The woollen manufacture--Divisions of employment--Early
history--Prohibitory laws--The Jacquard loom--Middle-age
legislation--Sumptuary laws--The silk manufacture--
Ribbon-weaving--The linen manufacture--Cloth-printing--
Bleaching.
Those who have not taken the trouble to witness, or to inquire into, the
processes by which they are surrounded with the conveniences and
comforts of civilized life, can have no idea of the vast variety of ways
in which invention is at work to lessen the cost of production. The
people of India, who spin their cotton wholly by hand, and weave their
cloth in a rude loom, would doubtless be astonished when they first saw
the effects of machinery, in the calico which is returned to their own
shores, made from the material brought from their own shores, cheaper
than they themselves could make it. But their indolent habits would not
permit them to inquire how machinery produced this wonder. There are
many amongst us who only know that the wool grows upon the sheep's back,
and that it is converted into a coat by labour and machinery. They do
not estimate the prodigious power of thought--the patient labour--the
unceasing watchfulness--the frequent disappointment--the uncertain
profit--which many have had to encounter in bringing this machinery to
perfection, and in organizing the modes of its working, in connection
with labour. Further, their knowledge of history may have been confined
to learning by rote the dates when kings began to reign, with the names
of the battles they fought or the rebels they executed. Of the progress
of commerce and the arts they may have been taught little. The records
of wool constitute a real part of the history of England; and form, in
our opinion, a subject of far more permanent importance than the
scandalous annals of the wives of Henry VIII., or the mistresses of
Charles II.
Let us first take a broad view of the more prominent facts that belong
to our woollen manufacture; and then proceed to notice those of other
textile fabrics.
The reader will remember that when the fur-traders refused to advance to
John Tanner a supply of blankets for his winter consumption, he applied
himself to make garments out of moose-skins. The skin was ready
manufactured to his hands when he had killed and stripped the moose; but
still the blanket brought from England across the Atlantic was to him a
cheaper and a better article of clothing than the moose-skin which he
had at hand; and he felt it a privation when the trader refused it to
him upon the accustomed credit. It never occurred to him to think of
manufacturing a blanket; although he was in some respects a
manufacturer. He was a manufacturer of sugar, amongst the various trades
which he followed. He used to travel about the country till he had found
a grove of maple-trees; and here he would sit down for a month or two
till he had extracted sugar from the maples. Why did he not attempt to
make blankets? He had not that Accumulated Knowledge, and he did not
work with that _Division of Labour_, which are essential to the
manufacture of blankets--both of which principles are carried to their
highest perfection when capital enables the manufacture of woollen
cloth, or any other article, to be carried forward upon a large scale.
We will endeavour to trace what accumulations of skill, and what
divisions of employment, were necessary to enable Tanner to clothe
himself with a piece of woollen cloth. We shall not stop to inquire
whether the skill has produced the division of employment, or the
division of employment has produced the skill. It is sufficient for us
to show, that the two principles are in joint operation, unitedly
carrying forward the business of production in the most profitable
manner. It is enough for us to know, that where there is no skill there
is no division of employment, and where there is no division of
employment there is no skill. Skill and division of employment are
inseparably wedded. If they could be separated, they would in their
separation cease to work profitably. They are kept together by the
constant energy of capital, devising the most profitable direction for
labour.
Before a blanket can be made, we must have the material for making a
blanket. Tanner had not the material, because he was not a cultivator.
Before wool can be grown there must be, as we have shown, appropriation
of land. When this appropriation takes place, the owner of the land
either cultivates it himself, which is the earliest stage in the
division of agricultural employment,--or he obtains a portion of the
produce in the shape of corn or cattle, or in a money payment. Hence a
tenantry. But the tenant, to manufacture wool at the greatest advantage,
must possess capital, and carry forward the principle of the division of
employment by hiring labourers. We use the word _manufacture_ of wool
advisedly; for all farming processes are manufacturing processes, and
invariably reduce themselves to change of form, as all commercial
processes reduce themselves to change of place. If the capital of the
farmer is sufficient to enable him to farm upon a large scale, he
divides his labourers; and one becomes a shepherd, one a ploughman,--one
sows the ground, and one washes and shears the sheep, more skilfully
than another. If he has a considerable farm, he divides his land, also,
upon the same principle, and has pasture, and arable, and rotation of
crops. By these divisions he is enabled to manufacture wool cheaper than
the farmer upon a small scale, who employs one man to do everything, and
has not a proper proportion of pasture and arable, or a due rotation of
crops. At every division of employment skill must be called forth in a
higher perfection than when two or more employments were joined
together; and the chief director of the skill, the capitalist himself,
or farmer, must require more skill to make all the parts which compose
his manufactury work together harmoniously.
But we have new divisions of employment to trace before the wool can be
got to the manufacturer. These employments are created by what may be
called the _local_ division of labour. It is convenient to rear the
sheep upon the mountains of Wales, because there the short and thymy
pastures are fitted for the growth of wool. It is convenient to
manufacture the wool into cloth at Leeds, because coals are there at
hand to give power to the steam-engines, with which the manufacture is
carried on. The farmer in Wales, and the manufacturer of cloth at Leeds,
must be brought into connection. In the infancy of commerce one or both
of them would make a journey to establish this connection; but the cost
of that journey would add to the cost of the wool, and therefore lessen
the consumption of woollen cloth. The division of employment goes on to
the creation of a wool-factor, or dealer in wool, who either purchases
directly from the grower, or sells to the manufacturer for a commission
from the grower. The grower, therefore, sends the wool direct to the
factor, whose business it is to find out what manufacturer is in want of
wool. If the factor did not exist, the manufacturer would have to find
out, by a great deal of personal exertion, what farmer had wool to sell;
or the farmer would have to find out, with the same exertion, what
manufacturer wanted to buy wool. The factor receives a commission, which
the seller and buyer ultimately unite in paying. They co-operate to
establish a wool-factor, just as we all co-operate to establish a
postman; and just as the postman, who delivers a number of letters to a
great many individuals, does that service at little more cost to all,
than each individual would pay for the delivery of a single letter, so
does the wool-factor exchange the wool between the grower and the
manufacturer, at little more cost to a large number of the growers who
employ him, than each would be obliged to pay in expenses and loss of
time to travel from Wales to Leeds to sell his wool.
We have, however, a great many more divisions of employment to follow
out before the wool is conveyed from Wales to Leeds or Bradford. If the
packs are taken on shipboard, and carried down the Mersey to Liverpool,
we have all the variety of occupations, involving different degrees of
skill, which make up the life of a mariner; if they go forward upon the
railroad to Manchester, we have all the higher degrees of skill involved
in their transport which belong to the business of an engineer; or if
they finally reach their destination by canal, we have another division
of labour that adjusts itself to the management of boats in canals. But
the ship, the railroad, the canal, which are created by the necessity of
transporting commodities from place to place, have been formed after the
most laborious exercise of the highest science, working with the
greatest mechanical skill; and they exist only through the energy of
prodigious accumulations of capital, the growth of centuries of patient
and painful labour and economy.
We have at length the wool in a manufactury at Leeds or Bradford. The
first class of persons who prepare the wool, are the sorters and
pickers. It is their business to separate the fine from the coarse
locks, so that each may be suited to different fabrics. There is
judgment required, which could not exist without division of labour; and
the business, too, must be done rapidly, or the cost of sorting and
picking would outweigh the advantage. The second principal operation is
scouring. Here the men are constantly employed in washing the wool, to
free it from all impurities. It is evident that the same man could not
profitably pass from the business of sorting to that of scouring, and
back again,--from dry work to wet, and from wet to dry. When the wool is
out of the hands of the scourers it comes into those of the dyers, who
colour it with the various chemical agents applied to the manufacture.
The carders next receive it, who tear it with machines till it attains
the requisite fineness. From the carders it passes to the slubbers, who
form it into tough loose threads; and thence to spinners, who make the
threads finer and stronger. There are subdivisions of employment which
are not essential for us to notice, to give an idea of the great
division of employment, and the consequent accumulation of peculiar
skill, required to prepare wool to be made into yarn, to be made into
woollen cloth.
The next stages in the manufacture are the spinning, the warping, the
sizing, and the weaving. These are all distinct operations, and are all
carried forward with the most elaborate machinery, adapted to the
division of labour which it enforces, and by which it is enforced.
But there is a great deal still to be done before the cloth is fit to be
worn. The cloth, now woven, has to be scoured as the wool was. There is
a subsequent process called burling, at which females are constantly
employed. The boiling and milling come next, in which the cloth is again
exposed to the action of water, and beaten so as to give it toughness
and consistency. Dressers, called giggers, next take it in hand, who
also work with machinery upon the wet cloth. It has then to be dried in
houses where the temperature is sometimes as high as 130 degrees, and
where the men work almost naked. It is evident that the boilers and
dressers could not profitably work in the dry-houses: and that there
must be division of employment to prevent those sudden transitions which
would destroy the human frame much more quickly than a regular exposure
to cold or heat, to damp or dryness. The cloth must be next cropped or
cut upon the face, to remove the shreds of wool which deform the surface
in every direction. When cut, it has to be brushed dry by machinery, to
get out the croppings which remain in its texture. This done, it is dyed
in the shape of cloth, as it was formerly dyed in the shape of wool.
Then come a variety of processes, to increase the delicacy of the
fabric:--singeing, by passing the cloth within a burning distance of
red-hot cylinders; frizing, to raise a nap upon the cloth; glossing, by
carrying over it heavy heated plates of iron; pressing, in which
operation of the press red-hot plates are also employed; and drawing, in
which men, with fine needles, draw up minute holes in the cloth when it
has passed through the last operation. Then comes the packing; and after
all these processes it must be bought by a wholesale dealer, and again
by a retailer, before it reaches the consumer. Between the growth of the
fleece of wool, and the completion of a coat by a skilful tailor,--who,
it is affirmed, puts five-and-twenty thousand stitches into it,--what an
infinite division of employments! what inventions of science! what
exercises of ingenuity! what unwearied application! what painful, and
too often unhealthy labour! And yet if men are to be clothed well and
cheaply, all these manifold processes are not in vain; and the
individual injury in some branches of the employ is not to be compared
to the suffering that would ensue if cloth were not made at all, or if
it were made at such a cost that the most wealthy only could afford to
wear it. But for the accumulation of knowledge, and the division of
employments, engaged in the manufacture of cloth, and set in operation
by large capital, we should each be obliged to be contented with a
blanket such as John Tanner desired, and very few indeed would even
obtain that blanket: for if skill and division of labour were, not to go
on in one branch, they would not go on in another, and then we should
have nothing to give in exchange for the blanket. The individual injury
to health, also, produced by the division of labour, is not so great,
upon the average, as if there were no division. All the returns of human
life in this country show an extremely little difference in the effect
upon life, even of what we consider the most unhealthy trades; and this
proceeds from that extraordinary power of the human body to adapt itself
to a habit, however apparently injurious, which is one of the most
beautiful evidences of the compensating principle which prevails
throughout the moral world.
The wool manufacture of Great Britain employs very nearly three hundred
thousand persons; in the various processes connected with the production
of cloth, worsted, flannel, blankets, and carpets. What a contrast to
all this variety of labour is the history of the earlier stages of the
manufacture of woollen cloth. It is unnecessary to go back to the time
of Henry III., when the production of wool was in such an imperfect
state through flocks of sheep being scattered over immense tracts of
waste land, that a manor in Surrey was held under the crown by the
tenure of gathering wool for the Queen. According to the record, Peter
de Baldewyn was to gather the wool from the thorns that had torn it from
the sheep's back; and if he did not choose to gather it he was to
forfeit twenty shillings.[23] In the time of Edward III., according to
Fuller, in his 'Church History,' the English clothiers were wholly
unskilful; "knowing no more what to do with their wool than the sheep
which wear it, as to any artificial and curious drapery, their best
cloth being no better than frieze, such their coarseness for want of
skill in the making." When the Flemish clothiers came into England, the
manufacture improved; in spite of the regulating power of the state,
which was perpetually interfering with material, quality, and wages. In
time wool became the chief commodity of England. The woolsack of the
House of Lords was typical of this staple industry; and of the mode also
in which the majesty of legislation sat heavy upon the produce. To
encourage the manufacture nothing was to be woven but wool. From the
cradle to the grave all were to be wrapt in wool. The genius of
prohibition prevented the exchange of wool with other manufactured
commodities; and, therefore, to keep up rents, Narcissa was "odious in
woollen," and a Holland shirt--for British linen did not exist--was a
rare commodity, cheap at "eight shillings an ell," as in the days of
Dame Quickly.
This was the state of things at the end of the 17th century, and
somewhat later. The manufacturers clamoured against the exportation of
wool; and the agriculturists at the same time resisted the importation
of Irish and Scotch cattle. The parliament listened to both sets of
clamourers. It said to the people:--You of trade shall not be ruined by
the land selling wool to foreigners--there shall be no competition; you
shall buy the wool at the lowest price. And then parliament turned round
to the complaining grazier, and said,--the cloth-maker and his men
shall not ruin you by buying meat cheap--no Irish cattle or Scotch sheep
shall come here to lower your prices. From 1664 to 1824 the exportation
of wool was strictly prohibited. The importation was sometimes prevented
by high duties--sometimes encouraged by low. The manufacture was
constantly struggling with these attempts of the state to hold a balance
between what were so universally considered as conflicting interests. In
1844 the whole system was abandoned. In 1853, we imported one hundred
and seventeen million lbs. of sheep and lamb's wool--of which
three-fifths came from Australia--and two million of alpaca and llama
wool. The wool-growers at home still found a ready market; the great
body of the population had good coats and flannels and blankets; and, in
addition, we exported ten million pounds sterling of woollen
manufactures.
[Illustration: Jacquard Power-looms: Stuff-manufacture.]
[Illustration: Mechanism of power-loom.]
The employment of wool in the manufacture of broadcloth and flannel was,
a few years ago, almost the entire business of the woollen factories.
The novel uses to which wool is now applied, and the almost innumerable
varieties of articles of clothing which are produced from long wool and
short wool--from combinations of alpaca wool and coarse wool, of wool
with cotton, of wool with silk--together with the introduction of
brilliant dyes and tasteful designs, formerly unknown--have established
vast seats of manufacture which are almost peculiar to our country, and
have converted, in a few years, humble villages into great cities. The
finest Paisley shawls rival the elaborate handicraft of Hindustan; and,
what is of more importance, the humblest female may purchase a tasteful
article of dress at a price which a few years ago would have been
thought fabulous. The wonderful variety of patterns which we see in
these and other productions of modern skill are effected by the Jacquard
apparatus, in which the pattern depends upon the disposition of holes
pierced in separate bits of pasteboard. In common weaving, the weft
threads pass alternately under and over the entire warp threads, which
are lifted up to allow the weft in the shuttle to traverse from one
side to the other. The Jacquard apparatus determines, by the number and
arrangement of the holes in the cards, which of the separate warp
threads shall be so lifted; for at every throw of the shuttle the blank
part of each card moves a series of levers which raise certain warp
threads; while other levers, passing into the holes in the card, do not
affect the other warp threads. In this way, patterns of the greatest
complexity are woven in cotton, and worsted, and silk; so that even a
minute work of art, such as a portrait or a landscape, may be produced
from the loom. Every pattern requires a separate set of cards. We do not
expect this brief notice to be readily understood. Those who would
comprehend the extent of ingenuity involved in the principle of this
invention, and the beautiful results of which it is capable, should
witness its operation in a Halifax power-loom. In a bobbin-net machine
the cards are connected with a revolving pentagonal bar, each side of
which is pierced with holes, corresponding with the pins or levers
above. When a card comes over the topmost side of the pentagon the
levers drop; but those pins only which enter through the holes in the
card affect the pattern which is being worked. Any one who views this
complicated arrangement in a Nottingham lace-machine, requires no small
amount of attention to comprehend its mysterious movements; and when the
connection is perceived between that chain of dropping cards, and the
flower that is being worked in the lace, a vague sense of the manifold
power of invention comes over the mind--we had almost said an awful
sense.
[Illustration: Jacquard cards.]
* * * * *
If there be one thing more remarkable than another in the visible
condition of the people of Great Britain, it is the universality of
useful, elegant, and cheap clothing. There is very small distinction in
the ordinary coat and trowsers of the peer and the best dress of the
artisan; and not a great deal more in the gown and shawl of the
high-born lady and those of the handmaid of her toilet. Perhaps the
absence of mere finery, and the taste which is an accompaniment of
superior education, constitute the chief difference in the dress of
various ranks. This feature of the present times is a part of our social
history.
For several centuries the domestic trade of the country was hemmed round
and fettered by laws against extravagance in dress, which had always
been a favourite subject for the experimentalizing of barbarous
legislation. An act of 1463, recites that the Commons pray their lord
the king to remember that in the times of his noble progenitors,
ordinances and statutes were made for the apparel and array of the
commons, as well of men as of women, so that none of them should use or
wear any inordinate or excessive apparel, but only according to their
degrees. However, we find that all these ordinances had been utterly
fruitless. The parliament makes new ordinances. The nobles, according to
these, may wear whatever they please; knights and their wives were to
wear no cloth of gold, or fur of sables; no person under the state of a
lord to wear any purple silk; no esquires or gentlemen and their wives
any silk at all; no persons not having possessions of the yearly value
of forty pounds, any fur; and, what is cruel indeed, no widow but such
as hath possessions of the value of forty pounds, shall wear any fur,
any gold or silver girdle, or any kerchief that had cost more than three
shillings and four-pence; persons not having forty shillings a-year were
denied the enjoyment of fustian and scarlet cloth; the yeoman was to
have no stuffing in his doublet; nor servants in husbandry, broadcloth
of a higher price than two shillings a yard. The length of gowns,
jackets, and cloaks, was prescribed by the same statute; and the unhappy
tailor who exceeded the length by the breadth of his nail, was to be
mulcted in the same penalties as those who flaunted in skirts of more
than needful longitude. The men and women of the mystery and workmanship
of silk prefer their piteous complaint to parliament, that silk-work
ready wrought is brought into the realm. If it had occurred to them to
petition that the gentlemen and their wives might be permitted to wear
satin, as well as the lords, their piteous complaint of want of
occupation might have been more easily redressed than by foreign
prohibition. Sumptuary laws have long been abolished; but to them
succeeded the laws of custom, which prescribed one sort of dress to one
condition of people, and another to another. We cannot doubt which state
gives most employment to manufacturers, the law of exclusiveness or the
law of universality. If the labourer and artificer were still
restricted, by enactment or by custom, to the wearing of cloth of a
certain price per yard, we may be quite sure that the manufacture of the
finer cloths would be in no flourishing condition; and if the
servant-maid could not put on her Sunday gown of silk, we may be equally
clear that the silk-trade would continue to be the small thing that it
was half a century ago, when it had the full benefit of restriction,
instead of being, as it is now, one of the great staple trades of the
country.
When the frame-work knitters of silk stockings petitioned Oliver
Cromwell for a charter, they said, "the Englishman buys silk of the
stranger for twenty marks, and sells him the same again for one hundred
pounds." The higher pride of the present day is that we buy seven
million pounds of raw silk from the stranger, employ a hundred and
fourteen thousand of our own people in the manufacture of it by the aid
of machinery, and sell it to the stranger, and our own people, at a
price as low as that of the calico of half a century ago. In 1853 the
exports of silk manufactures, including those of silk mixed with other
materials, silk-yarn and silk-twist, amounted to the enormous sum of two
millions sterling, having doubled since 1849. In 1826, when the ruin of
our silk-trade was boldly prophesied as the sure result of the reduction
of the prohibitive duties on foreign silk, the exports of our silk
manufactures did not reach two hundred thousand pounds. William
Huskisson, the great statesman who produced this mighty change, was then
denounced in parliament as "an insensible and hard-hearted
metaphysician."
[Illustration: Hanks of silk. _a_, Bengal; _b_, Italian; _c_, Persian;
_d_, Broussa.]
[Illustration: Egyptian winding-reel.]
When a boy who keeps silk-worms upon mulberry leaves, puts a
spinning-worm into a little paper bag, and finally obtains an oval ball
of silk,--he does, upon a small scale, what is done in the silk-growing
countries upon a large scale. When he winds off his cocoon of silk upon
a little reel, he is engaged in the first process of silk making. There
must be myriads of silk-worms reared to produce the seven million pounds
of raw silk that Great Britain manufactures. The school-boy, from three
or four silk-worms, can obtain a little skein of silk, which he
carefully puts between the leaves of a book, and looks at it again and
again, in delight at its glossy beauty. Perhaps he does not take the
trouble to think how many such skeins would be required to produce a
pair of silk stockings. As the school-boy puts his skein into a book, so
the silk-producers of India, Italy, Persia, and Turkey, send us their
hanks of silk, which we call by various names, made up as shown in the
opposite page. In Egypt, a silk-producing country, a woman has a simple
machine for preparing the hanks of silk for the purposes of commerce.
She winds the silk upon a reel. She has no moving power but that of her
hand and arm. In England a woman also attends to a winding-machine, by
which the silk is transferred to bobbins, for the purpose of being spun
to various degrees of fineness. She has no labour to perform, beyond
providing a supply of material to be wound, removing a bobbin when it is
filled, placing an empty one in its place, and occasionally piecing a
broken thread. She is doing what the machine cannot do--adjusting her
operations to many varying circumstances. The machine is moved by the
steam-engine; but the steam-engine, the reels, and the bobbins would
work unavailingly, without the guidance of the mind that waits upon and
watches them.
[Illustration: Silk winding-machine.]
The peculiarity in the manufacture of silk-twist, or thread, as
distinguished from that of cotton, or flax, or wool, is that it is
produced naturally in one uninterrupted length. The object of the
machinery of a silk-mill is, not to combine short fibres in a
continuous thread by spinning, but to wind and twist, so as to unite
many slight threads already formed into one thread of sufficient
strength for the purpose of weaving, or of sewing. The subsequent
processes are the same as with the fibrous substances. The machinery by
which these processes are carried on has been improved, by successive
degrees, since Thomas Lombe erected the first silk-mill at Derby, in the
beginning of the 18th century. He obtained a patent which expired in
1732; and parliament, refusing to renew his patent, granted him a
compensation, upon the condition that he should deposit an exact model
of his machinery in the Tower of London. That model was shown to the
visitors of the Tower in the present century; and, by comparison with
the vast array of spindles in a modern silk-mill, would seem as
inefficient as the flail compared with the thrashing-machine.
Ribbon-weaving is a branch of the silk manufacture, in which our country
is rapidly attaining an excellence as regards beauty of design, which
may fairly compete with the best productions of the French looms.
* * * * *
Thomas Firmin, a philanthropic writer, who published 'Proposals for the
Employment of the Poor,' in 1681, says, "It is a thing greatly to be
wished that we could make linen cloth here as cheap as they send it us
from abroad." He thought the poor might then be employed; but he
despairingly adds, "if that cannot be done, nor any other way found out
to employ our poor people, we had much better lose something by the
labour of our poor, than lose all their labour;" and so he proposes to
give those who were idle flax and hemp to spin in spacious workhouses.
The notion was a benevolent one; and it was the favourite scheme, for
half a century, to destroy idleness and beggary in England, by setting
up manufactories at the public cost. Defoe saw the fallacy of the
principle, and resisted it with his strong common sense: "Suppose now a
workhouse for the employment of poor children sets them to spinning of
worsted. For every skein of worsted these poor children spin, there
must be a skein the less spun by some poor person or family that spun it
before." Defoe saw that there could be no profitable increase of labour
without increase of consumption; and he argues that if the Czar of
Muscovy would order his people to wear stockings, and we could supply
them, the poor might then be set to work. The increase of consumption,
all over the world, is produced by the inventions which diminish the
cost of production. We now make linen cloth here cheaper than it is sent
to us from abroad; and the result is that in 1853 we exported our linen
manufactures to the extent of six million pounds sterling; and employed
a hundred thousand persons in the manufacture. In the flax-mill of
Messrs. Marshall, at Leeds, where all the operations of spinning are
carried on in one enormous room, five times as large as
Westminster-hall, seventy thousand lbs. of flax are worked up weekly
into yarn. The question of flax-cultivation in these kingdoms has been
agitated of late years; and the course of political events has rendered
the consideration of an increased home supply, a matter of pressing
importance. It is not an easy matter to provide for the demand. The
great flax-mill at Leeds would require the flax-cultivation of six
thousand acres, to keep its spindles at work for one year.
[Illustration: Interior of Marshall's Flax-Mill, Leeds.]
Having thus noticed the leading processes of the manufacture of cotton,
of wool, of silk, of linen, we may conclude this chapter with a brief
mention of the art that gives to many of the fabrics produced their
chief beauty--the art of printing cloth in colours. This art applies to
the finest as well as the commonest productions of the loom; and the
science of the British dyer, the beauty of his patterns, and the
perfection of his machinery, have now given us an eminence in this
department of industry which can only be preserved by constant efforts
towards perfection of design and durable brilliancy of colour.
[Illustration: Indigo-harvest in West Indies.]
There is a striking, although natural parallel, between printing a piece
of cloth and printing a sheet of a book, or a newspaper. Block-printing
is the impress of the pattern by hand; as block-books were made four
centuries ago. We have no block-books now; for machinery has banished
that tedious process. But block-printing is used for costly shawls and
velvets, which require to have many colours produced by repeated impress
from a large number of blocks, each carrying a different colour. Except
for expensive fabrics, this mode is superseded by block-printing with a
sort of press, in which several blocks are set in a frame. Here again is
somewhat of a similarity to the operation of the book-press. Lastly, we
have cylinder-printing, resembling the rapid working of the
book-printing machine, each producing the same cheapness. As the pattern
has to be obtained from several cylinders, each having its own colour,
there is great nicety in the operation; and the most beautiful mechanism
is necessary for feeding the cylinder with colour; moving the cloth to
meet the revolving cylinder; and giving to the cylinder its power of
impression. But those who witness the operation see little of the
ultimate effect to be obtained in the subsequent processes of dyeing.
Fast colours are produced by the use in the pattern of substances called
mordants; which may be colourless themselves but receive the colour of
the dye-bath, which colour is only fixed in the parts touched by the
mordant, and is washed out from the parts not touched. When what is
called a substantive colour is at once impressed upon the white cloth,
much of the beauty is also derived from subsequent processes. The
chemist, the machinist, the designer, and the engraver--science and
art--set the calico-printing works in activity; and the carrying on
these complicated processes can only be profitably done upon a large
scale. In the earlier days of our cotton manufacture there were small
print-works in the neighbourhood of London, where the imperfect
machinery was turned by water-power. The steam-engine of one Lancashire
factory now produces more printed cottons and muslins than all the
rivers of southern England in the last century. The calico-printers now
number about twenty-seven thousand persons. But no direct enumeration
can be made of the employments that are required merely to produce the
dyes with which the calico-printer works. The mineral and vegetable
kingdoms, and even the animal kingdom, combine their natural productions
in the colours of a lady's dress. The sulphur-miner of Sicily, the
salt-worker of Cheshire, the hewer of wood in the Brazils, the Negro in
the indigo plantations of the East and West Indies, the cultivator of
madder in France, and the gatherer of the cochineal insect in Mexico,
are all labourers for the print-works of England and Scotland. The
discoveries of science, in combination with the experience of practice,
has set all this industry in motion, and has given a value to
innumerable productions of nature which would otherwise be useless and
unemployed. But these demands of manufactures do more--they create modes
of cultivation which are important sources of national prosperity. Jean
Althen, a Persian of great family, bred up in every luxury, became a
slave in Anatolia, when Kouli-Khan overthrew the Persian empire. For
fourteen years he worked in the cotton and madder-fields. He then
escaped to France, carrying with him some madder-seeds. Long did he
labour in vain to attract the attention of the government of Louis XV.
to his plans. At length, having spent all the fortune which he had
acquired by marriage with a French heiress, he obtained the patronage of
the Marquis de Caumont, in his attempts to introduce the cultivation of
madder into the department of Vaucluse. His life was closing in
comparative indigence when a new branch of industry was developed in his
adopted country. The district in which he created a new industry has
increased a hundred-fold in value. The debt of gratitude was paid by a
tablet to his memory, erected sixty years after he was insensible to
human rewards. We starve our benefactors when they are living; and
satisfy our consciences by votive monuments. Althen's daughter died as
poor as her father. The tablet was erected at Avignon when the family
was extinct.
[Illustration: Calico-printing by Cylinder.]
There is a process connected with the production of clothing which we
must briefly refer to, as one of the signal examples of the axiom of our
title--'Knowledge is Power.'
Let us suppose that chemistry had not discovered and organised the modes
in which bleaching is performed; and that the thousands of millions of
yards of calico and linen which we weave in this country had still to be
bleached, as bleaching was accomplished in the last century. We knew
nothing about the matter, and our linen was then sent over to Holland to
go through this operation. The Dutch steeped the bundles of cloth in ley
made by water poured upon wood ashes--then soaked them in
buttermilk--and finally spread them upon the grass for several months.
These were all natural agencies which discharged the colouring matter
without any chemical science. It was at length found out that sulphuric
acid would do the same work in one day which the buttermilk did in six
weeks; but the sun and the air had still to be the chief bleaching
powers. A French chemist then found out that a new gas, chlorine, would
supersede the necessity for spreading out the linen for several months;
and so the acres of bleaching ground which we were using in England and
Scotland--for we had left off sending the brown and yellow cloth to
Holland--were free for cultivation. But the chlorine was poisonous to
the workmen, and imparted a filthy odour to the cloth. Chemistry again
went to work, and finally obtained the chloride of lime, which is the
universal bleaching powder of modern manufactures. What used to be the
work of eight months is now accomplished in an hour or two; and so a bag
of dingy raw cotton may be in New York on the first day of the month,
and be converted into the whitest calico before the month is at an end.
[Illustration: Bleaching-ground at Glasgow.]
[23] Blount's 'Ancient Tenures,' ed. 1784, p. 183.