Author: Herbert Heaton

Publisher:

Published: 2015-07-06

Total Pages: 482

ISBN-13: 9781330834077

Excerpt from The Yorkshire Woollen and Worsted Industries, From the Earliest Times Up to the Industrial Revolution, Vol. 1 The present volume had its origin in a thesis written in 1911 for the Honours School of History in the University of Leeds. In that work my attention was confined to the Yorkshire textile industry in the eighteenth century, but the award of the Rutson Research Scholarship (1911) and of a Fellowship (1912) by the University of Leeds made it possible to devote much time to the earlier history of the industry. The substance of the first three chapters was submitted for the M.A. degree (Leeds), and that of the greater part of the book was presented as a thesis for the degree of M.Com. (Birmingham) in 1914. Since then the thesis has been largely rewritten and considerably expanded. In the following pages I have attempted to sketch the history of the Yorkshire woollen and worsted industries from the earliest times of which there is documentary evidence down to the eve of the Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. I have traced the expansion of the local manufacture, and described its many vicissitudes, its organization at various stages, its markets, its relation to the State. But in all things the coming of the Industrial Revolution has been my stopping-place. The building of the modern mills, the final capture of the worsted trade from East Anglia, the victory over the West of England clothiers, and other results of the coming of la grande Industrie are left untouched. My reason for stopping at this point was that to carry the story on to the present day would make the volume too long. Further, on commencing my researches I found a number of scholars at work on the period 1760-1900. One was specializing on the Bradford trade after 1760; another was studying the textile trades, 1750-1850; the Hammonds were promising a volume on the town labourer, and Mantoux had already published La Revolution Industrielle (1906). About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.