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Economic Decline in the English Industrial Revolution: The Gloucester Wool Trade, 1800–1840

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Albion M. Urdank
Albion M. Urdank
Affiliation:
The author is Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of History, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana 46556.
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Abstract

This study questions the concept of entrepreneurial failure, traditionally invoked to account for the demise of the Gloucestershire wool trade in the Industrial Revolution. Gloucester clothiers used steam power selectively because of the high cost of coal but on a more regular basis and at greater capacity than scholars have commonly admitted. Excess capacity due to overcapitalization accounted for the failure of mills with large engines; underutilization of steam accounted for the failure of mills with small engines. Both types of failure sprang from rational and entrepreneurial choices, and not from an unwillingness to innovate.

Type
Papers Presented at the Forty-fourth Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 45 , Issue 2 , June 1985 , pp. 427 - 433
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1985

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References

1 See Perry, R., “The Gloucestershire Woollen Industry, 1100–1690,” Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucester Archaeological Society, 66 (10. 1947), pp. 49–137.Google Scholar

2 Mann, Julia de Lacey, The Cloth Industry in the West of England from 1640 to 1880 (Oxford, 1971), especially pp. 175–76, 212.Google Scholar

3 Lipson, E., History of the Woollen and Worsted Industries (London, 1921), p. 251;Google ScholarClapham, J. H., An Economic History of Modern Britain (Cambridge, 1930), vol. 1, p. 144.Google Scholar

4 Mann, Cloth Industry, p. 192;Google ScholarGregory, Derek, Regional Transformation and Industrial Revolution: A Geography of the Yorkshire Textile Industry (Minneapolis, 1983), p. 69. He agrees that parity in innovation existed but only until 1835. But by 1835 the lower district had already collapsed, a fact that needs to be considered in any comparison with Yorkshire made through 1850.Google Scholar

5 Mann, Cloth Industry, pp. 169, 172, 182, 186, 218–19.Google Scholar

6 Gregory, Regional Transformation, passim;Google ScholarTann, Jennifer, “The employment of power in the West-of-England wool textile industry, 1790–1840,” in Harte, N. B. and Ponting, K. G., eds., Textile Hiswry and Economic History. Essays in Honour of Miss Julia de Lacey Mann (Manchester, 1973), p. 220.Google Scholar

7 Gloucester Journal, December. 17, 1842 and February. 15, 1845.Google Scholar

8 Mann, Cloth Industry, p. 177. The evidence cited is from a hearsay report; see footnote 18 for evidence suggesting excess capacity.Google Scholar

9 Perry, R., “The Gloucestershire Woollen Industry, 1100–1690,” Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucester Archaeological Society, 66 (10. 1947)., pp. 190–91;Google ScholarTann, “Employment,” pp. 219–20; Gregory, Regional Transformation, pp. 69–73.Google Scholar

10 IburdGoogle Scholar

11 See especially Tann, “Employment,” pp. 211–12.Google Scholar

12 See Pollard, Sidney, The Genesis of Modern Management (Cambridge, Mass., 1965), pp. 2–3 for a distinction between entrepreneurial and management functions.Google Scholar

13 Tann, Jennifer, “Some Problems of Water Power—A Study of Mill Siting in Gloucestershire,” Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucester Archaeological Society, 84 (03 1966), p. 75;Google ScholarGregory, Regional Transformation, p. 70.Google Scholar

14 Gloucester Journal, April 29, 1837, Barnard's Factory at Nailsworth, 14 to 30 ends per week; June 1, 1833, Davies's, C. F. factory at Nailsworth, 10 to 30 ends per week; July 14, 1832, Lodgemore Mills, 50 to 100 ends per week.Google Scholar

15 Perry, R., “The Gloucestershire Woollen Industry, 1100–1690,” Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucester Archaeological Society, 66 (10. 1947)., 07 14, 1832 and 01. 5, 1839.Google Scholar

16 Perry, R., “The Gloucestershire Woollen Industry, 1100–1690,” Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucester Archaeological Society, 66 (10. 1947)., 04 7, 1821, sale of effects of John Bready, bank.Google Scholar

17 Perry, R., “The Gloucestershire Woollen Industry, 1100–1690,” Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucester Archaeological Society, 66 (10. 1947)., 01. 24, 1837.Google Scholar

18 The output/power ratio for Uley Mills was.63 ends/week/horsepower; for Lodgemore, it was 1.43 ends/week/horsepower.Google Scholar

19 Hudson, Pat, “Proto-industrialization: the case of the West Riding wool textile industry in the 18th and early 19th centuries,” History Workshop Journal, 12 (Autumn, 1981), pp. 48–49.Google Scholar

20 See Urdank, Albion M., “Dissenting Community: Religion, Economy and Society in the Vale of Nailsworth, Gloucestershire, 1780–1850” (Ph.D. thesis, Columbia University, 1983), appendix 5.2, for a catalog of mill references. Large, high-powered engines are those with 20 horsepower or more; small, low-powered engines in this analysis range from 8 to 18 horsepower.Google Scholar

21 Estimates of missing values for water power and ends per week were made from two sets of simple linear estimators: WATER = 8.58 + 0.71 STEAM, and ENDS/WEEK = 18.05 + 0.556 TOTAL HORSEPOWER. Nine observations for the water power estimator were derived from evidence given by Gloucester clothiers before a parliamentary committee, and one observation was taken from the Gloucester Journal; see British Parliamentary Papers, vol. 20 (1834), pp. 249–91, and the Gloucester Journal, July 14, 1832, Sale of Lodgemore Mills. Steam could be used to predict water horsepower because clothiers based their engine purchasing decisions on the water horsepower capacity of their mills. The estimator was then applied to the steam horsepower data of the 34-mill sample. A variable, TOTAL HORSEPOWER, was used next to estimate missing values for output, using the first 12 observations of the 34-mill sample.Google Scholar

22 See Duncan, Otis, Introduction to Structural Equation Models (New York, 1977), chap. 4 on recursiveness and pp. 17–19 for the method of estimating path coefficients from correlations.Google Scholar

23 The following correlations between steam and water at.99 may have been partly inflated by the method of estimating water power. But the estimator was derived from a virtually independent sample with a significantly high r-value of.73, a level at which variables normally lose their independence. Given the support the qualitative evidence gives to his finding, a degree of inflation of the r-value is tolerable. The manner of estimating missing values for output clearly did not affect the r-values; the r-value of the estimator was.756 and for the sample as a whole,.795.Google Scholar

24 F-test for models 1 and 2: Adjusted R 2 =.8191, F 1 = 75.708, d.f. = 2, 31, Prob. > F. 001; Adjusted R 2 =.8027, F 2 = 18.303, d.f. = 2, 9, Prob. > F.0007. The t-tests on unstandardized betas showed them to be significant.+F.+001;+Adjusted+R+2+=.8027,+F+2+=+18.303,+d.f.+=+2,+9,+Prob.+>+F.0007.+The+t-tests+on+unstandardized+betas+showed+them+to+be+significant.>Google Scholar

25 F-test for model 3: Adjusted R 2 =.2019, F = 3.530, d.f. = 2, 18, Prob. > F. 0509; the unstandardized betas proved not to be significant.+F.+0509;+the+unstandardized+betas+proved+not+to+be+significant.>Google Scholar