The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 405 pages of information about The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844.

The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 405 pages of information about The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844.
from adequate, and it may be safely assumed that, in the year 1845, the power and number of the machines and the number of the workers is greater by one-half than it was in 1834.  The chief centre of this industry is Lancashire, where it originated; it has thoroughly revolutionised this county, converting it from an obscure, ill-cultivated swamp into a busy, lively region, multiplying its population tenfold in eighty years, and causing giant cities such as Liverpool and Manchester, containing together 700,000 inhabitants, and their neighbouring towns, Bolton with 60,000, Rochdale with 75,000, Oldham with 50,000, Preston with 60,000, Ashton and Stalybridge with 40,000, and a whole list of other manufacturing towns to spring up as if by a magic touch.  The history of South Lancashire contains some of the greatest marvels of modern times, yet no one ever mentions them, and all these miracles are the product of the cotton industry.  Glasgow, too, the centre for the cotton district of Scotland, for Lanarkshire and Renfrewshire, has increased in population from 30,000 to 300,000 since the introduction of the industry.  The hosiery manufacture of Nottingham and Derby also received one fresh impulse from the lower price of yarn, and a second one from an improvement of the stocking loom, by means of which two stockings could be woven at once.  The manufacture of lace, too, became an important branch of industry after the invention of the lace machine in 1777; soon after that date Lindley invented the point-net machine, and in 1809 Heathcote invented the bobbin-net machine, in consequence of which the production of lace was greatly simplified, and the demand increased proportionately in consequence of the diminished cost, so that now, at least 200,000 persons are supported by this industry.  Its chief centres are Nottingham, Leicester, and the West of England, Wiltshire, Devonshire, etc.  A corresponding extension has taken place in the branches dependent upon the cotton industry, in dyeing, bleaching, and printing.  Bleaching by the application of chlorine in place of the oxygen of the atmosphere; dyeing and printing by the rapid development of chemistry, and printing by a series of most brilliant mechanical inventions, a yet greater advance which, with the extension of these branches caused by the growth of the cotton industry, raised them to a previously unknown degree of prosperity.

The same activity manifested itself in the manufacture of wool.  This had hitherto been the leading department of English industry, but the quantities formerly produced are as nothing in comparison with that which is now manufactured.  In 1782 the whole wool crop of the preceding three years lay unused for want of workers, and would have continued so to lie if the newly invented machinery had not come to its assistance and spun it.  The adaptation of this machinery to the spinning of wool was most successfully accomplished.  Then began the same sudden development

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The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.