hopeful terms. "This city, which contained two hundred thousand souls,
is now reduced to less than twenty-five thousand. The citizens are fled;
the monks remain. Here we find twenty-six parish churches, thirty-eight
convents, seventeen hospitals, four colleges, twelve chapels, and
nineteen hermitages, the monuments of its former opulence." Townsend's
good taste, unusual for a traveller of that time, was horrified at the
profanation of the Alcazar, whose "magnificent apartments are now
occupied with spinning-wheels and looms, and instead of princes they are
filled with beggars. The good archbishop here feeds seven hundred
persons, who are employed in the silk manufactory; but unfortunately,
with the best intentions, he has completed the ruin of the city; for by
his weight of capital, he has raised the price both of labour and of the
raw material, whilst, by carrying a greater quantity of goods to the
common market, he has sunk the price of the commodity so much, that the
manufacturers, who employed from forty to sixty workmen, now employ only
two or three, and many who were in affluence are now reduced to penury.
"These people are so far from earning their own maintenance, that over
and above the produce of their labour they require forty thousand ducats
a year for their support."
Alvarez de Colmenar, Ricord, Bourgoing, Laborde, and other writers,
Spanish and non-Spanish, of the eighteenth century, inserted full
descriptions of the silk trade of Valencia and Barcelona. "On y fait,"
wrote Alvarez de Colmenar of the former of these towns, "de très bonnes
draperies, fortes, d'un bon et long usage, et propres à résister à la
pluie, et grande quantité d'étoffes de soie; delà vient que les
meuriers, dont les feuilles servent à nourrir les vers à soie, y font
d'un fort gros revenu pour les habitans." Ricord, in his scarce
pamphlet, printed at Valencia in 1793, gives valuable statistics
relating to this industry and locality, prefacing his figures arranged
in tabular form by the following remarks: "The silk factories of this
province form the principal basis of her commerce. They not only consume
all the silk which is raised in the kingdom (of Valencia), and which, in
1791, amounted to 581,688 pounds of fine silk, 93,800 of that of
Alducar, and 26,115 of _hiladillo_, but they also require to provide
themselves from Aragon and other parts of Spain, or even from abroad,
seeing that in the year aforesaid more than 37,000 pounds were imported
from foreign countries." The tabular statement appended to these
observations tells us that in the region of Valencia the looms for
making fine and silken fabrics such as velvets, _anascotes_, stockings,
handkerchiefs, scarves, garters, and ribbons, gave employment to a total
of 9,668 workmen, and were distributed among the towns or villages of
Valencia, Alcira, San Felipe, Alcoy, Vilanesa, Denia, Ruzafa, Alicante,
Peniscola, Beniganim, Pego, Olivo, Liria, Asuevar, Orihuela, Gandia,
Elche, Castellon, and Vall de Almonacid. Riaño admits, however, that
this manufacture might have prospered even more, if means had been
adopted to suppress certain acts committed by the weavers, spinners, and
twisters of the silk.
More curious and instructive is the description of the same industry by
Jean-François Bourgoing, whose observations, evidently secured at
first-hand, are worth translating _in extenso_:--
"What attracted us still more than the fine-art works were the stuffs
produced at the silk-factories, which constitute the principal glory of
Valencia and contribute to her prosperous condition. We followed all the
process of this manufacture, from the cultivation of the mulberry-tree
to the weaving of the richest fabrics. I will try, therefore, to give a
comprehensive account of them.
"Spain, and particularly the kingdom of Valencia, could well export her
silk to foreign parts, even after setting apart a quantity sufficient
for her factories. Government, however, does not appear to be convinced
of this, because it offers constant hindrance to such exportation, or
else, when it consents to it, imposes heavy dues. These dues consist of
nine _reales_ and a _quartillo_, or nearly two _livres_ seven _francs_
per each Valencian pound of silk, which only weighs twelve ounces, and
is worth at least fifteen _livres_ when it is in the raw state. When the
silk harvest has been scanty, as in the year 1784, it has been known to
fetch eighty _reales_ or twenty _livres_. This year, too, the yield of
silk has been so small that the manufacturers of Valencia petitioned
Government to allow the introduction, duty-free, of two hundred thousand
pounds of it from Italy and France.
"In ordinary years, the pound of (raw) silk costs eight _reales_ for
twisting and three _reales_ for dyeing in green, blue or other common
colours; so that this material, ready to use, costs altogether about
seventy-one _reales_ the pound, or seventeen to eighteen francs of our
money.
"Of course this price varies according to circumstances. One of the
causes which exercise the greatest influence on this fluctuation is the
harvest of the mulberry. These valuable trees are thickly planted over
the champaign of Valencia, and all of them are of the white-leaved kind.
This distinction, which would be superfluous in France, is by no means
so in Spain, where, in several provinces, as, for instance, the kingdom
of Granada, the leaves of the black mulberry are used to nourish the
silkworms, and yield almost as handsome a silk as those of the
white.[19]
[19] "The mulberry of Valencia is the _white_, as being most suitable to
a well-watered plain. In Granada they give the preference to the
_black_, as thriving well in elevated stations, as more durable,
more abundant in leaves, and yielding a much finer and more
valuable silk. But then it does not begin bearing till it is about
twenty years of age. In this province they reckon that five trees
should produce two pounds of silk.
"I had the curiosity to examine their method of feeding the
silkworms. These industrious spinners are spread upon wicker
shelves, which are placed one above the other, all round, and
likewise in the middle of each apartment, so as to leave room only
for the good woman to pass with their provisions. In one house I
saw the produce of six ounces of seed, and was informed that to
every ounce, during their feeding season, they allow sixty
_arrobas_ of leaves, valued at two pounds five. Each ounce of seed
is supposed to yield ten pounds of silk, at twelve ounces to the
pound. March 28th, the worms began to hatch, and May 22nd they went
up to spin. On the eleventh day, from the time that they were
hatched, they slept; and on the fourteenth, they awoke to eat
again, receiving food twice a day till the twenty-second day.
Having then slept a second time, without interruption, for three
days, they were fed thrice a day; and thus alternately they
continued eating eight days and sleeping three, till the
forty-seventh day; after which they ate voraciously for ten
days, and not being stinted, consumed sometimes from thirty to
fifty _arrobas_ in four and twenty hours. They then climbed up
into rosemary bushes, fixed for that purpose between the shelves,
and began to spin.
"Upon examination, they appear evidently to draw out two threads
by the same operation, and to glue these together, covering them
with wax. Thismay be proved by spirit of wine, which will dissolve
the wax, and leave the thread. Having exhausted her magazine, the
worm changes her form and becomes a nymph, until the seventy-first
day from the time that the little animal was hatched, when she
comes forth with plumage, and having found her mate, begins to
lay her eggs. At the end of six days from this period of existence,
having answered the end of their creation, they both lie down and
die. This would be the natural progress; but, to preserve the silk,
the animal is killed by heat, and the cones being thrown into
boiling water, the women and children wind off the
silk."--Townsend; _Journey through Spain in the years 1786 and
1787_; Vol. III., pp. 264-266.
"The leaves to these mulberry-trees are sold by the load of ten
_arrobas_; and the Valencian _arroba_, which is about equal to
twenty-seven French pounds, cost, in 1783, about thirty _sols tournois_.
"The mulberry leaves are gathered once, twice, or, at most, three times
in each year; but it is not often that the two last crops are of as fine
a quality or as abundant as the first. The greater part of the year is
suited for harvesting the leaves, and this harvesting is carried out
progressively as the silkworms copulate, steadily increasing in quantity
up to the moment when they build their cocoons. As a rule only the
leaves are plucked, the branches being spared as far as possible. Thus
despoiled of its verdure in the middle of the finest times of year,
although surrounded by a dazzling vegetation, the tree looks like a dry
log floating on a green expanse of waters, while the mass of naked
trunks which seem to be completely sterile, and which grow more numerous
as the season advances, combine to render cheerless a prospect otherwise
so fertile and so smiling. Still worse becomes their state when the
trees are pruned entirely of their branches--an operation which is
performed upon them at least once in every three years.
"In the space of ten years the kingdom of Valencia has yielded six
million pounds of silk, which makes a yearly average of six hundred
thousand pounds; and as the whole of Spain produces a million pounds per
annum, we see from this that Valencia alone supplies more than half of
the entire quantity. The silks of Valencia are the finest of the whole
Peninsula, and fit to be compared with the best of Europe generally, but
the spinning is still imperfect, because in Spain there are not, as in
France and elsewhere, houses where the women who spin are gathered
together under the eye of an inspector to see that all the silk is spun
evenly. In the kingdom of Valencia the spinning is distributed among
several thousand hands, who introduce six, seven, eight, or even more
ends in a thread of silk which should always have the same number; hence
the unevennesses in the fabrics which are woven from them, while for the
same reason we do not utilize for any delicate work the raw material
which we import from Spain. The silk we employ for our costlier fabrics
is of the kind which we import from Piedmont and the southern provinces
of France. Also, for the last few years we have felt less need of the
Valencian silk. The laws prohibiting the exportation of this Spanish
silk have stimulated the cultivation of mulberry-trees in Languedoc,
where the peasantry, alive to the profit which these trees could render
them, have preferred them to other kinds for planting round their
property. This is why, in the year 1783, French silk could be bought for
a lower price than the Valencian silk purchased in that region, plus the
dues levied upon its exportation. I know of a merchant who at this time
enjoyed the privilege of exporting for six years a hundred thousand
pounds free of all dues, but who throughout the year 1783 was unable to
find a purchaser in France. Spain could perhaps remedy the egress of her
raw material by further increasing (as, indeed, she daily does) the
number of her looms, and by exporting a greater number of her products
to her American possessions; but her silk-stuffs will never be perfected
until she markets them in foreign countries, where the taste of her
customers may tend to better that of her manufacturers.
"The silk raised in the kingdom of Valencia is estimated, during an
average year, to be worth six or seven millions of _piastres_ (nineteen
to twenty-two millions of _livres_.) At the time of my visit to this
city, she only employed one half this quantity, although her looms of
every size amounted to four thousand. The rest, in spite of the
prohibitions laid upon its extraction, is smuggled off to foreign
countries, escaping, sometimes to France by way of Barcelona, and
sometimes to Portugal by way of Seville and Extremadura. Nevertheless,
there is probably more silk in Spain to-day than formerly, and measures
have been earnestly adopted to encourage the industries which make use
of it. For some time past, silk-looms have been scattered over the whole
of Cataluña, and in the kingdoms of Granada, Cordova, Seville, etc.,
producing handkerchiefs, ribbons, and other stuffs in sufficient
quantity to supply, or nearly so, the national market: nevertheless this
still left a large market for our stocking-factories of Languedoc. The
Spanish Government, by the law of 1778, limited itself to excluding
these stockings from forming part of the foreign cargoes to the
Colonies, but as they continued to be imported into Spain, this law was
readily evaded, since it sufficed to stamp the French article with the
mark of a Spanish factory. It would have required an excessive
vigilance, almost a positive inquisition, to guard against a fraud of
this kind, prompted by the avarice of traders. The Spanish Government
next sought, by the law of 1785, to put a stop to it by totally
excluding our silk stockings, and this measure, together with the
establishment of a number of new looms in Spain, has produced an almost
absolute stagnation in the market which our factories of Languedoc had
formerly enjoyed in the Peninsula. But let me return now to the
Valencian factories.
"This city has no one building in which might be performed the whole of
the processes through which the silk must pass. Any person who wishes to
examine them, must visit several workshops; and this was the course
which we adopted, under the guidance of a manufacturer as intelligent as
he is amiable, named Don Manuel Foz, a gentleman who has travelled
extensively in order to perfect his knowledge of handling silk, and who,
among other secrets, has brought from Constantinople the art of watering
silken stuffs. As a reward for his activity, he has been appointed
_Intendente_ of all the factories of Valencia.
"There are hardly any merchants at Valencia who are not more or less
concerned in silk-making: indeed, they look upon this industry as quite
a _point d'honneur_. Some of them supply with silk no more than four or
five looms, which work at their expense, while others have under their
control as many as several hundred.
"After the silkworm has cleverly built its cell, the first thing to be
done is to stifle it before it can pierce the cocoon in search of a new
existence. For this purpose the cocoons are thrown into a moderately
heated oven; and then, when once the worm is killed, they can be kept
without being spun for as long as may be needed.
"In order to strip them of their covering of silk, they are thrown into
hot water, after which the women workers pick up, and with surprising
quickness, the threads of several of them, join them, and deal them out,
thus joined, on wheels constructed for this object. On the design of the
wheels depends the degree of thoroughness with which the silk is spun;
but those which are employed in Spain are generally the most imperfect,
as I shall presently explain.
"I have already said that the slip of silk should be drawn from at least
four cocoons, and even then it only serves for making slender fabrics,
such as taffeta or ribbon. We were shown, indeed, a skein which was
assured to contain no more than two cocoons; but so slight a slip is of
no use at all. Most of them are made from seven or eight cocoons, and
two of the former are joined in order to form a thread sufficient to be
placed upon the loom.
"My readers are sure to know that all woven fabrics consist of two
distinct parts, the woof and the warp. The woof is that which is passed
by the shuttle from one side of the loom to the other, and which is
enchased between the two surfaces formed by the warp. As the woof is
subjected to more wear and tear than the warp, it should be stouter. For
this reason each of the two ends of which it is composed is twisted
separately before the two are twisted together, while for the warp the
latter of these processes is sufficient. The result of this difference
is that, when looked at beneath the microscope, the thread of the woof
has an uneven look, as though it were a small cable, while that of the
warp looks flat and smooth, and is therefore adapted to reflect the
light, receiving the shiny look which makes a silk-stuff so attractive.
"But the beauty of these fabrics depends, above all else, upon the way
in which the silk is divided as it is drawn from the cocoon. This first
stage of the spinning is performed in one or other of three ways,
according to the kind of wheel which is employed for it. The method
which the Spaniards have adopted from an early period has the following
drawback; that the small threads of six, seven, and eight cocoons which
are stripped at the same time, go to form a single thread, and are
deposited upon a small spindle without the thread rubbing against
another one, which friction serves to lay the little hairs which bristle
up, so that the slip of silk thus formed retains a hairy nap and is
easily frayed. In the Piedmontese method, on the other hand, each slip
is joined to another, and is not drawn apart until it has been twisted
round it four or five times.
"The third method, known as that of Vaucanson, is more expensive than
the one last mentioned. In the wheel invented by Vaucanson, the two
silk-slips are reunited after the first twisting, in order to be twisted
once again. This operation is called the 'double _croissade_.'
"If these threads, thus placed on bobbins, are intended for the woof,
they are enchased perpendicularly in a machine consisting of several
compartments, in which they are twisted separately. Thence they are
transferred to another machine, in which they are twisted all together;
after which they are ready for the loom. Those which are destined for
the web are not twisted (as I have explained above) until the moment
when they are united. Both at Valencia and at Talavera de la Reina these
machines, so precious to the weaver's craft, and which economise manual
toil, are not unknown.[20]
[20] They certainly were not unknown at Valencia. I have before me a
copy of the work, _Disertacion descriptiva de la Hilaza de la Seda,
segun el antiguo modo de hilar y el nuevo llamado de Vaucanson_,
written by the priest Francisco Ortells y Gombau, and published at
Valencia in 1783, by order of the Royal Council of Commerce and
Agriculture. This book, which clearly sets forth the superiority
of Vaucanson's method over those which had preceded it, states
that at first the Valencians were strongly opposed to the
Vaucanson wheel, believing that it caused a loss and waste of
silk. Probably the real reason was that it prevented the
manufacturers from adding spurious weight to the silk by mixing it
with oil. This practice, says Ortells, was then "so widespread an
evil in the kingdom of Valencia, that there is hardly anybody who
does not resort to it: notwithstanding it has been so often
prohibited by His Majesty, yet openly, where all the world may
witness, do the workers spin with much oil added to the silk."
The Vaucanson form of wheel was also more expensive. In the region
of Valencia its cost was about thirty _pesos_, that of the older
wheels being only fifteen or sixteen _pesos_. However, this
difficulty was not insuperable, for in the year 1779 the Royal
Council of Commerce presented a hundred and twenty Vaucanson
wheels to the peasants who had raised a minimum crop of a hundred
pounds of silk, requiring, in return, that the recipients of the
gift should spin not less than fifty pounds of silk per annum.
"At the latter of these towns I had already seen a single toothed-wheel,
which set in motion up to a thousand of these tiny bobbins on which are
wound the twisted slips of silk. The wheels I saw at Valencia were
smaller, because in this city there is not, as there is at Talavera, a
royal factory self-contained within a single building. At Valencia each
manufacturer, in order to carry out these various processes, requires to
deal with workmen and machines distributed through several quarters of
the town, and chooses from among them such as he best prefers.
"Nothing can be simpler than the working of these silk-twisting
machines, when once the toothed-wheel has set them going. The
perpendicular movement of all these little bobbins is looked after by
women, and even children.[21]
[21] At the time when Vaucanson's wheels began to be used in Spain, silk
was spun by men all over the Peninsula, except in the immediate
neighbourhood of Valencia (Orteils; _Hilaza de la Seda_, pp. 134
_et seq._) In every other region devoted to this industry such as
the valley of the Jucar and the Huertas of Orihuela and Murviedro,
as well as in the factories of Toledo, Seville, Granada, Cordova,
Jaén, Baeza, Talavera, and Priego, the spinning was performed by
men exclusively. Women, however, were often engaged in harvesting
the cocoons.
"If they should happen to clog, a touch of the finger disengages them.
If one of the slips should break, the harm is mended in a trice: the
practised fingers of the machinist pick up the broken ends with
marvellous despatch, tie them together by an imperceptible knot, and the
bobbin which was thus delayed loses no time in overtaking its
neighbours.
"The slips of silk, before being twisted two by two, are put through
another process which I ought to mention. When they are still in skeins
they are spread upon a large tub in which is a quantity of viscous
substances heated to boiling point, the gases from which tend to make
them adhere to one another. This is termed _passer à la brève_.
"Thence they are removed to the machine for twisting them. The silk, on
issuing from this machine, is called organzine; and it is only when it
is in this state that it can be exported from Piedmont, where the
twisting process was better executed than elsewhere, until the time when
it was rendered yet more perfect by Vaucanson.[22] This clever mechanic
has combined all possible advantages relating to the business of the
silk-weaver. His system, and no other, is practised in the Lyons
factories; but these wheels _à double croissade_ are only available for
silk produced in France; since that which is exported from abroad and
which is principally used in these factories, requires to be reduced to
organzine before it can again be taken out of the country.
[22] "I should here remark that the silk which is spun and twisted
according to the method of Vaucanson, forms a fabric a third part
closer and stronger than ordinary silk-stuffs."
"In this respect Spain possesses a sensible advantage over other
manufacturing nations; since she raises a greater quantity of silk than
she is able to consume, and could easily put it through the most
advanced and perfect processes; in spite of which she has clung for ages
to her faulty method. The present government has attacked this method by
the only means efficient to bring about a change; that is, the slow but
certain influence of persuasion. In 1781 the Count of Floridablanca
contracted with a French merchant settled in Madrid, that he should
supply a hundred _tours_ of the Vaucanson pattern for spinning silk,
first to the Murcian factories (of which province the Count was a
native), next to the Valencian, and subsequently to any others that
might wish for them; and with this object he granted to the merchant in
question the privilege of exporting, free of duty, six hundred thousand
pounds of silk in six years. Nevertheless, it is possible that this
measure may yet remain fruitless for many years owing to the apathy of
the Spanish manufacturers, who were loth to use a finer, closer quality
of silk, because it must be woven with greater care owing to its
containing three ends instead of two, the work being greater on this
account without a corresponding increase in the gain. It has also been
found necessary to employ Frenchmen in the earliest trials made in Spain
of this new method.
"The success of the Spaniards should not be counted on, if we are to
judge of it by a factory, which was founded some years since at _La
Milanesa_, a league's distance from Valencia, by an intelligent man
named La Payessa.[23]