f national competitor, weakened her
position by a double protective policy, not merely refusing admittance
to foreign manufactures in her markets, but retaining heavy duties
upon the importation of foreign coal and iron, the foundational
constituents of machine-production. This protective policy, adopted by
nations whose skill, industry, and natural resources would have
rendered them formidable competitors to English manufacturers, has
hindered considerably the operation of those economic forces which
impel old and thickly-peopled countries to specialise in manufacture
and trade, and so has retarded the general development of modern
machine-production. But while protective tariffs indisputably operate
in this way, it is not possible to determine the extent of their
influence. In a large country of rich resources a high degree of
specialisation in manufacture is possible in spite of a protective
policy. The pressure of high wages is an economic force more
powerfully operative than any other in stimulating the adoption of
elaborate machinery.[95] Both in the textile and the iron industries
the United States present examples of factory development more
advanced even than those of England. Certain processes of warping and
winding are done by machinery in America which are still done by hand
labour in England.[96] The chain and nail-making trades, which employ
large numbers of women in South Staffordshire and Worcestershire, are
made more cheaply by machinery in America.[97] Moreover, the high
standard of living and the greater skill of the American operatives
enables them to tend more machines. In German factories a weaver tends
two, or rarely three looms; in Lancashire women weavers undertake
four, and in Massachusetts often six looms, and sometimes eight.[98]

[Illustration: CONSUMPTION OF RAW COTTON, 1887-88. (Millions
of lbs.)]

Thus we see how the new industrial forces were determined in the order
of their operation by the character and conditions of the several
countries, their geographical position and physical resources, the
elements of racial character, political and industrial institutions,
deliberate economic policies, and, above all, by the absorbing nature
of the military and political events contemporary with the outburst of
inventive ingenuity. The composition of these forces determined the
several lines of less resistance along which the new industry moved.

The exact measurement of so multiform a