"resembled ourselves in this, that they possessed large weaving establishments, and supplied with their products foreign lands;" and Mr. Warden (Linen Trade Ancient and Modern) offers even a description of such places, to the effect that they were "of a kindred nature to the handloom weaving shops, not yet extinct in this country (Scotland). Lastly, M. Maspéro, one of the latest and most accomplished writers on Egyptian archæology, actually locates some of them, and even traces their descent to the present day. Writing of the reign of Rameses II. (ie. the fourteenth century B.C.), "Apu," he says, "is celebrated for its spinning mills," adding in a note: "The spinning mills of Ekhurem (Apu) still exist; their chief manufacture is a material with little blue and white checks, of which the fellah women make their outer garments" (Ancient Egypt and Assyria; p. 74).

The evidence from ancient Babylonia is equally convincing, but space will not admit of its being given. It shall suffice to quote the observation of Bonomi (Nineveh and its Palaces), that Semiramis is "stated by many writers of antiquity to have founded large weaving establishments along the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates." It must be allowed, however, that this testimony would have been more satisfactory had the author furnished the names of the "many writers" referred to.

Of the great dye-houses, and glass and metal works of Phoenicia ; the (possibly) great silk and porcelain factories of ancient China; of the woollen manufactures-so renowned -of Lydia, Phrygia, and Persia; the carpet manufacture of old Carthage, we must not pause to treat ;1 we know, indeed,

1

1 This branch of the general subject is dealt with at some length in my Introduction to a History of the Factory System; Chap. ii.

extremely little of them, nor is the subject very closely related to our theme. Instead, we may proceed at once to the next great civilization of the ancient world, to Rome in the plenitude of her power. There is no doubt that the Factory System was largely availed of both in ancient Italy and her colonies. Not to go beyond our own experience for an example, we are aware that the Romans established a great woollen factory for clothing their troops at Winchester, and immense potteries in many parts of the country. They had also a "Fabrica," or vast military forge, at Bath. Mr. Scrivenor (History of the Iron Trade) gives the following very graphic account of it. "The fabrica was a large college of

armourers, where the varied weapons used by the Roman soldiers were manufactured. The business of this society, and the laws which regulated it, are developed by the Theodosian and Justinian codes. It there appears that towards the commencement of the second century the army smiths were created into companies, each governed by its own president or head, denominated the primicerius. That the employment of these bodies was to make arms for the use of the legion or legions to which it was attached, at public forges or shops, called fabricæ, erected in the camps, cities, towns, or military stations; that these arms when forged were to be delivered to an officer appointed to receive them, who laid them up in arsenals for public service; that to prevent any abuse in this important branch of military economy, and to ensure its proper and methodical management, no person was permitted to forge arms for the imperial service unless he were previously admitted a member of the society of the Fabri; that to secure the continuance of their labours after they had been instructed

in the art a certain yearly stipend was settled on each armourer, who (as well as his offspring) was prohibited from leaving the employ till he had attained the office of primicerius, and, finally, that none might quit his business without detection, a mark or stigma was impressed upon the arm of each as soon as he became a member of the Fabrica." But it was not in her colonies only that Rome availed herself of the Factory System. We learn from Blanqui1 that, about this time, Italy itself "was full of manufactories where paid workmen shared with slaves consigned to the rudest tasks, the fatigues, though not the profits of manufacture: "—from which we are not to infer, however, that there were free operative labourers as well as slaves there, but rather many free overseers, who were requisite to keep the slaves in order, and who had no closer interest in the work.

These two descriptions of the interior economy of Roman factories, brought thus together, are very interesting. We view herein the actual operation of two archaic forms of the organization of labour which, in one mode or other, have prevailed from an immensely remote past, and may quite possibly prevail again. The collegiate or guild system would not, of course, be always necessarily in the service of the State, nor the servile organization always outside it; on the contrary, the opposite of this was more commonly the case. But whatever their civil circumstances and prospects they are types of extraordinary persistency in the industrial history of mankind, beside which the devices of to-day directed towards the same end can but be considered immature, experimental, and exceptional, and are probably temporary at the best.

1 Page 54.

EARLY ENGLISH FACTORIES.-When the Romans retired from Britain, the great works they had established for the manufacture of textile fabrics, of metal, and of earthenware were closed, and for eight or nine hundred years there were no factories The nearest approaches to such places remaining were the workmen's quarters attached to religious houses, to the castles of the more powerful nobles, and the king. In these, but especially in the first named, whatsoever industry was left other than of the purely isolated kind was to be found, but it was agglomerated not combined industry: the operatives worked under no general labour system, and the produce was for use, not profit. Gradually, after the conquest by the Normans, other developments tended to arise. First, the early Norman sovereigns brought many skilled workmen over in their trains who were forthwith endowed with certain privileges, settled in selected districts, and given the opportunity of starting on an independent career; and next, industrious foreigners came over occasionally of their own accord; whether induced to do so by political or topographical causes, or by the mere love of change and hope of gain. In the reign of Henry I., in particular, a considerable colony of Flemish weavers; driven across the sea owing to inundations in their own country settled here; and were established by him chiefly on his northern and western frontiers, where they acted as a protection against the incursions of the Scotch and Welsh. Under the Plantagenets, and while our kings were often abroad, these workmen colonies increased in prosperity, and at about this time we begin to read of “factories of a rude kind" set up in various parts of the country. Such factories were probably

1 Romance of Trade; p. 103.

1

fulling mills; and it is in connection with one of them that Manchester makes a first appearance in industrial history with "a fulling mill on the banks of the Irt" (1301); Halifax and Bradford (in Yorkshire) being each noted as in possession of another at about the same period. In the neighbourhood of these, other buildings would often gather in time, where the cloth-still spun and woven at home-might be dyed, and subjected to other processes, or where possibly all processes of manufacture might occasionally be accumulated in a single establishment; and in such a one, accommodating a congeries of free workmen in the service of a capitalist employer, we have the germ of the modern Factory System.

A great advance was made in the reign of Edward III. Edward had married a Flemish princess, Philippa of Hainault, and it is to that union-indeed to the queen's own personal interest and efforts it is said that England owes the re-establishment of her woollen manufacture on a large scale.1 Thenceforth progress was uninterrupted, uninterrupted even by those terrible scourges the Black Death, and Wars of the Roses; or, at the worst, only temporarily interrupted to start afresh with redoubled vigour. By the time the Tudors were firmly seated on the throne undoubted evidence is found of the existence of large textile factories, not inconsiderable even in comparison with many of the present day. The most notable (in the reign of Henry VII.) was that of John Winchcombe, Wynchcomb, or Whitcomb, commonly called "Jack of Newbury," but, whose real name was John SmallwoodWinchcombe being the Gloucestershire village whence he

1 The story is told with much quaintness of detail by Fuller; Church History, Book iii.