LEEDS, seventeen miles from Huddersfield, is the centre of five railways, by
which it has direct connection with Hull, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle,
on the east, and Carlisle on the west coast, Sheffield, Nottingham, Derby,
and Birmingham, in the Midland counties, possesses one of the finest central
railway stations in the kingdom, and has also the advantage of being in the
centre of inland navigation (a great advantage for the transport of heavy
goods), as it communicates with the eastern seas by the Aire and Calder
navigation to the Humber, and westward by the Leeds and Liverpool to the
Mersey. The town stands on a hill, which rises from the banks of the river
Aire. Leeds has claims to antiquity, but few remains. When Domesday Book
was compiled it appears to have been an agricultural district.
Wakefield was formerly the more important town. Lord Clarendon, in 1642,
speaks of Leeds, Halifax, and Bradford, "as three very rich and populous
towns, depending wholly upon clothing."
The first charter was granted to Leeds by Charles I., and the second by
Charles II., on petition of the clothworkers, merchants, and others, "to
protect them from the great abuses, defects and deceits, discovered and
practised by fraudulent persons in the making, selling, and dyeing of woollen
cloths."
The principal manufacture of Leeds is woollen cloth. Formerly the trade was
carried on by five or six thousand small master clothiers, who employed their
own families, and some thirty or forty thousand servants, and also carried on
small farms. But the extension of the factory system has somewhat diminished
their numbers. There are still, however, in connection with Leeds, several
small clothing villages, in which the first stages of the operation are
carried on, in spinning, weaving, and fulling.
Large quantities of worsted goods are brought to Leeds to be finished and
dyed, which have been purchased, in an undyed state, at Bradford and Halifax.
The dye-houses and dressing-shops of Leeds are very extensive. Goods
purchased in a rough state in the Cloth Halls and Piece Halls are taken there
to be finished. There are also extensive mills for spinning flax for linen,
canvas-sailing, thread, and manufactures of glass and earthenware. In
connection with Messrs. Marshall's flax factory, the same firm are carrying
on extensive experiments near Hull in growing flax.
Cloth Halls.--Previous to 1711, the cloth market was held in the open street.
In 1755, the present Halls were erected, and in them the merchants purchase
the half manufactured article from the country manufacturers.
The Coloured Cloth Hall is a quadrangular building, 127.5 yards long, and 66
broad, divided into six departments called streets. Each street contains two
rows of stands, and each stand measures 22 inches in front, and is inscribed
with the name of the clothier to whom it belongs. The original cost was 3
pounds 3s. This price advanced to 24 pounds at the beginning of the present
century; but it has now fallen below its original value--not owing to a
decrease in the quantity of manufactured goods, but owing to the prevalence
of the factory system--in which the whole operation is performed, from sorting
the piece to packing the cloth fit for the tailor's shelves--over the domestic
system of manufacturing. An additional story, erected on the north side of
the Coloured Cloth Hall, is used chiefly for the sale of ladies' cloths in
their undyed state. The White Cloth Hall is nearly as large as the Coloured
Cloth Hall, and on the same plan. The markets are held on Tuesdays and
Saturdays, on which days alone the merchants are permitted to buy in the
Halls. The time of the sale is in the forenoon, and commences by the ringing
of a bell, when each manufacturer is at his stand, the merchants go in, and
the sales commence. At the end of an hour the bell warns the buyers and
sellers that the market is about to close, and in another quarter of an hour
the bell rings a third time, and the business of the day is terminated. The
White Cloth Hall opens immediately after the other is closed, and the
transactions are carried on in a similar manner.
The public buildings of Leeds are not externally imposing, and it is, without
exception, one of the most disagreeable-looking towns in England--worse than
Manchester; it has also the reputation of being very unhealthy to certain
constitutions from the prevalence of dye-works.
The wealthy and employing classes in Leeds (we know no better term) have a
reputation for charity, and good management of charitable institutions.
Howard the philanthropist visited the workhouse, and praised the management,
at a period when to deserve such praise was rare. The subscriptions to
public charities are large, and there is an ancient fund for pious uses, said
to amount to upwards of 5000 pounds a-year, managed by a close self-elected
corporation, about the distribution of which they do not consider themselves
bound to give any detailed information. Dr. Hook, the Vicar of Leeds, has
organized a system of house-to-house visitation, for the purpose of affording
aid, in poverty and sickness, to the deserving and religious, and educational
instruction to all, which has effected a great deal of good, and would have
done more, had not well known circumstances shaken the confidence of the
Leeds public in the honesty of some of the teachers. All parties agree,
however differing in opinions, that Dr. Hook himself is a most excellent,
charitable, self-sacrificing man.
A New Grammar School--first founded in 1552 by the Rev. Sir William Sheafield,
and since endowed by several other persons--is lodged in a building of ample
size, with residence for the head master, and enjoys an income of 2000 pounds
a-year; and there are four Exhibitions of 70 pounds a-year to Magdalen
College, Cambridge, tenable till degree of M.A. has been taken; one
Exhibition of 100 pounds a-year, tenable for five years, at Queen's College,
Oxford, open to a candidate from Leeds school; and four of 50 pounds each, at
Oxford or Cambridge, for four years. There were 174 scholars in 1850. It is
open to the sons of all residents in Leeds, without any fee to the masters,
who are liberally paid. The elements of mathematics are taught. The Charity
Commissioners reported it to be satisfactorily and ably conducted.
The Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society, the Leeds Literary Institution,
and the Leeds Mechanics Institute, are all respectable in their class. The
Mechanics Institute forms the centre of a union of Yorkshire associations of
the same kind.
Three newspapers are published in Leeds, of large circulation, representing
three shades of political opinion.
The Leeds Mercury--which has, we believe, the largest circulation of any
provincial paper--was founded, and carried on for a long life, by the late Mr.
Edward Baines, who represented his native town in the first reformed
parliament, and for some years afterwards--a very extraordinary man, who, from
a humble station, by his own talents made his way to wealth and influence. He
was the author of the standard work on the cotton trade, as well as several
valuable local histories. The Mercury is still carried on by his family. One
son is the proprietor of a Liverpool paper, and another, the Right Honourable
Matthew Talbot Baines, represents Hull, and is President of the Poor-Law
Board.
Among the celebrated natives of Leeds, were Sir Thomas Denison, whose life
began like Whittington's; John Smeaton, the engineer of Eddystone Lighthouse,
the first who placed civil engineering in the rank of a science; the two
Reverend Milners (Joseph, and Isaac, Dean of Carlisle), great polemical
giants in their day, authors of "The History of the Church of Christ;" Dr.
Priestly, inventor of the pneumatic apparatus still used by chemists, and
discoverer of oxygen and several other gases; David Hartley, the
metaphysician whom Coleridge so much admired that he called his son after
him; and Edward Fairfax, the translator of Tasso. Nor must we forget Ralph
Thoresby, author of "Ducatus Leodiensis, or the Topography of the Town and
Parish of Leeds"--a valuable and curious book, published in 1715; and of
"Vicaria Leodiensis, a History of the Church of Leeds," published in 1724.
Wool Growing, and Woollen Manufactures.--Yorkshire is the ancient seat of a
great woollen manufacture, founded on the coarse wools of its native hills;
but coal and cheap conveyance, with the stimulus mechanical inventions have
applied in the neighbouring counties to cotton, have given Yorkshire such
advantages over many ancient seats of manufacture, that it has transplanted
and increased a considerable portion of the fine cloth trade formerly carried
on in the west of England alone, besides engrafting and erecting a variety of
other and new kinds of textiles, in which wool or hair have some very slight
part.
It is quite certain that woollen garments were among the first manufactured
among barbarous tribes. We have seen this year, in the Exhibition in Hyde
Park, specimens of white felted cloth from India, equal, if not superior, to
anything that we can manufacture for strength and durability, which must have
been made with the rude tools, of the form which has been in use for probably
at least two thousand years.
English coarse wools have been celebrated, and in demand among foreign
nations, from the earliest periods of our history. In the time of William
the Conqueror, an inundation in the Netherlands drove many clothiers over,
and William of Malmesbury tells us that the king welcomed them, and placed
them first in Carlisle, where there are still manufactories, and then in the
western counties, where they could find what was indispensable for their
trade--streams for washing and plenty of wood for boiling their vats. Very
early the manufacturers applied to restrain the exportation of English wool.
In the time of Edward I., we find a duty of twenty shillings to forty
shillings per bag on importation. Edward III. prohibited the export of wool,
at the same time he took his taxes and subsidies in wool, which became a
favourite medium of taxation with our monarchs, and sent his wool abroad for
sale. Under his reign, Flemish weavers were encouraged to settle here and
improve the manufacture, which became spread all over England thus--Norfolk
fustians, Suffolk baize, Essex serges and says, Kent broadcloth, Devon
kerseys, Gloucestershire cloth, Worcestershire cloth, Wales friezes,
Westmoreland cloth, Yorkshire cloth, Somersetshire serges, Hampshire,
Berkshire, and Sussex cloth: districts from a great number of which woollen
manufactures have now disappeared. We have Parliamentary records of the
mutual absurdities by which the woollen manufacturers, on the one hand,
sought to obtain a monopoly of British wool, and the wool growers endeavoured
to secure the exclusive right to supply the raw material. Act after act was
laid upon everything connected with wool, so that it is only extraordinary
that, under such restrictive trammeling, the trade survived at all.
"Odious! In woollen! 'twould a saint provoke!
Were the last words that poor Narcissa spoke."
In 1781, when, the price of wool being low, the Lincolnshire woolgrowers met
under the chairmanship of their great landowners, and resolved on petitions
praying "that British might be exported and that Irish wool might be excluded
from England;" thereupon the Yorkshire manufacturers met and resolved that
"the exportation of wool would be ruinous to the trade and manufactures of
England," that the manufacturers would be obliged to leave the kingdom for
want of employment, and that the importation of Irish woollen yarn ought to
be interdicted.
The manufacturers were under the impression that no other country than
England could produce the long wools suitable for the manufacture of worsted.
Some time afterwards the woollen manufacturers thought themselves likely to
be ruined by the introduction of cotton cloth, "to the ruin of the staple
trade of the kingdom," and succeeded in placing an excise duty upon the new
fabric.
The contention between sheepowners and manufacturers continued until, in
1824, when the influence of Mr. Huskisson's opinions on trade were beginning
to be felt in Parliament, and to the disgust of both parties, a compromise
was effected by a reduction of all wool duties to a uniform duty of ld. per
lb. on the export of British and importation of foreign wool. The last step
was a total repeal of all duties.
English wools may be divided into long and short staples. The long is used
for worsted, which is finished when it leaves the loom; the short for cloth,
which is compacted together, increased in bulk and diminished in breadth, by
fulling; that is, so beating as to take advantage of the serrated edges of
the wool which lead it to felt together.
Foreign wool, known as merino, has been used from an early period. In the
time of the Stuarts, an attempt was made to monopolize all the Spanish wool
exported.
Wars and bad government in Spain have destroyed the export trade in merino
wool, but the breed, transplanted into Germany, has multiplied and even
improved. Our finest wool is obtained from Silesia, and the breed is
cultivated with more or less success in many parts of the European continent.
In England, all attempts to cultivate the merino with profit have failed.
Next to Germany in quality, and exceeding that country in quantity, we obtain
our greatest supply of fine wool from Australia, where, in the course of
twenty-five years, the merino sheep has multiplied to the extent of twelve or
thirteen million head, and is still increasing; thus doubling our supply of a
fine article, not equal to German, but, at the low price at which it can be
furnished, helping to create entirely new manufactures by intermixing with
our own coarse wools, which it renders more available and valuable. We also
obtain wool from the Cape of Good Hope, from India, from Egypt, and from
South America.
Besides pure wool, our manufacturers use large quantities of goat's hair,
called mohair, from the Mediterranean, of camel hair, of Thibet goat's hair,
of the long grey and black hair of the tame South American llama and alpaca,
and of the short soft red hair of the vicuna, a wild animal of the same
species. Indeed, almost every year since the repeal of all restrictions on
trade, has introduced some new raw material in wool or hair to our
manufacturers.
The alpaca and vicuna, now an important article of trade and manufacture,
although well known to the native Peruvians at the time of the conquest by
the Spaniards, has only come into notice within the last twenty years. The
first article of the kind that excited any attention was a dress made for Her
Majesty from a flock of llamas belonging to Her Majesty, under the
superintendence of Mr. Thomas Southey, the eminent wool broker.
The stock from the small flock of merinos taken out by Colonel Macarthur to
what was then only known as Botany Bay, now supports 300,000 souls in
prosperity in Australia, and supplies exports to the amount of upwards of a
million and a half sterling per annum.
The Great Exhibition afforded an excellent display of the variety and
progress of Yorkshire woollen manufactures, proving the immense advantage
they derived from choice and mixture of various qualities and materials. In
several examples the body was of stout English wool, with a face of finest
Australia,--in some cases, of mohair,--and, in one instance, a most beautiful
article was produced by putting a face of vicuna on British wool.
As at present conducted, the process of a woollen factory up to certain
stages of machinery is the same as that of a cotton factory. But it will be
seen that a great deal depends on an ample supply of water of good quality.
Cloth Manufacture.--(1.) The first operation is that of sorting the wool. Each
fleece contains several qualities,--the division and arrangement requires
judgment; the best in a Silesian fleece may be worth 6s. a pound, and the
rest not worth half the money. After sorting, wools are mixed in certain
proportions.
(2.) The mixture is first soaked in a hot ley of stale urine and soap, rinsed
in cold water, and pressed between rollers to dry it.
(3.) If the cloth is to be dyed in that operation, next succeeds the
scouring. Supposing it dyed,
(4) wyllying follows, by which it is subject to the operation of the spikes
of revolving wheels, for the purpose of opening the fibres and sending it out
in a light cloud-like appearance, to where a stream of air driven through it,
clears away all impurities by a sort of winnowing process, and sends it out
in a smooth sheet.
(5.) If any impurities remain, it is hand picked.
(6.) It is laid on the floor, sprinkled with olive oil, and well beaten with
staves.
(7.) The operation of the scribbling machine follows, by which it is reduced
to a fleecy sheet and wound on rollers.
(8.) The carding machine next reduces it to hollow loose short pipes. These
are joined
(9) in the slubbing machine into a weak thread, and here we see the use of
the young hands, boys and girls, who piece one of these pipes as they are
drawn through the machine by a slow clockwork motion, bending one knee every
time as they curtsey sideways toward the machine. They earn very good wages
and look healthy; but, where the wool is dyed, what with the dye and what
with the oil, the piecers are all ready toileted to sing to a banjo; and
sometimes, with rubbing their faces with their dirty hands, they get sore
eyes.
(10.) Spinning hardens the thread.
(11.) Weaving is done by hand or by power-loom. The power-looms are becoming
more common. After weaving, it is washed in soap-water and clean water by
machinery,--then stretched on tenterhooks and allowed to dry in a smooth
extended state:
(l2) then examined for all hair and impurities to be picked off by "burlers."
After this follows
(13) fulling, or felting, which gives woollen goods that substance which
distinguishes them. Every hair of wool is saw-edged, and this by beating
will mass together. Superfine cloth with a thick solution of soap spread
between each layer, and, folded into many piles, is exposed to the long
continued action of revolving wooden hammers on wheels, three separate times,
for four hours each time. This process diminishes both breadth and length
nearly one half.
After "fulling" cloth is woolly and rough; to improve the appearance it is
first
(14) teazled--that is, raked with cylinders covered with the round prickly
heads of the teazle plant. Many attempts have been made to invent wire and
other brushes for the same purpose, but hitherto nothing has been found more
effective and economical than the teazle. To apply them the cloth is
stretched on cloth beams, and made to move in one direction, while the teazle
cylinders turn in another. When the ends of the fibres have been thus
raised, they are
(15) sheared or clipped, in order to produce the same effect as clipping the
rough coat of a horse. Formerly this operation was performed by hand. The
introduction of machinery created formidable riots in the west of England. At
present the operation is performed with great perfection and rapidity, by
more than one process.
When the cloth has been raised and sheared once, it is in the best possible
condition for wear; but in order to give superfine cloth beauty, it is
sheared several times, then exposed to the action of steam, and at the same
time brushed with cylinder brushes. Other operations, of minor importance,
are carried on for the purpose of giving smoothness and gloss. It may be
observed that a brilliant appearance does not always, in modern manufactures,
betoken the best cloth. An eminent woollen manufacturer having been asked
what cloth he would recommend for wear and warmth to a backwoodsman, answered
quickly, "Nothing can wear like a good blanket." The small manufacturers
generally dispose of their cloth in the rough state.
The progress of machinery has called into existence a great number of
factories, especially in worsted and mixed stuffs, has given value to many
descriptions of wool formerly valueless, and, coupled with the repeal of the
duty, brought into the market many kinds unknown a few years ago. "Properties
once prized," Mr. Southey remarks in his Essay on Wools, "have given way to
some other property upon which machinery can better operate, and yield more
desirable results. Spanish wool, once deemed indispensable, is now little
sought after. It is supplanted by our colonial wool, which is steadily
advancing in quality and quantity, while angora goat, and alpaca wools are
forcing their way into and enhancing the value of our stuff trade." . . .
"Machinery has marshalled before its tremendous power the wool of every
country, selected and adopted the special qualities of each. Nothing, in
fact, is now rejected. Even the burr, existing in myriads in South America
and some other descriptions of wool, at one time so perplexing to our
manufacturers, can now, through the aid of machinery, be extracted, without
very material injury to the fibre." . . . "In no description of manufacture
connected with the woollen trade has machinery been more fertile in
improvements than in what may be termed the worsted stuff trade."
"The power-looms employed, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, in the worsted
stuff trade, increased from 2,763 in 1836, to 19,121 in 1845 (and are
probably not far from 28,000 at the present time). Worsted goods formerly
consisted chiefly of bombazets, shalloons, calamancoes, lastings for ladies'
boots, and taminies. Now the articles in the fancy trade may be said to be
numberless, and to display great artistic beauty. These articles, made with
alpaca, Saxony, fine English and Colonial wools, and of goats' hair for weft,
with fine cotton for warp, consist of merinoes, Orleans, plain and figured
Parisians, Paramattas, and alpaca figures, checks, etc."
The machines for combing and carding, of the most improved make, will work
wool of one and a half inch in the staple, while for the old process of hand-
combing four inches was the minimum.
But we must not enter further into these details, as it is our purpose rather
to indicate the interest and importance of certain manufactures than to
describe the process minutely.
The Yorkshire woollen manufacture is distributed over an area of nearly forty
miles by twenty, occupied by clothing towns and villages. Leeds, Bradford,
Halifax, Huddersfield, Dewsbury, and Wakefield, are the great manufacturing
centres. Mixed or coloured cloths are made principally in villages west of
Leeds and Wakefield; white or undyed cloths are made chiefly in the villages
occupying a belt of country extending from near Wakefield to Shipley. These
two districts are tolerably distinct, but at the margins of the two both
kinds of cloth are manufactured. Flannels and baizes are the principal
woollen articles made in and near Halifax, together with cloth for the use of
the army. Blankets are made in the line between Leeds and Huddersfield.
Bradford provides very largely the spun worsted required for the various
manufactures. Stuffs are made at Bradford, Halifax, and Leeds, and narrow
cloths at Huddersfield. Saddleworth furnishes broadcloth and kerseymeres. As
a specimen of the variety of articles produced in one factory, take the
following list, exhibited in the Crystal Palace by a Huddersfield
manufacturer:--"Summer shawls; summer coatings; winter woollen shawls;
vestings; cloakings; table covers; patent woollen cloth for gloves; do.
alpaca do.; do. rabbits' down do.; trowserings; stockingnett do."
We may observe, that there is no more pleasant mode of investigating the
processes of the woollen manufacture, for those resident in the south of
England, than a visit to the beautiful valley of the Stroud, in
Gloucestershire, where the finest cloths, and certain shawls and fancy goods,
are manufactured in perfection in the midst of the loveliest scenery. White-
walled factories, with their resounding water-wheels, stand not unpicturesque
among green-wooded gorges, by the side of flowing streams, affording
comfortable well-paid employment to some thousand working hands of men and
women, boys and girls.