Before 1700 the manufacture of soap was carried on in mxnerouo small houses throughout the country. The chief soap making centres were London and Bristol. Until about 1750 Tuch of the hard soap used in Britain Evas imported from Southern Europe. By 1785 Britain had become largely self cufficiont for supplies of hard soap and the proportion of soft soap =ado doolinod to leas than 10 of the total. Between 1785 and 1851 the number of licensed soap ma'wrs in Britain declined from 971 to 176 and the average output por firm rose fron about 20 to 500 tons a year. Thore was a marked dooline in the number of small soap makers situated away from the main industrial towns of the Midlands and the North and the ports of London, Liverpool ant Glasgow. About 1830 synthotic soda came into general use in the manufacture of soap, forty years after tho procecs of iianufaoturing coda from aalt had been perfeoted by Zeblano. 01§41 This deli] was probably because there was an adequate supply of imported vegetable alkali and boeause the soap rakers did not vrioh to make use of the noro convenient synthotio alkZ Li, A few soap works on tho canal bank cites, ideal for the acewmulation of raw matorials, were able to exploitthe new source of alkali for a few years but they failed to capture much of the trade of Liverpool or London. Fron an early date the ranußaoture of soap was dependent upon imported raw materials and the greatest concentrations of the industry were located at the ports. In the first half of the 19th century, Liverpool had advantages in the manufacture, in the export market, and in the industrial markets for soap, yet the demand for soap by the population of London sustained London as the chief soap producing area in Britain.