Chapter II: Introduction: xix.-xxxi

I.--The stimulus given to research in economic history
by the discovery of Messrs. M‘Connel’s records and
of Crompton’s letters; central position in economic
history occupied by commerce and industry of
textiles; Lancashire cotton industry a graft on
this old stock.

II.--Beginning of cotton manufacture in Europe;
mediæval gilds in textile trades; rise of an organised
journeyman class in fourteenth century; but
in the sixteenth century the centre of the labour
problem was the small master, whose well-being
was dependent on free flow of capital and credit.

III.--Industrial conditions in seventeenth-century
Lancashire resembled those in mediæval Florence
and Douai, but differed vitally by the absence
of a monopoly of capital; such a monopoly was
developing in the Merchant Adventurers and other
companies in Elizabeth’s reign; and led to a crisis
in the textile industries in 1586-1587; the expansion
of the northern textile industries due to its exceptional
freedom.

IV.--The removal of restrictions on the free flow of
capital a main factor in the Industrial Revolution;
illustrations of this from the careers of William
Radcliffe, David Dale, and Nathan Meyer Rothschild.