IS

THE COTTON TRADE IN ENGLAND

affairs leads to a breaking-up of society, or to a dilemma which isonly to be loosened with powder and shot. Among great indus-tries there are two specially adapted for this proof—the Iron Tradeand the Cotton Industry . Both extend over the whole world, andproduce everywhere the same, or at least similar, articles. Theproductions of both are measurable and comparable either bylength or weight. Both are, in addition, the leading trades ofthe most important industrial countries in the world.

But the Cotton Industry has one advantage over theIron Trade. In it machinery has for a century obtained the upperhand, and has more and more confined human exertions to theminding of the machine. The Iron Trade is different. TheBessemer and Siemens processes have only recently put mechanicalpower into a leading position, whilst with the puddlers of to-daythat older type of skilled and strong-sinewed hand-labour dies out.But the English Cotton Industry , which presents the longest his-tory of all modern Centralised Industry, is particularly suitablefor an examination of the economical and social tendencies of themodern economical system. We seek in the history of the English Cotton Trade those traits which can everywhere be deemed ofvalue as general characteristics of centralised industrial forms ofproduction.

Therefore, if I beg the reader to accompany me yet again toEngland, this happens in the sense in which once Sir William Petty and other contemporary Englishmen studied Holland, and therebyhelped to establish the greatness of their own native country.