OLD TRICKS

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVIII, Issue 198, 4 August 1928, Page 12

OLD TRICKS

OF THE WOOLLEN TRADE.

We are often inclined, to believe, that business morality' to-day is at a lower ebb than in the early history of England. From old records, however, one learns that even in the twelfth century they had some business practices which were at any rate more blatant than those employed to-day. We are told, for example, that dyers, weavers and fullers will not work on the clothes of others except for an excessive wage, and what is worse, the dyers often change the wool, and the weavers the yarn, and the fullers the whole cloth.” The excessive stretching of the cloth on tenter frames to make it appear wider grew to such a pitch that it was complained that “if a gentleman make a livery for his man, in the first shower of rain it may fit his page.” An Act of Parliament in te reign of Henry VIII lays do.wn for the prevention of fraudulent spinning, that “the weaver shall weave, worke, and put into the webe .... as moch and all the same yerne as the clothier shall deliver, and restore the surplus without any more oyle, brene, moisture, dust, sand, and any other thing.” Regrettable as it may seem to those who love to conjure up twelfth century which never existe. save in the minds of twentieth -entury people, adulteration and all Jic tricks of the trade were practis'd in the making of cloth as well as the marketing of foodstuffs. “Victual that are sold.” said St. Thoms . Aquinas, “are often not pure, and therefore have not the same value as homegrown produce”: a remark having a familiar ring to-day.