turing processes. For the use of steam power in mills necessitated the liberal use of coal, and hence the factory districts are necessarily almost coincident with the great coalfields, as will be seen from any geological map. It is also curious to notice that each coalfield has its own particular manufacture closely associated with it.1 Thus the Yorkshire coalfield contains most of the towns where the woollen industry prevails, while its southern extension, which descends into Nottinghamshire, includes the cutlery and hardware district of Sheffield and the lace and hosiery of Nottingham. The Lancashire coalfield is almost exclusively surrounded by towns engaged in the cotton trade; the Staffordshire fields are connected chiefly with pottery, and, on their Southern limit, with hardware and machinery; the South Wales coal district is noted for its smelting and ironworks. Moreover, the coal industry had been developed almost simultaneously with the growth of manufactures, and, indeed, one reacted upon the other. It will be convenient here to mention the improvements made in coal-mining and in the iron trade.

§ 206. The Revolution in the Mining Industries.

It has been mentioned in a previous chapter 2 that the development of the vast natural resources of our country as regards coal and iron was retarded by the lack of steam power. But with the steam-engines of Watt and Boulton a new era dawned upon coal-mining. In 1774 Watt, after vainly advocating his invention, entered into partnership with Matthew Boulton, a Birmingham man, who devoted all the capital he possessed to the introduction of Watt's engine into practical use. The new engine soon produced a vast change in the manner of pumping water from the mines, just as it also produced other changes in every

1 This is also noticed by H. R. Mill, Commercial Geography, pp. 44-46 (ed. 1888), and is, of course, obvious.

2 Above, pp. 310 to 312.

3 See Smiles, Lives of the Engineers (Boulton and Watt), ch. viii., “Their Partnership," p. 146.

See diagram of Watt's pumping-engine for mines in Smiles, u. 3., ch. x. p. 180.

manufacture dependent upon the use of coal. Steam-power was used not only to clear the mines of water, but also in sinking shafts, where formerly entrance had often been made only by tunnelling in the side of a hill. It was used, too, in bringing up the coal from the pit, and in many other necessary processes. The result of this application of steam power was soon seen in the general opening up of all the English coal-fields, and the consequent further growth of towns like Newcastle, Sheffield, and Birmingham,2 whose industries now depend so greatly upon a large supply of coal.

With the great output of coal came an immediate revival of the iron trade, which it will be remembered had greatly declined about 1737 and 1740, for as coal was not available wood had to be used as fuel, and the consequent destruction of forests, especially the Sussex Wealden, had caused legislative prohibitions. The scientific treatment of iron ore in the various processes of manufacture had indeed been improved, but nothing much could be done without coal. This was seen, for instance, by an iron-master, Anthony Bacon, in 1755, who obtained a lease, at the trifling rental of £200 per annum, for ninety-nine years, of a district at Merthyr Tydvil, eight miles long and five broad, upon which he erected both iron and coal works. In 1760 Smeaton's invention of a new blowing apparatus at Dry Roebuck's works at Carron, near Falkirk, did away with the old clumsy bellows; and the other inventions of the Cranages (1766), of Onions (1783), and of Henry Cort9 (1784), for which separate treatises must be consulted, brought the manufacture of iron almost to perfection. Whereas about the middle of the eighteenth century we produced only some 18,000 tons of iron annually, 10 and had

1 Bourne, Romance of Trade, p. 175.

2 Both Sheffield and Birmingham only had between 20,000 and 30,000 inhabitants about 1760; see Toynbee's table, Industrial Revolution, p. 36; cf. also Lecky, History of the Eighteenth Century, vi. 212.

3 Smiles, Industrial Biography, ch. ii. p. 42. Ib., ch. vii. p. 130.

7 Ib., ch. v. pp. 86-88.

'Ib., ch. vii. (all).

4 Ib.ch. ii. pp. 38-42.

6 Ib., ch. viii. p. 137.

8

Ib.,

ch. vii. p. 115.

10 Ib., ch. v. p. 79.

Z

to import at least 20,000 tons,1 we produced in 1788 as much as 68,000 tons,2 and the production has gone on steadily increasing to the present time, when some five million tons of iron are obtained annually.3

§ 207. The Improvements in Communications.

Besides these improvements in mining and machinery, there were also others which, though not perhaps quite so strikingly important, had a considerable influence upon the progress of industry and commerce. These were the improvements made in the internal communications of the country both by land and water. It must not be supposed, however, that because improvements were made the state of the roads was so exceedingly bad as it has been the fashion to describe them. There has been considerable exaggeration as to the difficulties of travelling both in mediæval and later times, and there is plenty of evidence which goes to show that matters were not invariably so bad as might be imagined from descriptions 5 more picturesque than accurate. It is certain that the cost of carriage in mediæval times was cheap, and thus, by implication, that the roads were good. But less care seems to have been shown in maintaining them in later centuries, so that it is quite possible that the roads in England were in better repair in the reign of Edward III. than in that of George III. Still, even in the eighteenth century, the evidence of Arthur Young 7-which has been freely misquoted-goes to show that the state of the roads. was not by any means so bad as we should imagine if we merely took our picture of them from the complaints made of particularly execrable sections. The turnpike roads were

1 Scrivener, History of the Iron Trade, pp. 57, 71; Smiles, u. s., p. 79, says four-fifths of it came from Sweden.

2 M'Culloch's, Commercial Dictionary, s. v. Iron.

3 Year Book of Commerce.

4 Rogers, Six Centuries, p. 135; Economic Interpretation of History, P. 483.

E.g. in Macaulay, History, ch. iii., which has been so freely copied by his inferiors.

6 Rogers, Economic Interpretation, p. 484.

7 Cf. itinerary at end of Northern Tour, Vol. IV,

generally in fairly good repair, and it is obvious that matters cannot have been so bad as is supposed, when we consider that in Defoe's time Manchester merchants would send their goods on horses right across England to Stourbridge,1 or when waggons took silk from London to Kendal,2 or when live geese were sent to London markets in cartloads from the Fens.3

While, however, guarding against receiving an exaggerated impression of the evil state of roads before the end of the eighteenth century, we may notice that about the middle of that period there were great improvements made, insomuch that Henry Homer, writing in 1767, declares (though evidently with rhetorical exaggeration) "there never was a more astonishing Revolution accomplished in the internal system of any country than has been within the compass of a few years in England." 4 This was due to the erection of turnpikes and levying of tolls under the authority of various Acts of Parliament; and later on there was great development owing to the improved methods introduced by the well-known road-makers, Metcalfe, Telford, and Macadam.

5

There were also considerable improvements made in carriage by water. This had been a favourite mode of conveyance in medieval times, when the rivers were largely used, and it continued to be so till, in the eighteenth century, rivers were supplemented or joined by canals. A great impetus to canal-making was given by the success of Brindley's efforts in 1758, when he made a canal for the Duke of Bridgewater's colliery at Worsley to Manchester.8 The importance of this canal was not due to its length, for it was only seven miles long, but to the fact that its construction presented serious engineering difficulties, such as tunnelling through rock and carrying an aqueduct over the 1 Defoe, Tour, i. 94. 2 Young, Northern Tour, iii. 171-173 (ed. 1770).

Homer, The Enquiry into the Means of Preserving the Publick Roads; cf. p. 4 seq.

1 Geo II., c. 11; 5 Geo. I., c. 12; 14 Geo. II., c. 42. Cf. also Smiles, Lives of the Engineers (Metcalfe and Telford), Vol. III. p. 69.

6 Ib., passim.

7 Rogers, Hist. Agric., i. p. 663; also i. ch. 27, and v. ch. 25.

8 Smiles, Lives of the Engineers (Vol. I., Brindley), ch. iii.

River Irwell.1 Other canals followed. One of ninety-six miles in length, connecting the rivers Trent and Mersey, was finished in 1777; Hull and Liverpool were connected by another, and Liverpool with Bristol; and in 1792 the Grand Junction Canal connected London with Oxford and other important towns in the Midlands.2 It is curious to notice that on at least one of these early canals, that made from Worsley to Manchester, passengers were conveyed as well as goods. "A branch of useful and profitable carriage, hitherto scarcely known in England, was also undertaken, which was that of passengers. Boats on the model of the Dutch trekschuyts, but more agreeable and capacious, were set up, which, at very reasonable rates and with great convenience, carried numbers of persons daily to and from Manchester along the line of the canal." 3 This branch of traffic has quite died out, and even the carriage of goods by water is now not so frequent as formerly. But it is a matter of regret that waterways are not more used for merchandise in England, as they are in some Continental countries, even where railways are numerous; for in Belgium,1 which has quite as many railways in proportion to its size as England, both canals and rivers are very widely used for the transit of goods, and prove of great utility.

§ 208. The Nation's Wealth and its Wars.

Of course all these discoveries of new processes in procuring coal and making iron, and the improvements in communication, enormously increased the wealth of England, and at the same time entirely changed the conditions of industry. For they helped the textile manufactures by providing any amount of fuel and machinery, and all these together gave employment to a population that seemed to grow in accordance with the need of the nation for workers. 5

1 Smiles, Lives of the Engineers (Vol. I., Brindley), ch. iii. p. 173.

2 For a very good summary of the Canals of England and other countries,

cf. M'Culloch's Commercial Dictionary (ed. 1844), 8. v. Canals. Aikin, Description of the Country round Manchester, p. 116.

This is from the writer's personal observation.

"In the cotton trade," said Sir R. Peel in 1806, "machinery has given birth to a new population," and he ascribed this to early marriages, caused