279.  The accumulation of many large manufacturing establishments in the same district has a tendency to bring together purchasers or their agents from great distances, and thus to cause the institution of a public mart or exchange.  This contributes to diffuse information relative to the supply of raw materials, and the state of demand for their produce, with which it is necessary manufacturers should be well acquainted.  The very circumstance of collecting periodically, at one place, a large number both of those who supply the market and of those who require its produce, tends strongly to check the accidental fluctuations to which a small market is always subject, as well as to render the average of the prices much more uniform.

280.  When capital has been invested in machinery, and in buildings for its accommodation, and when the inhabitants of the neighbourhood have acquired a knowledge of the modes of working at the machines, reasons of considerable weight are required to cause their removal.  Such changes of position do however occur; and they have been alluded to by the Committee on the Fluctuation of Manufacturers’ Employment, as one of the causes interfering most materially with an uniform rate of wages:  it is therefore of particular importance to the workmen to be acquainted with the real causes which have driven manufactures from their ancient seats.

“The migration or change of place of any manufacture has sometimes arisen from improvements of machinery not applicable to the spot where such manufacture was carried on, as appears to have been the case with the woollen manufacture, which has in great measure migrated from Essex, Suffolk, and other southern counties, to the northern districts, where coal for the use of the steam-engine is much cheaper.  But this change has, in some instances, been caused or accelerated by the conduct of the workmen, in refusing a reasonable reduction of wages, or opposing the introduction of some kind of improved machinery or process; so that, during the dispute, another spot has in great measure supplied their place in the market.  Any violence used by the workmen against the property of their masters, and any unreasonable combination on their part, is almost sure thus to be injurious to themselves.”

281.  These removals become of serious consequence when the factories have been long established, because a population commensurate with their wants invariably grows up around them.  The combinations in Nottinghamshire, of persons under the name of Luddites, drove a great number of lace frames from that district, and caused establishments to be formed in Devonshire.  We ought also to observe, that the effect of driving any establishment into a new district, where similar works have not previously existed, is not merely to place it out of the reach of such combinations; but, after a few years, the example of its success will most probably induce other capitalists in the new district to engage in the same manufacture:  and thus, although one establishment only should be driven away, the workmen, through whose combination its removal is effected, will not merely suffer by the loss of that portion of demand for their labour which the factory caused; but the value of that labour will itself be reduced by the competition of a new field of production.