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CHAPTER II.ToC

       Table of Contents

      THE STRUCTURE OF INDUSTRY BEFORE MACHINERY.

      § 1. Dimensions of International Commerce in early Eighteenth Century.

      § 2. Natural Barriers to International Trade.

      § 3. Political, Pseudo-economic, and Economic Barriers—Protective Theory and Practice.

      § 4. Nature of International Trade.

      § 5. Size, Structure, Relations of the several Industries.

      § 6. Slight Extent of Local Specialisation.

      § 7. Nature and Conditions of Specialised Industry.

      § 8. Structure of the Market.

      § 9. Combined Agriculture and Manufacture.

      § 10. Relations between Processes in a Manufacture.

      § 11. Structure of the Domestic Business: Early Stages of Transition.

      § 12. Beginnings of Concentrated Industry and the Factory.

      § 13. Limitations in Size and Application of Capital—Merchant Capitalism.

      § 1. In order to get some clear understanding of the laws of the operation of the new industrial forces which prevail under machine-production it is first essential to know rightly the structure and functional character of the "industrial organism" upon which they were destined to act. In order to build up a clear conception of industry it is possible to take either of two modes of inquiry. Taking as the primary cell or unit that combination of labour and capital under a single control for a single industrial purpose which is termed a Business, we may examine the structure and life of the Business, then proceed to discover how it stands related to other businesses so as to form a Market, and, finally, how the several Markets are related locally, nationally, internationally so as to yield the complex structure of Industry as a whole. Or reversely, we may take Industry as a whole, the Industrial Organism as it exists at any given time, consider the nature and extent of the cohesion existing between its several parts, and, further, resolving these parts into their constituent elements, gain a close understanding of the extent to which differentiation of industrial functions has been carried in the several divisions.

      Although in any sociological inquiry these two methods are equally valid, or, more strictly speaking, are equally balanced in virtues and defects, the latter method is here to be preferred, because by the order of its descent from the whole to the constituent parts it brings out more definitely the slight cohesiveness and integration of industry beyond the national limits, and serves to emphasise those qualities of nationalism and narrow localism which mark the character of earlier eighteenth century industry. We are thus enabled better to recognise the nature and scope of the work wrought by the modern industrial forces which are the central object of study.

While the Market or the Trade is less and less determined or confined by national or other political boundaries in modern times, and nationalism is therefore a factor of diminishing importance in the modern science of economics, the paramount domination of politics over large commerce in the last century, acting in co-operation with other racial and national forces, obliges any just analysis of eighteenth century industry to give clear and early emphasis to the slight character of the commercial interdependency among nations. The degree of importance which statesmen and economists attached to this foreign commerce as compared with home trade, and the large part it played in the discussion and determination of public conduct, have given it a prominence in written history far beyond its real value.[3]

      It is true that through the Middle Ages a succession of European nations rose to eminence by the development of navigation and international trade, Italy, Portugal, Spain, France, Holland, and England; but neither in size nor in character was this trade of the first importance. Even in the case of those nations where it was most developed it formed a very small proportion of the total industry of the country, and it was chiefly confined to spicery, bullion, ornamental cloths, and other objects of art and luxury.

      It is important to recognise that in the first half of the eighteenth century international trade still largely partook of this character. Not only did it bear a far smaller proportion to the total industry of the several countries than does foreign trade to-day, but it was still engaged to a comparatively small extent with the transport of necessaries or prime conveniences of life. Each nation, as regards the more important constituents of its consumption, its staple foods, articles of clothing, household furniture, and the chief implements of industry, was almost self-sufficing, producing little that it did not consume, consuming little it did not produce.

In 1712 the export trade of England is officially estimated at £6,644,103,[4] or considerably less than one-sixth of the home trade of that date as calculated by Smith in his Memoirs of Wool. Such an estimate, however, gives an exaggerated impression of the relation of foreign to home trade, because under the latter no account is taken of the large domestic production of goods and services which figure in no statistics. A more instructive estimate is that which values the total consumption of the English people in 1713 at forty-nine or fifty millions, out of which about four millions covers the consumption of foreign goods.[5] In 1740 imports amounted to £6,703,778, exports to £8,197,788. In 1750 they had risen respectively to £7,772,339 and £12,699,081,[6] and ten years later to £9,832,802 and £14,694,970. Macpherson, whose Annals of Commerce are a mine of wealth upon the history of foreign commerce in the eighteenth century, after commenting upon the impossibility of obtaining a just estimate of the value of home trade, alludes to a calculation which places it at thirty-two times the size of the export trade. Macpherson contents himself with concluding that it is "a vast deal greater in value than the whole of the foreign trade." Скачать книгу