the price of provisions, each individual suited his term of labour to his own inclination. Still however, the weavers out-ran the spinners, notwithstanding the supplies of yarn from abroad, and there existed a constant dearth of the material for

manufacturing cloth. The spinning-wheel was brought into play by the young and old inhabitants of the farmer's cottage only to fill up vacancies of other employment, and there was consequently no regular supply to meet the growing demand. It appears that in earlier times the master used to supply his weaver, generally, with the material for his loom, but it is mentioned that about 1740 Manchester merchants began to give out warps and raw cotton to the weavers, receiving them back in cloth, and paying for the carding, roving, spinning, and weaving. At that time the warping was carried on by means of pegs fastened into the wall; and all the other processes by which the raw article

* The weaving of a piece containing twelve pounds of eighteen penny weft occupied a weaver about fourteen days, and he received for the weaving 18s.; spinning the weft, at ninepence per pound, 9s.; picking, carding, and roving, 9s.-Guest.