AND ON THE CONTINENT.
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further proof in contradiction of Marx 's theory is, that similarmachines had already been used here and there for centurieswithout in their time attaining any economical importance. Theapplication of steam power for lifting loads is centuries old.Peter the Great had applied, after the manner of the Dutch, a steamengine for the watering of his gardens. The combination of anumber of spindles with bobbins in a creel or frame, and thesetting into operation of bobbins as well as spindles by mechanic-al means, was an arrangement of Italian silk-spinning introducedby Sir Thomas Lombe into Derby before there was any mentionof machinery in the cotton industry (6). The so-called Saxonspinning wheel—an old German invention—the forerunner of thelater throstle—had already made the greatest portion of thespinning process mechanical ; for instance, the twisting ofthe thread and the winding-on of the same without the aid ofthe human hand (7). The woman spinning had only to performthe drawing-out of the thread by manual labour. This spinning-wheel was used for a long time in Germany for spinning flax, buta combination of this arrangement in some way with that of theItalian, which appears to have been somewhat similar, was notthought of. Johann Beckmann relates, in the first volume ofhis “ Contributions to the History of Inventions ”—and, with theexception of the date, Marx in “ Kapital ” makes exactly the samestatement—that as early as about 1579, powerloom weaving hadbeen invented in Dantzic.
Therefore it was not technical grounds which led to theeconomical reversal towards the end of the last century. Muchmore probably was it the accumulation of a number of economicalmoments which led to the technical developments. Long-created, or at least half-accomplished inventions, but, up to thatdate economically ■without influence, were first at this time appliedto form modern centralised industry. This is not- the place togive in fuller detail this economical foundation of the trade revo-lution, because this task requires a special examination. It issufficient to name the main ideas of the development.
I. As mentioned above, society in the Middle Ages consistedof a number of independent isolated groups which were only ina slight manner connected to each other by interchanging. What-