Compared to the 200,000 French textile workers who had been "directly" thrown out of work by the 1787 Agreement, the 2,500 Britons unemployed because of silk imports were still within a "controllable" range. Besides, Spitalfields was already recognized as a lawless district. How much worse could it get?
On the other hand, the timber scandal at the Royal Dockyards had vanished from British newspapers, though neighboring countries were still reporting on it. After all, the British Navy's dockyards involved overseas timber yards too, and some of the wood had rotted before it was even used.
Some of it had been stored for too long; some had been bought as rotten timber at fir prices. Yet the worst "corruption" was not in those areas.
The Fable of the Bees mentioned this: if there were no opportunities to build new ships, the first-rate shipwrights and everyone under them would either have starved to death, died young, or simply lived out their natural lives.
The First Lord of the Admiralty established a special investigative committee. They submitted twelve reports. Whether for warships or civilian vessels, blocks and tackle were indispensable in the age of sail, and the rate at which such "consumables" were used was simply staggering.
Anchors and anchor chains did not break easily. One set of chains could serve a ship for a very long time. Yet after an hour-long storm, the loss of consumables would far exceed that of ten days of fair weather. The First Lord's reform was to establish naval factories so such consumables could be produced independently, without having to buy shoddy products from outside contractors that endangered sailors' lives.
Before this, his reforms had chiefly concerned "people." That was not to say the First Lord had the power to appoint officers, though many people wrote him