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The search for the cause of the reason for the betterment of the woolcomber and other phenomena, we may have to go back further for the root causes of things. To the manorial system, when everybody had their place and their land (importantly). There were payments (in labour) to the Lord of The Manor (The Lord) to tend his land. Homelesness may have been little heard of in the UK. A seminal occurance seems to be heath issues, plagues, The Black Death which reduced the available working population for the Lord of The Manor. This caused labour to have a value and to be migatory as the Lord found he had to pay for his required labour. Money bacame a more important currency. So the Lord sought more money, he engaged in agrigultural improvements - clover, turnips, crop rotation using these. He needed better return from the land. So their was petition for the various Enclosure Acts in the 18th century. These gave the land (with compensation to others) to the formal landholders, to the Lord. But there was no more common land to be shared, poor people couldn't farm the Waste (verges etc.) - it was now all the Lord's or the big Landholders. The poor man, the peasant, the wool comber could rely on land no more. He had to rely on the Lord more and the integrity of his BOND to look after him. Often this bond was abused, sometimes not e.g. Earl Wentworth-FitzWilliam. So perhaps the wool comber was forced to be a wool stapler and to venture to better himself. When the wool comber set up his business fiduciary features were in the ascendency. making money was all that counted. What's more there were suddennly more men looking for 'work' to earn money to buy food, because they had lost their land. So big opportunity to turn the screw back (but on the landless, the poor again). Things are becoming clearer.
I think (as in all big accidents) we have a perfect storm of phenomena coming together: we have (very key) the inventions (Arkwright's cotton spinnign machines) facilitating the factory system, diseases reducing labour and encouraging payment via money and not in kind, the Enclosure Acts kicking people off the land and another very important thing not mentioned so far: war, the wars with France and Napolean, reducing Continental food imports, causing food shortages and the need to make land more productive.
One should also remember that this critical juncture time (late 18th eraly 19th century) was around when slavery in UK and its terrotories was abolished. If you have the benefit of a slave than you don't have much need for money because somebody is working for you for free. So if this nice little earner disappears and you have to buy his/her labour then that's starting to value money again. So what did the wealthy wool comber or stapler do - he turned the screw on his fellow many and have his near slavery and that of his wife and children for a pittance - of course with a lot of mal-treatment to spice things up.