276 Textiles and Textile Materials Trades 



dressing, etc., — the clothier carried his ware and paid the artisans. 

 He thus employed many distinct classes of artisans and each per- 

 formed only one operation upon the wool or cloth. The excellence of 

 this system consisted in the concentrated direction of all the process 

 by the clothier under a well-defined division of labor. Its greatest 

 defect was the wastes caused by repeated carriage over considerable 

 distances between successive artisans, and the cause of this decen- 

 tralization was fundamentally the fact that power machinery needful 

 to concentrated factory production had not yet been invented. But 

 the clothier's business at this early time required considerable capi- 

 talists and men of broad correspondence who could undertake the 

 risks involved. 



The clothier occupied a \'ery responsible and prominent place in the 

 local community. He was the moneyed man, the paymaster and 

 the employer to the whole vicinity. The neighborhood's activitv 

 and prosperity rested in his hands. One admirer exclaimed, "what 

 an Advantage it is to the Poor to be born under the Influence of a 

 Clothier, who, Hke the Sun, scatters Life and its Support to every one 

 round him."^ How responsible the clothier felt for the welfare of his 

 community is illustrated in Gloucester during the hard times 1619-22 

 when it was reported to the government's inquirers that "One Will 

 Bennett, a very ancient and good clothier, doth offer to live by brown 

 bread and water, rather than his great number of poore people 

 should want work, if he had means to keep them in work." Manv 

 clothiers declared they were compelled to pawn their clothes to keep 

 their people at work.- When a clothier set up in a town it was an 

 earnest of prosperity. For instance, during Mary's reign, one Edward 

 Gascogne was heralded at Winchester, Hants, as one who "hath 

 planted himselfe in that your cittie and hathe there takin in hande 

 the makinge of cloth to the releiffe and settinge on workc of a multi- 

 tude of poore folkes."^ 



From very early date they became employers of labor outside their 

 immediate journeymen and apprentices. They seem to have super- 

 vised directly the spinning of the finer yarns and to have sent the 

 coarser woof wool into the country to be spun.'* In 1467 "spynners, 

 websters, dyers, shermen" are named as employees of the "maisters 



iGent. Mag., 1739:205. 



2 S. P. Dom., Jas. I, CXXVIII, 49. 



3 Stowe MS. 846, fol. 180d; V. C. H., Hants, V, 484. 



^In 1623, for instance, at Reading, Berks; Reading Rec, II, 159; V. C. H., 

 Berks, I, 391. 



