Abstract
THE technical developments that laid the foundation of the nineteenth-century success of the cotton industry have received more attention than any other aspect of its history. The literature on Hargreaves’s jenny, Arkwright’s water frame, Crompton’s mule, and the ancillary preparation machinery, is so abundant that a new description, even of the salient features, seems unnecessary, and in any case students of economic history are more interested in the significance of innovations than in the details of inventions. This section will therefore be confined to three features of technical change in the cotton industry which are essential to an appreciation of the process of economic growth: the adoption of mechanical power, the increase in productivity, and the stages in the transition from the domestic to the factory system.
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References
R. L. Hills, Power in the Industrial Revolution (Manchester, 1970) pp. 66–7;
J. Tann, The Development of the Factory (1970) pp. 47–9.
D. S. L. Cardwell, ‘Power Technologies and the Advance of Science, 1700–1825’, Technology and Culture, V I (1965).
S. D. Chapman, ‘The Cost of Power in the Industrial Revolution’, Midland History, i (1971).
Extracted from E. Baines, History of the Cotton Manufacture (1835) pp. 386–92.
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H. Catling, The Spinning Mule (Newton Abbot, 1970) p. 54.
Calculations based on data in Portland MSS., Notts. C.R.O., DD 4P 79/63, and Chatham papers, P.R.O., 30/8/187.
Abraham Rees, Cyclopaedia, article on ‘Cotton’ (1808); C. Aspin, James Hargreaves and the Spinning Jenny (Helmshore, Lancs., 1964).
M. Lévy-Leboyer, Les Banques Européennes et l’Industrialisation Internationale (Paris, 1964) p. 27.
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Hills, Power in the Industrial Revolution, chap. v; Chapman, ‘Fixed Capital Formation’, pp. 61–3.
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Chapman, ‘Fixed Capital Formation’, pp. 76–81.
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© 1972 The Economic History Society
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Chapman, S.D. (1972). Technology. In: The Cotton Industry in the Industrial Revolution. Studies in Economic History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-01515-3_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-01515-3_2
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