The Manchester Region

Introduction

This chapter describes the regional perspective which has been an important spur to economic historical writing over the last couple of decades. It shows the extent to which contemporary writers regarded Manchester as being part of an economic region. Consideration is given to the extent that Manchester did in fact have a region during the period. It quantifies the importance of different places within that region, in the context of Manchester's economy, and shows the extent to which the transformation of the economy of Manchester impacted on the economic structures of the regional satellites. A part of the discussion centres on the adequacy of the proto-industrial model of development, which is often associated with the regional perspective, to explain the changes described in the early part of the chapter.

The Manchester Region

Manchester made only a small proportion of the textile goods sold through its warehouses: the latter were at the centre of a system of production which dominated what could be described, geographically, as the Manchester region.  The regional perspective has been championed by economic historians in recent years as an imoportant analytical framework within which to study economic change, especially during the time of the industrial and commercial changes which have been characterised as the Industrial Revolution. [1]. The regionalists argue that regional analysis will overcome the shortcomings of explanatory models based upon national economic aggregates which necessarily obscure the transformations which occurred at sub-national level, where some industries in some regions were in a state of dramatic decline, whilst others were growing rapidly and the nature of production also in a state of flux. The regional perspective is, however, an analytical method and not an explanatory model: it does not seek to explain why the industrial revolution occurred as classical perspectives do, it seeks to re-focus the debate surrounding the revolution to a lower level, which has the advantage of moving the debate from fairly abstract macro-economic theory, to a more concrete empirical and quantitative level.

Modern economic historians have suggested that, during the period, the Manchester region was a “complicated pattern of sub-regions, which arguabley only attained a real measure of coherent regional identity with the completion of the transition to factory-centred industrialisation.” [2] However, the regional aspect of the Manchester trade was well-acknowledged by contemporaries. Aikin's work of 1795 is an attempt to describe the regional economy of Manchester, in which almost every township within a thirty mile radius of the town had a part to play in either the spinning, weaving or finishing of textiles for the Manchester market. He explains in some detail the part played by many of the townships in this regional economy (whilst curiously neglecting those townships within the parish of Manchester). There was a consciousness of the fact of Manchester being the lynchpin of an economic region: "The centre we have chosen is that of the cotton manufacture; a branch of commerce, the repid and prodigious increase of which is, perhaps, absolutely unparalled in the annals of trading nations. Manchester is, as it were, the heart of this vast system, the circulating branches of which spread all around it, though to different distances." [3] In 1800, Radcliffe met with the principal manufacturers of Manchester and Stockport at which they "found there was not a village within thirty miles of Manchester, on the Cheshire and Derbyshire side, in which some of us were not putting out cotton warps, and taking in goods, employing all the weavers of woollen and linen goods who were declining those fabrics as the cotton trade increased." [4]  There were efforts to solve regional problems at a regional level: some of the largest manufacturers of pure cotton goods, met at Manchester early in 1791, to organise opposition to the import of muslins and cotton goods from the East Indies. [5] By the end of the period, there were even efforts at the regional organisation of workers, to oppose the exportation of spun cotton, to be woven outside the country. [6]

Later historians have noted the importance of the Manchester economic region during the period. "the economic history of the Manchester region has hardly been touched since... 1931." [7] The leading economic historians of early nineteenth century Manchester sought to "explore the linkages of the factory firm to other economic components by inserting the former into the totality of a local economic system. Manchester provides an ideal site for such an investigation, It is the central nodal point of the Industrial Revolution..." [8] In their formulation, "local economic system", however, excluded anywhere outside the town of Manchester: the local economic system, was that of a self-contained city. It is the contention of this chapter that the villages and towns surrounding Manchester, its economic hinterland, played a crucial and increasingly important role in the economy of Manchester during the period in question. Manchester's very existence, indeed, was predicated on this rural economy. For the purposes of this chapter, the "local economic system" stretched far beyond the boundaries of the town.

The Regional Occupational Structure

Table 2 shows the occupations of grooms from a number of townships near Manchester.

Key

Wvr= weavers            Tex= other textile workers

Agr= agriculturists            Oth= other occupations

Table 2. Occupations of Grooms from Outlying Townships. 1750s & 1790s.  [9]

The table shows the importance of weaving to the rural economy of the Manchester parochial region in the 1750s. The townships, with the exception of Salford, were those on the periphery of Manchester, and Manchester was the largest local centre. For the group of townships as a whole, weavers constitute almost 47% of the sample, excluding Salford, which, being in some respects, an extension of the town of Manchester, had a different occupational structure from that of the rural townships which are represented in the table, the figure drops slightly to 44%. Other textile employments accounted for almost 10%, and agriculture for over a quarter. In the 1750s, the importance of agriculture was concentrated in the southern townships of Chorlton, Didsbury, Withington and Stretford, where textiles were less important than in northern townships such as Blackley, Droylsden and Failsworth. These figures show that, overall, even during the 1750s weaving provided more employment in the rural townships of the Manchester region than did agriculture, [10]. However, agriculture was often a significant by-employment of weavers in the region. Clarkson's second feature of proto-industrialisation is that "the industrial products made by peasant manufacturers who combined say, weaving or stocking-knitting with farming." [11] That this was the case is confirmed by an comment of Samuel Oldknow's agent in Anderton, a rural community close to Chorley in Lancashire, who noted, as late as 1786, that "haytime is coming on and if some more weavers gets work they are likely to hold it some time on that Acc[oun]t." [12] By the 1750s, in the area immediately surrounding the town of Manchester the relative importance of the two sectors in terms of adult male employment was unambiguous.

By 1790, the position had changed somewhat in the countryside, as it had done in Manchester. Once again excluding Salford, the proportion of weavers fell (although absolute numbers in the sample increased), whilst those engaged in other textile employments remained more or less constant. The proportion of men engaged in agriculture almost halved between the two dates, and those employed in other occupations more than doubled. This latter change is largely a consequence of the dramatic growth of the hat making trade in Denton, a rural township to the south east of Manchester. The Denton figures for the 1790s sample include 15 feltmakers and 12 hatters, or 30% of those engaged in "Other" occupations (excluding Salford). This shows that, whilst textiles remained an important source of employment in the region between the two dates other occupations also increased in significance.

When compared with the abstract of figures from the occupational structure of Manchester at comparable dates, a significant pattern emerges: weaving was a, proportionately, more important employer of male labour in the rural townships around Manchester than in Manchester itself. This proportional significance decreased between the 1750s and the 1790s, but remained. Manchester had employed proportionally more "other" textile workers than the countryside (predominantly finishing trades during the 1750s, and cotton spinners and finishing trades during the 1790s). The conclusion is that weaving was a more significant employer of labour in the countryside than in the town throughout the period. Manchester's had less of a manufacturing role than did its hinterland.

Regional Textile Traders

Manchester's role in this regional economy, therefore, primarily lay elsewhere than in manufacture. Its role was, of course, as a marketing centre for the various products of the rural townships, and of the town itself. Clarkson's fourth feature of proto-industrialisation is that "Towns located in manufacturing zones were principally centres of trade and commerce." [13]This role as a marketing centre increased during the period, even though there was a growth of the new mechanised spinning of cotton within Manchester: the importance of weaving to the town declined fairly steadily throughout the period. [14] An indicator of the significance of Manchester, in its role as a regional commercial centre, is the number of tradesmen from other towns and villages who traded in the Manchester market.  Table 3 shows the places of origin of tradesmen who had warehouses in Manchester, and who were thus buying or selling in the Manchester market.

Table 3. Places of Origin of Tradesmen with Manchester Warehouses. [15]

These figures give an impression of the relative importance of local towns and villages within the Manchester commercial economy. They give no impression of the scale of trade which each individual tradesman undertook, one single tradesman may have brought as many goods to the market as ten or more of his contemporaries. John Aikin’s comments about the different towns and villages have been appended to the table. These comments help to illustrate the type of goods being produced in each of the places listed.

The increase in the number of places sending tradesmen to the Manchester market suggest changes elsewhere, either in the process of marketing itself, or in the types of goods being produced for sale in the Manchester market. Table 4, below, illustrates this latter change in the regional context. As regards the increased importance of particular towns in the Manc