PUBLICATIONS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER
HISTORICAL SERIES
No. XXXVI
THE EARLY
ENGLISH COTTON INDUSTRY
Published by the University of Manchester at
THE UNIVERSITY PRESS (H. M. MCKECHNIE, Secretary)
12 LIME GROVE, OXFORD ROAD, MANCHESTER
LONGMANS, GREEN & CO.
LONDON: 39 Paternoster Row
NEW YORK: 443-449 Fourth Avenue and Thirtieth Street
CHICAGO: Prairie Avenue and Twenty-fifth Street
BOMBAY: 8 Hornby Road
CALCUTTA: 6 Old Court House Street
MADRAS: 167 Mount Road
[Illustration: STATUE OF SAMUEL CROMPTON
NELSON SQUARE, BOLTON
_On the base there is a representation of Hall-i’-th’-Wood which can
just be distinguished in the photograph_]
THE EARLY
ENGLISH COTTON INDUSTRY
WITH SOME UNPUBLISHED LETTERS OF
SAMUEL CROMPTON
BY
GEORGE W. DANIELS, M.A.
SENIOR LECTURER IN ECONOMICS IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER BY
GEORGE UNWIN, M.A.
PROFESSOR OF ECONOMIC HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER
MANCHESTER: AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
12 LIME GROVE, OXFORD ROAD
LONGMANS, GREEN & CO.
LONDON, NEW YORK, BOMBAY, ETC.
1920
PUBLICATIONS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER
No. CXXXIII
PREFACE
In view of what is said by Professor Unwin in his introductory chapter
concerning the business material of the firm of M‘Connel & Kennedy,
the reason why this small volume has been written requires little
explanation. From the time this material was kindly placed at our
disposal by Mr. J. W. M‘Connel, grandson of one of the founders of the
firm, my interest has been centred mainly in the development of the
English cotton industry from its beginning to about the end of the
third decade of the nineteenth century.
Fortunately this investigation fitted in well with work on which I was
already engaged. For some time previously the preparation of lectures
for students of the Tutorial classes, conducted by the University of
Manchester in conjunction with the Workers’ Educational Association,
had caused me to turn my attention to the sources of the social and
economic history of the late seventeenth and the early eighteenth
centuries, with the object of enabling me to speak with a little more
confidence than I could gain from easily accessible books.
Last summer when I began that which has developed into the following
chapters my intention was to write a few pages of introduction to
the succeeding letters of Samuel Crompton, and later to publish a
volume dealing with the English cotton industry throughout the period
mentioned. Much of what appears in this volume was intended to form
the first part of that work, but the second part has been left for a
separate volume. There are, therefore, many gaps and deficiencies in
the present volume. Some of these gaps, I trust, may be filled and
deficiencies supplied at a later date.
My obligations are very numerous and in some cases extend to much more
than appears in this volume. To the late Humphrey Chetham I am indebted
for providing in Manchester the library which bears his name, in the
reading-room of which I have spent so many delightful hours.
Mr. H. Crossley, the present librarian, has rendered me untiring
assistance in searching out the authorities that I have used, as have
the librarians of the Manchester Reference Library and the Christie
Library. Miss F. Collier has assisted me in many ways, but particularly
in the tedious task of wading page by page through the _Journals of
the House of Commons_ and the files of _The Manchester Mercury_ and
making extracts therefrom. Miss P. Heap has sketched the map from
the one published in 1795 with Aikin’s _Thirty to Forty Miles Round
Manchester_. The Corporation of the Royal Exchange Assurance, through
its Manchester manager, Mr. J. Loudon, has granted me permission to
reproduce the photograph of the model of Manchester in the seventeenth
and early eighteenth centuries. The model has been constructed by
Mr. H. Yates of Moss Side, Manchester, and is a remarkable piece of
work. It is based upon “A Plan of Manchester and Salford, taken about
1650” (referred to on p. 25) and must have involved an enormous amount
of research, as by far the greater part of its detail is based upon
contemporary documents and prints. It is to be hoped that before long
the model may find a permanent resting-place in some Manchester public
institution.
Too late for me to avail myself of the information they contain,
I find that Mr. Loudon has published a series of articles in _The
Royal Exchange Assurance Magazine_, entitled “Manchester Memoirs.” In
writing these articles Mr. Loudon has made use of such records of the
Corporation as were not destroyed when the Royal Exchange was burned
down in January, 1838. Sufficient remain, however, to indicate their
value in the elucidation of the social and economic history of the
Manchester district in the eighteenth century, and the part that was
played by the Corporation in its development. Records are still in
existence of policies taken out by prominent Manchester business men at
that time, including one by Richard Arkwright, in 1785, when he insured
his Manchester factory for £5000.
In addition to the persons already mentioned, I am indebted to Mr.
Thomas Midgley, Curator of Chadwick Museum, Bolton, for valuable
information and for the photograph of Crompton’s statue; to Mr. J.
Wadsworth, of the staff of _The Manchester Guardian_, for important
references; to Mr. H. L. Beales, of the University of Sheffield, for
compiling the index; and to Professor D. H. Macgregor for reading my
proofs. To Mr. H. M. M‘Kechnie, the Secretary of the University Press,
I am deeply grateful, as he has advised my every step while the book
has been passing through the press, and has helped me in many other
ways.
But my greatest debt is to Professor George Unwin. Whatever taste for
social and economic history I now possess, or may acquire, I owe to
him. He has contributed far more to this volume than the introductory
chapter. But my deepest obligation is for his companionship, which
for many years has been to me a constant source of encouragement and
inspiration.
G. W. D.
THE UNIVERSITY, MANCHESTER,
_June, 1920_.
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION xix.-xxxi.
I.--The stimulus given to research in economic history
by the discovery of Messrs. M‘Connel’s records and
of Crompton’s letters; central position in economic
history occupied by commerce and industry of
textiles; Lancashire cotton industry a graft on
this old stock.
II.--Beginning of cotton manufacture in Europe;
mediæval gilds in textile trades; rise of an organised
journeyman class in fourteenth century; but
in the sixteenth century the centre of the labour
problem was the small master, whose well-being
was dependent on free flow of capital and credit.
III.--Industrial conditions in seventeenth-century
Lancashire resembled those in mediæval Florence
and Douai, but differed vitally by the absence
of a monopoly of capital; such a monopoly was
developing in the Merchant Adventurers and other
companies in Elizabeth’s reign; and led to a crisis
in the textile industries in 1586-1587; the expansion
of the northern textile industries due to its exceptional
freedom.
IV.--The removal of restrictions on the free flow of
capital a main factor in the Industrial Revolution;
illustrations of this from the careers of William
Radcliffe, David Dale, and Nathan Meyer Rothschild.
CHAPTER I
THE DEVELOPMENT OF A COTTON MANUFACTURE 1-29
I.--The development of the English cotton industry
the classic example of the Industrial Revolution
movement; its importance as an indication of what
the transition from the domestic to the factory
system of organisation involved, 1-2; cotton and
cotton-cloth common articles of import before the
sixteenth century; “cottons” a prominent
Lancashire manufacture in the early sixteenth
century; unsuccessful attempts to regulate the manufacture,
2-6; necessity for caution in accepting the
view that cotton was not used in the manufacture
of Lancashire cloths in the sixteenth century, 7-8.
II.--Authentic evidence of a considerable manufacture
of cotton in Lancashire; petition of London
merchants (1621); testimony of Lewis Roberts
(1641); fustian manufacture probably introduced
in second half of the sixteenth century, 8-12;
extent of the manufacture indicated in petitions
from Lancashire (1654); possible effect of Thirty
Years’ War; Fuller’s account of Lancashire fustian
manufacture (1662); Bolton the staple place for
fustians in the seventeenth century, 13-16.
III.--Countries from which cotton-wool imported in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; cotton-yarn
and fine cotton-fabrics imported by East
India Company, 16; John Barkstead’s schemes
(1691) for manufacture of calicoes and muslins and
their failure, 16-19; opposition of silk and woollen
trades to import of dyed or printed calicoes; resulting
Act (1700) followed by import of plain calicoes
which were printed and dyed in England; Act
(1721) prohibits their wear or use; opposition to
Act from manufacturers of cotton in Dorset, 19-21;
increasing prominence of fustians rouses opposition;
petitions from Lancashire, Cheshire, and Derbyshire
result in “Manchester Act” (1736); use or
wear of printed goods made of linen-warp and
cotton-wool declared lawful; progress of cotton
manufacture, 1730-1764, 22-24.
IV.--Development of Manchester trade, 1650-1750;
distinction between smallware, check, and fustian
branches; fustian especially regarded as the cotton
manufacture; some goods made entirely of cotton
in first half of eighteenth century but majority
probably of mixed character; worsted and silk
utilised and linen largely manufactured, 25-29.
CHAPTER II
THE ORGANISATION OF THE COTTON MANUFACTURE 30-71
I.--Clothiers in the Northern cloth district; Martin
Byrom of Manchester (1520); statute (1543) refers
to Irish merchants and others who sell linen-yarn
and wool on credit in Manchester; petition of
Lancashire clothiers against restrictions on middlemen
(1577), 30-31; wealthy men engaged in
Lancashire cloth trade--_e.g._ the Tippings, Mosleys,
Chethams; their charitable bequests; extent of
their concerns, 32-34; Humphrey Chetham bought
goods for London market; employed workpeople
in spinning yarn and in weaving and finishing cloth;
typical clothier of the domestic system, 35-36;
small independent producers not typical workpeople
in Manchester district in early eighteenth
century; evidence of statutes; changes in
organisation of fustian manufacture; testimony
of Ogden and Guest, 36-39.
II.--Organisation of smallware trade; manufacturers,
undertakers, journeymen, apprentices; changes
in first half of eighteenth century; combination of
workpeople; articles (1747-1753) aim at enforcing
apprenticeship and limiting number of apprentices,
40-42; increasing price of food and consequent
disturbances; smallware weavers attempt to
raise wages; prosecution and submission at
Lancaster Assizes (1760), 42-45; Lord Mansfield’s
charge on combinations in Lancashire (1758);
combination of check-weavers; dispute with
employers and strike in Manchester area; the
“document”; demand regulation of trade under
statute 5 Eliz.; proposals for settlement of dispute
by weavers and Mr. Percival; submission and
prosecution at Lancaster Assizes (1759); Lord
Mansfield’s comments on Statute of Apprentices;
later history of smallware weavers’ combination;
economic and social significance of the combinations;
their relation to earlier associations and to
modern trade unions, 45-55.
III.--Distribution of manufacturers and workpeople in
Manchester area in first half of eighteenth century;
connections maintained by “putting out” system,
56; trade in raw materials; cotton imported
through London, Liverpool, Whitehaven, Lancaster;
wool reached manufacturers through inland traders;
linen yarn spun in England and Scotland, but
Ireland and the Continent most important sources
of supply; qualities of yarn, and goods in which
used; cotton merchants and yarn merchants in
Manchester; foreign trading-connections; Manchester
goods exported to West Indies, Africa, Italy,
Germany, North America, Russia, Asiatic Turkey,
57-60; inland trade carried on by travelling merchants
with pack-horses; partly displaced from early
eighteenth century by “riders-out” who solicited
orders; goods forwarded by carriers; development
of communications; importance of petty-chapmen;
links between manufacturing centres
and country districts; organisation of their trade
and capital involved; economic development
during century preceding great inventions in
cotton industry, 60-66; tables relating to manufacturers,
merchants, crofters, and carriers in
Manchester area (1772), 67-71.
CHAPTER III
THE COMING OF MACHINERY: KAY TO ARKWRIGHT 72-91
I.--Modern cotton industry dates from great inventions;
inventions relate especially to spinning
and preparatory processes, but earliest successful
efforts in weaving; “Dutch” loom introduced into
Manchester district in early eighteenth century;
John Kay invents “flying-shuttle” (1733); first
used in woollen industry; other inventions of Kay;
Robert Kay effects improvement in hand-loom
(1760); more complicated loom introduced for
figured goods; discrepancy between spinning and
weaving, 72-74; types of spinning-wheel in use--“Jersey”
wheel, “Brunswick” wheel; methods
of cleaning and carding cotton; Lewis Paul’s
patent for roller-spinning (1738); and for carding
(1748); lack of success; carding-machine introduced
into Lancashire (1760), 75-78; need for
improved spinning-machine; Society of Arts
offers reward for invention (1761); inventions of
the “spinning-jenny” (patented 1770) and the
“water-frame” (patented 1769); description of
spinning process by the spinning-wheel, the jenny,
and the water-frame; Arkwright erects factory at
Cromford (1771) and takes out “carding” patent
(1775), 79-81; attacks upon new machinery by
workpeople; not fully explained by effects of its
introduction, 82-83.
II.--Outbreak of Seven Years’ War ushers in century
of unrest in England due mainly to political causes;
unrest frequently broke out in riots; conditions in
sixties and seventies of eighteenth century; efforts
of Parliament to cope with rising food prices;
agitation against trading middlemen; attack
made upon jenny during period of industrial
depression and high prices at close of Seven Years’
War; and upon Arkwright’s machinery when
American War of Independence dominated the
situation; workpeople state their case against
machinery to Parliament; counter-petition by
manufacturers; decision of Parliamentary Committee,
83-91.
CHAPTER IV
THE OPPOSITION TO THE PATENTS 92-112
Failure of attempts to obstruct use of Arkwright’s
machinery; Act (1774) reduces duty and removes
prohibition on printed calicoes, 92-93; patents
of Hargreaves and Arkwright challenged by manufacturers;
Hargreaves’ failure to uphold his
patent; his claim to invention of jenny questioned
by Guest; his later career, 92-97; Arkwright’s
characteristics; his association with Jedediah
Strutt; development of his concerns, 97-100;
infringements of his patents; fails to secure verdict
in law-suit (1781); Arkwright’s _Case_; requests
Parliament to consolidate his patents and continue
them until 1789; opposition of Manchester Committee
of Trade; secures verdict in second law-suit
(February, 1785); agitation in Manchester;
application for new trial; Thomas Highs’ claim to
invention of roller-spinning; Arkwright loses
verdict in third trial (June, 1785); application for
new trial refused (November, 1785); Arkwright’s
achievements, 100-112.
CHAPTER V
THE MULE AND THE RISE OF A NEW COTTON MANUFACTURE 113-148
I.--The work of Samuel Crompton; begins efforts to
produce improved yarn at Hall-i’-th’-Wood (1772);
invents “mule” (1779); prices obtained for his
yarn; consents to make machine public, 113-116;
character of the mule and its method of spinning;
probable reasons why patent not applied for;
treatment of Crompton in 1780 and its effects;
asserts unacquaintance with Arkwright’s rollers,
117-122.
II.--Mule at first worked by hand in cottages; improvements
in the mule; the “Billy”; mule
supersedes jenny in cotton spinning; and water-frame
in finer counts, 122-124; application of
water-power; attempts to invent “self-actor”
mule; increase in size and appearance in town
factories, 124-126; early fine cotton-spinners;
immigration of Scotsmen; fine spinning and
machine making combined; rise of specialised
firms, 126-128; fine cotton fabrics made from
mule-spun yarn; effect upon Eastern cotton
industry; testimony of John Kennedy; markets
for fine yarn in late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries; transition in the English cotton-industry;
import of cotton from United States,
126-132.
III.--Social effects of the transition; William Radcliffe’s
account; examination of the view that combined
agricultural and industrial occupations prevailed
in country districts of Lancashire before the coming
of factories; evidence from _Manchester Mercury_,
Aikin, Parliamentary reports; Radcliffe’s account
of the township of Mellor; 1801 census returns
relating to Mellor; Gaskell’s account of the classes
in country districts affected by the transition;
yeomen and artisans; improvement in material
position of artisans and elevation of lower class;
many yeomen turned to industry and some achieved
success as manufacturers; number engaged
in Lancashire textile industry who combined
agricultural and industrial occupations relatively
small; similar conclusion regarding number of
small independent producers, 132-144; improved
position of weavers reacted upon other trades and
attracted labour; the Napoleonic War; mid-eighteenth
century conditions repeated and intensified;
effects upon social and economic
development; and upon the problem of industrial
relationships, 144-148.
CHAPTER VI
CONCERNING THE AFFAIRS OF SAMUEL CROMPTON 149-165
Crompton takes up residence at Oldhams; begins
spinning business at Bolton (1791); subscription
(1802-1803) partial failure owing to outbreak of
war; extends his business; difficulties of his
position; attempts to arouse interest in his case,
149-153; application to Parliament decided upon;
collects information concerning effect of the mule
in England, Scotland, and Ireland (1811-1812);
petition presented to Parliament and referred to
Committee; period of distress and riots; delay
in proceedings; grant of £5000; Crompton’s disappointment,
153-158; failure of business
concerns; subscription raised for annuity (1824);
second petition to Parliament; Crompton’s death
(1827); memorials of Crompton; improvements
in the mule; its position in the world’s cotton
industry, 158-165.
CHAPTER VII
LETTERS OF SAMUEL CROMPTON 166-194
ADDITIONAL NOTES 195-197
INDEX 199-214
ERRATA
Page 12, footnote 1, _for_ “_ibid_” _read_ “_Growth of
English Industry and Commerce_, ii.”
” 19, ” 1, _for_ “_S.P.D._, Petition Entry
Book” _read_ “_ibid._”
” 144, ” 1, _after_ “_Petitions_” _read_ “(1803).”
” 149, line 13, _for_ “reference” _read_ “references.”
” 159, ” 19, _for_ “1825” _read_ “1827.”
ILLUSTRATIONS
STATUE OF SAMUEL CROMPTON _Frontispiece_
MANCHESTER IN THE SEVENTEENTH AND
EARLY EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES _To face p._ 25
MAP SHOWING THE LOCATION OF
MANUFACTURERS AND CROFTERS IN
THE MANCHESTER AREA IN 1772 ” 70
THE HALL-I’-TH’-WOOD ” 115
REDUCED FACSIMILE OF CROMPTON’S
HANDWRITING _Page_ 171
INTRODUCTION
I
In the year 1906 one of the oldest and largest firms in the cotton
industry, that of Messrs. M‘Connel & Co. Ltd., published, under the
title of _A Century of Fine Cotton Spinning_, a brief history of
their business, including some deeply interesting extracts from their
earliest letter-books. The use of this material in 1913, when a second
edition had been issued, by a research student of the University, Mr.
W. Bradburn, M.A., prompted inquiries about the original sources and
led to the discovery of what is probably a unique set of economic
documents--the entire record of a great industrial and commercial
enterprise during the forty years of its most rapid expansion. In an
upper storey of one of Messrs. M‘Connel’s mills in Ancoats, Mr. Daniels
and myself found not only a great array of day-books, cash-books,
ledgers and letter-books for the period 1795-1835, but also the whole
correspondence, invoices, receipts, etc., of the firm neatly endorsed
and carefully packed year by year into tin boxes, each box having the
date duly painted upon it. It almost seemed as if the firm had from
the first foreseen the lively interest which their achievements would
excite in the economic historian of the future, and the fact that one
of its early members, Mr. John Kennedy, made a number of valuable
contributions to the history of the cotton industry in the Transactions
of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society and elsewhere
lends reasonableness to this supposition.
These records were generously placed at the disposal of the University
for the purposes of research. They have already enabled Mr. Daniels to
cast much new light on the vicissitudes of the cotton trade during the
revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, and he hopes in time to illustrate
by their aid many aspects of the cotton industry during the most
important period of its development. In the meantime a new stimulus
has been given to the investigation of origins. These had never been
exhaustively studied, and the discovery amongst Messrs. M‘Connel’s
business correspondence of a series of original letters of Samuel
Crompton which, though written in the year 1812, are concerned with
his invention of the mule, more than thirty years before, furnished an
additional reason for the reconsideration of the earliest history of
the industry which has been attempted in this volume.
From the earliest recorded times down to the period of the Industrial
Revolution, the textile crafts and the commerce based upon them had in
more than one important sense occupied a central position in economic
history. The weaving of home-spun fabrics had always furnished the
main transitional link between the world of the self-subsisting
agriculturalist and the world of specialised industry. Moreover, this
almost universally diffused domestic manufacture, organised for the
supply of distant markets, represents a phase of industrial development
historically intermediate between the “handcraft system” of the
mediæval city and the factory system of the nineteenth century; and
the fabrics thus produced, the silks of China, Italy and France, the
cottons of India and Central Asia, the fine woollens of Flanders and
Florence, the kerseys and broadcloths of England, the linens of Holland
and Silesia, the fustians of Barcelona and Bavaria, have been in turn
during twenty centuries amongst the chief commodities of international
and intercontinental trade.
For these reasons the story of the textile crafts affords better
illustrations than could be obtained from any other source of three
of the main aspects of economic history--_i.e._ (1) that of social
differentiation and the formation of classes; (2) that of the
development of industrial and commercial organisation, and (3) that
of the development of the industrial and commercial policies of
modern states. That the Lancashire cotton industry possesses this
representative character is a commonplace. In no other modern industry
can the emergence and separate organisation of a wage-earning class,
the development of the factory system and the world market, the story
of industrial legislation and of British commercial policy in the
nineteenth century be so adequately studied.
But the cotton industry is, as Mr. Daniels has shown, a new graft on
an old stock. Long before it passed under the factory system it was
organised on a capitalist basis, derived in all probability from the
fustian manufacture which it had displaced. The account of the disputes
of the smallware and check weavers with their employers in 1758-1759,
and of their formation and enforced repudiation of box clubs, shows
clearly that whilst, as regards their economic dependence on their
employers, their status differed little from that of the hand-loom
weaver in the early nineteenth century; their methods of combined
action were essentially the same as those that prevailed amongst
the textile crafts in the fifteenth century. A brief consideration,
therefore, of the earlier phases in the organisation of labour and
capital in the textile industries as a whole may serve to place the
modern cotton industry on the right historical perspective and help to
account for the unique rapidity of its expansion.
II
It is in the first half of the twelfth century that we get the first
evidence of the production of cotton fabrics in the Christian countries
of Europe. Edward Baines, who in his excellent and scholarly account[1]
of the origins of the cotton industry dated its European beginnings
from the reign of Abderahman the Great (A.D. 912-961) in Moorish Spain,
and showed that it had become well established in Barcelona by the
thirteenth century, could not find any trace of it in Italy before the
beginning of the fourteenth century. Recent research[2] has, however,
proved that by the middle of the twelfth century there already existed
a flourishing export trade from Genoa to the Levant of the fustians
of Northern Italy and Tuscany and of the light cottons (pignolato) of
Piacenza; so that the fustians which are found on sale at the Champagne
fairs[3] at that period were probably from Italy as well as from Spain.
The frequent mention of cotton wool and yarn as articles of commerce
makes it probable that fabrics containing cotton were produced in
Flanders during the fourteenth century. At the same time a fustian
manufacture began to grow up around Ulm and Augsburg, deriving its
cotton supplies through Venice, which acquired a European reputation in
the sixteenth century.[4]
[Footnote 1: Baines, _History of Cotton Manufacture_, pp. 38-43.]
[Footnote 2: A. Schaube, _Handelsgeschichte der romanischen Völker des
Mittelmeergebiets_, pp. 159-160.]
[Footnote 3: F. Bourquelot, _Etudes sur les foires de Champagne_, i.
273.]
[Footnote 4: E. Nübling, _Ulms Baumwolleveberei im Mittelaltes_ in
_Schmollers Forschunsen_, Bd. IX.]
Of the great range of new social classes engaged in, or concerned
with, the textile industries that were built up during the Middle Ages
by the creative energy of free fellowship, it is impossible here to
attempt any account. There were gilds of weavers which secured in the
twelfth century chartered right of marketing and autonomy before the
rise of municipal self-government[5]; gilds of importers and exporters
of cloth formed amongst the wealthy class that administered the first
forms of civic independence[6]; gilds of tailors or cloth-cutters
(Gewand-schneider) that attempted to monopolise the right to retail
trade[7]; gilds of small masters in the auxiliary crafts--of fullers,
dyers and shearmen seeking to maintain an independent contact with the
market[8]; and finally, gilds of wage-earning journeymen who never
secured full recognition of their right to a separate organisation. The
conflict between these class interests was a main factor in municipal
politics during the fourteenth century and culminated not infrequently
in revolution.
[Footnote 5: Ashley, _Economic History_, vol. i., pt. i., ch. 3. Unwin,
_Gilds and Companies of London_, pp. 42-46.]
[Footnote 6: Unwin, _Industrial Organisation_, pp. 30-31; A. H.
Johnson, _History of Drapers Company_, i. G. des Marez, _Organisation
du Travail à Bruxelles_.]
[Footnote 7: Keutgen, _Der Grosshandel im Mittelalter_ in _Hansische
Geschichtsblätter_, 1901, p. 67.]
[Footnote 8: Unwin, _Industrial Organisation_, pp. 32-36.]
In 1345 a dispute at Ghent between the fullers and their employers,
the weavers and clothmakers about a piece-work rate led to a pitched
battle in which hundreds were slain.[9] For a few months during the
Ciompi rising of 1378 the nine thousand textile wage-earners of
Florence maintained themselves by a temporary transformation of the
gild constitution on an equal footing with the wealthier classes of the
city, but were then obliged to fall back on that Friendly Society form
of organisation out of which the Lancashire weavers in the eighteenth
century constructed their later trade unions.[10] Elsewhere in many
places the struggle of the town wage-earners for recognition was
carried on with varying success during the fifteenth century. In 1453
the journeymen fullers of Brussels formed part of an international
federation comprising forty-two towns and cities whose objects were to
limit the supply of labour and to exclude all workers from towns in
their black list.[11] The journeymen weavers followed the example of
the fullers and their black list included the whole of England as well
as the cities of Malines and Ypres. The records of the last successful
strike of the fullers of Leyden in 1478 show that their fraternity,
though it included small masters, was mainly representative of the
journeyman class.[12]
[Footnote 9: W. J. Ashley, _James and Philip van Artevelde_, pp.
162-163.]
[Footnote 10: A. Doren, _Die Florentiner Wollentuchindustrie_, pp.
124-242.]
[Footnote 11: G. des Marez, _Organisation du Travail à Bruxelles_, pp.
118-119, and _Le Compagnannage des Chapelier Bruxellois_, pp. 17-19.]
[Footnote 12: _Bronnen tot de Geschiedenis van de Leidsche
textielnijverheid_, I. xxi. Ed. N. W. Posthumus.]
From that time till the end of the seventeenth century we hear little
of the activities of the journeymen. In all cases where they expanded,
the textile industries outgrew the limits of the town economy and drew
supplies both of capital and labour from sources outside the corporate
boroughs and the gilds. The textile workers became in every country a
much larger and more important section of the community than before,
but their centre of gravity shifted from the journeyman wage-earner to
the working master who was essentially a small capitalist and receiver
of credit, and whose economic well-being depended primarily upon a free
flow of capital and credit.[13] It remains to consider briefly how this
was affected by the mercantilist policy of the state.
[Footnote 13: Unwin, _Industrial Organisation in the 16th and 17th
Centuries_, pp. 52-61, 126. _Commerce and Coinage in Shakespeare’s
England_, i., p. 330.]
III
Capitalist employers and even, to some extent, our wage-earning
proletariat were to be found as early as the close of the thirteenth
century in the chief urban centres of the textile industries in
Flanders and Italy; and at first sight there seems little to
distinguish the industrial conditions and the class relations
prevailing in those centres from those described as existing in
Lancashire between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries. The
patrician draper of Douai in the last quarter of the thirteenth
century[14] ran his business on lines which we find still maintained by
the Chethams and the Mosleys of seventeenth-century Manchester. In both
cases the capitalist was primarily a merchant with agents or partners
in other cities, who bought his raw material from abroad and helped to
put his goods on a distant market. At the industrial centre he had a
warehouse and also a workshop where he employed a few workers chiefly
in finishing the cloth or in preparing the material for manufacture.
But his relation with most of those who were in effect his workpeople
was ostensibly that of a trader. He sold them the materials of their
craft and bought the finished products, allowing them credit for the
interval.
[Footnote 14: G. Espinas, _Jehan Boine Broke, Bourgeois
et drapier-Douasien in Vierteljahrschrift für Social und
Wirthschaftsgeschichte_, vol. ii., pp. 53-70.]
The other form of industrial organisation found in eighteenth-century
Manchester, in which the materials were delivered through putters-out
to the cottage workers of the surrounding country, had been already
fully developed by the Wool Gild of fourteenth-century Florence.[15]
[Footnote 15: A. Doren, _Die Florentiner Wollentuchindustrie_, chap. v.]
What constitutes the vital difference between the conditions at Douai
and Florence on the one hand, and those in Lancashire on the other
hand, was the virtual monopoly of the employing function and of the
supply of capital or credit which the civic constitution of the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries gave to the patrician merchant or
to the members of the wool gild, and which was entirely absent from
the Manchester fustian or cotton industry. The weaver who obtained
his materials from the Chethams or Mosleys might, if their terms
were better, have got credit from the Irish yarn dealers or other
“foreigners” who visited the Manchester market, and he was free to
set up as an independent manufacturer as soon as he had acquired the
necessary capital or credit. Such freedom, however, was by no means
universal or even normal in the textile industries of sixteenth-century
England. A monopoly of the employing function had grown up in the
corporate burghs which were the older centres of the industry and the
effect of the industrial and commercial policy of the sixteenth century
was to give a national sanction to this monopoly, and to put a ban upon
expansion or improvement.
One of the main instruments of that policy was the company of
Merchant Adventurers. This was a _cartel_ of English merchants,
mainly Londoners, which had gradually gained a control of the export
trade of cloth to Antwerp--the chief Continental market. Throughout
the sixteenth century it sought to prevent the English clothier from
exporting his own cloth and the foreign merchant from coming to buy
it in England. At the same time it restricted the number of its
own members and limited the amount of trade done by each. So far,
therefore, from having been, as is commonly supposed, the main organ
for the expansion of English trade, it constituted, in fact, the main
hindrance to that expansion. In 1551-1552 the government of Edward VI.,
in order to raise from the Adventurers a desperately needed loan, gave
an official sanction to their monopoly. It stopped the trade of the
Hanseatic merchants who had recently been exporting over one-third of
the rapidly increasing output of English cloth,[16] and it authorised
the Adventurers to exclude other native merchants from the trade.
As the Adventurers could not find a market for the whole national
output, they complained of over-production.[17] The corporate boroughs
which were the older privileged centres of the industry naturally
supported this complaint, and a series of enactments from 1552 to 1563
(including the Statute of Weavers and the Statute of Apprentices) which
endeavoured to restrict the expansion of the textile manufactures in
the country districts were largely due to the combined influence of
these two vested interests and to the fiscal needs of the Government.
[Footnote 16: J. M. Lappenberg, _Urkundliche Geschichte des Hansischen
Stahlhofes zu London_, p. 175.]
[Footnote 17: _Acts of the Privy Council for 1550_, p. 19.]
The Hanseatic trade was restored under Philip and Mary, and during the
first half of Elizabeth’s reign the German merchants continued to find
a market for a considerable quantity of English cloth.
This additional channel through which capital and credit could flow in
and out of the country was rendered more indispensable by the gradual
stoppage of trade with Central Europe through the Netherlands. But in
the second decade of Elizabeth fresh hostilities arose between the
Merchant Adventurers who had settled at Hamburg and the Hanseatic
League with the result that the German merchants were in 1576 excluded
from trading in Blackwell Hall, and later in 1580 deprived of all
their remaining privileges in England, whilst the Adventurers lost
their foothold in Hamburg.[18] At the very moment when the foreign
channels for the export trade were thus being closed the native
channels were being seriously narrowed through the action of the
same vested interests. The monopoly of the Merchant Adventurers
extended only to the Low Countries and Germany. The trade with Spain
and the Baltic, with Venice and the Levant and Morocco had been free
to all Englishmen and had been opened up by enterprising merchants,
frequently from the lesser parts, who more truly deserved the title
of Adventurers than the corporate monopolists of the markets nearer
home. But between 1575 and 1588 each of these branches of foreign
commerce was monopolised by a chartered syndicate formed after the
model of the Merchant Adventurers and controlled largely by the same
group of Londoners. Prices went up by leaps and bounds. “When every
nation,” said Harrison, “was permitted to bring in her own commodities
... we had sugar for fourpence the pound that now ... is well worth
half-a-crown, raisins and currants for a penny that now are bidden at
sixpence. I do not deny that the navy of the land is in part maintained
by their traffic, but so is the price of wares kept up now that they
have gotten the only sale of things upon pretence of better futherance
of the common wealth into their own hands.”[19]
[Footnote 18: R. Ehrenberg, _Hamburg und England_, chap. iv.]
[Footnote 19: W. Harrison, _Description of England_, Book III., chap.
iv.]
Far more serious, however, was the monopoly of the export trade in
cloth. In 1586 the Privy Council was receiving alarming reports of
the discontent in Somerset. The poorer sort, who were wont to live by
spinning, carding and working of wool, were starving for lack of work
and on the point of rebellion. An accidental fire at Bath was taken
for a beacon lighted to proclaim a general rising. “This great matter
of the lack of work,” writes Burleigh to Hatton, “not only of cloths,
which presently is the greatest, but of all other commodities which
are restrained from Spain, Portugal, Barbary, France, Flanders, Hamburg
and the States, cannot but, in process of time, work a great change and
dangerous issue to the people of the Realm, who heretofore in time of
outward peace lived thereby, and without it must either perish for want
or fall into violence to feed and fill their lewd appetites with open
spoil of others, which is the root of rebellion.”
The remedy proposed by Burleigh was to undo at one stroke the whole
effect of the restrictions that had been accumulating since 1564. To
have more sales there must be more buyers and more ships. The Hanseatic
trade must be restored. Other alien merchants must receive the same
liberty and be encouraged to use it by lower export duties.[20]
Blackwell Hall must be opened again to German buyers, and if the
Londoners refused, a cloth hall must be set up at Westminster. Finally,
the exportation of cloth must be free to all English merchants whether
members of the Adventurers’ Company or not.[21] But the application
of these sound remedies was frustrated by the war with Spain and the
reign of Elizabeth closed with a period of intensified monopoly and of
commercial depression.[22]
[Footnote 20: W. R. Scott, _Joint Stock Companies_, 1720, i., p. 88.]
[Footnote 21: Eliz., _State Papers Domestic_, cci.]
[Footnote 22: W. R. Scott, _op. cit._, i., chap. v.]
The expansion of the textile industries of England, which there is no
reason to doubt was taking place at this period, is clearly not to be
placed to the credit of Elizabethan statesmanship. It took place almost
entirely in the district exempted from the Weavers Acts. Foremost
amongst those districts were Lancashire and the West Riding, which thus
enjoyed the advantages of comparative _laissez faire_ at a time when
restrictions on the creation and the free flow of capital were part of
the accepted national policy.
IV
The importance for the expansion of British industry of the subsequent
removal of those restrictions can be best understood if we compare
the conditions under which English woollen industry was developing at
the close of the sixteenth century with those that prevailed in the
cotton industry at the close of the eighteenth century. In the earlier
period, of course, there was nothing to correspond to the jenny, the
mule, and the steam-engine. But certain conditions quite as essential
to the development of the industry are common to both cases--above all,
a rapid accumulation of new capital and a simultaneous expansion of
organising ability. It was a vital factor in both these developments
that the capital and ability accumulating in one field should be free
to flow over into and fertilise other fields.
This is clearly shown in the instructive case of William Radcliffe,
whose account of the transition of the cotton industry to the factory
system has been critically discussed and set in a new light by Mr.
Daniels. William Radcliffe commenced working life as a hand-loom
weaver at Mellor. Any young man, he tells us, of moderate ability
and self-confidence could have got on at that time. The capital
accumulating in his hands enabled him to give out work, exactly as a
sixteenth-century clothier would have done, to all the villages round.
Within about fifteen years he was finding employment for one thousand
hand-looms; he had £11,000 invested in the business; a bank gave him
credit for £5000. Most of this capital and credit was employed, not
in the manufacture itself, but in trade. It was represented by large
quantities of piece goods on their way to the consumer, but still
unsold. The new captain of industry could not extend his enterprise
unless he used his capital to find a new market. For this purpose
Radcliffe took as his partner a young Scot with more education than
himself, who brought another Scot into the business, and who regularly
visited Frankfort and Leipzig to open a market for the firm’s muslins.
Or let us take the case of David Dale, the father-in-law of Robert
Owen and the founder of the New Lanark Mills. He commenced life, like
Radcliffe, as a hand-loom weaver, but soon became clerk to a mercer
who very likely found work for weavers. Then we find him importing
foreign yarns to set weavers at work on his own account and taking in
a partner to help him. With the capital thus acquired he started a
whole series of spinning mills--the first in Scotland--and the need
of finding an outlet for his yarns led him to extend his operations
to weaving and dyeing. Finally, as he was getting on in years, he
disposed of his manufacturing interests to younger and more energetic
men like his son-in-law, and withdrew his own capital and organising
ability into the less speculative field of banking. In the cases of
Dale and Radcliffe we see capital accumulated in industry flowing over
into commerce and banking. But all were not so successful as Dale.
Even Radcliffe came to grief in his later years and was dependent on
the capital of others. And in many cases capital and credit are to be
observed flowing in the opposite direction. The merchant who imported
cotton enabled the young manufacturer to set up for himself by giving
him three months’ credit, whilst the exporting merchant rendered
similar assistance by paying for the manufacturer’s output week by
week. It was in this way, by a flow of capital inwards from commerce,
that most of the early industrial enterprises of Lancashire got
started and the immense expansion of the cotton industry was rendered
possible. One other example will serve to complete the account and to
show the international significance of the development at the moment
when Radcliffe was sending out his partner to Germany. Nathan Meyer
Rothschild was buying Manchester goods at Frankfort for transmission
to more easterly markets. Some quarrel with a Manchester merchant
led him to think that he could make better use of his capital by
settling in Manchester himself. His father supplied him with £20,000,
and he arrived to take part in an almost feverish expansion of the
industry. He found there were three separate profits to be made in the
manufacture: one upon the supply of the raw material, one upon the
manufacturing, and one upon the dyeing and spinning. His capital and
organising ability enabled him to combine all three. In half-a-dozen
years he had turned his £20,000 to £60,000, and then, obeying the
instinct of his race and following the signs of the times, he withdrew
his capital to banking and became one of the leading figures in the
London money market.[23]
[Footnote 23: _Memoirs of Sir T. F. Buxton_, ed. by his son, 288-289.]
Enough has been written--perhaps too much--by way of introduction to
the new and valuable chapters which the researches of Mr. Daniels have
added to the history of the Lancashire cotton industry--enough if I
have succeeded in indicating the historical background of the industry
and the world-wide character of the development--too much if I have
anticipated here and there some of the more important conclusions that
Mr. Daniels has drawn from his investigations.
G. UNWIN.
THE EARLY ENGLISH COTTON INDUSTRY
CHAPTER I
THE DEVELOPMENT OF A COTTON MANUFACTURE
I
At the present time the British cotton industry, which is almost
entirely localised in Lancashire and in the adjoining parts of Cheshire
and Yorkshire, is the largest of the world’s textile industries.[24]
The year 1770, immediately after Arkwright obtained his first
patent, marks a well-defined division in its history. From this date
expansion became conspicuous and the industry became definitely
organised on the lines of the factory system. Previously expansion
had been comparatively slow, and the domestic system of organisation
had prevailed. The expansion of the cotton industry, therefore, is
an outstanding example of the transition which is now known as the
Industrial Revolution--a movement which, it is not too much to say,
found its centre within the area in which the cotton industry is now
concentrated, and from thence has spread to all the economically
advanced countries of the world. In the following pages we shall be
mainly concerned with the earlier period and with some aspects of the
transition, and it is hoped that some light will be thrown upon the
question as to what the transition involved, particularly as regards
the organisation of the cotton industry, and the economic relationships
of the classes engaged therein.
[Footnote 24: Outside the area mentioned, Glasgow and neighbourhood is
the only centre in the United Kingdom where the industry is carried
on to a considerable extent (_Report of Committee on Textile Trades_
(1918), pp. 45, 49. (Cd. 9070)).]
At what date cotton was first used in the manufacture of cloth in
England is somewhat obscure. When Baines wrote his _History of the
Cotton Manufacture_ he had found only two references to the import
of cotton-wool from the end of the thirteenth to the beginning of
the sixteenth centuries,[25] and it has generally been assumed that,
during this period, it was imported only in small quantities, and
used for minor purposes, such as candle-wicks. It has recently been
shown, however, that, throughout the intervening centuries, cotton was
a common article of import, figuring in the customs at many English
ports,[26] and while as yet there is little evidence as to its uses,
the knowledge of its regular import suggests that it may have been put
to more important uses than that just mentioned.
[Footnote 25: Published in 1835, p. 96.]
[Footnote 26: Gras, _The Early English Customs System_ (1918), pp. 119,
161, 167, 193, 222, 271, 452, 503, 554-555, 635, 647, 696. In 1507
there is an entry of cotton wolle “spowne.”
In a _Chronological History of Bolton to 1873_, compiled for _The
Bolton Chronicle_, it is stated that cotton yarns were spun at Horwich
in 1510.]
Cotton cloth, or cloth partly made of cotton, had been imported long
before the sixteenth century, and, in the early years of that century,
there is ample evidence of its import, as well as an increasing amount
of evidence of the import of the raw material.[27] About the same time
the word “cottons” as the name of a cloth manufactured in Lancashire
becomes conspicuous. In 1514, in a statute regulating the manufacture
of cloth, cottons are mentioned, but are excluded from its provisions,
as they are from the provisions of a similar statute twenty years
later.[28] Also Hakluyt records the fact that, between the years
1511 and 1534, cottons were included among the cloth exports of the
country,[29] and about the year 1538 we get Leland’s reference: “Bolton
upon Moore Market stondith most by cottons and cowrse yarne. Divers
villages in the Mores about Bolton do make cottons.”[30]
[Footnote 27: Fustians were imported into Lynn at the end of the
fourteenth century, and there are many references to the import of
cotton-russet in 1509 (Gras, _ibid._, pp. 436, 581 _et seq._). In the
inventory of the goods of Alexander Staney (1477) “12 yards of white
osborner fustian” are mentioned (_Lancashire and Cheshire Wills_,
Chetham Society, vol. iii., N.S.).]
[Footnote 28: 6 Hen. VIII., c. 9; 27 Hen. VIII., c. 12. In view of
what will be said later, it may be noticed that, in the first of these
statutes, regulations were laid down regarding the delivery of wool, by
clothiers, for breaking, combing, carding and spinning, and the amounts
of wool or yarn to be redelivered by workpeople.]
[Footnote 29: Baines, _History of the Cotton Manufacture_, p. 96.]
[Footnote 30: _The Itinerary of John Leland_, edited by Thomas Hearne
(1711), vii., p. 41.]
Until the middle of the century it appears that the manufacture of
cottons was unregulated, but in 1551 a comprehensive statute was passed
relating to the manufacture of cloth throughout the country, and
“all and everie cottonnes called Manchester Lancashire and Cheshire
Cottonnes” and “all cloths called Manchester Rugges otherwise named
Friezes” were included within its scope.[31] By the regulations of this
statute, the lengths, breadths and weights of these cloths were fixed,
and also the amount of stretching to which they could be subjected.
After this time the regulations were continued and modified in numerous
statutes enacted during the remainder of the sixteenth century and in
the early seventeenth century.
[Footnote 31: 5 and 6 Edw. VI., c. 6.]
The next important statute affecting the Lancashire cloth industry,
however, was the Weavers’ Act of 1555.[32] The main purpose of this
Act was to prevent the increase of clothiers outside corporate towns,
and, to secure this end, country clothiers were forbidden to have more
than one loom each in their possession, while country weavers were
limited to two looms, and also to two apprentices. Every weaver had to
serve a seven years’ apprenticeship, and no person not already engaged
in weaving or in causing to be woven any kind of broad white woollen
cloth was allowed to begin, except in towns or in places where such
cloth had been commonly made for the last ten years.
[Footnote 32: 2 and 3 Philip and Mary, c. 11.]
When the Act was passed, York, Cumberland, Northumberland and
Westmorland were exempted from its provisions, but Lancashire was
included. At this time the county was still largely a country district
with a cloth industry that had not yet become famous, though there
is much evidence that it was expanding. Consequently, had the Act
remained unmodified, the development of the county and the expansion
of its industry might have been seriously checked. Two years after its
enactment, however, several additional counties were exempted from
its provisions, except as regards apprenticeship, and Lancashire and
Cheshire were included among them.[33]
[Footnote 33: 4 and 5 Philip and Mary, c. 5. Ashley, _Economic History_
(1909), vol. i., pp. 233-235. Unwin, _Industrial Organisation in
the XVIth and XVIIth Centuries_ (1904), pp. 92-93. In 1558-1559 and
1575-1576 other places were exempted, and in 1623-1624 the Act was
finally repealed.]
From the beginning, considerable difficulty was experienced in
regulating the manufacture of cloth in Lancashire. In the 1551 Act, the
breadth allowed for Manchester cottons and friezes was narrower than
for ordinary cloths, and when the Weavers’ Act was modified a provision
was introduced which allowed them to be made in half-pieces. By 1566
more serious difficulties had been revealed. In an Act passed in that
year,[34] it was stated that clothiers “inordinately seeking their own
singular gains” were accustomed to carry away divers cottons, friezes,
and rugs, and sell them before the Aulnager had fixed the Queen’s seal
on them, and in some instances they had even counterfeited the seal. To
meet these difficulties it was enacted that deputy Aulnagers should be
appointed, to be situated at Manchester, Rochdale, Bolton, Blackburn
and Bury. In view of the fact that, about this time, in addition to
these places, the cloths were mentioned in connection with Salford,
Leigh and Radcliffe,[35] it is probable that their manufacture was so
extensive that, even if the clothiers had been more willing to conform
to the regulations, the task of the Aulnager was too large to be
efficiently performed.
[Footnote 34: 8 Eliz., c. 12.]
[Footnote 35: _Vict. County Hist., Lancs._, ii., p. 296.]
But there were other difficulties. The clothiers protested that it was
impossible for them to conform to the lengths, breadths, and weights
laid down in the statutes without the undoing of great numbers of poor
people commonly engaged in making the cloths, and further alterations
had to be made. The alterations were mainly in the direction of
allowing the cloths to be made considerably lighter, but ten years
later a writer condemned all kinds of northern cloths for false dyeing,
for shortness of weight and for stretching.[36]
[Footnote 36: _State Papers Domestic, Eliz._, vol. iii., 38. _Economic
Journal_, x., p. 24. According to the 1551 statute, a piece of cottons
had to be 22 goads in length, 3/4 yard in breadth and 30 lbs. in
weight. In 1566 the length had to be 21 goads or 20 goads at least, the
same breadth as before, but only 21 lbs. in weight. In 1551 a piece of
frieze had to be 36 yards in length, 3/4 yard in breadth and 48 lbs.
in weight. In 1566 the length was 35 to 36 yards, the same breadth as
before, but only 44 lbs. in weight.]
By the last years of the sixteenth century the problem of regulation
was still unsolved, and apparently it was decided that even more
vigorous measures should be adopted. In 1597 an Act[37] was passed
“against the deceitful stretching and tentering of Northern cloth,”
and, in the preamble, it was stated that notwithstanding the many
good and wholesome laws enacted hitherto, the cloths had grown worse
and worse, were more stretched and strained, and were made lighter
than ever before. The remedy adopted was to prohibit all tenters or
engines for stretching cloth in the northern counties, and the Justices
of Peace had to appoint overseers to enforce the regulations as to
length and weight. In the year following the enactment of this statute
a report was sent to the Council,[38] in which it was stated that,
although sundry letters had been written to the Justices of Peace in
Lancashire and Yorkshire, pointing out their duty in enforcing the
statute, the regulations which it contained had not been observed.
Consequently a recommendation was made that two honest men be appointed
to inspect the making of kersies, northern dozens and cottons, with
power to enforce the regulations. In the last year of Elizabeth’s reign
it was found necessary to pass another similar statute with application
to the whole country.[39]
[Footnote 37: 39 Eliz., c. 20.]
[Footnote 38: _S.P.D. Eliz._, vol. cclxix. 45.]
[Footnote 39: 43 Eliz., c. 10.]
The mere record of the futile attempts to enforce these statutes is
sufficient proof that they were inappropriate to the situation. During
the sixteenth century considerable changes were taking place in the
English cloth industry. It was the period when the “New Drapery” was
being introduced and attempts were being made to regulate it on the
lines of the “Old Drapery.” The regulations never corresponded with the
facts of the case and their effective enforcement was impossible.[40]
It was not only the length, breadth, and weight of the cloths that
caused difficulty. What were regarded as inferior materials were being
introduced into them, something which the statute of 1551 attempted
to cope with. This was not a new grievance at that time, but in the
sixteenth century it may have had a new significance. In 1606 an
attempt was made to distinguish between cloths made of perfect wool and
those into which Flocks, Thrums, and Lambs’ Wool entered, by insisting
that the latter should have a black yarn on the one edge and only a
selvedge on the other. Afterwards, no person had to put any Hair,
Flocks, Thrums, or any yarn made of Lambs’ Wool or other deceivable
thing or things, in or upon any Woollen Cloth, Half-Cloth, Frieze,
Dozen, Bays, Penistone, Cotton, Taunton Cloth, Bridgewater, Dunster
Cotton, or any other cloth, upon pain of forfeiting such cloth.[41]
[Footnote 40: These facts are borne out in the writings of the
apologists for regulation. _Cf._ John May, _A Declaration of the Estate
of Clothing now used within this Realme of England_ (1613).]
[Footnote 41: 4 Jas. I., c. 2.]
At this point this reference is important for our purpose in the
evidence it offers that, at this time, cottons were regarded as a
species of woollen cloth. All the references in the sixteenth century
have the same implication,[42] and even as late as 1700, when all
duties, subsidies, etc., imposed by previous Acts were swept away,
cottons were still enumerated among “manufactures of wool.”[43]
Moreover, the processes mentioned in connection with the making of
cottons were those applicable to woollen goods. It appears, therefore,
that cottons were not cotton fabrics in the modern sense. The cottons
of the sixteenth century were an important manufacture not peculiar
to Lancashire alone: they were made in other manufacturing districts.
In an account of woollen goods exported between Michaelmas 1594 and
Michaelmas 1595 the following figures were given:--baize, 10,976
pieces; cottons, 168,065 pieces; woollen stockings, 34,085 pairs;
sayes, 4256 pieces; English Norwich, 339[44]; and, about the same time,
Manchester cottons were enumerated among the principal exports of the
country.[45]
[Footnote 42: At the end of the sixteenth century Camden referred to
Manchester as “eminent for its woollen cloth or Manchester cottons”
(_Britannia_, Gibson’s edition (1772), ii., p. 143).]
[Footnote 43: 11 and 12 Wm. III., c. 20.]
[Footnote 44: _S.P.D. Eliz._, vol. ccliii. 122.]
[Footnote 45: _Ibid._, vol. cclv. 56. In 1580 the merchants and
citizens of Chester petitioned that Chester might be made the only port
for Manchester cottons, which petition was ultimately granted (_Ibid._
_Add._, vol. xxvi., 90. _Ibid._, vol. clviii. 2). In 1605 it was stated
that “the most part of English cloth transported for France is made
up of the coarsest wools as kerseys, cottons, and bays, serving for
linings” (_Ibid._ _Add._, vol. xxxvii. 60).]
But, while it can be definitely stated that cottons were regarded
as woollen goods in the sixteenth century, it is hard to resist a
suspicion that the vegetable fibre, cotton, may have been used in the
manufacture of Lancashire cloths. The fact that they were regarded as
woollens is not, of itself, conclusive, as, at that time, cotton was
usually called cotton-wool.[46] Further, there is the circumstance
of their comparatively light weight, and also the difficulty of their
makers complying with the regulations laid down for them. Possibly
these facts may be explained by the use of the materials mentioned
in the statutes, and certainly similar difficulties appear to have
been experienced over a wide range of fabrics. On the whole, the
commonly accepted view, that Manchester cottons and other goods usually
mentioned along with them were really woollen goods, appears to have
justification, although, perhaps, it should not be stated without a
caution.
[Footnote 46: In the eighteenth century a writer well acquainted with
Manchester manufactures still referred to cotton as wool (_Infra_, pp.
37-38).]
II
Until recently there was no authentic evidence before 1641 that
anything which might be called a cotton manufacture had become
established in Lancashire. In that year, in the oft-quoted passage
of Lewis Roberts, it was stated that “the towne of Manchester in
Lancashire must be also herein remembered, and worthily for their
incouragement commended, who buy yarne of the Irish in great quantity,
and weaving it returne the same againe in Linen into Ireland to sell;
neither doth the industry rest here, for they buy cotton woole in
London that comes first from Cyprus and Smyrna, and at home worke the
same, and perfit it into Fustians, Vermilions, Dymities, and other
such stuffes; and then returne it to London, where the same is vented
and sold, and not seldome sent into forrain parts, who have means at
far easier termes, to provide themselves of the said first materials.”
The same writer also informs us that “the Levant or Turkey Company
... brings ... great quantity of cotton and of cotton yarne ... into
England.”[47]
[Footnote 47: _The Treasure of Traffike_ (London, 1641), pp. 32-34.]
We are now indebted to an American investigator[48] for the discovery
of an earlier piece of evidence, in the form of a petition “as well of
divers merchants and citizens of London that use buying and selling
of fustians made in England as of makers of the same fustians” which
is so important and not yet so well known that the relevant passages
must be quoted: “About 20 years past divers people in this kingdom, but
chiefly in the county of Lancaster, have found out the trade of making
of the fustians, made of a kind of bombast or down, being a fruit of
the earth growing upon little shrubs or bushes, brought into this
kingdom by the Turkey Merchants, from Smyrna, Cyprus, Acra, and Sydon,
but commonly called cotton-wool; and also of linen-yarn most part
brought out of Scotland, and other some made in England, and no part of
the same fustians of any wool at all, for which said bombast and yarn
imported, his Majesty hath a great yearly sum of money for the custom
and subsidy thereof. There is at least 40 thousand pieces of fustian
of this kind yearly made in England, the subsidy to his Majesty of the
materials for making of every piece coming to between 8d. and 10d. the
piece; and thousands of poor people set on working of these fustians.
The right honourable Duke of Lennox in 11 of Jacobus, 1613, procured
a patent from his Majesty of alnager of new draperies for 60 years,
upon pretence that wool was converted into other sorts of commodities
to the loss of customs and subsidies for wool transported beyond seas;
and therein is inserted into his patent, searching and sealing, and
subsidy for 80 several stuffs; and amongst the rest these fustians or
other stuffs of this kind of cotton-wool and subsidy and a fee for the
same, and forfeiture of 20s. for putting any to sale unsealed, the
moiety of the same forfeiture to the said duke, and power thereby given
to the duke or to his deputies, to enter any man’s house, to search for
any such stuffs and seize them till the forfeiture be paid; and if any
resist such search to forfeit 10l. and power thereby given to the lord
treasurer or chancellor of the Exchequer, to make new ordinances or
grant commissions for the aid of the duke and his officers in execution
of their office.”
[Footnote 48: W. H. Price, “On the Beginning of the Cotton Industry
in England,” _Quarterly Journal of Economics_, vol. xx., pp. 608-613.
He quotes from London Guildhall Library, vol. Beta, _Petition and
Parliamentary Matters_, 1620-1621, No. 16 (old No. 25). My attention
was drawn to this reference by its being quoted by S. J. Chapman
in _V.C.H. Lancs._, ii., p. 380. Mr. Price also gives a reference
(_State Papers Domestic_, lix. 5) of the presumed date, 1610, where a
petitioner asks the Earl of Salisbury for confirmation of a grant made
to him for reformation of frauds daily committed in the manufacture of
“bombazine cotton such as groweth in the land of Persia being no kind
of wool.”]
The probable date of this petition is 1621, and its importance in
relation to the beginning of the English cotton industry is evident.
Although the “thousands” mentioned as employed in the making of
fustians at the time is a stereotyped number in petitions, and may
perhaps be somewhat discounted, the facts that a cotton manufacture had
become established in England and that it had attained a considerable
magnitude are placed beyond doubt.[49]
[Footnote 49: See note _infra_, pp. 195-196.]
A little more light appears to be thrown upon the petition in a
pamphlet which was published in 1613, the year in which the patent of
the Duke of Lennox was extended[50] to include “80 several stuffs; and
amongst the rest these fustians or other stuffs of this kind of cotton
wool.” The pamphlet was written by John May, a “deputie alneger” who
at the time was out of office, under the title, _A Declaration of the
Estate of Clothing now used within this Realme of England. With an
Apologie for the Alneger showing the necessarie use of his Office_, and
was dedicated in obsequious terms “to the Duke of Lenox ... Alneger
generall for the Realme of England and the Dominion of Wales.” The
writer was concerned with the deceits that had crept into the clothing
trade generally, owing to lack of supervision, but he was particularly
anxious about the “many sorts of cloth or stuffs lately invented which
have got new godfathers to name them in fantasticall fashion that they
which weare them, know not how to name them, which are generally called
newe draperie.”[51]
[Footnote 50: See _infra_, p. 197.]
[Footnote 51: P. 22.]
It is not without significance that in no part of his pamphlet does he
give any inkling that he knew that any of the new goods were other than
woollen goods, rather he implies the contrary.
Seeing that the Duke of Lennox secured the extension of his patent in
the year this pamphlet was published, and that the writer was, at least
potentially, an interested party, the connection between the two seems
fairly clear. Moreover, his apparent lack of knowledge that some of
the new cloths were not made of wool may help to explain the complaint
in the petition, that fustians had been brought under regulation as
though they were woollen fabrics.[52] At any rate, the pamphleteer
specifically mentions fustians, among the new drapery, as requiring
the attention of the Aulnager: “There is also a late commodite in
greate use of making within the Kingdom which setteth many people on
worke, called Fustians, which for want of government are so decayed
by falsehood, keeping neither order in goodnesse nor assize, insomuch
that the makers thereof, in this short time of use are wearie of their
trades, and it is thought will returne again to the place whence it
came, who doe still observe their sorts and goodnesse, in such true
manner as by their seales they are sould, keeping up the credit of that
which they make: what a shame is this to our nation, to be so void of
reason and government, that a good trade should bee suppressed for want
of good order amongst themselves, and have so good a president from
others.”[53]
[Footnote 52: The fact that the writer of the pamphlet makes no mention
of cotton in connection with fustians raises a speculation as to
the character of the following species of new drapery. He certainly
implies that it was something distinct from the “cottons” mentioned so
frequently in the sixteenth century: “A sort of cloth is made called
Manchester or Lancashire plaines to make cottons, which containe about
a yard in breadth; these are often bought by merchants and others,
which cut them to length according to a kersie, and hath them dressed
and dyed in forme to a kersie, the which are not onely vented in
foreign parts, but many of them vented in the Realme; which cloth
proves very unprofitable in wearing” (p. 32).]
[Footnote 53: Pp. 33-34.]
Whether or not the writer of the pamphlet knew of what materials
fustians were made, in this passage he supplies further evidence that
in 1613 their manufacture in this country was regarded as recent, and
he also indicates that the manufacture had been introduced from some
other country. According to Dr. Cunningham, the beginning of the new
drapery “can be traced to the immigration of 406 persons who were
driven out of Flanders in 1561 ... where the cotton manufacture had
been a flourishing industry,”[54] and the immigration continued later
in the century.[55] Dr. Cunningham surmised,[56] as did Baines when he
wrote his book in 1835,[57] that the cotton manufacture was introduced
into England by the immigrants, and that it commenced, therefore, in
the second half of the sixteenth century. It would appear that their
views have justification. Beginning at that time, a sufficient period
would have elapsed by 1620 to allow the manufacture to grow to the
stage indicated in the petition. Whether, in view of the considerations
already adduced, cotton had been used in the manufacture of cloth
before the immigrations must be left a doubtful question.
[Footnote 54: Cunningham, _Growth of English Industry and Commerce._,
pp. 82-83.]
[Footnote 55: Smiles, _The Huguenots_ (1870), p. 56.]
[Footnote 56: _Ibid._, p. 83.]
[Footnote 57: Baines, _ibid._, p. 99.]
After the reference of Lewis Roberts in 1641 to the manufacture of
fustians in Lancashire, there is no lack of evidence to the same
effect. The first piece of evidence which may be noticed is of
particular importance, in that it gives another indication of the
extent of the industry, and suggests a fact which may have had a
bearing upon its growth in this country.
At the beginning of 1654 trade in Lancashire, in common with the rest
of the country, was in a state of depression owing to the restrictions
on foreign intercourse consequent upon the Dutch War.[58] During the
early months of the year petitions were presented to the Council by
“traders for cotton wool, and fustians, and poor weavers in Lancashire
on behalf of themselves and several thousands” to allow the import of
cotton-wool “to prevent the ruin of the great manufacture of fustians
and the makers and weavers.”[59]
[Footnote 58: Scott, _Joint Stock Companies to 1720_ (1912), i., p.
253.]
[Footnote 59: _Calendar of State Papers Domestic_, lxvi., Feb. 1, 9.]
In April, the following reasons were presented to the Council on behalf
of the poor of Lancashire for liberty to bring in cotton-wool from
France, Holland, etc. “The dearth of wool is worse to them than that of
bread 3 years since, and now there are not 5 bags of wool in all the
merchants’ hands in Lancashire for 20,000 poor in Lancashire who are
employed in the manufacture of fustians. Mr. Seed and Mr. Winstanley,
who reported 150 or 200 sacks of prize-wool, that they might gain time
to sell their own wool, now confess that it proved 20 or 30 bags and
the sale was prohibited. Unless cotton-wool be brought much lower, the
manufacture will revert to Hamburg, whence our cheaper making gained
it, for they can buy wool at 6d. or 7d., and we have to pay 18d. or
20d. Whilst we can have no supply but from the Straits, and that
through the Turkey merchants, we cannot be supplied at such rates as
will preserve our manufacture from ruin, as we cannot raise the price
of our fustians on account of the lower price at Hamburg viz. 16s. a
piece which we cannot afford under 20s., though they used to be 12s. or
13s. We beg therefore a dispensation as regards wool from the Act which
enriches strangers and destroys the people of this nation. Such laws
were better buried in oblivion than to bury alive the poor.”[60]
[Footnote 60: _Ibid._, lxix. 7.]
From these petitions it is evident that in 1654 there was a definitely
established industry in Lancashire dependent for its prosperity upon
regular supplies of cotton-wool. But, also, when what is known of
the position in Germany in the first part of the seventeenth century
is taken into account, the petition just quoted may have a further
significance.
Whatever may have been the case in England prior to the sixteenth
century regarding the use of cotton in the manufacture of cloth, at
that time it had been so used in Germany for more than two centuries.
In the fourteenth century a cloth called “barchent,” which like the
English fustian consisted of a linen warp and cotton weft, was woven,
and at that time found a widespread market. The early seats of the
industry were Ulm and Augsburg, where the famous Fugger family rose to
fame on the basis of barchent-weaving. Later the industry spread to
other parts of Germany, to Alsace and to the towns along the northern
trade-route. Before the end of the sixteenth century Nürnberg, Hof,
Zwickau, Leipzig and Chemnitz were all engaged in cotton spinning and
weaving, with the result that, at that time, Germany was far ahead of
all other European countries in cotton manufacture. Before the end
of the first quarter of the seventeenth century the country began to
suffer one of the greatest devastations known to history through the
outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War, and its cotton manufacture almost
disappeared.[61]
[Footnote 61: Dehn, _The German Cotton Industry_ (1913), pp. 1-2.]
In addition, therefore, to the immigration of Flemings and to the
destruction of industry in their country, it seems reasonable,
particularly in view of the statement in the above petition that the
manufacture in which cotton-wool was used had been gained from Hamburg,
to look to the decay of the German industry as part of the explanation
of the rise into prominence of the English fustian manufacture in the
first half of the seventeenth century.
When Fuller came to write of Lancashire in 1662 it was the fustian
manufacture that especially attracted his attention. After referring
to the various kinds of foreign fustians (including Augsburg fustians)
which had long been imported into the country, he states that “These
retain their old names to this day, though these several sorts are
made in this county, whose Inhabitants buying the cotton-wool or
yarne, coming from beyond the sea, make it here into fustians, to
the good employment of the Poor and great improvement of the Rich
therein, serving many people for their outsides, and their betters for
the Lineings of their garments. Bolton is the staple-place for this
commodity, being brought thither from all parts of the county. As for
Manchester, the Cottons thereof carry away the credit in our nation,
and so they did an hundred and fifty years agoe. For when learned
Leland on the cost of King Henry the Eighth, with his Guide, travailed
Lancashire he called Manchester the fairest and quickest Town in this
county and sure I am, it hath lost neither spruceness nor spirits since
that time.” He also mentions other products for which Manchester was
noted to which reference will be made later.[62]
[Footnote 62: _Worthies of England_ (1662), ii., pp. 106-107.]
One point that should be noticed is that Fuller refers to Bolton as
the centre of the fustian manufacture, while he mentions cottons, as a
distinct fabric, especially in connection with Manchester. Though the
manufacture of cotton had certainly made progress by this time, there
is no substantial reason for thinking that the cottons referred to
by him were different from the cottons of the sixteenth century. The
fact is that the development of the cotton manufacture is definitely
associated with the manufacture of fustians. In the middle of the
eighteenth century, although other fabrics were then produced which had
a stronger claim to be called cotton fabrics than had fustians, the
words cotton manufacture still meant pre-eminently the manufacture of
fustians.[63]
[Footnote 63: _Infra_, pp. 25, 27, 29.]
Further, the association of fustians in the seventeenth century with
Bolton rather than with Manchester was probably justified. As we shall
see, in its early stages the fustian manufacture was mainly, if not
altogether, carried on in the outside districts. So far as Manchester
was concerned, the manufacture of fustians appears, at first, to have
been added to another branch of manufacture at a later date than when
Fuller wrote. Before dealing with other branches of manufacture,
however, it will be advisable to continue the history of the fustian
manufacture into the thirties of the eighteenth century, which years
mark an important stage in its development.
III
At the close of the seventeenth century, the annual import of
cotton-wool amounted to nearly 2,000,000 lbs., and was still brought
mainly from the Levant and the islands of the Mediterranean, though
in the previous century some was imported from Africa.[64] In the
seventeenth century, excellent witness is borne to the importance
it had attained, by those interested in floating companies for
colonisation putting forward prospects of its growth as an inducement
to subscribers to their schemes.[65] Before the end of the century,
cotton from the British plantations had assumed a prominent place, and
from this time the European West Indian colonies, with South America,
became the most important sources of supply until the end of the
eighteenth century, when they in turn were displaced by the United
States. Also, during these two centuries, cotton-yarn and fine cotton
fabrics were imported by the East India Company from the ancient home
of the cotton industry in the East.[66]
[Footnote 64: Baines, _ibid._, p. 346. Scott, _ibid._, ii., p. 11.]
[Footnote 65: Scott, _ibid._, pp. 323, 326, 335.]
[Footnote 66: _Records of Fort St George, Despatches from England_,
1670-1677, pp. 4, 27 _et seq._ Ure, _Cotton Manufacture_, i., p. 355,
1861 edition.]
Apparently it was this import of fine cotton fabrics which in 1691
attracted the attention of John Barkstead, merchant, of London, and
threatened to bring the developing cotton industry into the hands of a
patentee. Mr. Barkstead was evidently an enterprising individual who
was interested not only in the cotton industry, but also in the silk
industry, and in copper mining.
We get the first glimpse of him in October, 1690, when he presented
a petition, in which he pointed out that the workmanship of the fine
thrown silk imported amounted to one quarter of its value, the benefits
of which would be enjoyed by the poor if it were performed at home.
As he had found out an engine which would achieve the desired end, he
requested the grant of a patent for fourteen years to enable him to
introduce it. In the same month a warrant for the patent was issued,
but there is no clear indication that the claim stated in the petition
materialised.[67] In May, 1692, however, in a warrant issued to prepare
a Bill for incorporating a company for winding silk, he appeared as the
first governor[68]; and in July of the preceding year as an assistant
in a company which had as its object the purchase of lands where copper
was expected to be found.[69]
[Footnote 67: _S.P.D._, Petition Entry Book, i., p. 96. _S.P.D._,
Warrant Book, xxxv., p. 434.]
[Footnote 68: _Ibid._, H.O. Warrant Book, vi., p. 335.]
[Footnote 69: _Ibid._, p. 115.]
It was in this month that he presented a petition, in which he claimed
that, by his industry and at great expense, he had “procured cotton
wool from the West Indies, to be spun so extraordinarily fine, as to be
fit to make such cloths commonly called callicoes ... as well as in the
East Indies,” and prayed for a patent for his invention.[70] A few days
later a warrant was issued to prepare a Bill to grant this prayer.[71]
Whether in the meantime his idea had developed, or he had evolved a new
one, it is difficult to say, but in the following month his name as
petitioner again appeared, this time in connection with an invention
for “making calicoes, muslins, and other fine cloths of that sort (out
of the cotton wool of the growth and produce of the Plantations in the
West Indies) to as great perfection as those which are brought over and
imported hither from Calicut and other places in the East Indies.”[72]
Again a warrant was issued to prepare a Bill for the grant of a patent
which he evidently secured.[73]
[Footnote 70: _Ibid._, Petition Entry Book, i., p. 154.]
[Footnote 71: _Ibid._, H.O. Warrant Book, vi., p. 125.]
[Footnote 72: _Ibid._, Petition Entry Book, i., p. 178.]
[Footnote 73: _Ibid._, H.O. Warrant Book, vi., p. 164. For a reference
to this patent see French, _Life and Times of Samuel Crompton_ (1859),
pp. 233-234.]
The next step was the customary one of applying for a charter of
incorporation in order to exploit the invention. Consequently two
months later (October, 1691) we find Mr. Barkstead and five other
London merchants, including one of the assistants in the silk-winding
company, pointing out that the “said Barkstead has found out an
invention for making calicoes and muslins, etc., out of Cotton wool for
which he has a patent for 14 years, but that the undertaking requiring
at least £100,000 stock to carry on and manage the said invention, the
petitioners humbly pray to be incorporated with the Earl of Nottingham
as their first governor.” The petition was referred to the Attorney or
Solicitor-General, but fortunately the scheme does not appear to have
come to anything.[74]
[Footnote 74: _S.P.D._, Petition Entry Book, i., p. 198. It is apparent
that it was much the same set of men who were interested in all
Barkstead’s schemes. Another assistant in the silk-winding company
appeared with Barkstead as assistant in the copper mines company. I
have been unable to find any trace of the cotton company, and Professor
W. R. Scott informs me that he does not think the company was actually
floated even if a charter was granted. By those acquainted with the
exhaustive character of Professor Scott’s work his statement will be
regarded as conclusive.]
As a matter of fact, although this incident is interesting, like
the majority of schemes of a similar character relating to other
industries, it cannot be regarded as of any importance in the
development of the cotton industry in this country. The idea of
supplanting the fine cotton fabrics of the East by home productions
was, no doubt, an attractive one--doubly so because in 1691 the
existing East India Company was being vigorously opposed by a rival
syndicate. In the same month as the above charter was applied for, a
petition was presented to the House of Commons, in the name of the
London merchants, attacking the existing company, and less than five
months later an address was presented to the King praying that he would
dissolve it and incorporate a new one.[75] It may well have been that
Mr. Barkstead’s scheme was a part of, or at any rate a symptom of, the
opposition then prevailing, and had very little substantial foundation.
His application for a patent stands altogether on a different footing
from those of the next century, when the machinery to which they
referred did actually attain the end which he claimed to have in
view. In the seventeenth century this was impossible: at that time,
it is questionable whether any fabrics consisting entirely of cotton
were produced in the country at all. In any case it is certain that
the chief products of the English cotton manufacture were the hybrid
fustians consisting of a linen warp and cotton weft.
[Footnote 75: Scott, _ibid._, ii., p. 152.]
After the collapse of Mr. Barkstead’s scheme the English cotton
industry does not appear to have had much attraction for men with
grandiose aims, until the South Sea period arrived, when two companies
were proposed, each with a capital of £2,000,000, one “for making
calico in Great Britain and encouraging the growth of cotton in the
plantations,” and the other “for the cotton manufacture in Lancashire,”
while there was also “A proposal by several ladies and others to make,
print and paint and stain callicoes in England and also fine linen as
fine as any Holland to be made of British flax.” Subscribers to the
latter scheme had to be women dressed in calico.[76] How this scheme
fits into its historical environment will at once become apparent.
[Footnote 76: Scott, ibid., iii., pp. 450-452.]
Before the end of the seventeenth century the import of fabrics from
the East had created considerable agitation among those engaged in
the silk and woollen trades, and demands were made for legislative
interference. In 1700 an Act was passed,[77] by which the import of
printed or dyed calicoes was prohibited, and their sale or use either
for apparel or furniture made subject to a penalty. The prohibition was
speedily followed by an import of plain calicoes which were printed
or dyed in this country, and as early as 1703, petitions for further
restrictions were again being presented to Parliament.[78] For some
years little notice was taken of them, but from 1719 the petitions
became a flood,[79] with the result that, in 1721, another Act[80] was
passed which prohibited the use or wear of printed or dyed calicoes,
whether the printing or dyeing had been performed in England or
elsewhere.
[Footnote 77: 11 and 12 Wm. III., c. 10.]
[Footnote 78: _Journals of the House of Commons_, xiv., pp. 280, 283,
284.]
[Footnote 79: _Ibid._, xix., p. 182 _et seq._]
[Footnote 80: 7 Geo. I., c. 7.]
It has been stated that one of the reasons for the failure of the Act
of 1700 was that “Lancashire men set to work to produce cloth of linen
warp and cotton weft which was sent to London to be printed and dyed in
imitation of the prohibited Oriental fabrics.”[81] It appears, however,
that there is little or no justification for this view. At a time when
petitions to Parliament were regarded almost as a positive obligation
on the part of anyone who had a real or imaginary grievance, it is
exceedingly improbable, had such been the case, that the Lancashire
men would have failed to make their voices heard. Apparently, not a
single petition was presented from the county in opposition to the
proposed legislation by those engaged in making cloth of the character
mentioned, while there was at least one in favour of it.[82] Moreover,
it is significant that no mention of such a cloth is to be found in
the petitions praying for restriction. The opposition to the Bill
came mainly from the towns of Scotland engaged in the linen industry,
where it was feared that linens would be included, and this opposition
was successful, as British linens were specifically excluded from the
Act.[83]
[Footnote 81: Espinasse, _Lancashire Worthies_ (1874), pp. 297-298.]
[Footnote 82: _J.H.C._, xix. 208.]
[Footnote 83: _Ibid._]
Singularly enough, the opposition on behalf of a cotton manufacture
came, not from Lancashire, but from Dorset in the following petition,
which is of sufficient interest in the early history of the English
cotton industry to be quoted in full:
A “Petition of the Mayor, Aldermen, Bailiffs, Capital Burgesses and
principal inhabitants of the Borough of Weymouth and Melcomb Regis
in the County of Dorset, together with the Merchants, Masters of
Ships, Master workmen, Weavers and Spinners of Cotton Wool imported
from the British Plantations and manufactured in the town aforesaid,
in behalf of themselves and many hundred of poor Cotton spinners
in that neighbourhood was presented to the House and read, setting
forth, that for many years past a manufacture had been carried on
in the said town for making Cotton Wool imported from the British
Plantations into cloth of divers kinds, more particularly into such
fabrics as imitate calicoes; which having, of late years, been printed
and dyed, have afforded the manufacturers opportunity to support the
Poor in that town and neighbourhood thereof. That the petitioners are
apprehensive that the manufacture of cotton cloth in that town may,
under the name of calicoes, be interdicted the weaving, by which means
many hundred families of poor cotton spinners will be reduced to want,
and the Manufacture of that town entirely lost: and praying that the
Cotton cloth manufactured in that town, both checqued, printed, and
dyed, may be permitted to be worn in the same manner and liable to
the same duties as the Manufacture of British and Irish Linens are
permitted.”[84]
[Footnote 84: _J.H.C._, xix. 295.]
The apprehension of the petitioners was justified, as a motion to refer
their petition to the Committee of the whole House, then concerned with
the Bill for more stringent restrictions on the use and wear of printed
or dyed calicoes, was passed in the negative by 190 votes to 68.[85]
In the Act of 1721 the prohibition included any printed stuff made of
cotton or mixed therewith, but from its scope muslins, neckcloths, and
fustians were excluded.[86]
[Footnote 85: _Ibid._]
[Footnote 86: _Ibid._, xxii. 566.]
The above petition is distinctly interesting, not only as evidence
that cotton was manufactured in Dorset, but also in that there is no
suggestion that the cloths were not composed solely of cotton, and this
at a time when it is improbable that such cloths were manufactured to
any extent in Lancashire.
The fustian manufacture had been in existence in the country for
more than a century, and, by 1720, must have been of considerable
importance, but apparently a stage had not been reached when printed
fustians were seriously competitive with other kinds of printed cloth.
The prohibition of the use of printed calicoes had its effect, however,
in stimulating the printing of other fabrics,[87] and after the passing
of the Act of 1721 it is clear that printed fustians began to occupy a
prominent place in the cloth trade of the country, which again called
forth opposition from those engaged in the woollen trades which came to
a head in 1735.
[Footnote 87: “I proceed to another visible increase of trade, which
spreads daily among us, and affects not England only, but Scotland and
Ireland also, though the consumption depends wholly upon England, and
that is, the printing or painting of linen. The late Acts prohibiting
the use and weaving of painted callicoes either in clothes, equipages,
or house furniture, were without question aimed at improving the
consumption of our woollen manufacture, and in part it had an effect
that way. But the humour of the people running another way, and
being used to and pleased with the light, easie, and gay dress of
the callicoes, the callicoe printers fell to work to imitate those
callicoes by making the same stamps and impressions, and with the same
beauty of colours, upon linen, and thus they fell upon the two branches
of linen called Scots cloth and Irish linen. So that this is an article
wholly new in trade, and indeed the printing itself is wholly new; for
it is but a few years ago since no such thing as painting or printing
of linen or callicoe was known in England; all being supplied so cheap
and performed so very fine in India, that nothing but a prohibition of
the foreign printed callicoes could raise it up to a manufacture at
home; whereas now it is so increased, that the parliament has thought
it of magnitude sufficient to levy a tax upon it, and a considerable
revenue is raised by it” (_A Plan of the English Commerce_ (1728), p.
296, quoted in Baines’ _Cotton Manufacture_, pp. 260-261). A good brief
account of the early development of calico printing in this country is
given in two lectures by Edmund Potter, of Manchester, vol. iii., _The
Monthly Literary and Scientific Lecturer_, 1852. The trade began in the
neighbourhood of London in the last years of the seventeenth century
and was first established in Lancashire in 1764. Shortly afterwards the
first Robert Peel became interested in it and carried it on with great
vigour. “Peel was to calico printing what Arkwright was to spinning.”
See also _Report of Committee on Manufactures, Commerce, and Shipping_
(1833), p. 237.]
This time the opposition, which centred in Norwich, took the form of
instituting prosecutions under the 1721 Act, of inserting notices in
newspapers and distributing them, informing the public that the wearing
or using of printed fustians was illegal. As printed fustians had been
excluded from the scope of the Act, there was no illegality, but the
opposition was sufficient to call forth a petition from the fustian
manufacturers in Manchester and other parts of Lancashire, and in
the counties of Cheshire and Derbyshire, appealing for the Act to be
explained so that the question would be placed beyond doubt.[88] In
the evidence on the petition[89] a strong case was presented on behalf
of merchants engaged in foreign trade--particularly in the import of
cotton--and of fustian manufacturers, it being stated that several
thousand persons from five to seventy years of age were employed in
the manufacture. One witness asserted that he and his brother employed
upwards of 600 looms in the weaving of fustians, and as one weaver
required four spinners to supply him with yarn, he computed that
upwards of 3000 persons were dependent upon them for employment--a
striking case of large-scale production, in the sense of numbers
employed, nearly forty years before the appearance of the factory in
the cotton industry.
[Footnote 88: _J.H.C._, xxii., p. 551.]
[Footnote 89: _Ibid._, pp. 566-567.]
In little over a month after the petition was presented the “Manchester
Act”[90] was passed, which explained the 1721 Act, so as definitely
to exclude from its scope printed goods made of linen yarn and
cotton-wool, manufactured in Great Britain. It will be noticed that
even this Act did not remove the prohibition on the use of printed
goods made entirely of cotton. The justification given in the Act
for allowing the use of printed goods, when made of linen-yarn and
cotton-wool, was that they were “a branch of the ancient fustian
manufacture of this kingdom.” So far as petitions were concerned,
the only opposition to the “Manchester Act” came from the Company of
Weavers in London, on the ground that fustians could only with great
difficulty be distinguished from Indian calicoes, and that the use of
the latter would be made easy; and from the Gentlemen, Landowners,
Occupiers of Land, Wool-staplers, Wool-combers, and Weavers of the City
of Peterborough, who desired the Bill which preceded the Act to be
explained for the general good of the wool and silk manufactures.[91]
On the other hand, the traders of Wakefield supported the Bill with the
argument that a restriction on the import of cotton-wool, which the
prohibition of printed fustians would involve, would prejudice their
export of woollens, and the woollen manufacturers of Burnley adopted
a similar attitude; also, the Bill was whole-heartedly supported by
the merchants engaged in foreign trade at Glasgow, Whitehaven and
Lancaster.[92]
[Footnote 90: 9 Geo. II., c. 4.]
[Footnote 91: _J.H.C._, xxii., pp. 589, 605. The weavers claimed to be
manufacturers of worsted stuffs and stuffs made of silk and cotton.]
[Footnote 92: _Ibid._, xxii., pp. 593-595.]
From the thirties of the eighteenth century until the coming of the
great inventions the cotton industry made slow but steady progress.
The import of cotton-wool which in 1730 amounted to 1,545,472 lbs.
reached 3,870,392 lbs. in 1764, but it was not until the eighties
that a startling increase was seen; the average import in the last
two years of that decade amounted to 32,000,000 lbs.[93] At that time
the organisation of the industry, the methods of manufacture, and the
character of its products, were undergoing the changes which mark the
early stages of the industry in its present form.
[Footnote 93: Baines, _History of the Cotton Manufacture_, pp. 346-347.]
IV
In considering the development which took place from the middle of the
seventeenth century to the last quarter of the eighteenth as regards
other textile commodities produced in the Manchester district, a
useful starting-point is given by a writer about 1650, who described
the trade of the town as “not inferior to that of many cities in the
kingdom, chiefly consisting in woollen frizes, fustians, sack-cloths,
mingled stuffs, caps, inkles, tapes, points, etc., whereby not only the
better sort of men are employed, but also the very children by their
own labour can maintain themselves.”[94]
[Footnote 94: Quoted from Aikin’s _A Description of the Country from
Thirty to Forty Miles round Manchester_ (1795), p. 154. The description
originally appeared with “A Plan of Manchester and Salford taken
about 1650.” This plan was inserted in the sheet of another “Plan of
the towns of Manchester and Salford,” first published in 1741, and
republished with small alterations in 1746 and 1751. The 1751 plan
has been reissued with Procter’s _Memorials of Bygone Manchester_
(1880). These plans are important for our purpose as the letterpress
accompanying them contains a description of Manchester and Salford
from which the second quotation in the text is taken. The whole of the
letterpress is given by Procter, _ibid._, pp. 350-356.]
The enumeration of commodities in this account, which is very similar
to that given by Fuller in 1662, may be compared with another contained
in an account of Manchester and its trade in 1751, which may be
regarded as holding good in the main for a considerable time later: “Ye
present Inhabitants ... are in particular known to be an Industrious
people; the Reason of their being so numerous is y^e flourishing trade
follow’d here for a long time known by y^e name of Manchester Trade
w^{ch} not only makes y^e town but y^e Country round about for several
miles populous, industrious & wealthy. The trade consists chiefly of
three general branches, viz. The Fustian or Cotton Manufacturs, y^e
Check Trade & Small Wares. The Fustian Manufacture call’d Manchester
Cottons, has been long in y^e place & neighbourhood, & is of late much
improv’d by several modern Inventions in dying and printing. The Check
Trade includes several Articles, as Stuffs for Aprons, Gowns, Shirts,
Ticking, Bolstering, &c. But y^e Small Ware Business comprehends most
as Inckle, Lace of many sorts, Tapes, Filleting, &c. All these Trades
employ both a great number & almost all sorts of Hands not only
of Men both Rich & Poor but of Women & Children, even of 5 or 6 years
old, who by Spinning, Winding, or Weaving, may earn more here than in
any other part of y^e Kingdom.... There is not any Town in y^e nation
excepting our Sea Ports y^t may be compared to it in Trade as appears
from y^e number of Packs of Goods w^{ch} go weekly out of y^e Town,
w^{ch} amount in a moderate Computation to 500.”
[Illustration:
_By permission of the Corporation of the Royal Exchange Assurance,
A.D. 1720_
MANCHESTER IN THE SEVENTEENTH AND EARLY EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES]
It will be noticed that a distinction is made between three general
branches of trade, a distinction which an analysis of the first
Manchester Directory, compiled twenty years later, shows to have
had a sound basis.[95] At this point, however, we are concerned
with the development which had taken place during the century which
intervened between the two quotations, a development which can be
traced in Ogden’s _Description of Manchester_, published in 1783.[96]
Unfortunately he gives no definite dates as to the changes to which
he refers, but the development of the three general branches of trade
carried on in the town is fairly clearly indicated.
[Footnote 95: See tables _infra_, pp. 67-68. In 1603, and in 1613,
the Town Jury of Manchester dealt with complaints of the keeping
of a Friday market in the open street for the sale of “Sackclothe,
Incle-points, Garteringe, Threede, Buttons, and other Smallwares” to
the prejudice of the Saturday market (_Manchester Court Leet Records_,
vol. ii., pp. 189, 287).]
[Footnote 96: Republished in 1887 under the title of _Manchester a
Hundred Years Ago_, and edited with an introduction by William E. A.
Axon. A comparison of the portion of Aikin’s _Manchester_ dealing with
the trade of the town will show that this is the “printed account” from
which his information was obtained. The references in the above text
are to the 1887 reprint.]
In addition to the manufacture of such commodities as those mentioned
in the 1651 reference, he informs us that bolsters, bed-ticks,
linen-girth web, and boot-straps were among the early manufactures, but
that the trade in ticks and webs was soon lost to the West of England.
This led to those concerned in making them turning to the manufacture
of coarse checks, striped hollands, hooping and canvas.[97] As time
went on “the manufacturers of check made great advances in trade and
introduced new articles.” What they appear to have done was to progress
in the direction of making goods consisting entirely of cotton and
mainly of cotton.[98]
[Footnote 97: Ogden, _ibid._, p. 73.]
[Footnote 98: Ogden, _ibid._, p. 78-79.]
But there was another line of development pursued by those engaged
in the manufacture of laces, inkles, tapes, and filleting. At an
early stage these men added “divers kinds of bindings and worsted
smallwares,”[99] and later when “it was found that the Dutch enjoyed
the manufacture of fine Holland tapes unrivalled: plans were therefore
procured, and ingenious mechanics invited over to construct swivel
engines, at great expense, but adapted to light work for which they
were first intended, on so true a principle, that they have been
employed in most branches of smallwares with success.”[100]
[Footnote 99: _Ibid._, p. 81.]
[Footnote 100: _Ibid._, p. 82.]
As regards the fustian manufacture, Ogden implies that, at first, it
was not carried on in Manchester to any extent, and in this respect
his statement is supported by that of Fuller in 1662. Referring to an
early date, Ogden states that “Fustians were made about Bolton, Leigh,
and the places adjacent, but Bolton was the principal market for them,
where they were bought in the grey by Manchester chapmen, who finished
and sold them in the country.”[101] When we get to 1772, however, it
is evident that there were a large number of fustian manufacturers
in the town,[102] and in the petition which resulted in the 1736
“Manchester Act” “manufacturers of fustians in the town of Manchester”
were certainly prominent. Ogden’s account of the matter is that the
smallware “manufactory has not been sufficient to employ large capitals
without the aid of some other branch. The fustian trade has been added
to it, first as an auxiliary, and then embraced as a principal, where
there was capital to support it.”[103]
[Footnote 101: _Ibid._, p. 74.]
[Footnote 102: _Infra_, p. 67.]
[Footnote 103: Ogden, _ibid._, p. 82.]
Probably the development which took place was, that as fustians
came to be printed, and their manufacture extended, some smallware
manufacturers turned part of their capital into that trade, and
later adopted it altogether, while others no doubt began in business
as manufacturers of fustians. Thus by the middle of the eighteenth
century, and particularly by 1772, the three branches of trade in
Manchester could be fairly clearly distinguished from one another,
although at that date some manufacturers were engaged in more than one
of the three trades.[104]
[Footnote 104: _Infra_, p. 67.]
The term fustian, it may be noticed, comprehended a large range of
goods of which herring-bones, pillows for pockets and outside wear,
strong cotton ribs and baragons, broad-raced linen thicksets and tufts,
dyed, with white diapers, striped dimities, and lining jeans, are
mentioned by Ogden.[105] Cotton thicksets and cotton velvets were also
attempted, but in neither of these was much success attained until the
later years of the eighteenth century owing to lack of better methods
of dressing, bleaching, dyeing and finishing.[106] If thread[107] and
sail-cloth[108] are added to the commodities which have been mentioned,
also woollens, which were mainly produced in the districts directly
north and north-east of Manchester, probably the principal textile
goods manufactured in Lancashire until the seventies of the eighteenth
century have been included in the list.
[Footnote 105: Ogden, _ibid._, p. 75.]
[Footnote 106: _Ibid._, pp. 75, 77.]
[Footnote 107: _J.H.C._, pp. 76-78, 1737. In his evidence on a petition
relating to linens, threads, tapes, etc., John Marriot, threadmaker,
Manchester, stated that the thread manufacture in Lancashire had more
than doubled during the preceding twenty-four years.]
[Footnote 108: Warrington was especially noted for this manufacture.
In March, 1749 (_J.H.C._), it was stated in evidence from Warrington
that 5000 people were thus employed. In the evidence given on this
occasion instances were mentioned of one manufacturer at Reading having
500 families, comprehending 2000 persons, on his books as employees.
Another at Deptford had 46 looms employed and 500 poor families.
See also _J.H.C._, xxvi., p. 781, 1754. Three principal hosiers at
Nottingham had 100 frames each. For evidence as to manufacture of
sail-cloth at Warrington, see also Aikin, _Manchester_, p. 302;
Pococke, _Travels Through England_, i., p. 9.]
At the present day, it is difficult to discover the exact materials
of which some of the goods mentioned were made, but as the smallware
weavers were always known as worsted smallware weavers, it may be
assumed that worsted entered largely into their products. With checks,
and fustians, linen was a more prominent material, but into these
cotton certainly entered, as it probably did into the majority of goods
to some extent, and silk was also utilised.[109] Frequently it has been
stated[110] that no goods were made entirely of cotton in England until
Arkwright began to spin by rollers, but the statement is inaccurate.
Maybe they were not produced to a large extent compared with mixed
goods, but that they were made in the Manchester district before that
time is distinctly stated by Ogden.[111] What is certain is that linen
was largely manufactured. In a petition presented to the House of
Commons in 1713 it was stated that in Lancashire 60,000 persons were
engaged in its manufacture,[112] and this and other petitions show that
they were situated in almost every part of the county.[113]
[Footnote 109: Ogden, _ibid._, p. 74.]
[Footnote 110: By Ure and Espinasse definitely, by Baines more
cautiously. Ure, _Cotton Manufacture_, i., p. 223. Espinasse,
_Lancashire Worthies_, p. 415. Baines, _ibid._, pp. 101, 322.]
[Footnote 111: Ogden, _ibid._, pp. 78-79. After referring to various
goods produced in Manchester, certainly before 1770, he proceeds: “To
these succeeded washing hollands all cotton in the warp which were a
good article with the housewives, till yarn was mixed with the warp and
ruined their character.” He also refers to the manufacture of cotton
goods for the African trade. The statements of the other writers are,
of course, based upon the fact that it was difficult to spin a cotton
thread suitable for warp with the existing appliances. Even so, cotton
goods were made in other countries, and cotton yarn was imported.
As regards the use of the word “yarn” in the eighteenth century in
England, it was not often used with reference to cotton, but usually
to linen yarn. _Cf._ Ogden, _ibid._, p. 92: “If cotton comes down to
a reasonable price, the warps made of this twist would be as cheap as
those made of yarn, and keep the money here which was sent abroad for
that article, there being no comparison between yarn and cotton warps
for goodness.”]
[Footnote 112: _J.H.C._, xvii., p. 377.]
[Footnote 113: _Ibid._, xvi., pp. 311-324, 509-511.]