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also had no other object than to mask the import of English yarns.The value of yarns smuggled yearly into Franee alone is given as15 to 20 million francs (9). Of the importance of smuggling wefind in Bein’s “ Industry of the Voigtland ” a quantity of proofs(compare pp.88 to 91). The commerce of the Voigtland sufferedfor instance, by long-continued rainy weather, because therebythe routes for smuggling into Russia were made impassable.
International competition compelled England to cheapenthe costs of production. This effort, as it had produced CentralisedIndustry, now drove this forward to further improvement. It was
compelled to bear the consequences of its own existence. Evenat that time also the egg-shells of decentralised industrial con-ditions clung to the oldest Centralised Industry—spinning. Thebrushing away ot these egg-shells is the history of English cotton-spinning, which develops the peculiarities of Centralised IndustryIn proportion as it has to contend for the premier position in theworld’s markets. Looked at from this standpoint, the tremend-ous mass of entangled Blue-Book reports are quite clear. Thecomplaints of textile employers and the troubles of the workers areunderstood—the conditions of changing from half to fully cen-tralised industry. But clear also become therewith the social-revolutionary movements in the “thirties” and “forties.” If,indeed, economical conditions are really the foundation of thesocial, the same conclusion harmonises for the latter : Thesesocial movements are the infantile sicknesses of CentralisedIndustry.
We now ask what was the result of international competition—how did the striving after the cheapening of the costs of produc-tion first influence spinning? It caused at once a concentrationof the industry in the neighbourhood of Manchester. That thisdevelopment occurred under the pressure of the world’s market isproved by the fact that formerly spinning was much less con-centrated than to-day. Spinning by means of rollers, the mostimportant step to modern machinery, i.e., the arrangement forthe mechanical drawing of rovings, which before this was achievedby hand, was transferred by the metal preparation. Thusthe first yam was spun “ without hands ” in the middle of the lastcentury in Birmingham . The first large factories were situatednear Nottingham , and the merchants of Manchester sought to
9. Ure: “ Cotton Manufactures,” Intro., pp. 31, 36, 63. Report of the SilkCommittee of 1832, p. 586.