Revival: The Woollen and Worsted Industries (1907)

J. H. Clapham

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138554962
• eBook ISBN: 9781351342483
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

An overview of the woollen and worsted industries in England in the 1900s.

THE WOOLLEN

AND

WORSTED INDUSTRIES

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY

THE group of industries with which this little book deals has a long and famous past. Its development has attracted economists and historians in an uncommon degree, and rightly; for it is connected at all points with the rise both of the economic and the political life and strength of the nation. To condense into a single chapter a story that began before ever William of Normandy brought Flemish weavers over the Channel or the Lord Chancellor sat on a woolsack would be almost irreverent and altogether unwise. To condense it into an Introduction would be impertinent. I shall, therefore, make no attempt to deal with any but the most recent history, except where the past throws direct light on the facts of the present. And such history as the book contains will be found scattered throughout the various chapters where it is likely to be of most use.

In the absence of history, some definition of the ground to be covered is needed. Grammatically, anything made of wool is woollen; but, technically, the woollen manufacture is but a part of what one may call, in the absence of any simple popular name, the wool-working industries. The technical differences between woollen and worsted will be dealt with in Chapter II. Here it is enough to mention that those differences are primarily connected with the structure of the yarn and the mechanical treatment of the wool before and during the process of spinning. On the Continent this fact is emphasised in the names given to the two branches of the industry. The French and German equivalents of woollen and worsted are “carded” and “combed”—terms descriptive of the distinctive preliminary processes through which the wool goes. Our term worsted comes, as the philologists still think, from a quiet Norfolk village with a great church, where now there is no sound of the loom, but where once fabrics woven of combed wool were produced in quantities great enough to make the place famous throughout England.

When finished and ready for market, worsted fabrics are usually lighter and finer than woollens. Most of the softer and lighter materials for women’s dress, the “stuffs,” are made in whole or in part of worsted, more often in part than in whole. Silk or cotton yarns are the usual accompaniments. Other typical worsted fabrics are the fine napless cloth of which men’s dress suits are now made, the smooth fancy “trouserings,” and so forth. Among heavier worsteds are some of the serges and other plain or fancy “coatings”.¹ But here the boundary line between woollen and worsted fabrics is blurred by the now not uncommon practice of using both classes of yarn in one piece of cloth. Typical woollens are the old fine broadcloths, uniform cloths, box-cloths and the like; pilot cloths and the stout materials of which winter overcoats are made; flannels, blankets and tweeds. Cotton yarns are used in woollen as well as in worsted weaving, in the construction of what are known as union cloths; but, in spite of the presence of cotton, such cloths are as a rule fairly heavy. Cotton is also mixed with wool before spinning, in many cases, as a cheap and effective substitute.

Thus on the one side the woollen and worsted industries stand in very close relations with the cotton trade and industry, and have points of contact with the silk industry. With these industries, of course, this book has nothing to do. On the other side stand the carpet and the hosiery industries. The former is sometimes treated not as a distinct branch of manufacture, but as a mere subdivision of woollen and worsted. It is so treated in all English official employment statistics, both those issued by the factory inspectors and those printed in the census returns; also in foreign trade statistics. Therefore it will have to be included in certain sections of this book. But its processes are so different from those of cloth or stuff manufacture, that no attempt can be made to describe them or to discuss the organisation of the carpet trade. Reference to it will be necessary from time to time, but there will be no pretence of making these references exhaustive.

The manufacture of hosiery is a distinct trade from every point of view—a trade in which the knitting machine takes the place of the loom. It is a great consumer of worsted and woollen yarns, but in no sense a part of the woollen or of the worsted industry. To it, therefore, no reference will be made except in its capacity of consumer.

In estimating the national importance of any group of industries various tests may be applied—the number of persons engaged in it, the sum annually paid in wages, the quantity of machinery at work, the value and amount of raw material consumed, and the value and quantity of finished goods produced. In the present state of our statistical knowledge, some only of these tests can be applied to the woollen and worsted group; and even those that are applicable must be handled cautiously, for the group presents more statistical problems and pitfalls than almost any other important section of British industry.

The number of persons employed in 1901, according to the factory inspectors’ returns, was 259,909. This figure covers spinning and weaving and all preliminary and allied processes, shoddy-making and carpet-making, but not hosiery-making. It also includes about 3000 dyers, bleachers or printers, but not the bulk of these classes of workpeople, since most of them do not work in what are technically known as textile factories and are not engaged in handling woollens and worsteds only. Besides this small body of dyers and others, the inspectors report that 355 persons were employed in all the other “non-textile” processes in the mills of the United Kingdom. This is clearly a grotesque underestimate of the miscellaneous employés. It is a pity that so misleading a figure should be included at all.

The inspectors’ figures are based on returns from all the registered mills in the country, but how complete these returns are only the millowners know. It is sometimes maintained that there is a considerable risk of error, due to carelessness in filling in the inquiry forms, but a comparison of the inspectors’ returns with the census returns of occupations—which, of course, are collected in a totally different way—shows that this risk is in all probability not serious.

To illustrate this point reference may be made to the Yorkshire returns. The inspectors’ figure for “wool, worsted and shoddy” in the West Riding was 187,204. The census figures in the same year were: “wool and worsted,” 181,004; and “mixed or unspecified materials,” 11,201. This second heading includes all those textile workers who merely returned themselves as spinners, weavers or what not, or as workers with mixed materials. The bulk of them would certainly be wool workers; but a minority would be classed by the inspectors under some other head—cotton, silk, or linen perhaps. When a reduction of, say, 20 per cent, from the 11,201 has been made to allow for this minority, the census total of wool workers comes to nearly 190,000. But in the census all dyers and bleachers are entered separately, whereas the inspectors’ total includes 3032 of this class. On the other hand, the census includes employers, the inspectors do not, and there are certainly some thousands of employers. So that the discrepancies are not serious, and the maximum possible error in the inspectors’ figures is inconsiderable.

In the case of machinery we have statements in connection with which there seems to be no great risk of error. They are more recent than the figures of employment, having been collected in 1904. Woollen, worsted and shoddy mills are treated separately. There were 1377 woollen factories in the kingdom in 1904, containing 329 rag-grinding machines for making shoddy, 6083 sets of carding machinery, 2,613,759 spinning spindles, 211,353 doubling spindles for twisting yarns together, and 50,357 power looms. The 161 shoddy mills had 566 rag-grinding machines, 319 carding sets, 77,815 spinning spindles, 2520 doubling spindles and 1432 looms.¹ In the 841 worsted mills there were 2823 combing machines, 2,937,900 spinning spindles, 845,166 doubling spindles, and 52,725 power looms. Some of the “woollen” mills contained a little worsted machinery and vice versd, but the amount of this overlapping was small. The items are 101 combs in woollen mills and 298 woollen carding sets in worsted mills.

Nearly all the machinery is steam driven. A few mills—some of them of considerable size—use both steam and water power. In out-of-the-way places water power may occasionally be found working unassisted—a rare relic of the past. Here and there steam is being displaced by electricity. The new motive force has so far made slow progress; some doubt whether it will ever win the day. There are technical difficulties connected with its adoption and the existing mill-engines are remarkably economical. But it can be used and it is being used. I have visited an important woollen mill in which it has been applied to nearly every process; and there seems no reason why this should not eventually become common.

Since 1889 the number of worsted spindles has risen by 22 per cent.; the number of woollen spindles has fallen by nearly 16 per cent. The number of woollen looms has fallen from 61,831 to 50,357; that of worsted looms from 67,391 to 52,725. It should be borne in mind that during the fifteen years from ’89 to 1904, the pace of both spindles and looms and the average width of the looms had considerably increased. The figures of raw material consumption show clearly enough that a steady increase in productive power accompanied this numerical decline in certain forms of machinery.

These consumption figures are by no means so certain as one could wish. At several points it is necessary to rely on estimates, which can never be quite satisfactory, however carefully they are framed. The certain data are the imports and re-exports of foreign and colonial wool, the exports of British wool, and the number of sheep in the United Kingdom. From the last figure an estimate of the home clip has to be made, based on the probable average weight of the fleeces of different breeds of sheep; and from the figure thus arrived at must be deducted the exports of British wool. The greatest difficulty arises in connection with the “home-grown” rags and the quantity of raw material made from rags generally. Another estimated figure is that of the wool taken from imported sheepskins; but this is not entirely a matter of guess work, and moreover the item is not an important one. Elaborate figures of consumption, worked out on these lines, have been published annually for the last few years by Mr. F. Hooper, late secretary of the Bradford Chamber of Commerce. For the year 1906 he estimates that the amount of new wool retained for consumption was 517·1 million lbs.,¹ the amount taken from sheepskins 32 millions, and the amount made out of rags 190 millions.

For the five years 1900-4 the new wool retained averaged 484·5 million lbs., the skin wool 29·6, and the rag wool 145 millions. The quinquennial averages in millions of lbs. for the years since 1870 are as follows:—

	NEW WOOL RETAINED.	SKIN WOOL.	RAG WOOL.
1900-4	484·5	29·6	145·0
1895-9	519·5	33·6	132·0
1890-4	472·6	32·2	118·0
1885-9	413·4	25·0	101·0
1880-4	353·6	20·0	123·0
1875-9	353·3	20·1	104·0
1870-4	341·7	23·0	89·0

This is not the place to comment on the details of consumption. The chapters which follow will throw some light on them. But it should be mentioned here that one possible source of error connected with the figures has not yet been referred to. It is that the words “a pound of wool” are not so simple as they seem. Wool may be dirty or clean, fine or coarse. It so happens that in the earlier years covered by the table, there was relatively more wool imported clean than there now is, which means that a part of the increase is but grease and dirt. But the possible error due to this cause is not great. Nor need much weight be given to the fact that the very fine wool from Australia and elsewhere formed a smaller fraction of the whole at the end of the period than at the beginning; though the fact deserves to be put on record.

Besides the new wool, skin wool, and rag wool there is cotton, both spun and unspun, to be taken into account. Estimates of the quantity consumed have been put forward from time to time; but they are necessarily much more uncertain than any of the other estimates, which is saying a good deal. I do not propose, therefore, to quote any figures; but to content myself with stating the certain fact that the consumption of cotton has increased of late years.

A calculation of the value of the raw material consumed in the industries could not be made with any certainty; nor would it be of great use, unless coupled with reasonably accurate valuations of the output of finished goods from the mills, and of the total amount paid in wages. Neither valuation is to be had; so that these particular tests of the national importance of the wool manufactures cannot be applied.

Everyone is more or less familiar with the way in which the industries are distributed over the face of the country—the primacy of the West Riding, and the importance of the parts of Lancashire round about Rochdale, the significance of the Tweed towns and of Kidderminster, the continued activity of the famous old “West of England” manufacturing district in Gloucester, Wiltshire, and Somerset. The map which gives the distribution of the industry by counties to a large extent speaks for itself. It shows how widely scattered the business of wool manufacturing still is, in spite of the fact that well-nigh 80 per cent, of the workers in it live in the comparatively narrow bit of hill country between the valley of the Wharfe and the valley of the Irwell. The scattering would be still more apparent if the map included Ireland and the Highlands; for the 3523 Irish woollen mill “hands,” reported in 1901, were spread over twenty-six counties, and in Scotland the 2976 work people not accounted for on the map were divided among eleven northern counties.

The mills of Ireland and the north of Scotland are without exception woollen mills—well, not quite without exception: twelve worsted looms are reported from Monaghan. So are the Welsh mills and all the mills—they are not very many—in Northumberland, Hereford, Monmouth, Oxford, Essex, Sussex, and Cornwall. These are in most cases the remnants of old local industries from the days when there was no power-driven...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY
• CHAPTER II. THE MANUFACTURING PROCESSES
• CHAPTER III. THE RAW MATERIALS AND THE TRADE IN THEM
• CHAPTER IV. INDUSTRIAL AND COMMERCIAL ORGANISATION
• CHAPTER V. LABOUR IN THE INDUSTRIES
• CHAPTER VI. THE INDUSTRIES ABROAD
• CHAPTER VII. IMPORTS AND EXPORTS
• INDEX