THE WOOLLEN INDUSTRY IN IRELAND. 



401 



furnished by him it appears that from 1874 to 1889 the number of power 

 looms employed in the industry increased from 307 to 925. There are also 

 no small number of looms engaged in the home weaving industry, both for 

 export and for local use. This is an industry which has escaped statistical 

 record, but the importance of which ought not to be underestimated. From 

 the investigation made by the Irish Industries Association and by the 

 writer,' it is certain that the County of Donegal at this day exports home- 

 made cloth mostly for foreign markets, amounting to nearly half the total 

 exports of Ireland at the date of the Williamite legislation of 1698-99. 

 Since 1889 the factory industry has held its own, but not much more. 

 Factories at that date numbered 82— they are now 114. The hands 

 employed numbered 3,443 — they are now 3,323. Irish tweeds are noted 

 for their durability and honesty of workmanship, but have hitherto suffered 

 from the defect in designing power which has beset all modern Irish indus- 

 tries into which an artistic element enters, and which have been cut loose 

 from the traditional style that still guides the Donegal wool-workers. Irish 

 manufacturers have generally shown themselves much more alive to the 

 necessity of having modern machinery than to that of employing competent 

 designers. This defect, however, is being largely remedied in the present 

 day. Irishmen, unfortunately, have seldom received the training in applied 

 art necessary to enable them to fill the position of designers to woollen 

 factories, and at present, a factory which is not content merely to watch the 

 English output and copy what is going there, has usually to import an 

 English or Scotch designer. In some cases a marked expansion of business 

 has followed from this step, and there are now mills in Ireland which can and 

 do turn out goods, particularly in cheviots, equal in every respect to the 

 finest woollen manufactures of Great Britain. Even in the latter there is a 

 very large field for improvement and new invention in the matter of design- 

 ing, and if Ireland, where labour is good and cheap, and where adulteration 

 and shoddy are unknown, could develop original designing power in this 

 branch of industry, the latter might yet rival the linen manufacture of 

 the North as one of the main sources of Irish prosperity. 



The Loom of Penelope. 

 (From a Vase Painting 400 b.c.) 



2 D 



