A further growth of the factory system took place independent of machinery,and owed its origin to the expansion of trade,an expansion which was itself due to the great advance made at this time in the means of communication.The canal system was being rapidly developed throughout the country.In 1777the Grand Trunk canal,96miles in length,connecting the Trent and Mersey,was finished;Hull and Liverpool were connected by one canal while another connected them both with Bristol;and in 1792,the Grand Junction canal,90miles in length,made a water-way from London through Oxford to the chief midland towns.Some years afterwards,the roads were greatly improved under Telford and Macadam;between 1818and 1829more than a thousand additional miles of turnpike road were constructed;and the next year,1830,saw the opening of the first railroad.These improved means of communication caused an extraordinary increase in commerce,and to secure a sufficient supply of goods it became the interest of the merchants to collect weavers around them in great numbers,to get looms together in a workshop,and to give out the warp themselves to the workpeople.To these latter this system meant a change from independence to dependence;at the beginning of the century the report of a committee asserts that the essential difference between the domestic and the factory system is,that in the latter the work is done 'by persons who have no property in the goods they manufacture.'Another direct consequence of this expansion of trade was the regular recurrence of periods of over-production and of depression,a phenomenon quite unknown under the old system,and due to this new form of production on a large scale for a distant market.
These altered conditions in the production of wealth necessarily involved an equal revolution in its distribution.In agriculture the prominent fact is an enormous rise in rents.Up to 1795,though they had risen in some places,in others they had been stationary since the Revolution.But between 1790and 1833,according to Porter,they at least doubled.In Scotland,the rental of land,which in 1795had amounted to *2,000,000,had risen in 1815to *5,278,685.A farm in Essex,which before 1793had been rented at 10s.an acre,was let in 1812at 50s.,though,six years after,this had fallen again to 35s.In Berks and Wilts,farms which in 1790were let at 14s.,were let in 1810at 70s.,and in 1820at 50s.Much of this rise,doubtless,was due to money invested in improvements-the first Lord Leicester is said to have expended *400,000on his property-but it was far more largely the effect of the enclosure system,of the consolidation of farms,and of the high price of corn during the French war.Whatever may have been its causes,however,it represented a great social revolution,a change in the balance of political power and in the relative position of classes.The farmers shared in the prosperity of the landlords;for many of them held their farms under beneficial leases,and made large profits by them.In consequence,their character completely changed;they ceased to work and live with their labourers,and became a distinct class.The high prices of the war time thoroughly demoralised them,for their wealth then increased so fast,that they were at a loss what to do with it.Cobbett has described the change in their habits,the new food and furniture,the luxury and drinking,which were the consequences of more money coming into their hands than they knew how to spend.
Meanwhile,the effect of all these agrarian changes upon the condition of the labourer was an exactly opposite and most disastrous one.He felt all the burden of high prices,while his wages were steadily falling,and he had lost his common-rights.
It is from this period,viz.,the beginning of the present century,that the alienation between farmer and labourer may be dated.
Exactly analogous phenomena appeared in the manufacturing world.The new class of great capitalist employers made enormous fortunes,they took little or no part personally in the work of their factories,their hundreds of workmen were individually unknown to them;and as a consequence,the old relations between masters and men disappeared,and a 'cash nexus'was substituted for the human tie.The workmen on their side resorted to combination,and Trades-Unions began a fight which looked as if it were between mortal enemies rather than joint producers.
The misery which came upon large sections of the working people at this epoch was often,though not always,due to a fall in wages,for,as I said above,in some industries they rose.But they suffered likewise from the conditions of labour under the factory system,from the rise of prices,especially from the high price of bread before the repeal of the corn-laws,and from those sudden fluctuations of trade,which,ever since production has been on a large scale,have exposed them to recurrent periods of bitter distress.The effects of the industrial Revolution prove that free competition may produce wealth without producing well-being.We all know the horrors that ensued in England before it was restrained by legislation and combination.
