Capital and Structure of the Industry

Abstract

A GLANCE at the bibliography will confirm that there has been more academic interest in the amount of capital invested in firms in the cotton industry than in any other aspect of its long history. There are two reasons for this. The original one is that historians have for long been fascinated by the notion most clearly formulated in Samuel Smiles’ Self-Help (1860), that enterprise was open to men of limited capital who had the character to exploit the opportunities open to them. More recent interest derives from strong interest in development economics, that is, in the conditions necessary for industrialisation, including the initial investment costs. Both topics are evidently much wider than the cotton industry but have focused on it because of the major role played by cotton in the first Industrial Revolution, i.e. in the Industrial Revolution in Britain.