The Evolution of Modern Capitalism: A Study of Machine Production. J. A. Hobson
1860
In the silk industry the influence of machinery is complicated by several considerations especially affecting this manufacture. Although the ingenuity and enterprise of the Lombes had introduced complex machinery into silk throwing many years before it was successfully applied to any other branch of textile industry, the trade did not grow as might have been expected, and the successive increments of great mechanical invention were slowly and slightly applied to the silk industry. There are special reasons for this, some of them connected with the intrinsic value of the commodity, others with the social regulation of the trade.
The inherent delicacy of many of the processes, the capricious character of the market for the commodities, the expensive production of which renders them a luxury and especially amenable to the shifts of taste and fashion, have preserved for artistic handicraft the production of many of the finer silk fabrics, or have permitted the application of machinery in a far less degree than in the cotton and woollen industries.
Moreover, the heavy duties imposed upon raw and thrown silk, which accompanied the strict prohibition of the importation of manufactured silk goods in 1765, by aggravating the expenses of production and limiting the market at the very epoch of the great mechanical inventions, prevented any notable expansion of consumption of silk goods, and rendered them quite unable to resist the competition of the younger and more enterprising cotton industry, which, after the introduction of colour-printing early in the nineteenth century, was enabled to out-compete silk in many markets.
Even in the coarser silk fabrics where weaving machinery was successfully applied at an early date, the slow progress in "throwing" greatly retarded the expansion of the trade, and after the repeal of the duty on imported silk in 1826 the number of throwing mills was still quite inadequate to keep pace with the demands of the weavers.[76] Subsequent improvements in throwing mills, and the application of the ingenious weaving machinery of Jacquard and later improvers, have given a great expansion to many branches of the trade in the last fifty years.
But the following statistics of the consumption of raw and thrown silk from 1765 to 1844 indicate how slight and irregular was the expansion of the trade in England during the era of the great inventions and the application of the steam-motor, and how disastrously the duties upon raw and thrown silks weighed upon this branch of manufacture.
Average Importation.[77]
| lbs. | lbs. | ||
| 1765 1766 1767 | 1823 | 2,468,121 | |
| 715,000 | 1824 | 4,011,048[78] | |
| 1825 | 3,604,058 | ||
| 1785 1786 1787 | 1826 | 2,253,513 | |
| 881,000 | 1827 | 4,213,153 | |
| 1828 | 4,547,812 | ||
| 1801 to 1812 | 1829 | 2,892,201 | |
| 1,110,000 | 1830 | 4,693,517 | |
| 1831 | 4,312,330 | ||
| 1814 | 2,119,974 | 1832 | 4,373,247 |
| 1815 | 1,475,389 | 1833 | 4,761,543 |
| 1816 | 1,088,334 | 1834 | 4,522,451 |
| 1817 | 1,686,659 | 1835 | 5,788,458 |
| 1818 | 1,922,987 | 1836 | 6,058,423 |
| 1819 | 1,848,553 | 1837 | 4,598,859 |
| 1820 | 2,027,635 | 1838 | 4,790,256 |
| 1821 | 2,329,808 | 1839 | 4,665,944 |
| 1822 | 2,441,563 | 1840 | 4,819,262 |
In the linen industry the artificial encouragement given to the Irish trade, which, bounty-fed and endowed with a monopoly of the British markets, was naturally slow to adopt new methods of production, and the uncertain condition of the English trade, owing to the strong rivalry of cotton, prevented the early adoption of the new machine methods. Although Adam Smith regarded linen as a promising industry, it was still in a primitive condition. Not until the very end of the eighteenth century were flax spinning mills established in England and Scotland, and not until after 1830 was power-loom weaving introduced, while the introduction of spinning machinery into Ireland upon a scale adequate to supply the looms of that country took place a good deal later.
We see that the early experimental period in the cotton industry produced no very palpable effect upon the volume of the trade. Between 1700 and 1750 the manufacture was stagnant.[79] The woollen manufacture, owing largely to the stimulus of the fly-shuttle, showed considerable expansion. The great increase of cotton production in 1770–90 measures the force of the mechanical inventions without the aid of the new motor. The full effects of the introduction of steam power were retarded by the strain of the French war. Though 1800 marks the beginning of a large continuous expansion in both cotton and woollen manufactures, it was not until about 1817, when the new motor had established itself generally in the large centres of industry and the energy of the nation was called back to the arts of peace, that the new forces began to fully manifest their power. The period 1840 onwards marks the effect of the revolution in commerce due to the application of the new motor to transport