I study the slow adoption of ring spinning in Great Britain's cotton industry at the end of the 19th century, which has been used as evidence of British entrepreneurs' declining efficiency and conservatism (Musson, 1959; Aldcroft, 1964; Lazonick, 1981, 1981b). To this purpose I use firm-level data from all of Lancashire's cotton firms over several years. The data are from Worrall's The Cotton Spinners and Manufacturers' Directory for the years 1885, 1886–1887, 1890, 1894, 1902, and 1910.First, I show that the vertical organization of the industry, with its firms specializing in spinningor weaving, did not act as an impediment to the adoption of the ring spinning technology, as was argued by Lazonick. In particular, I show the following: i) non-integrated firms were the first to adopt rings in Great Britain; ii) the large majority of firms that adopted rings wereincumbents; iii) vertically integrated firms that were spinning only either twist or weft yarnwere still in existence in 1910; and iv) only a negligible number of firms changed theirorganizational structure upon adopting ring spinning. I also show that a large fraction of firmsinstalled very small numbers of ring spindles upon the adoption of ring spinning, suggestingthat firms were slowly adopting ring spindles to replace old mule spindles rather thantransitioning over to ring spinning at a single point in time.Then, I show that the rate at which vertically integrated firms adopted rings suddenly acceleratedafter 1902. I interpret this as evidence that British entrepreneurs were fully aware of thetechnological complementarities between rings and automatic looms. These complementaritiescould only be fully exploited by vertically integrated firms.
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