The Early English Cotton Industry

The cotton industry did not merely transform England's economy. It rewrote the contract between human beings and their work. In this meticulously researched volume, first published in 1920, George W. Daniels traces the remarkable arc of England's cotton trade from its humble domestic origins in the late seventeenth century through its meteoric rise to global dominance by the early 1800s. The book documents the critical technological innovations - from the flying shuttle to the spinning jenny to Crompton's revolutionary mule - that converted hand-craft production into the factory system, reshaping English society in the process. Daniels gives proper weight to figures like Samuel Crompton, whose unpublished letters grace these pages, revealing the private struggles and ambitions of the inventors who powered the Industrial Revolution. The introductory chapter by George Unwin sets this economic transformation within its broader social and institutional context. This is foundational scholarship on the birth of modern industrial capitalism, essential reading for anyone seeking to understand how England became the workshop of the world - and what that transformation cost and created.