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The Output of the British Woolen Industry in the Eighteenth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

Phyllis Deane
Phyllis Deane
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge Department of Applied Economics
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Extract

As part of a general inquiry into the economic growth of die United Kingdom, an attempt is being made to estimate long-term trends in output of individual industries over as long a period of time as the data allow. Throughout the eighteenth century wool was the major English manufacturing industry. It is the purpose of this article to consider the evidence of contemporary estimates of the value of the woolen manufacture, with a view to using them as a basis for an assessment of the broad trends in its output over this crucial period of Britain's industrial history.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 17 , Issue 2 , June 1957 , pp. 207 - 223
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1957

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References

1 I am indebted to the Committee on Economic Growth of the Social Science Research Council for sponsoring this inquiry, which is now in progress at the University of Cambridge Department of Applied Economics.

2 Smith, John, Memoirs of Wool (2d ed.; 2 vols.; London, 1757). See his introduction, I, and later, II, 383–84.Google Scholar

3 See Clark, G. N., Guide to English Commercial Statistics, 1696–1782, (London: Royal Hist. Soc, 1938), pp. 15Google Scholaret seq., for a discussion of these overstatements in the trade records after the export duties on wool were taken off on March 30, 1700, and for a quotation from Davenant, who tried to get a penalty imposed for false entries: “From the time these outward duties were taken off the merchants have made their entries at pleasure, as well in the outports as in London, but generally they have entered greater quantities than were really exported.”

4 Cf. also James, John, History of the Worsted Manufacture in England (London, 1857), p. 237Google Scholar. “One conclusion will be come to by all who have investigated this subject, that the tendency was almost universal to exaggerate our home supply of wool.”

5 Two Tracts by Gregory King, ed. Barnett, George E. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1936), p. 38Google Scholar.

6 Ibid., p. 46.

7 Ibid., p. 67. In an analysis of the trade records for the end of the seventeenth century, R. Davis arrived at an average annual figure of £3.045 million for woolen manufactures exported during the period 1699–1701; see his “English Foreign Trade, 1660–1700,” Economic History Review, 2d ser., VII (December 1954), 164–65Google Scholar. It is possible, that this was somewhat inflated by the merchants’ exaggerations referred to by Davenant. (see the quotation.given in note 3 above) and that the true value of woolen exports was less than this. Conversely, of course, the trade records on which King based his estimates, belonging as they did to a period when there were export taxes on wool, may be affected by merchants’ tendencies to understate their shipments. Heaton suggests j£2.6 million for exports of worsted and woolen cloth in 1688 but gives no source: Heaton, Herbert, The Yorkshire Woollen and Worsted Industries (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1920), p. 258Google Scholar.

8 Discourses on the Public Revenues and on the Trade of England, Part II (London, 1698)Google Scholar, in Works, ed. Sir Charles Whitworth 5 vols.; (London, 1771), II, 147. But the estimate was avowedly a “supposition” and he wrote by way of preface to it that “what the worth of wool may be when manufactured is hardly capable of any computation because the commodities into which it is wrought are of such different values.”

9 A Short Essay upon Trade in General, but more enlarged on that branch relating to the woolen manufactures of Great Britain and Ireland, etc., etc., by a Lover of his Country and the Constitution of Great Britain (London, 1741). The British Museum catalogue attributes this pamphlet to Thomas Cowper. John James quotes extensively from it, History of the Worsted Manufacture, pp. 231 et seq.

10 On the subject of wastage (ibid., p. 52), he accuses his predecessors of ignoring its effect in their calculations. “I am now going upon my Last Calculation by which I shall discover a Falacy that all the aforesaid Authors have suppressed (if they knew what they wrote upon) with a design to swell their Account and impose upon their Readers, viz the Wool wasted in its Weight by Washing, Combing, Carding, Scribbling, etc. They take up notice of making their Computation for Labour, on a Pack of Wool, which ought to be on a Pack of Goods made from Wool, which is something more than ¼ difference, for 4 Packs of Wool in the Fleece will not make 3 Packs of Woollen Goods reckoning the whole of the Wool of Great Britain and Ireland on an Avaridge.

11 The number of sheep he estimated at 16,640,000 for Great Britain, and the average fleece at 3 ½ lb. compared with King's average of 4 lb. See Fussell, G. E. and Constance Goodman, “Eighteenth Century Estimates of British Sheep and Wool Production,” Agricultural History, IV (1930)Google Scholar, for a general assessment of eighteenth-century estimates of sheep and wool output and for the view that this estimate of 16,640,000 (there attributed to Daniel Webb) was the most acceptable figure for the middle years of the century.

12 Contemporaries usually allowed 25 per cent for Scotland, but on what grounds it is impossible to discover. On the other hand, a comparison of Sinclair's and Luccock's estimates of the numbers of sheep in Scotland and England respectively at the end of the century suggests a proportion of 10 per cent of Great Britain for Scotland. The Scottish share may have been greater in 1741 (though we have no evidence to this effect), but a considerable proportion of the Scottish wool was probably consumed by English manufacturers, so that if we are interested in the output of manufactured woolens in England a deduction of 10 per cent for Scotland seems generous.

13 See, for example, in a petition presented by the British Woollen Manufacturers to the members of Parliament in 1737, quoted by Smith, Memoirs of Wool, II, 67; also An Essay Presented: or a Method Humbly Proposed … by an English Woollen Manufacturer to pay the National Debts without a New Tax, etc., etc. (London, 1744)Google Scholar.

14 Bischoff, James, A Comprehensive History of the Woollen and Worsted Manufactures (2 vols.; London, 1842)Google Scholar, I, 224, gives an estimate for England of approximately 3i2;ooo sacks on the basis of 3 lb. per fleece and 16 million sheep shorn. But there seems to be some confusion here between sacks (of 364.1b.) and packs (of 240 lb.).

15 Smith, Memoirs of Wool, p. 210.

16 Two Tracts by Gregory King, p. 67. He attributes the estimate to Chambers, which suggests that he did hot base the figure on any trade records; Davenant also used this estimate of £2 million in a pamphlet written in 1697. Worlds (Whitworth edition), II, 147.

17 R. Davis, “English Foreign Trade,” pp. 164–65.

18 A Short Essay upon Trade, p. 54. Cf. also James, History, of the Worsted Manufacture, p. 257, writing of the worsted industry in particular: “It had spread itself into every quarter of the kingdom; on the north in Durham and Yorkshire; on the south in Devonshire and Hampshire; on the west in Wiltshire, Somersetshire, Warwickshire and other counties; and in the south coast of the kingdom in Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex. It was still in every aspect a domestic manufacture pursued by the fireside, where the turn of'the spinning.wheel and the click-clack of the loom mingled together and had enabled England, even then, to furnish with apparel the nations of the earth ‘from China to Peru.’ “

19 See the figures published by Bischoff, A Comprehenrive History, Vol. II, Appendix, Table 4;

20 Cf. Heaton, The Yorkshire Woollen and Worsted Industries, p. 358: “… in reality the West Riding was appropriating to itself a greater and greater share of the national industry and was attracting the trade from other parts of the country. The worsted industry which grew up around Bradford was not a new national asset; it was an expansion made largely by outrivalling the East Anglian worsted manufacture.”

21 Smith, Memoirs of Wool, II, 407.

22 By BischofT at length in Comprehensive History, I, 186 et seq.

23 James, History of the Worsted Manufacture, p. 280.

24 Wolrich's estimates are quoted by BischofT, Comprehensive History, I, 186–89. They relate to the year ending Easter 1773, which was a good year for the West Riding, but not so good as 1772/73. Output in 1771/72 was a little below the average for the decade 1768/69 to 1777/78. The boom in British woolen exports seems to have preceded that in West Riding output; it occurred in 17**71 according to the published figures of official values.

25 Estimate made for a committee of the House of Commons in April 1800. Quoted by Bischoff, Comprehensive History, I, 329.

26 Cf. James, History of the Worsted Manufacture, p. 286: “The value of the Yorkshire worsteds exported nearly approached that of cloth though Yorkshire was peculiarly the seat of the manufacture of cloth for export.”

27 Young, Arthur, The Farmer's Tour Through the East of England (4 vols.; London, 1771), II, 80Google Scholar; idem, A Six Months Tour Through the North of England (4 vols.; London, 1770), IV, 544Google Scholar; idem, Political Arithmetic, Part II (London, 1779), p. 32Google Scholar.

28 This estimate was made in the course of his national-income calculation. It should be noted that one of the problems of interpreting Young's estimates is that it is not always clear whether they relate to. England alone or to England including Wales. Probably he regarded the Welsh contribution to the woolen manufacture as negligible.

29 Political Arithmetic, U, 32.

30 Probably his overestimate of the domestic output of wool compensated for his underestimate of average price, for later and reasonably well-informed. nineteenth-century estimates suggest a domestic clip of about 80 million lb. since 1775, and figures given by Bischoff and others suggest that gd. per lb. was a reasonably average price for the period 1770–1775. In fairness to Young it should be noted that the price of wool fell to his price of 6d. per lb. in 1779, which was the date of Political Arithmetic, Part II, but this seems to have been the only year of the century when it was as low as this.

31 Macpherson, D., Annals of Commerce (4 vols.; London, 1805), IV, 526Google Scholar. The estimate for 1774 was given by John Campbell in his Political Survey of Great Britain (2 vols.; London, 1774), II, 158Google Scholar. None of these estimates is sufficiently well documented to be taken very seriously.

32 In his estimate of the insurable property of Great Britain made for the Globe Insurance Company, of which he was chairman, and quoted by Macpherson, Annals of Commerce, IV, 549.

33 Luccock, John, The Nature and Properties of Wool (Leeds, 1805)Google Scholar.

34 Ibid., p. ii.

35 Ibid., p. 343-

36 Ibid., table facing p. 148.

37 Sir Sinclair, John, General Report of the Agricultural State and Political Circumstances of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1814), III, Statistical Tables, p. 8Google Scholar. The information on which this report was based was largely collected at the end of the eighteenth century, and the report was drawn up in 1811–14, s o that it is difficult to attribute it to a particular year. Much of the Scottish wool was used in the English industry. Sinclair estimates the labor cost of the Scottish woolen industry as, £150,000, and this, in view of the occupational analysis he later published for 1821, seems half what it should be. Idem, Analysis of the Statistical Account of Scotland (1825), p. 286Google Scholar. Labor cost then would appear to have been about; £ 337,000 and was probably not higher than the wartime cost at a higher level of wages and prices.

38 Much of this was Spanish wool, the price of which was rising rapidly at this period. An estimate of £ 1,800,000 for the total value of imports of wool was made by John McArthur in 1803: quoted Bischoff, Comprehensive History, I, 368.

39 See, for example, the evidence of the manufacturers before the House of Commons in 1800, quoted by Macpherson, Annals of Commerce, IV, 526; James, History of the Worsted Manufacture, pp. 371 and 394; Stevenson, in the Edinburgh Encyclopedia, ed. D. Brewster (18 vols.; Edinburgh, 1830), Vol. VIII, Part II, section on England; McCulloch, J., Statistical Account of the British Empire (2 vols.; London, 1837), II, 48Google Scholar. Informed contemporaries were aware of the margins of error inherent in such a calculation: see the evidence of Benjamin Gott to the House of Lords Committee in 1828, Sessional Papers, 1828, Vol. VIII (quoted Bischoff, Comprehensive History, II, 194).

40 Colquhoun, P., A Treatise on the Wealth, Power and Resources of the British Empire (1815), p. 91Google Scholar.

41 For prices of English wool, see Bischoff's list for 1741–1830 in A Comprehensive History, Vol. II, Appendix; for imported Spanish wool, see Tooke, Thomas, A History of Prices (6 vols.; London, 1838–57), II, 420Google Scholar.

42 Most of the estimates in this table have been discussed already in the text or the notes and will not be referred to in detail here. The estimates for 1695 are derived from Gregory King. Those for 1741 are based on the calculations of “Lover of his Country” in A Short Essay upon Trade in General, deducting 10 per cent of Great Britain for Scotland. The 1772 figures are based on Arthur Young's estimates, but his estimate of the value of raw material has been converted to quantitative terms by assuming a price of gd. per lb., which was approximately the average for the three years 1771–1773 according to Bischoff. We have rejected Young's direct estimate of the quantity of wool produced, which amounted to more than 125 million lb. The 1799 and 1805 figures are based on John Luccock's estimates and on the assumption that the value of short wool was doubled and that of long wool quadrupled in the process of manufacture at this period.

43 For the derivation of these national-income estimates, see Deane, Phyllis, “The Implications of Early National Income Estimates for the Measurement of Long-Term Economic Growth in the United Kingdom,” Economic Development and Cultural Change, IV, (November 1955), 3–38Google Scholar. Very roughly the corresponding estimates were about £48 millions circa 1688 (after Gregory King), about £130 millions circa 1770 (after Arthur Young) and about £200 millions circa 1799 (after Pitt, Beeke, and Bell).

44 Eden's estimates made circa 1800 for the Globe Insurance Company (quoted Macpherson, Annals, IV, 549) put the value of cottons produced in Britain at over half the value of the woolens. In less than thirty years, retained imports of cotton wool had increased some tenfold and there had been a substantial improvement in the quality of the cotton industry's final product

45 Using Gregory King's estimate of £2 million for circa 1688 as a starting point, the rate of growth of woolen exports seems to have been much the same as the rate of growth in real output. If we start, however, from the figure of about ^ 3 million extracted by Davis from the Customs Ledgers for 1699–1701, we should conclude that the rate of growth was very low.

46 This is based on a very conservative interpretation of Young's estimates. Had we used his own quantity figures, instead of deriving a quantity from his value estimate and a more acceptable price estimate, we should have found a much higher rate of advance.

47 Heaton, The Yorkshire Woollen and Worsted Industries, p. 323.

48 Ibid., pp. 280 et seq. Clapham, J. H., “The Transference of the Worsted Industry from Norfolk to the West Riding,” Economic Journal, XX (June 1910), 205Google Scholar, states that in Norwich “they are said not to have adopted the wheel but to have been still using the distaff in 1780; and this is borne out by the fact that in Norfolk itself—but in Norfolk only, the distaff was still in use in 1818.”