イギリス綿織業における工場制への移行過程

In contrast to a swift, revolutionary and transforming event in cotton spinning, the transition from the domestic system to the factory system in cotton weaving during the British Industrial Revolution was a slow and staggered progress. It took more than half a century from the invention of the first power-driven machinery by Edmund Cartwright in 1785 to the final victory of mechanized weaving over hand weaving in the 1840's. The slowness of the transition from hand to power was due partly to imperfections in the powerloom itself, partly to improvements in the handloom, and partly to the excessive supply of labour recruits in the cotton weaving industry. Whereas the powerloom 'did not approximate to its modern form until 1840' (Briggs and Jordan), there were many attempts to improve the handloom either by removing from the weaver's responsibility the time-consuming preparatory processes of warping and dressing, or by performing the basic motions of throwing the shuttle or winding-on the cloth beam more efficiently. The improved handloom could either retain a virtual monopoly, or at least accounted for the greater part of the cloth produced in most weaving branches until 1825.The universal adoption of the powerloom was delayed, even after its technical superiority was assured, simply because handloom labour was so cheap and plentiful. As H. J. Habakkuk maintains, 'if Labour had been scare in England, the domestic system would have contracted more rapidly than it did'. Manufacturers were naturally reluctant to invest in an imperfect machine which might easily become outmoded and rapidly depreciate in value. Further, the master manufacturers had little incentive to adopt new methods so far as they were able to evade losses involved in the factory system (e. g., machine idle during the recession) simply by contracting the employment. Due to a lack of balance between the supply of labour and the demand for it in this non-skilled trade, the handloom weavers were unable to resist the wage reductions or under-employment. This situation was worsened after 1826 when the tide of investment turned its way : from the employment of cheap labour to the mechanized mass production. The handloom weavers in the 1830's formed a reserve army of labour which was able to find work only when the factories were fully occupied. The deterioration of their economic and social state was deepened. Although the number of handloom weavers had begun to decrease in southern (urban) Lancashire in the 1820's, a substantial number of them (including adult male) clung to their dead-end occupation for another or two decades in north-east (rural) Lancashire and some remote parts of England and Scotland. In the 1840's, only after (l) Kenworthy and Bullough's invention had terminated' a process of piecemeal improvements and half-solutions of the powerloom ' (Bythell) ; (2) the growth of overseas markets had provided a powerful incentive to adopt the power-driven machinery ; and (3) the economic growth had prepared employment opportunities for rural underemployed weavers and made it feasible for them to move to urban areas, the cotton handloom weavers eventually disappeared from the British industrial scene.