Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/394

386 "that the rise of the Cotton Trade hath caused the decline of the Silk Manufacture in this country and if the French adopt the Cotton Trade (as no doubt they will) it will operate with equal power against the manufacture of France."

Salte's peroration has an unconscious irony that would have delighted Adam Smith.

"If your Lordships consider this Object in a Limited and local view only as giving Bread to a part of the Laborious poor of our own country—it rises very high—but if your Lordships consider it in its remote and future consequences as enriching the Manufacturer and Merchant and yielding an ample Revenue to the State—it rises infinitely in dignity and Importance."

But whilst an increasing supply of fine and finer yarns at continually lessening prices enabled the British muslin manufacture to dispose effectually within a few years of the competition of India, it soon compelled Oldknow to face a lively competition at home. Within a fortnight after his prophecy about the revolution in cotton yarn, Salte writes to Oldknow (23 May 1786):

"Our ears are stressed every day with the Excellence of Scotch and Lancashire Muslins; if cheapness proves any excellence they have it indeed. … The Scotch impudence and perseverance is beyond all, but there is a Manufacturer in Lancashire makes excellent goods … a friend of ours last Saturday bought 300, all that came … he says superior to yours and much lower."

And again on 5 June :

"The Lancashire People are all exerting themselves and no less than three or four houses opened to sell Lancashire Muslins by Commission and the accounts of buyers are much in their praise. …"

And on 12 July: 'The Scotch have loaded the Town … with Ballasore handkerchiefs.'

After this the refrain of all Salte's letters is the need for pressing on to the goal of technical perfection. Oldknow must outstrip all his rivals by neatness of work and elegance of pattern. He must drop calicoes and cheap muslins and concentrate his energies on his best products. Patterns are sent to Stockport 'of Muslins come over as presents to the People of Fashion … written under to describe to you how they are worked'. If we possessed Oldknow's replies to these letters we might perhaps find him saying that the supply of the finer workmen as of the finer twist was limited, that he could not secure their services unless he found work for calico-weavers in their families, and that if he produced nothing but articles of the highest fashion his capital and his labour would be without employment in the dead season. It was no doubt with a view to the more intimate