Textile industry

“ CHAPTER IV. SPINDLE, LOOM, AND NEEDLE IN NEW ENGLAND
The major steps in the manufacture of clothes are four: first to harvest and clean the fiber or wool; second, to card it and spin it into threads; third, to weave the threads into cloth; and, finally to fashion and sew the cloth into clothes. We have already seen the influence of Eli Whitney's cotton gin on the first process, and the series of inventions for spinning and weaving, which so profoundly changed the textile industry in Great Britain, has been mentioned. ”

“ True, other branches of the textile industry have also benefited by the application of machine methods of spinning and weaving similar to those above described; but no other important textile has seen such a remarkable growth under the stimulus of machine production as has cotton. ”

“ Cotton is the basis of the largest textile industry in the world. The business is conducted on a gigantic scale in many countries by means of vast capital, complicated machinery, and varied processes involving considerable periods of time between the raw material and the finished product. ”

“ The American textile industry was founded by British artisans who came to this country carrying contraband in their heads, that is, the plans of weaving, spinning, and knitting machines which the English guarded as carefully as military secrets.... The pre-eminence of this country in the manufacture and use of agricultural implements is set out in elementary school-books as proof of American inventiveness ”

“ If the general position of women in the whole field of industry is reviewed, it will be seen that, beyond question, all the textile fabrics used at this time, with the exception of a few luxuries, were made from the thread which was spun by women and children, the export trade in cloth also depending entirely on their labour for spinning and to some extent for the other processes. ”

“ The textile branches of industry make a large demand for classification, in regard to raw materials, yarns, thread, and piece-goods: three for cotton, three for flax and hemp, one for jute, three for silk, three for wool and worsted, and one for carpeting and rugs. Saddlery and harness require one class to themselves, so does made-up clothing, so do india-rubber and gutta-percha goods. ”

“ The increase in the output of production and multiplication of various kinds of industries has been particularly phenomenal. In the textile industry the production has increased more than 300 per cent. ”

“ The textile art is one of the most ancient known, dating back to the very inception of culture. In primitive times it occupied a wide field, embracing the stems of numerous branches of industry now expressed in other materials or relegated to distinct systems of construction. Accompanying the gradual narrowing of its sphere there was a steady development with the general increase of intelligence and skill so that with the cultured nations of to-day it takes an important, though unobtrusive, place in the hierarchy of the arts. ”

“ The uses to which the textiles were put were for clothing, furniture for the house, utensils for a thousand industries, fine arts, social functions and worship.
In order to comprehend the more intricate processes of the higher peoples it is necessary to examine the textile industry in all of the culture areas. It is essentially woman’s work, though among the Pueblos, strangely enough, men are weavers. ”

“ Textile Manufacture as a Domestic Industry.—Colonial women, in addition to sharing every hardship of pioneering, often the heavy labor of the open field, developed in the course of time a national industry which was almost exclusively their own. Wool and flax were raised in abundance in the North and South. "Every farm house," says Coman, the economic historian, "was a workshop where the women spun and wove the serges, kerseys, and linsey-woolseys which served for the common wear." ”

“ In addition, the raising of raw silk has been built up principally in countries where there is a system of home industry—a social and industrial system never developed in the United States. However, although America has never been a factor in the producing of the raw material, it has risen to a place of utmost importance in the manufacture of the finished textile. Immense quantities of raw silk are imported from abroad—principally Japan, Italy, and China—and its conversion into the finished products constitutes a most important part of our industry. ”

“ The fact that cotton is, as has been already shown, the most important of the textile industries, utilizing larger sums of capital, turning out greater values of product, distributing its products over a wider area and to a larger number of people than any other of the textiles, justifies a somewhat more elaborate discussion of this industry and its development during the period in which the manufacturing industries of the world have been transferred from hand labor to that of machines, and in which capital has come to form so important a factor in production. ”

“ The textile skill of any people, has in all ages been a measure of their culture and advancement. The recognition of those simple facts enable us to appreciate the proofs of the intelligence and skill of our home-workers as exhibited in products of their cottage-looms.
In this industry scattered amongst a great number of villages, places such as Broumov, Náchod, Chotěboř and others too numerous to mention, 30,000 men are employed, the majority being engaged in the production of a common quality of linen or cotton goods. ”

“ The industry is carried on in a great number of neighbouring townships, but the cloth is commonly finished or dressed in the city itself, this procedure differing from that of the wool manufacturers in Gloucestershire and the west of England, who carry out the entire process in one factory. Formerly much of the business between manufacturer and merchant was transacted in the cloth halls, which formed a kind of market, but merchants now order goods directly from the manufacturers. Artificial silk is important among the textile products. ”

“ In 1870 the number of textile establishments in the United States was 3035, giving occupation to 146,897 employees, and consuming annually 359,420,829 pounds of textile fibres, while in 1890 the number of establishments had increased to 4114, employing 511,897 hands, and consuming the enormous amount of 1,572,548,933 pounds of fibres; representing progress and growth in the textile arts not excelled by any other manufacturing industry.
Food and clothing constitute the primary wants of man. ”

“ The finishing operations consist of seaming, where necessary, and removing imperfections.
Growth
The growth and importance of the industry is perhaps best realized from the fact that in 1870 there were 5,625 machines in the country, in 1905, 88,374, and now well over one hundred thousand. In 1850 men wore hand-knitted socks and flannel underwear. From 1860 to 1910 the product of the country’s knitting machines rose from $7,300,000 to $200,100,000.
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Folding
Cotton yarn is used more than woolen because it spins more cheaply and is less difficult to knit. ”

“ As wealth increased the home loom and spinning-wheel were slowly supplanted by the mill and factory. The different textile manufacturers at length found that competition was so keen that it was necessary to adulterate, particularly any fabric that was popular. The classes of goods that are most adulterated are the expensive fabrics, those of wool and silk. There are such changes of fashion in dress at the present day that garments composed of materials formerly considered good enough are often thrown aside as old-fashioned when only half worn. ”

“ As the shuttles fly the finished fabric is rolled up ready for inspection, and, when passed, goes to the market, and later is made into garments.
It is a huge task to clothe the modern world. No one realizes how much it means until he looks into the work of the textile-mills which have grown up in our own and in other countries. ”

“ As trade grew up, she brought these fine silken textiles to our markets, and articles of dress were made of silk for men’s as well as women’s wear among the wealthy. At what period the raw material came to be imported here, not so much for embroidery as to be wrought in the loom, we do not exactly know; but from several sides we learn that our countrywomen of all degrees busied themselves in weaving. ”

“ Old woollen rags, rags of carpets, and all the dust from the carding and spinning in the wool and cotton factories of Northern France, with a small addition of cotton, are transformed here into cloth which flows from Vienne to all the big cities of France--20,000 yards of "shoddy" every day-to supply the ready-made clothing factories, Hand-weaving has evidently nothing to do in that industry, and in 1890 only 1,300 hand-looms were at work out of the 4,000 which were in motion in 1870. ”

“ Let, then, all those who belong any-wise to the weaving trade and come hither, go home resolved to stand for the future behind no nation, either of past or present time, in the ability of weaving not only useful, but beautiful and artistic textiles. ”

“ Factories are, again, subdivided into textile and non-textile: they are textile if the machinery is employed in preparing, manufacturing or finishing cotton, wool, hair, silk, flax, hemp, jute, tow, China grass, cocoanut fibre or other like material either separately or mixed together, or mixed with any other material, or any fabric made thereof; all other factories are non-textile. ”

“ In the clothing trades the industrial revolution has made some way, and is doubtless going to make still more way, but it is unlikely that the older-fashioned methods of tailoring and dressmaking can ever be superseded as completely as was the hand-loom weaving in the cotton trade. Dress is a matter of individual taste and fancy, and much as the factory-made clothing and dressmaking has improved in the last ten or twenty [Pg 65] years, it is unlikely ever to supply the market entirely. Stay-making is a rapidly developing factory industry at Bristol, Ipswich and elsewhere. ”

“ The weaving establishments produce woollen and mixed woollen and cotton fabrics together with silk and satin drapery, swanskins, jerseys and other fancy goods. The making of velvet pile carpets and upholstering materials is a speciality of the town. To these industries must be added those of dyeing, the manufacture of hosiery, of the machinery and other apparatus used in the textile factories and of soap. ”

“ The Board concluded: 'The men's clothing industry is thus an industry which is nearly entirely dependent in its operations upon purchases and sales in interstate commerce and upon interstate transportation. There is a constant flow of raw wool from the western States and foreign countries to the mills of New England where it is transformed into men's wear fabrics, thence to the sponging and shrinking plants of New York and Philadelphia, then, joined by the other necessary raw materials, to the fabricating factories of the Middle Atlantic States for manufacture into clothing. ”

“ OF MATERIALS, THE CORSET, AND THE CRINOLINE
The material question seems to have been answered in every country save England, where the initiative in manufacture is conspicuous by its absence, though we have through the centuries so successfully begged, borrowed, stolen, or acquired an expert knowledge of the various textile arts, that every manufactured fabric is now grist which may come from our mill. ”

“ Large purchasers of textile fabrics and various administrative bodies, such as army clothing departments, railway companies, etc., have adopted definite specifications to ensure having good material and workmanship. ”

“ The silk trade had received new life from the flow of intelligent French workers, and the first modern factory with elaborate machinery was that set up for silk throwing by Lombe. Yet by far the larger number of the important textile inventions of the eighteenth century were either applied in the first instance to the cotton manufacture and transferred, sometimes after a lapse of many years, to the woollen, worsted, and other textile trades, or being invented for woollen trades, proved unsuccessful until applied to cotton. ”

“ These comprise the making of men's and women's suits and dresses, coats, hats, shirts, underwear, collars and cuffs, gloves, etc. As we have seen, the making of wearing apparel has always been woman's work. During the domestic period of industry the same hands that spun the thread and wove the cloth also sewed the garments. When spinning and weaving had been taken out of the home and made specialized factory occupations, the making of clothes still remained a domestic occupation because no machinery had as yet been applied to this branch of manufacture. ”

“ In the beginning of the eighteenth century the textile manufacturing of England was carried on by craftsmen dwelling in the rural districts, the master clothiers living in the greater towns, sending out wool to be spun into yarn which, returned to them prepared for the loom, was re-distributed among other hand workers in other cottages. ”

“ Manufacturing industries are giving shape to the industrial future of the country. The cotton-mills alone employ seventy thousand people and keep more than one million spindles busy. More than one million operatives are engaged in textile manufactures. Much of the cloth, both cotton and silk, is still woven on cottage looms. The cotton cloth is sold mainly in China and Korea; the surplus silk textiles find a ready market in the United States. The best straw matting used as a floor-covering is now made in Japan and constitutes a very important export. ”

“ In the more highly-developed branches of the textile and metal trades the division of processes appears at first sight more sharply marked than to-day. The carder, spinner, weaver, fuller in the cloth trade worked in the several processes of converting raw wool into finished cloth, related to one another only by a series of middlemen who supplied them with the material required for their work and received it back with the impress of their labour attached, to hand it out once more to undergo the next process. ”