Esther M. Zimmer Lederberg
The Industrial Revolution in Great Britain
The Cloth Industry

Lord's Mill


To see images associated with Cloth Manufacturing, click any of the following links:

  1. Charles Dickens's Interest in the Industrial Revolution: The Cloth Industry
  2. Richard Arkwright and early Cloth Manufacturing industrialization
  3. Spinning Jenny, Slubbing Billy, and the Self-actor Mule
  4. Steam Engines and Power Looms
  5. The Mill Environment and Dangers
  6. The Mills
  7. Personages Associated With Social Movements

Cloth Manufacturing Industries

     Cloth was originally made by hand, using the spinning wheel. However, by attaching many spinning wheels to a common axle, the output of yarn could be increased several times over. Using a water wheel (or even a wind-mill, if the wind is sufficiently constant), the axle of the water wheel could drive the multiple spinning wheels. A water wheel axle could also be set to turn another axle connected by gears but at a right angle to the main axel of the water wheel. Using a steam engine fueled by coal, was a more powerful source of energy that could be used to produce yarn. The energy derived from a steam engine was not subject to weather, drought, etc.
     Using fibers from the cotton plant, wool, flax, silk, etc., different kinds of cloth could be manufactured. Once the fibers had been produced, power machinery was then used to weave cloth, as well as lace.
     As new machinery was invented for the cloth industry, the process of producing cloth increased in efficiency, therefore fewer workers were required. However, while such low-cost workers provide a labour supply, these workers cost money. Housing was required. Health costs rose, as producing coal in mines as well as working with machinery in the cloth industry was dangerous. The initial cloth manufacturing machines had unprotected "belts" (cheaper not to cover the belts) and the fingers, hands, arms, feet and legs of workers (and sometimes the entire body) were caught in these machines, thus maiming or killing the workers. Cloth fibers caused lung diseases, just as coal-dust also caused debilitating lung diseases. Industrialists wanted to drive down costs, but workers could not live on slave wages (and they often starved to death, in spite of the penal workhouses and those "transported" for stealing food). Social instability could be predicted, and social instability is exactly what happened. Governments do not handle instability well, a problem that governing bodies did not know how to solve (except by using violent repression to maintain the hierarchical "class" structure). As a rough indication of these times, consider the following incomplete "time line". What is shown is how instable the government was: it was not able to deal with the forces it had unleashed in this new society based upon a Capitalist Industrial Revolution. The Industrial Revolution had been born! Also note how so many of these important events took place during the life time of Charles Dickens!

Dickens Time Line


     What happened to the yarn and cloth produced from the factories? There were specialized subsidiary industries that fed off of these cloth products, which included stocking weavers and lace makers. There were specialized sub-industries such as spooling and hemming. Yarn was spooled by girls who started working in this industry at age 14. There were winders, boys starting at age 8, who set up the frames for the spools. (Note: child labour may be questioned morally on several levels. For example, in legal cases, one child may testify against another, thereby requiring children to be imprisoned. W. P. Roberts pointed out that such consequences were immoral). There were threaders (an average of 1,800 threads per machine to weave lace). The lace that came out of the machines had connecting threads which had to be removed. This was called "running" or "drawing" lace; the children who did this work were "lace runners". Occupational diseases mostly consisted of eye inflammation, cornea inflammation and cataracts. In addition, there was pathological curvature of the spine due to the long hours of standing. The lace runners were "recognized from their gait". This was based upon the British government Children's Employment Commission report of Lord Ashley (1840, 1842, 1844). Another specialty in lace making was in bobbin-lace work. Death commonly occurred at an early age due primarily to lung diseases.
     Another specialized area of work was in cotton printing. Engraved cylinders were driven by steam power and could print four to six colors at once. This was the calico printing industry. Another specialized area of workers were called bleachers, who had to breathe chlorine continually. As the typical worker in England wore corduroys called "fustian", a specialized group of workers was called the "fustian cutters". Similar to the tally system, weavers were given materials on credit to work with; this was recorded on a card that also specified the hour when the work was to be returned. The weaver's card was viewed as a contract. Fines were levied if the work was returned late for any reason, or if the work had any deficiencies (there was no unbiased authority to determine this). If any attempt was made at arbitration, the worker was dismissed.
     Thousands of young girls worked from 15 to 18 hours a day as dressmakers. When pressed, they often had to work 20 hours, or through the entire night. They effectively lived in the sewing establishments, which had crude beds and were provided with low-quality food so that these dressmakers could continue to work with minimal interruption. The material was entrusted to them on deposit, which often required them to pawn some of the material they already had, in order to buy more material; thus, they were bound or enslaved. Some of these practices were discussed in "Nicholas Nickleby" by Charles Dickens.
     Lung diseases were quite common during Victorian times, as they were caused by the irresponsible cost-cutting methods of those new industries. There was lung disease among coal miners, caused by coal dust. There were also lung diseases in the cloth manufacture industry due to inhalation of cloth fibers. Similarly, in the metal trades, such as sharpening knife blades, the metal dust particles caused lung disease. Ceramics were manufactured in "bottle kilns" or "hovel kilns". Bottle kilns were updraft kilns that used coal for fuel, held upon cast iron grates (after 1700) and were shaped like bottles, hence their name. These kilns had two levels. In the upper chamber the ceramics were "bisqued", while the lower chamber held the glazed wares. The tall bottle kilns required strong bricks able to withstand the stresses due to the weight of the high kiln walls. Hence the walls were thick (and even used bracing chains around the walls to provide strengh). Such kilns required a great deal of coal to heat these walls. "Hovel kilns" were a slight modification, in which the chimney (or "hovel") was constructed separately from the main part of the kiln. Many of these "bottle kilns" and "hovel kilns" were located in Staffordshire. Often these kilns were quite large, as large as a house. In the ceramics industry the clay dust caused lung diseases. In the ceramics industry, children (called "mould-runners") had lung disease; other children (called "jiggers") suffered industrial diseases. The worst diseases in the ceramics industry were found among those children who dipped the ceramics into glaze solutions in the "dipping-house": these liquid glazes typically contained lead and arsenic. (The use of such toxics is now against the law.) Charles Dickens was aware of and interested in such kilns!
     The terrible working conditions which characterized the early Industrial Revolution, consisting of highly exploitive labor without fair compensation; health hazards which almost always could be remedied but were not because of costs; and terrible living conditions; naturally led to open class warfare. At first such warfare was classified as criminal; workers destroyed machines. The problem with such 'criminal' activity was that it did not support any form of political union. In 1824 laws were passed that permitted coalitions of workers based upon free association. This right had previously been restricted to the aristocracy and capitalists. Previous to 1824 (in 1812 and 1822) the weavers held general strikes which were guided by secret association (as of course they were considered to be criminal). Similarly, in 1818 the Scottish miners had a general strike. The objectives of these strikes were in part to limit the number of apprentices to keep wages high, and to assist unemployed workers. Membership cards were distributed so that if workers moved from place to place (called "tramping") they could still find employment. Capitalists opposed these labor movements and employed "knobsticks" (strike-breakers, or scabs, of both sexes). In addition, capitalists attempted to become independent of specialized workers by creating machines that could do the specialized work; examples being in the specialized area of fustian cutters and calico printers. Thus the automatic "mule" was invented, also referred to as the "iron man".
     Chartism was one response. Founded in 1838, it was based upon the People's Charter:
  1. Universal suffrage for all men of proper age who were sane and unconvicted of crime
  2. Annual parliaments
  3. Payment of Members of Parliament (so that poor workers could be elected)
  4. Voting by ballot (to prevent bribery and intimidation by capitalists)
  5. Equal electoral districts to secure equal representation
  6. Abolition of property qualification of £300 for candidates, so that all members were eligible

     The Chartists and Socialists established their own reading rooms, which they filled with politically-oriented journals and included writers such as Helvétius, Holbach, Diderot, Shelley, Byron, Bentham, Godwin, etc. The capitalists responded by creating "mechanics institutes" with reading material strictly limited to technical subject matter associated with work. One of the most important men in struggling for the rights of workers was W. P. Roberts, a solicitor. He was a major figure in the Great Strike of 1844 (see Coal Mining).
     Yarn is quite interesting. It could be sold outside Great Britain to secure profit, but how might yarn be used within Great Britain? The "other half" of the cloth industry is the weaving industry. Development of the domestic weaving industry to support the export of cloth and take over the great Colonial cloth industries such as in India, France, China, etc. (to seek external markets) must yet be discussed.
    The household spinning wheel had been used for many years. The spinning wheel was used for cotton, flax, wool, and silk. The spinning wheel had a spindle that was horizontal to collect yarn. The way that the spindle was constructed resulted in yarn collecting in a pyramidal shape or a elliptical shape. One variant of the spinning wheel was called the Saxony or Liepzig wheel, used for flax, but the Saxony wheel used a more advanced kind of spindle with a "flyer" that collected yarn evenly and with the same tension on a "bobbin". In 1769, Richard Arkwright designed and constructed the first roller-spinner, powered by a horse, an example of a "trapiche", commonly used in the New World on slave plantations to process sugarcane. Cloth "power spinners" mills usually use a power source limited to either water-mills or steam-engines. Almost simultaneously (1770), Hargreaves designed the spinning "jenny". This was an advance in that eight spinning wheels were mounted on a single, common, axle, with vertical spindles. Unfortunately, the jenny often broke yarn. In 1771, Arkwright in conjunction with Mead and Strutt replaced the horse trapiche by a water-wheel. Crompton designed the "spinning-mule" which is an advance on the jenny as aside from having the equivalent of sixteen spinning wheels (it has 16 spindles), it doesn't break yarn as the jenny does, and it is powered by a water-mill! In 1775, Arkwright builds a mill on the Durwent with vertical flyer-and-bobbin spindles. In 1775, the first true yarn mill using power spinners, called the Cromford water frame was created. In 1779, at Stockport, the "slubbling billy" was created. It uses wool, and combines the jenny with the mule. Finally, in 1785, the steam engine was used as a power source by Boulton and Watt at Nottinghamshire.
     Hand "warping" machines allowed warp filaments long enough to be collected into a heap and more easily handled, all the filaments of the same length. Click to see hand warping machine. The warped yarn was then used on looms. Headdles allowed the loom to weave warp with woof fibers. Different shuttles could be strung to different materials such as wool, flax, etc., or yarns of different colors, producing "tweel". A "batten" was used to push the woof back towards where the cloth accumulates. The "headdles" are composed of hooks to which the warp filaments or yarn is attached. It was then possible to attach foot-operated "treadles" that selected a headdle and raise the headdle, thereby catching or engaging the warp yarns, and another foot treadle to pull down and remove the warp yarns from the hooks on the headdle. Thus the different headdles could then be selected to get different patterns. Warp and woof could alternate different fibers: wool, cotton, flax, and silk successively and in different colors. This is called "draught" and "cording". Mr. John Kay of Bury [separate figure] improved the loom by inventing his shuttle, which is selected by a "picking peg". It was originally used for woolens in 1738, then cottons in 1760. (Add Figure 97.) The design of a pattern for selecting warp yarns by specific headdles was called "drawing a warp". The plan of the sequence of headdles was called a "drought". Connecting the headdles to treadles in the correct sequence was called "cording". However, the warp yarns tended to get tangled, filaments of yarn unraveled and the warp yarns were not at equal tension. To remove this problem, a paste, originally of a starchy flour (called a "dressing" or "sizing") was brushed on the warp to smooth the filaments as well as stiffen them. A comb was used to clear away knots and partially unraveled yarn filaments. The humidity due to the dressing was removed by a fanning action.
     A water-powered "power-loom" was invented circa 1785 by Dr. Edmund Cartwright, who then successfully used steam power in 1792. In 1796 Robert Miller of Glasgow, with John Montieth in 1801, started a power loom mill. However, it was necessary to run the looms intermittently to allow dressing of the warp. Such intermittent action prevented successful use of such machines. This dressing problem was solved in 1803 and 1804 by Radcliffe and Ross, with the help of Thomas Johnson in Stockport (Manchester). They solved the problem of dressing the warp as follows:
     The warp passes through a hot dressing of starch and is then compressed between two rollers to extrude most of the moisture. The warp is finally drawn over a succession of tin cylinders heated by steam, which dries the dressed warp, aided by revolving fanners. The power-loom was born! As a consequence, the employment of hand-spinners and hand-weavers rapidly declined, and the need for factory operatives was created.
     The three major foundations of the Industrial Revolution were the cloth (and related) industries; the coal and iron mines (coal provided fuel for the steam engines and iron was used to build the steam engines); and the slave estates in the New World, Africa and India, which provided capital that could be invested in machines and mines as well as markets to sell cloth. The British government engaged in a movement to abolish slavery which was carefully targeted to the Atlantic slave trade, but by no means opposed to slavery elsewhere! The purpose of this Abolitionist movement was to prevent capital formation in other countries such as France and the Islamic-based countries trading in Africa, to prevent these competitor countries from establishing and elaborating their own Industrial Revolutions. However, the Abolitionist movement had another very serious objective: to replace New World slavery by Colonialism. Why transport slaves at high expense to the New World, when they could be exploited exactly where they were located to begin with? Indeed, "Buxton's government-sponsored expedition up the Niger of 1841 was premised on the expectation that ... [would]... "result in 'bringing forward into the world millions of consumers.@" Abolition of the Transatlantic slave trade was far from independent of the "slavery" practiced back in Britain. Slaves were bought partly by barter using cloth in this process of barter, and plantation slaves were "paid" in cloth as well. Thus the cloth manufacturers in Manchester did not want slavery to end%. The issues of Slavery and Colonialism will not be discussed any further here. However, the theme of Slavery and Colonialism did appear in novels by Charles Dickens ("Little Dorrit" and "Bleak House" for example). (See Footnote #1 on previous page.) Much of this discussion is based upon "The Condition of the Working Class in England", by Friedrich Engels.


@     "Economic Growth and the Ending of the Transatlantic Slave Trade", by David Eltis, Oxford University Press, 1987, p. 119
%     "The Atlantic Slave Trade", by J. E. Inikori, and S. L. Engerman, Duke Univ. Press, 1992, p. 172


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