Textiles Part 23

HISTORY OF THE ORGANIZATION OF TEXTILE INDUSTRIES

The development of the textile industry may be divided into four stages or periods: first, the family system; second, the guild system; third, the domestic system; and fourth, the factory system.

=The Family System.= Under the family system the work of spinning and weaving was carried on by members of a household for the purpose of supplying the family with clothing. There were no sales of the product. Each cla.s.s in society, from the peasant cla.s.s to that of the n.o.bleman, had its own devices for making clothing. This was the system that existed up to about the tenth century.

=The Guild System.= As communities became larger and cities sprang up, the textile industry became more than a family concern. There was a demand for better fabrics, and to meet this demand it became necessary to have a large supply of different parts of looms. The small weaver who owned and constructed his own loom was not able to have all these parts, so he began to work for a more prosperous weaver. The same conditions applied to spinning, and as early as 1740 spinning was carried on by a cla.s.s distinct from the weavers. As a result the small weaver was driven out by the growth of organized capital, and a more perfect organization, called the guild system, arose. By this system the textile industry was carried on by a small group of men called masters, employing two, three or more men (distinguished later as journeymen and apprentices). The masters organized a.s.sociations called guilds and dominated all the conditions of the manufacture to a far greater extent than is possible under present conditions.

It was the family system that existed in the American colonies at the beginning of the settlement, and for many years after. The guild system was not adopted in America because it was going out of existence on the Continent.

=The Domestic Period.= By the middle of the eighteenth century the textile industry began to break away from the guilds and spread from cities to the rural districts. The work was still carried on in the master's house, although he had lost the economic independence that he had under the old guild system where he acted both as merchant and manufacturer. He now received his raw material from the merchant and disposed of the finished goods to a middleman, who looked after the demands of the market.

=The Factory System.= The domestic period was in turn crowded out of existence by the factory system. A factory is a place where goods are produced by power for commercial use. The factory system first came into prominence after the invention of the steam engine. No record has been found showing its existence prior to this invention.

English weavers and spinners became very skilful and invented different mechanical aids for the production of yarn and cloth. These mechanical aids not only enabled one man to do twenty men's work, but further utilization was made of water and steam power in place of manual labor. Then began the organization of the industry on a truly gigantic scale, combining capital and machinery and resulting in what is known as the factory system.

Previous to the development of the factory system there was no reason why any industry should be centered in one particular district. Upon the utilization of steam power the textile industry became subdivided into a number of industries, each one becoming to a great extent localized in convenient and suitable portions of the country. Thus in Bradford the wool of Yorkshire (England) meets the coal of Yorkshire and makes Bradford the great woolen and worsted center of the world.

The same thing took place in Manchester, where the cotton of America meets the coal of England under satisfactory climatic conditions, and around Manchester is the greatest cotton manufacturing of the world.

The same is true in America. Lawrence became a large worsted center on account of the great fall of water and the use of the river to deposit wool washings. Lowell, Fall River, and New Bedford became large cotton centers for similar reasons.

HISTORY OF MANUFACTURING

[Ill.u.s.tration: SPINNING WHORL

One of the earliest devices used for spinning]

=Spinning.= Spinning and weaving are two of the earliest arts practised by man. Yarn for the making of cloth was spun in the earliest times by the use of the distaff and spindle. The spindle was a round stick of wood a foot or less in length, tapering at each end.

A ring of stone or clay was placed on the spindle to give it steadiness and momentum when it revolved. At the top of the spindle was a slit or notch in which the yarn was caught. The distaff was a larger, stouter stick, around one end of which the material to be spun was wound in a loose ball. The spinner fixed the end of the distaff under her left arm so that the coil of material was in a convenient position for drawing out to form the yarn. The end of the yarn, after being prepared, was inserted in the notch, and the spindle was set in motion by rolling it with the right hand against the leg. Then the spinner drew from the distaff an additional amount of fiber, which was formed by the right hand into uniform strands. After the yarn was twisted, it was released from the notch and wound around the lower part of the spindle.

In order to spin yarn by the primitive spinner, it was necessary for the fiber to have sufficient length to enable it to be manipulated, drawn over, and twisted by the fingers. It is noted that the yarns for the gossamer-like Dacca muslins of India were so fine that one pound of cotton was spun into a thread 253 miles long. This was accomplished with the aid of a bamboo spindle not much bigger than a darning needle, which was lightly weighted with a pellet of clay. Since such a slender thread could not support even the weight of so slight a spindle, the apparatus was rotated upon a piece of hollow sh.e.l.l. It thus appears that the primitive spinners with distaff and spindle had nothing to learn in point of fineness from even the most advanced methods of spinning by machinery.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HAND SPINNING

From a Fourteenth Century MS. in the British Museum]

Certain rude forms of the spinning wheel seem to have been known from time immemorial. The use of the wheel in Europe cannot, however, be dated back earlier than the fifteenth century. In the primitive wheel the spindle, having a groove worked in its whorl, was mounted horizontally in a framework fixed to the end of a bench. A band pa.s.sed around the whorl and was carried around a large wheel fixed farther back on the bench, and this wheel, being turned by the hand of the spinner, gave a rapid rotation to the spindle.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AN ANCIENT LOOM

From an Egyptian Monument]

The fibers to be spun were first combed out by means of carding boards--an implement of unknown antiquity, consisting of two boards with wire teeth set in them at a uniform angle. The fiber to be carded was thinly spread upon one of the boards, and then the other was pushed backward and forward across it, the teeth of the two overlapping at opposite angles, until the fibers were combed out and laid straight in parallel lines. The fibers were then sc.r.a.ped off the boards in rollers or "cardings" about twelve inches long and three-quarters of an inch in diameter. An end of the carding was then attached to the spindle and the wheel set in motion. The carding itself was held in the hand of the spinner and gradually drawn out and twisted by the rotation of the spindle. As soon as a sufficient length had been attenuated and twisted to the required fineness, the thread so produced was held at right angles to the spindle and allowed to wind up on it. But for fine spinning two operations of the wheel were generally necessary. By the first spinning the fibers were drawn out and slightly attenuated into what was called a roving, and by the second spinning the roving itself pa.s.sed through a similar cycle of operations to bring it to the required degree of attenuation and twist.

Many improvements in the primitive wheel were introduced from time to time. In its later developments two spindles were employed, the spinner being thus enabled to manipulate two threads at once, one in each hand. This was the latest form of the spinning-wheel, and it survived until it was superseded in the eighteenth century by the great series of inventions which inaugurated the industrial revolution and led in the nineteenth century to the introduction of the factory system.

[Ill.u.s.tration: EARLIER SPINNING AND WEAVING

From a Fifteenth Century MS. in the British Museum]

=Weaving.= When or where man first began to weave cloth is not known, nor is it known whether this art sprang from one common center or was invented by many who dwelt in different parts of the world. There is such a sameness in the early devices for spinning and weaving that among some men of science it is thought that the art must have come from a common center.

Fabrics were made on the farms two or three hundred years ago in the following manner: the men of the household raised the flocks, while the women spun the yarn and wove the fabrics. In this way the industry prospered, giving occupation and income to thousands of the agricultural cla.s.s. You might say that in England fabrics were a by-product of agriculture. As time went on, farmers of certain sections of England became more expert in the art, and the weaving became separated from the spinning. The weavers became cl.u.s.tered in certain towns on account of the higher skill required for the finer fabrics. The rough work of farming made the hands of the weaver less skilful. This, coupled with the fact that the looms became more complicated with improvements, called for a more experienced man.

Great inventions brought about a more rapid development of the factory.

Richard Arkwright, who has been called the "father of the factory system," built the first cotton mill in the world in Nottingham in 1769. The wheels were turned by horses. In 1771 Arkwright erected at Crawford a new mill which was turned by water power and supplied with machinery to accomplish the whole operation of cotton spinning in one mill, the first machine receiving the cotton as it came from the bale and the last winding the cotton yarn upon the bobbins. Children were employed in this mill, as they were found to be more dexterous in tying the broken ends. As the result of this great invention, factories sprang up everywhere in England, changing the country scene into a collection of factories, with tall chimneys, brick buildings, and streets.

From 1730 to the middle of the nineteenth century the development of inventions was rapid:

1730--First cotton yarn spun in England by machinery by Wyatt.

1733--English patent granted John Kay for the invention of the fly shuttle.

1738--Patent granted Lewis Paul for the spinning machinery supposed to have been invented by Wyatt.

1742--First mill for spinning cotton built at Birmingham; moved by a.s.ses; but not successful.

1748--Patent on a cylinder card as first used by hand, granted Lewis Paul.

1750--Fly shuttle in general use in England.

1756--Cotton velvets and quiltings first made in England.

1760--Stock cards first used for cotton by J. Hargreave.

Drop box invented by Kay.

1762-67--Spinning-jenny invented by Hargreave.

1769--Arkwright obtains his first patent on spinning.

1774--Bill pa.s.sed in England to prevent the export of cotton machinery.

1775--Second patent of Arkwright on carding, drawing, and spinning.

1779--Mule spinning invented by Crompton. Peele's patent on carding, roving, and spinning.

1782--Date of Watt's patent for the steam-engine.

1783--Bounty granted in England for the export of certain cotton goods.

1785--Power loom invented by Cartwright. Cylinder printing invented by Bell. A warp stop-motion described in Cartwright's patent.

1788--First cotton factory built in the United States, at Beverly.

1789--Sea Island cotton first planted in the United States. Samuel Slater starts cotton machinery in New York.

1790--First cotton factory built in Rhode Island by Slater.