ket and selling abroad.

It may help the reader to appreciate the organic growth of the cotton
industry if we now run over the main lines of its evolution. Originally
the industrial units were held together in one homogeneous commercial
setting. The Manchester merchants bought cotton and warps, put them out
to the weavers, and arranged for the finishing of the cloth and then for
its sale, so far as they had not been acting on orders already received.
There were variations of this system--for instance, in early years
weavers sometimes bought their own yarns and cotton and sold their
cloth--but just before the industrial revolution the arrangement
sketched above was the most usual. Adverting to our formula, the
Manchester merchants, we observe, performed functions a (in conjunction
with importers), b (as regarded warps), and [beta]. Weft the weaver had
to get spun by his family or outsiders. So, broadly speaking, there was
one single commercial setting. After the appearance of the factory, the
commercial work as between the water-twist mills, the mule-spinning
businesses and the manufacturers, so far as the businesses were
distinct, appears to have been done by the several producing firms
concerned. It was not at once that ([alpha]b) began to differentiate,
[beta] was already a separate business in the hands of Manchester
merchants and the foreign houses who had established themselves in
Manchester to direct the export trade. At the present time an advanced
stage of commercial specialism has been reached. From the risks
connected with the buying of cotton the spinner may if he please escape
entirely.[41] Selling work is now done usually through intermediaries,
but there is no one uniform rule as to the carrying of the commercial
risks involved. This appears to be now to some extent a matter of
arrangement between the persons concerned, but ultimately no doubt the
risks will have to be borne by those most qualified by experience to
bear them, namely, the commercial specialists. In no other trade in
England, and in no other cotton industry abroad, has commercial
specialism been carried so far as in the cotton trade of Lancashire. It
is partly in consequence of the difference in this respect between the
cotton industry in Lancashire and abroad that the separation of spinning
from weaving is far more common in England than elsewhere. Elsewhere
producers are deterred from specializing processes further in distinct
businesses b