The cotton manufacture had its origin in the East, where the cotton plant is indigenous, and where the climate renders a light and absorbent fabric a suitable clothing for the people. It has in consequence been long established over every part of Asia, although it is only in India that it is carried on extensively, with a view to foreign exchange.
Arrian mentions cotton cloth among the commodities which the Romans brought from India; but the quantity imported by them was inconsiderable, arising from the preference which they gave to woollen clothing. Dr Robertson remarks, that the difference between the cargoes imported from India in ancient and in modern times, appears to have arisen, not from any diversity in the nature of the goods prepared for sale in that country, but from variety in the tastes or in the wants of the nations with which they have successively traded.
The implements used by the Indians in the different processes of the cotton manufacture, from the cleaning of the wool to its conversion into the finest muslin, may be purchased for the value of a few shillings, and are of so rude and simple a construction as to be evidently the invention of a very early period. With the exception of the loom, none of them deserves the name of a machine, or displays the slightest mechanical ingenuity. They spin the yarn upon the distaff; and yet, with all the advantages which we in this country derive from machinery, we have never been able to equal, either in fineness or quality, the yarn which is produced by means of this primitive instrument. The well managed use of the finger and thumb of the Indian spinner, patiently and carefully applied in the formation of the thread, and the moisture at the same time communicated to it, are found to have the effect of incorporating the fibres of the cotton more perfectly than can be accomplished by our most improved machines.
The loom is composed of a few sticks or reeds, which the Indian carries about with him, and puts up in the fields under the shade of a tree, or at the side of his cottage. He digs a hole large enough to contain his legs, and the lower part of the "geer," and fastens the balances to some convenient branch over head. Two loops underneath the geer, in which he inserts his great toes, serve as treadles, and he employs the shuttle, formed like a large netting needle, but of a length somewhat exceeding the breadth of the cloth, as "battoon," using it alternately to draw through the weft and strike it up. The reed is the only part of the weaving apparatus which approaches, in the perfection of its construction, to the instruments we use. The loom has no beam, and the warp is laid out upon the ground the whole length of the piece of cloth. The weavers live entirely in villages, as they could not, if shut up in towns, work in this manner. Upon this rude machine, worked in the way we have mentioned, the Indians produce those muslins which have long been such objects of curiosity, from the exquisite beauty and fineness of their texture.
It is probable that the whole of the implements which we have just described existed as we now find them before the people of India were divided into castes. The transmission of the same employment from father to son, which, although not specially enjoined by the Hindu code, is the invariable practice in India, while it has the effect of conveying unimpaired the knowledge acquired in any art, tends to check its farther advancement. It is the opinion of Mr Rickards, who so ably advocated the interests of the natives of India in the discussion in parliament on the renewal of the Company's charter (1814), that latterly this form of society, with all its dependencies, habits, and restraints, has been held together chiefly by the oppression of the fiscal exactions, the want of a free trade; and the consequent universal poverty of the people. In support of this opinion, he refers to what the Hindu population of Calcutta and Bombay have achieved in the pursuits of commerce. We trust, however, that we may now look forward to the speedy abolition of this system, so much opposed to all development of talent, and which, by reducing man to the condition of a machine, has paralyzed the exertions and arrested the improvement of the people of India.
To the same cause, however, which has thus precluded invention, is to be attributed that dexterity in his particular employment, which the Indian artisan possesses. From the earliest age he learns to spin and weave under the direction of his father, and having no hope or desire of advancement in any other line, he gains, through constant practice, that wonderful skill, which may thus be considered almost as a family inheritance. To be able to manage his ill-constructed loom, even in the production of ordinary fabrics, he is obliged to acquire such a sleight of hand, that it is not surprising if, out of the multitude trained in this manner, a few should be found capable of producing those muslins which are said, when spread upon the grass, to appear like the gossamer web. From the superiority of these goods, and from their retaining their appearance longer than European muslins, it has been supposed that the cotton of which they are made is of better quality than any known to the European manufacturers. This, however, is a mistake; there is no cotton in India of a quality superior to the best sea island. The excellence which these muslins possess is to be ascribed wholly to the skilful tact of the workman in the processes of spinning and weaving.
But how dearly is this excellence of art purchased by the sacrifice of the better faculties of man! How different is the effect produced by this branch of industry upon the people and circumstances of India, from that produced by it upon the people and circumstances of England! In the East, the cotton manufacture has probably been carried on as extensively as at present, for some thousand years; yet it has given birth to no inventions, to no increase of national riches, to no improvement in the condition of the labouring class. The scanty pittance which the poor artisan gains from his labour is spent by him in his sustenance almost as soon as it is received. In England, the same manufacture has not existed for more than seventy years, yet in that short time it has given rise to some of the happiest efforts of ingenuity; it has been of incalculable use in promoting mechanical skill; and the demand for additional power created by the extension of its processes, has led to the perfecting of the steam-engine, the most successful attempt which man has ever made to bend the properties of matter to his will. How many canals, bridges, and rail-roads have been formed for the circulation of its products; how many new cities, and what an increase of population, has it called into existence; how many new agricultural markets has it been the cause of establishing; and how mightily has it thus increased the comforts and the means of enjoyment of the community!
In India, this manufacture has not only failed to improve the condition of the people—it does not appear even to have afforded to those engaged in it the means of accumulating the capital necessary to carry it on; for both the price of the material and the wages of the workmen, in place of being supplied by the master manufacturer, are advanced by the purchaser of the goods.
Thus, the East India Company, who until lately were in the habit of making a great part of their remittances in manufactures, actually advanced, through their Residents, the funds required to enable the workmen to produce the goods. To assist this officer, they placed under him a number of European servants, and an establishment of native clerks and of persons termed Peons, whose duty it was to watch and control the weavers. The resident, when he had to provide an investment, entered into a contract for the goods, either with the native merchants acting as brokers, or with the master manufacturer or headsman, and these parties made subsidiary agreements with the weavers. The resident then advanced money for carrying on the work to the chief contractors, who distributed it to the different classes of workmen, and were responsible for the delivery of the manufactured goods at the Company's warehouse, in the state stipulated in the contract. The commercial resident never interfered with the arrangements or operations of the contractors, except when complaints were made of delay or fraud, arising from the interference of other brokers, or contractors acting for other parties than the Company, and then a host of Peons were sent forth by him to intimidate, and, if necessary, to coerce the weaver. The resident, when not engaged in providing goods for the Company's investment, was authorized to employ the weavers on his own account. This greatly increased his influence over those people, who having him constantly among them, as head of the little colony, and being unable at any time to move a step without his advances, felt themselves in a state of entire dependence upon him. Thus, although the brokers, who made contracts for the Portuguese and others, were generally willing to give higher prices than those which the resident arbitrarily fixed, the weavers, however they might be disposed to elude his orders, or to outwit him in his operations, never ventured openly to dispute his will. Various laws and regulations were enacted to protect these poor people in their transactions with the Company's agents, but where the sovereign was the chief trader, and a party in the cause, the impartial administration of justice was not to be looked for.
For some years past, the East India Company have ceased to remit so large a part of their revenue as formerly in manufactured produce. So far, however, as they still do so, the goods are provided in the manner we have pointed out; and the same mode is followed by private merchants, trading on their own account, for the purpose of obtaining goods for export.
Common muslins are made in every village throughout the peninsula. Orme says, "When not near the high road or a principal town, it is difficult to find a village in which every man, woman, and child, is not employed in making a piece of cloth."
The very fine muslins to which we have alluded, of such exquisite texture as to have been poetically designated "webs of woven wind," are made at Dacca. They were intended chiefly for the use of the potentates of the country, who kept agents to superintend the workmen employed in the manufacture; but since the assumption by the Company of the territories of these Indian princes, the demand has fallen off, and a considerable part of the population have betaken themselves to the cultivation of indigo. The cotton from which the muslins of Dacca are woven, grows in a district of not more than forty miles in length by three in breadth, and in such limited quantity as never to have become an article of commerce.
The long cloths and fine pallicuts are made chiefly within the presidency of Madras, the coarse piece goods and pallicuts in Surat, the finest calicoes at Masulipatam, and tablecloths of a superior quality at Patna. Each district varies from the others in the nature of its productions, as may be seen from the different denominations of cotton goods to be found in every investment coming from India.
An apprehension has sometimes been expressed that the inhabitants of India, in possession of the raw material, may obtain a knowledge of our machinery, and, by combining with its peculiar advantages their cheaper labour and superior manual dexterity, may be enabled to undersell us to such a degree as to ruin and put an end to our manufacture; but in the state of the people of India there are circumstances which render this impossible, without a change being first produced upon their moral condition, their institutions, and their habits. The training which makes the Indian, with such imperfect tools, able to perform his work so well, disqualifies him from doing it in any other way, or with any other implements than those to which he has been familiarized from his infancy. The attempt to introduce our machinery into India is, however, now making. A spinning mill has
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1 Since this article was sent to the press, we have received a communication from Moorshedabad on the present state of the Dacca muslin manufacture, accompanied by a sample of the Dacca cotton wool, and some skeins of the yarn spun from it. The wool is equal in fineness to the very best sea island, of still stronger staple, but so short as to preclude the possibility of being spun by our machines. The District in which the cotton is grown is stated to be periodically overflowed. The yarn is of different grists, the coarsest greatly finer than the highest number spun in this country (No. 250), while the finest has been rated by an experienced spinner to whom we have shown it, to be of a fineness not under 300. It is beyond our conception how this yarn can be spun by the distaff and spindle, or woven afterwards by any machinery. been built at Calcutta, and although the private company which commenced the undertaking has failed, the work continues to be carried on. There are at present nearly seven hundred persons employed in the mill, engaged at the rate of about seven shillings each per month; but those people, it is found, cannot continue to work beyond a few hours at a time, and a succession of hands to carry on the operations through the day is required... To train them, in such circumstances, to dexterity and skill, is impossible; and, accordingly, the yarn spun is not only of inferior quality, but, even with the low nominal wages, costs so much as to disqualify it for competition with the yarn of this country.
The extensive introduction of machinery into Great Britain has meanwhile, by reducing the price of our manufactures, enabled us not only to maintain a successful competition with the India goods at home, but to send cottons to a great amount to India itself. A complete revolution has in consequence taken place in the nature of the exports from that country to Europe, and indeed to all the markets on this side of the Cape of Good Hope. When we first got possession of India; our investments at home were principally (in point of value almost entirely) composed of manufactured produce. They are now in a great measure made up of the produce of the soil; indigo, cotton wool, raw silk, saltpetre, &c., &c. It might have been expected that this change would have produced most distressing effects upon the crowded population of a country such as India, which in all ages has been a great manufacturing and exporting community; but no materially unfavourable consequences have flowed from it. In India every manufacturer is at the same time a husbandman. When not employed to make a web, he supports his family by agricultural labour. It thus happened, that in proportion as the demand for goods for export declined, the natives, without difficulty, and without that distress which generally attends a change of employment in other countries, were able to direct their attention more and more to agriculture, and the result has hitherto been rather an improvement in their condition than otherwise.
The following tables show the difference of the cost of cotton yarn produced in India and in Great Britain, and the progressive increase of the export of yarn from this country to India.
### Comparative Statement of the Cost of English and Indian Cotton Yarn in the Years 1812 and 1830, furnished by Mr Kennedy of Manchester, to the Committee of Parliament on East India Affairs.
| English Cotton Yarn | Indian Cotton Yarn | |---------------------|--------------------| | Hanks per day per spindle | Price of Cotton and Waste per lb | Labour per lb | Cost per lb | Cost per lb | Labour per lb | Price of Cotton and Waste per lb | | 1812 | 1830 | 1812 | 1830 | 1812 | 1830 | 1812 & 1830 | 1812 & 1830 | | No. | £ | s. | d. | £ | s. | d. | £ | s. | d. | £ | s. | d. | £ | s. | d. | | 40 | 2 | 275 | 1 | 6 | 0 | 7 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 7 | 2 | 6 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 7 | 3 | 4 | 0 | | 60 | 175 | 2 | 5 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 10 | 1 | 6 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 6 | 1 | 10 | 6 | 0 | 5 | 8 | 1 | | 80 | 15 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 11 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 7 | 4 | 4 | 2 | 6 | 9 | 3 | 8 | 10 | 0 | 4 | | 100 | 14 | 1 | 8 | 2 | 4 | 1 | 4 | 2 | 10 | 2 | 2 | 5 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 12 | 4 | 11 | 1 | 0 | | 120 | 125 | 1 | 65 | 2 | 6 | 1 | 4 | 3 | 6 | 2 | 8 | 6 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 16 | 5 | 16 | 0 | 0 | | 150 | 1 | 33 | 2 | 10 | 1 | 8 | 6 | 6 | 4 | 11 | 9 | 4 | 6 | 7 | 25 | 6 | 25 | 0 | 0 | | 200 | 75 | 9 | 3 | 4 | 3 | 0 | 15 | 8 | 11 | 6 | 20 | 9 | 0 | 14 | 6 | 45 | 1 | 44 | 7 | 0 | | 250 | 5 | 6 | 4 | 0 | 3 | 8 | 31 | 0 | 24 | 6 | 35 | 0 | 28 | 2 | 84 | 0 | 83 | 4 | 0 |
State of the Export of Cotton Yarn and of Piece Goods from Great Britain to India from 1818 to 1831.
| Year | 1823 | 1824 | 1825 | 1826 | 1827 | 1828 | 1829 | 1830 | 1831 | |------|------|------|------|------|------|------|------|------|------| | Cotton yarn, lbs | 123,585 | 105,864 | 235,366 | 919,807 | 2,793,645 | 4,185,280 | 2,896,325 | 4,291,713 | 6,703,655 | | Piece goods, yards | | | | | | | | | |
The cotton manufacture of China is of immense amount, and is carried on almost entirely for home consumption; but its origin is not of the same remote date as that of India. Indeed the lateness of its rise, and the slowness of its progress, in a situation so favourable, appear extraordinary. In the accounts of the revenues and of the arts of China during the period of the celebrated dynasty which commenced about 1100 years before the Christian era, and lasted for some centuries, no mention is made of the cotton plant; nor indeed is there any notice of cotton in these records until about 200 years before the Christian era, from which period to the sixth century, the cotton cloth, which was either paid in tribute, or offered in presents to the emperors, is always mentioned as a thing rare and precious.
The annals record as a singular circumstance that the Emperor Ou-ti, who mounted the throne in 502, had a robe of cotton. In the seventh century we find the cotton plant mentioned, but its cultivation appears to have been then confined to gardens; and the poets and romancers of that period are occupied in celebrating the beauty of its flowers. From these circumstances we may venture to say that there could have been no manufacture of the article in the country at that time. It was in the eleventh century that the cotton plant was first removed from the gardens to the fields, and became an object of common culture; and it is not until this period that we can date the commencement of the manufacture. So slow and backward sometimes are nations, far advanced in other respects, to prosecute objects, afterwards consi-
Cotton was introduced into China at the time of the conquest of that country by the Mogul Tartars, in the year 1280; after which period, every encouragement was given by government to the culture and manufacture of cotton. But there were considerable difficulties to be encountered, in the prejudices of the people, and in the opposition of those engaged in the manufacture of woollen and linen; and it was not until the year 1568 that these obstacles were altogether surmounted. After that date the progress of the cotton manufacture was rapid, and now nine tenths of the population are clothed in its fabrics.
Almost the only cotton goods exported from China are nankeens. Barrow states the production of all the fabrics of the Chinese manufacture at the time he visited the country in 1792 to be stationary, attributing this to the want of proper encouragement from the government, and to the rigid adherence of the people to ancient usages. To keep a manufacture in a progressive state, there must be a progressive demand for its products; and the Chinese manufacturers having no means of disposing of any surplus quantity, must accommodate the supply to the wants of their own consumption. It is said by travelers who have obtained access to that country, that the people show a great desire for articles of British manufacture. How valuable then to both countries would be the establishment of a free intercourse, and how conducive probably to the increase of the productions of both!
The Chinese, over and above the cotton wool which they raise at home, import largely from British India, and from the Burmese territories. This intercourse commenced about fifty-five years ago. A famine, which happened in China about that period, induced the government to direct, by an imperial edict, that a greater proportion of the land should be thrown into the cultivation of grain. Since then, the importation of cotton from India has been considerable, although constituting but a small part of what is consumed in their manufacture. The amount of the importations is stated at 40,000 bales.
The manufacture of cotton goods in Europe is said to have been first attempted by the commercial states of Italy, before the discovery of the passage to India by the Cape of Good Hope. These enterprising communities were the entrepôts through which the cotton fabrics of India passed to the different markets of the West; and being situated in the neighbourhood of countries where the cotton wool was grown, and familiar with manufacturing processes, it is supposed that they were led to attempt the imitation of articles so much valued, and bringing so high a price. Another speculation places the introduction of the cotton manufacture into Europe at a later date, and gives to the people of the Low Countries the honour of having been the first manufacturers of these articles, in imitation of the cotton fabrics which the Dutch, about the beginning of the seventeenth century, began to import from India. But this last account cannot be correct; for Guicciardini, in 1560, in a very full list which he gives of the different articles annually imported into and exported from Antwerp, then the greatest commercial mart in Europe, specifies fustians and dimities of many fine sorts among the manufactured articles imported from Milan, and mentions cottons generally among those brought from Venice. But in the articles exported from Antwerp, although we find linens sent to almost every country, cotton cloth is not once mentioned. Italy, therefore, at that time had a cotton manufacture, which, it is probable, soon after made its way to the Netherlands; for we know it was brought from the latter country to Britain by Protestant refugees about the close of the sixteenth or early in the seventeenth century.
That this manufacture was carried on in England at a pretty early period of the seventeenth century, we know from good authority. Lewis Roberts, in his "Treasure of Traffic," published in the year 1641, says, "The town of Manchester buys linen yarn from the Irish in great quantity, and weaving it returns the same again in linen into Ireland to sell. Neither does her industry rest here; for they buy cotton wool in London that comes from Cyprus and Smyrna, and work the same into fustians, vermillions, and dimities, which they return to London, where they are sold, and from thence not seldom are sent into such foreign parts, where the first material may be more easily had for that manufacture." These goods were woven chiefly about Bolton, and were purchased there at the weekly market by the Manchester dealers, who afterwards finished them, and either sent them to London for export, or sold them to their customers over the country.
At this period, and for a long time after, the weaver provided his own warp, which was of linen yarn, and the cotton wool for his weft, buying them wherever he could best supply himself. But as the trouble of looking about for these materials was found to be an unprofitable application of his time, the Manchester purchasers established agents in the different villages for the sale of those articles. In this way of conducting the business, each weaver's cottage formed a separate and independent little factory. The yarn for his warp was bought by him in a prepared state, the wool for his weft was carded and spun by the female part of his family, and the cloth was woven by himself and his sons.
This is the situation in which we generally find a manufacture before the introduction of machinery, and particularly before it has been carried to such an extent as to allow of a division of labour, and a separation of the different processes into distinct employments. At this stage, the workman has usually his residence in the country, where he can be accommodated with a little garden ground; and perhaps with grass for a cow; and there, in the bosom of his family, aided by the industry of its different members, he prosecutes his employment. How much more of the comforts of life and of the means of natural enjoyment belong to this state of the manufacture than to the more advanced one, in which combined systems of machinery, and a more perfect division of labour, collect the workmen into factories and towns!
It would be impossible to enumerate all the descriptions of cotton goods which, in succession, were brought forward from the commencement of the manufacture. The pattern cards of the principal houses in the trade, which were circulated from time to time through the kingdom and over the continents of Europe and America, exhibited specimens of nearly two thousand kinds, comprehending in the assortment every variety of taste and fancy.
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1 See Macpherson's Annals of Commerce. 2 The fustians that were made at this early period of the manufacture were those denominated herring-bone, pillows for pockets and outside wear, strong cotton ribs and barragon, broad raced linen thickset and tufts, with whitened diaper, striped dimities, and jeans. At some distance of time there were added to these, cotton thicksets, goods figured in the loom; and at a still later date, cotton velvets, velveteens, and strong and fancy cords. (Aitken's History of Manchester.) For the introduction and after improvement of many of these articles, the country is indebted to the late Mr John Wilson of Ainsworth. This gentleman was originally a manufacturer of fustians at Manchester, but had early engaged in the manufacture of cotton velvets, and by persevering efforts he succeeded in bringing it to the utmost degree of perfection. His improvement of the mode of dressing, finishing, and particularly of dyeing these goods, acquired for them so high a character, that both in the home and foreign market his articles sold in preference to those of every other manufacturer. His plan for cleaning off the loose and uneven fibres was by the use of razors. He afterwards successively employed for this end singeing by spirits of wine, and the application of a hot iron resembling a weaver's drying iron, which last instrument had been introduced for the same purpose in the manufacture carried on in the Manchester house of correction, by Mr Whitlow, governor of that institution. At a later period Mr Wilson effected his object by drawing the goods rapidly over a cylinder of cast iron heated to redness, by which they were in a superior manner cleared of the down or pile which had been raised upon them in the various operations of weaving, washing, bleaching, or dyeing.
These successive inventions of Mr Wilson, for performing this process, give us some idea of the manner in which improvements are introduced into our manufactures, when fortunately the efforts of self-interest are directed by intelligence and talent. Mr Wilson having a turn for chemical inquiries, investigated the different known processes of dyeing; and, by the improvements he introduced in the application of them to his own manufacture, materially advanced that art. Having succeeded to his satisfaction in dyeing the other rich colours, he procured from the Greeks of Smyrna the secret of dyeing Turkey red. An account of this process was given by him in two essays, read to the Philosophical and Literary Society of Manchester, and which, on his retiring from business, he printed and distributed among his friends. The many valuable improvements introduced by Mr Wilson into the different processes connected with the cotton manufacture had the effect not only to establish it more firmly, but rapidly to enlarge its extent.
A considerable share of the calico printing business was transferred, about the year 1760, from London to Lancashire, in consequence of the cheaper accommodation for carrying on the work, and the lower wages of the workmen. A fall in prices thereupon took place, and this cheapness produced an increased demand for calicoes. These goods were at that time made of linen warp and cotton weft, it having been found impracticable, before Sir Richard Arkwright's discovery, to spin cotton warp of sufficient strength.
At this period the dealers from Manchester, in place of buying fustians and calicoes from the weaver, as had been the practice before, began to furnish him with materials for the cloth, and to pay him a fixed price per piece for the work when executed. Along with a portion of linen warp, they gave him out a portion of cotton wool, which he was obliged to get spun into the weft he was to use. But so fast was the manufacture by this time outstripping the process of spinning, that it frequently happened that the sum which the master weaver was allowed by his employer was less than what he found himself obliged to pay to those whom he employed to spin it. He durst not, however, complain, much less abate the spinner's price, lest his looms should be unemployed. In this state of things, the further progress of the manufacture must have been stopped, if a more productive mode of spinning had not been discovered.
It has been said that the yarn produced at this time in England, by the one-thread wheel, the only spinning machine known, did not exceed in quantity what 50,000 spindles of our present machinery can yield. To have reared and trained hands sufficient to have doubled this quantity, had it been possible, must have been the work of a length of time, and the amount of the manufacture would still have been insignificant. A change in the system, therefore, had become indispensable; and we find that different ingenious individuals had already begun to employ themselves in contriving a better mode of spinning.
When we contrast the splendid inventions connected with the cotton manufacture, which from this period burst forth in rapid succession, with the passive acquiescence in the use of imperfect machinery during the long period which preceded, we are apt to ascribe these improvements to the circumstance alone of a number of men of genius having at that moment arisen; and to forget that the ultimate cause exists in the times which called their energies into action.
Already, about the year 1730, the fly-shuttle had been invented, one of the most important steps in the progress of the art of weaving; and in the year 1760 improvements had begun to be made in the carding process.
James Hargreaves, a weaver at Stanhill, near Church, in Lancashire, an illiterate man, possessed of no great mechanical knowledge, had adapted the stock cards used in the woollen manufacture, to the carding of cotton, and had besides greatly improved them. By his invention a person was able to do double the work, and with more ease than by hands carding. In the stock cards, one of the cards is fixed, whilst the other, being suspended by a cord over a pulley, is worked by the carder; and in this way two or three cards can be applied to the same stock.
This contrivance was soon succeeded by the cylinder cards, or carding engine. It is not ascertained who was the inventor of this valuable machine, but it is known that the grandfather of the present Sir Robert Peel was among the first persons who used it; and that, so early as 1762, he, with the assistance of Hargreaves, erected a carding engine with cylinders at Blackburn. This machine did not differ materially from that now in use, except that it had no contrivance for detaching the cotton from the cards, an operation which was performed by women with hand cards.
These successful advances show that the minds of the manufacturing class had been awakened to discovery, and must have encouraged and stimulated the efforts that were then making to effect corresponding improvements in spinning.
There had been several unsuccessful attempts to improve the mode of spinning before the year 1767, when James Hargreaves, whom we have already mentioned, invented the "Spinning Jenny." The idea of this machine is said to have been suggested to him by seeing a common spinning wheel which had been accidentally overturned, continue its motion while it lay on the ground. If such was the cause, it marks a mind of no common description, which from so casual an occurrence could elicit an invention of so much importance.
After several unsuccessful attempts to carry into execution the conception he had formed, he succeeded in producing a rudely constructed jenny of eight spindles, turned by bands from a horizontal wheel. In it the eight spindles were passed between two pieces of wood laid horizontally the breadth of the machine; and these being grasped in the spinner's hand, and drawn out by him, formed the rovings into threads. The structure of this "jenny" was soon afterwards greatly improved, and it was at last brought to work as many as eighty spindles. This machine, although of limited powers when compared with the beau-
tiful inventions which succeeded it, must be considered as the first and leading step in that progress of discovery which carried improvement into every branch of the manufacture—which, as it proceeded, changed the nature and character of the means of production, by substituting mechanical operations for human labour—which caused the manufactured article to become more and more a product of capital. The progress of invention after this was rapid; for when it was seen that, with the aid of the few mechanical combinations we have mentioned, the spinner had been enabled to increase his power of production nearly eighty fold, the attention of those engaged in other branches of manufacture was awakened to the possibility of introducing changes equally beneficial into their peculiar employments.
Hargreaves' invention occasioned great alarm among those who earned their subsistence by the old mode of spinning, and even produced popular commotion. A mob broke into his house and destroyed his machine; and some time after, when a better knowledge of the advantage of his invention had begun to bring his "spinning jenny" into general use, the people rose a second time, and scouring the country, broke to pieces every carding and spinning machine they could find. Hargreaves himself had by this time removed to Nottingham, where he was engaged in erecting a small spinning work, about the same period that Mr Arkwright came to settle there, being also driven from Lancashire by the fear of similar violence.
The "jenny" in a short time put an end to the spinning of cotton by the common wheel, and the whole wets used in the manufacture continued to be spun upon that machine, until the invention of the "mule jenny," by which it was in its turn superseded. Hargreaves died in great poverty a few years after his removal to Nottingham.
While Hargreaves was producing the common jenny, Mr Arkwright (afterwards Sir Richard Arkwright) was employed in contriving that wonderful piece of mechanism, the spinning frame, which, when put in motion, performs of itself the whole process of spinning, leaving to the workman only the office of supplying the material, and of joining or piecing the thread when it happens to break.
The extraordinary person to whom we owe this invention was born in the year 1732, at Preston, in Lancashire, of parents in poor circumstances, and was the youngest of thirteen children. He was brought up to the humble occupation of a barber, and up to the time when he made his discovery he continued to derive his subsistence from the exercise of this employment. Living in a manufacturing district, it is probable that his attention was drawn to the mechanical contrivances around him; and that hearing from every one complaints of the deficient supply of cotton yarn, he was stimulated to contrive a plan for increasing the production, by changing the mode of spinning. Even after he had matured the conception of what he proposed to execute, he had great difficulty in giving his ideas a practical form, from his total want of mechanical skill and experience; and his discovery was likely to have been lost to the world, from his not being able to find any person willing to embark the capital that was necessary to give the undertaking a fair trial. None but a person of his ardour and perseverance could have overcome such obstacles.
It has already been mentioned that Mr Arkwright had removed to Nottingham. Here he prevailed upon the Messrs Wrights, bankers, to advance him the sums of money necessary to enable him to go on with his experiments, it being understood that, if his plan succeeded, they were to share in the profits. These gentlemen, however, finding the amount of their advances swell to a larger sum than they had expected, while there seemed to them little prospect of the discovery being brought into practical operation, informed Mr Arkwright that the transaction being out of the ordinary course of their business, they would be glad if he could get some one else to take their place, and repay them their money; and they mentioned Mr Need of Nottingham as a person likely to do this, from his being already engaged in other patent discoveries, and acquainted with such undertakings. Mr Arkwright in consequence applied to Mr Need, who told him he had no objection to join in the scheme, if he could be satisfied that the discovery was such as he represented it, and desired him to carry the model of his machine to Mr Strutt of Derby, his partner in the stocking patent, by whose report he would be guided. Mr Strutt, a man of great mechanical knowledge, seeing at a glance the merit of the invention, and how little was required to render it complete, told Mr Need that he might with great safety close with Mr Arkwright; the only thing wanting to his model being an adaptation of some of the wheels to each other, which, from want of science, the inventor, with all his powers of contrivance, had not been able to accomplish.
In the year 1769, Mr Arkwright obtained his patent for spinning with rollers, and Mr Need and Mr Strutt became his partners in the concerns to be carried on under it. He erected a mill at Nottingham, which he worked by horse power. But this mode of giving motion to the machinery being expensive, he, in the year 1771, built another mill at Cromford, in Derbyshire, to which motion was given by water.
In 1772, his patent was contested, on the ground that he was not the original inventor of the process for which it was obtained; but a verdict was given in his favour, and his right to the exclusive use of the discovery remained afterwards undisturbed.
Mr Arkwright, soon after his removal to Cromford, followed up his first great discovery with other inventions and combinations of machinery for preparing the cotton for spinning, by which perfection was gradually given to the process through all its successive operations. For these additional improvements he took out another patent in the year 1775. But in 1781, his right to this second patent was disputed, on the plea that he was not the inventor of some of the mechanical contrivances comprehended under it; and after different trials of the question before the Courts of King's Bench and Common Pleas, judgment was finally given against him in November 1783, and the patent cancelled.
The originality of Mr Arkwright's mind, as well as the merit of his invention of the spinning frame, appear most striking when we consider the little resemblance between this machine and the common spinning wheel. His discovery did not consist in improving an instrument which already existed, but in the invention of an entirely new means for performing the same process in a better manner. When this is kept in view, it seems extraordinary that such a contrivance should have been the production of a person in his circumstances. His after inventions for preparing the cotton, which are sometimes spoken of as the most wonderful parts of the process of cotton spinning, do not appear to us so striking as this first effort of his genius. Besides the advance in mechanical knowledge which he must have made before the time when they were produced, these inventions, although only to have been conceived by an original and fertile mind, are still but improved arrangements of a machine previously in use, or applications of his own spinning machine altered and adapted to the accomplishment of this object. But the power of his mind was perhaps marked by nothing more strongly than the judgment with which, although new to business, he conducted the great concerns to which His discovery gave rise, and the systematic order and arrangement which he introduced into every department of his extensive works. His plans of management, which must have been entirely his own, as no establishment of a similar nature then existed, were universally adopted by others; and after long experience they have not yet, in any material point, been altered or improved.
In 1786, Mr Arkwright, on presenting an address from the county of Derby, of which he was then high sheriff, had the honour of knighthood conferred upon him.
We shall now proceed to give an account of the different machines used in cotton spinning, invented by Sir Richard Arkwright, and of those afterwards invented by others, describing them in the order in which they are employed. In this manner we shall be able to exhibit a view of the present state of the art.
The cotton wool, after it has been carefully picked, either by the hand or by a machine, is carried to the carding engine. This machine consists of two or more large cylinders covered with cards, with teeth like those of hand cards, which revolve in opposite directions, and nearly in contact with each other. These cylinders are either surmounted by other small ones, covered in like manner with cards, by whose revolutions in opposite directions to those of the larger cylinders, and with different velocities, the cotton is carded, and put on the last or finishing cylinder; or, as is now more generally practised, the first cylinder, that is, the one nearest the feeder, is surrounded by a fixed concave framing lined with cards, which coming nearly in contact with the cylinder cards, produce the same effect in the process as the top cylinders, and in a more simple manner. (See Plate CLXXVII. fig. 1, 2, 3, 4.)
We have noticed, in speaking of the carding engine which Mr Peel erected in 1762, that at that time the cotton was taken off the finishing cylinder by means of hand cards. But by the time Mr Arkwright began his spinning, this operation was performed by the application of a roller with tin plates upon it like the floats of a water wheel, which, revolving with a quick motion, scraped off the cotton from the card. This was a rude contrivance, and in its operation injured both the cotton and the cards. Mr Arkwright substituted for it a plate of metal, toothed at the edge like a comb, which, in place of being made to revolve like the other, was moved rapidly in a perpendicular direction by a crank, and, with slight but reiterated strokes on the teeth of the cards, detached the cotton from them in a uniform fleece. In place also of sheet cards, with which the finishing cylinder had hitherto been covered, he employed narrow flit cards, wound round it in a spiral form, by which contrivance a continuity of the fleece was produced, which, as it left the card, was gradually contracted in its size by being passed through a kind of funnel, and then flattened or compressed between two rollers, after which it was received into a tin can in the state of a uniform continued carding.
The taking off the cotton from the cards in this manner is one of the most beautiful and curious operations in the process of cotton spinning; and although the crank, which forms a part of the apparatus, had perhaps been used in some way or other prior to the date of Mr Arkwright's second patent, as was urged in the action for having it set aside, the comb for taking off the fleece, and the spiral card which produces its continuity, were inventions indisputably his own.
The next step in the process after the carding is what is called drawing the cotton. The machine employed for this purpose, called the drawing frame, is constructed upon the same principle as the spinning frame, from which machine the idea of it was taken. To imitate the operation performed by the finger and thumb in hand spinning, two pairs of rollers are employed; the first pair, slowly revolving in contact with each other, are placed at a little distance from the second pair, which revolve with greater velocity. The lower roller of each pair is furrowed or fluted longitudinally, and the upper one is neatly covered with leather, to give the two a proper hold of the cotton. If we suppose a carding to be passed between the first pair of rollers, it will be drawn forward as they move, but without any change in its form and texture further than a slight compression received from the incumbent roller. But if, from the first pair, it be passed through the second, moving with twice or thrice the velocity of the first, it will be drawn twice or three times smaller than it was when it entered the first rollers. In the succeeding operation, two, three, or more of these drawings are passed together through the rollers in the same manner, coalescing as they pass, and forming a single new drawing. This doubling and drawing is several times repeated, having the effect to arrange all the fibres of the cotton longitudinally in a uniform and parallel direction, and to do away with all inequalities of thickness. In these operations the cotton receives no twist. (See Plate CLXXVII. fig. 5, 6.)
Roving the cotton, which is the next part of the process of preparation, is an operation similar to that employed for drawing it, only that, to give the rove, in its now reduced thickness, such a degree of tenacity as will make it hold together, a slight twist is given to it, converting it into a soft and loose thread. This is effected by passing it, as it leaves the rollers, into a conical can, which, while receiving it, revolves with considerable velocity. (See Plate CLXXVII. fig. 7, 8, 9.) After this the rove is wound by the hand upon a bobbin by the younger children of the mill, and carried to the spinning frame.
About the year 1817, the fly frame was introduced for preparing rovings for the middle and coarser numbers of both warp and weft; and this machine having received considerable improvements since, has nearly superseded the use of the roving frame. Instead of the revolving cans of the roving frame, the fly frame has spindles placed at equal distances from each other, with a fly on the top of each, one of the legs of which is made in the form of a tube, for the purpose of receiving the roving and conveying it to the bobbin. The rollers deliver the roving to the top of the fly, where it passes through a small hole immediately above the centre of the spindle, called the eye of the fly, and from which it descends through the tube to the bobbin, which is fitted loosely on the spindle. The fly revolves rapidly round the bobbin, and winds the roving on it as fast as it is delivered by the rollers. (See Plate CLXXIX. fig. 1, 2.) The motion of the rollers and spindles are equal and uniform at all times; hence the twist is equally diffused over all parts of the roving. But to adapt the taking up of the roving to the uniform delivery of the rollers, the speed of the bobbin must be variable and unequal; for while it increases in diameter, the velocity of its acting circumference will remain the same. The ratio of its accelerating motion, therefore, must be equal to the ratio of its increasing diameter; that is, supposing the bobbin to follow the fly; but sometimes the fly follows the bobbin, in which case the speed of the bobbin must decrease in the same ratio as above.
An important improvement in the process of preparation for cotton spinning is the tube frame lately introduced. It is employed as a finishing frame for coarse numbers; but, when used as a slubbing or roving frame, it may be applied to the preparation of yarns of any number whatever. The construction of this machine differs from that of the roving frame, in having, instead of cans, revolving horizontal cylinders, parallel with the beam roll-
Cotton Manufacture.
Spinning frame.
Throstle.
Mr Danforth's throstle.
Mr Crompton invents the mule jenny.
ers, placed about twelve inches in front of the beam. Its chief advantage lies in the great quantity of roving it can produce in a given time, its superiority of production to the fly frame being as eighty-four to seventeen; but the rove it produces is inferior in quality, and, having no twist, is extremely soft and tender, and causes a greater quantity of waste than the roves prepared by the fly frame.
The spinning frame has the double set of rollers which have been described in the account given of the drawing and roving frames, and which, operating in the same manner as in those machines, extend the rove, and reduce it to a thread of the required fineness. The twist is given to the thread by the application of the spindle and fly of the common flax wheel, adopted in the machine for this purpose. (See Plate CLXXVIII. fig. 10.)
The yarn produced by this mode of spinning is called water twist, from the circumstance of the machinery by which it is obtained having been, for a long time after its invention, put in motion by water.
The only attempt to extend the principle comprehended in Sir Richard Arkwright's first contrivance, the spinning frame, is to be found in the machine called the throstle, introduced about the year 1810. In this machine the spinning apparatus is in every respect the same as in Sir Richard Arkwright's frame, but the movement of the parts is different.
In place of four or six spindles being coupled together, forming what is called a head, with a separate movement by a pulley and drum, as is the case in the frame, the whole rollers and spindles on both sides of the throstle are connected together, and turned by bands from a tin cylinder lying horizontally under the machine. The merit of the invention chiefly lies in the simplification of the moving apparatus just mentioned. The movement is not only rendered lighter, but greater facility is afforded for increasing the speed of the machine, and consequently, when the nature of the spinning admits it, for obtaining a larger production. The throstle can also, with more ease, and at less expense, be altered to spin the different grists of yarn; only a few movements require to be changed in it to produce this end, while in the spinning frame there are a great many. (See Plate CLXXVIII. fig. 11.)
An improvement on the throstle, which was thought to be very promising, was lately made by Mr Danforth, an American spinner. His object was to obviate the vibration of the spindle (caused by the flyer being placed on the top of it, with nothing to keep it steady), whereby it is prevented from being driven with advantage beyond a certain limited speed. To remedy this, Mr Danforth introduced into his throstle a stationary spindle, on the top of which he fixed an inverted conical cup. In this improved throstle the bobbin revolves on the spindle with great rapidity, and by a transverse motion is raised and lowered so as to be, when at the highest point, entirely within the cup, and when at the lowest entirely below it. The edge of the cup passing thus along the whole length of the bobbin, builds the yarn equally on every part while it is receiving the necessary twist.
To secure to himself the benefit of this invention, Mr Danforth took out patents in all the different European states. His improvement gives a great increase of quantity, but is accompanied by such an addition of waste as to form, in the opinion of many spinners, an insuperable objection to its use. Mr Robert Montgomery of Lochwinnoch, Renfrewshire, has, however (1832), made additions to this machine, which he expects will make it produce even a larger quantity and better quality of yarn than Mr Danforth's, without waste.
Mr Samuel Crompton of Bolton in 1775 completed his invention of the "mule jenny," in contriving which he had been engaged for several years. But this machine did not come into general use, nor was its value known until after the expiration of Arkwright's patent; because till then, the spinner was confined to the rove prepared for common jenny spinning, which was unsuitable to the mule jenny.
After the spinner was allowed to make use of Mr Arkwright's fine process of preparation, by his patent being cancelled, the power of this machine became known; and its introduction forms another important era in the history of the cotton manufacture. Being fitted to supply those "grists" and qualities of yarn which the other machines could not produce, the manufacturer was enabled to enter upon fabrics which otherwise it would have been vain to attempt. Warps of the finest quality are spun upon the mule; while, on the spinning frame, yarn of a finer grist than No. 50 cannot be spun to advantage. The reason is, that the fine thread has not strength to stand the pull of the rollers when winding itself on the bobbin of the spinning frame; a stress which is saved to it in the mule, where the draught takes place only in a slight degree faster than the rove is given out by the rollers. All wefts, from the lowest to the highest numbers, are now spun upon Crompton's machine, the use of Hargreaves' jenny having been entirely superseded by it. It was some time, indeed, after the mule came into use, before it was ascertained that the finest yarn required for the manufacture could be produced from it. But in the year 1792, Mr Jonathan Pollard of Manchester succeeded in spinning yarn upon the mule, of the fineness of 278 hanks to the pound, from cotton wool grown by Mr Robley, in the island of Tobago. This yarn was sold at twenty guineas per pound to the muslin manufacturers of Glasgow.
The mule, in its structure and operation, is a compound of the spinning frame and of Hargreaves' jenny, from which circumstance it has probably received its name. It contains a system of rollers like that belonging to the twist frame; but in place of having every four or six of them in separate heads, as is the case in that machine, the whole are coupled together; and the rove being drawn through them, is, in its conversion into thread, received on spindles revolving like those of the jenny. The carriage on which these spindles are placed is moveable, and is made to recede from the rollers a degree faster than the thread is given out. After a certain quantity of the roving has been thus delivered by the rollers, they are stopped; but the carriage continues to recede somewhat farther; and the spindles continuing also to revolve, the thread is drawn out to the fineness required, and then receives its proper portion of twist. This last operation resembles that performed by the common jenny, and produces a similar effect. (See Plate CLXXVIII. fig. 12.)
Mr Crompton took out no patent; but many years after he had given this important invention to his country, he received from parliament a grant of L5000.
The mule was originally worked by the spinner's hand; but in 1792, Mr William Kelly of Glasgow, at that time manager of the Lanark Mills, obtained a patent for moving it by machinery. Mr Kelly soon saw, however, that in the extended state of the cotton trade, the exclusive possession of this important improvement was not likely to be quietly acquiesced in; and, unwilling to involve himself in the litigation which would have been necessary to defend his privilege, although the undisputed inventor of the process, he allowed every one freely to avail himself of its advantages.
Mr Kelly's machinery was contrived so as to move every part of the mule, even to the returning of the carriage into its place, after the draught was finished. Had his invention come into full operation, the employment of men as spinning would have been thereby rendered unnecessary, and children would have been able to do all the duty required. But, after a short trial, it was discovered that a greater amount of produce could be obtained, and at a cheaper rate, by using the machinery merely to draw out the carriage, and employing the men to return it as formerly. In this way one spinner could serve two mules, the one carriage moving out during the time that he was engaged in returning the other.
Proceeding in this train of discovery, it was next found unnecessary to confine the mule to a hundred and forty-four spindles, the largest number which it had till then contained; for with the assistance of the above mechanical improvement, the spinner was able to manage two mules of three or four hundred spindles each, and thus to spin on six hundred or eight hundred, instead of on only a hundred and forty-four spindles.
The process of mule spinning continued to be conducted upon this plan, till several proprietors of large cotton works restored the part of Mr Kelly's machinery which returns the carriage into its place after the draught is completed. By thus lessening the fatigue to the spinner, they were enabled to employ women in place of men. All that is to be done by the spinner in this case is, with a slight touch of the hand to shift the band, so as to allow the carriage to be moved back into its resting position, and, as this takes place, to manage the guide for building the cop, and regulate and temper the motion of the carriage as it recedes.
An extension of the size of the mule employed in spinning very fine numbers was accidentally suggested to a spinner of Manchester in 1830, and enabled him to reduce the wages paid for spinning these numbers sixpence a pound. Being desirous to fill a garret-room of his mill with jennies of five hundred spindles each, of the size of those worked in the rooms below, he found, from the contraction of the space, occasioned by the inclination of the roof, that there was not room for a mule of five hundred spindles to stand across the floor. It then occurred to him, that as in spinning those high numbers of yarn, the movement of the carriage in drawing out so slender a thread was of necessity very slow, it might be practicable to work a thousand spindles in one mule, without increasing the breakage of threads; and that should this be the case, he would then be able to fill his garret by placing these jennies lengthwise. The experiment was tried, and the mule of a thousand spindles found to work so well as to admit of the above reduction of the wages of the spinner.
There is at present (1832) in a course of trial in different spinning works, a mule, the carriage of which, after having drawn out the thread, is returned by mechanical means, without the aid of the spinner, or the guidance of his hand to secure the uniform building of the cops. The apparatus for accomplishing this can be affixed to the mules now in use without any other alteration. Messrs Sharpe and Robarts took a patent in 1829 for this invention; but the right to the discovery having been disputed, its general adoption was retarded till about six months ago, when a verdict in their favour was obtained. The machinery for effecting the object being rather complicated, fears have been entertained that it may be liable to get out of order, and cause frequent stoppages of the work, besides occasioning a considerable expense in keeping the machine in repair. The most judicious spinners, however, consider the discovery to be founded upon correct principles; and when such is the case, we may count upon mechanical science being able sooner or later to simplify the movement, and admit of the improvement being brought into general use. Several mill proprietors in Lancashire are in the course of altering their mules to spin in this manner; and if the plan succeeds they will be able to dispense with the mule spinners, retaining merely the piecers (children) to take up and join the broken ends.
In addition to the process of preparation already described as employed in frame and coarse mule spinning, the cotton intended for fine mule spinning goes through a further operation. It was found that extending the roves at once to a fine thread, was a reduction of texture too rapid to admit of the production of a good article, and that an intermediate operation was necessary. This gave rise to the process of stretching, which is performed on a mule fitted up for the purpose, which draws the rove another degree finer, without communicating to it such an additional twist as might prevent its being extended afterwards into a thread upon the spinning mule.
We have now finished our account of the different machines employed in cotton spinning, and have endeavoured to describe the succession of improvements which have been made on them up to this time, so as to give some idea of the progress in their power of production. But it will not be possible, from the nature of the subject, to exhibit in a similar manner the not less important advances made from time to time in the construction of the minute parts of these machines, and in the skill and management of the spinner who works them. By these means a progressive acceleration of their movement was rendered practicable, and even after the machine had long been apparently in a very perfect state, the quantity of produce was more than doubled.
About the year 1790 the average product of the spinner of yarn No. 40 was little more than a hank per spindle per day; but by the year 1812, as appears by Mr Kennedy's table of the comparative cost of the cotton yarn of India and of this country, it had advanced to two hanks per day; and in 1830 to 2½. The effect of this increase of production upon the cost of the article was very great, as will be seen by the following statement of the reduction of the wages of spinning, and of the fall in the sale price of yarn which rapidly succeeded.
We have already noticed that, until the cancelling of Sir Richard Arkwright's patent, by which the mule spinner became at liberty to use his improved mode of preparation, the few fine wefts required were spun on Hargreaves' Jenny. In the year 1786 this yarn was sold in Glasgow and Paisley at 3½s. per pound for No. 90, 7s. per pound being the price of spinning it. The warp was spun upon the twist frame, and was sold at the same time at 4½s. 6d. the pound for No. 90.
We are informed by Mr Crompton, that immediately upon his completing his invention of the mule, in the year 1775, he obtained 14s. per pound for the spinning and preparation of No. 40; that a short time after he got 25s. per pound for the spinning and preparation of No. 60; and that he then spun a small quantity of No. 80 to show that it was not impossible to spin yarn of so fine a grist, and for the spinning and preparation of this he got 42s. per pound. For some little time after the mule came into general use, in the year 1786, it was the practice in many places for the spinner to purchase the wool in a prepared state; and separate concerns for preparing cotton were established and carried on. At this time 10s. per pound were paid for spinning No. 100; but soon afterwards the wages for this number were reduced, first to 8s. and then to 6s. 8d. In 1790 the price of spinning No. 100 was 4s. per pound. In 1792 it was brought to 3s. 1d., and in 1793 to 2s. 6d., at which price it continued till 1795; when the mule coming to be worked by machinery, and an increase being made in the number of spindles, the spinner was enabled so to extend the quantity of his pro- duce, as to admit of another considerable reduction in wages. The price of spinning No. 100 was in the course of a few years brought down to 8d. per pound, at which price it continued until 1826, when it was further reduced to 6½d. per pound. Notwithstanding this extraordinary diminution of the price of spinning, such have been the effects of the improvements in the plan and construction of the machinery, in the selection and preparation of the wool, and in the spinner's skill and tact in the execution of his work, that he is able to earn more money now than he did when the wages were at the highest.
The following table gives the numbers, the age, and sex of the persons employed in twenty-nine of the spinning mills belonging to Glasgow, with the maximum and minimum amount of weekly wages earned in 1832 by the different sexes at the different ages. Extracted from Dr Cleland's valuable work *The Statistics of Glasgow*.
| Age from 9 to 10. | Males Weekly Wages | Females Weekly Wages | |------------------|--------------------|----------------------| | 128 | 1s. 3½d. to 3s. | 114 | | | | 1s. 3½d. to 4s. |
| Age from 10 to 12. | Males Weekly Wages | Females Weekly Wages | |-------------------|--------------------|----------------------| | 361 | 2s. to 4s. | 463 | | | | 2s. to 4s. |
| Age from 12 to 14. | Males Weekly Wages | Females Weekly Wages | |-------------------|--------------------|----------------------| | 417 | 2s. 9d. to 6s. | 479 | | | | 2s. 9d. to 6s. 6d. |
| Age from 14 to 16. | Males Weekly Wages | Females Weekly Wages | |-------------------|--------------------|----------------------| | 274 | 3s. 6d. to 7s. | 419 | | | | 3s. 6d. to 7s. 6d. |
| Age from 16 to 18. | Males Weekly Wages | Females Weekly Wages | |-------------------|--------------------|----------------------| | 214 | 4s. 3d. to 9s. 6d. | 520 | | | | 4s. 3d. to 7s. 6d. |
| Age from 18 to 21. | Males Weekly Wages | Females Weekly Wages | |-------------------|--------------------|----------------------| | 143 | 6s. to 20s. | 581 | | | | 5s. to 20s. |
| Age 21 and upwards. | Males Weekly Wages | Females Weekly Wages | |---------------------|--------------------|----------------------| | 1050 | 9s. 1d. to 35s. | 1411 | | | | 6s. 6d. to 20s. |
The sale prices of the yarn during this period were as follows:
In the year 1786, for No. 100 ........................................... 38s. 1787 ........................................... 38s. 1788 ........................................... 35s. 1789 ........................................... 34s. 1790 ........................................... 30s.
In the year 1791 ........................................... 29s. 9d. 1792 ........................................... 16s. 1d. 1793 ........................................... 15s. 1d. 1794 ........................................... 15s. ld. 1795, spun from Bourbon cotton wool 19s. 1796 ........................................... ditto 19s. 1797 ........................................... 19s. 1798, per sea island 9s. 10d. 1799 ........................................... 10s. 1ld. 1800 ........................................... 9s. 5d. 1801 ........................................... 8s. 9d. 1802 ........................................... 8s. 4d. 1803 ........................................... 8s. 4d. 1804 ........................................... 7s. 10d. 1805 ........................................... 7s. 10d. 1806 ........................................... 7s. 2d. 1807 ........................................... 6s. 9d.
Since which time the price, after various fluctuations, fell in 1829 to 3s. 2d., and in 1831 to 2s. 11d., at which price it remained in 1832.
But the benefit of the improvements we have noticed has not been confined to the reduction of the cost of the yarn. Its quality has been rendered so much superior, that the weaver is enabled, with the same hours of labour, to produce a fourth more cloth than he was able to do forty years ago.
During the time that the machines for the different processes of cotton spinning were advancing towards perfection, Mr Watt had been employed in maturing and reducing to practice his conceptions for extending the powers of the steam-engine. His inventions for rendering these available to the movements of manufacturing machinery exhibit a beauty of contrivance peculiarly characteristic of his genius, and, more than any of the other discoveries which mark this period, have influenced the circumstances of this country and of mankind.
If we had no other means of giving motion to our machinery than by placing it on a stream of water, or employing the power of horses, how comparatively expensive must our operations have been, and how limited their progress! By means of Mr Watt's inventions we are enabled to carry the power at once to the situation where it can be most advantageously used; we can place it in the centre of a population trained to manufacturing habits, and thus bring together the different branches of manufacture, with their numerous subsidiary establishments, all dependent upon or intimately connected with each other, thereby giving facility and effect to their mutual operations.
Some account of the introduction of the steam-engine, therefore, naturally forms a part of the history of the cotton manufacture. In perusing the following detail, obtained from Mr Watt in 1818, the reader, aware of the present extensive employment of this powerful auxiliary to industry, will be surprised at the slowness with which it came into general use.
Mr Watt had early turned his thoughts to the application of the steam-engine to rotative motion, and in the year 1781 had devised the means for accomplishing this end. But at the moment he was taking measures for legally securing to himself the exclusive advantages of his invention, a confidential workman betrayed a part of his plan to other persons, who took a patent for it. In the following year, having substituted a most ingenious contrivance to supply the part of the process which had been stolen from him, he obtained for Messrs Bolton and Watt a patent for his mode of applying this power. Their first *rotative* engine (for we are obliged to use that term to avoid circumlocution) was erected in the year 1782, at Bradley iron-works, and they erected another in the same year at their own manufactory. In 1783 they erected an engine for winding ores out of a mine in Cornwall. In 1784 they erected seven engines, one for an oil mill at Hull, one at Messrs Goodwin and Company's brewery in London, one at Mr Whitbread's, with four others, including the first engine for that splendid establishment, the London Albion Mills. Among those erected by them in 1775 was one for Messrs Robinsons, at Papplewick, in Nottinghamshire, for spinning cotton, the first instance of the application of steam to this manufacture. In the following year they erected a number of their engines for various purposes; and in 1787 one for Messrs Peels, at Warrington, for cotton spinning, and three others for the same purpose at Nottingham. No rotative engine had yet been erected at Manchester; and it was seven years after Bolton and Watt had received their patent that they constructed for Mr Drinkwater the first engine used there for spinning cotton. In 1790 they erected one for spinning cotton at Nottingham for Sir Richard Arkwright, and another at Darlington for spinning flax; a cotton spinning engine at Manchester for Mr Simpson, and a second at Pepperwicks for Messrs Robinsons. Some time before this Sir Richard Arkwright and others, from an ill-judged economy in the first cost, had introduced into their spinning factory atmospheric or Newcomen's engines, with rotative motions applied to them. But quickly perceiving their error, they abandoned them, and Bolton and Watt's engines soon came to be universally used among cotton spinners, and all other manufacturers.
In an account of the means which contributed to that fall in the price of spinning which we have mentioned, we must not omit the progressive improvement in the cultivation of the raw material, and in the application of its different qualities to their most profitable uses. Previous to the year 1793, the cotton used in the coarser articles of the manufacture, with the exception of a small quantity imported from India and from the Levant for the fashion trade, was wholly the growth of our own and of the French West India Islands. That for the better kind of goods was raised in Demerara, Surinam, and Berbice. The wool for fine goods was grown in the Brazils, and that for the few very fine mohairs then manufactured, in the Isle of Bourbon.
In 1787 the descriptions of cotton imported into Britain appear to have been as follows:
- From the British West Indies: 6,800,000 lbs. - From the French and Spanish colonies: 6,000,000 - From the Dutch: 1,700,000 - From the Portuguese: 2,500,000 - From the Isle of Bourbon, by Ostend: 100,000 - Smyrna and Turkey: 5,700,000
Total: 32,800,000
Had we continued to derive our sole supply of cotton from these countries, the progress of the manufacture would have been greatly retarded, not only from the difficulty of making the production of the raw material keep pace with the increasing consumption, but from the impossibility of obtaining the qualities of wool suited to the finer descriptions of goods, which the improved machinery enabled us to undertake.
But fortunately, about the year 1790, the planters in the southern states of the American Union began to turn their attention to raising cotton wool; and, besides carrying the cultivation of the article to a great extent, they produced qualities of cotton before unknown. In 1792 the quantity of cotton exported from the United States was only 138,328 lbs., no manufacture of cotton goods having been attempted in America for many years after that period. Their crop for the present year (1833) will exceed 275,000,000 lbs., of which 63,450,000 lbs. is expected to be used in their own manufacture, leaving 211,550,000 lbs. for exportation. In 1831 they exported 619,000 bales to Great Britain, 127,000 to France, and 27,000 to other parts.
The American cotton wool first brought to this country was very ill cleaned, and in consequence was indiscriminately applied to the manufacture of the coarser species of goods. It was soon, however, perceived that the cotton raised upon the coast, termed sea island cotton, had a finer and longer staple than that grown farther back in the country, and known by the name of upland cotton. But it was not for several years, and after a succession of trials, that this wool was ascertained to be of a quality in every respect superior to the cotton of the Isle of Bourbon. Indeed, it was only in the year 1796 that the finest description of it was applied to the purposes for which Bourbon wool had till then been used, and which it soon entirely supplanted. The second quality of it about the same time supplanted the Brazil wool in many kinds of goods.
The upland cotton is a different species from the sea island, and is separated with such difficulty from the seed, that the expense of cleaning the wool must have put a stop to its further cultivation, had not a machine, by which the operation of cleaning is easily and successfully accomplished, been invented in 1795 by Mr Eli Whitney of Massachusetts. There are two qualities of this cotton, the one termed Upland Georgia, grown in the states of Georgia and South Carolina, and the other, of superior quality, raised upon the banks of the Mississippi, and distinguished in the market by the name of New Orleans cotton. A strong prejudice existed for some time against the upland wool, which was thought to be of inferior quality, and not to receive a good colour in dyeing; but being found suitable to different coarse fabrics, its cultivation was so rapidly extended, that, in 1807, 35,018,448 lbs. of upland cotton were exported from the United States.
The cotton of the finest quality ever brought to the English market, or probably ever grown, was that formerly mentioned as having been raised in the island of Tobago between the years 1789 and 1792, upon the estate of Mr Robley. That gentleman carried the cultivation of this article to some extent; but the price of cotton falling very low, and the cultivation of sugar becoming extremely profitable, in consequence of the destruction of the sugar plantations in the French islands, he was induced to convert his cotton grounds into a sugar plantation. The production of cotton of this very fine description was never attempted by any other person, although it is believed that the price it would yield would amply repay its expense.
Until about the year 1815, it was thought that the cotton wool of India, from the shortness of its staple, could not be spun with advantage upon our machinery; and in
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1 The year 1790 has always been stated as the period at which the planters of the southern states began to turn their attention to the raising of cotton wool. But we happen to know that in 1784, the late William Rathbone, an extensive American merchant in Liverpool, received from one of his correspondents in the southern states a consignment of eight bags of cotton. This cotton, on its arrival at Liverpool, was seized by the custom-house officers, on the allegation that it could not have been grown in the United States, and that it was liable to seizure under the shipping act, as not being imported in a vessel belonging to the country of its growth. When afterwards released, it lay, for many months unsold, in consequence of the spinners doubting whether it could be profitably worked up.
Consequence, the greater part of the Indian cotton brought to this country was spun upon the common jenny, and used as felt for the coarsest calicoes. It was discovered, however, that by mixing it with the longer stapled wools of other countries, it might be brought into a state fit for the mule and spinning frames.
It was expected that the opening of the trade in 1814 would have led to more care in the cultivation of the article, and would have given rise to the production of cotton of superior quality to any that had previously been obtained from India. This, however, did not take place. It appears, from the evidence before the parliamentary committees in 1830-31, that up to that period there had been no improvement in the quality of the cotton raised in India; that the dependent state of the cultivator; and the constant fiscal interference to which he was subjected, are insurmountable obstacles to the attainment of this object; and that until European skill and capital come to be employed in the cultivation of the cotton, better qualities are not to be looked for. The influence of the impolitic regulations imposed under the Company's monopoly to secure the revenue are particularly felt in the presidency of Bombay. Up to a late period, this was the only part of India in which any considerable quantity of cotton was grown or exported. In the district of Guzerat alone 100,000 heavy bales are annually produced.
The part of the crop which goes to the Company for the rent of the land is delivered by the cultivator to the Company's collector, immediately after the cotton has been picked, but before it has been separated from the seed. This person fixes annually the rent which the cultivator is to pay, the amount of which is always imposed in a specified sum of money, but payable in cotton, rated at a price named by the collector. Its amount upon an average of years is about one half of the crop. In the payment of this rent, the collector refuses to receive any but the best and cleanest part of the cotton, and to this the farmers dare not object. What remains is purchased principally by the Company's commercial resident, who formerly fixed the price he was to pay for it; but in the bargains now made by the officer, he gives the average price received by the cultivators in the surrounding districts.
| Year | Bales | |------|-------| | 1825 | 110,000 | | 1826 | 135,000 | | 1827 | 130,000 | | 1828 | 50,000 | | 1829 | 75,000 | | 1830 | 120,000 | | 1831 | 100,000 |
The wool exported is all long-staple wool, but of two sorts, one called in Egypt makko, and in England common Egyptian; the other the produce of sea island seed, called in Egypt Semnar, and in England sea island Egyptian. Besides these two descriptions of cotton, Egypt raises from 15,000 to 20,000 bales of short-staple cotton, similar in quality to that of Smyrna, and chiefly consumed in the country itself.
The cotton received from Egypt is found to be among the most useful that is grown, and that raised from sea island seed ranks in quality next to American sea island.
Having succeeded in the production of cotton, the pacha thought he might advance another step, and have it spun into yarn and woven into cloth. He accordingly formed establishments for spinning and weaving in Cairo, Bosacco, Rosetta, and other places; and so early as 1826 he had sixty-one mills at work, moved by the power of buffaloes. The machinery was supplied from France and England, orders in council having been obtained in the latter country to authorize its export. Power-looms were also sent out, but did not succeed.
If the culture of cotton in Guzerat has been able to exist under this oppressive system, what might not be expected were the rent of the lands, as is now the case in the presidency of Bengal, fixed and paid in money, and were the growers at liberty to sell the product to those who would give the best price for it! The rapid increase of cultivation in Bengal since the introduction of this more enlightened system of management, and the acquisition and diffusion of wealth which have been the consequences, present a striking contrast to the impoverished and wretched state of the cultivators in Bombay, and speak a language in political science not to be misunderstood.
Since 1814 attempts have been made to introduce the Bourbon seed into Guzerat. These attempts have failed, but it would be wrong to be discouraged by the ill success of an undertaking carried on under the management which usually belongs to monopoly. A very different result may be looked for when that system and its effects shall have been more completely done away, and improvements come to be conducted by those who are to reap the benefit of them. Were this better system once established throughout the peninsula, it appears not unreasonable to expect, in a country so extensive, and of such various soils, not only that all the qualities of cotton wool known to our manufacturers would be produced, but that new varieties might be obtained, possibly of more useful application than any we yet possess.
Egyptian cotton was introduced into this country for the first time in 1823. Among many schemes for calling into action the capabilities of Egypt, all of which were selected with admirable sagacity, Mahmoud Pacha, the present ruler of that country, thought of cotton wool as a product suited to the soil and climate, and the culture of which, from the great and growing demand, was likely to prove a profitable speculation. His measures for prosecuting this object were carried into execution with the energy which has characterized all his proceedings, and were upon a scale to enable him, so early as 1823, to export 5623 bales to England.
We have not been able to obtain a statement of the general export of cotton from Egypt for 1823 and 1824; but the following table shows the amount exported annually since that period.
Last year the pacha shipped a thousand bales of yarn to Calcutta for sale; but it was not of a quality to enter into competition with the English yarn, and it was found to be unsaleable, except at a most disadvantageous price. He ordered it therefore to be woven into cloth in Calcutta on his own account, and to be re-shipped to Egypt in a manufactured state.
Claperton and Landers, on their expeditions to trace the course of the Niger, found the inhabitants everywhere clothed in cotton. They mention that cotton wool is produced in the different districts in the interior, and is spun into cloth on the spot. There exists, therefore, in the heart of Africa an extensive manufacture of cotton cloth. It is to be regretted that they give no information of the way in which the yarn is spun, and no description of the loom employed to weave it. It would be interesting to know the nature of the instruments used by the natives in these processes, as such knowledge might enable us to trace whence the Africans derive their acquaintance with the art of weaving; and thus perhaps throw some light on African history. It appears that the people of Eboe, and of the countries near the coast, are chiefly clothed in Manchester cotton goods; a circumstance which would lead us to expect, should we succeed in obtaining a commercial intercourse with the interior of Africa, that a valuable market for our manufactures may be found in that country.
We have just learned that the American settlers of Liberia have been able to establish a communication across the country to Timbuctoo, and have found there a considerable market for cotton cloths.
We shall now resume our account of the progress of the manufacture in Great Britain.
From Sir Richard Arkwright having commenced his operations at Nottingham, the seat of the stocking manufacture, and from his connection with Mr Need, who was largely engaged in it, the whole produce of his spinning was at first devoted to that trade. The cotton yarn for this manufacture requires to be particularly smooth and equal; and to secure these qualities, it is spun by a process differing a little from that employed for ordinary twist; being from two roves in place of one, it is called double spun twist. The introduction of this article produced a great change upon the stocking manufacture. Hand-spun cotton was entirely laid aside; and stockings made of twist were of so superior a quality, that in a short time they wholly supplanted thread stockings.
The manufacture of cotton stockings in Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, and Leicestershire, is now of great extent.
About the year 1778, Mr Need and Mr Strutt made the important discovery, that the yarn produced by the spinning frame had sufficient strength to fit it for warp, although its firmness and hardness rendered it less suitable for weft. The weft, therefore, continued to be spun by Hargreaves' jenny; and from this time the calicoes, and other articles in imitation of India goods, which had hitherto been manufactured with linen warp, came to be made wholly of cotton; and the progressive increase of these manufactures, particularly of calicoes, after this time, was unexampled.
After having made a considerable quantity of those goods, Mr Need and Mr Strutt discovered, that, when printed, they were subject to double the duty charged upon calicoes woven with linen warp, and that their sale was even prohibited in the home market. After a long and expensive application to the legislature, they succeeded in procuring the repeal of those impolitic laws. Nearly about the same period, calicoes entirely of cotton were begun to be made at Blackburn; which place soon became the seat of their manufacture, and for a long time the great market to which the printers from all parts of the kingdom resorted for their supplies. This branch went on increasing for many years in a most extraordinary degree. About the year 1805, it was calculated that the number of pieces sold annually in the Blackburn market was not less than a million; and by that time the manufacture of this article was not confined to the country round Blackburn, but had spread into the north-west district of Yorkshire, principally about Colne and Bradford, from which part of the country 20,000 pieces weekly are said to have been sent to Manchester.
The first attempts to make muslins in this country commenced simultaneously in Lancashire and at Glasgow about the year 1780, but without success. There was no yarn fitted for the weft of these goods, except that spun upon Hargreaves' jenny; and when made of this, it was found they were not of a marketable quality. Recourse was then had to wefts brought from India; and although a better article than the former was by this means produced, it was still not of a quality to compete successfully with Indian muslin. As soon, however, as the invention of the mule jenny enabled the spinner to produce yarns suited to such fabrics, the manufacture of the finest cotton articles became an important branch of trade in this country. That machine, as has been mentioned, came into use at the end of the year 1785, upon Sir Richard Arkwright's patent being cancelled; and it is from that period we ought to date the commencement of this part of the manufacture. So rapid was its progress, that in 1787 it was computed that 500,000 pieces of muslin were in that year manufactured in Great Britain.
Muslin began to be made nearly at the same time at Bolton, at Glasgow, and at Paisley, each place adopting the peculiar description of fabric which resembled most those goods it had been accustomed to manufacture; and in consequence of this judicious distribution at first, each place has continued to maintain a superiority in the production of its own article.
Jacquets both coarse and fine, but of a stout fabric, checked and striped muslins, and other articles of the heavier description of this branch, are manufactured in Bolton, and in its neighbourhood.
Book, mill, and lino muslins, and jacquets of a lighter fabric than those made in Lancashire, are manufactured in Glasgow. Sewed and tamboured muslins are almost exclusively made there and in Paisley. A machine of the most ingenious contrivance for performing the operation of tambouring was in the year 1807 invented by Mr John Chinnie, Duncan of Glasgow, and a patent taken out for the discovery. Each machine contains about forty tambouring needles, and is superintended by a girl, who pieces the thread when it breaks. This beautiful, and, at first, promising piece of mechanism has never come into general use. At present there are only three or four machines kept at work by the Messrs Mitchells of Glasgow, who at an early period became proprietors of the patent.
What are called fancy goods, woven in the loom, were first made at Paisley, which had been the chief seat of the silk gauze manufacture of this country. In the silk trade, which was then beginning to fall into decay, a body of most ingenious workmen had been bred. By employing them, the taste and invention which had produced the varieties displayed in that beautiful article were immediately transferred to the production of similar fabrics of muslin. From this circumstance Paisley for a long time retained the exclusive possession of this branch; but being only seven miles distant from Glasgow, the general seat of the cotton manufacture of Scotland, and the mart to which most purchasers of muslin resort, many of its principal manufacturers have been induced to move their establishments to that city, although the weaving of these muslins continues to be executed in Paisley and its neighbourhood.
There is a curious circumstance to be noticed with regard to the manufacture of the very fine fabrics of muslin in Scotland, that a great part of the yarn used for them is brought from Manchester, in consequence of the Scotch spinners not having yet been able to produce the very fine numbers of yarn of the best quality. This inferiority does not proceed from a less perfect construction of the machinery employed in Scotland, the mechanics and the machine makers of Glasgow being admitted to be excellent workmen; neither does it arise from the want of skill in those who conduct the business, or from any difference in the processes employed in the two countries; but it is to be attributed to the same cause which produces the superior yarn of India, namely, an adroitness and mechanical sleight of hand in the operative spinners of Manchester, acquired by a few out of the great multitude bred there.
The manufacture of the thicker cotton fabrics was at the same time rapidly rising in importance. The manu- Cotton manufacture has been exclusively confined to the north of England, all attempts to make them in Scotland having proved unsuccessful. The finer qualities of this article are made at Warrington, the coarser in the western parts of Yorkshire.
Balloon handkerchiefs were first manufactured about Preston and Chorley, where they still continue to be made. The manufacture of ginghams was for a long time confined to Lancashire, but for many years it has been extensively introduced at Glasgow, although Lancashire continues to be the chief seat of this branch.
Polka dot handkerchiefs were first made about the year 1785 at Glasgow, where the manufacture of them has been carried to a great extent. They were not made in Lancashire till some time afterwards, and the manufacture of them there has never been to the same amount; Glasgow, therefore, continues to be the principal mart for this article.
Blue and white checks and stripes for exportation were at first of a linen fabric, but were afterwards woven with linen warp and cotton weft; and when Sir Richard Arkwright's discovery enabled the spinner to produce cotton yarn of sufficient strength to be used for warps, a great proportion of these goods came to be made wholly of cotton. This manufacture is carried on in Lancashire and in the county of Fife, and to a small extent at Aberdeen; its chief seat, however, is Carlisle.
The manufacture of cotton cambric was begun about the same period, and was separated into two branches; into cambric to be used as garments in a white or printed state; and into cambric made in imitation of French linen cambric, to be used for the same purposes as that article. The first is made nearly altogether in Lancashire, where the manufacture of it is carried on to great extent; and the second, of much less amount, wholly at Glasgow. The Scotch manufacturers have never been able to rival the Lancashire in the first, nor the Lancashire manufacturers to rival the Scotch in the last.
Bandana handkerchiefs, and Bandana cloths for garments, were first made by Mr Henry Monteith, at Glasgow, about the year 1802, and are now manufactured there to a considerable amount. The cloth is dyed a bright Turkey red, and the colour is discharged from those parts which form the pattern or figure, by passing a chemical mixture through them. Glasgow still continues to be the chief seat of this manufacture, where there are several large works for carrying it on. The demand for Bandanas, however, has latterly fallen off, while, in consequence of the repeal of the impolitic duty on printed cloths, the consumption of these has greatly increased, and most of the proprietors of the Turkey red dyeing establishments have therefore been induced to add calico-printing to their former business.
From the circumstance of Glasgow being the seat of a fine manufacture, it was found difficult, as long as hand weaving continued, to introduce there the weaving of calicoes; the article was made to a limited amount at Perth, but the Scotch calico-printers were obliged to look for the principal part of their supply of cloth to Lancashire. So long as this was the case, it is evident that the Scotch were not on an equal footing with the English printers; and as a great deal of capital had been embarked in the trade by the former, a considerable anxiety was felt by them that this defect in their situation should be remedied. The object was at length attained by the introduction into Scotland, in 1801, of the art of weaving by the power of water or of steam, the machinery and subsidiary processes for which had about that time been so improved, that cloth woven in this way was found to come as cheap, if not cheaper, than if produced by manual labour.
Weaving by power had been attempted fifteen years before its introduction into Scotland, by the Rev. E. Cartwright of Hollander House, Kent, who invented a loom to be worked by mechanical means. The circumstances of this discovery, which have been obligingly communicated to us in a letter from Mr Cartwright, are curious, and, in the history of inventions, we think interesting. Mr C. says,
"Happening to be at Matlock in the summer of 1784, I fell in company with some gentlemen of Manchester, when the conversation turned on Arkwright's spinning machinery. One of the company observed, that as soon as Arkwright's patent expired, so many mills would be erected, and so much cotton spun, that hands never could be found to weave it. To this observation I replied, that Arkwright must then set his wits to work and invent a weaving mill. This brought on a conversation on the subject, in which the Manchester gentlemen unanimously agreed that the thing was impracticable; and, in defense of their opinion, they adduced arguments which I certainly was incompetent to answer, or even to comprehend, being totally ignorant of the subject, having never at that time seen a person weave. I controverted, however, the impracticability of the thing; by remarking, that there had lately been exhibited in London an automaton figure which played at chess. Now, you will not assert, gentlemen, said I, that it is more difficult to construct a machine that shall weave than one which shall make all the variety of moves which are required in that difficult game.
"Some little time afterwards, a particular circumstance recalling this conversation to my mind, it struck me that, as in plain weaving, according to the conception I then had of the business, there could only be three movements, which were to follow each other in succession, there would be little difficulty in producing and repeating them. Full of these ideas, I immediately employed a carpenter and smith to carry them into effect. As soon as the machine was finished, I got a weaver to put in the warp, which was of such materials as sail-cloth is usually made of. To my great delight, a piece of cloth, such as it was, was the produce. As I had never before turned my thoughts to anything mechanical, either in theory or practice, nor had ever seen a loom at work, or knew any thing of its construction, you will readily suppose that my first loom must have been a most rude piece of machinery. The warp was placed perpendicularly, the reed fell with a force of at least half a hundredweight, and the springs which threw the shuttle were strong enough to have thrown a Congreve rocket. In short, it required the strength of two powerful men to work the machine at a slow rate, and only for a short time. Conceiving in my great simplicity that I had accomplished all that was required, I then secured what I thought a most valuable property by a patent, 4th April 1785. This being done, I then condescended to see how other people wove; and you will guess my astonishment when I compared their easy mode of operation with mine. Availing myself, however, of what I then saw, I made a loom, in its general principles nearly as they are now made; but it was not till the year 1787 that I completed my invention, when I took out my last weaving patent August 1st of that year."
But the idea of weaving by machinery was not new. About the close of the preceding century, a drawing and a description of a similar loom (a circumstance unknown to Mr Cartwright) had been presented to the Royal Society of London. The movements, too, in both are the same with those of the inch-loom, a machine which had long been in use.
Mr Cartwright, after obtaining his second patent, erected a weaving factory at Doncaster, which he filled with looms. This concern was unsuccessful, and was at last aban-
But still the invention was considered so important to the country, that some years after, upon an application from a number of manufacturers at Manchester, parliament granted Mr Cartwright a sum of money as a remuneration for his ingenuity and trouble.
About the year 1790 Mr Grimshaw of Manchester, under a license from Mr Cartwright, erected a weaving factory, which was to have contained five hundred looms, for weaving coarse sacking cloth. He intended also to attempt the weaving of fustians. But after a small part of the machinery had been set going, the work was destroyed by fire; and as the concern during the short trial that had been made did not promise to be successful, the mill was not rebuilt.
About the year 1794 Mr Bell of Glasgow invented another loom, for which also a patent was taken; and a factory of these looms was erected at Milton, near Dumbarton. But this concern, although carried on for many years, was not more successful than those which had preceded it.
In 1801 Mr John Monteith of Glasgow erected a weaving factory in the village of Pollokshaws, containing two hundred looms. This concern also at first promised ill, but is understood to have afterwards succeeded, and the number of looms was increased to three hundred.
In 1805 a large weaving factory was erected at Catrine, in Ayrshire, by Messrs James Finlay and Company, to be carried on in conjunction with their extensive spinning works at that place; and in 1808 they built another weaving factory at Doune, connected with the spinning works there, the two containing 462 looms. The quantity of cloth produced in these establishments, in proportion to the number of hands employed in them, is understood to have been greater than had been obtained before in other works, and the undertaking is said to have done well from the outset.
After this period new weaving factories were erected in Glasgow or in its neighbourhood almost every year. In 1817 there were in Glasgow or belonging to it fifteen weaving factories, containing 2275 looms. There are now (1832) sixty-three factories, containing 14,127 looms.
Weaving by power, however, could never have succeeded, but for the discovery of a process for dressing the web before it is put into the loom, which happily was effected by Mr Radcliffe of Stockport. The stoppage of the work from time to time for dressing the web made it impossible to do more than attend to one loom; but by the acquisition of this process, one person, generally a girl, can attend to two looms.
The contrivances for "dressing" are very ingenious, the machinery employed in it deriving its movement from the power which gives motion to the looms. The yarn is first wound from the cop upon bobbins by a winding machine, in which operation it is passed through water, to increase its tenacity. The bobbins are then put upon the warping mill, and the web warped from them upon a beam belonging to the dressing-frame. From the beam now placed in the dressing-frame, the warp is wound upon the weaving-beam; but in its progress to it, passes through a strong dressing of starch. It is then compressed between two rollers, to free it from the moisture it had imbibed with the dressing, and drawn over a succession of tin cylinders heated by steam, to dry it. During the whole of this last part of its progress, it is lightly brushed as it moves along, and fanned by rapidly revolving fans.
Mr Peter Marland of Stockport, who for many years has had a large factory for weaving cotton cloth of a superior quality, is the inventor of an improvement upon the power-loom, by means of the double crank, for which, about the year 1807, he obtained a patent. The operation of the crank is to make the lathe give a quick blow to the cloth on coming in contact with it, and by that means render it more stout and even.
The weaving of calicoes by power did not succeed in Lancashire so early as it did in Scotland. In 1817, the number of power-looms in Lancashire was estimated to be about two thousand, of which only about one thousand were said to be then in employment. The cause of this was, that the price paid at the time we refer to for weaving by the hand, had been forced down to the very lowest degree by the depressed state of trade, and the pressure of an overgrown population bearing upon the means of employment. Wages had fallen below the rate at which the goods could be produced by machinery. This struggle for existence between the two processes terminated, however, as might have been expected. The hand-weavers finding it impossible to go on with the reduced wages, gradually gave way. Their numbers ceased to increase, and the extraordinary addition to the amount of the manufacture since that time has been the product of the power-loom. The goods of a very low quality are still woven by the hand. The yarn of which they are made is spun from waste, or the lowest-priced wools, and has not sufficient strength to bear the fatigue of the power-loom movement; and it is only by the dexterous management and sleight of the weaver's hand that it can be at all woven into marketable cloth.
There are now (1832) 80,000 power-looms in Lancashire. The weekly produce of two power-looms, managed by a girl, is from ten to eleven pieces of cloth, four fourths wide and twenty-five yards long, woven in an 11th reed; for this she is paid eightpence per piece.
The following table gives the numbers, the age, and sex of the persons employed in twenty of the weaving mills belonging to Glasgow, with the maximum and minimum amount of the weekly wages earned in 1832 by the different sexes, at the different ages. From Dr Cleland's Statistics of Glasgow.
| Age from 9 to 10. | Males | Weekly Wages | Females | Weekly Wages | |------------------|-------|--------------|---------|--------------| | | | | | | | | I | 1s. 6d. | 9 | 2s. 6d. to 3s. 6d. |
| Age from 10 to 12. | Males | Weekly Wages | Females | Weekly Wages | |-------------------|-------|--------------|---------|--------------| | | 31 | 1s. 9d. to 4s. 6d. | 66 | 2s. 6d. to 7s. 6d. |
| Age from 12 to 14. | Males | Weekly Wages | Females | Weekly Wages | |-------------------|-------|--------------|---------|--------------| | | 38 | 3s. to 6s. 6d. | 220 | 3s. to 7s. 6d. |
| Age from 14 to 16. | Males | Weekly Wages | Females | Weekly Wages | |-------------------|-------|--------------|---------|--------------| | | 60 | 3s. to 10s. | 447 | 4s. 10d. to 9s. |
| Age from 16 to 18. | Males | Weekly Wages | Females | Weekly Wages | |-------------------|-------|--------------|---------|--------------| | | 36 | 6s. 6d. to 12s. | 538 | 6s. 1½d. to 10s. 2½d. | From the change which took place in the dress of this country about fifteen years ago, when printed cotton cloths were almost entirely supplanted by silks and worsted stuffs, it was expected that the manufacture of calico, and in general of cotton goods, would decline. But any diminution of the sale of calicoses for the home printing trade has been amply compensated by the great and growing demand for exportation. These goods are either printed abroad or used in a white state, and the number of yards of calico produced is double what it was at the period when this decline was apprehended.
There is a branch of the cotton manufacture yet to be noticed, a branch not derived from the East, like muslin, but one that has had its origin in this country,—we mean the bobbinet, or Nottingham lace manufacture, which now furnishes employment to a large amount of labour and capital.
That the stocking-frame should have been transferred into a machine for weaving point-lace, a fabric so different in character, was not to have been expected. About the year 1768, however, a frame-work knitter of Nottingham, looking at the lace on his wife's cap, thought he could fabricate a similar article by means of his stocking-frame. He tried, and was, on the first attempt, to a certain degree successful. In 1782 some advance was made in carrying his invention farther; but the design was not finally matured till 1809, when Mr Heathcote of Teversal succeeded in bringing the machine to a perfect state, and took a patent for the discovery. In 1815 steam power began to be applied to the movement of the machine; but did not come into extensive use until 1820. In 1828, on the expiry of Mr Heathcote's patent, the manufacture increased with extraordinary rapidity. The demand for the goods became immense; and the Nottingham lace-frame was found, in the fabrication of plain nets, to rival the most finished productions of France and the Netherlands. It is proper however to observe, that without the previous possession of the mule jenny, we could not have made the acquisition of the cotton-lace manufacture. Had Mr Crompton not given us the means of obtaining very fine yarn, of the quality required for the delicate texture of Hanmold's altered stocking-frame, the parent of the machine upon which we now weave fabrics of such beauty must have rested with his first rude conception, for want of a material of sufficient fineness.
The manufacturers of lace by machinery during the time the contest with hand-labour was still undecided, reaped the same high profits which those who first employed the spinning machinery obtained under like circumstances. Indeed, the progress of machinery, and its effect upon production, are nowhere more strikingly exemplified than in the history of the cotton-lace manufacture.
Mr Heathcote's frame, on its introduction, at once took the place of the whole body of pillow-lace workers. After his patent expired, and the trade was thrown open, the eagerness to partake of the great profits produced a most active competition, and new and improved machines were brought forward in rapid succession, each in its turn rendering less profitable, and by degrees displacing, the one which had preceded it.
Again, when latterly the supply of the article came to overtake the demand, and prices were greatly reduced, the frames moved by power began to press hard upon those worked by the hand; and the value of the hand-machines, which, when they were first started, was as high as £1,200, sank to £60. There are now in the course of being introduced into the manufacture, machines possessing such power of production as must supersede the older ones entirely.
The number of lace frames was in September 1831 4501. Of these, 3501 were hand-machines; and seven hundred of them were held by workmen, who bore the twofold character of manufacturer and weaver, and to whom every fall in the price of the goods resolved itself into a fall of wages, leading to a reduction of the wages paid in the trade generally.
These machines work up annually 1,600,000 pounds of sea island cotton, which are spun into 1,000,000 pounds of yarn, of the value of £500,000, and give employment to fifty-five spinning factories at Manchester containing 860,000 spindles. It is calculated that 206,000 persons receive wages for the labour performed in the different processes of this manufacture; in spinning the yarn at Manchester, weaving the goods in Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire, and in the embroidery of them, executed in different parts of the kingdom. The product is estimated at 28,400,000 yards, and the value as it comes from the frame is £1,891,875. Of this whole production, about four eighths are exported in an unembroidered state to the Continent; about three eighths are sold unembroidered for home consumption; and the remaining eighth is embroidered in this country. The total value of the goods and of the work performed upon them in this country, has been estimated at £3,417,700.
The trade is at present in a state of great depression, occasioned partly by the decrease in the demand, the article, from its cheapness, having become less an object of fashion and desire; and partly by the constantly increasing amount of production, from the improved machinery, pressing on the market. A great extension of its sale, however, is expected, when the markets of the East come to be more completely opened to us.
Mr Felton of Nottingham, to whose valuable little treatise on this branch of the cotton manufacture we are indebted for the greater part of the facts we have given, says:
"We can export a durable and elegant article in cotton bobbin net, at fourpence per square yard, proper for certain useful and ornamental purposes, as curtains, &c.; and another article, used for many purposes in female dress, at sixpence per square yard."
Having now given a sketch of the progress of the cotton manufacture of this country, from its first introduction to the present time (1832), we shall endeavour to give some idea of its progressive increase, by tabular exhibitions of the quantity of cotton wool imported into Britain at different periods.
From the year 1716 to 1790, the average annual importation of cotton was 2,178,257 pounds. We have not been able to obtain any account of the cotton imported from that period to the year 1771; but the increase had not been great; for the average annual importation from 1771 to 1775, which commences two years after Hargreaves' and Arkwright's discoveries, and comprehends two years of the time after which calicos began to be made wholly of cotton, was only 4,764,589 pounds. The imports- The following table gives the quantity of cotton of different descriptions imported into Great Britain annually from 1802 to 1831 inclusive. The quantity is stated in packages, each package containing three hundred pounds.
| Year | American | Brazil | East India | Other sorts | |------|----------|--------|------------|-------------| | 1802 | 107,494 | 74,720 | 8,535 | 90,634 | | 1803 | 106,831 | 76,297 | 10,296 | 45,474 | | 1804 | 104,103 | 48,588 | 3,561 | 86,359 | | 1805 | 124,279 | 51,242 | 1,983 | 75,116 | | 1806 | 124,939 | 51,084 | 7,767 | 77,978 | | 1807 | 171,267 | 18,981 | 11,409 | 81,010 | | 1808 | 37,267 | 50,449 | 12,512 | 67,512 | | 1809 | 159,980 | 140,927| 35,704 | 103,511 | | Packages | 281,988 | 238,598 | 242,610 | 252,620 |
| Year | American | Brazil | East India | Other sorts | |------|----------|--------|------------|-------------| | 1810 | 243,963 | 142,846| 70,382 | 92,186 | | 1811 | 128,192 | 118,314| 14,646 | 64,879 | | 1812 | 93,331 | 98,705 | 2,607 | 64,563 | | 1813 | 37,720 | 137,168| 1,629 | 73,219 | | 1814 | 43,858 | 150,930| 13,048 | 74,800 | | 1815 | 208,051 | 91,055 | 22,357 | 52,840 | | 1816 | 166,077 | 123,450| 30,670 | 49,285 | | 1817 | 199,669 | 114,518| 120,202 | 44,872 | | Packages | 561,173 | 326,231 | 261,205 | 249,536 |
| Year | American | Brazil | East India | Egyptian | West India | |------|----------|--------|------------|---------|------------| | 1818 | 207,580 | 162,499| 247,659 | | 502,991 | | 1819 | 205,161 | 125,415| 184,259 | | 81,300 | | 1820 | 302,395 | 180,086| 57,923 | | 31,247 | | 1821 | 300,079 | 121,085| 30,095 | | 40,428 | | 1822 | 329,906 | 143,505| 19,263 | | 40,770 | | 1823 | 458,598 | 144,611| 38,393 | | 27,632 | | 1824 | 282,371 | 143,310| 50,852 | | 25,587 | | Packages | 668,729 | 546,183 | 571,651 | 491,678 |
| Year | American | Brazil | East India | Egyptian | West India | |------|----------|--------|------------|---------|------------| | 1825 | 423,446 | 193,942| 60,484 | 11,023 | 31,988 | | 1826 | 395,552 | 55,590 | 61,699 | 47,621 | 18,188 | | 1827 | 046,776 | 120,111| 73,738 | 22,450 | 30,988 | | 1828 | 444,390 | 167,362| 84,855 | 82,889 | 20,056 | | 1829 | 463,076 | 159,586| 80,489 | 24,739 | 18,867 | | 1830 | 618,527 | 191,468| 35,019 | 14,750 | 11,721 | | 1831 | 608,887 | 168,288| 76,764 | 38,124 | 11,304 | | Packages | 820,883 | 581,950 | 894,063 | 749,552 |
The following table gives the extreme prices of cotton wool in Liverpool on the 31st December of each year from 1818 to 1831, showing the progressive reduction of the price of the raw material of the manufacture during that period.
| Year | Sea Island | Orleans | Upland | Egyptian | Pernambuco | Maranhao | Demerara | West India | Sarat | |------|------------|---------|--------|----------|------------|----------|-----------|------------|-------| | 1818 | 33 a 48 | 16 a 21 | 17 a 17| 17 1/2 a 28| 17 1/2 a 28| 17 1/2 a 28| 17 1/2 a 28| 17 1/2 a 28| 17 1/2 a 28| | 1819 | 26 a 36 | 12 1/2 a 17| 8 1/4 a 14| 8 1/4 a 14| 8 1/4 a 14| 8 1/4 a 14| 8 1/4 a 14| 8 1/4 a 14| 8 1/4 a 14| | 1820 | 17 1/2 a 28| 14 1/2 a 28| 14 1/2 a 28| 14 1/2 a 28| 14 1/2 a 28| 14 1/2 a 28| 14 1/2 a 28| 14 1/2 a 28| 14 1/2 a 28| | 1821 | 14 1/2 a 28| 11 1/2 a 11| 8 1/4 a 8| 8 1/4 a 8| 8 1/4 a 8| 8 1/4 a 8| 8 1/4 a 8| 8 1/4 a 8| 8 1/4 a 8| | 1822 | 13 a 22 | 11 1/2 a 11| 8 1/4 a 8| 8 1/4 a 8| 8 1/4 a 8| 8 1/4 a 8| 8 1/4 a 8| 8 1/4 a 8| 8 1/4 a 8| | 1823 | 17 a 27 | 9 1/2 a 9| 9 1/2 a 9| 9 1/2 a 9| 9 1/2 a 9| 9 1/2 a 9| 9 1/2 a 9| 9 1/2 a 9| 9 1/2 a 9| | 1824 | 10 1/2 a 10| 10 1/2 a 10| 10 1/2 a 10| 10 1/2 a 10| 10 1/2 a 10| 10 1/2 a 10| 10 1/2 a 10| 10 1/2 a 10| 10 1/2 a 10| The following table gives the quantity of cotton yarn spun, and the quantities exported, and worked up at home from the year 1818 to 1831.
| Years | Yarn Produced | Exported | Consumed at Home | |-------|---------------|----------|------------------| | | | | | | 1818 | 98,911,800 | 14,743,675 | 84,168,125 | | 1819 | 98,566,200 | 18,085,410 | 80,480,790 | | 1820 | 108,238,500 | 23,032,325 | 85,206,175 | | 1821 | 116,126,100 | 21,526,369 | 95,599,731 | | 1822 | 130,943,700 | 26,595,488 | 104,348,232 | | 1823 | 138,731,400 | 27,378,986 | 111,352,414 | | 1824 | 148,656,600 | 33,605,510 | 115,051,090 |
The following table gives the markets to which the cotton yarn spun from 1818 to 1831 was exported.
| Years | Russia and Ports in the Baltic | Germany, Belgium, and Holland | France and Ports in the Mediterranean | Africa and North and South America | India and China | Totals | |-------|--------------------------------|-------------------------------|--------------------------------------|-----------------------------------|-----------------|--------| | | | | | | | | | 1818 | 5,918,691 | 7,937,234 | 876,957 | 18,932 | 1,861 | 14,743,675 | | 1819 | 3,779,544 | 13,124,637 | 1,157,593 | 22,665 | 971 | 18,085,410 | | 1820 | 9,060,052 | 11,659,802 | 2,089,451 | 22,009 | 1,011 | 23,032,325 | | 1821 | 4,815,114 | 14,819,820 | 1,863,340 | 21,674 | 6,421 | 21,526,369 | | 1822 | 4,948,619 | 18,764,070 | 2,838,828 | 20,673 | 23,273 | 26,595,468 | | 1823 | 7,148,497 | 16,694,715 | 3,393,204 | 29,085 | 123,535 | 27,378,986 | | 1824 | 12,304,373 | 16,497,594 | 4,632,063 | 45,616 | 105,861 | 33,605,510 | | 1825 | 9,369,333 | 19,721,419 | 3,264,078 | 51,408 | 123,586 | 32,641,604 | | 1826 | 12,380,188 | 22,160,331 | 6,671,463 | 47,732 | 919,507 | 42,179,521 | | 1827 | 11,481,650 | 23,225,400 | 5,675,140 | 170,797 | 2,793,645 | 43,346,632 | | 1828 | 14,885,515 | 18,169,935 | 5,826,280 | 222,872 | 4,185,280 | 43,242,882 | | 1829 | 17,564,062 | 31,262,142 | 8,203,586 | 636,274 | 2,696,325 | 50,562,189 | | 1830 | 17,855,541 | 29,718,184 | 11,485,195 | 327,483 | 4,291,718 | 63,678,116 | | 1831 | 14,352,638 | 28,023,322 | 10,792,384 | 1,689,155 | 6,703,655 | 61,561,154 |
The value of the present annual production of the cotton manufacture of Great Britain is estimated at L34,000,000 sterling, of which more than a half is the price of goods and yarn made for exportation. The capital invested in buildings and machinery is double what it was twenty years ago, and the quantity of goods annually produced much more than triple; yet, from the improvement of the processes, and consequent diminution of the expense of production, with the reduction which has taken place at the same time in the price of the raw material, this more than tripled quantity of the manufactured article does not represent more capital than was represented by, and required for bringing to market, the lesser amount during the preceding period. In the year 1812, when Mr Crompton applied to parliament for a remuneration for his invention, he found, by as accurate an investigation as he could make, that the number of mule spindles in this country was between four and five millions; and Mr Kennedy, in his memoir of Mr Crompton, has stated that the number in 1829 had increased to seven millions. It is now, in 1832, rated at eight millions. The quantity of cotton yarn spun in 1832 is 292,000,000 pounds, of which 132,000,000 pounds have been manufactured into cloth, giving employment to 203,373 looms. The cotton manufacture, in its different branches, is estimated to furnish employment to 1,500,000 persons.
Before concluding our account of the cotton manufacture of this country, we must call the reader's attention to the peculiar circumstances which opened to this branch of industry a course of such unprecedented success; and having done so, we shall notice the effects produced by it on the condition of the people, and on the general wealth and prosperity of the nation.
As the successive mechanical inventions which we have described came to be applied to the manufacture, they changed the principle of production, and made what till then had been nearly wholly a product of labour, become almost entirely a product of capital. Important results flowed from this change. It enabled Great Britain, the principal holder of these machines, to become the furnisher of a commodity, which up to that time had been brought at a great expense from India. It further enabled her to reduce its cost, and render what till then had been accessible only to the rich, and of limited sale, an article of general wear. During the long struggle which took place between machinery and hand-labour, this country continued to be the nearly exclusive possessor of the machines by which the reduction of cost was effected. Having in consequence, in a great measure, a monopoly of the supply, she was enabled to reap that harvest of prosperity which so unusual a combination of circumstances was calculated to produce. An improvement in the condition of every class of the community followed the advance of the manufacture. The progressive extension of the use of machinery, in place of lessening the demand for labour, as was at first dreaded, had the effect of increasing it to an extraordinary degree. There was a constantly growing want of hands to be employed in aid of the new machinery, and in the new branches of manufacture to which it gave birth. The wages of labour in consequence rose, at first moderately, but afterwards extensively; and the rise, having pervaded every description of employment, not only gave the whole labouring class in this country a command of the comforts of life, but brought within their reach many little luxuries to which they were formerly unaccustomed. The condition of the higher classes of the community experienced a corresponding advance, the population rapidly increased, and an enlarged consumption of the products of the soil took place, in consequence of the improved circumstances, as well as of the augmented numbers of the people. More grain, more butcher-meat, were used; and an additional quantity of corn was required for the horses employed in the transport of commodities, in the conveyance of passengers, and in the operations of husbandry. All these causes gave a stimulus to agriculture, and produced a change on that important branch of industry, not less remarkable than that which was simultaneously taking place in manufactures.
Previous to the year 1766, the industry, population, and consumption of the country had been for a considerable time stationary. We had, from the want of demand at home, been enabled during the whole of the preceding part of the century, to export grain annually to a large amount. From 1766, however, we ceased to be exporters of grain. The improvement of the circumstances of the country had enlarged its power of consumption, which from that time has been so steadily progressive, and so great, that notwithstanding our having, by our improved agriculture, augmented our products threefold, we not only have never been able to bring our home supply to meet our demand, but have been obliged to import largely every year from other countries.
There can be no such satisfactory evidence of the improving condition of a people as a continued increase in their power of consumption; and the facts we have stated afford proofs of a degree of comfort diffused for a length of time over a great population, which we believe is unequalled.
The influence on the commercial prosperity of the country has been scarcely less striking. In 1775 the tonnage of British vessels cleared outwards was 783,226 tons, and of foreign vessels 64,860 tons. In 1831 the tonnage of the British had increased to 2,904,731, and of the foreign to 896,051 tons.
Liverpool, the first commercial port of the empire, may be called a creation of the cotton manufacture. Aikens, in his History of Manchester, states the population of Liverpool at the commencement of last century to have been 12,420 persons, and the number of ships belonging to the port in 1710 to have been 84; averaging something less than 70 tons each ship. In 1766 six hundred and forty-six British vessels and fifty-four foreign vessels entered the port of Liverpool, and seven hundred and eight British and sixty-nine foreign vessels cleared out. In 1831 the population of Liverpool amounted to 163,175, and 8644 British vessels and 1078 foreign vessels entered the port, and 7743 British and 1040 foreign vessels cleared out.
Since the commencement of the cotton manufacture, the population of Lancashire, of Lanarkshire, and of Renfrewshire, the districts in which it is most extensively carried on, has increased threefold; and the population of Glasgow, which in the year 1763, immediately before the commencement of the cotton manufacture, was 28,300, has, as appears by the government census of 1831, increased to 202,426.
Such are the great results of the cotton manufacture and of the stimulus which its rapid increase has given to the other branches of industry.
But having reached this high state of prosperity, it may be asked, what security have we that we shall be able to maintain our pre-eminence in this manufacture, now that other countries, over which we possess no natural advantage, are using efforts to participate in its benefits?
To this it can only be answered, that the hopes of our being able to preserve our vantage-ground, rest upon our persevering industry, our economy, our great capital, the advanced state of our machinery, our attainments in mechanical knowledge; the benefit we derive from having been long in possession of the business, and the better acquaintance with the minutiae of its processes. The lead we have thus taken we think it probable we may for a long time be able to maintain; for invention is progressive, and in a manufacture extended like ours, every discovery that is made has the effect to unfold principles leading to other discoveries, or to suggest analogous applications in other departments. Those who conduct the various processes of manufacture, and those employed in the operative part of them, have all their thoughts constantly turned to the means of enlarging the powers of the machines they are in possession of, or to the discovery of others for executing parts of the work still performed by the hand. Besides the mere progress in machinery, there is a progress also in the use of machinery, of contrivances to supply its defects, and of little, undefinable, subsidiary aids, for the furtherance of the work to be done, which contribute to give a vast superiority to those who have been long habituated to the use of it.
It is not, however, the rivalry of the European states we have to dread in this branch. Over many of them we have natural advantages; and with all of them, from the circum-
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1 In the number of British vessels which have entered and cleared out of the port of Liverpool, coasters are included.
2 When the measures for conciliating the respective commercial interests of parties in the Irish Union were arranging, the opinion of professional men was taken as to the period at which the cotton manufacture of Ireland might be able to go on in competition with that of England without the help of protecting duties; and Mr William Orr of Dublin, who had introduced the manufacture into that country, was asked if he thought it likely that in ten years the Irish manufacturers would overtake the English in skill—Mr Orr replied, "Yes! if the English can be persuaded during that time to stand still."
stances which have been stated, it is probable we shall be able to maintain our ground. But perhaps this may not be the case, to the same degree, in the competition which we shall have to encounter with America, after her great tracts of land are occupied, and a fuller population admits of her capital and industry being profitably directed to manufacturing pursuits. From being the grower of the raw material, she has an advantage over us in this contest which none of our other competitors possess. But even this circumstance, we apprehend, is not of so much moment as may at first sight appear.
The southern states of the Union, in which the cotton wool is raised, from their local defects in other requisites, and the description of people of which the lower order is composed, never can become a manufacturing country. The competition, therefore, which we shall have to maintain, will be with the people of the northern states, who must, like ourselves, import the raw material which they are to manufacture. The difference of its cost to them and to us cannot be great, particularly if we shall have the East Indies and South America open for our supply.
We believe, then, that in this manufacture we have little to fear from competition; but we are not equally confident that its prosperity may not be exposed to risk from our ill-judged anxiety to secure a monopoly of its advantages. Our practice of excluding from our markets the manufactures of other countries, is not only contrary to sound political principles, but gives rise to a spirit of hostility unfavourable to our interests, and places us in such a state that, when other nations in retaliation exclude our manufactures from their markets, we have no right to complain. But even without any wish to retaliate, are not other nations too apt, as they advance in manufactures, to be led to copy those regulations to which they erroneously ascribe our success?
That we may not decide this question rashly, let us examine what is the danger to which we should be exposed if we were to take the opposite system, and open our ports to the manufactures of other countries.
If we can now export annually to the value of about 20,000,000 sterling of cotton goods, which, burdened with freight, charges, and the exporter's profit, we are able to sell in competition with foreign manufacture, can we have anything to fear from a competition with that manufacture in our home market, where the circumstances of the competing parties would be reversed? So far from the introduction of foreign manufacture into our market being an evil, we are inclined to think that it would be advantageous to our interests, and that in the interchange of various fabrics which would be the consequence, the sale of our own manufactures would be increased. Commerce being altogether a matter of barter, it is necessary for every country to purchase in order that she may sell; and fortunately, even in the same branch of manufacture, there is always room for such changes. There are shades of difference in the fabric of every article, upon which taste, or fashion, or caprice, never fails to fix an arbitrary value, thereby constituting them into separate commodities capable of being exchanged.
But the view we are taking of this important question does not rest altogether upon theory. Happily we have experience in support of it. No one disputes the advantage resulting from the interchange of commodities between Lancashire and Lanarkshire, or alleges that it would be for the benefit of either to have the manufacture of the other excluded from its market. Yet these two districts have their dependence upon manufactures which in their general features are the same.
Those who recollect the commercial treaty with France, in which some approach was made to a free trade between the two countries, will remember that while it lasted the sale warehouses of London and Manchester were resorted to by purchasers from the different towns of France, with the same freedom, and in nearly an equal proportion of numbers, as from the towns in England. And although in those warehouses commodities of a similar description of French and English production were to be found, and our shopkeepers were at the same time daily resorting to France to make purchases, in no period were our manufactures in a state of greater progressive prosperity than during the eight years, from 1786 to 1793, that this treaty existed.
There is no one, we believe, who had an opportunity of knowing the two countries at the time we mention, who will not say that both were benefited by this treaty, and probably exactly in the degree that the exclusive system in both had been departed from.
In addition to this, it may be proper to notice, that Switzerland and Saxony have always been open to the reception of cotton goods, free of duty; and that in none of the countries on the Continent is the cotton manufacture in a more thriving state. Might it not, therefore, be a measure of wisdom to withdraw our restrictions against the importation of foreign manufactures, the interference of which with our own products in the home market, supposing no interchange of the two to take place, never could be to the amount of the sale we may be deprived of by following the opposite policy, and thus inducing the exclusion of our own goods from the foreign market?
Fears have been expressed that the lower wages for which the labourers of other countries, our competitors in the manufacture, can work, and upon which, from the cheapness of their provisions, they can afford to live, may ultimately enable them to take the manufacture out of our hands. In reply to this, it may perhaps be sufficient to recall to our readers the small part of the cost of the commodity which now belongs to the labour of the hand, and the daily diminution which is taking place even of that part, by the introduction of new mechanical substitutes.
As examples of the progressive transference of production by hand labour to machinery, we may refer to the process employed for the production of cotton yarn before 1767, when each spindle required a person to work it; and compare it with the present state of spinning, when one man, with the aid of a few placers to take up and join his broken ends, can work a thousand spindles; or we may refer to the circumstance, that in Lancashire in 1818 there were not more than 2000 power-looms, and of these not a half in employment; and that in 1832 the number had increased to 80,000,—so extensive had been the change during these fourteen years from hand-weaving to weaving by power.
In addition to the security thus afforded by the alteration in the mode of production, we possess, in our inexhaustible stores of iron and coal, resources which more than counterbalance any advantages arising to other countries from the lower wages of their labourers. The unlimited command of these elements of power, one of which is the material of which machines are formed, and the other the chief article used in giving them motion, has not only led to extensive changes in the manufactures themselves, but has produced a complete revolution on the coasting trade of the country, and bids fair to give rise to an equally extraordinary change in the mode of internal communication.
Steam navigation has brought out the full benefit of our insular position. It has brought Bristol, Liverpool, Dublin, Belfast, and Glasgow, into constant and intimate relation; and the celerity and certainty belonging to the
conveyance render this means of transport for our finer commodities invaluable. A person in Glasgow sells an order for goods to be shipped by the first vessel for New York. There is no vessel to sail immediately from the Clyde; but he knows that one of the packet ships from Liverpool will sail for New York in four days from that time. He puts his goods into the steam-boat from Glasgow to Liverpool, and they are on board of the packet for New York in three days after he had received the order. The steam-boat enables the manufacturer of Glasgow to employ the weavers of Belfast, at no greater expense of carriage or time than he incurs in sending his yarn to be woven in the upper part of his county.
The railroad, again, between Manchester and Liverpool, with its steam conveyances, has not only reduced the cost of carriage between these places, but has had the effect of bringing almost together these two immense manufacturing and trading communities, overlapping, as it were, space and time, in the rapidity of the communication. A manufacturer in Manchester can leave his house in the morning, purchase a supply of cotton at Liverpool, and have it delivered at his work in Manchester the same day.
When the system of internal communication, therefore, shall have been extended to the degree that may be anticipated, and the approximation of our populous manufacturing and commercial districts shall by this means have been effected, there will be gained a saving of time and of capital, with a facility of combining on every occasion the powers of the whole manufacturing community in the increase of production, which few of our competitors can look forward to possess, and which, with our other advantages, are calculated to afford us assurance of the continuance of our present pre-eminence.
It will be proper, in an account of the cotton manufacture, to offer a few observations upon the effect of the extension of the use of machinery on the character and moral condition of the people.
The more perfect division of labour and separation of employment which takes place as the use of machinery advances, and the consequent limitation of the worker's attention to a single object, check the expansion of the faculties, and prevent that growth of intelligence in this class, which under a more general employment of their powers might be expected. Another evil of a similar nature, but attended perhaps with more serious consequences, is produced by manufactures when they have arrived at this state, namely, the employment of children in factories, by which these young creatures are withdrawn from their parents and homes before they have received the elements of education, or can have acquired domestic or moral habits.
In noticing these evils, however, we must recollect that the state of manufacture which gives birth to them is not an optional one; not the production of regulation or imitation, but has grown up in the progress of the arts of industry, prosecuted by an intelligent people. Although, therefore, it is our duty, in as far as we can, to correct their effects, we must lay our account with being exposed to them, so long as men are allowed to pursue their individual interest, by whatever fair means they conceive likely to accomplish their object.
To remedy in as far as possible the interruption to education, schools have been established in many of the factories, in which the children are instructed gratis in reading and writing. An institution of this kind we consider it to be the interest of the proprietor of every work to provide. The expense cannot be great, and will be amply repaid in the superior description of workers it will be the means of rearing. In the mean time, something is done to supply the deficiency of this provision by Sunday Cotton schools, which have been generally established in most of the manufacturing towns. In these, the children are not only taught to read, but are also instructed in the principles of religion, and in a knowledge of their moral duties.
In the year 1800, a course of lectures was given for the first time in Glasgow, in the Andersonian Institution, to the mechanics and working classes, with the view of affording them instruction in the science of their different employments. In the supplement to the former edition of this work in 1818, we thought it important to give an account of these lectures, in order to call public attention generally to the benefit which had been derived from them; but this account we think it unnecessary to repeat, as the "Mechanics' Institutions," which began soon after to be formed in Glasgow and in Edinburgh on the principles of this course, have since spread into every quarter of the kingdom. These establishments are calculated to counteract in a great degree the effects which we have noticed as arising from the minute division of employment, and confinement of attention to one object, in great manufactories.
So important does this species of instruction appear to us in the circumstances of this country, where so much depends on our being able to keep the lead which we have got in mechanical invention and discovery, that we think it worthy of consideration in a national point of view, whether, in the appointment of our parochial schoolmasters, it might not be declared indispensable that they should be qualified to teach the first principles of mechanics and chemistry.
With the stores of the raw material of machinery which we possess, might we not, with a proper training of our people, become machine-makers for all the nations who are less favourably circumstanced? The advantage of being able to occupy such ground would be incalculable.
We shall now return to the history of the progress of the cotton manufacture, from which our attention has been somewhat diverted by our desire to trace the true sources of its prosperity in Great Britain, and to arrive at a knowledge of the policy to be pursued, to enable us to retain our mercantile superiority.
In Ireland some attempts to introduce the manufacture Cotton of cotton goods were made so early as 1770, but the manufacture continued on a very limited scale until the year 1790. After this period the progress was considerable, although far short of what took place during the same time in this country; indeed its products have never been such as to enter into competition with those of Britain, or to become articles of general foreign sale. This probably arises from the high price of fuel, rendering the concentration of the processes by means of the power of steam, and the consequent saving in labour, in many situations impossible.
The chief seat of this manufacture in Ireland is Belfast, and the district of country situated within twenty miles of that town. But there are a good many calicoes, fustians, and cotton checks, made in Dublin, Balbriggan, Banden, and Cork. All these goods are consigned to factors in Dublin for sale, except a part of the calicoes, which the manufacturers are sometimes enabled to dispose of to printers on the spot.
In the article on the cotton manufacture in the Supplement to the former edition of this work, we mentioned that there were then only twenty-five cotton mills in Ireland, containing about 145,000 spindles, partly mule and partly throstle; and that when all these were at work they were supposed to spin about 36,000 pounds of cotton weekly. From the most minute inquiry which we have been able to make, we do not find that any advance in the manufacture has been made since then.
Some of the spinners weave the whole of their yarn, while others do not weave any; but in either case, the weaving is carried on by capitalists, who give out the yarn to be woven, and pay the weaver wages for his work. The greater part of this business is carried on in the same district with the linen manufacture, in which the weaver is the sole manufacturer, buying the yarn for his web, and selling the cloth when he has finished it. Perhaps the difference in the manner in which these manufacturing processes are conducted, may proceed from the different way in which the yarns made use of in the two branches are produced. The yarn for the linen manufacture is spun by individuals scattered over the country. This in the infancy of the business, and while little capital had been accumulated, may have led to the manufacturing process being carried on in a like detached manner; the weaver purchasing the yarn from his neighbour the spinner, and, after converting it into cloth, selling the web at the nearest market to the merchant. The cotton manufacture in Ireland did not grow up thus from small beginnings, but was introduced into that country at once from England, and with spinning establishments upon comparatively a large scale. It was in consequence necessary that the weaving should from the first take off the produce of those establishments; and there being no way of effecting this with certainty, but by employing the weavers upon wages to work up the yarn, the manufacture was begun, and has been prosecuted upon this plan ever since, while the linen manufacture carried on in the same district continues to be conducted upon the opposite system.
There are two power-loom mills in Ireland. One of them is understood to be doing well, the other has only been partly filled with looms, and has been allowed to remain in that state.
Large quantities of cotton yarn are sent from Britain to Ireland to be woven by the hand weavers in that country; and several Glasgow houses have agents at Belfast for giving out their yarns, to be woven in that neighbourhood, and returned to them in cloth. The manufacture furnishes in this case employment to English capital and Irish labour.
The annual return of the cotton manufacture of Ireland is estimated at £1,700,000.
The cotton manufacture was introduced into France about sixty-five years ago, and was first established at Archamps, in the Vivarais; from whence it afterwards made its way to Montpellier, in Lower Languedoc. For some time after its introduction, the greater part of the yarn used in its fabrics was brought from the Levant, a small part only, spun in the mountains of the Vivarais and the Gevaudan, being produced in the country. The Turkey red yarn required for coloured goods was either brought from Adrianople and Smyrna in a dyed state, or the manufacturers sent the yarn of their own spinning to these places, by way of Marseilles, to be dyed and returned to them. But this circuitous mode of obtaining those yarns did not continue long, for the manufacturers soon succeeded in inducing some Greek dyers to settle in France, and the natives having acquired from them a knowledge of these processes, the whole dyeing required for the manufacture came in the course of twenty years to be executed by Frenchmen. From these yarns, spun and dyed in the way we have stated, were produced at Montpellier, at Cholet in La Vendée, and in Bearn, large quantities of pocket handkerchiefs, and of cloths for garments and for furniture. The manufacture of these articles, and the art of dyeing, were established also at Rouen, at Amiens, and throughout the surrounding country, within ten years after their introduction into the south of France. Before this period, there had been carried on at Rouen a considerable manufacture of linen goods, similar to those afterwards made of cotton. The cotton goods, however, as was the case in England when first introduced, were woven with linen warp and cotton weft, and it was not till after Sir Richard Arkwright's invention that the French were able to make them wholly of cotton. With all this activity in the introduction of the cotton manufacture, no early attempts were made by the French to avail themselves of the improvements which had been introduced into the process of cotton spinning in England. Their first spinning machine of a construction superior to the one-thread wheel, was a mule which Monseigneur de Calonne, minister of France, introduced in the year 1787. This was immediately copied, and these machines adopted wherever the manufacture was carried on. The use of them increased rapidly, particularly at Rouen, at Paris, at Lille, at St Quentin, at Amiens, and at Montpellier.
About the same period the first attempt to spin water twist was made at Louviers. Hostility to the introduction of these improvements, similar to what had taken place in England, was manifested by the common people in France. But the disposition to disturbance was soon quelled, and the evident advantage which the new mode of spinning possessed over the old put an end in a short time to all idea of opposition.
It appears from official reports that the quantity of cotton wool used in the French manufacture was in the year
| Year | Quantity (pounds) | |------|------------------| | 1798 | 18,000,000 | | 1799 | 10,290,000 | | 1800 | 6,726,000 | | 1801 | 11,008,000 | | 1802 | 15,126,000 | | 1803 | 15,780,000 | | 1804 | 17,200,000 | | 1805 | 18,412,000 | | 1806 | 21,734,000 |
The cotton imported in the year 1806 was manufactured into the following articles. About 1,000,000 pounds into velvets; about 925,000 pounds into nankeens, nankinets, crepes, and other small stuffs; about 1,155,000 pounds into dimities; about 14,850,000 pounds into fustians, calicoes, coverlets, simouses, muslins, &c., &c.
In twenty-two of the departments in France in which this manufacture was carried on, there were, in 1806, 7,450 spinning mules, containing 800,724 spindles, and employing 28,460 persons, and there were in these departments 28,634 looms employed in weaving cotton fabrics, giving occupation to 31,107 persons. The number of machines and of people engaged in the manufacture in the other parts of the country are not stated.
In the same year France imported (contraband) from England 2,000,000 pieces of nankeen, 1,000,000 pieces of cloth for printing; and about 300,000 pieces of other descriptions of cotton goods, such as muslins, cambrics, dimities, &c., valued at L3,000,000 sterling.
It was only in the large spinning works, of which up to the year 1817 there were very few in France, that the power of water or of steam was employed, and, even in the greater part of them, the application of power was confined to the machinery used in the preparation of the cotton.
Nearly the whole of this branch of the manufacture had till then been carried on with small systems of preparative machinery moved by the power of horses, or by a wheel turned by a man or men, and the spinning part, under either system, was almost wholly worked by the hand.
The weaving branch was partly carried on by manufacturers, but more generally by operative weavers, who bought their own yarn, and disposed of the cloth, when woven, at the weekly markets.
The French manufacturers were in 1817 far behind the English, in the important art of combining mechanical power with manual dexterity, to effect an economy of labour and increase of production. They had been induced to prosecute the manufacture upon the plan we have mentioned, rather than erect establishments upon the extended scale and of the comprehensive nature used in this country; by the high interest they were obliged to pay for money on the one hand, and the comparatively cheap rate of labour on the other. The operation of these circumstances led them to pursue this system, as seeming the best calculated for producing the goods upon the cheapest terms, and with the smallest advance of capital.
There is, however, no scarcity of falls of water in France for moving large machinery, although the greater part of them are in situations either of scanty population or of difficult access, and are inconvenient for receiving the raw material, or disposing of the manufactured product. Many of the falls, too, are appropriated to mills or mines, and are not to be bought but at an expense which the benefit to be derived from them seems not likely to repay.
The original location of the different fabrics of the manufacture depended on the circumstances in each situation favourable for the production of the article to which the inhabitants took themselves; these circumstances remaining the same, the distribution of the different branches still continues with little change. In Paris there is a good deal of spinning, and they manufacture there the best calicoes and the finest cotton hosiery produced in France. The manufacturers of Paris have also a number of people employed in spinning and weaving at Versailles, Essennes, Melun, Senlis, Royaumont, Liancourt, Chantilly, Gisors, Carlepont, &c.
The cotton manufacture is, however, established on a more extensive scale in Rouen than in any other town in France; and it is not confined, to the city, for Normandy is peopled with cotton weavers, who carry on the business in their own houses, and send the goods they make to the hall at Rouen for sale. The manufacturers of Rouen have also many workmen employed in the neighbourhood of St Quentin and Cambrai, where their finest cloths are woven. The articles produced in Rouen, and in these dependent districts, are calicoes coarse and fine, and they are made to a great amount; velvets also in cotton great quantity; coloured cotton goods of all descriptions, which last, the Normans, from their superior knowledge in the art of dyeing, execute well.
At Amiens, and in the neighbourhood, there is a great deal of spinning done, partly for hosiery, but chiefly for velvets, of which a large quantity is made in this district. The cotton manufacture has in a great measure supplanted the woollen manufacture formerly carried on there.
At Troyes they manufacture dimities, fustians, swanskins, and different strong stuffs for furniture and linings. There is also a considerable manufacture of low-priced hosiery.
At St Quentin, although the spinning is considerable, it does not supply above a fifth of the yarn used in the surrounding district, in which there are, it is said, 12,000 weavers. These are employed upon different qualities of calicoes; upon cambrics for printing, upon dimities, and upon fancy goods, both white and coloured. There is no weaving done in the town. In the linen manufacture formerly carried on there 15,000 weavers were at one time employed in making linens, thread, gauzes, and cambrics; these are now reduced to about 2000.
At Tarrare they make the finest book muslins; but the yarn they use is all smuggled from England.
In the ci-devant province of Beaujolais they produce calicoes, low-priced dimities, and stuffs for linings.
At Nismes the people formerly wore wholly employed upon articles of silk; but they now manufacture very fine cotton stockings, and fancy goods of different descriptions, woven with silk warp and cotton weft.
At Lyons they make fancy articles in cotton, of superior taste and beauty, as they boast, to anything of the kind ever exhibited before; but they admit that the price of the goods is very high.
The manufacture of Montpellier is now entirely confined to what are called Madras handkerchiefs, made in imitation of those of India.
The manufacture carried on in Cholet, Laval, and the surrounding country, was formerly wholly of linen. They now make calicoes, coloured cotton handkerchiefs in great quantities, and coloured handkerchiefs of cotton and linen. They have no spinning in this district.
The calico printers of Alsace formerly drew their whole supplies of cloth from Paris, Rouen, and St Quentin; but having been enabled to establish spinning works, with the
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1 For a great part of this account of the cotton manufacture of France in the year 1806, we are indebted to the late Count Capel, who, upon being applied to for some information on the subject in 1817, with a liberality which usually accompanies talent, immediately favoured us with the following details—
"C'est avec plaisir que je vais vous transmettre les renseignements que vous me demandez.
"Les manufactures de coton ont été introduites en France il y a peu près 50 ans; la première fabrique a été formée à Arebonas dans le Vivarais; de là elle s'est étendue à Montpellier, dans le Bas Languedoc. On tisse une grande partie du coton filé du Levant, et on filasse le reste au moulin à la main dans les montagnes du Vivarais et du Gevanvans.
"Pendant plusieurs années, on tint les cotonniers teints en rouge d'Adriapole et de Smyrne; on y envoyait même par Marseille des cotons filés pour les y faire teindre.
"Quelques années après, on a attiré dans le pays des teinturiers Grèce, qui, peu après, ont fait connaître leurs procédés, et depuis 30 ans il n'y a que de Français qui teignent.
"Avec ces cotons, on fabrique à Montpellier, à Cholet dans la Vendée, et dans le Bearn, des tissus pour habillement, meubles, mocheries, dont ils font un grand commerce.
"La fabrication de ces tissus, et l'art de la teinture, ont été établis à Rouen, à Amiens, et dans tous les environs, 10 ans après qu'ils existaient dans le midi de la France.
"Le ministre, Monsieur de Calonne, a introduit le premier métier pour filer le coton, il y a 30 ans. Depuis cette époque, et surtout depuis 20 ans, ces machines se sont propagées sur tous les points de la fabrique, surtout à Rouen, à Paris, à Lille, à Saint Quentin, à Cholet, à Montpellier. Elles sont si nombreuses, que d'après un calcul exact, elles peuvent filer 30,000,000 de livres pesant par an de fil de coton. Elles sont mues par des cours d'eau, par des chevaux, ou par des machines à vapeurs.
"Les tissages se font dans les villes, et dans les campagnes. Il y a beaucoup de tisserands qui nechent leur fils, et vendent leurs tissus aux marchands qui les achètent.
"On fabrique en France toutes sortes de tissus de coton. À Tarrare, et dans les montagnes voisines, on fait des mousselines qui ne coûtent pas au pâté belles des Indes. Nos imprimeurs sur toile n'emploient que les calicoes et les percales fabriqués chez nous, et ils trouvent de l'avantage. Le commerce des tissus de coton fabriqués chez nous est annuellement de deux à trois cent millions de francs, sur lesquels il y a les quatre cinquièmes de main-d'œuvre. J'ai l'honneur de vous saluer,
LE COMTE CHAPAL."
VOL. VII. assistance of a few Swiss emigrant workmen, who instructed the Alsacians; they introduced into their country the cotton manufacture, and not only supply the goods required for their own printing, but have a surplus to dispose of for the consumption of others.
Lille, Tourcoing, and Roubaix, with the surrounding country, form a spinning and manufacturing district. Lille and Tourcoing spin not only for their own consumption, but are able to furnish a great deal of yarn for the weaving carried on in the neighbourhood. The yarn produced in Roubaix, on the contrary, does not suffice for its own demands. The goods manufactured in this district are printaniers, thicksets, crepes, and nankinets. Formerly its weavers were employed on woollen stuffs; but this branch is now entirely given up. At Cambrai the weaving is considerable, but it is almost wholly carried on for the manufacturers of St Quentin and Rouen.
The only articles of cotton manufacture in which the French compete with England are their dyed goods and their sewed muslins. The colours of the former are bright and durable; and the embroidery on their muslins is designed with taste, and well executed.
From 1817 to 1827 the manufacture has continued to go on prosperously. Spinning works upon the same principles as those in England, in which the preparation and spinning processes are carried on together, have been established in all the manufacturing districts; and the use of hand-mules is abandoned in every part of France.
In 1814, on the restoration of the Bourbons to the throne, the ministry which then came into power, entertaining the idea that the prosperity of a nation depended on its being able to produce everything required for its own consumption, took measures for protecting the French home manufactures, by preventing all competition from abroad; and, without regard to the natural advantages or disadvantages which the country possessed for carrying on any particular branch of industry, thought only of making France a great manufacturing nation, and the fabricator of every commodity.
In the year 1827, reports were submitted to government by the different chambers of commerce and manufacturing bodies in France, on the causes of the distress which was then generally felt. In these reports it was stated, that the protection which had been afforded to the home manufactures, by shutting out all competition, had produced two results—the refusal of other countries to receive the manufactures of France,—and a premature and in many cases an unsound growth of the protected manufacture at home. The consequence of fostering branches of industry in this manner, where there are no natural or local advantages for carrying them on, is not experienced so long as the demand for the home consumption of the article keeps the lead of the supply. This was the case for a length of time with the cotton manufacture of France, and the prosperity which it exhibited seemed to justify the minister's measures, and his confidence in the beneficial operation of his system. But in the year 1827, it was found that the quantity of cotton goods which the manufacture had by that time become enabled to supply, was more than the home market could take off; and their cost was too high to allow of their being profitably disposed of in the markets abroad. The parties who were engaged in the business found themselves thus involved in difficulty and distress, and this continued to the end of 1831, when, the low price to which the goods had been reduced having had the effect of increasing the home consumption, and even of causing an exportation of the surplus stock to the amount of 54,006,000 francs, of which 37,091,000 were for printed cottons; most of the factories were again set to work, and the crisis was considered to be over for the present.
The manufacturers, in their report, state the high cost of their machinery, and of fuel, as among the principal causes of the distress, and in proof of this give a statement of the comparative expense of erecting and maintaining a spinning mill in France and in England, wrought by a steam-engine of thirty horse power. They calculate the cost in France at 500,000 francs, in England at 325,000 francs; and the yearly maintenance of the establishment, including fuel in France, at 98,300 francs, and in England at 51,000 francs. The charge in spinning a kilogram of yarn they thus ascertain to be in the one case seventy-six cents, and in the other thirty-two. M. Martin, an iron founder at Rouen, on being asked by the committee to what he attributed the high price of their machinery, when compared with its price in England, replied, "A ce que le combustible, et tout le matériel de la fabrication, est trois fois plus cher en France qu'en Angleterre." Of 393 blast-furnaces at work in 1826 in France, only fourteen were worked with coal; and wood, which constitutes the fuel of the greater part of France, had risen in consequence to three times its former price.
The dearness of fuel operates no less disadvantageously in preventing the French from availing themselves fully of the powers of the steam-engine, applied by us in economising the cost of almost every process of the manufacture, and in cheapening the commodity to the consumer, by the rapid and less expensive transportation of the raw material to the place of manufacture, and of the finished product to the place of sale.
Attempts have been made in France to introduce the power loom; but the cost of fuel and machinery, added to the low price of hand weaving, have formed insurmountable obstacles to the extension of this mode of production. There are not now more than 3000 power-looms at work in France.
A manufacturing establishment at Rouen has recently obtained a patent for making cotton canvass for shipping, which is understood to be impermeable; and in that case the objection which has hitherto circumscribed the employment of this article will be removed.
The following statement of the importation of cotton wool into France from 1822 to 1831 inclusive, will show the amount of the manufacture during that period.
| Year | Bales | |------|-------| | 1822 | 215,199 | | 1823 | 172,312 | | 1824 | 243,958 | | 1825 | 216,460 | | 1826 | 231,001 | | 1827 | 279,693 | | 1828 | 239,733 | | 1829 | 264,760 | | 1830 | 254,000 | | 1831 | 243,168 |
The people of free countries apply themselves more early to the pursuits of industry than those who live under despotic governments, probably from the conviction that what their labour produces will be secured to them for their enjoyment. The Swiss boast that they manufactured muslins before the beginning of the last century. If this is correct, these goods certainly cannot have been fitted to compete with the India muslins, with which the markets of Europe continued to be supplied until the invention of the mule-jenny enabled the British muslins to rival them.
The cotton manufacture of Switzerland, whatever may have been the date of its commencement, was not at an early period of much amount. It was even many years after Sir Richard Arkwright's improvements before it began to make any considerable advance. The Swiss had no spinning by machinery before the year 1798, at which time their first mill was erected at St. Gall. Until that period all their yarn was spun upon the one-thread wheel, and even in 1817 about a tenth part of it was produced in this manner.
A considerable proportion of their machinery up to the year 1818 was worked in small systems scattered over the country; as we have stated to have been the case in France at that time. In the manufacture of the goods, the weaver provided himself with the yarn, and sold the cloth at the nearest weekly market; or exchanged it for a new supply of yarn. There were, however, some manufacturing capitalists who employed a number of weavers, furnishing them with materials for the cloth, and paying them wages. But only a small part of the manufacture was carried on in this way.
Although the manner in which the Swiss conducted the business at this time was not so well calculated for producing quantity, or bringing the article cheap to market, as the mode pursued by us, it left to the mechanic a higher moral rank and character, and a greater possibility of worldly enjoyment, than belongs to the working people of our more systematised establishments. Under the one, the workman appears to exercise independent labour, and his employment seems to be subservient to his own use and benefit. In the other, we see him only as an accessory to some piece of machinery for supplying the elements of commerce; and, losing sight of the object of man's labour, the extension of his comforts and enjoyments, we are led to consider a nation as a great manufacturing concern, and increase of production as what is to be desired, at whatever expense of individual privation it may be obtained.
The cotton manufacture of Switzerland, unprotected against foreign competition in the home-market, and excluded from the markets of France, Austria, and Piedmont, continued nevertheless steadily and uniformly to advance, furnishing a striking proof of the safety and advantage of free trade. Its progress since 1818 has been great. Additional spinning works have continued yearly to be established in the different cantons, at Winterthur and its neighbourhood, in the town and canton of Zurich, in the cantons of St. Gall and Appenzell, of Argovia, of Thurgau, of Geneva, and at St. Blaye near Basle.
At the present time, all the water power to be obtained without much expense, and situated in populous parts of the country, has been fully occupied. In some places, such as Zurich, it has been bought at as high a price as L200 for each horse power.
The quantity of cotton manufactured in Switzerland in 1832 is 56,000 bales, and the expense of bringing the raw material there is 1d. per lb.; on that brought from Trieste, and 1½d. on that from Havre.
There are at present (1832) above 9000 persons employed in the spinning processes, and the whole number of workers in the different branches of the manufacture, including those engaged in the dyeing and printing, exceeds 28,000. The wages paid in the spinning works are as follows: To carders (all men) 6s. per week; to drawers and slubbers (girls) 3s. per week; to stretchers (men) from 4s. to 6s. per week; to spinners from 8s. to 10s. per week. The working hours are generally fourteen hours per day, and eighty hours per week may be taken as the average. The weavers earn from 4s. to 4s. 6d. per week, and are paid 2s. per piece for calicoes. The workers in the different departments are considered to be well off, and are contented and happy. Power-looms have been tried, but the low wages of hand weaving, and scarcity of water-power for moving the machinery, have prevented their coming into use.
The goods manufactured are nearly of the same description as those made in Britain. The canton of Appenzell produces fine plain muslins and the finest embroideries. The canton of St. Gall, muslins, coloured pocket handkerchiefs, cottonets, and the finest cotton cloths. The canton of Zurich, on both banks of the lake, produces about a thousand pieces of calico weekly. The cantons of Thurgau and Argovia produce mostly coloured goods; and in these and the cantons of Zurich and Glaris the printing of cotton cloths is carried on to a considerable extent.
Switzerland has been an exporting country for many years; and the Swiss goods, particularly fine tweeds, and the better description of prints, have successfully competed with similar British goods in the Mediterranean markets, and latterly in South America. Foreign yarns, cloths, &c., are admitted into Switzerland free of duty.
Before 1822, all the numbers of water and mule twist, and manufactured articles of every description, were sent from this country to Switzerland. Now, fustians only are sent to that market, and hardly any yarn below No. 60. Indeed, so fast are the Swiss advancing in spinning, that they expect to be able immediately to supply themselves with all the yarns they use under No. 120.
The cotton manufacture is prosecuted to a considerable extent in different parts of Germany. In Austria it is carried on principally around Vienna; in the neighbourhood of which city there are a number of large spinning works, all of them moved by water. They do not spin higher numbers than No. 60. All the fine yarn they manufacture, and even a very considerable part of the coarse, is smuggled from this country. The importation of yarn under No. 60 is prohibited, but all higher numbers are admitted on paying a considerable duty. To facilitate the contraband introduction of these yarns, small spinning works have been established at Reichenberg, and other places upon the Bohemian frontier. The owners of these mills bring English yarns from Elberfeld or Manchester, make up the bundles anew, and sell the twist as Austrian. The business of spinning and manufacturing are carried on separately.
In Vienna and the surrounding country there are above 10,000 weavers employed. The weaving is also very considerable at Prague, Kuttenberg, Lettowitz, and Ebreischdorf; and is spread through Bohemia and Moravia. It is also carried on extensively at Gratz in Styria. Of late years a few works have been established in the Tyrol, in consequence of the abundance of water power, the low rate of wages, and the heavy duties on the importation of yarn. The cotton goods manufactured in the Austrian dominions are of a stout fabric, and well executed. Nankens form a principal article.
Austria, under her present form of government, cannot, we apprehend, be made a great manufacturing country. Commerce does not spring vigorously under the uncertainty which belongs to despotic rule; and, if successful, the diffusion of wealth, which is its consequence, produces a spirit incompatible with the exercise of arbitrary power. Supposing, therefore, the manufactures of Austria, by facilities encouragement, brought to supply a part of her own consumption, she cannot continue to advance in these pursuits, without involving a change of her political institutions.
In Saxony, the cotton manufacture, although perhaps not of greater amount than in Austria, is more generally diffused over the country, and exists under circumstances which offer a greater probability of future advance. The habits and moral condition of the Saxon people are favourable to the successful prosecution of manufactures. They are sober, industrious, well educated, and frugal. The administration of their government is liberal, and their rulers do not capriciously interfere with private pursuits. They have been long trained to manufacturing habits, having very early had an extensive linen business; and in order to introduce the cotton manufacture, nothing more was necessary than to transfer to the latter a part of the industry which had been employed in the former.
In 1799, after many unsuccessful attempts, Messrs Barnard and Brothers, with the aid of an English mechanic, erected at Chemnitz the first work which was established for spinning cotton in Saxony. Their example was quickly followed by others; but from the imperfect knowledge which the Saxons then possessed of the mode of erecting these works, and from the reduction of the profits of spinning, which took place in consequence of the increased competition upon the Continent and in England, these undertakings proved unsuccessful. Those who engaged in them became loaded with large stocks of unsaleable yarn, which they were not able to get quit of, until the blockade of the Elbe in 1804, and the subsequent occupation of Hanover by the French, which excluded for a time the competition of England.
The Berlin decree in 1806, and the enforcement of Bonaparte's continental system, gave great vigour to the spinning trade in Germany. By the year 1808, the German spinners had more than indemnified themselves for the loss which they had previously sustained; and they continued to prosper and to extend their business, till the success of the allies in the year 1813 put an end to the French yoke, and opened the country to the competition of foreigners.
Their machinery, however, had been greatly improved during this period; and the price of labour in Saxony being uniformly low, the Saxons allege that they would have been able to compete successfully with us, had it not been for our greater capital, and the advantage which our geographical situation gave us in the purchase of the raw material. Since 1818, the manufactures of Saxony have continued yearly to advance.
They spin mule yarn of a low quality from Smyrna cotton of numbers from No. 16 to No. 40, which they weave into thicksets, cotton velvets, and coloured pocket-handkerchiefs. They spin likewise a second quality of mule yarn, of numbers from No. 36 to No. 54, from bowed or New Orleans cotton, mixed with Perambuco or Smyrna cotton, according as they wish the quality to be better or worse. This yarn, which they work into cloths for garments, is unequal in the thread, but is preferred by the Saxon weavers to the English second quality of mule yarn, the cloth produced from it having, they think, more body. They import, however, a considerable quantity of the second quality of yarn from England. There is very little mule yarn of the first quality spun in Saxony. All the finer yarns, and nearly the whole of the water twist required in their manufacture, are imported from England. The yarn, whether spun at home or imported, is sold to the weavers, who are scattered over the country, and by them is converted into cloth, and disposed of at the weekly market of the nearest town.
The cotton manufacture of Prussia and the Rhenish provinces is rapidly increasing, not only in the weaving of British yarns, but in spinning for themselves. Works for this end are daily established. The use of the hand-mule is now confined to Gladbach, Rhegdt, and Kussen (left bank of the Rhine), where a few mules are retained for spinning yarns from No. 8 to No. 12. The number of persons now employed in spinning by power, including children, is estimated at from six to seven thousand. They work fifteen, or even sixteen hours a day. Water power is scarce, and steam-engines have lately been obtained, both from England and from Charenton. Wages in the Rhenish provinces are high; power-looms have, in consequence, been introduced, and their number is daily increasing. The cotton worked up in 1830 exceeded 35,000 bales.
The great manufacture of Prussia, however, and one which is growing yearly, is the weaving and dyeing of British yarns, supplied chiefly through Elberfeld. Some of these goods have even been sent back to England for shipment to the East Indies. The quantity of English yarn imported into Prussia in 1831 to be thus manufactured, was 15,600,000 pounds.
Attempts have been made to introduce the cotton manufacture into Russia. A spinning work was erected at St Petersburg more than twenty years ago; but being a royal work, it is carried on at great expense. There has, we believe, been one other mill built since in Russia; but the whole cotton spun in those works and on the distaff, the only other mode of spinning they possess, is under 3000 bales. Russia is becoming, however, yearly a better customer for British yarns. The quantity sent to that market in 1832 exceeded 19,000,000 pounds.
Weaving is carried on in Moscow and its neighbourhood, and latterly along that line of country stretching towards the Caspian Sea, particularly about Saratoga, where a colony of Moravians is established. The goods produced are used chiefly for the garments of the peasantry.
There are eleven spinning factories in Lombardy; but some of them are mere cloaks for facilitating smuggling. The hand-mules are fast disappearing; a few only remaining in the neighbourhood of Como and the Lago Maggiore. The mills work twelve hours per day. About 12,000 bales of cotton are used annually in the manufacture. The wages are lower than in Switzerland; but a good spinner can earn eight shillings per week, while a good labourer gets scarcely five.
An enterprising manufacturer attempted to establish power-loom weaving near Milan; but the want of mechanical skill occasioned a complete failure, and his work is now standing still.
A great deal of British yarn finds its way into the country, and is manufactured into stockings and other articles. Their own yarns are woven into heavy tweeds (fustanze), and common cotton cloth. All other descriptions of cotton goods are imported at a heavy duty, or smuggled, from Switzerland, England, and France.
Notwithstanding the encouragement given by the Piedmontese government to the introduction of the cotton manufacture into that country, it is as yet of very limited extent. There are a considerable number of hand-mules, but only four spinning mills. There is a good deal of weaving done, particularly of mixed linen and cotton goods. The wages are lower than in Switzerland.
Cotton wool grows in the Neapolitan dominions, and water power for the movement of machinery abounds; yet the cotton manufacture, although protected by heavy import duties, is chiefly confined to the weaving of foreign yarns. Of these, upwards of 2,000,000 pounds are worked up annually. Within these few years spinning mills have begun to be introduced, and five spinning works have been established. The rate of wages paid at one of these (at Salerno), said to be a very profitable concern, is matter of interest: carders, 4s. to 4s. 6d. per week; rollers and drawers, 3s. 2d.; and spinners, 6s. Weavers earn from 2s. to 2s. 6d. per week. With these aids to cheap production, there can be little doubt that, if the government of Naples had been in a state to ensure the ca- The government of the United States has evinced great anxiety to promote the establishment of the cotton manufacture in the northern part of the union, but without considering that manufactures are only valuable to a country in so far as by their means the people can be supplied with the article cheaper than they are able to procure it elsewhere. When a manufacturer requires the support of bounties, or of laws prohibiting the importation of similar articles, it is a consumption of the national wealth to foster a branch of industry incapable of maintaining itself. There is no greater error in policy than this; and yet we see it every day committed by young nations, when they endeavour to force manufactures, before the circumstances of the country admit of such undertakings; and by old nations, when they persist in the manufacture of articles which, from natural disadvantages, they cannot produce at so low a price as that at which they might purchase them from others.
A manufacture, to attain a permanently profitable establishment in a country, must grow up in it naturally. It must to a certain degree be indigenous, or there must exist circumstances affording special advantages and facilities for carrying it on. Manufacture may indeed be forced, in the same manner that grain may be made to grow on soils ungenial to its culture; but in both cases the application of capital will be unprofitable. Where industry is left to follow its natural course, every country will betake itself to the production of those articles which circumstances enable it most advantageously to supply; and the consumers, in consequence, will be furnished with the articles they require at the lowest possible cost. Every man's means of consumption will, to the degree in which the cost is reduced, be enlarged, and his command of the comforts and enjoyments of life be extended.
The favourite system of a country supplying everything within itself, is alike adverse to individual advantage and to the increase of national riches. A division of employment among nations, founded upon existing local or accidental circumstances, is as much in unison with the principles of sound political science, and as much calculated to promote the general benefit, as is the division of labour and of employments among individuals. It is not by manufacturing every thing it consumes that a nation becomes rich, but by its people being profitably employed.
If these principles be just, it must be a misapplication of American capital and industry, to withdraw them from the cultivation of the soil and the circulation of its products,—undertakings found to be highly profitable, and of boundless extent,—and to force them into manufactures supported by monopolies and bounties.
There cannot be a doubt, that sooner or later the American legislators will be compelled to relinquish the system they are pursuing. Even were they to continue to shut their eyes to its injurious operation, they would find it impracticable, in a community composed of federated states, with different local interests, to prosecute branches of industry which require to be protected against foreign competition. A federal compact, like a mercantile copartnery of individuals, presumes a perfect equality and community of interests among all the parties concerned; and, as in the case of a mercantile company, if any attempt were made to render the interests of certain of the partners subservient to those of the others, the concern would be immediately broken up, we may presume that, under like circumstances, the result will be similar with the federal compact of the United States. It would not be in the ordinary course of human affairs were the people of the southern states to continue to purchase articles required for their consumption at an advanced price, merely for the purpose of enabling the people of the northern states to manufacture them. Free trade then, we conceive, must accompany federated communities, wherever they are established; and we hail with satisfaction the prospect now opening of the attainment of this object in the western world, in every quarter of which the people appear to be resolving themselves into federal governments. The benefits of unrestricted intercourse between man and man, and between nation and nation, likely to be exhibited by these countries on so extended a scale, will open men's eyes everywhere to its advantages; and the period, we think, is not distant, when we shall look back with astonishment upon the wars we have carried on, the blood and treasure we have wasted, and the heavy burdens with which we have saddled ourselves, to acquire or retain colonial or commercial monopolies.
In the account we are to give of the rise of the American cotton manufacture, we shall chiefly refer to the public documents, in which its growth is studiously detailed, and the difficulties it has had to struggle with anxiously dwelt upon.
Before the year 1791, America possessed no manufacture except for domestic production and family use. But in that year a cotton mill was erected in the state of Rhode Island, as appears from a report of the secretary to the American treasury, drawn up in 1810.
This report further informs us, that another mill was erected in the same state in 1795, and two more in the state of Massachusetts in 1803 and 1804; that during the three succeeding years ten more were erected in Rhode Island, and one in Connecticut, making together fifteen mills, working about 8000 spindles, and producing about 300,000 pounds of yarn a year; that by a return which was made at the date of the report, eighty-seven additional mills had been erected in the end of the year 1809, sixty-two of which (forty-eight water and fourteen house mills) were then in operation, and worked 31,000 spindles; and that the other twenty-five mills were expected to be in operation in the course of the year 1810, and, together with the former ones (all of which are increasing their machinery), would, by the estimate received, work more than 80,000 spindles at the commencement of the year 1811.
The capital required to carry on the manufacture on the best terms is estimated at the rate of a hundred dollars per spindle; but it is believed that not more than at the rate of sixty dollars is generally employed. Each spindle produces annually about thirty-six pounds of yarn from forty-five pounds of cotton, and the value of the yarn may be averaged as worth one dollar twelve and a half cents per pound. Eight hundred spindles employ forty persons, viz. five men and thirty-five women and children.
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Since this article was written, accounts have been received from America, that the state of South Carolina had issued a declaration of its separation from the union, if the tariff laws are not immediately repealed; that the government at Washington had published a counter declaration asserting the supremacy of congress; and that both parties had proceeded to make military preparations for maintaining the ground they had respectively taken. It is, however, so clearly the interest of both to accommodate matters by mutual concessions, that there can be little doubt that the difference will for the present be settled by a reduction of the tariff, and probably a promise that it will be further progressively reduced. If the union, however, is maintained, we cannot doubt that this law will ultimately be wholly repealed. The increase of carding and spinning cotton by machinery in establishments for that purpose, exclusively of that done in private families, has been fourfold during the last two years (previous to 1810), and tenfold in three years. Thirty-six of these mills, working 20,406 spindles, are situated within thirty miles of Providence. The remainder are scattered all over the country.
Morse, in the last edition of his Geography, gives the same account of the state of the cotton manufacture of America at the end of the year 1810, as that contained in the public document above referred to; and adds, that the cloths manufactured were bed-ticking, stripes and checks, ginghams, cloths for shirts and sheetings, counterpanes, webbing and coach laces, diapers, jeans, vestings, cotton kerseys, fustians, cords, and velvets. From the enumeration given in his work of the manufactures carried on in the separate states of the union, it appears that the cotton manufacture is confined to the states of Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York.
We learn the farther progress of this manufacture from a report of the house of representatives, presented in the spring session of 1816. The report states,
"That the quantity of cotton manufactured in the year 1815 was 90,000 bales, a quantity nearly equal to that used in the cotton manufacture of France; That the quantity used in 1810 was 10,000 bales; in 1805, 1000 bales; and in 1800, 500 bales." This statement, the committee say, they have no reason to doubt, nor have they any to question the truth of the following succinct statement of the capital which is employed, of the labour which it commands, and of the products of that labour.
Capital employed........................................... $40,000,000 dollars. Males employed from the age of seventeen and upwards.................................................. 10,000. Women and female children................................................................. 66,000. Boys under seventeen years of age.......................................................... 24,000. Cotton manufactured, 90,000 bales...................................................... 27,000,000 lbs. Cotton cloth of various kinds manufactured............................................. $1,000,000 yards. Cost........................................................................................................... $24,000,000 dollars.
The report proceeds to say, "that the manufacturers of cotton, in making application to the national government for encouragement, have been induced to do so for many reasons. They know that their establishments are new, and in their infancy; and that they have to encounter a competition with foreign establishments that have arrived at maturity, which are supported by a large capital, and have from the government every protection that can be required."
"The committee, from the views they have taken, consider the situation of the manufacturing establishments to be perilous. Some have decreased, and others have suspended business. A liberal encouragement will put them again into operation with increased powers; but should it be withheld, they will be prostrated. A capital of near thirty millions of dollars will become inactive, the greater part of which will be a dead loss to the manufacturers. The committee, from all the consideration they have given to this subject, are deeply impressed with a conviction that the manufacturing establishments of cotton wool are of real utility to the agricultural interest, and that they contribute much to the prosperity of the union. Under the influence of this conviction, the committee beg leave to tender respectfully, with this report, the following resolution:
"That from and after the 30th day of June next, in lieu of the duties now authorized by law, there be laid, levied, and collected, on cotton goods imported into the United States and territories thereof, from any foreign country whatever, per centum ad valorem, being not less than cents per square yard."
At the date of this report the duty upon cotton goods imported into the United States was 15 per cent.; but before charging it, ten per cent. was added to the invoice, and the duty thus raised to 16½ per cent. Upon the recommendation of the committee, 10 per cent. more was imposed; and the whole being charged upon L110 for every L100 of net value, brought it up to 27½ per cent.
Besides this, all cotton goods below 13½d. per yard were ordered to be rated at 13½d., and the difference added to the amount of the invoice before calculating the duty.
This regulation was meant as a particular encouragement to the home manufacture of the coarser articles.
New tariff acts were successively passed in 1824, 1828, and 1832, in each of which the duty upon cotton goods imported was declared to be 25 per cent. ad valorem, rating the coarser fabrics in the same manner as in 1816.
The manufacture, under this protection against foreign competition, rapidly increased. Power-loom works were erected; the most approved processes both in spinning and weaving were adopted; and the business was generally successful. The manufacture, however, is still almost wholly confined to the states of New York, Rhode Island, and to the New England states. In the former of these it is very extensive; and in the neighbourhood of the city of New York nine new mills have been erected in the course of the last twelve months. Within the same period, 500,000 spindles are supposed to have been added to the cotton manufacture of the states. In both the spinning and weaving departments, the processes are conducted on the most approved principles, and there seems only to be wanting that skill and sleight of hand in the execution of the operations, which are indispensable to securing either excellence of quality in the articles, or largeness of quantity in the product. These are not to be obtained until the manufacturer acquires such a command of labourers as will enable him to enforce a long and attentive training of the workers.
The Americans have skilful mechanics, and have in different departments of industry introduced new machines, displaying much ingenuity and mechanical contrivance. In cotton spinning they have introduced a new throttle, called Danforth's throttle, noticed in our account of spinning-machinery, in the early part of this article.
If the protecting duties can be maintained, the prosperity of the American cotton manufacture will continue until its product exceeds the demand for the home consumption. If the surplus cannot then be disposed of in foreign markets, the manufacturers must experience similar distress to that of the cotton manufacturers of France from the year 1827 to 1832. The circumstances, however, giving rise to this state of things in the two countries are different. In America they are of a temporary character, and will quickly pass away. Possessed of the natural advantages for a successful prosecution of this description of employment, the northern states of the union only require population to become the seat of extensive manufactures. They have coal and iron, the want of the first of which in France, and the consequent high price of their iron, must prove an obstacle to the successful prosecution in that country of every branch of industry in which machinery is largely used.
The Americans have been lately trying to dispose of their cotton goods in foreign markets, but with what success we have not been able to learn. If the prices they have brought have been found sufficient to pay all expenses, and return a profit to the producers, there can no longer be any cause to dread the competition of foreigners in their own market; and their protecting duties may be repealed with entire safety.
By the report of the American secretary of the treasury, made to the house of representatives, they appear to have exported, during the years ending 30th September 1830 and 30th September 1831, the following goods of cotton manufacture.
| Year | Printed and coloured | value | 61,800 dollars | 96,981 | |------|---------------------|-------|---------------|--------| | | White | | 964,196 | 947,932| | | Nankeens | | 1,093 | 2,397 | | | Twist, yarn, and thread | | 24,744 | 17,221 | | | All other manufactu res | | 266,350 | 61,832 |
Total: 1,818,183
More than one third of this amount went to Mexico; the greater part of the remainder to the new South American states. Of the part exported to South America, the value of $250,000 was sent to Chili, and not more than $60,000 to any one of the other states.
The following statement, taken from the report of a committee of congress appointed in the spring of 1832, to inquire into the progress of the spinning and manufacturing of cotton in America, shows the number of cotton mills, spindles, and looms, and the quantity of cotton consumed and of yarn produced in that country in the year 1831.
In twelve states they had, mills: 795 spindles: 1,246,503 looms: 33,506
The weight of cotton consumed was: 77,557,316 lbs. Allowing 2 oz. per lb. for loss: 9,694,664 lbs.
The total weight of yarn produced was: 67,862,652 lbs.
Weekly amount: 1,305,051 lbs. Averaging 16½ oz. weekly per spindle.
It also appears, from the statements made by the same committee, that
The number of males employed were: 18,539 females: 39,927
Total number employed in spinning and manufacturing: 57,466
The amount paid for wages in the year was $10,294,444 dollars, or £2,144,780, being £42,895 per week, averaging 14s. 1½d. for each person employed as above.
We have now concluded our account of the cotton manufacture; a branch of industry which, next to the cultivation of the soil, furnishes a more extensive employment to labour and capital than any of the other occupations of man. Its history during the short period it has existed in this country furnishes matter of varied interest. We see in it the necessities and energies of a free people calling into active operation the dormant ingenuity of the artisan, and giving birth to a succession of the most striking inventions and discoveries for abridging or superseding human labour. As an immediate result of this change, we see a manufacture transplanted from India, where it had existed for ages, to become the staple of our country, the source of extraordinary and unexampled wealth. We see the effects of this achievement of art give animation to our commerce and agriculture, and contribute to the general amelioration and condition of every class of the community. We trust that we are not deceiving ourselves when we add, that we are also able to discover, in our present circumstances, elements of that moral improvement of our population, without which we shall look in vain for any permanent addition to the prosperity and happiness of the nation.
But the effects of the altered mode of production which our mechanical inventions have occasioned are not confined to Great Britain. The relative situation of different countries has been changed. While some of them remain in their former state, in others the power of production has been increased in an enormous ratio. This, however, will not be injurious to the progress of the whole. In each country, industry, if left to itself, will take that direction which the peculiar circumstances render most beneficial. New fields of employment will be explored and appropriated, and increasing commercial intercourse will diffuse the blessings to each people, in proportion to their peculiar wants, and their peculiar means of purchasing their gratification.