Woollen industry

“ Wells after a full discussion of these points, “what is now needed to restore prosperity to the woollen industry, is a removal of all duties on the importation of foreign wools and dyestuffs, and a general reduction of the duties on manufactured woollen fabrics of every description to 25 per cent ad valorem. ”

“ Let us turn from the sheep problem to the factory problem. What are the difficulties of the woollen industry? In the first place, as we have seen, there is no home supply of wool worth mentioning. Further, there is the intricacy of woollen manufacture. Cotton machinery has been brought to such a pitch of perfection for every operation and there are in existence so many technical manuals for every department of cotton manufacture that a certain standardisation of output is not difficult. The problem of woollen manufacture is much more complicated. ”

“ And it is growing worse and worse. As a mere and small example, less than one-half the amount of woollen machinery is now in operation in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, that was running here 15 years ago; and three-fourths of all the woollen manufacturers doing business in the County have failed in the 20 years just now past. In one word, it is no compensation to one industry for artificial burdens piled upon it, to pile corresponding burdens upon other industries affiliated with it. ”

“ The great Yorkshire woollen spinners tell us that to be cut off even for three or four weeks from the supplies of Australian wool would mean the closing of hundreds or thousands of factories and a widespread paralysis of industry. They point out that when the regularity of sea transport depended upon wind and weather, or when the home market supplied a larger share of the material, common prudence made it necessary to lay in heavy stocks to provide against contingencies for many months. ”

“ When we read of small towns now lying idle, which in the eighteenth century produced woollen cloth, linen, cotton, fustian, boots, hats, glass, beer, and food products, it simply means that a more highly organised system of industry has in its progress left such districts behind in the race. The woollen manufacture has centred in Yorkshire, cotton in Lancashire, linen in Belfast, and so forth—one district dwindled as others advanced and tended to monopolise production, without the legislature having anything to say to it. ”

“ The worsted industry appears everywhere to have been carried on rather like the woollen manufactures of the West of England than the same industry in Yorkshire. The woolcomber frequently owned the inexpensive hand-combs and pots with which he worked. But the woolcombers, like the weavers of the West of England, formed but one of several classes of workers for whose employment both capital and commercial knowledge was indispensable. ”

“ Movement along the line of strongest human feeling. Weakest workers are protected first, pauper children who are the least "free" parties in a contract, then protection advances to other children, young persons, women, men.
2. Protective legislation moves from the more highly organised to the less highly organised structures of industry. Cotton-mills are sole subjects of earliest Factory Acts, then woollen, then other textile trades, trades subsidiary to textile industries, non-textile factories, larger workshops, domestic workshops, retail trade, domestic service. ”

“ The great factor in the worsted industry to-day is the American Woolen Company, popularly known as the Woolen Trust, which was said to control sixty per cent. of the country’s output at the time of its formation in 1899, and can boast of the largest and best-equipped mills not only in the United States, but in the entire world. ”

“ A feature which goes far to explain the superior advantage which the worsted industry has over the woolen is that the former is essentially the big capitalist’s field, while the woolen mills are still run to a large extent by people of moderate means. According to the last census report, in 1909 the average output per mill in the worsted industry was nearly one million dollars, which was more than five times as large as that of the average woolen mill. ”

“ Make but the same experiment in the Woollen Manufactory, and its fatal effects upon the poor will soon be felt; for as you cannot increase the quantity of Animal Wool now being brought into the Market, any Invention that has a tendency to diminish Manual Labour is, and must be, pernicious. ”

“ The story grows uglier as we proceed. Two powerful commercial combinations took charge of the policy of the woolen interests—the National Woolgrowers' Association and the National Association of Wool Manufacturers, which were soon in control of this immense industry. Woolen mills sprang up so fast that a report of the New York Chamber of Commerce pronounced their increase "scarcely credible." So great was the new market created by the Government demand, and so ruthless were the parasites in forcing up prices, that dividends on mill stock rose to 10, 15, 25, and even 40 per cent. ”

“ The feudal system of industry, under which industrial production was monopolised by closed guilds, now no longer sufficed for the growing wants of the new markets. The manufacturing system took its place. ”

“ The industrial overlord holds control of the job with one hand. With the other he controls the product of industry. From the time the raw material leaves the earth in the form of iron ore, crude petroleum, logs, or coal, through all of the processes of production, it is owned by the industrial master, not by the worker. Workers separate the product from the earth, transport it, refine it, fabricate it. Always, the product, like the machinery, is the possession of the owning class. ”

“ The solution for our modern problems is this, that the industries should be owned by the people, operated by the people for the people, and the little busy bees who make the honey of the world should eat that honey, and there should be no drones at all in the hives of industry. ”

“ The new industrial forces first applied to the cotton spinning of South Lancashire, and rapidly forcing their way into other branches of the textile manufactures, then more gradually transforming the industrial methods of the machinery, hardware, and other staple English manufactures, passed into the Western Continent of Europe and America, destroying the old domestic industry and establishing in every civilised country the reign of steam-driven machinery. ”

“ Since steam, machinery, and the making of machines by machinery transformed the older manufacture into modern industry, the productive forces evolved under the guidance of the bourgeoisie developed with a rapidity and in a degree unheard of before. But just as the older manufacture, in its time, and handicraft, becoming more developed under its influence, had come into collision with the feudal trammels of the guilds, so now modern industry, in its more complete development, comes into collision with the bounds within which the capitalist mode of production holds it confined. ”

“ Let us rest our industries on that standard, and soon we could compete in the markets of the world in all the articles produced from iron, wood, leather, and cotton, the raw basis of which are our national productions. And it must be remembered that all the countries with which we compete are specie-paying countries.
"A country that does not rest her industry upon specie is necessarily excluded from the great manufacturing industries of modern civilization, and is self-condemned to produce only the raw basis for advanced industry. ”

“ They are laying sacriligious hands upon the most sacrosanct institution of private ownership, they challenge the exclusive mastery of the owner in his own mine and mill, they demand actual participation in industry, even in the most secret councils that control production and manipulate distribution,—aye ,they even dare suggest the taking over by labor of all industry. ”

“ English weavers and spinners became very skilful and invented different mechanical aids for the production of yarn and cloth. These mechanical aids not only enabled one man to do twenty men’s work, but further utilization was made of water and steam power in place of manual labor. Then began the organization of the industry on a truly gigantic scale, combining capital and machinery and resulting in what is known as the factory system. ”

“ The former mode of production, destined to supply only the daily needs of a given center and its immediate vicinity, was superseded by manufacture on a large scale, which implies the employment of a large number of workers and an increased division of labor. The merchants possessing large financial resources and broadness of perception, became the leaders along these new lines of industry that partly replaced and partly abolished the old handicrafts and put an end to their guild organization. ”

“ Hang on to your home, and if in a few months or a few years the mills begin booming again you will be secure for life. But if the iron industry doesn't revive, give up that trade and find other work here. If necessary go out and work on a farm, for the farming industry will always have to be carried on. ”

“ If Leeds makes woolens and does not, by fulfillment of contract, receive the means of obtaining from agricultural districts the needful quantity of food, it must starve, and stop producing woolens. If South Wales smelts iron and there comes no equivalent agreed upon, enabling it to get fabrics for clothing, its industry must cease. ”

“ You see, the year happened to have been a lean one--thanks to those same industry-mongering landowners, in that they had neglected to sow their crops; and now my factories keep growing at the rate of a factory a year, owing to the circumstance that such quantities of remnants and cuttings become so accumulated that, if a man looks carefully to his management, he will find every sort of rubbish to be capable of bringing in a return--yes, to the point of his having to reject money on the plea that he has no need of it. ”

“ How could the town-bred artisan cultivate his little holding without knowledge, capital, equipment, or direction? Could such tiny plots, unskilfully tilled by amateur farmers, be made capable of supporting even the most industrious and capable of the new owners? How could such ill-equipped amateurs compete successfully against the capitalist farmer, skilled in his trade and provided with all the machinery and tools required for modern farming? If this were impossible, how was the Company to get back its "rent" without which it could not extend its operations? ”

“ This change from production on a small scale, and often by hand, to large-scale production in factories equipped with complex machines, has had important results. It has so increased our control over Nature that even the humblest workman of to-day enjoys many comforts denied kings a few centuries ago. On the other hand, the Industrial Revolution has tended to create a numerous class which depends entirely upon wages, and to set off against this class an employing group which possesses and controls most of the income-producing equipment of industry. ”

“ The same principle was then carried into the different trades, and at last we find it fully developed in the cottage system of industry. Thus we find carding, spinning, and weaving carried on by separate members of the family. Carding and spinning, which required less bodily strength, was performed by the women, while the more laborious work of weaving was given over to the men. With the establishment of the factory and the introduction of machinery, means were supplied by which this system could attain its highest development. ”

“ Under these circumstances, and in proportion as these technological exigencies take effect in one branch of industry and another, the usufruct of the industrial community’s current productive efficiency comes to vest effectually in those who own the material means of industry. Their effectual exploitation of the community’s industrial efficiency will extend to such industries, and with such a degree of thoroughness and security, as the state of the industrial arts may decide. ”

“ This reasoning has had great weight on the Minds of best informed Men; but if we can by our united Efforts (as assuredly we can) raise in this Colony any Quantity of fine Wool, all its force would be at once demolished. Whatever the demands of Great Britain may be for that Commodity, we certainly may supply it. The universal use of Machinery might then be safely sanctioned, and the British Manufacturers would be enabled so to reduce the price of Woollen Cloths, as would assure throughout the world the most Monopoly that any people ever possessed. ”

“ The equipment with which men work today can be divided into separate individual shares only at the cost of incalculable embarrassment to industry. Before the days of machiinery, and aggregated capital, and the application of science to methods of production, no calamity less than war, famine or pestilence could produce equal industrial disturbance. ”

“ Our woollen manufacturers have been more successful than any other class of workmen, in persuading the legislature that the prosperity of the nation depended upon the success and extension of their particular business. They have not only obtained a monopoly against the consumers, by an absolute prohibition of importing woollen cloths from any foreign country; but they have likewise obtained another monopoly against the sheep farmers and growers of wool, by a similar prohibition of the exportation of live sheep and wool. ”