False Economy - Alan Beattie [91]
The political framework was also changing. The Great Reform Act of 1832 increased the parliamentary seats allotted to industrial cities and swept away many of the "rotten" or "pocket" boroughs—constituencies with small and easily bribed electorates that could in effect be bought and sold, and which tended to rest in the control of local landowners. Especially in the cities, evangelical Christian movements were also pushing for religious and political change, and would provide a bountiful fountainhead of reformist fervor.
The lobby that began pressing for reform got support from both the middle classes, who owned and ran Britain's growing factories, and the working classes, who labored in them. It was led by the Anti-Corn Law League, a pioneering national-level political pressure group. In organization and tactics, the League was way ahead of its time. Like so many trade lobbies to come after it, it sometimes masqueraded as a consumer-focused organization seeking cheaper food for the poor. But it was a producer interest—the manufacturers, and notably the cotton mill owners—that provided its core leadership, its money, and its organizational clout. Founded in London in 1836 as the Anti-Corn Law Association, it had, by 1838, found a natural home in Manchester, the center of the textile industry in Lancashire, in northwest England.
The two main leaders of the League were later to become some of the most famous advocates for free trade in history: Richard Cobden and John Bright. Cobden, who pursued the campaign against the Corn Laws from a prominent position in Manchester political life—he became member of Parliament for Stockport in 1841—was credited by Robert Peel with the repeal of the laws, "acting, I believe, from pure and disinterested motives." Of course, as textile manufacturers, Cobden and Bright came to the campaign with a very particular commercial interest. As we have seen, the ideal trade lobby is one that is sufficiendy well concentrated to be able to campaign coherently, yet sufficiently broad—or capable of portraying itself as such—to pass itself off as representative of the nation. The Anti-Corn Law League was a very good example.
In its vanguard were the textile manufacturers of Lancashire. Textile mills clustered in the county for a variety of reasons. It had convenient access to the great port of Liverpool, which enabled cotton to be brought in and clothing shipped out. It was near the Lancashire coalfields, which provided fuel for the steam-powered looms that replaced water-powered weaving. And the damp northern climate helped prevent yarn from snapping as it was being spun. As the total number of power looms doubled in England between 1835 and 1850, Lancashire's share increased from 67.5 to 79.1 percent. By 1846, 70 percent of the League's donations above £100 came from Lancashire.
But export-oriented industries of various sorts were broadening and spreading around the country. As the Industrial Revolution progressed, demand soared for semifinished manufactured goods, such as iron bars and girders, which served as inputs for other industrial processes. And as industrialization and the railway boom began to be exported elsewhere, such as North America and continental Europe, so did the components needed to construct it. Published directories of city-dwellers for the period show that all occupations were spreading out across many urban centers, with one exception: landowners.
The stark division between landowners and industrialists was in any case something of a caricature. One of the reasons that Britain's aristocracy