Cologne Economic History Paper Universität zu Köln Seminar Wirtschafts- und für Sozialgeschichte 01-2006 Alfred Reckendrees Diverse Paths to Factory Production, 1780s- 1840s: the Woollen Cloth Industry in the West Riding of Yorkshire and in the West of the Rhineland (Prussian Rhineprovince) Cologne Economic History Paper Ed.: Toni Pierenkemper/Alfred Reckendrees Seminar für Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte Department of Economic and Social History Universität zu Köln – D-50923 Köln University of Cologne – D-50923 Cologne - Germany [email protected] Cologne Economic History Paper Universität zu Köln Seminar Wirtschafts- und für Sozialgeschichte 01-2006 Alfred Reckendrees Diverse Paths to Factory Production, 1780s- 1840s: the Woollen Cloth Industry in the West Riding of Yorkshire and in the West of the Rhineland (Prussian Rhineprovince) Cologne Economic History Paper Ed.: Toni Pierenkemper/Alfred Reckendrees Seminar für Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte Department of Economic and Social History Universität zu Köln – D-50923 Köln University of Cologne – D-50923 Cologne - Germany [email protected] Alfred Reckendrees Diverse Paths to Factory Production, 1780s-1840s: the Woollen Cloth Industry in the West Riding of Yorkshire and in the West of the Rhineland (Prussian Rhine-Province) The author is grateful for any comment: [email protected] 1. Challenging the “Henderson View” 3 2. Production of woollen cloth 5 3. Working definitions: the firm, the machine, and the factory 8 3.1 The firm 8 3.2 The machine 9 3.3 The factory 10 4. “Pre-industrial” systems of production 10 4.1 West Riding, Yorkshire 12 3.2 The west of the Rhineland [since 1819: Regierungsbezirk Aachen (administrative district Aix- la-Chapelle), Prussian Rhine-Province] 15 5. The implementation of machinery, the diffusion of mechanical production, and the emergence of the factory 18 5.1 On machinery 19 5.2 Workforce and the scope of the factory 31 6. Markets, sales, and production 36 6.1 Markets and sales 36 6.2 Production 40 7. Explanations for divergence and similarities 42 References 44 Summary This paper compares the industrial development of the two leading British and German woollen cloth regions in the late 18th and the beginning of the 19th century. It focuses on the implementation of the industrial capitalism’s para- digmatic new system of production, the factory system. At the stage of the “Industrial Revolution” the West Riding of Yorkshire and the west of the Rhineland (Prussian Rhine-Province; an industrial district marked by the cities of Aix-la-Chapelle, Düren, Montjoie, and Eupen) had become the predominant industrial woollen cloth regions of their countries. The West Riding was much larger than its German counterpart and its figures of production were, of course, much higher. Both regions pioneered however the mechanisation of the national cloth industries – consid- ered that there was no German nation-state before 1871. The industrialists of the West Riding introduced spinning and carding machinery about 25 years earlier than the clothiers in the west of the Rhineland. However, about 1830 the scope of the typical factory had become compara- ble. The industry of the British region was much larger than the cloth industry of the Rhenish region, but the Rhen- ish factories acquired a comparable range of mechanical production and achieved even a higher degree of vertical integration. Large Rhenish clothiers producing in centralised factories increasingly exploited power machines that operated nearly all kinds of textile machines, nevertheless the looms were still operated by hand. The weavers were mostly centralised into factory workshops, but there was still a remarkable domestic production. Yet this domestic production as well as the artisan production was affiliated to the factory system. As a result of the rapid improve- ments in the west of the Rhineland, the two regional industries competed seriously on the cloth markets of the world. The implementation of the factory system in the two regions followed different lines that are analysed in this paper. The differences are explained by the structure of the respective traditional system of cloth production and by differ- ent types of products, the similarities are explained by production costs and changing market conditions. Cologne Economic History Paper 01-2006 3 1. Challenging the “Henderson View” The emergence of industrial capitalism in the late 18th and the beginning 19th century may be considered as a “watershed” in the economic history of Europe with respect to the systems of production and accu- mulation and to the system of institutional arrangements. While the term “watershed” associates the pre- sumption of a definable place (or time), the transition to industrial capitalism was not a unitary but a multi-faceted development over time and space. Depending on definitions, it lasted nearly one century. However defined, the emergence of industrial capitalism was expressed by economic, technical, social, scientific, and legal change (sometimes political change, too) that fundamentally altered economics and society. One of the most significant characteristics that allow an analytical discrimination between the emerging industrial capitalism and the commercial capitalism of the 15th to the 18th century, though proto-industrial developments should not be underestimated, is the implementation of the factory system. Within only a few decades the new system of production became most important in the highly developed economic regions of Western Europe, and it influenced strongly the process of accumulation. Therefore, the factory system is not only emblematic but also paradigmatic for the “new economy” of industrial capitalism. Yet the factory system was never exclusive, rather there were different interdependent coexist- ing systems of production. As the industrial sector always consisted of different and, more or less, entan- gled systems of production, the factory system did not become dominant in terms of employment. As this perception is mainly an old story of economic and social history, the factory system still remains an important analytical category for research. This concerns not only the sources we can employ. The most important questions regarding the emergence of industrial capitalism are in some way or other re- lated to the “factory”. This is, for instance, true for the supply of capital, labour force and labour relations, entrepreneurial and technical knowledge, and even the development of the markets and their penetration. Thus, the factory system may be regarded as a “core” of industrial capitalism. Used as an analytical cate- gory, it unfolds multi-faceted perspectives on different national, regional, or sectoral economic develop- ments of the 18th and 19th century. The purpose of this paper is not as far-reaching as this general concept. It aims at a comparative analysis of the industrial developments of the two leading British and German woollen cloth regions of the 18th and 19th century, the West Riding of Yorkshire and the west of the Prussian Rhineland, i.e. the region marked by the cities of Aix-la-Chapelle (Aachen), Düren, Montjoie, and Eupen. It focuses in particular on the respective implementation of the factory system in the period from the 1780s to the 1840s. Other as- pects of the emergence of industrial capitalism, as they are described above, are considered only from the “perspective of the factory”. This paper does not provide a new interpretation of the industrial development in the West Riding of Yorkshire. This would be too pretentious in view of the thorough and painstaking research, especially by R.G. Wilson, David Jenkins, Derek Gregory, Maxine Berg, or Pat Hudson.1 In fact, I am indebted to their insightful and controversial interpretations. Unfortunately, economic history did not similarly explore the industrial development of the west of the Rhineland.2 Remarkable research has only been done on the re- 1 Wilson, Gentlemen (1971); Wilson, Supremacy (1973); Jenkins, Factory (1973); Jenkins, West Riding (1975); Jenkins/Ponting, British Wool (1987); Gregory, Transformation (1982); Berg, Age (1985); Hudson, Genesis (1986); Hudson, Revolution (1992); Hudson, Proto-industrialization (1994). 2 Some of the cloth factories of Aix-la-Chapelle delivered their “archives” as a raw material Ersatz to the Word War I authorities; Janssen, Geschichte (1940), 5; and many records were also destroyed during the 2nd World War. Furthermore, the regional firms, the chamber of commerce, and even some cities of the region have been rather unaware of history. There are however some con- temporary publications, older dissertations, and popular books that will be noted when they are employed. 4 gional proto-industrial development3 pioneered by Herbert Kisch.4 Despite the lack of research, there is, remarkably, a predominant interpretation of the German woollen cloth industry that was formulated first in 1954 by William Henderson: ‘At first only slow progress was made in extending the use of modern ma- chinery in the German woollen and worsted industries’5 Henderson probably drew his predication from the literature on the German cotton or worsted industries but, in spite of this little fault, his superficial verdict has never been challenged. The dominant perception of the German woollen cloth industry rather reproduces the “Henderson view”: (1.) technical development lagged at least three decades behind the de- velopment in Britain, and (2.) industrial