Part 11 (1/2)

Machinery not only adds to human power, and economizes human time, but it works up the most common materials into articles of value, and equalizes the use of valuable materials. Thus, in linen of which the thread is spun by the hand, a thick thread and a thin thread will be found side by side; and, therefore, not only is material wasted, but the fabric is less durable, because it wears unequally.

These circ.u.mstances--the diminished cost of cotton goods, and the added value to the quality--have rendered it impossible for the cheap labour of India to come into the market against the machinery of Europe. The trade in Indian cotton goods is gone for ever. Not even the caprices of fas.h.i.+on can have an excuse for purchasing the dearer commodity. We make it cheaper, and we make it better. The trade in cotton, as it exists in the present day, is the great triumph of human ingenuity. We bring the raw material from the country of the people who grow it, on the other side of our globe; we manufacture it by our machines into articles which we used to buy from them ready-made; and taking back those articles to their own markets, enc.u.mbered with the cost of transport for fourteen thousand miles, we sell the cotton to these very people cheaper than they can produce it themselves, and they buy it therefore with eagerness.

Nearly twenty years after Arkwright had begun to spin by machinery, that is in 1786, the price of a particular sort of cotton-yarn much used in the manufacture of calico was thirty-eight s.h.i.+llings a pound. That same yarn in 1832 was two s.h.i.+llings and eleven pence a pound. In 1814 the selling price of a piece of calico distinguished by the trade as 72-7/8 was twenty-eight s.h.i.+llings; in 1844 it was six s.h.i.+llings and nine pence.

It is probably less at this day. If cotton goods were worn only by the few rich, as they were worn in ancient times, and even in the latter half of the last century, that difference of price would not be a great object; but the price is a very important object when every man, woman, and child in the United Kingdom has to pay it. Calico is four times as cheap as it was forty years ago. There are no very certain data for the produce of our looms, for, happily, no tax exists upon the great necessaries of life which they produce. But it has been calculated that the home consumption of cotton cloth is equal to twenty-six yards for every individual of the population; and taking the total number at twenty-seven millions, the quant.i.ty required would be seven hundred million yards. At five pence a yard, the seven hundred million yards of cloth amount to above fourteen million pounds sterling. At half-a-crown a yard, which we will take as the average price about forty years ago, they would amount to eighty-four millions of pounds sterling. At twelve or fourteen times the present price, or six s.h.i.+llings a yard, which proportion we get by knowing the price of yarn seventy years ago and at the present day, the cost of seven hundred million yards of cotton cloth would be one hundred and seventy-five millions of pounds sterling. It is perfectly clear that no such sum of money could be paid for cotton goods, and that in fact, instead of between fourteen and fifteen millions being spent in this article of clothing by persons of all cla.s.ses, in consequence of the cheapness of the commodity, we should go back to very nearly the same consumption that existed before Arkwright's invention, that is, to the consumption of the year 1750, when the whole amount of the cotton manufacture of the kingdom did not exceed the annual value of two hundred thousand pounds. At that rate of value, the quant.i.ty of cloth manufactured could not have been equal to one five-hundredth part of that which is now manufactured for home consumption. Where one person a century ago consumed one yard, the consumption per head has risen to about twenty-six yards. This vast difference in the comforts of every family, by the ability which they now possess of easily acquiring warm and healthful clothing, is a clear gain to all society, and to every one as a portion of society. It is more especially a gain to the females and the children of families, whose condition is always degraded when clothing is scanty. The power of procuring cheap clothing for themselves, and for their children, has a tendency to raise the condition of females more than any other addition to their stock of comfort. It cultivates habits of cleanliness and decency; and those are little acquainted with the human character who can doubt whether cleanliness and decency are not only great aids to virtue, but virtues themselves. John Wesley said that cleanliness was next to G.o.dliness. There is little self-respect amidst dirt and rags, and without self-respect there can be no foundation for those qualities which most contribute to the good of society. The power of procuring useful clothing at a cheap price has raised the condition of women amongst us, and the influence of the condition of women upon the welfare of a community can never be too highly estimated.

That the manufacture of cotton by machinery has produced one of the great results for which machinery is to be desired, namely, cheapness of production, cannot, we think, be doubted. If increased employment of human labour has gone along with that cheapness of production, even the most prejudiced can have no doubt of the advantages of this machinery to all cla.s.ses of the community.

At the time that Arkwright commenced his machinery, a man named Hargreave, who had set up a less perfect invention, was driven out of Lancas.h.i.+re, at the peril of his life, by a combination of the old spinners by the wheel. In 1789, when the spinning machinery was introduced into Normandy, the hand-spinners there also destroyed the mills, and put down the manufacture for a time. Lancas.h.i.+re and Normandy are now, in England and France, the great seats of the cotton manufacture. The people of Lancas.h.i.+re and Normandy had not formerly the means, as we have now, of knowing that cheap production produces increased employment. There were many examples of this principle formerly to be found in arts and manufactures; but the people were badly educated upon such subjects, princ.i.p.ally because studious and inquiring men had thought such matters beneath their attention. We live in times more favourable for these researches. The people of Lancas.h.i.+re and Normandy, at the period we mention, being ignorant of what would conduce to their real welfare, put down the machines. In both countries they were a very small portion of the community that attempted such an illegal act. The weavers were interested in getting cotton yarn cheap, so the combination was opposed to their interests; and the spinners were chiefly old women and girls, very few in number, and of little influence. Yet they and their friends, both in England and France, made a violent clamour; and but for the protection of the laws, the manufactories in each country would never have been set up. What was the effect upon the condition of this very population? M. Say, in his 'Complete Course of Political Economy,' states, upon the authority of an English manufacturer of fifty years' experience, that, in ten years after the introduction of the machines, the people employed in the trade, spinners and weavers, were more than forty times as many as when the spinning was done by hand. The spinning machinery of Lancas.h.i.+re alone now produces as much yarn as would require more than the entire population of the United Kingdom to produce with the distaff and spindle. This immense power might be supposed to have superseded human labour altogether in the production of cotton yarn. It did no such thing. It gave a now direction to the labour that was formerly employed at the distaff and spindle; but it increased the quant.i.ty of labour altogether employed in the manufacture of cotton, at least a hundred fold. It increased it too where an increase of labour was most desirable. It gave constant, easy, and not unpleasant occupation to women and children. In all the departments of cotton spinning, and in many of those of weaving by the power-loom, women and children are employed. There are degrees, of course, in the agreeable nature of the employment, particularly as to its being more or less cleanly. But there are extensive apartments in large cotton-factories, where great numbers of females are daily engaged in processes which would not soil the nicest fingers, dressed with the greatest neatness, and clothed in materials (as all women are now clothed) that were set apart for the highest in the land a century ago. And yet there are some who regret that the aged crones no longer sit in the cottage chimney, earning a few pence daily by their rude industry at the wheel!

[Ill.u.s.tration: Hindoo weaver at work in a field.]

The creation of employment amongst ourselves by the cheapness of cotton goods produced by machinery, is not to be considered as a mere change from the labour of India to the labour of England. It is a creation of employment, operating just in the same manner as the machinery did for printing books. The Indian, it is true, no longer sends us his calicoes and his coloured stuffs; we make them ourselves. But he sends us fifty times the amount of raw cotton that he sent when the machinery was first set up. The workman on the banks of the Ganges is no longer weaving calicoes for us, in his loom of reeds under the shadow of a palm-tree; but he is gathering for us fifty times as much cotton as he gathered before, and making fifty times as much indigo for us to colour it with.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Power-looms.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Dr. Cartwright, inventor of the power-loom.]

The change that has been produced upon the labour of India by the machinery employed for spinning and weaving cotton, has a parallel in the altered condition of the hand-loom weavers in Great Britain. In 1785 Dr. Cartwright produced his first _power loom_. It was a rude machine compared with the refinements that have successively carried on his principle. Every resistance was made to the introduction to this new power. The mill owners were slow to perceive its advantages; the first mills in which these looms were introduced were burnt. The hand-loom weavers worked at a machine which little varied from that with which their Flemish instructors had worked three centuries before. But no prejudice and no violence could prevent the progress of the new machine.

The object for which machines are established, and the object which they do effect, is cheapness of production. Machines either save material, or diminish labour, or both. ”Which is the cheapest,” said the committee to Joseph Foster, ”a piece of goods made by a power-loom, or a piece of goods made by a hand-loom?” He answered, ”a power-loom is the cheapest.”[22] This answer was decisive. The hand-loom weavers have continued to struggle, even up to this time, with the greater productive power of the power-loom; but the struggle is nearly over. It would have been terminated long ago, if the miserable wages which the hand-loom weaver obtained, had not been eked out by parochial contributions. It was the duty of society to break the fall of the workmen who were thrust out of their place by the invention; but had society attempted to interpose between the new machines and the old, so as to have kept the old workers to their less profitable employment, there would have been far more derangements of labour to mitigate. Upon the introduction of the spinning machinery there was great temporary distress of the hand-spinners, with rioting and destruction of spinning-mills. If these modes of resistance to invention had gone on to prevent altogether the manufacture of cotton thread by the spinning machinery, the consumption of cotton cloth would have been little increased, and the number of persons engaged in the manufacture would have been twenty, thirty or even forty times less than the present number. But there would have been another result. Would the great body of the people of Europe have chosen to wear for many years _dear_ cloth instead of _cheap_ cloth, that a few thousand spinners might have been kept at their ancient wheels in Lancas.h.i.+re? Capital can easily s.h.i.+ft its place, and invention follows where capital goes before. The people of France, and Germany, and America, would have employed the cheap machine instead of the dear one; and the people of England would have had cheap cloth instead of dear cloth from thence. We cannot build a wall of bra.s.s round our islands; and the thin walls of prohibitive duties are very easily broken through.

A profit of from twenty to thirty per cent. will pour in any given quant.i.ty of smuggled goods that a nation living under prohibitive laws can demand. Bonaparte, in the height of his power, pa.s.sed the celebrated Berlin decree for the exclusion of all English produce from the continent of Europe. But our merchants laughed at him. The whole coast of France, and Holland, and Italy, became one immense receiving place for smuggled goods. If he had lined the whole coast with all the six hundred thousand soldiers that he marched to Russia, instead of a few custom-house officers, he could not have stopped the introduction of English produce. It was against the nature of things that the people who had been accustomed to cheap goods should buy dear ones; or that they should go without any article, whether of necessity or luxury, whose use had become general. Mark, therefore, if the cotton-spinners of Lancas.h.i.+re had triumphed eighty years ago over Arkwright's machinery, there would not have been a single man, woman, or child of those spinners employed _at all_, within twenty years after that most fatal triumph. The manufacture of cotton would have gone to other countries; cotton spinning in England would have been at an end. The same thing would have happened if the power-loom, fifty years ago, had been put down by combination; other countries would have used the invention which we should have been foolish enough to reject. Thirty years ago America had adopted the power-loom.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Flemish weaver. From a print of 1568.]

In the cotton manufacture, which from its immense amount possesses the means of rewarding the smallest improvement, invention has been at work, and most successfully, to make machines, that make machines, that make the cotton thread. There is a part of the machinery used in cotton-spinning called a reed. It consists of a number of pieces of wire, set side by side in a frame, resembling, as far as such things admit of comparison, a comb with two backs. These reeds are of various lengths and degrees of fineness; but they all consist of cross pieces of wire, fastened at regular intervals between longitudinal pieces of split cane, into which they are tied with waxed thread. A machine now does the work of reed-making. The materials enter the machine in the shape of two or three yards of cane, and many yards of wire and thread; and the machine cuts the wire, places each small piece with unfailing regularity between the canes, twists the thread round the cane with a knot that cannot slip, every time a piece of wire is put in, and does several yards of this extraordinary work in less time than we have taken to write the description. There is another machine for making a part of the machine for cotton-spinning, even more wonderful. The cotton wool is combed by circular cards of every degree of fineness; and the card-making machine, receiving only a supply of leather and wire, does its own work without the aid of hands. It punches the leather--cuts the wire--pa.s.ses it through the leather--clinches it behind--and gives it the proper form of the tooth in front--producing a complete card of several feet in circ.u.mference in a wonderfully short time. All men feel the benefit of such inventions, because they lessen the cost of production. The necessity for them always precedes their use. There were not reed-makers and card-makers enough in England to supply the demands of the cotton machinery; so invention went to work to see how machines could make machines; and the consequent diminished cost of machinery has diminished the price of clothing.

[22] See p. 107.

CHAPTER XVII.

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 sh.o.r.es, made from the material brought from their own sh.o.r.es, 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 const.i.tute 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 Acc.u.mulated 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 acc.u.mulations 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 s.h.i.+pboard, 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 ca.n.a.l, we have another division of labour that adjusts itself to the management of boats in ca.n.a.ls. But the s.h.i.+p, the railroad, the ca.n.a.l, 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 acc.u.mulations of capital, the growth of centuries of patient and painful labour and economy.