IV. COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY.
The River Dour, with its corn mills, oil seed crushing mills and paper mills, was for many centuries a great aid to Dover commerce and industry. In later years steam has largely taken the place of water power, and would have done so to a much larger extent but for the fact that the importa tion of coal was discouraged by coal dues, imposed by a local Act of Parliament in 1778.
Ship-building, sail-making, and rope-spinning were profitable occupations here from generation to generation, but natural causes have brought them to an end, and no local effort could have galvanised those old callings into life again ; yet there was considerable compensation when those occupations were expiring, afforded by the opening of the Dover Packet Yard for the repair and re-fitting of the steam ships of the Passage.
A building boom about the same time increased the volume of the weekly earnings in Dover. This arose from the building of the new residences and lodging-houses on the margin of Dover Bay, as well as in many other parts of the town. The benefit was largely augmented by the fact that nearly all the building materials were locally obtained — the lime burnt from the c'lr.lk cliffs ; the timber cut from the surrounding country estates ; arA the bricks made in Dover brickfields. Local lime and timber had been used for centuries; but, p^-ior to the I'eginning of the Nineteenth Century, bricks and tiles were imported from Holland, and it is recorded that the bricks used in the building of New Bridge, in 1800, were brought from Greys, in Essex. The first local bricks were made on Barham Downs, burnt with wood; and the first Dover bricks were made at Dodd's Lane, Buckland, about the time that the Sea Front houses were built. As the years broucjht changes, the importation of timber from the North of Europe caused more money to go out of the locality, and the evil was increased when the timber was imported in planed boards, shaped pieces, and even manufactured for doors and windows. The local timber merchants, by installing expensive machinery, tried to compete against the importation of the manufactured timber, but it was not found possible to do it successfully.
With the decay of old industries and the fluctuation of new ones, it is a marvel that the Dover of 1801, with a population of 7,709, should have increased to 41,794 inhabitants in 1901. The increase arose partly from the policy already mentioned of using, as far as possible, home grown and home-made materials ; another cause has been the great works carried on by the State at Dover, from the building of the Admiralty Pier until the present time ; and probably the greatest cause of all has been the advantages derived from Dover being a garrison town, a seaport, a seaside resort, and the principal station on the Passage to the Continent.