In 1791, a manager at Bank Top mill in Manchester purchased the first bales of imported American cotton. The manager making the purchase was Robert Owen. Six decades later, vast imports of American cotton and the co-operative principles advocated by Owen contributed to a further expansion of the cotton industry. Immediately after the Ten Hours Act, and indeed in subsequent decades, the regulation of working hours, it seemed, did little to temper enthusiasm for new and, with further advances in technology, more productive cotton mills. Self-acting mules and power looms were improved, and some preparatory processes were automated. In turn, productivity advanced, and importantly, was now shared in the form of increased real wages.

Cotton workers now had the opportunity to turn away from the oppressive factory system and invest in their mill projects. McKay's vision, quoted above, made assumptions about working-class behaviour that were the exact opposite of those made by the opponents of factory regulation in the lead-up to the Ten Hours Act. Witness after witness called in opposition to factory reform at the parliamentary inquiries had warned of the fecklessness, drunkenness, and other forms of antisocial behaviour that would result from any relaxation of factory discipline. Genuine moral indignation no doubt motivated some of these claims, but as the last chapter showed, the anti-regulation entrepreneurs also had economic justifications for long hours and the threat of lost profits. Specifically, they were fearful of the risk associated with large-scale and personal, fixed-capital investment in a cyclical industry. Might then collective social capital, mobilized from the savings of the cotton operatives, respond differently to the challenges of market instability, about to be made worse by the onset of the American Civil War? Alternatively, might collective capital succumb to the same pressures as private capital?