are 1a
teeta o
ay os a
st
~~,
TEXTILE MANUFACTURES
OF
GREAT BRITAIN.
BY GEORGE DODD.
LONDON:
CHARLES KNIGHT & Co., LUDGATE STREET.
1844.
eben see ee Pe es
London: Printed by W. Crowes and Sons, Stamford Street.
3
CONTENTS.
lage
INTRODUCTION . eee “ F A 5
CHAPTER I.
COTTON AND TPssMANUPACTURE . 2. « « « 8 «= « YB
CHAPTER II.
BLEACHING, DYEING, AND PRINTING OF COTTONS . 45
CHAPTER III.
WOOBEEN: GLOTH MANUPACTURE) ©.) 005 “ce biceps) we 8H
CHAPTER IV.
WORSTED AND STUFF MANUFACTURES, ... « . « I3
CHAPTER V.
WLAX AND LINEN MANUFACTURES ....... « 146
CHAPTER VI.
Sheer NEL Eo: MeAINUBACT URE: 6. lois ee) o woe we bee
CHAPTER VII.
LACE AND BOBBIN-NET MANUFACTURES ... . . .205
THE TEXTILE MANUFACTURES
OF
GREAT BRITAIN.
INTRODUCTION.
Tere are, in this country, nearly two millions of per-
sons employed in the manufacture of materials for
clothing! The assertion is so startling, that it may well
be received with caution on the part of those to whom
- the subject is new ; but it rests on grounds too authentic
to be slighted. The information collected by the various
Government Commissioners, to whom have been intrusted
the inquiries into factory regulations, into the condition
of the hand-loom weavers, and into other matters bearing
on productive industry ; the vast body of details pub-
lished in the commercial and statistical works of Mr.
M‘Culloch and Mr. Porter; the tables resulting from
the recent census of the population—all afford evidence
that the number of persons employed in what are con-
yeniently termed the ‘ textile manufactures” cannot be
far short of that above stated.
6 INTRODUCTION.
Nor does this by any means represent the whole extent
of the industry applied to the production of dress in this
country. By ‘Textile manufactures” are meant those in
which filaments of cotton, of flax, of silk, or of wool, are
wrought into a form fitted to be used in the making ot
garments; into such goods, in fact, as calico, muslin,
linen, cambric, satin, silk, broad cloth, merino, bom-
bazeen, and the innumerable modifications of these, so
well known to most persons. But the production of
garments from these materials leads us into a wholly new
field of industry. Every county, every town and village
in every county, almost every street in every town, ex-
hibits its supply of persons who earn a maintenance by
the production of articles of dress from these materials.
What the number of such persons may amount to cannot,
perhaps, be safely conjectured. Many a humble cot-
tager, many an artisan’s wife, devotes some of her busily-
occupied hours in thus contributing to the fund, scanty
and uncertain it may be, by which the whole family
is supported. The court milliner who supplies the
dazzling attire for a drawing-room or an opera night; the
‘Cwest-end ” tailor, who perhaps drives in his own car-
riage to take an order for a coat; the ready-made clothes
dealer, who exhibits his carefully brushed and smartly
adjusted coats at a price which one would think could
scarcely pay for the cloth ; the poor sempstress by whom
(for a pittance miserably inadequate to the aching eyes
INTRODUCTION. vf
and aching head resulting from the employment) the
shops are supplied with many of the minor articles of
clothing—all are types of large classes of persons, dis-
tinct from those employed in the textile manufactures
properly so called, and yet swelling the number of those
employed in the production of dress.
Yet, even here, we fail to obtain an adequate idea of
the vast mass of industry so applied. ‘There are other
materials for dress besides spun and woven filaments, and
other departments of industry for the application of such
materials. Bedfordshire and the adjacent counties exhibit
their thousands employed in the preparation of straw-
plait ; while in nearly every town in England there are
females by whom the straw-plait thus prepared is
wrought up into hats and bonnets. There are in Ber-
mondsey, in Newcastle-under-Lyne, in Liverpool, in
Bristol, and other towns, large numbers employed in
working up wool, fur, and silk into the form of hats.
here are large tanneries in most of the principal towns
for the production of leather; and there are tens of
thousands constantly employed in working up this leather
into boots, shoes, and gloves. ‘There are furriers, plu-
massiers, artificial-florists, pin-makers, needle-makers,
button-makers, clasp-makers, and a host of other ar-
tisans, whose skill and industry are applied to matters
relating directly or indirectly to dress. It is not until
ve have glanced steadily in all these directions, that we
8 INTRODUCTION.
shall be in a condition to appreciate the enormous amount
of population, of capital, of skill, of mechanical ingenuity,
of energy, of patience, involved in the production of
clothing in this country.
Like all large subjects, this is capable of division and
classification, in such a way that each department may,
to a certain extent, be understood by itself. The present
volume is an attempt to present in a popular form an
outline of the chief features which mark the manufacture
of textile fabrics : to take—as the small beginnings from
whence great things arise—the sced-pod of the cotton-
plant, the seed of the flax-plant, the cocoon or ball of the
silk-worm, and the fleece of the sheep; and to trace
these through the steps whereby they arrive at a form
fit for preparation into articles of clothing. The de-
scriptions will not relate to the mode of proceeding at
any one or more specified factories, but to the general
system of the whole, as ascertained chiefly by personal
observation. ‘To some little extent we shall go beyond
the mere production of textile goods, for the purpose of
noticing the dyeing and printing of cottons, &e. ; but the
subjects are so bound up together that they ought not to
be dissevered.
G28")
CHAPTER I.
COTTON AND ITS MANUFACTURE.
Ir we take the town of Manchester as a centre, and
draw around it a circle of ten miles’ radius, we shall find
within that circle the seat of the most extraordinary ma-
nufacture which the world has yet witnessed: extraor-
dinary in relation to the annual amount of property pro-
duced, to the effects which that property has wrought on
the social features of the district, and to the mechanical
inventions whereby the manufacture has been founded.
We allude, of course, to the Cotton manufacture. Ata
period which may be remembered by persons yet living,
the quantity of raw cotton worked up in Britain was three
or four millions of pounds annually ; it is now three or
four hundred millions. At a period not very much
earlier, it employed a spinner one year to produce as.
much yarn as he can now produce in about a day. In.
1760, not more than forty thousand persons are supposed
to have been employed in this manufacture; there are:
now, in all its various branches, considerably above a
million. In the same year, there was, perhaps, not a
single yard of cotton goods exported ; whereas in recent
years the exports of cotton have nearly equalled all our
other exports put together. And, lastly, at the present
day the population of the manufacturing districts is four
times as great as it was at the former period.
B
10 TEXTILE MANUFACTURES
Should it be asked why this district is so distinguished
as the seat of the cotton manufacture, we may perhaps
be correct in saying that the circumstance is due to a
number of different causes. or instance: five centuries
ago, when Edward III. married the daughter of the
Earl of Hainault, he invited a number of Flemish
clothiers to come to England; and they, settling at
Bolton, within the district which we have marked out,
there established the processes of spimning and weaving.
Again, when the revocation of the Edict of Nantes drove
many weavers from France, in 1685, many of these ‘set-
‘tled-at and near Bolton; and although these immigrations
‘relate more to the history of the woollen than to the
-eotton manufacture, yet they laid a foundation for the
modern improvements in both. Then, again, the phy-
-sical character of the district presents marked facilities
for such a manufacture: the hilly range separating
Lancashire from Yorkshire gives rise to numerous
streams, which, before they reach the estuary of the river
Mersey, give motive power to water-wheels, and a sup-
ply of water to bleach-works and dye-works, such as has
no parallel for extent in any other country :—it has been
said that the Mersey and the Irwell are the two ‘ hardest
worked rivers in the world.” We may also adduce the
existence of coal in abundance in the county, and iron
in adjacent counties with which there is easy communica-
tion, as causes for the setthement of the cotton manu:
facture here. We must not forget, too, that Liverpool,
‘one of the most admirably situated ports in the kingdom,
is in the immediate vicinity of the cotton districts, serving
as a depot both for the imported raw material and for the
exported finished goods. Lastly, we might be expected
» OF GREAT BRITADN.. . - il
to mention the canals and railways which intersect this
district in unparalleled abundance ; but these are rather
consequences than causes of the location of the manufac-
ture. '
We may regard this district as one huge town, almost
as one huge factory ; for there is such a connecting link
between Manchester as a centre, and Bolton, Bury,
Rochdale, Oldham, Ashton, Stayley Bridge, Hyde,
Stockport, &c., as branches, that we cannot properly ap-
preciate the one without noticing the others. Let us,
then, beginning at the centre, take a rapid glance at this
wonderful scene of industry.
If we take our station in Market Street, Manchester,
at the west end of which is the Exchange, we are im-
mersed in’ the very heart of the whole system. We have
around us the wholesale ‘warehouses’ and _ offices
wherein is transacted all the business between the
dealers, the manufacturers, the spinners, the bleachers,
the calico-printers, &c., whether of Manchester or of
any of the surrounding towns. One street especially,
viz. Mosley Street, presents a curious index to the whole
arrangement. Here almost every house is occupied in
the way stated: no manufactures are carried on; no
retail shops exhibit the manufactured goods; but every
house, and almost every floor of every house, constitutes
the business-establishment for some large manufacturing
firm. The houses were once small and humble, but the
value of room in Manchester has increased so rapidly,
that it has been a profitable speculation to rebuild nearly
the whole of them in this street on a large and elegant
scale. So thoroughly developed has the system become,
that it is not found necessary to keep a large stock of
B2
12 TEXTILE MANUFACTURES
manufactured goods at these places. A bargain is struck,
say for ten thousand pieces of calico, as per sample ; and
this may be done in a small room, between the manu-
facturer and the dealer, while the goods are perhaps at
that moment being manufactured at Bolton, or Ashton,
or Stockport. Even the kitchens or cellars, as they
would be termed in other places, are warehouses or
counting-houses, and may be rented, say by a calico-
printer, while the ground-floor constitutes the place of
business for a fustian manufacturer, the first floor for a
spinner, the second for a muslin manufacturer, and so on.
The admirable manner in which the wholesale Man-
chester business is now conducted, has been the growth
of experience. Dr. Aikin, fifty years ago, separated the
history of Manchester, as regards the position of its
manufacturers, into four epochs, and these will give us
some insight into the gradual changes in the agency of a
mercantile system. The first epoch he places anterior to
about the year 1690, when the manufacturers worked
hard merely for a livelihood, without having accumulated
any capital ; and Aikin supposes that there were few or
no manufacturers who had accumulated so much as 3000/7.
or 40007. The second epoch began about the year just
named, and lasted, say till 1730. ‘The manufacturers
during this epoch began to acquire little fortunes, but
worked as hard and lived in as plain a manner as before,
increasing their fortunes as well by economy as by mo-
derate gains. ‘They began to build modern brick houses
in place of those of wood and plaster. ‘They confined
their trade to the wholesale dealers of London, Bristol,
Norwich, Newcastle, and Chester. Aikin says :—‘‘ An
eminent manufacturer of that age used to be in his ware-
OF GREAT BRITAIN. 13
house before six in the morning, accompanied by his
children and apprentices. At seven they all came in to
breakfast, which consisted of one large dish of water-
pottage, made of oatmeal, water, and a little salt, boiled
thick, and poured into a dish: at the side was a pan or
basin of milk, and the master and apprentices, each with
a wooden spoon in his hand, without loss of time, dipped
into the same dish, and thence into the milk-pan ; and as
soon as it was finished they all returned to their work,
In George I.’s reign, many country gentlemen began to
send their sons apprentices to the Manchester manufac-
turers.”
Dr. Aikin’s third epoch is from about 1730 to the era
of Arkwright’s inventions. ‘The marked feature of this
epoch was the manner in which the manufacturers
‘ pushed’ for orders.’ At first the chapmen or dealers
used to keep gangs of pack-horses, and to drive them to
the principal towns with goods in packs, which they
opened and sold to shopkeepers ; lodging what was un-
sold in small stores at the inns, and taking back sheep’s
wool to the manufacturing district. By degrees, however,
turnpike-roads were improved; waggons were laden
instead of pack-horses ; and the chapmen only rode out
for orders, carrying with them patterns in their bags.
In the former epoch, country districts were supplied from
the five or six large towns which received goods direct
from Manchester, each acting as a centre to the surround-
ing counties ; but now the manufacturers began to send
their riders to every part of the kingdom, soliciting orders.
The fourth epoch was consequent on the introduction
of machinery into the manufacture. The trade became
so large, that partners in commercial firms went to reside
14 TEXTILE MANUFACTURES
in London or on the Continent ; foreigners and London
merchants sent agents to reside permanently at Man+
chester ; agents, factors, and brokers were established,
some at Liverpool and some at Manchester, to manage
the transactions between the Liverpool merchant and the
Manchester manufacturer, both in respect to the raw
cotton and to the manufactured goods; all the manu-
facturers around Manchester agreed to make that town
their mart, and to appoint certain days of the week as
“market-days ” with each other ; and Manchester became
‘what it has ever since continued, one of the most im-
portant towns in the empire.
When we depart from the mercantile focus of Man-
chester, and walk in any direction towards the suburbs,
we come in sight of the cotton-factories, those enormous
brick structures which excite such astonishment in the
mind of a stranger. There are nearly two hundred of
these vast piles in the immediate vicinity of the town.
One or two canals pass through Manchester, and the
factories are generally situated in convenient proximity
to these canals. Pia ‘
: Tian a i me
con
B ay oo
MANN
HI (it ype j
|
<"
y |
\ .
[Bandana Press.]
and the bed-plate may then be seen to rise slowly till
the cloth comes into contact with an upper horizontal
OF GREAT BRITAIN. $1
plate; and such is the power of the machine, that the
cloth is pressed between the two plates with a pressure
of two or three hundred tons. Then the workman pours
some liquor into a cell, or trough, above the upper plate ;
and, after allowing it to remain a short time, he draws
off the liquor by a small cock, thereby removing the
pressure, and allowing ,the lower plate to sink. The
cloth is next removed from the press, and is seen to
have suffered a remarkable change in appearance ; the
_ red surface is now diversified with groups of white spots ;
_nay more, every one of the fourteen pieces is similarly
afiected, whether lying at the top, the bottom, or the
middle of the heap. ‘The red dye, which would have
withstood all the wear and tear of ordinary usage and
washing, is seen to be completely remoyed from the.
spots, leaving them quite white.
We naturally look to the two horizontal plates, to see
how the liquid has been enabled to act upon the cotton
cloth. Both plates are made of lead, about half-an-inch
in thickness, and both are perforated exactly in the
same way, and with holes of the same size, as the spots
to be produced on the cloth. The fourteen thicknesses
of cloth have thus a perforated plate above them, and
another below, so that any liquid which may be poured
on the upper plate can percolate through the holes, then
through the fourteen thicknesses of cloth, and, lastly,
through the holes in ,the lower plate. But it is easy to
conceive, that unless the cloth were pressed very tightly
between the plates, some of the liquid would spread
laterally beyond the margins of the holes; and it is to
prevent this that the immense pressure is exerted. The
liquid, which is a solution of bleaching-powder or chlo-
E
®
182 TEXTILE MANUEFACTURES
ride of lime, being poured on the upper surface of the
upper plate, is allowed to remain there a few minutes,
during which time it acts on the fourteen thicknesses of
cloth at the places where the holes in the plates occur;
but the imtense pressure prevents it from spreading
laterally to other parts of the cloth. The chloride of
lime removes the colour so rapidly, that in about ten or
-fifteen minutes all the fourteen thicknesses of cloth are
acted on. When one portion of the compound piece of
cloth is thus finished, it is wound on the front roller,
and another equal portion is unwound from the back
roller to be treated in a similar way.
Sometimes the spots on a blue or red Bandana hand-
kerchief are yellow instead of white. In this case the
chloride of lime is still the active agent by which the
ground-colour is removed ; but other arrangements are —
made whereby a chemical india of colour results. —
Two liquids are, in such an instance, poured on the
upper plate ; tle one being a solution of chloride of
lime, to abstract the ground-colour from the cloth; and_
the other some chemical agent which shall give a yellow
colour to the white spots thus produced; or perhaps it
may be that the white spots are not actually produced
-at all; but that the ground-colour, the colouring agent,
-and the chloride, all act simultaneously in the production —
of yellow spots at the parts of the cloth not protected
by the plates. .
In other instances, again, there are both white and
yellow spots combined in the same piece of cloth. This
arrangement requires the use of very ingeniously con-
structed plates. There is, in the first place, in each
‘plate, one series of holes for the white spots, and another
OF GREAT BRITAIN. 83
‘series for the yellow, and then an adjustment, so that there
shall be no channels of communication whatever between
the one series and the other. By certain little ridges
and dividing edges, all the holes of one series are brought
‘into connexion with a cell into which one kind of liquid
4s poured, while those of the other series are similarly
placed in connexion with another cell. Into one cell is
poured the simple solution which is to produce the white
spots: into the other the combined liquid for producing
the yellow spots; and the two liquids percolate through
-the cloth independent of each other, each one working
its own effect in its own peculiar way. In like manuer
the lower plate is so partitioned off as to afford separate
egress to the two kinds of liquid.
The preparation of these plates is an important feature
-in the operations. The lead of which they are made,
-being cast for the ‘purpose, is brought to as flat and
*smooth a surface as possible; and on each piece is
drawn or sketched the position of the various holes, cor-
respondent to the spots in the pattern. With appropri-
-ate tools, fitted for working in lead, the holes are then
- cut out completely through the lead; and various little
channels are made in that one which is to be the lower
- plate, as a means of carrying off the liquid when it has
effected its work. The holes in the upper plate are
-made to correspond strictly to those in the lower,
whether the pattern be simply a group of spots, or have
- in addition a border. ‘The nature of the process, it is
easy to see, is inconsistent with the production ef any
fine or delicate lines in the pattern ; and therefore very
little more is attempted than the production of spets
and lines or bold scrolls.
1
84 TEXTILE MANUFACTURES
Many of the handkerchief and shawl]-pieces are treated
in a mode somewhat midway between the usual process
of calico-printing, and that of Bandana-work, or, indeed,
combining something of the two. For instance, a piece
of cloth being dyed some uniform colour, and then
printed in certain parts with a chemical agent, is dip-
ped in a vat of bleaching liquid, which either instantly
discharges the colour from the printed parts, or gives to
them a wholly new colour; in either case imparting a
pattern. This process is well calculated to surprise a
bystander, for the printed part is almost wholly invi-
sible until dipped into the discharging vat; and hence
what appears to be a piece of plain red or blue cotton
comes out of the vat with a beautiful white or yellow
pattern upon it.
It is curious to observe the diferent tastes of dif-
ferent countries in respect to the patterns of handker- —
chiefs. Those firms which export this kind of goods
largely, classify their pattefns according to their market.
The patterns for the home market are generally un- —
meaning; curves, zig-zags, stripes, spots—all imagin- —
able shapes—are combined together into patterns repre-
senting objects which never have existed and never will,
but which may yet be pleasing to the eye. The Chi-
nese market, on the other hand, requires patterns in
which natural objects, such as birds and flowers, are de-
picted. The South American States demand the most
gorgeous mixture of colours that the dyer and the printer
can give: large masses of bright red, blue, and yellow—
without any particular reference to the pattern—are
called for. For the German market, pictorial subjects
are prepared, without much reference to brilliancy of
€
OF GREAT BRITAIN, 85
colours: copies from celebrated works of art, such as
sculptures, paintings, and engravings; together with
views of cathedrals, abbeys, castles, and public build-
ings generally, are the subjects which please our intel-
lectual neighbours of Germany. In this way a sixpenny
pocket handkerchief may become a book in which we
may read the taste and character of different nations.
ae
86) TEXTILE MANUFACTURES
CHAPTER TIT.
THE WOOLLEN-CLOTH MANUFACTURE.
Wuewn Leland, three centuries ago, called Leeds a_
‘f praty mercat toune, having one paroche church, rea-
sonably well builded,” it is evident that he did not re-
gard it asa busy centre of manufacturing operations,
receiving the produce of the neighbourhood, and dis-
tributing it to all quarters of the world. Nor indeed
are there any indications that the present ‘clothing
metropolis’ was at that time eminent in respect of the
woollen manufactures of the West Riding; for it is —
mentioned as being subordinate to Halifax, to Wake-
field, and to Bradford. And even all these towns taken
collectively did not represent the chief seat of this —
branch of productive industry ; since the, West of Eng-
land was at that time, and continued to be till a com-
paratively recent period, the most important clothing —
district in England.
The changes which the woollen manufacture, as re-
spects both localization and mode of management, has
been and is now undergoing, are very remarkable. Some
years ago the ‘ West of England cloths’ were the test
of excellence in this manufacture ; while the productions
of Yorkshire were deemed of a coarser and cheaper
character. At present, although the western counties
OF GREAT. BRITAIN... -. 87
have not deteriorated in their product, the West Riding
of Yorkshire has made giant strides, by which equal
skill in every department has been attained ; while the
commercial advantages resulting from coal-mines, from
water-power, from canals and railroads, and from vicl-
nage to the eastern port of Hull and the western port of
Liverpool, give to the West Riding a power which
Gloucestershire and Somersetshire cannot equal. The
steam-engine, too, and various machines for facilitating
some of the manufacturing processes, have been more
readily introduced into the former than into the latter ;
a circumstance which, even without’ reference to other
points of comparison, is sufficient to account for much of
the recent advance in the north.
When we look at a map of any district where the
woollen manufacture has been long carried on, we find
that it usually exhibits a range of hills and valleys, with
streams flowing from and between the former into the
latter; and a glance at the processes of manufacture
shows why this is the case. The water required in voth
the preparatory and the finishing processes, and the
power required to work the fulling-stocks, rendered the
vicinage of a river very important, especially when
steam-engines and Artesian wells were hardly known.
Dyer, in his poem of ‘the Fleece’—a production more
remarkable for the singularity of its object than for the
excellence of its poetry, it being a kind of history of
wool and the woollen trade ‘done into verse,’—notices in
the following lines some of the uses to which a clear
stream*was applied by the clothiers of eighty years ago :—
«¢ Next, from the slacken’d beam the woof unroll’d,
Near some clear-sliding river, Aire or Stroud, |
88 TEXTILE MANUFACTURES
Is by the noisy fulling-mill receiv'd ;
Where tumbling waters turn enormous wheels,
And hammers, rising and descending, learn
To imitate the industry of man.
O't the wet web is steeped, and often rais’d,
Fast-dripping, to the river’s grassy bank ;
And sinewy arms of men, with full-strain’d strength,
Wring out the latent water.”
Whether we go into Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, or
Yorkshire, we shall find these streams watering the
clothing districts. In Gloucestershire there is a district
called the ‘ Bottoms,’ containing about twenty parishes
and towns, in which, and in all the villages around,
woollen cloths are manufactured in large number ;
Stroud being a kind of centre to the whole; and here
we find the Stroud-Water and other small streams
flowing past these several places towards the Severn.
In Wiltshire the chief clothing towns, Bradford, Chip-
penham, Melksham, Trowbridge, and Westbury, are
all situated either on the Avon itself or on one of the
streams flowing into it. In Yorkshire, in like manner,
the busy clothing towns of Leeds, Bradford, Halifax,
Huddersfield, Wakefield, Dewsbury, Keighley, &c., are
situated on the banks of streams which are perhaps more
abundantly used as manufacturing aids than any others
in England, except the Mersey and the Irwell.
We hope to be able, by describing the operations
conducted in the large cloth-factories of modern times,
to give a general idea of this very interesting branch of
manufacture. But there are two matters which must
first be glanced at before the true position of such esta-
blishments can be understood; viz. the difference be-
tween woollen and worsted goods, and the difference
between the factory and the domestic systems of working.
OF GREAT BRITAIN. 89
As respects the first point, the sheep’s wool employed
is separated into two kinds, one of which is long in fibre
and the other short; the former being spun and woven
much in the same way as cotton or silk goods, while the
latter, besides being spun and woven, is felted, fulled, or
milled, so as to produce that peculiarity of surface which
distinguishes all woollen cloth. ‘These two branches of
manufacture are wholly distinct ; different kinds of wool
being employed, different machines applied, different
factory arrangements made, and different market-halls
established. The shalloons, camlets, tabinets, merinos,
moreens, duroys, lastings, calimancoes, and a host of
other varieties of worsted goods—forming the staple
products of Bradford and other towns in the West Rid-
ing—-will come under our notice in the next chapter,
the object here being confined to woollen manufactures
properly so called.
As respects the second point, the difference between
the modes of conducting the woollen manufacture is
very remarkable. ‘There are three systems followed ;
the first in the West of England, the second in a large
number of villages west and south of Leeds, and the
third principally in the towns of Leeds, Halifax, and
Huddersfield. In the master-clothier system of the
West of England the manufacturer buys his wool from
the importer or the wool-stapler, and employs persons
to work it up into cloth, giving each separate process
to distinct sets of men, who work either at their own
houses or at the house of the master-clothier. As each
man only performs one process, he acquires great ma-
nual dexterity at it; and the excellence of the West of
E3
$0 TEXTILE MANUFACTURES
England cloth used to be in great part attributed to this
subdivision of employment. So high, indeed, was the
reputation of the cloths sold at the Stroud and Wiltshire
markets, that, before the rapid rise of the Yorkshire
manufacture, the Yorkshire clothiers used frequently to
travel to the West of England to purchase wool, return
to the north to work it up into cloth, and re-convey it
for sale to the West of England, as being the most
flourishing mart for this commodity.
The domestic system of the Yorkshire villages difiers
considerably from the above.
Formerly the manufacture of cloth for sale was exclu-
sively confined to cities, and corporate and market towns,
the inhabitants of the villages and hamlets making little
more than sufficed for the use of their respective fami-
lies. But a numerous body of industrious men gradually
rose into importance who resided out of the towns,—
‘foreigners,’ as they are termed in the statutes, or
persons dwelling in the small towns of husbandry.’
Many of them were husbandmen or graziers, who made
their own wool into cloth with the assistance of their
wives and families. The sorting of wool was performed
by women. The cloths made out of the towns were
generally of a coarse description; and, if we may be-
lieve various authorities, the country clothiers were not
very strict in maintaining the assize, which fixed the
length and breadth of each piece. The condition of
some of these manufacturers was humble enough. Many
of them were only enabled to buy their wool in small
quantities, as ‘eight pennyworth, and twelve penny-
worth at a time,’ and therefore could not make their
OF GREAT BRITAIN. 9]
purchases of the wool-grower. A statute, passed in
1551 and 1552, which prohibited wool being bought
except by the persons intending to use it themselves
in the manufacture of cloth, did away with the inter-
mediate dealers in wool, whose existence was of essen-
tial importance to the small clothiers; but it was event-
ually found necessary to make some relaxations on’ their
account, so that wool might be bought by dealers
and sold again in the open market. The clothiers of
Halifax were relieved from this inconvenience in 1555,
by ‘an act enabling the inhabitants of that town ‘ to buy
wool, and retail it to poor folk to work, but not to the
rich and wealthy, nor to sell again.’ The preamble of
this statute describes, with considerable minuteness, the
circumstances of the humbler class of country clothiers,
and supplies details of some interest of the manner in
which they earried on their trade. It recites that ‘‘ the
parish of Halifax and other places thereunto adjoining,
being planted in the great wastes and moors, where the
fertility of ground is not apt to bring forth any corn or
good grass, but in rare places, and by exceeding and
great industry of the inhabitants; and the same inhe-
bitants altogether do live by cloth-making, and the
great part of them neither getteth corn, nor is able to
keep a horse to carry wools, nor yet to buy much wool
at once, but hath ever used only to repair to the town
of Halifax, and some other nigh thereunto, and there to
buy upon the wool-driver, some a stone, some two,"and
some three or four, according to their ability, and’ to
carry the same to their houses, some three, four, five,
and six miles off, upon their heads and backs, and so
92 TEXTILE MANUFACTURES
to make and convert the same either into yarn or cloth,
and to sell the same, and so to buy more wool of the
wool-driver; by means of which industry the barren
grounds in those parts be now much inhabited, and
above five hundred households there newly increased
within this forty years past, which now are like to be
undone and driven to beggary, by reason of the late
statute made that taketh away the wool-driver, so that «
they cannot now have their wool by such small portions
as they were wont to have.”
In the three centuries which have since elapsed, this
small or domestic system has suffered many changes, but
still retains its more prominent features. Under this sys-
tem, as exhibited at the present day, the actual workman
is a small manufacturer on his own account, and this was
the general system pursued before the application of large
capitals to the business. These small manufacturers fre-
quently occupy small farms, partly as a means of support,
and partly for the convenience of the manufacture. The
domestic clothiers have in their houses from one to four
looms, on which, and in the processes connected with
the spinning of the woollen yarn, they employ them-
selves, their wives and children, and sometimes a few
workpeople from the neighbourhood. During harvest
the females and children frequently go out to work in
the fields. In the primitive form of this system the
domestic clothiers carried on the whole process of the
manufacture, up to the state of undressed cloth; but as
the advantages of machinery and of combined capital
became apparent, they gradually adopted a curious mean
between the factory and the domestic systems. ‘They
OF GREAT BRITAIN. §3
erected joint-stock mills by contributions from among
themselves, or else independent parties established such
mills; and with the aid of these mills, the domestic
system now assumes the following form :—the domestic
clothier, after purchasing his wool and deciding on the
mode in which it shall be worked up, sends it to a mill
to be prepared for spinning: it is then brought home
for his wife and children to spin, and for him to weave
into cloth: it then goes again to the mill to be ‘ fulled ;’
and, after being again returned to the clothier, is by him
carried a stage or two further, and then sold in the state
of ‘undressed cloth,’ sometimes dyed, and in other cases
white. We shall further illustrate some of the features
of the domestic system in a future page.
The factory system of cloth manufacturing bears a
close analogy to that of cotton; it being the growth of
steam-power, mechanical invention, and accumulated ca-
pital. In the large woollen factories, every step of the
process is carried on in one building or one range of
buildings, from the sorting of the wool to the pressing
of the finished woollen cloth. In this system, as in
that of the master-clothiers, the workmen have no pro-
perty in the material which they are fabricating, their
remuneration being simply in the form of wages for la-
bour bestowed ; whereas, in the domestic system, the
manufacturer unites the characters of master and work-
man in himself,
Let us now witness the arrangements and follow the
routine of processes in the large woollen-factories.
Leeds, on whichever side we approach it, presents
marked evidence, by the numerous tall chimneys visible
on eyery side, of the extensive manufacturing operations
94. TEXTILE MANUFACTURES
carried on. It was estimated in 1838 that there were
at that time 106 woollen-mills in the parish of Leeds,
employing 9738 hands, 2721 of whom were females;
and that there were altogether more than three hundred
steam-engines at work in the parish, about half of which
were employed in the textile manufactures.* Leeds
must necessarily, therefore, present much of the smoke
and bustle of our busiest towns. The greater part of
these factories are congregated near or on the banks of ©
the river Aire, which flows through the town frem west
to east, and presents every indication of commercial
activity. When standing on the principal bridge of |
Leeds, leading from Hunslet to the main High Street,
called Briggate, a glance around reveals much of the
activity here noticed, though the crookedness of the
river prevents the array of factories and warehouses on
its banks from being visible so plainly as they otherwise
would be. But it is not alone in Leeds that these fea-
tures are observable. Huddersfield is another great
clothing town, and Halifax another; in both of them
are exhibited the large assemblages of buildings forming
woollen-factories, in most cases comprising an open
quadrangle surrounded by buildings. The sorting, the
preparing, the spinning, the weaving, the dressing, the
finishng—all have their distinct ranges of buildings,
though all are connected into one whole.
The nature of the processes carried on im these fac-
tories may perhaps be best illustrated by selecting a
piece of fine blue or black cloth as an example, and fol-
* The existence and extent of the textile manufactures in the eastern
part of the town are curiously illustrated by the names of a cluster of
five small streets there situated—Mill Street, Worsted Street, Spinner
Street, Cotton Street, and Silk Street.
~
OF GREAT BRITAIN. 95
lowing it through its various stages of progress; it
beimg at the same time understood that all the varieties
of woollen cloth result from various modifications of
some or all of these processes.
First of the erude wool. The wool of English sheep
is not now much used for broad-cloth; it bemg more
adapted for the production of stufis, camlets, and the
different articles commg under the denomination of
*worsteds.’ In proportion as the sheep is improved
in flesh, so does its wool acquire a quality unsuited for
the purposes of the woollen-manufacturer ; and as soon
as the import duty on foreign wool was so far lowered
as to lead to extensive dealings, our woollen manufac-
turers began to use a larger and larger proportion of
foreign wool, until at length it forms by far the greater
proportion of that employed. Formerly the Spanish
wool was regarded as the finest, and all our best cloth
was made from it; but the Spanish sheep being intro-
duced mto Saxony and other parts of Germany, the
German wool has gradually driven most of the Spanish
wool out of the English market. More recently, how-
ever, Australia has established a new source of supply,
and the wool thence obtained, in respect both of quality
and price, is so advantageous to the clothier, that every
year witnesses an enormous increase in the quantity im-
ported. We may perhaps state in a general way, that
at present our worsted fabrics are made mostly from
English wool, our fimest woollens mostly from German
wool, and the large bulk of our woollens mostly from
Australian wool.
The wool is brought to the factories in packages of
various shapes and sizes, some almost a cube of three or
96 TEXTILE MANUFACTURES
four feet, some in bags not much less than twelve feet
long, and others intermediate between the two forms.
Each fleece (comprising the wool from one sheep) of
foreign wool weighs from two to two and a half
pounds ; the coarser English fleece, adapted for hosiery
or the worsted trade, weighing sometimes six or eight
pounds. Generally the foreign wools are tied up in
small bundles of three or four fleeces each, and these
bundles made up into packs. When one of the packs
of wool is opened, the locks are found to be all en-
tangled together in a confused mass; and they have to —
be separated and somewhat loosened before any further
process can be commenced. But the workman into
whose hands the wool first passes has something more
to do than merely separate the locks ; he has to sort the
wool into parcels of different qualities, a process in-
volving very great nicety. Not only do fleeces differ
one from another, but different parts of the same fleece
present qualities of wool widely diverse ; and as these
different qualities are appropriate to the production of
different kinds of cloth, the preparatory sorting is an —
important affair. The fingers of the sorter acquire by
practice an extraordinary degree of sensitiveness, by
which different qualities of fibre, quite unappreciable
by others, are at once detected by him. He stands in
front of a bench or frame covered with a wire grating,
on which he places the wool, and, working nimbly with
his two hands, he separates the wool into six, eight,
ten, or sometimes as many as fifteen different kinds.
It is not mere fineness of fibre which the sorter regards :
he takes cognizance of softness, strength, colour, clean-
ness, and regularity, and regulates his subdivision by all
OF GREAT BRITAIN. 97
of these qualities. It is said that if the wool-sorter be
out of practice for any considerable time, his fingers
lose the delicacy of touch indispensable to his occu-
pation. The dust and loose fibres which are shaken
from the wool during the sorting fall through the grat-
ing into a receptacle beneath, and are thence removed
to be sold as manure.
The wool, thus separated into parcels, is scoured or
washed in a hot alkaline liquor, as a means of removing
some of the grease which it retains from the sheep.
With respect to the dyeing, a difference is observable
between cotton goods on the one hand, and woollen or
worsted goods on the other. Cotton goods are never
dyed in the state of cotton wool; the cotton being dyed,
if dyed at all, either after spinning or after weaving.
But woollen or worsted goods are never made from wool
dyed in the state of yarn, that is,’after spinning, but
before weaving; the wool being always dyed either in
the state of wool, before spinning, or after being woven.
This gives rise to the distinction between ‘ wool-dyed’
cloth and ‘ piece-dyed’ cloth, each kind possessing its
own peculiar advantages, and each giving employment
to a particular market or cloth-hall at Leeds. If the
cloth is dyed in the wool, the dyed wool, before under-
going any other process, is laid on a table, and women
pick out by hand any small fragments of dye-wood or
other impurity which may be mixed up with it.
The first process, by which the locks of wool are dis-
sected, and the fibres loosened one from another, is that
which is effected by a machine called a willy, or more
equivocally by the name of a ‘devil.’ This willy or
devil differs much in shape in different factories; but it
98 TEXTILE MANUFACTURES
is always a kind of hollow receptacle, in the inside of
which are a number of sharp teeth, which catch into the,
locks of wool while revolving within the machine, and
tear them open fibre from fibre—analogous, in fact, to:
the cotton-willow, described ina former page. In the
rooms where this process is carried on, a large heap of”
wool may generally be seen lying on the floor, where:
a man or boy sprinkles it with oil as a means of ren-
dering it softer and more easy to work. Some kinds:
of wool require willying more than once; while other
kinds are sufficiently fine to be separated by one such —
process.
We next follow the oiled wool into the buildings con-
tainmg the machines which prepare the wool for spin-
ning. Here the clatter of wheels, shafts, and other
mechanical appliances, reminds us that we have entered
upon that class of operations by which the factory system
is most strikingly distinguished from the handicraft sys-
tem of manufacture. Here machines do the work, and
children have the requisite skill for tending the machines,
‘The processes which these machines perform are of three
kinds, two of them somewhat analogous in character, but
the third totally different from either. Of these three,
viz. the seribbling-machine, the carding-machine, and the
slubbing-machine, the first. acts in the following way :—
There are several cylinders, on the surfaces of which
innumerable wires or points are fixed, bent in determi-
nate directions. These cylinders are so adjusted with
regard one to another, that the teeth of one cylinder,.
while rotating, come nearly in contact with those of the
cylinder nearest to it. This being the arrangement, a
- girl takes the oiled wool by handfuls from a basket, lays
' OF GREAT BRITAIN. — 99.
it on an endless apron at one end of the machine, and)
‘spreads it as equally as she can over a given surface.’
By the motion of this apron the wool is carried towards
the first cylinder, where it is caught by the teeth, and
carried round till brought within the action of the second
cylinder, which tears it from the first; and so on from
one cylinder to another, the teeth of each cylinder re-
moving it from those of the next preceding one. ‘The
consequence of this transfer is, that every fibre becomes
separated from the adjoining one, and the wool falls from
the last cylinder in the state of a light, flocculent, downy
layer. 4
Without leaving the room or shop, this downy layer
of wool is next transferred to the carding-machine,
where it is made to assume a different form. A girl,
called the ‘card-filler,’ weighs the wool, and puts a
certain weight of it on a given area of the endless or
feeding apron. The proportion between weight and’
area depends on the quality of the cloth to be made or.
the thickness of the yarn to be spun ; and much nicety
is required in laying the wool equally on all parts of
the surface, the fingers of the girl acquiring by practice:
a delicacy of touch somewhat analogous to that noticed
in respect to the wool-sorter. The layer of downy wool,
after being laid on the feeding-cloth, is drawn towards a
range of cylinders, as in the case of the scribbling ma-
chine, and these cylinders are in like manner provided
with teeth or wires. The wool is first carded or combed:
out till the fibres lie pretty nearly parallel; and a de-.
licate band or sheet of this carded wool, about thirty
inches long by six inches wide, is detached from the rest,.
and rolled up into the form of a pipe or rod, from a
100 TEXTILE MANUFACTURES
quarter to half an inch in diameter, and as long as the
detached sheet of wool. ‘The mechanical arrangements
by which this rolling up of the wool is effected are ex-
ceedingly ingenious, and the pipe of wool itself is not
less worthy of notice; for we find, on close inspection,
that the fibres do not lie longitudinally, but spread out
pretty nearly at right angles to the length of the piece.
This is a result of the peculiar way in which the roll or
pipe is made, and is produced as a means of making the
fibres interlace among each other more readily in the
process of fulling, no such condition being given to the
fibres in the production of yarn for worsted work, where
fulling is not required. .
Next we come to the slubbing-machine, or slubbing-
dilly, as itis more frequently called in the odd language
of the workmen. At this machine the pipes or ‘ cardings’
of wool are joimed end to end, and reduced in thickness
to an average of perhaps one tenth or twelfth part of an
inch. A sloping apron or feeding-cloth forms one end
of the machine, which is generally placed near the card-
ing-machines; and on this cloth the children place the
rolls or ‘ cardings’ of wool, placing them parallel, with
one end of each hanging down. ‘The remaining parts of
the machine consist of machinery for catching each of
these cardings at one end, drawing out a small portion,
elongating that small portion to many times its original -
length, imparting a slight twist to the portion thus elong-
ated, winding the ‘slubbing’ or soft twist on a spindle,
and then treating in a similar way another similar portion
of each carding. A whole row of cardings is thus worked
at the same time; and as each carding is gradually drawn
up into the machine, the children attach new cardings
OF GREAT BRITAIN. 10!
to the ends of the former ones, causing them to cohere
slightly by a very light rolling and pressing. In this
way the children take care to piece (from which occupa-
tion they derive their name of ‘ pieceners’) all the card-
ings in turn; so that each bobbing or spindle becomes
filled with a continuous line of ‘slubbin,’ one ounce ar
wool yielding from one to two hundred yards of slub-
bing.
The wool has now reached that state when it is ready
to be spun into yarn for the weaver. ‘This is done by
those large and beautiful contrivances known as ‘ mule-
spinning machines,’ by which the slubbing is first drawn
out to a state of great tenuity, and then spun into yarn;
in the same way as cotton-roving is spun into cotton-yarn,
So far as regards the principle involved in this process, it
may be regarded as a repetition of the process of slub-
bing; for in both cases the wool is attenuated beyond its
former state, and then spun or twisted.
We have thus traced the wool to the state of spun
yarn, and have next to follow its course to the weaver’s
hands. Some of the yarn is for warp, or long threads ;
the rest for weft, or cross threads; and each kind is spun
in a particular way, best calculated for the service which
it is to render. Some of the yarn is stiffened by im-
mersion in a vessel of warm size made of parchment or
leather cuttings. Next succeed the various processes of
‘ winding,’ ‘ warping,’ ‘ beaming,’ ‘ drawing in,’ &c. ; by
which the yarn is arranged in the proper position for
being used by the weaver, the warp attached to the
loom, and the weft attached to the shuttle. Most of these
preparatory operations have gradually undergone some im-
102 TEXTILE MANUFACTURES
provements or other; the warper, for instance, no longer
‘“* strains the warp
Along the garden walk, or highway side,
Smoothing each thread ;”
‘(to use Dyer’s description) but uses either a warping-_
frame or a warping-mill to facilitate his proceedings, —
|
‘nearly in the same way as the cotton-warpers noticed in-
‘a former chapter. The preparations being completed,
the process of weaving is conducted much in the same
way as any other kind of fabric, the looms presenting
no peculiarity of construction, except in respect to the
‘large size of those required for weaving the broadest
cloth. It may seem remarkable, that while steam-power
weaying is making such rapid strides im the cotton
‘manufacture, it has hitherto been but little introduced
‘in the weaving of woollen cloth; yet such is the case.
~Cloth-weaving has always been deemed among the
higher. branches of that art; insomuch that, other
things being equal, a hand-loom cloth-weaver earns
more than twice as much wages as a _hand-loom
cotton-weaver. ‘This results from the former being es-
sentially man’s work, requiring muscular power as well
“as manual dexterity ; whereas cotton-weaying can often
be done by women and children, thereby lowering the
“standard of wages. At the present day some of the
woollen factories exhibit weaving by steam-power, some
by hand-power, and some by both; while all the manu-
facturers on the domestic system of course adopt the
~ system of hand-weaving.
In regulating the width of the cloth, attention is paid
~to the remarkable shrinkage which takes place in the
~ after processes. or instance, a piece of cloth to be sixty
OF GREAT BRITAIN, | 105
‘inches wide when finished, must be woven nearly. a hun-
dred inches wide; and the length must be adjusted in
the same way. A piece of broad-cloth contains from
two to four thousand threads in width, according as it
may be ‘ 8-quarter,’ ‘ 10-quarter,’ or any other specified
width and fineness.
When woven, the cloth passes through a series of pro-
cesses which illustrate the difference between this branch
of manufacture and those relating to cotton, silk, or linen,
more remarkably than-anything else. It is scoured or
‘eleansed from the remaining oil which may yet adhere to
it, and from the size which had been applied to the yarn
before weaving. It is then ‘ milled,’ ‘ fulled,’ or ‘ felted,’
that is, beaten until the fibres of wool become so locked
into each other as almost to hide the intersecting warp
and weft threads. The ‘ fulling-stocks,’ in which this
process is carried on, are hollow receptacles in which an
enormous oaken hammer or stock vibrates up and down,
each stock being kept in motion by machinery connected
with a steam-engine. The cloth is partially opened in the
fullng-room ; and after a quantity of liquid soap has been
sprinkled on it, it is folded up into a pile and placed in
the fulling-stocks. It is then beaten for a period which
may to many persons seem extraordinarily long, viz. from
two to three entire days, during which it is removed five
or six times to have a re-supply of soap. It is only by
this long-continued action that the fibres of wool are
made thoroughly to interlock ; and by so doing the cloth
becomes greatly thickened, shortened, and narrowed. In
order that no hairs, dirt, or irregular threads may be
fulled into the substance of the cloth, it is handed up to
women called ‘ burlers’ before undergoing this process of
104 TEXTILE MANUFACTURES
fulling. The burlers stretch out the cloth over a sloping
table, and with a kind of tweezers pick out all irregular
knots, burs, or hairs.
After the scouring, the fulling, and several subsequent
processes, the cloth is stretched out and hung up to dry.
This used to be done in the tenter-fields, where the
tenter-hooks were driven into poles and rails, and the
cloth hung on them by the ‘list’ at the edges. But in
the factories there are heated rooms in which the cloth is
hung up, where it speedily dries.
The cloth becomes felted into a close fabric by the
{Hand Raising.}
OF GREAT BRITAIN. 105
process of fulling; but it is too rough and tmeven at the
surface to be used in that state. If the cloth is ‘ piece-
dyed,’ it undergoes that process about this stage of the
eperations ; but whether so or not, the cloth goes through
many finishing processes before being ready for use.
The chief of these are raising and cutting. In the pro-
cess of raising, the nap of the cloth is roughened up by a
brush made either of wires or of teazle-heads, and worked
either by hand or by machine. In _ hand-raising, the
workman stretches the cloth over a sloping stand, and
rubs it hard with a kind of wire-brush, held like a curry-
comb. In machine-raising, the wires, or more frequently
teazle-heads, are fixed to the surfaces of cylinders in
machines called ‘ gig-mills ;’ and the cloth, by passing
over these revolving cylinders, has the nap raised up into
a very rough surface. There are many modes of effecting
this ‘raising,’ but in all the principle is nearly the same.
The use of teazle-heads is a remarkable feature in the
process ; for no combination of wires has yet been found
that will effect the required object so efficiently as the
little elastic prickles on the surface of these teazles. They
are brought in bundles, and are prepared for use by a
man and a boy. The boy cuts off part of the stalks with
a pair of scissors, and the man fixes the teazles into oblong
iron frames, which frames are afterwards to be fitted to
the surfaces of the cylinders. The little elastic hooks
become from time to time filled with wool, and require
to be cleansed by means of a revolving brush applied to
them. .
The nap of the cloth being thus raised, it is ‘ cut,’ or
‘ cropped,’ or ‘ sheared,’ so as to produce an even surface.
‘This used formerly to be done by hand, the work-
F
106 TEXTILE MANUFACTURES
man using shears with very long blades, and working
over the whole surface of the cloth with a dexterity
which nothing but long practice could impart. But by
degrees various machines have been introduced for ef-
fecting the same object much more expeditiously, and the
hand-shears are now but little used. The most generally
employed form of cropping-machine is a spiral cutter
working against a long straight blade, the spiral cutter
being made to revolve rapidly, and the cloth being drawn
between the two.
According to the quality of the cloth, the raising and
cropping are repeated more than once, so as to produce
varying degrees of fineness of surface. ‘There are also a
number of minor processes, all calculated to give an im-
proved surface to the cloth: such as ‘ boiling’ it, to impart
a certain lustre; ‘ burling’ or ‘ picking’ it, to remove little
imperfections ; ‘inking’ any little white hairs or fibres
which may occur in the dyed cloth; ‘ pressing’ it be-
tween hot iron plates and smooth millboard ; ‘ steaming’
and passing the cloth over cylinders covered either with
brushes or a kind of plush, &c.
We have followed out the routine of processes pretty
continuously, as a means of showing the relative connec-
tion of the whole in the arrangements of a large cloth-
factory ; but we must find a little room to notice some
of the remarkable points accompanying the domestic
system of manufacture.
In some cases a manufacturer—midway as to position
between a factory-owner and a domestic clothier—has
the wool prepared for spinning in his own establishment,
or in a mill, and then gives it out to the cottagers to spin
and weave. In other cases, exemplified in many of the
OF GREAT BRITAIN. 107
villages west and south of Leeds, the domestic clothier
purchases his wool, mixes and assorts it according to the
kind of cloth which he wishes to make, and sends it to a
mill to be ‘ scribbled,’ ‘ carded,’ and ‘ slubbed.’ If this
mill be a ‘ company-mill,’ that is, one owned by an asso-
ciation of small manufacturers, the work is conducted by
a manager appointed by the owners, each one pays at a
certain rate for the work done for him, and at the end of
the year the profits are divided. The ‘slubbed’ wool is
taken from the mill to the house of the clothier, there to
be spun, wound, warped, and beamed, the clothier either
working himself or superintending the working of others,
according to his circumstances in life. When the cloth
is woyen, he sends it to the mill a second time, there to
be ‘scoured’ and ‘ fulled;’ and in this state he sells it,
leaving the ‘ raising,’ ‘ cropping,’ and ‘finishing,’ toge-
ther with the dyeing, if sold in the undyed state, to be
done by the purchaser. The mill so used, however, may
be the property of another person, who prepares the
wool for the clothiers. Such is the case in respect to
many mills on the river Aire. In these mills are gene-
rally contained all the machines and arrangements for
working the wool before the spinning and after the weay-
ing; that is, for willying, scribbling, carding, and slub-
bing, and afterwards scouring and fulling. The clothiers
send their wool dyed or undyed, as they think best, to
the mill, where it is prepared for spinning; then the
spinning and weaying are done by the clothiers and their
families ; and, lastly, the scouring and fulling are done at
the mill, preparatory to the sale at the cloth-halls.
To these cloth-halls we may next direct our attention.
The domestic clothiers do not keep shops or warehouses,
F 2
108 TEXTILE MANUFACTURES
nor ‘are there agents from the purchasers going from
house to house through the villages, nor are there cloth-
fairs or markets held in the villages. The clothiers, every
Tuesday and Saturday (which are the cloth-market days
at Leeds, to which we may here confine our attention)
attend at one or other of the two cloth-halls, and there
meet the parties who may be disposed to purchase. The
original market for woollen cloth was held on Leeds
Bridge, a spot selected probably on account of its pub-
licity ; but it must have been a strange and most inconve-
nient arrangement, with the pack-horses and stalls blocking
ap the way. In 1684 the market was removed farther
north, to the main street of Briggate. It was held early
in the morning, and was closed by the ringing of the
bell at the old chapel on the bridge ; and as soon as the
goods and benches were removed, the place was oc-
cupied by the country linen-drapers and shoemakers.
This system continued till 1711, when the first cloth-
hall was built. In 1755 a second hall superseded the
first; and in 1758 and 1775 were built the two halls
which have ever since been used as cloth-markets, and in
which more cloth has probably been sold than at any
other market-halls in the kingdom, or perhaps in the
world. From Dyer’s description, it would appear that a
century ago barges on the river Aire, and laden pack-
horses, were the means of carrying the cloth to and from
market :—
, «Trade and business guide the living scene,
Roll the full cars adown the winding Aire;
Load the slow-sailing barges, pile the pack
On the long tinkling train of slow-pac’d steeds.”
The ‘Coloured Cloth-hall,” situated near the com-
OF GREAT BRITAIN. 109.
mercial buildings in the western part of Leeds, is a
quadrangular brick building, inclosing an open area 360
feet long by 200 broad. It is divided into six depart-
ments, arcades, or streets, which receive distinctive
names, such as ‘‘ Change Alley,” ‘ Cheapside,” &c.:
Each avenue contains two rows of stalls or stands, each
stall measuring two or three feet in width, and marked with.
the name of the person who rents or owns it, and who is
always a country clothier. There are nearly two thou-
sand of these stalls, each stall having behind it an open:
space where the clothier may deposit his stock of cloth,
and the stall itself consisting simply of a small counter on
which the cloth is to be displayed.
- Such being the arrangement of the hall, the mode of:
conducting the traffic is as follows:—At a determinate
hour on the mornings of Tuesdays and Saturdays, varying
from half-past eight to half-past nine, according to the
season, the hall is opened, and the country clothiers bring
the cloth which they have for sale, mostly in carts. This
cloth has been dyed in the wool, prepared, spun, woven,
and fulled, but not sheared or finished. Each clothier
knows his own stand, places himself with his goods be-
hind it, and waits for customers. Some of these clothiers
are men of considerable property, while others are in
comparatively humble circumstances ; but there is a kind.
of homely intelligence, an honest plainness, in the ap-
pearance of all. So much for the sellers. ‘The buyers
are either merchants who have no manufactories of their:
own, or persons who combine the characters of merchants
and manufacturers. In the latter case, when the undressed
cloth is purchased, the buyer finishes it in his own factory,
and then consigns it to the woollen-drapers, shippers, or
110 TEXTILE MANUFACTURES
factors; but in the former case, the merchant who buys
the undressed cloth sends it to a mill or factory to be
finished, and then receives it back to his warehouse.
The purchasers at the hall are sometimes the merchants
themselves, and at other times experienced persons in
their establishments who are intrusted with the important
office of ‘buyer ;’ but in both cases the mode of pro-
ceeding is alike. ‘The buyers go to the hall as soon as
business commences, and walk through the ‘ streets’ or
avenues, looking at the cloth exposed on the stalls at
either side. All the sellers know all the buyers, and
each buyer is invited as he passes along to look at some
‘olives,’ or ‘browns,’ or ‘ pilots,’ or ‘6-quarters’ or
* 8-quarters ;’? and the buyer decides in a wonderfully
short space of time whether it will answer his purpose to
purchase or not. ‘‘ Mr. A., just look at these olives!”
“ How much ?” ‘ Six-and-eight.” ‘ Too high.” Mr. A.
walks on, and perhaps a neighbouring clothier draws his
attention to a piece or ‘ end’ of cloth (an ‘end’ being a
technical name for about twenty-five yards of cloth).
“ What’s this ?” ‘ Five-and-three.” ‘‘ Too low.” The
‘too high,” as may be supposed, relates to the price
per yard ; whereas the ‘‘ too low” means that the quality
of the cloth is lower than the purchaser requires. An-
other seller accosts him with—‘‘ Will this suit you, Mr.
A. ?” * Any English in it?” ‘‘ Not much; it is nearly
all foreign :”’ a question and answer which exemplify the
disfavour into which English wool has fallen in the cloth
trade. As the buyer proceeds, three or four clothiers
eall to him at once, or perhaps he has an entry in his
book which leads him to ask for a particular kind of cloth ;
and he then goes from one stall to another till he meets
OF GREAT BRITAIN. lll
with it. The clothier may ask perhaps two-pence or
_ four-pence per yard more than the buyer would like to
give; and in such cases a bargain is generally struck at
an intermediate price, though the clothier frequently
_ adheres resolutely to his original price. When the bar-
gain is concluded, which may be for all, or for only a
part of the cloth, the purchaser writes with a red pencil
a few marks on the corner of the cloth, and walks away.
This kind of traffic continues for one hour and a quarter,
at which time the hall is closed, after business to the
amount of many thousands has been transacted.
Immediately on the closing of the ‘‘ Coloured-Cloth
Hall,” the ‘‘ White-Cloth Hall,” situated in a more east-
ern part of Leeds, is opened ; and the buyers generally
proceed from the one to the other, unless the buyers of
dyed cloth do not want to purchase any undyed cloth, or
vice versa. This White-Cloth Hall is rather smaller
than the other, but is arranged on a similar plan, and the
business is similarly conducted. ‘The undyed woollen
cloth has a yellowish white colour, and is afterwards dyed
according to the purposes to which it is to be applied.
When the buyer has made his purchases, he proceeds
to the warehouse belonging to himself or his employers ;
and soon afterwards the clothiers from whom he may
have purchased arrive with the cloth. Every ‘ piece’ or
‘end’ is first measured, and the length, width, price,
and name of the seller entered in a book by aclerk. The
cloth is then taken into another room, and examined from
end to end, one person looking at it by a strong light
from a window, and another looking through it from be-
hind ; and there is a certain scale of allowances agreed on
for any defects which may be found. When the mea-
112 TEXTILE MANUFACTURES
suring and the inspection are completed, the clothiers at
once receive payment, and depart to buy wool for a new
supply of cloth. In many of the large firms cloth is not
only made throughout in factories, but purchases are also
largely made at the cloth-halls.
Such are a few of the features presented by the busy
‘clothing districts,’ by which is generally meant the
West Riding of Yorkshire, and to a less degree the West
of England.
OF GREAT BRITAIN. fhe
oe
CHAPTER IV.
THE WORSTED AND STUFF MANUFACTURES.
Our present chapter will partake somewhat of a rambling
character. As a means of affording a little information
concerning the worsted and stuff manufacture, we shall
find it desirable to extend our observations beyond the
factories themselves, and to glance round the circum-
stances and arrangements which give to an entire district
the character of one great workshop. It is often only
thus that the bearings and mutual dependence of different
trades can be properly appreciated. ‘The preceding
chapter has enabled us to glance at the general operations
connected with the manufacture of felted or fulled wool ;
and we will now see what the West Riding of Yorkshire
exhibits in respect to the manufacture of worsted goods ;
using the term worsted as applying to all wool which is
not fulled after being woven.
It is very probable that many of the woven fabries
now made into dresses, and called by various fanciful
names, although really made only of worsted, or of
worsted mixed with cotton, may not be generally known
as coming under the denomination of worsted goods.
The trade-list of a large worsted-factory at Halifax, for
example, contains the following enumeration :—‘ 3-4
Lastings, 3-4 Fancy Lastings, 3-4 Crapes, 3-4 Serge,
F3
7
114 TEXTILE MANUFACTURES
3-4 Orleans, 6-4 Orleans, Cassinets, 3-4 T wills, 3-4 Lin-
ings, 4-4 Dobbies, 6-4 Dobbies, 6-4 French Figures,
Alpaca, 3-4 Parisians, 6-4 Parisians, 3-4 Damasks, 6-4
Damasks, 3-4 Camlets, 4-4 Camlets, 5-4 Camlets, 6-4
Camlets, 5-4 Plainback, 6-4 Plainback, 7-4 Plainback,
6-4 Merino, Say Plainback, 5-4 Says, 3-4 Princettes.’
Now all these goods are made either of worsted alone or
of worsted mixed with cotton; none of them haying un-
dergone that peculiar process of fulling which forms the
chief characteristic of woollen goods. There are also
numerous forms in which worsted fabrics (or others in
which either silk or cotton is combined with worsted) are
prepared for sale, not included in the above list ; such are
those called ‘ Challis,’ ‘ Mousseline-de-laines,’ ‘ Fancy
Waistcoatings,’ ‘ Paramattas,’ ‘Shalloons,’ ‘ Duroys,’
‘ Taminets,’ ‘ Calimancoes,’ &c. If all the kinds were
enumerated, it would probably be found that in some in-
stances the fabrics have gone or are going out of date,
and that in other instances two names refer to the same
material ; thus, ‘ plainback’ is a manufacturer’s appellation
for a kind of worsted stuff known by some other name by
retail purchasers. There are two kinds of goods, in which
worsted is mixed with silk, that afford remarkable in-
stances of the tendency in manufactures to become-located
in particular districts ; ‘ Poplins’ being an Irish manu-
facture, and ‘ Bombazeens’ a Norwich product, and
neither of them being made to any considerable extent
elsewhere.
The rapid extension of the worsted manufacture in this
country is very remarkable. So long as efforts were
made by English wool-growers to compel the use of
English wool in cloth-making—efforts which the legis-
OF GREAT BRITAIN. 115
lature for many years sanctioned by legal enactments—
the worsted fabrics made were chiefly of a coarse and
heavy kind, such as ‘ camlets ;? but when the wool-trade
was allowed to flow into its natural channels by the re-
moval of restrictions, the value of all the different kinds of
wool became appreciated, and each one was appropriated to
purposes for which it seemed best fitted : foreign wool be-
came mostly in demand for woollen-cloth ; the wool of one
kind of English sheep continued in demand for hosiery and
heavy worsted goods; a fine long wool from a new breed
of English sheep became sought after as a material for fine
worsted goods ; and the wool of the Cashmere and Angora
goats became imported for similar purposes.
———
—==—=—=—=—=
————
SS
SSE
ag
li il
eee
(Cans for the Flax-drawings.]
ia
164 TEXTILE MANUFACTURES
until it presents a uniform width and thickness in every
part. Atone time it is exhibited in the form of a narrow
band about an inch and a half in width, and this by sub-
sequent ‘drawing’ or extension is diminished to a beau-
tifully smooth and glossy band an inch in width. All
the drawings or extended bands fall into tall cylindrical
cans, and are from thence conveyed to other machines,
where a similar process is conducted, until at length the
most perfect equality of width and thickness is obtained
in every part: for unless this equality is produced, no
after-process can prevent the yarn from being irregular.
We must here speak of the tow which results from the
preparatory processes, and of which mention has not yet
been made. When the flax is fitted into the clasps and
adjusted to the heckling-machines, the heckling-teeth not
only comb out the fibres straight and parallel, but also
remove irregular, short, or defective fibres, as well as
dust and dirt. The dirt falls to the bottom of the ma-
chine, and is thence removed ; but the waste fibres cling
to the teeth of the heckle, and there remain during the
process of heckling. When the clasps are removed in
order to be transferred to another machine, the heckle-
teeth are seen to be full of flaxen fragments, and these
fragments, constituting tow, are, by means of an apparatus
_attached to the machine, removed from the teeth in the
form of a continuous sliver ; so that while the machine is
heckling the fibres of good flax, it is also making a band
or riband of the inferior portion, Each machine produces
its own portion of tow sliver; but as the flax itselt be-
comes finer and finer in proportion to the number of
heckling-machines through which it has passed, so do the
tow slivers become finer and finer, and they are thus
- ee eae a dee
v7
OF GREAT BRITAIN, — 165
’ capable of being classified into six or eight different qua-
lities. In the language of the flax-mills, the flax ceases to
be called by that name after it has passcd through the
heckling-machines ; the good portion is then called ‘ dine,”
and the inferior ‘ tow.’ Both of these are afterwards spurs
- into yarn, but the yarn so produced has different degrees.
of excellence. Other machines are used, by which tow
is converted into slivers by carding, analogous to cotton.
and wool processes.
[Tow-carding. ]
166 TEXTILE MANUFACTURES
When the slivers, whether of line or of tow, have been |
brought to the desired breadth, thickness, and equality, |
they are carried to the ‘roving-machines,’ where they !
are transformed to the state of a soft, small, cylindrical |
cord. There are two combined movements whereby this |
is effected; the sliver is drawn out or elongated, and it |
has a slight twist imparted to it as a means of enabling it |
to cohere and to bear the subsequent action of the spin- |
ning-machines. |
‘These spinning-machines we have next to notice. |
They are on the ‘bobbin-and-fly’ principle; ‘mule- |
spinning’ not having, we believe, been introduced in the
flax manufacture. Flax, unlike cotton, silk, wool, or |
worsted, is spun wet, as a means of obtaining a finer and |
smoother yarn; and within the last few years the use of |
warm water, instead of cold, has been introduced for this |
purpose. The same flax, prepared in the same way, can |
be spun to a much higher number, or much greater degree |
of fineness, with hot water than cold; and this is doubt- |
less one of the improvements to which the recent progress
of the flax manufacture may be attributed. “The spindles
by which the yarn is spun revolve some thousands of
times in a minute, and the wet yarn thus throws off a |
continuous spray by the centrifugal force theneby gene-—
rated; the girls and young women who attend the
machines wear therefore a kind of thick apron to protect
themselves from the spray. ‘The water is contained in a
kind of oblong trough attached to each machine, and
steam is admitted by a small pipe as a means of bringing
the water to the required temperature.
When the yarn is spun, it is destined either for weay-
ing or for thread. If for weaying, the yarn is reeled into
OF GREAT BRITAIN. 167
hanks on a hexagonal reel, to be afterwards made up inte
bundles of twenty hanks each, containing sixty thousand
yards; but if the yarn is to be made into thread, it is
carried to other machines, by means of which two yarn-
threads are twisted together, and converted into the hard
and firm thread used in needlework and lace-making.
Here, then, the operations of a flax-mill terminate. If
the flax-yarn is woven into any kind of linen or flaxen
fabric, that is an additional feature. At most flax-mills
the operations cease when the yarn and thread are pro-
duced ; and we will, therefore, glance in other directions .
to see how the flax is worked up into cloth.
Barnsley in Yorkshire, Dundee in Scotland, and Belfast
in Ireland, are the three centres of the linen and flax-
cloth manufactures, mostly conducted on the domestic or
hand-loom system, but in some instances on the factory
or power-loom system. The flax fabrics woven in and
around Barnsley consist of linen, duck, check, drabbet,.
tick, huckaback, diaper, drill, towelling, and a mixture of
flax and cotton called ‘ union.” These goods are, gene-
rally speaking, not made in large factories; but there are
‘manufacturers’ at Barnsley and some other towns in
Yorkshire, who purchase flax-yarn from the spinners, and
give it out to hand-loom weavers, who weave it into cloth
at their own homes, bring it back to the warehouse of the
manufacturer, and receive payment for their labour.
In Scotland, Dundee takes precedence in coarse flaxen
and hempen goods, and Dunfermline in fine linens, such
as shirtings, damasks, and table-linen. Sheeting, bagging,
sacking, sail-cloth, and dowlas are made to an immense
extent in Dundee, where indeed this kind of manufacture
is more prominent than any other, and forms at present
168 TEXTILE MANUFACTURES
the staple of the place. Floor-cloth canvas, of the enor-
mous width of eight yards, is made at Dundee; and
nearly all the floor-cloth manufacturers of London obtain
their supply of canvas either from Dundee or from other
towns in Scotland. The flax manufacture in other
branches has also made such rapid progress, that the
Dundee linens and sheetings come into the market at a
price which the weavers in other places can scarcely
compete with. In 1839 there were about five thousand
hand-loom weavers engaged on linen fabrics in Dundee ;
and we believe that the power-loocm has not yet been very
extensively introduced into the linen-trade, the Dundee
mode of conducting the manufacture being very similar
to that in Barnsley. .
The flax fabrics woven in Ireland are chiefly fine and
coarse linens, canvas, sacking, and damask. The mode
of conducting the manufacture at present is very different
from what it was at the beginning of the present century.
At that time each weaver bought or raised and prepared
his own materials, from which he made his linen web, and
sold it in the public market, or by private contract, to
agents or travellers who went round the country making
purchases. Those weavers who had more than one loom
intrusted them either to other members of their families
_or to apprentices or journeymen, under their own personal
inspection. ‘The latter were frequently remunerated by
what was termed ‘ the fourth pemyy,’ that is, each jour-
_meyman received as his wages for weaving a piece of cloth,
-the fourth part of the gross sum for which such cloth was
.sold. Out of the remaining three-fourths the owner of
-the loom derived his profit and the cost of the yarn.
“Many weavers, who were small farmers also, had from
OF GREAT BRITAIN. 169
three to six or eight looms in their houses. The spinning
and various preparatory processes which the flax under-
went, were chiefly performed by the female branches of
the family ; and the owner, his apprentices and journey-
men, worked either at the loom or in the field, according
as the season or other circumstances rendered most
advantageous.
But at the present time the manufacture is conducted
on four diiferent systems :—Ist. The weaver works on
his own account, holding at the same time a small piece
of land: 2ndly. The weaver is a ‘ cottier,’. who works
for manufacturers without holding land: 38rdly. The
weaver works for manufacturers, and has at the same time
a farm: 4thly. The weaver works for manufacturers in
a weaving-shop or factory. The last-named of these
systems is the one which is now growing more into use ;
itis said to be not much relished by the hand-loom
weavers, as there is a kind of stringency in factory regu-
lations to which they were not before accustomed ; but,
on the other hand, it is said the weavers can earn more
in a given time than under the old system, besides being
freed from many irregularities to which hand-loom
weavers are subject. It is, however, in some one of the
first three systems that the Irish linen-weavers are to be
seen most characteristically. The Irish weavers as a
body seem to love freedom and a potato rather than fac-
tories and better food. The Assistant Hand-loom Com-
missioners state that they visited the cabins of some of the
weavers, and found them in the lowest depths of filth,
squalor, and wretchedness, but that the inmates were still
cheerful and—if such a word may be used—apparently
contented. Under the domestic system of weaving,
170 TEXTILE MANUFACTURES
where the weaver has to go and buy his yarn, and then
go to market to sell his woven cloth, the loss of time is
seriously great; but this source of loss is not the only
one: the habits and customs of the people lead to a for-
midable list of such losses. A weaver on one occasion
undertook to prove to Mr. Muggeridge that an Irish
weaver’s year contains only two hundred days, and the
demonstration would be laughable were there not reason
to believe that there is too much truth in it. ‘1 con-
fess,” says Mr. Muggeridge (‘ Hand-loom Weavers
Report,’ p. 726), ‘‘ that the proposition was new to me,
and my informant, with perfect gravity, thus logically
and, as he considered, unanswerably demonstrated it :—
“You will allow,’ said he, ‘an Irishman has fifty-two
Sabbaths on which he should not work?’ ‘ Granted.’
‘There then is fifty-two days. Not an Irishman in the
county Armagh that does not attend at least one market
weekly: there go fifty-two more days. Where’s the
man, if he be at all respectable, that won’t devote his
afternoon or half-day to the wake or funeral of his friend
or neighbour ? and it’s a poor neighbourhood that there
won’t be one death in a week: there go twenty-six days
more. Then, you know, there are our saint-days, and
our holy-days, and our birth-days ; and may be Dan will
be getting up a precursher ora tithe meeting, or the likes
o’ that, which a man is bound to attend for the love of
ould Ireland. And now make your reckoning, and see
whether a man will have more than two hundred days in
a year he can call his own.’”’
When Mr. Otway was making his inquiries at Drog-
heda, it happened from some cause or other that the
hand-loom linen-weayers were earning less than in any
=
OF GREAT BRITAIN. 171
other part of Ireland; they did not even seem to know
that others were earning more elsewhere. ‘‘ A person
ignorant of Irish economy,” says Mr. Otway, ‘‘ would
decide that a weaver earning but three shillings and four-
pence per week, and having a family of six to support,
must starve; but this is not the case, though, poor fellow !
he and his are badly off. With the manure he collects
(and in this respect he and all his family are industrious),
he is able to plant as much potatoes as will last him from
three to four months on ground obtained gratis from some
neighbouring farmer, who is glad to give the potato-crop
for the sake of the corn-crop which the manure will
enable him to obtain next year.” The man’s earnings
are applied to eke out the supply of provisions, to pay
rent, and to‘procure clothes, while the wife and children
fatten a pig, or sell eggs and poultry, or go out begging
among the small farmers in the vicinity; so that the
means of obtaining subsistence are derived from many
different sources. In other parts of Ireland the linen and
canvas weavers were earning somewhat better wages ;
and there is now going on a gradual transition towards
the factory arrangements of the linen trade.
172 TEXTILE MANUFACTURES
CHAPTER VI.
SILK AND ITS MANUFACTURE.
Manvracturtne industry, as well as polite literature,
has its classical spots. The birthplace or the residence
ofa great inventor, the first factory in any particular
department, or the place where the first practical appli-
cation of a new invention was made, has, in a busy and
commercial country like England, a sort of halo around
it: it is a mark and object of men’s attention, in which
we can read records of bygone times; and we can form
some estimate of the present, by comparing with it the
memento thus presented to us of the past.
Such a memento is the Old Silk-Mill at Derby.
When, standing on the bridge which crosses the Derwent
near the northern end of the town, we look down the
stream and glance at the long brick building on the right-
hand or western bank; and when we are told that this
was Lombe’s Silk-Mill, we are tempted to ask, “‘ Is this
the real mill? Is this the veritable building erected by
John Lombe more than a hundred and twenty years ago,
and at which William Hutton went to work in 1730?”
We find that it is so; and that it has never ceased to be
worked from that day to the present. Nay, the original
water-wheel, which was such a marvel at the time of its
erection, has been at work until within a very few years ;
OF GREAT BRITAIN. 173
and the old dusky-red pile of buildings, with its hundreds
of windows, still stands isolated from all other buildings,
on the little island which Lombe rented from the Derby
Corporation.
A silk-mill, in manufacturing phraseology, is the build-
ing in which raw silk, as imported, is prepared for the
weaver, the stocking-maker, or the seamstress, by spin-
ning or twisting, and other processes. A subdivision is
sometimes made between a ‘silk-throwing mill’ and a
‘ silk-spinning mill ;’ the former being for the manufacture
from good and perfect raw silk, and the latter from waste
and inferior silk ; but both are alike dependent on foreign
countries for the supply of the raw materials. The silk
arrives at the mill in the form of a filament or thread, and
it leaves the mill also as a thread; but the difference be-
tween the two forms, as to thickness, compactness, and
strength, is considerable. We may even go further back,
and state that the imported threads are themselves formed
of other threads made abroad ; so that in fact we cannot
rightly understand the matter without tracing the routine
back to the silkworm itself.
_ It is pretty generally known to readers in the present
day that silk is a secretion from the silkworm, elaborated
through two small holes near the head. How the worm
is reared ; how it changes its condition with great rapidity ;
how it is supported by eating vast quantities of mulberry-
leaves ; and how the Italian peasants prepare for the
momentous period when the worms are to produce their
silk—are matters upon which there is not room here to
enter. Suffice it to say, that when the critical time
arrives, the little worm seeks a corner or hollow space in
which to form its cocoon or nest. Having selected such
%~
174. TEXTILE MANUFACTURES
aspot, it attaches long threads of glutinous matter, or
silk, from side to side, to form a support for itself; and
upon this support it weaves around itself a hollow enve-
lope of light tissue-like texture. Within this wall it
continues to labour, spinning more and more length of
filament from the two holes before mentioned, and laying
the thread round the interior of its hollow dwelling, gra-
dually thereby increasing the thickness of the enclosing
wall. The nest assumes the form of a light egg-shaped
ball, very soft and loose on the exterior ; but as the worm
progresses with its work towards the centre, the structure
becomes more dense and compact, from the plies or re-
duplications of the thread being closer together. At
length the working ceases, and we have then a si/k cocoon,
with the worm imprisoned in its centre; the cocoon
being from an inch to an inch and a half long, and of a
yellow or orange colour.
Now it is important to bear in mind that it is one con-
tinuous thread thus produced ; or in fact it is two threads
twisted into one. There are two twin-threads spun out
from the two orifices ; and the worm, by a peculiar com-
bined movement of its mouth and front legs, brings these
two together, and agglutinates them by a gummy liquid.
The worm, if not interrupted, spins out the whole quantity
in one unbroken thread of enormous length, composed of
the two twin filaments. This circumstance gives rise to one
main difference between the cotton and silk manufactures ;
for cotton comes to us in the form of short fibres, which
have to be spun—formerly by hand, but now by ma-
chinery—into a continuous thread; whereas in the silk
manufacture the little insect performs this spinning pro-
cess, and presents the material in a continuous form.
OF GREAT BRITAIN. 175
But it may next fairly be asked, by what means is the
insect removed from its voluntary prison, and how is the
continuous thread of silk removed from the cocoons ?
This is effected in a singular manner. In Italy, from
whence a large quantity of silk is brought, the rearing of
the silkworms is the occupation of one class of persons,
while the winding of the silk is that of another; and the
rearers sell the cocoons to the winders as soon as the en-
closed insect is killed. Sometimes the cocoons are ex-
posed to the heat of an Italian sun for four or five hours ;
or, if the climate be too cold, they are placed in an oven
and there kept till vitality is destroyed. In short, the
poor little silk-makers are stifled to death in their egg-
shaped envelopes, after having produced the material
which man has chosen to appropriate to himself. When
the insect is killed, the external soft envelope, which is
known as floss-silk, is opened, and the hard cocoon is
protruded through the opening. This floss-silk is to be
afterwards brought to a manufactured state by the pro-
cess of silk-spinning, while the cocoon is appropriated to
the silk-throwster.
The vender of the cocoons separates them into different
qualities, to which he applies different names. Thus, the
‘ good cocoons’ are the most perfect; ‘pointed cocoons’
are apt to break in the winding; ‘cocalons’ are large,
but of a less compact nature than good cocoons ; ‘ dupions,’
or doublets, have two threads confused one with another ;
‘ soufflons’ are very imperfect cocoons; and so on, each
kind being paid for at a certain price, according to the
facility with which it will yield a good silken thread.
When the winder or reeler has purchased the cocoons
from the rearer, a woman proceeds as follows:—Into a
176 TEXTILE MANUFACTURES
vessel of warm water a number of cocoons are thrown,
and there immersed until the gum, which the insect had
used as a kind of cement in forming the cocoon, is so far
softened as to permit the thread to come off. ‘The reeler
‘then takes a whisk of fine twigs bound together, and cut
off evenly at the ends; and with this she gently presses
and stirs the cocoons, till the loose threads are entangled
en its points. She next raises her whisk with the threads
attached to it, disengages them from it, and draws their
ends through her fingers to remove any adhering floss or
impurity. Then, supposing the thread which she is
about to form is to consist of twenty filaments (the number
varying greatly in different circumstances), she collects
the threads of twenty cocoons, and passes them through
small eyes or loops in a reeling-machine. The first, we
will suppose, forms four groups of five each, each group
passing through one eye; then two of these groups are
combined into a larger group ; and lastly, all of the twenty
filaments are brought together in one thread. ‘This com-
bined thread is wound upon a hollow frame or reel ; the
cocoons, immersed in the warm water, being softened
precisely to that state which will admit of their yielding
the filaments easily. As fast as any or all of the cocoons
become exhausted, others are thrown into the warm water,
and their threads united to that of the cocoons previously
reeled.
It is thus that the silk leaves the form of cocoons, and
assumes that of a hank or skein. Of the quantity thus
yielded the following may give some notion. Each
cocoon yields on an average about three hundred yards
of silk; two hundred and fifty average-sized cocoons
weigh about a pound; and eleven or twelve pounds of
OF GREAT BRITAIN, Vee
cocoons give one pound of reeled silk, the other eleven-
twelfths being made up of the weight of the chrysalis, or
enclosed insect, floss-silk, waste, dirt, &e. From’ these
data it has been estimated that the original silk filament,
as elaborated by the insect, would require nearly five
hundred miles of length to weigh one pound !
The hanks of silk, thus produced from the cocoons
by the silk-reelers of Italy, France, Bengal, China, and
other countries, are the commodity which arrives in Eng-
land under the name of raw silk. That which is im-
ported under the name of thrown silk is the article after
having been worked in the silk-mills of foreign countries ;
and formerly a good deal of this used to be imported into
England. But in proportion as the English silk-mills
improyed in their processes, the English throwsters
were able to outweigh certain advantages which used to
attach to the Italian throwsters ; and the result is thus
shown—that while at the opening of the present cen-
tury the thrown silk imported was half as much in
weight as the raw silk, in 1839 it was only one-eighteenth
part as much, the advantage in change being altogether
on the part of the English throwster.
Let us suppose, then, that the silkworm-rearers of
Asia and southern Europe have brought into the market
cocoons fit for reeling; that the reelers have combined
the threads of several cocoons into one, and brought it
into the form of hanks; and that these hanks have been
imported into England. We shall then be prepared to
follow the hanks through the various processes included
under the general name of st/k-throwing, by which they
are brought into the proper state for warp and weit
I
178 TEXTILE MANUFACTURES
threads for the weaver, yarn for the silk-stocking maker,
sewing-silk, and other purposes.
The circumstance just alluded to, viz., the former
prevalence of silk-throwing in Italy, is precisely that
which led to the origin of the old mill at Derby, and to
the subsequent extension and improvement of the manu-
facture in various quarters. Hutton gives a very curious
account of the matter, from which we may here condense
a few particulars.
The Italians being the silk-throwsters for England,
and the taste of the day having set in favour of silks,
a Mr. Crotchet of Derby thought it would be a capital
speculation to commence silk-throwing in England. He
accordingly prepared a small mill at Derby ; but, to use
Hutton’s words, ‘‘ three engines were found necessary
for the whole process: he had but one. An untoward
trade is a dreadful sink for money; and an imprudent
tradesman is one more dreadful. We often see instances
where a fortune would last a man much longer, if he
lived upon his capital, than if he sent it into trade.
Crotchet soon became insolvent.” * It was in the year
1702 that this unsuccessful speculation was set on foot ;
and a few years thereafter elapsed before the occur-
rences took place which led to the construction of the
present mill, the first one really worked in England.
John Lombe, a good mechanic, a good draftsman,
and a man of tact and energy, went out to Italy with
a view of inspecting the machinery employed by the
Italians in the process of throwing silk, and of bringing
back to England a knowledge of the mode by which the
* Knight’s Miscellanies—‘ Life of William Hutton,’ p. 115.
OF GREAT BRITAIN. 179
process might be here carried on. As he knew that such
an examination would be strictly denied to him, it be-
comes a very fair question whether such a project was
morally or commercially just. We are, of course, well
pleased to see that the silk manufacture has taken deep
root in England; and we are prone to laud the inge-
nuity of the man who was mainly instrumental in its
introduction ; but how far such a project deserves to be
imitated, when effected by clandestine means, may one
day form an item in the morals of manufactures. How-
ever, to proceed. As Lombe could not gain admission
to the silk manufactories by open means, he bribed some
of the subordinates, and made frequent secret visits.
After each visit he noted down upon paper all the
particulars of what he had seen, until by degrees he
acquired a general knowledge of the whole routine;
but his object being discovered, he fled with the utmost
precipitation on board a ship, and narrowly escaped
assassination.
On his arrival in England Lombe determined to fix
upon Derby as the scene of his operations; and in the
year 1717 he agreed with the corporation of that town
for an island or swamp in the river Derwent, five hundred
feet long and about fifty wide, at a rent of eight pounds
per annum. On this spot he erected the mill which is
still existing, at an expense of 30,000/.; it was built
wholly upon huge piles of ash, sixteen or twenty feet
long, driven close to each other, and covered with a
flooring of masonry to form the foundation of the build-
ing. ‘The mode in which he is said to have borne the
expense of the gradual erection of this ponderous build-
ing was very remarkable. He hired various rooms in
Tig
180 TEXTILE MANUFACTURES
Derby, particularly the Town-hall, where he erected
temporary engines, worked by hand ; and the silk which
he manufactured at these engines, though sold at a price
which enabled him to compete with the Italian throw-
sters, yet yielded him so handsome a profit, that he was
enabled to advance money by degrees towards the erec-
tion of the great mill.
In 1718 Lombe procured a patent for his invention for
fourteen years, and carried on his proceedings with vigour,
aided by two Italians who accompanied him from Italy.
But his death soon ensued, under circumstances which
Hutton, following the current of popular rumour, thus nar-
rates :—‘‘ Alas! he had not pursued this lucrative com-
merce more than three or four years, when the Italians,
who felt the effects from their want of trade, determined
his destruction, and hoped that of his works would fol-
low. An artful woman came over in the character of a
friend, associated with the parties, and assisted in the
business. She attempted to gain both the Italians, and
succeeded with one. By these two slow poison was sup-
posed, and perhaps justly, to have been administered to
John Lombe, who lingered two or three years in agony,
and departed. The Italian ran away to his own country ;
and madam was interrogated, but nothing transpired,
except what strengthened suspicion.” The subtilties of
‘‘ Ttalian poisoning” have been such a favourite theme
for romancers and novelists, that this termination of
Lombe’s career has been much doubted. There is, how-
ever, proof that the Italians were very indignant (and in
truth, not without justice) at their trade being thus
snatched from them; and the King of Sardinia did all
he could to prevent the shipment of raw silk from Italy
OF GREAT BRITAIN. 181
to England; for the raw silk procured by the English
was by them worked up into thrown silk, thereby dis-
pensing with the services of the Italian throwsters.
After the death of John Lombe, the mill became the
property of his brother William ; but William ‘being
of a melancholy turn, he shot himself,” and the property
descended to his cousin Thomas, who subsequently be-
came Sir Thomas Lombe. ‘The patent expired in 1752,
but Sir Thomas petitioned parliament for a renewal of
the patent, on the plea that ‘‘the works had taken so
long a time in perfecting, and the people in teaching, that
there had been none to acquire emolument from the
patent.” Hutton asserts that Lombe had already accu-
mulated 80,000/., but we know not on what data. Par-
liament refused to grant a new privilege, but awarded
him 14,0002. as a reward for his ingenuity, on condition
that he would cause an exact model of his machinery to
be constructed, and placed in the Tower of London,
where it might be open to the inspection of all who
sought to erect similar machinery. From that period, a
hundred and eleven years ago, silk-throwing became a
regular and unrestricted occupation in England.
We do not know in what department of the silk-
throwing processes William Hutton, when a boy, was
employed ; but he tel!s us, in his Autobiography, that he
went to the Lombe mill in 1730, when about seven years
of age. He says, that when his parents thought he ought
to begin to work for himself, ‘‘ the silk-mill was proyosed,.
One of the clerks remarked to the person who took me
there, that the offer was needless, I was too young.
However, tne offer was made ; and as hands were wanted
in the infant state of this work, I was accepted. It was
182 TEXTILE MANUFACTURES
found, upon trial, that nature had not given me length
sufficient to reach the engine; for, out of three hundred
persons employed at the mill, I was by far the least and
the youngest. It is happy for man that his invention
supplies the place of want. The superintendents wisely
thought if they lengthened one end it would affect both.
A pair of high pattens were therefore fabricated, and
tied fast about my feet, tomake them steady companions.
They were clumsy companions, which I dragged about
one year, and with pleasure delivered up.”
Derby, ever since Lombe’s time, has been one of the
head-quarters of the silk manufacture in England. By
degrees, improvements have reached every department
of the manufacture; so that at the present day some of
the silk-mills present fine examples of factory arrange-
ment. Manchester, Macclesfield, Congleton, and Leek
are other towns where the manufacture has settled.
Spitalfields is connected only with the weaving of silk,
not with the spinning or throwing.
We will now proceed to speak of the operations con-
ducted at these silk-mills.
First, then, we have to understand that the hanks of
raw yellow silk are brought to the factory in bales or
bundles. The appearance of these bales, when opened,
is remarkably beautiful, from the glossy richness of the
material. The silk has different tints of colour, and dif-
ferent delicacy of texture, according to the country
whence it has been brought. For instance, the Broussa
silk and the Chinese silk are whiter than most of the other
kinds. ‘The bales of Bengal silk are made up to a weight
of about a hundred and fifty pounds, and consist of hanks
or ‘heads’ of small size. ‘The Italian silk is made up
OF GREAT BRITAIN. 183
into rather larger bales, and consists of larger hanks.
The Persian silk, which is of inferior quality, is in still
larger hanks, weighing about a pound each. The various
qualities of raw silk are now purchased in the market at
from ten to twenty shillmgs per pound. ‘The annexed
cut will show the general form of the hanks.
[Hanks of Silk.)
a, Bengal; 6, Italian; c, Persian; d, Broussa.
The processes which these different kinds of silks un-
dergo, in their passage through the silk-mill, depend on
the purposes to which the silk is to be applied. ‘Thus,
184 TEXTILE MANUFACTURES
there is a kind called dumb singles, which consists of silk
merely wound and cleaned ; this is used in the weaving
of gauze and other thin fabrics. Another manufactured
variety, called thrown singles, is silk which has been
wound, cleaned, and thrown, and is then used in the
weaving of ribands and common silks. Zam is silk
which, besides being wound, cleaned, and thrown, is
‘doubled,’ that is, two or more thicknesses of thread are
combined into one, and twisted together ; this is used for
the weft, or cross threads, of Gros de Naples, velvets,
flowered silks, and the best varieties of silk goods.
Another kind, called organzine, besides being wound,
cleaned, and doubled, is twisted or thrown twice ; the first
twist being like the yarns which form a strand, and the
second like the strands which form a rope: this forms a
hard and compact thread, and is used as the warp, or long
threads, for the same kind of goods as those which have
tram in the weft. Lastly, sewings are compound threads
of silk, wound, cleaned, doubled, and thrown, with es-
pecial reference to their ultimate use as sewing-silk.
It will thus be seen that the operations to which the
silk is submitted differ in complexity, according to the
purposes to which it is to be applied. Some are only
wound and cleaned; others wound, cleaned, and twisted
once; others wound, cleaned, doubled, and twisted once ;
others wound, cleaned, twisted, doubled, and twisted
again. In point of fact, therefore, the main operations
may be classified as winding, cleaning, doubling, and
twisting, or throwing ; with a few others subordinate to
them.
After a slight washing or soaking, comes the process
in which the winding-engine is brought into requisition.
OF GREAT BRITAIN, 185
This engine, as well as most others employed in the
+ manufacture, has undergone and is often undergoing im-
provement; but the annexed cut will show the general
{Winding-machine.]
object and action: in every silk-mill there are many of
these machines ranged in order, sufficiently far apart to
allow the workwomen and girls to pass between them ;
and these females may be seen walking to and fro, ad-
justing the different parts of the apparatus, removing
bobbins when they are filled» with silk, replacing them
with other bobbins to be similarly filled, and providing a
supply of the material which is to be wound.
The term ‘ winding,’ as here applied, refers to the
19
186 TEXTILE MANUFACTURES
original skeins or hanks of silk, which are to be wound on
bobbins four or five inches in length before the silk can
go through the processes of manufacture. Any one who
has sat at a domestic fireside, and has seen the process of
winding a skein of silk on a small wooden reel, or round a
roll of paper, will be prepared in some degree to under-
stand how the winding in a silk-mill is effeeted, so far as
the change of form in the silk is concerned. It will be
recollected that we explained, m a former paragraph,
how the silk-reelers of Italy transfer the silk to a hollow
framework or reel, as they draw it from the cocoons; and
it will be obvious that the circumference of the frame-
work will determine the size of the skein or hank pro-
duced. Then, in order to wind from the hank, the latter
must be stretched out over a support of some kind or
other: every one is familiar with the common mode of
holding a skein of silk stretched between the two hands
during the process of winding; but the manufacturer em-
ploys a dumb agent to.perform a similar service.
Understanding this, then, we may say that this dumb
agent, in the winding-machine, is called a swift—some-
what unfittingly perhaps, for its movements are very
slow compared with those of the bobbins. It is a hex-
agonal frame, or, if we may use such a term, a six-sided’
hoop, whose circumference equals the circumference of
the skeins of raw silk. ‘The skeins or hanks, as imported
from different countries, are not always the same size, and
therefore ‘swifts’ of different diameters are provided.
The swifts are also made in a light and elastic manner, so
as to adapt themselves readily to small differences of di-
mensions. ‘The hanks of silk are opened and separated,
and the skeins spread on the circumference of these swifts.
OF GREAT BRITAIN. 187
These swifts are ranged in parallel rows of several dozen
each, on either side of every winding-engine; so that a
common axle, running through the centres of them all,
will permit them all to rotate.
Next for the bobbins to which the silk is to be trans-
ferred. ‘These are ranged in a row above the swifts, one
bobbin to each swift ; and all the bobbins revolve together
on a horizontal axis. Now when one end of the thread
of any given skein is carried up from the swift -to the
bobbin above, and attached to it, the rotation of the bob-
bin will cause all the silk to be gradually unwound from
the swift on to the bobbin. The swift rotates solely by
the pulling-force of the silken thread, as the latter becomes
wound up, and this rotation causes the silk to be freely
given off from the swift. If no further provision were
made than is here indicated, the silk would be wound in
an irregular heap on the bobbin; but it is made to dis-
tribute itself in a parallel and equable layer, by passing
through an eye before it reaches the bobbin, which eye
is fixed in a bar that oscillates or traverses to and fro
sideways, so as to bring the thread successively in front of
every different part of the length of the bobbin.
The silk, then, has been, we will suppose, wound upon
bobbins, and is ready for the subsequent operations.
That which is termed cleaning is simply the removal of
all impurities or irregularities by which the diameter of
the thread may be rendered unequal. Sometimes this
is effected in the same machine by which other parts of
the process are carried on; while in other factories a
separate machine, called the ‘ cleaning-machine,’ is em-
ployed. However, the principle is the same in both
cases, and consists merely in passing the silken thread
188 TEXTILE MANUFACTURES
through a cleft in a piece of steel, so adjusted in size as
to allow the thread, in its proper state of thickness, to
pass freely through, but to detain and remove all aspe-
rities, roughnesses, and irregularities of surface.
If the preceding details be borne in mind, it will be
understood that the next process will depend on the pur-
pose to which the silk is to be applied: whether the
thread is to be used as ‘ dumb singles,’ ‘ thrown singles,’
‘tram,’ ‘organzine,’ or ‘sewings.’ But it will suffice if
we deem the ‘twisting’ or ‘ throwing’ to be the next
process, as it is, indeed, in most cases.
‘There does not seem to be any very definite distinction
among silk-throwsters, between the terms spinning,
twisting, and throwing ; or at least, the difference existing
is not such as can be understood by general readers. All
these terms refer to the formation of a rope-like twist of
the silken filaments, for the purpose of strength. In the
‘ filatures,’ or reeling-houses, in Italy, where the threads
of many cocoons are united into one compound thread,
this thread coheres merely by the glutinous gum which
envelopes the threads, and not by an actual twisting of
the threads: this twisting is reserved till the silk reaches
the throwing-mill.
We follow the silk, therefore, to the throwing or
twisting room, where machines called ‘ spinning-machines’
are at work. ‘This is an inconvenient confusion of terms,
for spinning is properly the combination of a number of
short fibres into a continuous thread, such as takes place
in the cotton, woollen, and linen manufactures, and also
in the silk-spmning from waste silk: in a silk-throwing
mill the term spinning ought not in strictness to be ad-
mitted at all, since there are no short fibres to be com-
OF GREAT BRITAIN. 189
bined into a continuous thread. Be it a ‘ twisting’ ora
‘ spinning’ machine, however, the action is both simple
and beautiful. The whole details of such machines would
be too complex to be sketched here ; but the annexed cut
may show the principle of the working parts. When
ay a5) Vii RY EK YY s) y\: x,
: ’
ve
7 i:
G
} ;
=
fy iiss
2 uP ZF 5 >
\ on 1);
a
A,
i
LSS : ,
© otal
‘ps
eer; E let
[Spinning Machine or Engine.]
190 TEXTILE MANUFACTURES
many such machines are seen in a row, the eye is at once
struck with the thousands of little spindles and bobbins
which are whirling round at a very rapid rate, some
yielding the silk which is to be twisted before reaching
the others. :
There is, to every machine, a set of bobbins whose
axes are horizontal, and another set whose axes are ver-
tical, and the twisting takes place while the silken thread
is passing from the former to the latter. The vertical
bobbins do not revolve, but they are placed upon steel
spindles which pass through their centres; and these
spindles, together with a kind of loop or eye attached to
one end, revolve rapidly. The silken thread being passed
from the horizontal bobbin through the eye or loop,
and fastened to the stationary vertical bobbin, and motion
being given to the apparatus, the thread becomes wound
on the vertical bobbin by the rotation of the little loop
apparatus, called the ‘flyer,’ round this bobbin; and a
twist is at the same time imparted to the thread.
We have said nothing of the comparative velocity with
which the two parts of the apparatus revolve ; but it will
be seen that a change in this relation produces a curious
effect. If, while the bobbin maintains a uniform rate of
movement, the flyer rotates more rapidly, the hardness of
twist is increased, or there are more spiral turns in a
given length of thread. If, on the other hand, the ve-
locity of the flyer decreases while that of the bobbin
remains uniform, or that of the flyer remains uniform
while that of the bobbin increases, the twist becomes
slackened, or there are fewer turns in a given length.
The silk-throwster can therefore give any degree of hard-
ness or Closeness to the twist, by varying the relative
velocities of the two moving parts.
OF GREAT BRITAIN. 19]
However complex the twisting-machine may seem at
first sight, itis but a repetition of similar parts, each ot
which acts in the manner just noticed. All the horizontal
bobbins are made to rotate by one piece of mechanism,
while all the spindles owe their motion to another. The
foreman or superintendent of the department regulates
the relative velocities which the two movements shall
bear to each other, according to the hardness of the twist
to be given to the thread; but, when this is adjusted,
women and girls attend the machines, replacing the lower
bobbins when emptied, and the upper ones when filled,
and also joining the ends of broken threads.
We may now dismiss the twisting of the single threads,
and speak of the doubling, which takes place in the manu-
facture of tram, organzine, and sewing-silk. This is a
combination of two or more threads into one, to increase
the strength and thickness, and may be deemed analo-
gous to the combination of the threads from many cocoons
into one in the foreign reeling-houses. The number thus
combined varies generally from three to twelve, and it is
a mere combination or laying together, without twisting.
This is effected in two different ways; either by a kind
of hand-wheel, something like a spinning-wheel, or by a
modern automatic machine of greater complexity ; but it
will be more readily understood if we speak of the hand-
method only. ‘This method of doubling the silk is carried
on by women, each sitting on a low stool, and having
before her a small wheel, which she turns with the right
hand. Each woman has, fixed up in a small frame near
her, as many bobbins as there are to be threads doubled
together. From each of these bobbins she takes the
loose_end of silk, and, combining them all into one, passes
192 TEXTILE MANUFACTURES
them through a kind of loop, and thence attaches them
to her wheel. Then, turning the wheel with the right
hand, she unwinds all the thread from all the bobbins,
and obtains a thicker but untwisted thread therefrom.
It generally happens that while some of the women are
doubling two threads together,:others are doubling three,
others four, and so on, to suit different qualities of goods.
The women arrange their simple machines obliquely, one
behind another, for economy of space, having the bobbins
of single silk placed on upright spindles, on which they
can rotate with facility. In the higher class of silk-mills
the doubling-machines are moved by steam-power, and
have all the elegance of modern spinning-machinery.
The doubled threads, whatever be their number, are,
as we before observed, merely laid side by side in a pa-
rallel group, without any intimate combimation. The
combination is the result of the next process, called
throwing, by which the two, three, five, or a dozen
threads are twisted firmly one round another. The
‘throwing-machine’ (of which merely the principle of
action is here sketched) for twisting doubled threads is
almost exactly the same in principle as the ‘ spinning-
machine’ for twisting singles, although differing in some
of the details. In both cases the thread to be twisted is
wound on a horizontal bobbin or reel, while the
bobbin for receiving it is in a vertical position. In both
cases the twist is given by a ‘ flyer’ revolving rapidly
round the vertical bobbin, and carrying with it the thread
through an eye or loop. In both cases the hardness or
closeness of the twist is regulated by the ratio between
the velocities of the two parts of the apparatus. But in
the one case a single thread is twisted around itself;
OF GREAT BRITAIN. 193
[Throwing-machine.]
_ while in the other several are twisted round one another,
_ like the yarns in a rope; or rather, if we may compare
the elementary cocoon filaments of the silk with the ele-
_ mentary: hempen fibres of a rope, we may say that, in
_ the first stage, the filaments are combined and _ twisted
. into ‘singles,’ while the hempen fibres are combined
194 TEXTILE MANUFACTURES
and twisted into ‘ yarns;’ and that, in the second stage,
the singles are combined and twisted into ‘ warp-threads,’
while the yarns are combined and twisted into ‘strands’
or ‘ropes.’ Nay, the analogy between ropes and thrown
silk is yet closer, and may be studied instructively. We
find that while the fibres of a yarn are twisted in one
direction, the yarns of a rope are twisted in the opposite
direction; and the like is observable in the twisting of
silk, so far as regards organzine, sewing-silk, and other
kinds in which strength is required. The matter may
be thus expressed :—‘ For ‘singles,’ after the raw silk
has been wound, it is thrown or twisted to the right ; for
‘tram,’ the silk is not twisted immediately after being
wound, but the raw silks are doubled, and then twisted
to the right; for ‘organzine,’ the raw silk, after beng
wound, is twisted to the left, then doubled, and the
doubled thread finally twisted to the right. 'This rope-
like texture gives great firmness to the organzine; while
the lesser amount of twisting in the tram gives it a more
floss-like texture, better suited to some purposes than the
organzine,
There is in some parts of the processes now described
a very pretty little contrivance, which has often been
noticed as one example among many which our manufac-
turés afford of certainty and precision in mechanical
operations. It is a piece of mechanism which refuses to
work when anything is going wrong; it is a tell-tale, an
overseer, a warning, which immediately informs the
workwoman that something requires her attention,
When the delicate threads of silk are passing from one
revolving bobbin to another, if the thread happens to be
defective at any particular part, it is likely to break ; and
OF GREAT BRITAIN. 195
in many cases a breakage would seriously injure the
manufactured article, if not immediately attended to.
For instance, if four threads are being doubled into one,
and one of the four break, the other three, if not in-
stantly stopped, would continue to form a threefold
thread, which would not correspond with the fourfold
previously made. The contrivance acts by stopping all
the bobbins of one group instantly, when any one of the
threads breaks. Each thread passes through an eye in
the end of a short lever; and, when a thread breaks, the
lever loses a temporary support, drops, and by means of
a sort of catch or detent stops the movement of the bobbin
on which the doubled thread is being wound. The stop-
page of the movement instantly attracts the notice of the
attendant, who mends the broken thread, and puts the
apparatus again into motion.
There are some kinds of twisted silk more dense,
thick, and strong than the ordinary varieties, prepared
by hand-twisting in a mode which bears some analogy
to rope-making, and which, to one unaccustomed to
the imspection of machinery, exhibits the true na-
ture of the twist in a clearer manner. Young active
boys are, in this case, employed in running to and fro
with untiring industry, carrying or supporting silken
threads in their hands; these boys are assisting to form
twisted silk, much on the same principle as twine is
spun in a rope walk. At one end of a long room or
other covered building is a large wheel turned by a
handle. On one face of the wheel, near the circum-
ference, are about a dozen hooks, ranged in a circle.
Several threads of silk, twelve or a lesser number, are
fastened to these hooks, and the other ends of the whole
twelve are carried to the ,distant end of the room by the
196 TEXTILE MANUFACTURES
boys. At that end they are fastened to hooks attached
to a machine capable of travelling slowly along the floor.
Matters being thus prepared, the handle of the wheel is
set in motion, by which the hooks are made to rotate
with great rapidity, and the threads fastened on them be-
come thereby twisted one around another with great
closeness. It bears in fact a very close resemblance—
not so much to the spinning of yarn from hempen fibres
—as to the twisting of strands or cords from yarns in a
rope yard. The silk-twisting is, however, effected with
great quickness ; and the boys are engaged in running to
and fro, attaching and detaching the remote ends of the
silken threads. All the boys at one frame or wheel are
under the control or orders of the man who superintends
the wheel, and who is responsible for the work produced.
All silk is either dyed or bleached at some stage or
other of its progress, and this is generally effected im-
mediately or soon after the twisting is finished. But
before it is dyed, it is made up into convenient hanks,
and ‘scoured,’ to remove the gum which may still adhere
to the silken filaments. Before this scouring; the silk is
harsh to the touch, and is unfit to receive the dye. It
is boiled for three or four hours in strong soap and water,
by which the gum is dissolved, and the silk rendered soft
and glossy. This scouring, together with the waste
which occurs in the preceding departments of the manu-
facture, reduces the weight of the silk four or five ounces
in the pound. The silk is washed in a current of clear
water to remove the soap, and it is then seen that, al-
though the weight is so much reduced, its bulk is greater
than before, and it presents the soft, rich, and delicate
gloss which is the characteristic of silk.
The processes of silk-throwing, or ‘ throwsting,’ con-
OF GREAT BRITAIN. 197
sidered as a general whole, may now be said to be
finished, and the silk-thrower has nothing further to do
with the material: he supplies the silk in this state to
those who wish to use it as warp and weft for weaving,
as yarn or thread for hosiery and gloves, as sewing-silk,
or to any of the numerous purposes to which thrown silk
is applied.
A very great diversity is shown in the application of
silk to the production of cords, laces, fringes, and other
light articles. Most of these are produced by the aid of
machines midway in their action between twisting and
weaving machines, combining something of both. The
rage for cheapness in the present day has led to a curious
exercise of ingenuity in this department of manufacture
by the invention of a process termed ‘plating,’ which
bears the same relation to the real silk manufacture as
metal ‘plating’ does to manufactures in silver. It con-
sists in putting a coating of silk on a substratum or founda-
tion of cotton, by which the more costly material is only
used in those parts which meet the eye. ‘The history of
our textile manufactures within the last dozen years is
full of examples of this kind, in which the manufacturer
endeavours, by economizing the more costly materials, to
_bring his wares within the purchasing capacity of an in-
creased range of customers. ‘The inventive ingenuity
called for in these adaptations is often exceedingly great,
and it has occasionally happened that new productions
which have owed their origin to motives of this kind have
created a new market by their beauty as well as their
cheapness.
One very remarkable article of silk manufacture—re-
markable, at least, in respect to one circumstance—is that
198 TEXTILE MANUFACTURES
of silk boot-laces with brass fags. The laces themselves
are made by a kind of braiding or twisting process, in
some degree analogous to that of whip-making. The
tags which form the rigid end to each lace are made by
two small machines, placed upon low benches, and
(Machine for cutting and hollowing tags.]
worked by boys. In the first of these machines, here
sketched, a boy takes in his hand a strip of brass, whose
width equals the intended length of the tag; and plac-
ing this in a kind of groove, he brings down a cutting-
edge to act upon it, which cuts the brass to the required
size. The groove into which the brass is placed is at the
same time so formed, that the little piece of brass, as it is
cut off, is at the same time bent into an angular or semi-
OF GREAT BRITAIN. 199
circular shape. The pieces of brass thus prepared are
_ transferred to another bench, where other boys are work-
ing on machines which fix the tags to the laces. The
{Machine for fixing tags to the laces.) |
tags are dropped one by one into a little recess ; and the
end of a lace being laid in the hollow of the tag, a lever
is brought down with the left hand, by which the tag is
made to embrace the lace firmly, enclosing it all round.
This is done with astonishing rapidity, and forms a
curious instance of the dexterity which is acquired by
long practice. No less dexterous is the way in which a
200 TEXTILE MANUFACTURES
hole or two are made in each tag, to pin it more effec-
tually to the lace.
It is not practicable to work up at the silk-throwing
mills the whole of the silk imported. The floss-silk
forming the outer covering of the cocoons, the defective
cocoons, and the waste produced in the filature and
throwing of good silk, form a mass of material which can
only be brought into useful form ‘at the silh-spinning
mills, At these mills, which have increased to an asto-
nishing extent within the last few years, and which are
situated chiefly in Manchester, this inferior kind of silk
is spun into yarn for cheap shawls, handkerchiefs, and
other articles, by a process nearly resembling cotton-
spinning; thus opening up an entirely new branch of
manufacture, and bringing into use a commodity which
was formerly almost useless.
The weaving of silk goods involves details so nearly
allied to those of other textile fabrics, that we need say
but little in addition to what has been given in former
chapters. In Spitalfields the weavers work in their own
houses, and employ the hand-loom for their silk goods.
There are no large factories, no power-looms, no steam-
engines ; but everything (with the exception of the use
of the Jacquard machine) goes on pretty nearly as it did
in times past. In Manchester, Derby, and other places,
on the contrary, the power-loom has been introduced into
the silk-factories, and is applied to the weaving of silk
goods in precisely the same way as for cotton or worsted
goods. Nothing can exceed in beauty some of the silken
fabrics wrought by the Jacquard machine of modern
times ; while an instrument called a pantograph has been
introduced for producing an exquisite embroidery on
OF GREAT BRITAIN. 201
plain silk goods after weaving. At Coventry an entire
body of weavers is employed solely in producing ribbons,
chiefly of silk, by the agency of various kinds of looms,
some of which are very ingeniously constructed.
There is one variety of silk goods so beautiful, and pro-
duced by such singular arrangements in the weaving, that
we must not pass it over without notice: viz., velvet.
Velvets are made of cotton as well as of silk; but they
are more particularly associated with the latter material.
The peculiar softness of velvet is owing to a loose ‘ pile,’
or surface of threads, unlike anything presented by the
plain varieties of silk goods. It need perhaps hardly be
remarked, that plain silks, as well as most woven fabrics,
consist of threads crossing each other at right angles ; the
‘ long-threads’ being technically called the warp, and the
‘ cross-threads’ the shoot or weft. But it is evident at a
glance that velvet possesses an additional feature in its
construction. ‘The back of the velvet exhibits the warp
and shoot with more or less distinctness ; but the face has
a short shag, or ‘pile,’ occasioned by the insertion of
short pieces of silk thread doubled under the shoot ; these
stand upright on the upper surface of the velvet, in such
numbers and so crowded together as entirely to conceal
the interlacings of the warp and shoot. It is to this
‘pile’ that the velvet owes its characteristic appearance,
as well as that remarkable softness to the touch which
distinguishes it from all other woven fabrics, and which,
while it would be difficult to explain them in any intelli-
‘gible terms, have themselves served for describing other
bodies which present appearances or qualities somewhat
similar. ‘The beauty of the surface results in a great de-
gree from the uniform evenness of the ‘ pile ;? while this
K
202 TEXTILE MANUFACTURES
evenness depends upon the perfect equality in the length
of the threads composing the pile; any irregularities de-
traet very considerably from the market value of the
goods, and hence the weaver has a motive for extreme
care in the prosecution of this branch of manufacture.
The insertion of the short threads which form the pile
must necessarily be effected in the weaving itself; and
this is done in a manner which we proceed to describe.
Instead of having only one row of warp-threads, which
will be crossed alternately over and under by the shoot,
there are éwo sets, one.of which is to form the regular
warp, while the other is to constitute the pile; and these
two sets are so arranged in the loom \as to be kept
separate. ‘The quantity of the pile-thread necessary is
very much more than that of the warp-thread; and
therefore must be supplied to the leom by a different
agency.
If the pile-threads were worked in among the shoot
in the same way as the warp-threads, the fabric would
be simply a kind of double silk, but without any kind
of pile; the pile-threads are therefore formed into a
series of loops, standing up from the surface of the silk ;
and by subsequently cutting these loops with a sharp in-
strument, the pile is produced. ‘The loops are formed in
a very singular way. After the weaver has thrown the
shuttle three times,across, making the shoot interlace
three times among the threads of the warp, he inserts a
thin straight brass wire at right angles to the length of
the piece, or parallel with the shoot. This wire is so
placed as to occupy a position through the whole breadth
of the fabric, above the warp-threads and below the pile-
threads. The treadle is then put to work, the alternate
———s eS lee
OF GREAT BRITAIN. 203
threads of the warp raised, and the shuttle again thrown ;
by which a shoot-thread is thrown over the pile-threads,
and also over one-half of the warp-threads; the wire be-
comes thus, as it were, woven into the substance of the
fabric. ‘Two more traverses of the shoot are then made,
passing alternately under and over the warp-threads in
the usual way, but not interfering with the pile-threads.
Another wire is then laid in, below all the pile-threads
and above all the warp-threads, and this is secured by
subsequent shoot-threads, as in the first case.
We have thus a very small portion of woven silk, with
two brass wires inserted among it; and bya most delicate
and difficult operation, these wires are removed by the
same operation which produces the raised pile. Each wire
is nearly a semicylinder in form, having along its upper
surface a carefully constructed groove ; and along this
groove the weaver passes the sharp edge of a cutting in-
strument called a ¢revat, thereby severing the pile-threads
in his progress. It necessarily follows from this operation
that two ends of each thread are thus loosened, and these
ends, being afterwards brushed up and dressed, constitute
a portion of the pile, sufficiently long to hide completely
the woven fabric beneath. ‘Two wires are employed, be-
cause if one only were used, the pile-threads would be-
come disarranged when it was removed. When the
liberated wire has been again inserted, and three shoots
thrown to secure it, the second line of loops is cut and
the second wire removed ; and so on during the weaving
of the whole length. The slowness and delicacy of this
branch of manufacture may be judged from the fact that
forty or fifty insertions of the grooved wire are made in
the space of one inch, the loops of the pile being cut an
K 2
204 TEXTILE MANUFACTURES
equal number of times. In addition to the other compli-
cations, the weaver has to use two shoot-threads, and
consequently two shuttles ; for the shoot thrown imme-
diately after the insertion of the wire is stouter than the
two following. Mr. Porter thus speaks of the uninter-
mitting carefulness required in the succession of opera-
tions on the part of the weaver :—‘‘ The use of the trevat
in cutting the pile calls for a certain amount of skilfulness
or sleight of hand, only to be fully acquired through care
and after long practice, while the minutest deviation from
the proper line in performing this part of the process
would infallibly injure, if even it did not destroy, the
goods; and the movements to be made throughout the
entire operation are so numerous, and require such con-
stant changing of the hand from one action to another,
that the weaver is greatly and unavoidably retarded in
his progress. It is considered to amount to a very good
day’s work when as much as one yard of plain velvet has
been woven. For this the workman is usually paid five
times the price charged for weaving gros-de-Naples.”
It is at the option of the manufacturer to give to the
velvet a greater or less degree of richness, by the close-
ness or number of the pile-threads; since the woven
fabrie beneath will be more or less completely hidden
according to the thickness or fulness of the pile. Some-
times striped velvets are made; and these owe their pe~
culiar appearance to some of thepile-threads being left
uncut. The number of threads thus left depends on the
width of the stripe; and it follows, from the nature of
the arrangement, that the stripe runs cross-way of the
velvet, or in the direction of the shoot.
ee Se
ae ee.
= OF GREAT BRITAIN. 205
CHAPTER VII.
LACE AND BOBBIN-NET MANUFACTURES.
Ir the fair ladies who wear veils, ‘ cardinal capes,’ scarfs,
collars, borders, quillings, and edgings of British lace,
could know the vast amount of inventive skill, of compli-
cated machinery, and of patient endurance involved in
the production of these articles, they would see how
largely the well-being of thousands depends on the fluc-
tuations of ‘ fashion,’ and would perhaps marvel how such
fabrics could be sold at such a price as the modern market
indicates.
We shall perhaps be correct in saying that those who,
from their sex and the form of their attire, have most
concern with lace as a material for ornamental dress, are
seldom in a condition to decide whether lace is in our
own day made by machinery or by hand ; or how far the
two are combined. And there is good reason why this
may be the case; for almost every year presents some
new adaptation of mechanism, some new order of pro-
cesses, by which a pattern is produced that could before
only result from the needle of the embroiderer. In some
cases the imitation is so exact, that a close inspection is
necessary to determine the mode of production ; while in
others the machine produces a new pattern altogether,
rather than an imitation of an old one worked by hand.
206 TEXTILE MANUFACTURES
But before we conduct the reader to the busy lace-
making world of Nottingham, where bobbin-net lace may
be said to form the staple product, it will be necessary to
pay a little attention to that which was formerly called
lace, when no such article as bebbin-net had yet been
heard of. The connection between it and the modern
manufacture is in every way remarkable.
The real lace, such as was worn by the dowagers of the
last century, is formed principally of flax thread, and is
wholly worked by hand, not only in the decorative parts,
but in the mesh-work ground itself. The bobbin-net of
modern times is made of cotton thread ; the meshes being”.
made wholly by machinery; and the figured device Gf
any) being effected sometimes by the same machine and
at the same time as the ground, and sometimes by a: kind
of embroidery or tambour-work. ‘The silk net, such as
the material of which black veils are sometimes made, is,
as its name imports, made of sik thread, and is formed
by machinery very nearly on the same principle as
bobbin-net.
At what period and in what country this elegant ma-
terial was originally first wrought for dress cannot perhaps
be easily determined. It has been supposed that Mary
de’ Medici was the first who brought lace into France
from Venice, where, and in the neighbouring states of
Italy, lace seems to have been long previously worn. It
is recorded that lace-making was introduced into this
country by some refugees from Flanders, who settled near
Cranfield, now a village on the west side of Bedfordshire,
and adjoining Buckinghamshire; and it has been sup-
posed that the first kind so made in England was that
which is called Brussels point, the net-work being made
’ OF GREAT BRITAIN. 207
by bone bobbins on a pillow, and the pattern and sprigs
being worked with the needle.
The working of hand-made or ‘ pillow-lace’ may be
E thus briefly described :—The lace-maker sits on a stool or
chair, and places a hard cushion on her lap. The de-
sired pattern is sketched upon a piece of parchment,
which is then laid down upon the cushion; and she in-
serts a number of pins through the parchment into the
cushion, in places determined by the pattern. She is
also provided with a number of small bobbins, on which
threads are wound ; fine thread being used for making
the meshes or net, and a coarser kind, called gimp or
gymp, for working the device. The work is begun at
the upper part of the cushion by tying together the
threads in pairs, and each pair is attached to one of the
pins thrust through the cushion. The threads are then
twisted one round another in various ways, according to
_ the pattern, the bobbins serving as handles as well as for
store of material, and the pins serving as knots or fixed
i
' points, or centres, round which the threads may be
twisted. The pins inserted in the cushion at the com-
mencement are merely to hold the threads; but as each
little mesh is made in the progress of the working, other
pins are inserted, to prevent the threads from untwisting ;
_ and the device on the parchment shows where these in-
sertions are to oecur.
Such is the simple principle, modified according to the
_ pattern about to be produced, on which ‘ pillow-lace’ is
_ made; and it is astonishing how many females have been
_ dependent for their subsistence’ on this occupation.
Throughout the midland counties, especially Bedford,
_ Buckingham, and Northampton, almost every town and
208 TEXTILE MANUFACTURES
village exhibits this domestic branch of manufacture ; but
so greatly has it suffered by the competition of the Not-
tingham lace, that it would perhaps be difficult now to
say what is the number of persons thus employed. Ina
petition presented to Queen Adelaide in 1830, it was
stated that a hundred and twenty thousand persons were
dependent on the pillow-lace manufacture, and were re-
duced to an extremely low rate of earnings ; but it is sup-
posed that the number has been since then greatly re-
duced. Mr. Slater (in M‘Culloch’s ‘Commercial Dic-
tionary’), after speaking of an improved pattern of
pillow-lace introduced about the year 1800, says, ‘¢‘ From
that time to 1812, the improvement and consequent suc-
cess were astonishing and unprecedented. At Honiton,
in Devonshire, the manufacture had arrived at that per-
fection, was so tasteful in the design, and so delicate and
beautiful in the workmanship, as not to be excelled even
by the best specimens of Brussels lace. During the
late war veils of this lace were sold in London at from
twenty to a hundred guineas: they are now (1831) sold
at from eight to fifteen guineas. The effects of the com-
petition of machinery, however, were about this time
felt ; and in 1815 the broad laces began to be superseded.
by the new manufacture. The pillow-lace trade has
since been gradually dwindling into insignificance.”
Here then we come to the point of connection between
pillow-lace and machine-lace: we see that the former
thirty or forty years back from the present time was in
its zenith ; and we have now to watch the steps whereby
that system was produced which has exhibited such won-
derful results at Nottingham.
Nottingham is the centre of the cotton hosiery district,
OF GREAT BRITAIN. 209
as Leicester is of the worsted hosiery, and Derby of the
silk. In all three varieties, the weaving (if it may be so
termed) of the stockings is effected through the instru-
mentality of the ‘stocking-frame,’ one of the most sin-
gular machines belonging to our textile manufactures ;
and it was through the medium of this frame that machi-
nery first became applied to the making of a material
which should imitate lace. A stocking, it would be seen
on a little examination, is formed by a series of loops, in
which a long and continuous thread is passed successively
through loops or eyes into which it is temporarily thrown ;
whereas lace, whether made on the pillow or by machi-
nery, results from a twisting of one thread round another.
It is said to have been about the year 1770 that one
Hammond, a frame-work knitter (which is the technical
name for a stocking-maker) at Nottingham, while looking
at a piece of pillow-lace in his wife’s cap, bethought him
of trying whether he could imitate it by a modified action
of his stocking-frame. With what degree of success the
attempt was followed is not clearly stated ; but in all pro-
bability it was more instrumental in spurring on the in-
genuity of others than in effecting the immediate object
desired. From that time Nottingham and its vicinity
became a scene of remarkable bustle and ingenuity ; nu-
merous frame-work knitters being led, by the hope of
pecuniary advantage, to study and improve the capabilities
of their hosiery-frames. By degrees the retail shops ex-
hibited specimens of machine-made lace, so much cheaper
than that made by hand, as to give rise to a progressively
increased demand ; and Nottingham became the nucleus
of an entirely new branch of manufacture.
The great improvement, however, which gave to the
k 3
210 TEXTILE MANUFACTURES
new branch of industry its most extraordinary impulse,
resulted from the inventive ingenuity of Mr. Heathcoat.
. This gentleman constructed a machine, which, from cer-
tain arrangements of its parts, was called a ‘ bobbin
frame’ or machine; and hence has resulted the term
‘bobbin-net.? But Mr. Heatheoat, like many other in-
genious men who have introduced improvements in manu-
factures (among whom Jacquard furnishes a notable in-
stance), was treated roughly for his pains by some of the
workmen ; and he transferred his capital and skill to
Devonshire, where the bobbin-net manufacture soon
attained a high degree of importance.
Mr. Heathcoat, having obtained a patent for his im-
portant improvements about the year 1809, retained the
use of it in a great measure in his own hands till about
the year 1823; when, the patent expiring, the manu-
facture was taken up with an extraordinary degree of
activity by many persons at Nottingham. ‘* A temporary
prosperity,” says Mr. M‘Cullech, ‘‘ shone upon the trade ;
and numerous individuals—clergymen, lawyers, doctors,
and others—readily embarked capital in so tempting a
speculation. Prices fell in proportion as production in-
creased; but the demand was immense; and the Not-
tingham lace-frame became the organ of general supply,
rivalling and supplanting, in plain nets, the most finished
productions of France and the Netherlands.” The
earnings of workmen were quite extraordinary. The
inhabitants of Nottingham look back to that period as to
a sort of golden age, never equalled before or since,
when men could earn wages such as would startle those
unacquainted with the matter. Dr. Ure remarks, that
“Cit was no uncommon thing for an artisan to leave his
OF GREAT BRITAIN. yAG
usual calling, and, betaking himself to a lace-frame, of
which he was part proprietor, realize by working upon it
20s., 30s., nay even 40s. per day. In consequence of
such wonderful gains, Nottingham, the birth-place of this:
new art, with Loughborough, and the adjoining villages,
became the scene of an epidemic mania. Many, though
nearly devoid of mechanical genius or the constructive
talent, tormented themselves night and day with projects
of bobbins, pushers, lockers,’ point-bars, and needles of
every various form, till their minds got permanently be-
wildered. Several lost their senses altogether; and
some, after cherishing visions of wealth, as in the old time
of alchemy, finding their schemes abortive, sank into de-
spair, and committed suicide.”
By degrees the furor subsided, and the bobbin-net ma-
nufacture took its place among those which are of national
importance, but not pre-eminent for lucrative returns.
Competition and superabundant supply, as usual, brought
this about. Various manufacturers and machinists have
from time to time introduced improvements and modifica-
tions of the machine ; and steam-power, which was first
applied to this manufacture in 1816, became gradually
adopted more and more, till the most extraordinary changes
have resulted in the prices of the finished articles. It has
been stated that lace, which was sold by Mr. Heathcoat for
five guineas a yard soon after the taking out of his patent,
can now be equalled at eighteen-pence a yard ; that quill-
ings, as made by a newly-constructed machine in 1810,
and sold at four shillings and sixpence a yard, can now
be not only equalled but excelled for three halfpence a
yard ; and that a certain width of net, which brought
seventeen pounds per piece twenty years ago, is now sold
for seven shillings! There are but few other branches.
912 TEXTILE MANUFACTURES
of our manufactures in which equal vicissitudes have oc-
curred in the same space of time.
The reader will by this time have had ample means
for judging how it is that machine-made lace has done so
much towards extinguishing the old pillow-lace ; and will
be prepared to accompany us in a brief notice of the ma-
nufacture.
In the first place, then, the cotton-thread ,is procured
from the Manchester districts. ‘There are probably a
few cotton-mills at hand, but the main bulk of the mate-
rial employed is furnished by the great Lancashire and
Cheshire firms. Flax-thread is now seldom or never
used for machine-made lace, cotton forming the great
staple, and to that we may confine our attention. The
‘‘ cotton-yarn agents ”’ are perhaps the first parties in the
chain of operations at Nottingham to whom it may be
necessary to refer. They come between the Manchester
spinner and the Nottingham manufacturer, effecting sales
of cotton thread or yarn from the former to the latter.
These agents are in some cases lace-agents also, and effect
sales of the manufactured articles; indeed they occasion-
ally receive a portion of the finished lace as payment for
the thread supplied.
Then comes the ‘manufacturer.’ A bobbin-net ma-
chine is so complex and so costly, that, unlike a common
loom, the actual workman can seldom possess one of his
own; he must be indebted to another man who possesses
capital, for his working implements. In some cases the
capitalist has a large building, containing all the require-
ments and resources of a regular factory, and where the
machines are generally worked by steam-power. In
other cases he may have a large number of machines, but
instead of working them on his own premises, he lets
OF GREAT PRITAIN. 213
them out at so much a day to middle-men called ‘ machine-
holders.’ These machine-holders intervene between the
machine-owners and the workmen, much in the same way
as a householder supplies a link between the house-owner
and the lodger ; he pays rent to the owner, and receives
it back, with a profit, from those who occupy a subordi-
nate position to himself. In such cases as these the ma-
chines are worked by hand-power, since steam-power
only becomes available in a tolerably large building.
Mr. Drinkwater, one of the Factory Commissioners,
who visited Nottingham for the purposes of the Commis-
sion in 1833, after giving a list of the machine-owners,
says :—‘‘ It will be seen by this list that a very large
proportion of them are proprietors of a single machine ;
in this case the owner generally works it himself, and so
far partakes of the character of master and journeyman.
Ji is not uncommon to find one of these costly machines,
which may have occasioned an outlay of 500/. to 1000/.,
within a house but little removed above the degree of a
cottage; but for the most part they are worked in the
attics and upper stories of substantial houses, the lower
parts of which are occupied as shops or lodging-houses.
The centre of the town is not much filled with them ;
but in all the approaches and in the back streets, as well
as in the better houses of the lower town, the incessant
thumping of the machine is heard.”
There are many large bobbin-net factories in and
around Nottingham, presenting all the usual appearances
of ranges of stories, row after row of windows, tall chim-
neys, steam engines, and complex machinery. In some
of these establishments various kinds of net and lace, both
plain and figured, are made. At others, the machines
are employed in the production of fancy net alone, that
214 TEXTILE MANUFACTURES
is, such as are intended to imitate the productions of
hand-labour ; both in the form of wide pieces, and in
that of narrow quillings and borders. In others, again,
the machines are wholly employed in making silk edg-
ings; a great many widths being made at one time, and
then separated by drawing out threads from between
them; some of the machines being able to produce ten
thousand yards of silk edging per week. So it is
throughout Nottingham and its vicinity. Some manufac-
turers undertake the fabrication of one kind of net or
lace, and some another; but there is a general similarity
of proceeding throughout, both in the mode in which the
machines act, and in the preparatory and finishing pro-
cesses to which the lace is subjected.
The reader may now very naturally be desirous of
knowing what kind of a machine it is that produces such
remarkable results. Here we have to state at once that
a thorough comprehension of its action can scarcely by
any possibility be acquired from a written description,
unless accompanied by a large series of illustrative en-
gravings, and studied closely by those who are accus-
tomed to investigate the action of machinery. ‘This is,
of course, quite beyond the present purpose, which re-
lates only to a slight exposition of the general principles
involved.
Let us ask, then, what is it that the machine has to
perform ? It has to entwine threads one around another
in such a way as to form meshes or holes, bounded by a
cireular, a square, a hexagonal, or an octagonal margin,
according to. the pattern. We may make the following
supposition :—Let a number of strings be suspended from
the ceiling of a room in pairs, so that when the two
strings of each pair are twisted round each other by
OF GREAT BRITAIN. 215
hand, they may form half as many ropes as there were
strings. We will further suppose, that after two or three
turns of one string round another, each string is twisted
once round one string of an adjoining pair, and then re-
turned again to its former companion. By this arrange-
ment, each rope would become linked to the adjoining
ropes on either side, and the whole would form a kind of
net-work, presenting holes or meshes bearing some ana-
logy to those of net-lace.
Or we may represent it pictorially, thus :—Here we
[Strings twisted in the manner of the bobbin-net.]
216 TEXTILE MANUFACTURES
have a small number of strings, fixed at one end; and
each string has to be passed diagonally round and be-
tween the others, so as to form knots, links, loops, or
whatever fastenings they may seem most to resemble.
The reader, perhaps, could hardly bring the matter home
to his own mind more clearly than by selecting a few
threads of different colours, fastening them at one end,
and twisting them round one another in a certain definite
and pre-arranged order: he would find that the meshes
produced would bear some slight resemblance to different
kinds of net, according to the manner and the order in
which the successive threads were brought into the twist.
Now it is to effect such convolutions as these that the
machine is employed ; and there is certainly much to call
for admiration in the successful adaptation of parts to this
end. In common weaving, it is well known that the
cross threads pass at right angles over and under the long
thread, passing over and under each thread alternately,
if it be to form a plain material, or passing over several
threads consecutively and under one, if it be to forma
twill. But in the production of net this crossing is at
the same time accompanied by a twist, so that one thread
passes completely round another.
The net-machines are infinitely more complex. There
are several kinds employed by the Nottingham manufac-
turers, and known by the names of the ‘ circular-bolt
machine,’ the ‘ lever-machine,’ &c., according to certain
peculiarities in the mode of action ; but one of these, viz.
the ‘ circular bolt,’ which is more used than any of the
others, will be sufficient for our purpose. It so far bears
an analogy to a common loom that there are warp-threads
stretched in a parallel layer, and weft-threads wound on
OF GREAT BRITAIN. Q17
bobbins which pass between the warp-threads; but be-
yond this point the analogy is very slight indeed. In
common weaving, the warp-threads lie horizontal; here
they are vertical. In the former case, the bobbins are
only few in number; in the latter they amount to hun-
dreds, and even thousands. In the former the bobbin
passes between and among the warp-threads in the direc-
tion of the plane in which the warp lies; in the latter it
passes at right angles to that direction. In the former
there is only one weft-thread, or one bobbin or shuttle,
to many thousand warp-threads ; in the latter, there are
as many separate weft-threads and bobbins as there are
warp-threads.
When we thus speak of ‘ bobbins’ in reference to com-
mon weaving, we depart a little from common nomencla-
ture; for the name of ‘shuttle’ is given to the little
machine which carries the weft-thread: but the analogy
of principle is observable, independent of the technical
terms employed. ‘The shuttle, in common weaving, is a
kind of little boat, containing the weft-thread, wound
upon a pir or axis. But the bobbin of a net-machine is
a most remarkable contrivance. The cotton is first wound
on to a reel, or bobbin, from the form of skeins, by a
winding-engine, of which the principle of action is shown
in the following page, and thence transferred to the ex-
quisite little apparatus of the bobbin-net machine. This
apparatus is so minute that the whole of it, including the
bobbin on which the cotton weft-thread is wound, and the
carriage or frame in which it is placed, is not thicker than
the diameter of the meshes in the net to be made. Very
frequently the thickness is not more than one-thirtieth of
an inch! The bobbin consists of two thin disks of brass,
218 TEXTILE MANUFACTURES
[Winding-engine.]
about an inch and a half in diameter, laid face to face,
with a slight intervening space; and in this minute space
the thread is wound, in quantity about fifty or sixty yards
to each bobbin. The bobbin is then fitted into a kind of
carriage, which conveys it between the threads of the
warp, and at the same time allows the thread to be
unwound from the bobbin: in short, the carriage is to
the bobbin what the little boat of a shuttle is to the
pirn on which the weft-thread is wound.
No less than three thousand six hundred of such bob-
bins as are here described are sometimes used in one
machine! Many of the machines are twenty quarters
wide—that is, fitted to the manufacture of net five yards.
OF GREAT BRITAIN. 219
in width ; and have twenty of these bobbins to the inch.
If the arrangements of such a machine be examined, it
will be seen that the warp-threads are wound on a beam
in the lower part of the machine, from which they ascend
to the upper part. The warp is divided into two parcels
(somewhat in the same manner as the warp of a common
loom by the action of the treadles), and each parcel is
susceptible of a reciprocating motion, alternately to the
right and left. The weft-threads, wound on the bobbins,
are fastened each at one end to the upper part of the
machine; and the bobbins are suspended so as to have a
backward and forward motion between the warp-threads,
like so many clock pendulums, being guided between the
warp-threads by a very curious piece of apparatus called
a ‘comb.’ The principle of action, then, is this :—After
the bobbins have been driven between the respective
warp-threads, the warp is shifted a little on one side, so
that, when the bobbins return, they pass through open-
ings different from those which they traversed in the first
instance ; and by this means the weft-thread, unwinding
from each bobbin in the course of its movement, becomes
twisted round one of the warp-threads. After this has
been repeated two or three times, the comb which carries
the bobbins is itself shifted to and fro laterally, by which
the bobbins are brought opposite to openings between the
warp-threads different from those to which they were be-
fore opposed. Herein lies the whole principle. According
as the front layer of warp, or the hinder layer, or the
comb carrying the bobbins, are shifted to and fro late-
rally, so does the weft-thread, as it becomes unwound
_ from the bobbins, twist round the warp-threads during
the passage of the bobbins across; a shifting, in one or
220 TEXTILE MANUFACTURES
other of several different ways, being effected immediately
after each traverse of the bobbin. After a certain num-
ber of twistings have been effected, a series of points be-
come inserted between the warp-threads, and temporarily
hold up the knotted twists so as to form the meshes of the
net.
It has been often said, and truly, that the bobbin-net
machine is one of the most complicated which the inge-
nuity of man has ever devised ; and it may therefore well
be supposed that nothing more than the bare principle
can be here exhibited. Perhaps it may assist the reader
if we carry out our former supposition a little further.
Let a series of strings be suspended from the ceiling in
two rows, with the lower ends of each row fastened to a
horizontal bar; and let a number of small pendulums be
suspended between the strings, and enabled to oscillate
to and fro between them, ‘Then, if after each traverse
of the pendulums between the stretched threads, the
rows, one or both, of threads be shifted a little on one
side, so that the pendulums may return through openings
different from those which they before traversed, we
should have a system of movements somewhat analogous
to those in the machine; and the strings by which the
pendulums were suspended would be found to twist
round the stretched vertical strings. If we further sup-
pose that each row of strings is capable of being shifted
independent of the other, and that the pendulum strings
be fastened to a shifting bar near the ceiling, we might
imitate in a rough way the series of movements by which
net is made.
Not only is plain net made by these movements of the
machine, but figured net also. In plain nets, all the
OF GREAT BRITAIN. 221
bobbins are moved similarly at one time; but in fancy
nets, some are stationary, some pass between the warp-
threads, some are shifted laterally to the distance of one
mesh, some to the distance of two or three meshes ; some
move to the right, some to the left; the warp-threads,
too, instead of being divided into two parcels only, are
divided into several, each of which is susceptible of the
lateral movement independent of the others. It is by
modifications of these lateral movements that all the
numerous varieties of machine-made lace or net are pro-
duced ; and if this fact be borne in mind, the principle
of the machine becomes to a certain degree explicable.
It is by means of levers that the various parcels of warp
and bobbin threads are shifted laterally, after each tra-
verse of the bobbins ; and the cut in page 222 shows one of
the modern contrivances for governing the movements of
the levers. This is an application of the Jacquard appa-
ratus to the bobbin-net machine. We have already spoken
of the mode of making the cards for this apparatus, and
in the following page show one method of applying it.
Near the end of the bobbin-net machine is fixed the
pentagonal bar here represented, each side of which is
pierced with as many holes as there are pins or levers
above, seen at the top of the cut. A number of oblong
pieces of card, from two to five hundred, are connected
together in an endless chain, and so arranged as to size,
that when one of the cards is laid on one side of the pen-
tagon, and the latter made to revolve, the whole series
will be brought successively in contact with the pentagon,
each one lying temporarily on the flat upper side. LEvery
card is pierced with holes, varying in number and dispo-
sition according to the pattern of the lace to be produced,
929 TEXTILE MANUFACTURES ¢
[Jacquard Apparatus, }
but never more.in number than the pins or levers above ;
and these holes are so cut as to coincide exactly with
those in the pentagon. Suppose, then, the pentagon ‘to
have an up and down motion, so as to be brought in con-
OF GREAT BRITAIN. 923
taet with the pins, what would result? Wherever a hole
occurs in the card, it permits the pin opposite to it to
penetrate into the pentagon ; but where a blank occurs,
by the card not being perforated opposite to a particular
pin, the pin cannot enter the pentagon, but is driven
upwards. Now the warp and bobbin threads, and other
apparatus of the machine, are so connected with these
pins, that when one of the pins is driven upwards, some
part of the thread apparatus is shifted laterally ; and it
hence follows that the disposition of the holes in the
cards determines the order and number of the shiftings
of the threads. It bears a strong analogy to the action
of a barrel-organ or a musical snufi-box, where the number
and disposition of the pins on the barrel determine the
pipes and the springs which shall be sounded. The
number of cards employed depends on the number of
successive movements requisite to form one complete spe-
cimen of the pattern.
Whether the article be plain broad net, fancy broad
net, sprigged net, plait net, wire-ground net, quilling
net, or edging, the movements of the machine by which
it is made depend pretty much on the same principles,
and may therefore all be alluded to in connection. But
in noticing the subsequent processes, it will be desirable
to take some one kind asa standard; and for this pur-
pose it will be well to select a specimen of ‘ piece-goods,”
such as a collar or a cape, in which all the figures are
worked by hand on a piece of plain net.
After a piece of plain net has left the machine, it
undergoes the process of ‘ gassing,’ or singeing, for the
removal of the hairy filaments from the cotton. ‘There
are some firms in Nottingham‘which confine their atten-
924 TEXTILE MANUFACTURES
tion to this operation only. The gassing-machine is a
very beautiful contrivance, in which the manufactured
article is drawn between two rollers, and exposed, as it
passes, to the action of a large number of minute blazes
of gas, which remove the little adherent filaments without
scorching or burning the net.
Supposing, as we do, the specimen to be a piece of
plain net which is to be embroidered by hand, the net
next receives a slight printing, with some coloured pig-
ment, of the pattern which is to be worked upon it.
There are in Nottingham a small number of artists (for
so they are, or ought to be) who design patterns for the
lace-workers, and cut them out on wooden blocks, pre-
cisely as those for the floor-cloth manufacture. This is
evidently an employment in which taste and a know-
ledge of the forms of natural objects are required ; one,
in fact, which the establishment of a School of Design is
especially calculated to assist. The lace is generally
carried to the house of the ‘designer and stamper,’ who
stamps the pattern very slightly on it. In the instance
of a cape or collar, or any article of definite shape, the
stamp gives the shape and size of the article, as well as
the figures with which it is to be decorated.
When the stamper has imprinted on the net the out-
lines of the device, a ‘ pattern-setter’ decides on the
manner in which the pattern shall be filled up. For
instance, if a leaf form part of the pattern, the stamper
only gives the outline of the leaf, and it rests with the
pattern-setter to determine how the needle of the em-
broideress shall fill up the device.
We must next transfer our attention to one of the
humble homes of the numerous and lowly-paid ‘ lace-
OF GREAT BRITAIN. 225
runners,’ The term embroidery does not seem to be
much used in connection with the Nottingham lace-trade,
most of those who work on net with the needle being
termed ‘lace-runners.? Each workwoman has a frame,
on which the net is stretched out horizontally, at a height
of about three feet from the ground. She sits on a stool
or chair, places her left hand under the stretched net, to
keep it in a right position for working, and with her
right hand works the pattern with needle and thread in
every part where the stamper has imprinted a device.
The needle is inserted between and among the meshes
of the net, and stitches of greater or less length taken,
until there is a body of thread laid in sufficient to mark
the device conspicuously. ‘This working round of the
outline is called ‘running,’ while the filling-up of the
interior parts is termed either ‘ fining’ or ‘ open-working,’
according as the original meshes of the net are brought
to a smaller or a larger size by the action of the needle.
How, by the work of the needle, the meshes of the net
may be made larger or smaller, will be easily compre-
hended by the one sex, and must be taken for granted
by the other.
It is sad work to see how continuously these poor
females must labour before they can earn a small pit-
tance. Little do those who see in the attractive shop-
windows of London the beautiful veils and capes which
Nottingham now produces, imagine how much wearisome
and ill-paid labour has been concerned in their produc-
tion. ‘The earnings of the lace-runners do not, on an
average, much exceed a half-penny an hour; for the
weekly earnings for long days’ work are seldom much
above three shillings, and are sometimes below it.
L
926 TEXTILE MANUFACTURES
The mode in which this embroidery business is trans-
acted is often thus:—A person takes from a manufac-
turer as much work as twenty, or perhaps fifty, females
can embroider ; and she devotes as many rooms as her
house can afford to the reception of the workers, who
pay to her a trifling sum (out of their trifling earnings)
for the use of the room. They alk receive their work
from the person who rents the house, who pays them for
their labour, deducting a rent for the frame-room, and a
further trifle for some other item. To eke out their
earnings, the women in one room often have their meals
in common, making up, for a few pence, a hash or stew
sufficient to dine seven or eight. There they sit, for
twelve or fourteen hours a day, with the head stooping
over their work, plying the needle, and driving off dull
thoughts as well as they may by singing (for there is said
to be much singing among the Nottingham workpeople),
It is not unfrequent for them to say :—‘‘ If the great
ladies of London knew how much work we have to do to
their veils and capes for a shilling, they would pay
better.”” But, poor things, these embroiderers do not
know how complex, in such a country as England, are
the circumstances which regulate the wages of labour :
they would perhaps find that in reality the ‘ great ladies
of London” have but little direct influence on the rate of
the seamstresses’ earnings. Inquiries, which have recently
occupied much public attention, have shown that it is
not only in lace-embroidery that seamstresses have to
bestow many hours of labour for a very insufficient re-
muneration.
Some of the articles in lace are decorated by ‘tam-
bouring’ instead of ‘lace-running.’ ‘This is done in
OF GREAT BRITAIN. aay
. frames similar to the others, and by females in a similar
rank of life; but a very small hook. is used instead of a
needle, by which a thread is wound as a kind of chain
about and among the threads of the net.
After the lace-runners have worked the collar, cape,
veil, or other net-lace article, it is taken back to the
manufacturer, who then employs ‘ lace-menders’ to ex-
amine every piece, and mend, with needle and thread,
every defective mesh in the net, whether produced in the
machine or by any subsequent accident. ‘This is done
so skilfully, and the form of the mesh so closely imitated,
that the mended part can scarcely be detected except by
a practised eye. The females engaged at ‘ lace-mending’
earn much higher wages than the lace-runners, on account
of the greater skill required.
The bleaching is an important part of the net manu-
facture, and is carried on by several firms in the neigh-
-bourhood of Nottingham. ‘The net, after going through
the greater part of the processes, has acquired a tint
nearly as dark as brown holland; and it is the office of
the bleacher to give it the snowy whiteness which adds
sso much to the beauty of the material. This bleaching
is effected by a series of processes, such as scouring,
-exposure to the action of bleaching liquid, drying, &c.
Usually the bleached article is wrung or pressed, and
then hung up in a hot room to dry; but a curious mode
-of applying centrifugal power is sometimes adopted. In
this method the net is wrapped round in a kind of coil,
between two concentric copper cylinders, the inner one
of which is perforated with holes. The apparatus is then
made to rotate with extraordinary velocity, so great even
as a thousand times in a minute ; and the cenizifugal force
Ine
2238 TEXTILE MANUFACTURES
thus engendered drives out the water from the damp net
through the holes in the cylinder, thus leaving the mate-
rial nearly dry.
If the net or lace is to be black, instead of white, it is
dyed instead of bleached.
After being again examined to see whether any further
mending is required, the net next goes to be ‘ dressed,’
and this takes us to the work-rooms of another class of
persons. The ‘lace-dressing rooms’ of Nottingham are
sometimes two hundred feet in length. Long frames ex-
tend from end to end of the shop or room, capable of
being adjusted to any width by a screw, and provided
with a row of pins round the edge. The net or lace is
first dipped in a mixture of gum, paste, and water, wrung
out, and stretched upon the frame by means of the pins
or studs. While on the frame it is rubbed well with
flannels, to equalize the action of the stiffening material
in different parts, and then left to dry im a warm room.
It is to the nature of the solution used that the different
kinds of net and lace owe their different degrees of
stiffness.
If the manufactured article be a cape, a collar, or a
veil, it is not till the present stage in the proceedings
that it is cut from the piece. The stamping, the em-
broidering, the gassing, the bleaching, the dressing—all
are done while the piece is yet whole, several yards in
length ; but when it approaches thus far towards com-
pletion, the material is cut up, according to the size and
shape given by the stamp, and a ‘ pearl edge,’ or some-.
thing similar, is sewn on by hand round every edge.
After a process of rolling, pressing, ticketing, &c., the
article is finished.
OF GREAT BRITAIN. 229
The kind of article which we have selected as a speci-
men or standard comprises within the range of its manu-
facture nearly all the processes involved in the other
branches of the lace-trade ; and will therefore serve to
give an idea of them all. As regards the question, to
what degree hand-labour is employed upon the different
varieties, the following will be a kind of summing-up.
Tn a ‘ plain net’ the whole fabric is made at the machine.
In ‘ sprigged net,’ the groundwork and a portion of every
sprig are made at the machine, and the outline of every
sprig is then worked by hand. In ‘ fancy broad-net’ the
device as well as the groundwork are made at the ma-
chine. In ‘plait-net’ the same thing is observable, and
also in ‘ tatting-net.’ In ‘edging’ and lace for borders
the device is now very generally worked by the machine,
but in some varieties it is partly put in by hand. In
‘ piece-goods,’ such as capes, collars, and veils, the device
is almost wholly worked by hand, a very small proportion
being effected by the Jacquard appendage to the lace-
machine. As an exemplification of the manner in which
the machine and the hand imitate each other’s produc-
tions, we give in the following page representations of
two specimens, one of which (a) was wholly worked at the
machine, and the other (0) wholly figured by hand on a
machine-made net, excepting the ‘pearl edge,’ which,
after being made at the machine, was sewn on by hand.
We stated, in a former part of this chapter, that the
machine-holder, whether owner or not, buys thread from
the Manchester cotton-spinner, and then works it up into
net or lace. He does not do anything further to the
material, but sells it at once, either to other manufac-
turers, or to agents and dealers. These other manufac-
230 TEXTILE MANUFACTURES
RIN SLOVAK Dk
FanSite es
B, SOQ
6 see a Pes
[Specimen of Run Lace.]}
turers carry the material through all the subsequent ope-
rations, employing and paying for the services of the
gassers, the bleachers, the dyers, the dressers, the stamp-
ers, the menders, and the embroiderers. Some of these
manufacturers only undertake the finishing of the plain
‘goods, while others confine themselves to the fancy or
embroidery department. Some are ‘ cap-manufacturers ;’
OF GREAT BRITAIN. 231
that is, they procure the lace from the machine-workers,
dress and finish it, cut it up, and employ a number of
women to make it into caps. Lastly, agents, sent by the
great wholesale houses from London and elsewhere, visit
Nottingham periodically, and make their purchases in
lace and net ; for Nottingham is the market for this com-
modity, whether made there or elsewhere.
This may suffice as a brief sketch of a manufacture
which may be said to have had no existence in the be-
ginning of the present century, and of which Mr. Felkin
(the greatest authority in all matters relating to the
bobbin-net trade) made the following estimate in 1831 :
he calculated that the capital employed in Manchester
in spinning thread for the bobbin-net manufacturers
amounted to nearly a million sterling; and that the
capital employed by the latter in various ways exceeded
two millions sterling; that the number of persons em-
ployed in spinning, making, winding, embroidering,
mending, &ec. for the bobbin-net work, amounted to
more than two hundred thousand; that the raw mate-
rial (cotton and silk) used was worth about 150,000/.
annually, in the state as imported; that this value was
increased to 540,000/. when spun into thread; and
that the final value, when manufactured into net, and
ready for sale, was nearly two millions sterling per
annum, or, including the wages of the embroiderers em-
ployed in different parts of England, more than three
millions sterling! These results are certainly extra-
ordinary, and could have been but little anticipated
by the inventors of the machine, sanguine as they
might be.
232 TEXTILE MANUFACTURES OF GREAT BRITAIN.
Such, then, are the broad features which distinguish
the textile manufactures. Such are the operations which
give life and bustle to the districts of the north ; which
have caused the erection of four or five thousand fac-
tories ; which have called forth the skill and energies of
machinists and engine-makers, which give employment to
half a million persons within the factories, and two or
three times as many out of them. And all for what ?—
merely for the manufacture of materials afterwards to be
applied to the purposes of clothing! It is true that our
own population is not the only one thus provided for.
Every part of the world, to a greater or less extent, exhi-.
bits some or other of these products of our national in-
dustry. The South American looks eagerly for the
gaudy-coloured cottons of England ; and the Asiatic, the
African, the Polynesian——so far as fiscal and legislative
arrangements will permit—find by degrees that the textile
productions of this country, despite the hazard and ex-
pense of a long voyage, are fitted to become the materials
for part, at least, of their customary dress. We need not
travel out of our way to claim for England the character
of being the great workshop for the whole world. The
world is large enough for all; and we may sufficiently
admire and marvel at what this small corner of Europe
has achieved, without depreciating the achievements of
other countries.
THE END.
/
London: Printed by Wirtt1am CLowss and Sons, Stamford Street.
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