These seem small scale to us now, but the contrast was with still smaller places using hyrdro power. In the clyde valley which I know the iniital center of the textiles was New Lanark which must have had a population of only a couple of thousand or so. There was an attempt at a big investment in Hydro Power in Greenock with enough water being ducted in for several big mills but Glasgow was a much bigger center of population than a small town like Greenock with a big pool of labour available to it. So the capitalist who invested in the Greenock Cut as it was called was unable to persuade mills to move out there. Remember you can only build hydro mills where there is a big drop in water levels. Mercantile cities were built around ports where the river waters are necessarily smooth.
New Lanark was built in the upper reaches of the Clyde next to waterfalls still used for hydro power, the nearest big cities Glasgow and Edinburgh were by the sea. Greenock was the only place where they thought they could combine a head of water with a port since there, the hills come close to a navigable part of the estuary. ________________________________ From: [email protected] [[email protected]] on behalf of Marshall Feldman [[email protected]] Sent: Monday, March 03, 2014 10:12 PM To: Progressive Economics (Pen-L) Subject: [Pen-l] Fwd: pen-l Digest, Vol 2193, Issue 1 So why didn't large cities form around sources of hydropower? Or, why didn't the existing cities, which (depending on the time period) were mainly large, mercantile ports, build canals and mill ponds to generate water power locally? The demographics of urbanization hardly make a compelling case that cities had large concentrations of workers prior to the industrial revolution. Greater London had about 1,000,000 people in 1800, but Manchester had less than 100,000<http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/ITmanchester.htm>. In 1800, New York had 60,515, Boston had 24,937, and Providence had 7,614<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Largest_cities_in_the_United_States_by_population_by_decade>. Chicago's population was under 30,000 in 1850<http://www.uic.edu/depts/ahaa/imagebase/chimaps/mcclendon.html> but grew to 1.7M by 1900. Greater Los Angeles<http://www.laalmanac.com/population/po25.htm> had under 20,000 people in 1880 but grew to about 130,000 by 1900 and to almost 18M by 2010<http://www.newgeography.com/content/002372-the-evolving-urban-form-los-angeles>. So, rather than seeing mobile power as enabling capital to move to large cities which already had large reserves of labor, it seems large cities formed as a result of the mobility of capital. This is not to say, capital mobility was the only reasons large cities formed. It also still leaves unexplained why mill towns did not become the centers of the industrial revolution (e.g., why not Pawtucket -- where Slater built his mill -- instead of Providence as the major urban center in the area?) -------- Original Message -------- Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2014 01:45:37 -0800 From: Gar Lipow <[email protected]><mailto:[email protected]> Subject: Re: [Pen-l] The shift to coal in the UK To: Progressive Economics <[email protected]><mailto:[email protected]> Message-ID: <CAFtrwhgG8RyP6EcLapkKrJC=kfqd1ogttt4x0itjydknsn_...@mail.gmail.com><mailto:CAFtrwhgG8RyP6EcLapkKrJC=kfqd1ogttt4x0itjydknsn_...@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" No actually citing Andre Malm's recent piece on the the replacement of hydropower by coal in textile mills in the 18th century. I can't speak for Cockshott but suspect he was thinking of the same piece. Why did coal replace water power in England, Scotland and Wales? For running textile mills, hydro gave you better better production per hour of labor with no more operating skill required. Further capital and operating costs other than labor were lower. And right through 1870 was enough unused prime hydro potential to run every textile mill England, Scotland and Wales, and as late as 1870 trade literature and parliamentary enquiries show that hydor was cheaper and more productive. So why coal Very simple: Hydro was mostly in rural communities - close enough to marketsw and with good accessible transport, but far from labor centers. Labor had to be imported and coaxed with either high wages or various types of non-wage compentsation.. Whearas steam plants could be located in big cities and towns in the midst of large labor pools. By 1830, probably sooner that ability to tap cheap labor was a decisive advantage. As labor militancy in the textile industry grew there was a second advantage. When workers when on strike, they could be replaced immediately in the steam plants. Whereas in the water mills where workers had to be imported, strikebreaking was more difficult and more expensive. In the mills that was only advantage coal had over hydro - ability to tap into cheap labor pools, both to lower initial labor costs and break strikes. No reduction in quantity of labor compared to hydro. No ability to use less trained labor.. The only advantage in coal over hydro in mills up about 1870 was redistribution of income and power from labor to capital. Of course this only applied to mills. Obviously, coal was the superior to wood in smelting, and superior to animals for running railroads and steamships. Still I think an interesting and indicative point: social technological choices not always driven by true technical advantage. Not unknown, but I think it gets overlooked in some of these discussion. On Sun, Mar 2, 2014 at 7:18 PM, Gar Lipow <[email protected]><mailto:[email protected]> wrote: > Cockshott's point on a related thread remains valid. Coal replace hydro > mainly as a means of strikebreaking. booksandjournals.brillonline.com > \content\journals\10.1163\1569206x-12341279 > > And yes electricity can replace much oil transport - Specifically when it > comes to ground transport. Trains are a mature technology though replace > most car traffic of them would require a reversal of sprawl in many > nations. Given replacement of fossil fuels with renewable electricity, > many unsurvivable practices could be replaced by survivialbe ones. Water > efficiency and desalinzation, capture and composting of organic waste to > close to repair the food->waste->fertilizer loop that was broken with the > dawn of industrialization. > > > On Sun, Mar 2, 2014 at 6:34 PM, Perelman, Michael > <[email protected]><mailto:[email protected]>wrote: > >> The Corn Laws raised the price of grain relative to people. Suddenly the >> railroad gained an advantage over horse drawn transportation, leading to >> improvements in steam engines ... >> >> >> >> >> >> Michael Perelman >> >> Economics Department >> >> California State University >> >> michael dot perelman at gmail.com >> >> Chico, CA 95929 >> >> 530-898-5321 >> >> fax 530-898-5901 >> >> www.michaelperelman.wordpress.com<http://www.michaelperelman.wordpress.com> >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> pen-l mailing list >> [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> >> https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l >> >> > > > -- > Facebook: Gar Lipow Twitter: GarLipow > Solving the Climate Crisis web page: SolvingTheClimateCrisis.com > Grist Blog: http://grist.org/author/gar-lipow/ > Online technical reference: http://www.nohairshirts.com > End of pen-l Digest, Vol 2193, Issue 1 **************************************
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