Note 444 — Chapter V · THE MULE AND THE RISE OF A NEW COTTON MANUFACTURE

There is a striking resemblance between the situation during the Napoleonic War and that during the recent European War. In this country there was the same fear about the food supply and similar efforts were made to conserve and increase it. In 1795 the members of the Houses of Parliament agreed by resolution to restrict the consumption of wheaten bread in their families, and their example was followed by various bodies throughout the country. In The Manchester Mercury numerous recipes appeared for making bread out of ingredients other than wheat. The Board of Agriculture experimented in making bread with substitutes for wheat and publicly exhibited no fewer than eighty different sorts (Curtler, A Short History of English Agriculture (1909), p. 230). The General Enclosure Act avowedly had as its aim an increase in the food supply and was passed during a terrible time of distress. Except that allotments were not regarded with much favour, the agricultural legislation was closely analogous to that of the recent war period. In the political and the industrial spheres the Combination Act took the place of sections of the Munitions Acts and the Defence of the Realm Acts. “Under the shadow of the French Revolution the English governing classes regarded all associations of the common people with the utmost alarm. In this general terror lest insubordination should develop into rebellion were merged both the capitalist’s objection to high wages and the politician’s dislike of Democratic institutions” (Webb, History of Trade Unionism, p. 64). Necessarily the vast proportion of the national expenditure (including loans to Allies) went to provide war materials of British manufacture, and war services, and there were the same complaints of the agricultural, the merchant, and the tradesmen, classes becoming rich out of war profits. Also, generally speaking, there was a great increase of employment, particularly in connection with the army, the navy, and Government offices. In the industrial sphere periods of intense pressure alternated with periods of great depression when distress was rampant. The great distinction between the two periods is evidently to be attributed to the social and political development which had taken place during the intervening century whereby flagrant class legislation had become impossible. Much information of a reliable character concerning conditions during the Napoleonic War is given by Lowe, in The Present State of England (1822). In the correspondence of M‘Connel and Kennedy to and from their customers in England, Scotland, Ireland and on the Continent, the industrial situation is indicated day by day from 1795 until beyond the conclusion of the war.