Introduction to a history of the factory system

Introduction

TO A

HISTORY OF THE FACTORY

SYSTEM

BY

R. WHATELY COOKE TAYLOR

LONDON

RICHARD BENTLEY & SON, NEW BURLINGTON STREET

Printed by R. & R. Clark, Edinburgh.

l had aspired to write the History of the Factory System. In collecting materials for doing so two difficulties con¬ tinually confronted me. The first was the great mass of detail that would need to he presented to the reader should the work attempt in even a moderate degree to justify its title. The second was the lack of material of prime importance on which such a history could be based. The factory system of the far past has left no records behind ; that remains still a subject of inquiry and speculation. The history of the modern factory system is almost equally difficult of access. It is to be found only in the few, and generally vague, allusions of very various writers ; and in official documents and departmental reports of this and other countries. There is absolutely no independent source of information in English literature, that I know of, dealing with the whole of this subject. I have preferred instead then, greatly to limit the scope of my original design, and to confine it to an Introduction only, and that in outline, to such a history, arranged in what I consider would be something like the proper form for a work of the kind to assume. There should be comparatively little difficulty hereafter in filling in that outline, and continuing the narrative down to the present day, were any fairly com-

VI petent person to undertake tlie task. Where the real difficulty lies is in grouping together in an orderly succession the various impulses, historical and economical, that have been concerned about the evolution of this particular method of production; of tracing a continuity, and exhibiting the points of contact among them ; and of suggesting the right moral throughout. This has been my endeavour here.

It is little less than a scandal to our industrial literature that the effort was not made before. It is a truly extra¬ ordinary omission from it that this most portentous and characteristic feature of our national economy still awaits systematic investigation. Foreigners have not been quite so backward in the matter. In several noteworthy books abroad, the philosophy and history of the factory system are dealt with in a capable and thoughtful manner ; though more usually in the interests of some special school of economic teaching than solely for themselves.1 But here, in the land of its fullest adoption ; in (as it were) its own peculiar home ; no such philosophical analyses ; nothing indeed but the most meagre treatises exist ; those mostly of a controversial kind ; and scarcely any even of them within the last forty years.2 It is not that the subject

1 The allusion is to the socialistic economists of Germany, France, and Italy. It is unnecessary to instance the works of any of these as they have in no case been made use of in the composition of this volume.

2 It is worthy of note that none of the English Encyclopaedias, nor other great works of reference, have anything approaching to an adequate article on the factory system. Many of them have no article on it at all, and those that have nearly universally confine themselves to a brief summary of the Factory Acts. Even the Penny Cyclopcedia cannot be excepted from this category, though it is perhaps the least culpably negligent in the matter. In Great Industries of Great Britain, published by Messrs. Cassell, there is a clear statement of modern English legislation ; but this is all.

Vll itself is repellent, or of limited interest. A history of the most productive form of industrial organisation ever known, of its methods and vicissitudes, should surely he one of surpassing interest to the statesman and jurist ; equally with the economist and employer of labour ; hut most of all to the persons employed. Nor need it he much less so to every other member of the body politic. That history, properly told, would he full, in its earlier stages, of quaint contrasts and still more significant harmonies between the social conditions of the past and present ; of strange survivals and long neglected facts ; of the records of achievements of high, often of most romantic interest ; of unremitting human interest throughout. Something of this even the present Introduction may disclose. But how much would the interest he deepened when the story came to tell of quite recent times. The history of that revolution in industry, and consequently all social life, that is the fruit of the modern factory system, would have to speak of the most sudden and amazing transformation in human affairs that mankind has yet witnessed. In the course of little more than a century the industrial framework of the whole civilised world has been radically reconstructed, and more changes have occurred in consequence, even more obvious and tangible changes — changes conspicuous upon the very face and features of the country itself — than for certainly the whole of a previous 1300 years.1 How that new

1 An article in the Fortnightly Review for April 1882 lias the following remarks on this subject : — “ The last hundred years have seen in England the most sudden change in our material life that is perhaps recorded in history. . . . The use of steam in manufactures, and locomotion by sea and land, the textile revolution, the factory system, the enormous growth of population, the change from a rural to a town life, the portentous growth of the empire, the vast expanviii system of industry arose and spread ; what it succeeded ; whence it came ; whither it tends ; to what extent and in what directions it has affected and is likely to affect our destinies : — these are some of the considerations which such a history would deal with, and they are not anywhere, one would say, to he excelled in interest. Least of all, one should surely say, in England, whose prosperity, whose existence almost : whose existence certainly as a great

sion of sea power, of commerce, of manufactures, of wealth, of intercommuni¬ cation, of tlie post ; then the use of gas, electricity, telegraphs, telephones, steam-presses, sewing-machines, air-engines, gas-engines, electric-engines, photographs, tunnels, ship canals, and all the rest. Early in the last century England was one of the lesser kingdoms in Europe, but one-third in size and numbers of France and Germany ; now it is in size twTenty times — twenty times — as big as either, and six or seven times as populous as either. London was then only one of a dozen cities in Europe, hardly of the area of Manchester or Leeds ; it is now the biggest and most populous city in recorded history, nearly equal, I suppose, in size and population to all the capitals of Europe put together. . . . For 4000 years we know, and probably for 40,000 years, man has travelled over land as fast as his own legs, or men’s legs, or horses’ legs, could carry him, but no faster ; over sea as fast as sails or oars could carry him. Now he goes by steam over both, at least at three times tlie pace. In previous ages, possibly for twenty centuries, about 100 miles a day was the outside limit of any long continuous journey ; now we can go 4000 miles by sea in fourteen days, and by land in five days. . . . The whole surface of our planet has only been known about 100 years. . . . For 20,000 years every fabric in use has been twisted into thread by human fingers and woven into stuff by the human hand. Machines and steam-engines now make 10,000 shirts in tlie time that was formerly occupied in making one. For 20,000 years man had got no better light than was given by pitch, tallow, or oil ; he now has gas and electricity, each light of which is equal to hundreds and thousands of candles. Where there used to be a few hundred books there are now 100,000 ; and the London newspapers of a single year consume, I daresay, more type and paper than the printing-presses of the whole world produced from the days of Gutenberg to the French Revolution. . . . Take it all in all, the merely material, physical, and mechanical change in human life in the hundred years from the days of Watt and Arkwright to our own is greater than occurred in the thousand years that preceded, perhaps even in 2000 or 20,000 years.”

ix country : is inevitably bound up with the proper solution of the problems they present. Those problems too are becom¬ ing more pressing as time proceeds ; as this system strikes its roots deeper, and spreads its branches wider, at the expense of elder and less energetic growths ; and this while a dazed legislature is painfully feeling its way among them, with half concessions and temporary expedients, clumsily enough for the most part, while still on the whole faithful to the high responsibilities of its trust.

It is in the light of this last consideration, added to those already stated, that I have resolved to abbreviate the contents and hasten the publication of this book. The expansion of the factory system into nearly all departments of industrial employment in this country has become an already accomplished fact. Commensurate with it, has become the desire among the better minded of the people, including our more thoughtful legislators, to take precautions that the new order of things shall be introduced at the least preventible cost of human health and happiness. 1 1 was not so always, but such is the feeling now. But this benevolent intention is at present checked and hampered ; is liable to be diverted from its proper course and rendered nugatory, or even injurious, by the amazing ignorance of the history and philosophy of the whole subject that prevails. 1 am anxious to make a humble beginning towards a better state of things. “The student of social and industrial problems,” says a recent writer, “ ere he can rightly understand them, and properly estimate their force, must learn something of history, primitive, mediaeval, and modern,”1 and my aim is to supply from those sources a 1 Distribution Reform, by Thomas Illingworth (Cassell ami Co., 1885).

X sketch that might aid such a student in understanding the factory system of to-day. No one can feel more fully than I do how imperfect and inadequate the performance of this attempt is ; how crude, hasty, and fragmentary. Still it is an attempt, as I believe, in the right direction ; and if its only result be to incline more capable minds into the same train of thought it would serve a very useful purpose. If it should itself, however, have the greater result of intro¬ ducing something like order into popular conceptions of this matter, where nothing but chaos was found before, even though it were only something like order, and not the particular order that was expected or is approved, it would then have more than fully achieved its end.

For this book, I must repeat, professes to be no more than an introduction to the history of the factory system, not to be that history itself. It proposes to show how such a history might be written ; how I should myself have written it if opportunity, ability, sufficient knowledge, and other circumstances had been in my favour; and it is intended to suggest the proper moral that ought to pervade such a one. I have commenced, therefore, at the dawn of combined labour: which is the first germ, of course, of a factory system : and roughly sketched some of the labour organisa¬ tions of very ancient times. Those labour systems differed in several notable respects from ours, and to these differences I have drawn attention ; and they much resembled ours in several more. It is of great importance that the points of resemblance equally with the points of divergence should be recognised. From the most ancient times I have passed to classical antiquity, where the indications of a factory system xi are fainter than before, but are found nevertheless ; and from classical to mediaeval times, where the indications are fewer still, but never wholly absent. In the course of this progression I have had occasion to observe that trade and manufacture are inextricably related, and I have added, therefore, a chapter on ancient and mediaeval commerce. Where the limits would at all permit, I have said a few words on the social and political, as well as the industrial, conditions of the time dealt with, and of the classes referred to. I wish to make it clear that the modern factory system is so far from being the only conceivable factory system — as is commonly assumed — that it is, in fact, but one of many actual ones which have already had their day; and may be but the precursor of others yet to come ; that its essential economy is not, therefore, to be studied in any one particular aspect, but in various aspects, and that con¬ sequently all exterior dealing with it, to be successful, must be founded on those wider considerations, historical and economical, that I have endeavoured to bring into view.

In the preparation of a work of this scope my reading has necessarily taken a wide and very various range. Equally, in keeping within the limits that I have imposed upon myself and in accelerating the completion of the undertaking, has that reading been generally compelled to be of a very superficial kind. I may at once allow that much of this book is a compilation from others ; and it is so inevi¬ tably. dSTo work of precisely the same kind has, so far as I am aware, ever appeared before ; and the materials for it (in the spirit in which I have here employed them) are such as do not yield themselves easily to casual research.

Those materials have had accordingly to be sought far and wide amongst the works of others, generally amongst well-known works as the most accessible. I have availed myself of such assistance as these supply without scruple ; and in some parts of the text the principal labour has been their proper collation and piecing together. I have in every case endeavoured to make acknowledgment of the assistance thus rendered in the most conspicuous way. Where a book is quoted for the first time, I have generally given in the notes its title, date, edition, and the names of the author and publisher (where possible) in full. If cited at second hand, I have named the intermediate authority. Where a quotation is made at length, I have almost invariably (I have striven to do so invariably) used the author’s own words ; and I have preferred to take this course rather than epitomise, often at very considerable inconvenience to myself. If occasionally all these precautions have failed me in making the full acknowledgment that I desire, it is either an oversight, or because the authority quoted is too well known, of too ancient date, or too obscure, for the reference to be useful.

Just at the last, the completion of this book has been hurried more than I had once expected or intended. The great likelihood that the area of factory legislation will soon be further enlarged, and the unusual interest that the public is now showing in this and kindred questions, have induced me to issue it at the very earliest possible opportunity. It is not without a pang that I do so, conscious as I am of its numerous imperfections ; its many sins, both of omission and commission ; its crudities, that further revision might have xiii

removed ; its faults, that closer study might have remedied. But the moment is critical ; time is precious ; and if the facts thus loosely grouped together should assist, though ever so little, in instructing public opinion upon the matter about which they are concerned, 1 shall he satisfied that I have acted for the best.

WHATELY COOKE TAYLOR.

Chapter I

F actory — Statutory Definitions — Mill — Manufacture — Manufacture and Mart — Trade — Handicraft — Art and Manufacture — Agricul¬ ture — Laws of Agricultural and Manufacturing Industry — Machinery — Division and Combination of Labour— The Factory System — Extractive Industries — Transport and Building — Services and Commodities — Immaterial Products— Plan of this Work ..... Pages 1-41

Chapter II. Other Forms Of Labour Organisation

Prehistoric Times — The Patriarchal Age — Village Communities — Despotism — The Tribal System — Slavery — Serfdom — Hereditary Trades — Caste — Guilds — The Municipal System — The Manorial System — The Feudal System — Free Industry — Competition — Capital and Labour .... 42-78

CHAPTER III. MANUFACTURING INDUSTRY IN ANCIENT TIMES (TEXTILE industries)

Textiles — Weaving — Spinning — Egypt — Materials used — Weaving Implements — Netting and Embroidery — Fine Linen — Spinning

XVI

CONTENTS

Implements — Egyptian Textile Manufactories — Other Ancient Countries — Ethiopia — Idumea — Arabia — Assyria — Babylonian Manufactories — Phoenicia — Carthage — Palestine — India — Indian Manufacture — Persia and Media — Lydia — Phrygia — China — Greece — Greek Colonies — Italy — Classical Implements — Gaul and Germany — Scythia and Sarmatia — Scandinavia — Mexico — Peru ...... Pages 79-127

Chapter IV. Manufacturing Industries In Ancient Times (miscellaneous Industries)

Dyeing and Printing — Colours known to the Ancients — Tyrian Purple —Ancient Dyers and Dye-houses — Bleaching — Fulling — Metal¬ lurgy — Tubal Cain — Metals known to the Ancients — Gold — Silver — Brass — Iron — Copper — Tin — Lead — Mercury — Metal Manufacture — Founding, Casting, and Refining — Earthenware — Bricks — Pottery — -Porcelain — Glass — Paper — Leather 128-177

Chapter V. Ancient And Medleval Commerce

The Middle Ages — Movements of Commerce — Ancient Caravan Routes — Ancient Maritime Commerce — Hebrew Commerce : Ophir — The Phoenicians — The Carthaginians — Classical Com¬ merce — Later Egyptian Commerce — Imperial Rome — Constanti¬ nople — Arabian Commerce — The Crusades — Venice and Genoa — -The Hanse League — The Netherlands — Mediaeval Inland Commerce — Fairs .... 178-218

Chapter VI. Medieval Manufactures

The Dark Ages— The Church — The Greek Empire — Silk — Wool — Flax — Cotton — Metal Manufacture — Smaller Industries — Locks

CONTENTS and Clocks — Wire Drawing — Dyeing — Felting — Paper-making — Pottery — Leather — Glass — -Mediaeval System — Trade Societies

Chapter VII. England Before The Factory System — To The Reign Of

EDWARD III.

The Ancient Britons — Primitive Manufactures — The Roman Period — Roman Manufactures — -The Roman System — The Saxons — Saxon Manufactures — The Saxon System — The Normans Classes at the Conquest — Domesday Book— The Plantagenets- Condition of Trade and Industry — -Legislative Restrictions — Social Condition of this Time . . . 2 6 2-2 9 i>

Chapter VIII. England Before The Factory System — From Edward III

TO WILLIAM III.

Edward III. : Establishment of the English Woollen Manufacture — John Kempe — The Black Death— The Statutes of Labourers — Wat Tyler — Emancipation of the People — The Wars of the Roses — Political Economy of this Period — Wages — Sumptuary Laws — The Tudors — -Elizabeth — The Poor Laws — Apprentice¬ ship — The Iron Industry — The Stuarts . 300-339

Chapter IX. The Modern Factory System

William III. — Social Condition of the Time — Commerce — Manufacture — Birth of the Modern Factory System — English Silk Industry — John Lombe — The First Factory — Successful Result — -Woollen Manufacture — The Fleece — Linen Manufacture — - Decline of the Iron Industry — Pottery — Paper — Smaller Metal Industries : Sheffield and Birmingham — General Increase of Production

340-383

CONTENTS xviii