The Evolution of Modern Capitalism: A Study of Machine Production. J. A. Hobson
consequent cheapening of raw material, especially of cotton, the opening up of new markets for the purchase of raw material and for the sale of manufactured goods. The effect of this diminished cost of production and increased demand for manufactured goods upon the textile trades is measured by the rapid pace of the expansion which followed the opening of the early English railways and the first establishment of steam-ship traffic.
§ 8. The development of the textile trades, and that of cotton in particular, arose from the invention of new machinery. This machinery was quickened and rendered effective by the new motor. The iron trade in its development presents the reverse order. The discovery of a new motor was the force which first gave it importance. The mechanical inventions applied to producing iron were stimulated by the requirements of the new motor.
In 1740 the difficulty of obtaining adequate supplies of timber, and the failure of attempts to utilise pit-coal, had brought the iron trade to a very low condition. According to Scrivener, at this time "the iron trade seemed dwindling into insignificance and contempt."[80]
The earlier steps in its rise from this degradation are measured by the increased application of pit-coal and the diminished use of charcoal.
The progress may be marked as follows:—
(1) The application of Watt's earlier improvements upon Newcomen's engines, patented 1769, was followed by a rise in the average output for furnaces worked with charcoal. The average output of 294 tons in 1750 was increased to 545 tons in 1788.
(2) The substitution of coke for charcoal proceeding pari passu with improved methods of smelting yielded an average output for coke-fed furnaces of 903 tons in 1788. To this epoch belong also Cort's inventions for puddling and rolling (patented 1783–84), which revolutionised the production of bar-iron.
(3) The introduction of Watt's double-power engine in 1788–90. In 1796 the production of pig-iron was double that of 1788, and the average output per furnace raised to 1048 tons.
(4) The substitution of hot for cold blast in 1829, effecting an economy of coal to the extent of 2 tons 18 cwt. per ton of cast-iron.
(5) The adoption of raw coal instead of coke in 1833, effecting a further reduction of expenditure of coal from 5 tons 3–½ cwt. to 2 tons 5–¼ cwt. in producing a ton of cast-iron.
These were the leading events in the establishment of the iron industry of this country. The following table indicates the growth of the production of English iron from 1740 to 1840:—
| Year. | No. of Furnaces. | Average Output. Tons. | Total Produce. Tons. |
| 1740 | 59 | 294 | 17,350 |
| 1788 | 77 | 909 coke 545 charcoal | 61,300 |
| 1796 | 121 | 1048 | 125,079 |
| 1806 | 133 | 1546 | 258,206 |
| 1825 | 364 (261 in blast) | 2228 | 703,184 |
| 1828 | 365 (277 in blast) | 2530 | |
| 1839 | 378 | 3592 | 1,347,790 |
Here we see that economy of power rather than improved machinery is the efficient cause of the development of industry, or more properly, that economy of power precedes and stimulates the several steps in improvement of machinery.
The substitution of coke for charcoal and the application of steam power not merely increased enormously the volume of the trade, but materially affected its localisation. Sussex and Gloucester, two of the chief iron-producing counties when timber was the source of power, had shrunk into insignificance by 1796, when facilities of obtaining coal were a chief determinant. By 1796, it is noteworthy that the four districts of Stafford, Yorkshire, South Wales, and Salop were to the front.
The discovery of the hot blast and substitution of raw coal for coke occurring contemporaneously with the opening of railway enterprise mark the new interdependence of industries in the age of machinery.
Iron has become a foundation upon which every machine-industry alike is built. The metal manufactures, so small in the eighteenth century, attained an unprecedented growth and a paramount importance in the nineteenth.
The application of machinery to the metal industries has led to an output of inventive genius not less remarkable in this century than the textile inventions of the eighteenth century.
"In textile manufacture it was improved machinery that first called for a new motor; in metal manufacture it was the new motor which rendered necessary improved machinery. … For all modern purposes the old handicraft implements were clearly obsolete. The immediate result of this requirement was the bringing to the front a number of remarkable men, Brindley, Smeaton, Maudsley, Clements, Bramah, Nasmyth, etc., to supply mechanism of a proportionate capacity and nicety for the new motive-power to act upon and with, and the ultimate result was the adoption of the modern factory system in the larger tool-making and engineering workshops, as well as in metal manufactories proper. Thus there gradually grew up," says Jevons, "a system of machine-tool labour, the substitution of iron hands for human hands, without which the execution of engines and machines in their present perfection would be impossible."[81]
In the later era of machine development an accumulative importance is attached to the improvements in the machine-making industries. The great inventions associated with the names of Maudsley and Nasmyth, the cheapening of steel by the Bessemer process, and the various steps by which machines are substituted for hands in the making of machinery, have indirect but rapid and important effects upon each and every machine-industry engaged in producing commodities directly adapted to human use. The economy of effort for industrial purposes requires that a larger and larger proportion of inventive genius and enterprise shall be directed to an interminable displacement of handicraft by machinery in the construction of machinery, and a smaller proportion to the relatively unimportant work of perfecting manufacturing machinery in the detailed processes of each manufacture engaged in the direct satisfaction of some human want.
A general survey of the growth of new industrial methods in the textile and iron industries marks out three periods of abnormal activity in the evolution of modern industry. The first is 1780 to 1795, when the fruits of early inventions are ripened by the effective application of steam to the machine-industries. The second is 1830 to 1845, when industry, reviving after the European strife, utilised more widely the new inventions, and expanded under the new stimulus of steam locomotion. The third is 1856 to 1866 (circa), when the construction of machinery by machinery became the settled rule of industry.
§ 9. Bearing in mind how the invention of new specific forms of machinery in the several processes of manufacture proceeds simultaneously with the application of the new motor-power, we find ourselves quite unable to measure the amount of industrial progress due to each respectively. But seeing that the whole of modern industry has thus been set upon a new foundation of coal and iron, it is obvious that the bonds connecting such industries as the textile and the iron must be continually growing closer and stronger. In earlier times the interdependency of trades was slight and indirect, and the progress in