Modern History Sourcebook:
Richard Guest: The Steam Loom,
1823
Initial advances in the manufacture of textiles used older
methods of power provision - water-mills and so forth. It was
the application of steam power which accelerated the centralization
of textile production in factories.
The new powered machines also leading to the substitution of
women and children for the previously highly-skilled spinners
and weavers. The result was enormous production gains in a very
short period - output increased while labor costs decreased. The
skilled workers were, in the meantime, made poor while the factory
owners became wealthy.
The same powerful agent which so materially forwarded and advanced
the progress of the Cotton Manufacture in the concluding part
of the last century, has lately been further used as a substitute
for manual labour, and the Steam Engine is now applied to the
working of the loom as well as to the preparatory processes....
In 1785, the Rev. E. Cartwright invented a Loom to be worked by
water or steam. The following account of this invention is taken
from the Supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica: -
"Happening to be at Matlock, in the summer of 1784, I fell
in company with some gentlemen of Manchester, when the conversation
turned on Arkwright's spinning machinery. One of the company observed,
that as soon as Arkwright's patent expired, so many mills would
be erected, and so much cotton spun, that hands never could be
found to weave it. To this observation I replied that Arkwright
must then set his wits to work to invent a weaving mill. This
brought on a conversation on the subject, in which the Manchester
gentlemen unanimously agreed that the thing was impracticable;
and in defence of their opinion, they adduced arguments which
I certainly was incompetent to answer or even to comprehend, being
totally ignorant of the subject, having never at that time seen
a person weave. I controverted, however, the impracticability
of the thing, by remarking that there had lately been exhibited
in London, an automaton figure, which played at chess. Now you
will not assert, gentlemen, said I, that it is more difficult
to construct a machine that shall weave, than one which shall
make all the variety of moves which are required in that complicated
game.
"Some little time afterwards, a particular circumstance recalling
this conversation to my mind, it struck me, that, as in plain
weaving, according to the conception I then had of the business,
there could only be three movements, which were to follow each
other in succession, there would be little difficulty in producing
and repeating them. Full of these ideas, I immediately employed
a carpenter and smith to carry them into effect. As soon as the
machine was finished, I got a weaver to put in the warp, which
was of such materials as sail cloth is usually made of. To my
great delight, a piece of cloth, such as it was, was the produce.
"As I had never before turned my thoughts to any thing mechanical,
either in theory or practice, nor had ever seen a loom at work,
or knew any thing of its construction, you will readily suppose
that my first Loom must have been a most rude piece of machinery.
"The warp was placed perpendicularly, the reed fell with
a force of at least half an hundred weight, and the springs which
threw the shuttle were strong enough to have thrown a Congreve
rocket. In short, it required the strength of two powerful men
to work the machine at a slow rate, and only for a short time.
Conceiving in my great simplicity, that I had accomplished all
that was required, I then secured what I thought a most valuable
property, by a patent, 4th April, 1785. This being done, I then
condescended to see how other people wove; and you will guess
my astonishment, when I compared their easy modes of operation
with mine. Availing myself, however, of what I then saw, I made
a Loom in its general principles, nearly as they are now made.
But it was not till the year 1787, that I completed my invention,
when I took out my last weaving patent, August 1st, of that year."
Mr. Cartwright erected a weaving mill at Doncaster, which he filled
with Looms. This concern was unsuccessful, and at last was abandoned,
and some years afterwards, upon an application from a number of
manufacturers at Manchester, Parliament granted Mr. Cartwright
a sum of money as a remuneration for his ingenuity and trouble.
About 1790, Mr. Grimshaw, of Manchester, under a licence from
Mr. Cartwright, erected a weaving factory turned by a Steam Engine.
The great loss of time experienced in dressing the warp, which
was done in small portions as it unrolled from the beam, and other
difficulties arising from the quality of the yarn then spun, were
in this instance formidable obstacles to success; the factory,
however, was burnt down before it could be fully ascertained whether
the experiment would succeed or not, and for many years no further
attempts were made in Lancashire to weave by steam.
Mr. Austin, of Glasgow, invented a similar Loom, in 1789, which
he still further improved in 1798, and a building to contain two
hundredof these Looms was erected by Mr. Monteith, of Pollockshaws,
in 1800.
In the year 1803, Mr. Thomas Johnson, of Bradbury, in Cheshire,
invented the Dressing Frame. Before this invention the warp was
dressed in the Loom in small portions as it unrolled from the
beam, the Loom ceasing to work during the operation. Mr. Johnson's
ma. chine dresses the whole warp at once; when dressed the warp
is placed in the Loom which now works without intermission. A
factory for Steam Looms was built in Manchester, in 1806. Soon
afterwards two others were erected at Stockport, and about 1809,
a fourth was completed in Westhoughton. In these renewed attempts
to weave by steams considerable improvements were made in the
structure of the Looms in the mode of warping, and in preparing
the weft for the shuttle With these improvements, aided by others
in the art of spinning, which enabled the Tinners to make yarn
much superior to that made in 1790, and assisted by Johnson's
machine, which is peculiarly adapted for the dressing of warps
for Steam Looms, the experiment succeeded Before the invention
of the Dressing Frame, one Weaver was required to each Steam Loom,
at present a boy or girl, fourteen or fifteen years of age, can
manage two Steam Looms, and with their help can weave three and
a half times as much cloth as the best hand Weaver. The best hand
Weavers seldom produce a piece of uniform evenness; indeed, it
is next to impossible for them to do so, because a weaker or stronger
blow with the lathe immediately alters the thickness of the cloth,
and after an interruption of some hours, the most experienced
weaver finds it difficult to recommence with a blow of precisely
the same force as the one with which he left off. In Steam Looms,
the lathe gives a steady, certain blow, and when once regulated
by the engineer, moves with the greatest precision from the beginning
to the end of the piece. Cloth made by these Looms, when seen
by those manufacturers who employ hand Weavers, at once excites
admiration and a consciousness that their own workmen cannot equal
it. The increasing number of Steam Looms is a certain proof of
their superiority over the Hand Looms. In 1818, there were in
Manchester, Stockport, Middleton, Hyde, Stayley Bridge, and their
vicinities, fourteen factories, containing about two thousand
Looms. In 1821, there were in the same neighbourhoods thirty-two
factories, containing five thousand seven hundred and thirty-two
Looms. Since 1821, their number has still farther increased, and
there are at present not less than ten thousand Steam Looms at
work in Great Britain.
It is a curious circumstance, that, when the Cotton Manufacture
was in its infancy, all the operations, from the dressing of the
raw material to its being finally turned out in the state of cloth,
were completed under the roof of the weaver's cottage. The course
of improved manufacture which followed, was to spin the yarn in
factories and to weave it in cottages. At the present time, when
the manufacture has attained a mature growth, all the operations,
with vastly increased means and more complex contrivances, are
again performed in a single building. The Weaver's cottage with
its rude apparatus of peg warping, hand cards, hand wheels, and
imperfect looms, was the Steam Loom factory in miniature. Those
vast brick edifices in the vicinity of all the great manufacturing
towns in the south of Lancashire, towering to the height of seventy
or eighty feet, which strike the attention and excite the curiosity
of the traveller, now perform labours which formerly employed
whole villages. In the Steam Loom factories, the cotton is carded,
roved, spun, and woven into cloth, and the same quantum of labour
is now performed in one of these structures which formerly occupied
the industry of an entire district.
A very good Hand Weaver, a man twenty-five or thirty years of
age, will weave two pieces of nine-eighths shirting per week,
each twenty four yards long, and containing one hundred and five
shoots of weft in an inch, the reed of the cloth being a forty-four,
Bolton count, and the warp and weft forty hanks to the pound.
A Steam Loom Weaver, fifteen years of age, will in the same time
weave seven similar pieces. A Steam Loom factory containing two
hundred Looms, with the assistance of one hundred persons under
twenty years of age, and of twenty-five men will weave seven hundred
pieces per week, of the length and quality before described. To
manufacture one hundred similar pieces per week by the hand, it
would be necessary to employ at least one hundred and twenty-five
Looms, because many of the Weavers are females, and have cooking,
washing, cleaning and various other duties to perform; others
of them are children and, consequently, unable to weave as much
as the men. It requires a man of mature age and a very good Weaver
to weave two of the pieces in a week, and there is also an allowance
to be made for sickness and other incidents. Thus, eight hundred
and seventy-five hand Looms would be required to produce the seven
hundred pieces per week; and reckoning the weavers, with their
children, and the aged and infirm belonging to them at two and
a half to each loom, it may very safely be said, that the work
done in a Steam Factory containing two hundred Looms, would, if
done by hand Weavers, find employment and support for a population
of more than two thousand persons.
The Steam Looms are chiefly employed in Weaving printing cloth
and shirtings, but they also weave thicksetts, fancy cords, dimities,
cambrics and quiltings, together with silks, worsteds, and fine
woollen or broad cloth. Invention is progressive, every improvement
that is made is the foundation of another, and as the attention
of hundreds of skilful mechanics and manufacturers is now turned
to the improvement of the Steam Loom, it is probable that its
application will become as general, and its efficiency as great,
in Weaving, as the Jenny, Water Frame and Mule, are in Spinning,
and that it will, in this country at least, entirely supersede
the hand Loom.
From Richard Guest, Compendious History of the Cotton Manufacture (Manchester 1823), pp. 44-48.
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