t their resources by carrying on some
farming. But the invention of machinery for spinning not only created
a new industry, but destroyed the old. Cotton thread could be produced
vastly more cheaply by machinery. In 1786 a certain quantity of a
certain grade of spun yarn was worth 38 shillings; ten years later, in
1796, it was worth only 19 shillings; in 1806 it was worth but 7
shillings 2 pence, and so on down till, in 1832, it was worth but 3
shillings. Part of this reduction in price was due to the decrease in
the cost of raw cotton, but far the most of it to the cheapening of
spinning.

It was the same a few years later with weaving. Hand-loom weavers in
Bolton, who received 25 shillings a week as wages in 1800, received
only 19 shillings and 6 pence in 1810, 9 shillings in 1820, and 5
shillings 6 pence in 1830. Hand work in other lines of manufacture
showed the same results. Against such reductions in wages resistance
was hopeless. Hand work evidently could not compete with machine work.
No amount of skill or industry or determination could enable the hand
workers to make their living in the same way as of old. As a matter of
fact, a long, sad, desperate struggle was kept up by a whole
generation of hand laborers, especially by the hand-loom weavers, but
the result was inevitable.

The rural domestic manufacturers were, as a matter of fact, devoting
themselves to two inferior forms of industry. As far as they were
handicraftsmen, they were competing with a vastly cheaper and better
form of manufacture; as far as they were farmers, they were doing the
same thing with regard to agriculture. Under these circumstances some
of them gave up their holdings of land and drifted away to the towns
to keep up the struggle a little longer as hand-loom weavers, and then
to become laborers in the factories; others gave up their looms and
devoted themselves entirely to farming for a while, but eventually
sold their holdings or gave up their leases, and dropped into the
class of agricultural laborers. The result was the same in either
case. The small farms were consolidated, the class of yeomanry or
small farmers died out, and household manufacture gave place to that
of the factory. Before the end of the century the average size of
English farms was computed at three hundred acres, and soon afterward
domestic spinning and weaving were almost unknown.

There was considerable shifting of population. Certain parts of the
country w