.yC.NA,' ^ SCOTTISH HISTORY SOCIETY FOURTH SERIES VOLUME 6 The Dundee Textile Industry PETER CARMICHAEL OF ARTHURSTONE 1809-1891 The Dundee Textile Industry 1790-1885 FROM THE PAPERS OF PETER CARMICHAEL OF ARTHURSTONE edited by Enid Gauldie b.phil. ★ EDINBURGH printed for the Scottish History Society by T. AND A. CONSTABLE LTD 1969 © Scottish History Society 1969 ^ 0 :_ ^" ^^97°/8 Printed in Great Britain PREFACE It was at the suggestion of Mr David Walker that I first visited Arthurstone in the hope that letters or drawings of Peter Carmichael might have been preserved there. I am grateful to the present owner of Arthurstone, Major Peter Carmichael, for allowing me to read and select for publication the papers left by his great-great-uncle, and for his patience, kindness and help- fulness to me during my work. I must also acknowledge the help I have received from the firm of Baxter Brothers and Company and from the staffs of Dundee University Library and Dundee Public Libraries. The discovery of the manuscript and the editorial work upon it have arisen from the activities of the regional research group working within the department of modern History of the university of Dundee. E.G. Dundee February, 1969 A generous contribution from the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland towards the cost of producing this volume is gratefully acknowledged by the Council of the Society CONTENTS Preface v Introduction xiii AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF PETER CARMICHAEL 1790-183 3 : The flax trade in Dundee and district 1833-1842: First appointment with Baxter Brothers MEMOIR OF PETER CARMICHAEL 1842-1853: Improvements in machinery 97 1854-1866: The effect of wars on the trade of Dundee 1867-1885: Country retreat and the decline of linen Glossary 245 Index 249 ILLUSTRATIONS Portrait of Peter Carmichael frontispiece Maps of Dundee, 1793 -1874 ix View of Dens Works, Dundee 2 Opening of Baxter Park, Dundee, 1863 96 Drawings of patent weft winding machine, 1852 138 Introduction The papers presented in this volume reveal the life of a Victorian textile engineer and the history of the firm which he came to lead. Peter Carmichael was bom in 1809, the son of James Carmichael, then manager of a flax mill at Kirkland in Fife. The family had been originally small farmers in Speyside, driven away from the land and into industry by dearth. After his father had settled in Dundee as tenant of a small flax mill in Lower Dens, Peter was educated at Dun- dee Grammar School and on leaving school served an apprenticeship at the nearby Monifieth Foundry, learning there the making of textile machinery. He worked as an engineer in London and Leeds, but in 1833 returned to Dundee, where he was soon offered the post of mill manager for the firm of Baxters, with whom he remained for the rest of his life. The Baxter family had had interests in flax since the early eighteenth century, but by 1833 had established their busi- ness as mill-spinners, merchants and manufacturers as one of the fore- most in the trade. Carmichael applied to the business his consider- able abilities as a manager of men and an inventor of machines. Baxters soon recognised his worth to them, making him manager over all the mills shortly after his first appointment, and a partner in 1852. The firm prospered increasingly and by the 1880s had become the largest flax firm in the world. From 1872 Carmichael was its senior partner. In 1869 he followed the example of other prosperous businessmen, the success of whose activities had dimin- ished the amenity of their home towns, by purchasing a country estate: the lands of Arthurstone, near Meigle, in Perthshire. In his later years he spent more and more time in the country but con- tinued to take an active interest in Baxter Brothers until his death in 1891. His remarkable advance up the social scale had been matched by his increasing wealth, and he left at his death a fortune of ^id.ooo.1 1 Calendar of Confirmations and Inventories ... Scotland, 1891 (Edinburgh, 1892), p. 135. XIV DUNDEE TEXTILE INDUSTRY The first part of these papers is a series of autobiographical remini- scences written by Peter Carmichael himself in his old age. In these he relates his own story against the background of the linen industry, particularly as it affected his family and himself in Dundee. This autobiography, written in a simple and effective style, unfortunately breaks off in 1842. The character of Peter Carmichael, as revealed through his own writing and particularly in his letters, contrasts pleasantly with the traditionally accepted picture of the ruthless, hypocritical Victorian textile man. He was a warm and affectionate man, although always reserved with those not close to him. He was saved from pompous- ness or intolerance by a cast of mind which found humour in most situations. His wide reading gave him a pleasant literary style. He was a devotedly religious man, both in his observance of Christian duties and in his private thoughts, but his family life was not conducted with Calvinistic severity. The reminiscent delight with which he recounts in an early chapter a dance in the kitchen at his home, and the hilarity which met the fiddlers’ fall into the box-bed,1 shows a man who never despised entertainment and fun even when his own days were rigorously bound by the needs of his work. This narrative betrays clearly the increasing perplexity with which Vic- torians of conscience and humanity faced a world in which their business interests seemed to conflict more and more uncomfortably with the needs of the people employed by them. After 1842 the papers continue in the form of a biography with letters, gathered together by Alexander Monfries, tutor to Car- michael’s children. Because the narrative linking Carmichael’s letters after 1842 was written by this tutor, socially and financially de- pendent upon him, its tone is of uncritical adulation, untempered by the kind of humour which Carmichael himself would have shown or by disinterested appreciation of his importance. This makes it all the more necessary to place the subject of this memoir in his context and to consider the effect he had upon the firm of which he became head, the position of that firm in the town of Dundee and the place of the town in the linen trade of Britain. The period which Carmichael served in Dundee saw a complete change not only in the importance of the flax industry but also in 1 See below, p. 83. INTRODUCTION XV the extent of the influence which could be exerted by any individual upon that industry. After the mid-nineteenth century there can have been few spheres of hfe in which ability counted for less than in jute and flax. In the 1850s and 1860s profits bore hardly any relation to ability or efficiency. At the height of the boom any man who could buy or rent a tumbledown mill could make a fortune. After the boom, shrinking markets and wildly fluctuating costs produced a situation in which entrepreneurial skills could have little effect on the downward trend of the industry. It was, therefore, of importance that Peter Carmichael’s return to Dundee in 1833, after his training and experience in London and Leeds, coincided with what may have been the only occasion during the nineteenth century when his kind of abihty could have made a lasting impression on the industry. This was the period before flax processes had been successfully mechanised. Dundee had still to reckon with Aberdeen as a serious competitor in the linen trade and had not yet caught up with Leeds. Yet by 1870 Dundee was the most important producer of coarse linens in Britain. Various factors had influenced that change of situation. One of these was the establishment by Baxters, under Carmichael's direc- tion, of the first successful power-weaving factory. But, while this innovation was undoubtedly of importance in speeding production and regulating quality, it was not the only influence on development. The importance of mechanisation must be considered alongside the impact which the trade felt from the establishment of the railway system around Dundee and the consequent expansion of markets. A Mexican tariff reduction in 1842 created openings for coarse linens at a time when the capturing of the government contract for duck canvas by Richards and Company of Aberdeen might have left Baxters without an outlet for their increased production. Two great wars brought orders for exactly the kind of product Baxters was geared to produce: tents for the armies in the Crimea, sails for the supply ships, gun-covers and biscuit bagging for the forces of the North in the American Civil War. Carmichael’s careful control of cost and quahty and his streamlining of production processes helped Baxters to take advantage of this kind of opportunity; but they could not create it. Similarly during the 1870s, when the world recession in trade set in, the greater efficiency of Baxters helped the firm to xvi DUNDEE TEXTILE INDUSTRY escape the worst of its effects, and the credit for that greater efficiency was Carmichael’s; but no amount of skill or foreknowledge could prevent the drastic falling away of demand. Carmichael’s inventive talent and managerial ability, and to some extent his uncompromis- ing character, did influence the trade during the years of greatest increase and may have helped to mitigate the less desirable effects of so rapid a development. Contemporaries were in no doubt at all about the contribution made by Carmichael to textile engineering.