AMERICAN INDUSTRIES SINCE COLUMBUS. 185 



were the beginning of a series of protective and restrictive stat- 

 utes in Great Britain, relating to wool and its manufacture, 

 which, extended over a period of nearly five centuries. Some- 

 times this legislation was wise and beneficial ; at others it ham- 

 pered, by almost incredible restrictions, both the growing and 

 the manufacturing interests. A curious study of the relations 

 of legislation to industrial enterprise is offered by the experience 

 of England on this subject. 



The development of the industry was certainly very rapid at 

 the commencement of this policy. At the beginning of the reign 

 of Edward III more than half of the cloth worn in England was 

 imported ; and, in his twenty-eighth year, it is stated that the 

 exports of cloth were threefold the imports. From that time the 

 progress of the industry was steady, if not rapid ; for in Eng- 

 land, as everywhere else, until toward the close of the eighteenth 

 century, the manufacture remained a hand operation, and, there- 

 fore, essentially the same operation as throughout the middle 

 ages. Some improvements in hand-spinning and in the hand- 

 looms were made, but they were not of a kind that radically 

 changed processes or notably facilitated production. The ad- 

 vance consisted largely in the modification of patterns, the intro- 

 duction of new designs, and the better application of the art of 

 dyeing. With our present knowledge we may indeed wonder 

 how the capacity of this hand-machinery sufficed to supply the 

 clothing of the world. These were centuries of almost constant 

 war, in which great armies were uniformed in wool. Occupation 

 enough there must certainly have been for the weavers, notwith- 

 standing the fact that there are repeated accounts in the contem- 

 porary histories of great depressions and constant dispersion of 

 the cloth manufacture. They were nimble-fingered experts, and 

 could perform feats at the loom which would astonish a modern- 

 day weaver. Some of the fabrics they wove, specimens of which 

 remain to us, were marvels of ingenuity both in pattern and col- 

 oring. We have not greatly gained upon them in any of these 

 respects. But the advantages of machine-made cloth over hand- 

 made are obvious, apart from greater productive capacity. No 

 hand-spinner, however dexterous, can impart absolute uniformity 

 to a yarn. Machinery can accomplish a uniformity so perfect 

 that when the scales will detect the variation of the fraction of an 

 ounce it is attributable to carelessness. For the same reason the 

 spinning of the very light yarns, such as are used in that won- 

 derful creation of French genius, the all-wool dress-goods yarns 

 as fine as two-eighties or two-nineties was an impossibility be- 

 fore the application of power to spinning. No human skill, how- 

 ever trained and expert, can throw the shuttle with the precision 

 of power. 



