ABSTRACT
The factors affecting the growth of population in Great Britain during the Industrial Revolution have been intensively studied by Dr. Mabel Buer and Mr. G. T. Griffith; and Dr. Arthur Redford has demonstrated that migration from rural areas to urban centres was mainly of a short distance character. The depopulation of the Highlands from the late eighteenth century, intensified if not occasioned by the clearance policy of the new type of landlord, contributed to Lowland industrial development and to overseas expansion. A more difficult problem arose with the immigration of Irish Catholic labourers. Irish female labour was used on the "domestic" system by West of Scotland cotton manufacturers, on both sides of the Channel. The social habits of the Irish are frequently censured, despite the utility of their labours. Bremner attributed the greater prevalence of industrial conflict in the West to the great influx of the Irish element"a very rough type" as compared with the native Scots of the Lothians.
