The Supply of Raw Materials in the Industrial Revolution

Abstract

This chapter begins by defining the exchange of products manufactured in the towns for agricultural produce and raw materials as 'the great commerce of every civilized society'. The supply of mineral raw materials forms an interesting contrast with the supply of vegetable and animal raw materials. The cotton industry has attracted more attention than any other in discussions of the Industrial Revolution, and since it grew vastly while continuing to use a vegetable raw material. Cotton has for long been treated as the type par excellence of the new manufacturing industry, the lead-off industry in the take-off into sustained industrial growth. The importance of the changes in raw material supply and in the transport system can be illustrated from the writings of the economists of the period as well as traced in the narrative economic history, especially in the discussions of the limits of economic growth.

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