Under such conditions the new machine-industry could make little advance. Excepting in the case of the woollen industries, England had for the most part already shaken off the old regulations before 1770. In particular, the cotton trade, which was in the vanguard of the movement, being of recent growth and settling outside the guild towns, had never known such restrictions, and therefore lent itself to the new order with a far greater facility than the older trades. Moreover, England was free from the innumerable and vexatious local taxes and restrictions prevalent in France and in the petty governments of Germany. Although the major part of these foolish and pernicious regulations has been long swept away from Germany and other continental nations, the retarding influence they exercised, in common with the wider national system of protection which still survives, kept back the cotton industry, so that in Germany it still stands half a century behind its place in England.[92]
The following figures show how substantial was the lead held by England in the cotton manufacture a little before the middle of the century.
NUMBER OF SPINDLES WORKING IN COTTON MILLS IN 1846.[93]
Spindles. England and Wales 15,554,619 Scotland 1,727,871 Ireland 215,503 Austria and Italy 1,500,000 France 3,500,000 Belgium 420,000 Switzerland 650,000 Russia 7,585,000 United States 3,500,000 States of the Zollverein 815,000 ---------- 35,467,993
The development of the cotton industry in 1888 in the chief industrial countries, as indicated by the consumption of raw cotton, is expressed in the accompanying diagram.
Lastly, the national trade policy of England was of signal advantage in her machine development. Her early protective system had, by the enlargement of her carrying trade and the increase of her colonial possessions, laid the foundation of a large complex trade with the more distant parts of the world, though for a time it crippled our European commerce. While we doubtless sacrificed other interests by this course of policy, it must be generally admitted that "English industries would not have advanced so rapidly without Protection."[94] But as we built up our manufacturing industries by Protection, so we undoubtedly conserved and strengthened them by Free Trade--first, by the remission of tariffs upon the raw materials of manufacture and machine-making, and later on by the free admission of food stuffs, which were a prime essential to a nation destined to specialise in manufacture. France, our chief national competitor, weakened her position by a double protective policy, not merely refusing admittance to foreign manufactures in her markets, but retaining heavy duties upon the importation of foreign coal and iron, the foundational constituents of machine-production. This protective policy, adopted by nations whose skill, industry, and natural resources would have rendered them formidable competitors to English manufacturers, has hindered considerably the operation of those economic forces which impel old and thickly-peopled countries to specialise in manufacture and trade, and so has retarded the general development of modern machine-production. But while protective tariffs indisputably operate in this way, it is not possible to determine the extent of their influence. In a large country of rich resources a high degree of specialisation in manufacture is possible in spite of a protective policy. The pressure of high wages is an economic force more powerfully operative than any other in stimulating the adoption of elaborate machinery.[95] Both in the textile and the iron industries the United States present examples of factory development more advanced even than those of England. Certain processes of warping and winding are done by machinery in America which are still done by hand labour in England.[96] The chain and nail-making trades, which employ large numbers of women in South Staffordshire and Worcestershire, are made more cheaply by machinery in America.[97] Moreover, the high standard of living and the greater skill of the American operatives enables them to tend more machines. In German factories a weaver tends two, or rarely three looms; in Lancashire women weavers undertake four, and in Massachusetts often six looms, and sometimes eight.[98]