An Account by William Radcliffe 1828

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

On Power Looms: An Account by William Radcliffe 1828 rom the year 1770 to 1788 a complete change had gradually been effected in the spinning of yarns—that of wool had disappeared altogether, and that of linen was also nearly gone. Cotton, cotton, cotton, was become the almost universal Fmaterial for employment. The hand wheels, with the exception of one establishment were all thrown into lumber-rooms, the yarn was all spun on common jennies, the carding for all numbers, up to 40 hanks in the pound, was done on carding engines; but the finer numbers of 60 to 80 were still carded by hand, it being a general opinion at that time that machine-carding would never answer for fine numbers. In weaving no great alteration had taken place during these 18 years, save the introduction of the fly-shuttle, a change in the woollen looms to fustians and calico, and the linen nearly gone, except the few fabrics in which there was a mixture of cotton. To the best of my recollection there was no increase of looms during this period,—but rather a decrease. Although our family and some others in the neighbourhood during the latter half of the time, earned from three to four fold-wages to what the same families had heretofore done, yet, upon the whole, the district was not much benefited by the change; for what was gained by some families who had the advantage of machinery, might, in a great measure, be said to be lost to the others, who had been compelled to throw their old cards and hand-wheels aside as lumber.... The next fifteen years, viz. from 1788 to 1803, which fifteen years I will call the golden age of this great trade, which has been ever since in a gradual decline.....

Copy Link

Recommended publications

Prices and Profits in Cotton Textiles During the Industrial Revolution C
PRICES AND PROFITS IN COTTON TEXTILES DURING THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION C. Knick Harley PRICES AND PROFITS IN COTTON TEXTILES DURING THE 1 INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION C. Knick Harley Department of Economics and St. Antony’s College University of Oxford Oxford OX2 6JF UK <[email protected]> Abstract Cotton textile firms led the development of machinery-based industrialization in the Industrial Revolution. This paper presents price and profits data extracted from the accounting records of three cotton firms between the 1770s and the 1820s. The course of prices and profits in cotton textiles illumine the nature of the economic processes at work. Some historians have seen the Industrial Revolution as a Schumpeterian process in which discontinuous technological change created large profits for innovators and succeeding decades were characterized by slow diffusion. Technological secrecy and imperfect capital markets limited expansion of use of the new technology and output expanded as profits were reinvested until eventually the new technology dominated. The evidence here supports a more equilibrium view which the industry expanded rapidly and prices fell in response to technological change. Price and profit evidence indicates that expansion of the industry had led to dramatic price declines by the 1780s and there is no evidence of super profits thereafter. Keywords: Industrial Revolution, cotton textiles, prices, profits. JEL Classification Codes: N63, N83 1 I would like to thank Christine Bies provided able research assistance, participants in the session on cotton textiles for the XII Congress of the International Economic Conference in Madrid, seminars at Cambridge and Oxford and Dr Tim Leung for useful comments.
[Show full text]
Bulletin Vol 46 No3 2016 V4.Pub
addleworth istorical ociety ulletin Volume 46 Number 3 2016 Bulletin of the Saddleworth Historical Society Volume 46 Number 3 2016 New Additions to the Archives The Family Papers of Joseph Whitehead Johnson of Leeds Mike Buckley 59 A Saddleworth Commemorative Jug Mike Buckley 72 Memory Lane Una Ross 78 Members of my Family who took part in WWII Patricia Foster 83 Obituary Keith Taylor 87 Cover Illustration: Mary Jane Johnson (née Whitehead (c1840-1905) SHS Archive ©2016 Saddleworth Historical Society and individual contributors and creators of images. i ii SHS Bulletin, Vol. 46, No. 3, 2016 NEW ADDITIONS TO THE ARCHIVES The Family Papers of Joseph Whitehead Johnson of Leeds Mike Buckley The Society acquired a collection of deeds and family papers at an auction by Capes Dunn on the 29th November 2016. The lot, which was described as an ‘Interesting Collection of mainly 19th Century ephemera relating to the Whitehead, Buckley and Radcliffe families from the Shaw Hall and Shaw Hall Bank areas of Saddleworth’ turned out to have belonged to the Johnson family of Leeds who, though never having resided in the district, had acquired the bulk of the papers through marriage. The collection is a mixture of wills, deeds and other household documents spanning a century and a half and is a useful example of how deeds and papers belonging to a particular property or family can end up in the most unlikely and unrelated places. The earliest documents belonged to the Buckley family of Shaw Hall Bank. Following the sale of the James Farrer’s manorial estate in 1791, the large Shaw Hall Bank farm was bought by John Buckley of Abels (1704-1795) and three of his sons.
[Show full text]
The Arkwrights
THE ARKWRIGHTS The Industrial Re30lution at Stockport and Marple GEORGE UNWIN, M.A., M.Com. ~rofuirof Economic History in the U?lioersity of Manche~ter with Chapters by ARTHUR HULME and GEORGE TAYLOR, M.A. MANCHESTER - - AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS LONDON, NEW YORK, 8rC. LONGMANS, GREEN & CO. '924 PREFACE Publications of the Utzio~rjityof Manckerter HREE leading contemporary authorities on the No. CLXII. early history of the cotton industry and of the Tfactory system-Robert Owen, William Radcliffe, and John Kennedy-agree in attributing considerable im- portance to the achievements of Samuel Oldknow, who first turned the new spinning inventions to full account by the production of finer cotton fabrics in successful rivalry with the East. In his delightful autobiogl-aptly, Owe11 has told us how, soon after he became an apprentice in Mr. McGuffog's shop at Stamford, Oldknow's British Mull Muslins beean4 to disvlace those of Indian manu- facture and were eagerly bought up by the nobility at half-a-guinea a yard. His subsequent account of Oldknow's beginnings as a master spinner anti of how " the handsonle and imposing mill at Mellor " proved a stumbling block to the ardent young Welshman's earliest ambitions will be found recorded in this book in Owen's inimitable style. This cotton mill. which ~assedinto the hands of the Arkwright family, has destroyed by fire in I 892, and has since that date been a picturesque and interesting ruin. A detached portion, however, lying by the river-side and within a stone's-throw of the residence built bv Oldknow.
[Show full text]
“A Stitch in Time”
Curriculum Units by Fellows of the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute 1987 Volume VI: Science, Technology, and Society “A Stitch in Time” Curriculum Unit 87.06.05 by Pamela M. Fowler Man began weaving as early as the Stone Age. He learned to make rough clothing from the filters of the flax plant. By the time of the Ancient Egyptians, making linen was a fine art. The discovery of how to unwind the thread of the silkworm cocoons and weave them into cloth was made around 2000 B.C. by the Chinese. About the same time the people of India found out how to make cloth from the fibers of the cotton plants. It wasn’t until the middle Ages and Renaissance Period that people began to weave cloth and clothing for their families in their homes on handlooms they made. Although Indian rugs and blankets are still woven by hand, today most woven cloth is done by automatic looms run by man. How cloth is woven into fabric is still pretty much a mystery to may students. If one is not an avid seamstress the question remains dormant in the brain. Through “A Stitch in Time” I intend to challenge my students intellectually and creatively. Continuing from a previously written unit “A Stitch in Time” entails the explanation of the various tools to change thread into cloth. This unit is divided into five phases. Phase I: Introduction During this phase of “A Stitch in Time” I will introduce the basic information that each student will need to now prior to beginning the class.
[Show full text]
Early Modern Rural By-Employments: a Re-Examination of the Probate Inventory Evidence*
Early modern rural by-employments: a re-examination of the probate inventory evidence* early modern rural by-employments by Sebastian A. J. Keibek and Leigh Shaw-Taylor Abstract It has generally been presumed that most men in early modern rural England significantly augmented the income from their principal occupation by engaging in one or more subsidiary economic activities. The historical evidence for the prevalence of such by-employments is almost exclusively based on probate inventories. Historians have determined by-employment incidences for regions and time intervals throughout early modern England through straightforward frequency counts of inventories that indicate multiple gainful activities. This article argues that such frequency counts are unreliable. Using early eighteenth-century Cheshire and Lancashire as a test case, we demonstrate that the by-employed were more likely to be probated than those with only one source of income. Using occupa- tional data from parish registers and estimates of contemporary livestock numbers, we assess the degree to which the by-employed are over-represented in the probate record. We conclude that inventories vastly exaggerate by-employment incidence. This conclusion has a currency beyond the temporal and geographic bounds of our test case since the cause of the exaggeration – the probate record’s inherent wealth bias – was common to the whole of England, throughout the early modern period. We therefore conclude that by-employments were not nearly as ubiquitous as has been assumed. Historians of early modern England have often argued that contemporary individuals generated significant income from by-employments, that is, economic activities additional to their principal occupations.
[Show full text]
Romantic Globalism
Romantic Globalism Romantic Globalism BRITISH LITERATURE AND MoDERN WorLD ORDER, 1750–1830 T Evan Gottlieb THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS COLUMBus Copyright © 2014 by The Ohio State University. All rights reserved. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gottlieb, Evan, 1975– author. Romantic globalism : British literature and modern world order, 1750–1830 / Evan Gottlieb. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-8142-1254-7 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-8142-1254-9 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978-0-8142-9357-7 (cd-rom) ISBN-10: 0-8142-9357-3 (cd-rom) 1. English literature—18th century—History and criticism. 2. Globalization in literature. 3. Romanticism—Great Britain. I. Title. PR149.G54G68 2014 820.9'006—dc23 2013037404 Cover and text design by Juliet Williams Type set in Adobe Minion Pro Printed by Thomson-Shore, Inc. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. ANSI Z39.48–1992. 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 CONTENts T Acknowledgments vii INTRODUCTION Recovering Romantic Globalism 1 CHAPTER ONE Going Global: The Scottish Enlightenment Theorizes Modernity 17 CHAPTER TWO The Global Gothic: Sympathy, Cosmopolitanism, and Tolerance in Radcliffe’s Romances 44 CHAPTER THREE Fighting Words: British Poetry and the Napoleonic Wars 68 CHAPTER FOUR The Clash of Civilizations and Its Discontents: Byron, Scott, and the East 95 CHAPTER FIVE Modern Sovereignty and Global Hospitality in Scott’s European Waverley Novels 121 CONCLUSION Romanticism, Mediation, Globalization 147 Notes 155 Bibliography 188 Index 206 AcKNowLEDGMENts T At the conclusion of a long process of drafting, writing, and revising, it is a true pleasure to thank the many people who helped me along the way.
[Show full text]
The Industrial Revolution and Its Impact on European Society 583 Produced Textiles Fulfilled That Demand
CHAPTER 20 The Industrial Revolution and Its Impact on European Society CHAPTER OUTLINE • The Industrial Revolution in Great Britain • The Spread of Industrialization • The Social Impact of the Industrial Revolution • Conclusion FOCUS QUESTIONS • What conditions and developments coalesced in Great Britain to bring about the first Industrial Revolution? • What were the basic features of the new industrial system created by the Industrial Revolution? • How did the Industrial Revolution spread from Great Britain to the Continent and the United States, and how did industrialization in those L areas differ from British industrialization? • What effects did the Industrial Revolution have on urban life, social classes, family life, and standards of living? • What were working conditions like in the early decades of the Industrial Revolution, and what efforts were made to improve them? HE FRENCH REVOLUTION dramatically and quickly altered the political structure of France, and the Napoleonic conquests Tspread many of the revolutionary principles in an equally rapid and stunning fashion to other parts of Europe. During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, another revolution—an industrial one— was transforming the economic and social structure of Europe, although in a less dramatic and rapid fashion. The period of the Industrial Revolution witnessed a quantum leap in industrial production. New sources of energy and power, especially coal and steam, replaced wind and water to create labor-saving machines that dramatically decreased the use of human and animal labor and, at the same time, increased the level of productivity. In turn, power machinery called for new ways of organizing human labor to maximize the benefits and profits from the new machines; factories replaced shop and home workrooms.
[Show full text]
The Power Loom Puzzle
4 The Power Loom Puzzle The Industrial Revolution was heralded by a flood of inventions and the accumulation of capital which, in new forms, constituted enormous power with which to produce wealth. Innovation was in the air. People were searching for new ways of producing goods at cheaper cost. The conveyor belt was born. Mass production based on the division of labour and the use of mechanical power could have raised the living standards of everybody. Sadly, for the workers, this was not to be: • . without the increase in productive power that is due to industrialization the rise in real wages could not possibly have occurred. The important question is why it was so long delayed. There is no doubt at all that it was delayed; whether there was a small rise, or an actual fall, in the general level of real wages in England between (say) 1780 and 1840 leaves that issue untouched It is the lag of wages behind industrialization which is the thing that has to be explained.' Explanations for this have been partial and none have taken into account the regressive effect of land monopoly. The Marxist critique has conditioned us to believe that capital and the motives of its owners constitute the problematic area. The acquisitive greed of the capitalists is held to be responsible for large- scale poverty and deprivation. From the outset the modern factory system has been blamed. Men had been severed from a tranquil, pastoral history and the machine was nominated as Enemy No. 1. Yet this was ironical, for the machine was as much a victim of the early years of industrial society as were the men.
[Show full text]
Lecture 8 the Industrial Revolution and the Transformation to The
GEOS 24705 ENST 24705 ENSC 21100 Lecture 8 The Industrial Revolution and the transformation to the modern energy system Copyright E. Moyer 2016 Most of U.S. energy use is lost as waste heat total e ~ 40% 70% through transportaon e ~ 21% heat engine turbines e ~ 24% Carnot-style “air engines” are in use • gas only • closed cycle • external combus/on Themes for today • The Industrial Revolu/on and the development of heat engines are related but not the same – industrializaon started before the heat engine – the heat engine ul/mately allowed greater industrializaon • Industrializaon produced profound social & economic upheaval • The upheaval was ampliﬁed by limitaons in energy technology Mills had been mechanized and centralized since Medieval times Grindstone, 1700s, U.S. Yates gristmill, North Carolina U.S. from Hamilton, “The Village Mill in Early New England” Mills had been mechanized and centralized since Medieval times Grindstone, 1700s, U.S. Rock Run gristmill, Maryland U.S. from Hamilton, “The Village Mill in Early New England” Textiles were still a home industry in the mid-1770s but extremely repetitive motions are well suited to mechanization Jersey Spinning Wheel. From: The Story of Source: unknown the Cotton Plant, Frederick Wilkinson, 1912, via Gutenberg.org over 6 spinnners to make thread for 1 weaver as looms improved in 1730s Spinning was mechanized to meet thread demand Spinning jenny, 1764 James Hargreaves power: human Spinning mule, 1779 Samuel Crompton Power: water “Water frame” 1769 fully automated by 1830 John Kay, Richard Arkwright power: horses, then water Mechanization of spinning benefits weavers... from Radcliffe on weaving, 1828...
[Show full text]
The Hand-Loom Weaver and the Power Loom: a Schumpeterian Perspective
The Hand-Loom Weaver and the Power Loom: A Schumpeterian Perspective Robert C. Allen Working Paper # 0004 May 2017 Division of Social Science Working Paper Series New York University Abu Dhabi, Saadiyat Island P.O Box 129188, Abu Dhabi, UAE https://nyuad.nyu.edu/en/academics/divisions/social-science.html The Hand-Loom Weaver and the Power Loom: A Schumpeterian Perspective REVISED by Robert C. Allen Global Distinguished Professor of Economic History Faculty of Social Science New York University Abu Dhabi P.O. Box 129188 Abu Dhabi United Arab Emirates Senior Research Fellow Oxford University Nuffield College New Road Oxford OX1 1NH United Kingdom [email protected] The empirics of this paper rest on John Lyon’s Ph.D. dissertation The Lancashire Cotton Industry and the Introduction of this Powerloom, 1815-1850. This is an impressively well informed and thorough reconstruction of the technology and economics of the industry. This paper could not have been written without it. John Lyons sadly died in 2011. I dedicate the paper to him. This is a revised version of a discussion paper originally issued as Oxford University, Working Papers in Economic and Social History, Number 142, 2016 2017 Abstract Robert C. Allen The Hand Loom Weaver and the Power Loom: A Schumpeterian Perspective , Schumpeter’s ‘perennial gale of creative destruction’ blew strongly through Britain during the Industrial Revolution, as the factory mode of production displaced the cottage mode in many industries. A famous example is the shift from hand loom weaving to the use of power looms in mills. As the use of power looms expanded, the price of cloth fell, and the ‘golden age of the hand loom weaver’ gave way to poverty and unemployment.
[Show full text]
Entrepreneurship and the Industrial Revolution in Britain
Entrepreneurship and the Industrial Revolution in Britain Joel Mokyr Depts. of Economics and History Northwestern University Eitan Berglas School of Economics Tel Aviv University revised, April 2006 The loyal and competent research assistance of Marianne Hinds is acknowledged. Michael Silver helped edit the manuscript. The comments and suggestions of William Baumol, Louis Cain, Andrew Godley, Deirdre McCloskey, and William Baumol have helped improve an earlier draft. Prepared for the “Entrepreneurship in History” conference, New York, Oct 20-21. Forthcoming in William J. Baumol, David S. Landes, and Joel Mokyr, eds., Entrepreneurs and Entrepreneurship in Economic history, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008. 1 Introduction The “New Economic history” has had little patience with entrepreneurial explanations of major economic developments. Ever since the emergence of a cliometric literature on the economic history of modern Britain in the 1970s, economic historians trained in economics have debunked the view that Britain’s late nineteenth century decline could be explained in some way by social factors that led to “entrepreneurial failure.”1 In this essay I will look at entrepreneurship in an earlier period, the decades of the Industrial Revolution. This subject is at least not nearly as controversial as the “Victorian decline.” The Industrial Revolution has remained a staple of the literature (despite ill- conceived attempts to banish it).2 On the Victorian decline, there are now serious doubts that it ever happened at all and that we need a theory of failure in this case. The fundamental intellectual dilemma in explaining the relationship between the Industrial Revolution and entrepreneurship is well-understood. It is, at base, an identification problem.
[Show full text]
Critical and Iconographic Reinterpretations of Three Early Gothic Novels
ADVERTIMENT. Lʼaccés als continguts dʼaquesta tesi queda condicionat a lʼacceptació de les condicions dʼús establertes per la següent llicència Creative Commons: http://cat.creativecommons.org/?page_id=184 ADVERTENCIA. El acceso a los contenidos de esta tesis queda condicionado a la aceptación de las condiciones de uso establecidas por la siguiente licencia Creative Commons: http://es.creativecommons.org/blog/licencias/ WARNING. The access to the contents of this doctoral thesis it is limited to the acceptance of the use conditions set by the following Creative Commons license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/?lang=en . Critical and Iconographic Reinterpretations of three early Gothic Novels. Classical, Medieval, and Renaissance Influences in William Beckford’s Vathek, Ann Radcliffe’s Romance of the Forest and Matthew G. Lewis’s The Monk. UNIVERSITAT AUTONOMA DE BARCELONA Department of English and German PhD in English Studies 2016 Critical and Iconographic Reinterpretations of Three Early Gothic Novels. Classical, Medieval, and Renaissance Influences in William Beckford’s Vathek, Ann Radcliffe’s Romance of the Forest and Matthew G. Lewis’s The Monk. Supervisor Professor Andrew Monnickendam Maria Teresa Marnieri Acknowledgements I would like to thank Professor Andrew Monnickendam, for his invaluable support and precious suggestions, and express my deepest gratitude for his patient and encouraging tutoring. I am indebted to Professor Sara Martín Alegre, Professor Jordi Coral Escola, and Professor Joan Curbet Soler, whose teachings and ideas were a great inspiration, and to Professor Maria Jose Solé Sabater for her constant help and assistance. I am grateful to Professor Stuart Gillespie and Professor David Hopkins for their studies on literary translations that influenced my research.
[Show full text]