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(so-called dhooties and T-cloths); l’reston produces liner plainealieoes for tlie home and Continental markets. The factoryplaces lying nearer to Manchester , and the first customers forspinning, have mostly their specialty in more complicated wovengoods. Thus Oldham has cotton velvets, Bolton figured good3,Ashton and Glossop printing cloths of the fiist quality, the districtof Colne, situated between these and the northern weaving dis-trict, makes ordinary coloured goods.
On the other hand, in Manchester , the central point of theindustry, manufacturing is gradually disappearing. The millsthere are mostly of an older date, but are still of historicalinterest as former cradles of the great industry. Manchester isconstantly becoming more and more simply the seat of the exporttrade. Thirty years ago goods were packed in the northerlyweaving districts for export. At the present time this takesplaco in Manchester —in many cases in the cellars underneaththe high warehouses, which often go down several stories intothe earth, and in which, by means of steam engines and hydraulicpresses, the bales of yarn and woven goods are pressed into halftheir bulk, and even less. The continually increasing value ofthe land (16) drives the industry away from the city of com-merce. But the environs of Manchester are also abandoned bythe industry. It is generally admitted as the reason that onlyin places which are quite exclusively devoted to the industry areworking populations, highly trained and thoroughly to be de-pended upon, to be found (17).
How important is the existence of these exclusively industriallocalities, which, situated in the neighbourhood of the centre ofcommerce, combine the advantages of centralisation with those ofdecentralisation, is confirmed bv Marsden (18). “It can easilybe demonstrated that it would be more profitable to plant a millin a locality possessing skilled labour and in proximity to themarkets, paying full prices for buildings and machinery, than it
1G. Compare 11 Auswanderung der Industrie nacli dem flachen Lande"(.Tannasch: “ Europaische Baumwollindustrie. ” 11 and 12). There is. how-ever, by no means a decentralisation iu Lancashire, but rather an organisationof the industry round its central point.
17. Compare J. C. Ficlden: “Sketch of the British Cotton Industries”(“ Co-operative Wholesale Annual,” 1887), p. 330.