Part 12 (2/2)
24,324 20,256 25,140 23,579 Worsted
40,413 74,482 117,349 261,140 Silk mixed with other material
39 3,327 4,705 10,464
----------------------------------------
141,871 202,499 391,188 756,677 ------------------------------------------------------------------------
The hosiery of Saxony was superseding, a few years ago, from its extreme cheapness, the s.h.i.+pment to the United States of goods made at Nottingham. The cheapness in Saxony was produced, not by the employment of large capital and the application of the most expensive machinery, but by the miserably low wages of labour. It is stated by Mr. Porter that, in 1837, a man of Saxony, with his wife and three children, working incessantly at the stocking-loom, could only earn 5_s._ 4d.
weekly. In the princ.i.p.al manufacturing districts of that country, the food of the artisans is of the coa.r.s.est kind, and of the most limited supply. The comparative ease and comfort of the workers in our hosiery districts is one of the most satisfactory proofs that invention is as great a benefit to the labourer as to the capitalist.
As the nether-stocks of our ancestors were for the great and wealthy, so were their Hats. Old Stubbes writes, ”Sometimes they use them sharp on the crown, pearking up like the spear or shaft of a steeple, standing a quarter of a yard above the crown of their heads, some more, some less, as please the phantasies of their inconstant minds. Other some be flat and broad on the crown, like the battlements of a house. Another sort have round crowns, sometimes with one kind of band, sometimes with another, now black, now white, now russet, now red, now green, now yellow, now this, now that, never content with one colour or fas.h.i.+on two days to an end. And thus in vanity they spend the Lord his treasure, consuming their golden years and silver days in wickedness and sin. And as the fas.h.i.+ons be rare and strange, so is the stuff whereof their hats be made divers also; for some are of silk, some of velvet, some of taffeta, some of sa.r.s.enet, some of wool, and, which is more curious, some of a certain kind of fine hair; these they call beaver hats, of 20, 30, or 40 s.h.i.+llings price, fetched from beyond the seas, from whence a great sort of other vanities do come besides.” Here, then, we see that the beaver hat was in those days an article of great price. The commonalty had their ”plain statute caps” of wool. In our time the beaver hat was the common wear of the middle cla.s.ses until the last few years, when the cheaper silk hat became almost universal. We import from France some plush for making hats; but much of this silk material is also prepared in our own factories. Hats have therefore become intimately a.s.sociated with the material produced by the loom.
The manufacture of Gloves is connected, in a very large department, with the hosiery manufactory. The use of thread gloves and cotton gloves has had the effect, in some degree, of lessening the consumption of leather gloves. The importation of leather gloves and mitts was prohibited until 1825. We now import three million pairs annually; and the home manufacture, instead of being ruined as was predicted, was never more prosperous. The French gloves, once so superior to our own, have improved the English, by the natural force of compet.i.tion; and the manufacturers not only purchase better leather than formerly, but the cottage-workwomen that labour in the glove districts have become neater and more careful sewers. The consumption of gloves has ceased to be exclusively for the rich. The perfumed and embroidered glove of the 16th century is no longer required. The use of gloves has become universal amongst both s.e.xes of the middle cla.s.ses. The female domestic would think it unbecoming to go to church without her gloves; and the well-dressed artisan holds it nothing effeminate to use a covering for his hands, which his forefathers thought a distinguis.h.i.+ng appurtenance of the high-born and luxurious.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Gloves for the great.]
Our home-manufacture of Boots and Shoes has received an immense impulse from foreign compet.i.tion. The number of men's and women's boots and shoes which we import is not much above two hundred thousand. But we also import six hundred thousand boot-fronts from France, which our own people work up. Although the boot and shoe manufacture can scarcely be considered a factory process, it has now adapted itself to certain localities, such as Northampton. The articles made in the provinces were originally distinguished for their cheapness merely. They now unite the characters of goodness and cheapness. This chiefly arises from the trade being carried on, at Northampton especially, upon a large scale--upon a principle the very reverse of the old familiar spectacle of the cobbler in his stall.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Cobbler's stall, about 1760.]
The Straw-plat is a domestic manufacture, chiefly carried on in the midland and eastern counties. It employs thirty-two thousand persons, of whom twenty-eight thousand are females. The straw hat and bonnet makers amount to twenty-two thousand, of whom more than twenty thousand are females. The art of straw-platting has been greatly improved amongst us of late years; but the Italian straw, being of a finer nature, is in greater demand for the higher priced bonnets.
The beautiful production of Artificial Flowers has, in very recent years, been much increased in England. France, with its superior taste, long supplied us with these ornaments, which had the brilliancy of natural flowers without their perishableness. But three thousand females, and five hundred males, are now engaged with us in this branch.
The Fan-makers of England are only thirty in number. In France this is a large branch of manufacture. In the Jury Report on the Exhibition of Industry in 1851 there is a notice of the fan-trade of Paris, which is curious as showing the joint influences upon cheapness, of machinery, and of the multiplication of works of art by engraving. The fan-makers of Paris in 1847 employed five hundred and seventy-five work-people--the number of the s.e.xes being pretty equally divided. ”The men were for the most part copper-plate engravers and printers, lithographic draughtsmen and printers, painters, and colourers; the women were mounters, illuminators, painters, colourers, and overlookers. In twenty years it appears that the produce in fans had increased in value nearly threefold, whilst the number of work-people had diminished one-half.
This change is attributed to the employment of machinery, especially of the fly press, in stamping out and embossing the ribs, and the extensive employment of chromo-lithography, an art not practised at the former period. By these means the French have been enabled greatly to increase their exports by the production of cheap fans, to compete with those made by the Chinese.”
Dekker, in his 'Gull's Hornbook,' printed in 1609, advises the gallant of his day to exhibit a ”wrought handkerchief.” A ”handkerchief, spotted with strawberries,” was Oth.e.l.lo's first gift to Desdemona. It was an embroidered handkerchief, such as is produced in the present day at Cairo by the Egyptian ladies in their private apartments. The embroidered s.h.i.+rts of the time of Elizabeth are thus noticed by Stubbes:--
”These s.h.i.+rts (sometimes it happeneth) are wrought throughout with needle-work of silk, and such like, and curiously st.i.tched with open seam, and many other knacks besides, more than I can describe; in so much as I have heard of s.h.i.+rts that have cost some ten s.h.i.+llings, some twenty, some forty, some five pound, some twenty n.o.bles, and (which is horrible to hear) some ten pound apiece.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: Men'seg, or Egyptian embroidery-frame.]
The embroidery-frame was in time superseded by the lace-pillow, which is stated to have been first used in Saxony in the sixteenth century. The production of Lace extended to Belgium and France; and we are still familiar with the names of Brussels, Mechlin, Lisle, Valenciennes, and Alencon lace. Until the present century no lace was heard of but pillow-lace,--a domestic manufacture, of which Honiton was the most famous seat. A stocking-weaver of Nottingham adapted his stocking-frame to the making of lace about 1770; and the bobbin-frame was invented in 1809. It was never extensively used till the expiration of the patent; and the produce of this machine was kept at so high a price by the patentees that it interfered little with the labour of the lace-makers in the cottages of the midland counties.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Bobbin-net meshes.]
But a time was coming when as much bobbin-net as the patentees of the first frame charged five pounds for would be sold for half-a-crown; and when, as a necessary consequence of this cheapness, lace-making as a domestic employment would wholly cease, or be confined to the production of an expensive article, supposed to be superior to machine-made lace.
That the old hand-labour could compete with the machine was an impossibility. Lace of an ordinary figured pattern used to be made on the pillow at the rate of about three meshes per minute. A bobbin-net machine will produce similar lace at the rate of twenty-four thousand meshes per minute, one person only being required to wait upon the machine. Those who have watched the cottage lace-maker, working with her bobbins and pins, were unable, without long observation, to understand the principle upon which she intertwined the threads. But to explain the more rapid working of the bobbin-net machine would require such a minute acquaintance with all its parts as belongs to the business of the practical machinist, and which words are inadequate to exhibit. The accompanying engraving offers the best notion we can furnish.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Essential parts of the bobbin-net machine.
The warp, ascending from the beam A, pa.s.ses through small holes in a guide-bar B, and thence to the point C, where the bobbins in their respective combs, driven by the ledges on the two bars beneath, traverse the warp to and fro, and interlace the threads as shown at D; the points E a.s.sisting to maintain the forms of the meshes.]
Instead of England being now supplied with lace from France and Belgium, we are now an exporting lace-country. In 1848 we exported cotton lace and net to the amount of 363,255_l._; in 1853 to the amount of 596,578_l._
According to the census of 1851, the number of persons employed in the lace manufacture was 63,660; of whom 54,080 were females. The same returns give the number of 4658 embroiderers.
There is an article employed in dress which is at once so necessary and so beautiful that the highest lady in the land uses it, and yet so cheap that the poorest peasant's wife is enabled to procure it. The quality of the article is as perfect as art can make it; and yet, from the enormous quant.i.ties consumed by the great ma.s.s of the people, it is made so cheap that the poor can purchase the best kind, as well as the rich. It is an article of universal use. United with machinery, many hundreds, and even thousands, are employed in making it. But if the machinery were to stop, and the article were made by human hands alone, it would become so dear that the richest only could afford to use it; and it would become at the same time so rough in its appearance, that those very rich would be ashamed of using it. The article we mean is a Pin.
It is not necessary for us to describe the machinery used in pin-making, to make the reader comprehend its effects. A pin is made of bra.s.s. We have seen how metal is obtained from ore by machinery; and therefore we will not go over that ground. But suppose the most skilful workman has a lump of bra.s.s ready by his side, to make it into pins with common tools,--with a hammer and with a file. He heats it upon an anvil, till it becomes nearly thin enough for his purpose. A very fine hammer, and a very fine touch, must he have to produce a pin of any sort,--even a large corking-pin! But the pin made by machinery is a perfect cylinder.
To make a metal, or even a wooden cylinder, of a considerable size, with files and polis.h.i.+ng, is an operation so difficult that it is never attempted; but with a lathe and a sliding rest it is done every hour by a great many workmen. How much more difficult would it be to make a perfect cylinder the size of a pin? A pin hammered out by hand would present a number of rough edges that would tear the clothes, as well as hold them together. It would not be much more useful or ornamental than the skewer of bone with which the woman of the Sandwich Islands fastens her mats. But the wire of which pins are made acquires a perfectly cylindrical form by the simplest machinery. It is forcibly drawn through the circular holes of a steel plate; and the hole being smaller and smaller each time it is drawn through, it is at length reduced to the size required.
<script>