ABSTRACT
the history of the hosiery industry during the first half of the nineteenth century exemplifies the ‘slow-footed progress’ which industries might have experienced without the important inventions which we associate with the industrial revolution. 1 The history of the machine-made lace industry shows the economic and social effects of an innovation which revolutionized an industry. The changes were less rapid and, because of the smallness of the industry, less significant than the transformation of the cotton industry. Nevertheless, important similarities between the two should not be overlooked, for innovation in both industries was followed by falling prices and, eventually, the production of articles of improved quality. Furthermore, the rise of the machine-made lace industry exemplifies Professor Charles Wilson’s statement that
It is misleading to consider the industrial revolution merely in terms of undifferentiated commodities called cotton or woollens or iron. Such treatment obscures the fundamental fact that the need to be met was for highly specific versions of such general categories. 2
