ABSTRACT
Before the rise of the modern cotton industry, during the last thirty years of the eighteenth century, the export of wool manufactures was by far the most important branch of Great Britain’s foreign trade. In 1770 it was valued at £1,000,000 out of a total export of some £4,000,000. This state of things came to an end during the years of the first great industrial revolution. Not that the wool industry declined—very far from it—but cotton grew with incredible rapidity and soon pushed its way to the place which it now holds at the head of the list of exports. Iron, steel and machinery followed hard after cotton, as the means of transporting bulky goods improved. In the second half of the nineteenth century came the vast extension of the export trade in coal. Meanwhile miscellaneous exports of every conceivable type were increasing in importance, as compared with the old staple commodities. As a result of these changes the export of wool manufactures 273has become a secondary branch of our oversea trade, although it has never lost its importance. At present these manufactures, including yarns and partially worked wool, make up from a twelfth to a fourteenth of the total exports of British and Irish produce. For example, in 1906 the total exports were worth £375,000,000, and the woollen and worsted exports £31,745,000.
