SPINNING AND WEAVING.

Otago Witness, Issue 3102, 27 August 1913, Page 75

SPINNING AND WEAVING.

WONDERFUL PROGRESS OF LANCASHIRE. Some idea of the enormous growth of the county since her mechanical geniuses began to apply automatic actions to machinery, which, with the aid of steam power, gradually displaced the small and innumerable domestic workshops by the establishment of the ever-expanding factory system is to be found in a most informing article by Mr James Haslam m the Liverpool Daily Post. Half the Cotton Trade of the World “ Our chief industry,” he says—“in fact, now the chief industry of the country—is that of the manufacture of cotton fabrics. And what fine tales we could tell his Majesty about this—about its beginning, its growth, its present importance to national wealth, Us world supremacy, its real men and women and lads and lasses who work it, its eveirecurring struggles between masters an men, and the handshakes at the end of them, with some such remark as, Well, we’re aw reet agen till next time. Anyhow, we all know that this cotton industry is the admiration of the world. “Here in this county we have 56,0UU,UUU cotton spindles and 786,000 cotton looms or nearly one-half of the total cotton trade of the whole world. Lancashire has now a population of 4,768,4? j which is 6 ® r than the population of Scotland or of Ireland, and more than twice as great as tne population of Wales. Of the 580,000 men, women, and children employed m the cotton industry of the United Kingdom, about 92 per cent, work in Lancashue mills. , ~ The Growth of Population.— “ The factory towns through which the King passes began to grow mushroomlike at the close of the eighteenth century. If you go back to 1760, when King George 111 ascended the throne our big spinning and weaving towns of to-day were mere villages and hamlets nestling at the feet of green hills or sleeping on the banks of limpid streams. Bat look at the difference of on© or two of them, for example. In 1801 (after 20 yearsj or move of the new factory system) Bolton had a population of 16,000; it has now 181 000. Blackburn came into the century with about 11,000 s ? ul f; P re^ r l t population of this town is 134,000. Oldham started the century with 12,024 people, and in 1911 she had 147,495 citizens. The population of Lancashire altogether was only 672,731 in 1901-a figure which is exceeded to-day by Liverpool alone (with 746,556) or Manchester (with 714,427). The increase in the population of the big towns may be measured at the rate of 1000 to 1500 souls a year Ihw was so in the first half of the nineteenth century. It has been so since. - The Centres of Spinning and Weaving.— “Now, in the four towns—Be., Bolton, Blackburn, Oldham, and Burnley—you get the centres of the spinning and weaving industry. Burnley is the most distinct weaving town. Blackburn has a greater mixture of spinning. But Burnley and Blackburn together are the principal weaving centres. The two towns have about 200,000 power looms and nearly 100,000 cotton operatives. Oldham is the world’s biggest centre of the coarse and medium cotton spinning trade; Bolton holds the same high rank in fine spinning. Both Bolton and Oldham have numerous looms, but they are distinctly spinning towns. Oldham district has 17,000,000 spindles, or more than hall the numbei in all cotton mills in all other European countries combined. Bolton has about 7,000,000 spindles, largely producing a class of yarn that cannot be equalled in any part of the globe. —Why Bolton Spinners Excel. —

“All cotton centres in the world strive, •wherever they can, to come nearer to the level of Bolton. All can get the same class of machinery if they want it, but they cannot secure the same class ol workers. The fine spinning industry was founded, of course, on the invention of a Bolton man—that is, of Samuel Crompton. who completed his spinning mule in 1779 but never" took out a patent for it. Since then Bolton has held the premier position in the production of gossamerlike threads of yarn. A financial magnate of the United S'tates of America, once said that it would have paid America at one time to have presented every spinner and weaver in Lancashire with £SOOO to have transferred his or her services to American mills. Comparing them with the polvglot cotton mill workers of America, an American statistician observed, two or three years ago, that the Lmted States could not hope to compete with Lancashire for generations to come, lie put it in this way: —‘The practice of handling delicate cotton threads, and the art of ■weaving them into fine fabrics, in Lancashire, are bom with the children; they are part of their blood ; the children are bom to spin and weave, and American children cannot hope to equal them in this dav and generation.’ “But we did not take kindly at first to the mechanical devices that gave us such a long start as spinners of yarn and weavers of cloth. Rather than as a maker of manufacturing nations, invention was regarded as the forerunner of the economic ruin of both masters and men.

—Unrecognised Geniuses. — "Poor Janies Hargreaves, of Blackburn, who gave us the spinning jenny in 1764, had to fly for his life. To save himself from mob violence, John Kay, the inventor of the fly-shuttle (1733), had to decamp. He fled, secretly, to France, where he died in poverty. Lancashire to-day doe* not know where or how he was buried. His monument on the Market square in Bury, recentlr erected, tells ns that his fly-«huttle quadrupled the human power of weaving, and placed England in

the front rank as the best market in the world for textile manufactures.

“Richard Arkwright, who patented his water-irame (a spinning machine driven by water) in 1769, and founded the factory system, was com,polled to leave Lancashire. A mill which he erected in Birkacre, near Chorley, was burned down while a powerful body of police and soldiers looked on. As if that were not enough, Lancashire manufacturers combined not to buy any of his yarn when, he went to set up mills elsewhere. Honest Samuel Crompton had to work in secret and fear of his life.

“The first power-loom was invented by the Rev. Edward Cartwright, a Suffolk clergyman, who had never seen a loom in bis life. It was patented in 1785; in 1790 a factory" filled with these looms was entered by an uncontrollable mob of operatives, who destroyed the whole of the machinery. —The Changes of a Century.—

“But from these mad outrages our forefathers proceeded to apply themselves to steady work and improvements. Nevertheless, it is impossible for any stranger to lealise the difference between what exists to-day r and what was endeavoured to he done in the beginning. Samuel Crompton’s mule contained no spindleis. One hundred years ago two men would have thought they were doing exceedingly well by taking charge of 200 spinning spindles, running at 1000 revolutions a minute. To-day one man and two youths take care of 2000 to 3000 spindles running at 9000 and 9500 revolutions per minute. “Year after year new processes are being carried on by self-acting apparatus that would hardly have been dreamt of a comparatively short time ago. Strangers are spellbound by it all; it moves their imagination and makes them think that with the mechanical genius of Lancashire nothing is impossible.”