ABSTRACT
Over the past ten years economists have returned to the question of the Industrial Revolution, and the conditions prerequisite to it. concept of Industrial Revolution as the inauguration of a mature and developed stage of capitalism is thus emasculated; and the bashful change of terminology turns out to have been far from accidental. In the evolution of the wage-labour: capital relationship within the system of domestic industry there are some interesting transitional stages which show the handicraftsman in process of conversion into a pure wage-earner. There were also gradations to be noticed at any one date within a given handicraft industry. The word ‘accumulation’ implies the mere piling up of durable objects of wealth. In modern capitalism we have learned to visualise this as the constant creation of new means of production— industrial plants and equipment, means of communication, sources of power.
