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The article discusses draperies as an example of a technical innovation in the English textile industry. During its rise to importance in the later Middle Ages, the products of the English cloth industry which entered into international trade and are thereby known to historians, had certain noteworthy technical and economic qualities. First, they were or at least it is generally assumed that they were mainly true woolens, made of short-stapled carded wool, in both warp and weft and fulled so that the woven mass of fibres was thoroughly felted, to give an enduring, strong, weather-resistant fabric. Second, although these processes obviously gave scope for variations in colour, size, quality, weight and finish, exports seem mainly, though not wholly, to have comprised good or medium-quality fabrics. So long as the market was dominated by such products, neither producers nor sellers could expect any great increase in turnover through the growth of replacement demand. So long as buyers were buying recognized qualities attached to particular types, it remained in the interests of producers to try to ensure the maintenance of those qualities.

This article discusses the growth and management of the iron industry in England during the sixteenth century. Apart from the increase in the quantities of material to be handled, the added complexity of the indirect process meant greater difficulty in the identification of technical deficiencies. If undetected, these could result in poor yields with effects, which could be financially serious over the long periods for which furnaces could be continuously in blast. Similarly, difficulties in obtaining regular supplies of raw materials on a sufficient scale could lead to considerable uncertainty. Such aspects of management in the industry have been apt to be over-shadowed by the actual details of technical change, and are rather less well known than managerial methods in industries where less technical development took place. Establishing the profitability of this undertaking from the accounts presents certain difficulties. The surplus on the working account bears no relation to total profit due to the practice of omitting all receipts from bulk as opposed to casual sales of iron.

In this article, the author explains the acceleration of population growth in England, which occurred during the middle of the 18th century. There have been two traditional explanations of the acceleration in population growth which occurred during the middle of the eighteenth century: the Malthusian view that it was a consequence of the Industrial and Agricultural Revolutions through an improved standard of life; that it was the result of various medical innovations independent of these Revolutions. The problem posed by these competing interpretations is central to English economic and social history: did the Industrial and Agricultural Revolutions create their own future labor force and expanding numbers of consumers, or were they themselves children of a Population Revolution which preceded them? Economic historians have attempted to answer this question by estimating population, birth- and death rates at decennial intervals throughout the eighteenth century. The population increased relatively slowly up to 1750, after which it increased rapidly and steadily right through to the end of the nineteenth century.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century London was no longer the only centre for the wholesale manufacture of boots and shoes. By that time the production of ready-made footwear had developed at Northampton and more recently at Stafford, Kettering, Wellingborough, and Daventry, where in each case it was conducted by one or two enterprises. The rise of wholesale manufacturing was not accompanied by the appearance of typically large enterprises but a handful of firms each employed several hundred people in 1851, the majority of whom were outworkers.' Improvements in communications and greater urbanization explain the growth of certain centres where boot and shoe production became localized, as an expanding market encouraged specialization of function and by region. In the middle fifties there were signs that some classes of workers were becoming scarce, and this fact, taken together with a strike for higher piece rates and the subsequent introduction of closing machinery, fiercely resisted by shoemakers in Northampton and Stafford, suggested that the character and chronology of the first phase of mechanization in the footwear industry can be explained: by labor shortage, a situation which was beginning to affect other sectors of the economy in the 1850's.