THE DISCONTENT OF ENGLISH INDUSTRIES I English Woollen and Silk Industries By the seventeenth century the woollen industry had become the backbone of English economic life. Thanks to the influx of foreign skill in the successive migrations of the Flemings in the fourteenth century, the Walloons and Dutchmen in the sixteenth century, and to the active protection which the industry enjoyed under a succession of patriotic kings, England became the leading wool-manufacturing country in Europe, so much so that the jealousy of ambitious foreign kings like Louis XIV was directed against this 'nation of shopkeepers'. When the Old Drapery with its homely broadcloths became old-fashioned, in came the New Drapery under foreign influence with its bays and says its bombazines and moccadoes, and other finer fabrics to suit the taste of the modern Englishmen and Englishwomen who were then being formed under the new influences brought to bear upon social life in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. These new industries flourished in Norwich, Colchester, Canterbury, London, and other centres; and enabled England to "clothe half Europe" and to send her textiles to the uttermost parts of the earth. The importance of wool and the industries connected with it was a subject on which there had been a wonderful unanimity of opinion among all classes and parties in England. Many patriotic writers went into poetic ecstasy on the subject and indulged in fanciful analogies and allusions. It is one such enthusiast who wrote,* "whether * J. B. Interest of England considered, 1717. Ovid alluded to this commodity of ours when Jason sailed to steal the golden fleece assisted by Medea's charms I am not antiquary enough to determine." This was perhaps suggested by the well-known lines of Dryden : "Though Jason's fleece was famed of old The same writer compared wool to Samson's locks, and prophesied evil to it when its destiny should lie in the hands of frivolous women. According to a more serious writer,* Daniel Defoe, English broadcloth was the one unrivalled article of dress suited for every race and climate. He says: "Be their country hot or cold, torrid or frigid, near the Equinox or near the Pole, the English manufacture clothes them all. Here it covers them warm from the freezing of the North Bear; and there it shades them and keeps them cool from the scorching beams of a perpendicular sun." Even those whose interest happened to lie against the woollen industry have proclaimed the primacy of wool over all other interests. Sir Josia Child, the great champion of the East India trade, declared that wool was "the foundation of English riches." Charles Davenant, next only to Child as protagonist of the same trade, wrote in 1697; "As bread is the staff of life, so the woollen manufacture is truly the principal nourishment of our body politic."† It was this general recognition that the woollen was the staple manufacture in the kingdom that enabled those engaged in it (in Adam Smith's words) "to have been more successful than any other class of workmen in persuading the legislature that the prosperity of the nation depends upon the success and extension of their particular business." No wonder that a fair proportion of the laws entered in the English Statute Book concerns wool. The number of pamphlets written on the subject in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is indeed amazing. Government was always expected to protect its interests in a special manner, and its policy, both * A Plan of English Commerce (1728). † An Essay on East India Trade, p. 88. domestic and foreign, was greatly influenced by the woollen interest. It was an unquestioned principle in those countries that England should be up against any trade or commodity that harmed wool in the slightest degree. Such was the situation Indian textiles had to face when they were introduced into England. Next to wool came silk, which though a manufacture of foreign extraction," became soon acclimatised in England and "came to a state of great perfection" by the immigration of French artisans in the late seventeenth century. The Huguenots driven from France by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes were welcomed in England, both for their staunch Protestantism and for their exceptional skill in the textile. arts. They settled in Canterbury, Spitafields and other places, which thereby soon became flourishing centres for various valuable commodities like high-class silks, brocades, velvets, hats and so forth. The Royal Lustring Company was started in 1692 by some of these immigrants, and this soon obtained a virtual monopoly in many kinds of stuffs. English silks became so famous that as early as 1730 Italian tradesmen had no better device for commending their stuffs than by protesting that those were right English.” The industry grew strong and seems to have absorbed some of those peasants and yeomen evicted by the enclosing landowners. In Spitalfields alone there were about 100,000 weavers towards the close of the seventeenth century. It is said that in 1681 there were in England as many employed in the silk as in the woollen industry. ་་ Such was the position of the leading English industries when the Indian goods arrived in England. But all on a sudden the situation changed for the worse. A contemporary pamphlet summarises it: "Now come our East India gentlemen. The result is that weavers break, journeymen run away having no trade. Some fled to Holland, some to Ireland, some starved to death at home with their wives and children."† * Social England IV, 127. † England's Danger by Indian Manufactures (1699) II Industrial Crisis During the last decade of the seventeenth century, the English woollen and silk industries underwent a great crisis. There was unemployment everywhere and the working classes were thrown into a state of intense misery. Frequent representations were made to Parliament, and the petitions received from industrial districts, as we shall see, are full of details of starvation among the labourers. The pamphlets of the period also tell the same tale. No doubt, those Grub-street writers must have exaggerated the case a great deal; but that there was widespread unemployment and intense misery cannot be questioned. It is well attested by the admissions of Child, Davenant and other supporters of the East India Company. What was the cause of this misery? The weavers and the country generally attributed it to the Indian trade. Nor did the Company's protagonists deny it. Child wrote: “I do admit that the wearing of so many printed calicoes had been a prejudice to the complainants and do wish a means might be found to prevent it." Elsewhere, however, he minimises the suffering and even justifies it on the ground that if these were losers by the trade there were others—and in greater number-who gained by it. Of course it was in vain to urge this argument against the premier industry of the time. The comparative cheapness of calico was at the bottom of these troubles. Consumers at all times and in all countries will buy in the cheapest market, and patriotic considerations are not strong enough to make any drastic change. Indian calicoes and silks enabled people to clothe themselves at a third and (sometimes even a sixth) of the expense normally incurred by the wearers of English woollens and silks. And as for elegance, these foreign goods were superior. Of course, light Indian fabrics and stuffs could not even in summer entirely supply the needs of clothing in England, and so there was a limit to its increased consumption. But it was to the interest of all ordinary people to substitute it for costly English woollens and silks so far as possible, and this was naturally done. Hence the troubles that arose in the latter part of the century. The importation and use of Indian goods in England not only disorganised the home industries but dislocated foreign trade, and this made the condition at home even worse. The Turkey Company imported silk and silk goods from the Levant in exchange for English woollen exports. When the East India Company brought in cheaper silk from Persia and India, the Levant goods were no longer needed; and the English merchants who managed the trade, as also the manufacturers who supplied woollen cloth for exportation lost their business. This aggravated unemployment and discontent in the country and made the Turkey merchants the sworn enemies of the East India Company. England's trade with Central Europe also suffered by the influx of Indian goods. Previously English manufacturers used to send large quantities of woollen cloth to Germany and adjacent countries, but this was in exchange for their linen which was used in England. But when calico displaced German linen, English woollens were no more demanded in Germany and the English weavers as well as traders lost their business. "When we flighted their manufactures they fell on ours.' ."* According to Cary, the Germans in retaliation used their linen weaving looms for making woollen cloth and thereby not only dispensed with English goods at home but sent their goods to Poland and other countries. The same happened in respect to other branches of foreign trade. Calico came to be increasingly used in most European countries, and this indirectly told upon English industries which previously sent cloth to those countries. It has already been shown that the English East India Company itself had been sending large quantities of their goods to America, Spain, and the various English colonies. Considering all these facts, it was quite natural that the manufacturers put the whole blame upon calico, and calicoimporters were hated as the enemies of national prosperity. * Cary, Discourse Concerning E. I. Trade (1698). p. 4. |