ABSTRACT
The history of the development of the textile trades and their organization after 1600 is the story, first of the development of a capitalist class, the clothiers, who provided the raw material for their poorer folk to work up in their own homes, paid them wages and sold the finished product; 32 later, of the rise of the small, energetic capitalists to rapid fame and fortune. 33 It is a story that has been often written, and has been taken as typifying the development of capitalism in all industry; but the non-textile trades provide as interesting a story, and one that does not follow exactly the same course, and it is with them that we are principally concerned.
