Cotton Masters, 1830-1860

Notes:

See the writer's doctoral thesis, 'Lancashire Textile Masters, 1830-1860. A social and political study', Oxford, 1981. Examines emergence via the Industrial Revolution of leading cotton industry entrepreneurs as a recognizably 'middle class' element in Victorian society, personifying the new force of industry in the nineteenth century which was more visible and more vocal than equally influential groups, for example, City financiers. These cotton masters were Lancashire based and are 'identified for the most part not as entrepreneurs but as social and political animals ... The entrepreneur's concern with capital, goods, labour discipline and technological progress has been treated as subordinate to the social and political ramifications of the entrepreneur's life ...'. The study is supported by a biography of 351 masters. The sections are: 1] The cotton masters - the economics of success'; 2] The cotton masters - social formation'; 3] 'Assumption of political power'; 4] 'Exercise of municipal authority'; 5] 'Pressure of interests - capitalists and combinations'; 6] 'Politics of pressure'; 7] 'Achievement of status'; 8] 'Stewardship of wealth; 9] 'Making of an industrial elite'