

INDUSTRIES 



the enterprise had to be given up in 1873. 

 Apart from minor local difficulties, the cause of 

 failure lay in the fact that whereas 30,000 tons 

 were required every year if the factory was to be 

 worked at a profit, not more than 7,000 were 

 supplied. The farmers were not willing to 

 modify their modes of cultivation sufficiently to 

 produce the amount required. To achieve the 

 desired result some 3,000 acres, or, allowing for 

 rotation of crops, 6,000 acres, would have had 

 to be devoted to the cultivation of beet. 1 



Turning now to the other group of industries, 

 which include some half-dozen species of textile 

 manufacture and the manufacture of ready-made 

 clothing and of corsets, and which find work for 

 about six or seven thousand people, two-thirds of 

 whom are women, we find their connexion with 

 Suffolk broadly explained by reference to a single 

 economic principle. They may all be considered 

 as having arisen to utilize the supply of labour 

 created by the cloth industry, which in one form 

 or another had been carried on in Suffolk from 

 the end of the thirteenth till the beginning of 

 the nineteenth century. The first and most 

 notable phase of this industry, the making of 

 coloured (chiefly blue) broad cloths and kersies of 

 heavier texture, reached the height of its pros- 

 perity by the end of the fifteenth century, was 

 visibly declining under Charles I, and is little 

 heard of after the Restoration, having gradually 

 passed to the west and north of England. In 

 part it was replaced by the making of the ' new 

 draperies' bays, says and calimancoes, which was 

 set up in Elizabeth's reign, and of which Sudbury 

 was the centre, and by the weaving of sailcloth 

 and other hempen fabrics, the former at Ipswich, 

 the latter at Stowmarket, Halesworth, Bungay, 

 and all along the northern border of the county. 

 But the weaving of these fabrics was not a full 

 equivalent for the industry that had been lost. 

 During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries 

 the amount of weaving done in Suffolk con- 

 tinually declined, and the chief occupation of the 

 county, as far as the textile manufactures was 

 concerned, was the combing of wool and the 

 spinning of yarn for the worsted weavers of Nor- 

 folk. At the beginning of the nineteenth century 

 both the spinning and the weaving, whether of 

 wool or of hemp, were fast being driven out by 

 the competition of the power-looms of Yorkshire. 

 There was thus at this time in Suffolk a large 

 fund of cheap technical skill seeking occupation, 

 and offering an excellent opportunity to the in- 

 dustrial capitalist who knew how to divert it into 

 some profitable channel. The first to occupy 

 the vacant field were the master silk-weavers of 

 Spitalfields. The increased cost of living in 

 London and the consequent advance in wages 

 secured by the Spitalfields Act was leading them 

 to transfer a good deal of their work to the 

 country, and much of it went to Suffolk. After 



1 Journ. of the Roy. Agric. Soc. (1898), 345. 



serving for a century as an outpost of London, 

 Sudbury has recently been selected as the indus- 

 trial head quarters of a number of old Spitalfields 

 firms. Power-loom weaving of silk has been 

 largely introduced, but the hand-loom weavers 

 still number several hundreds. 



About the time of the introduction of silk 

 weaving, the pure woollen and hempen fabrics of 

 Suffolk were being replaced by checks and fustians, 

 a mixture of woollen or cotton yarn with linen, 

 and these in their turn gave way to drabbet, a 

 mixture of linen and cotton, which is still, along 

 with other mixed fabrics, largely made at Haver- 

 hill and at Syleham. Here again the hand-loom 

 has gradually given way to the power-loom, but 

 its use in the silk and drabbet weaving for several 

 generations after it had been abandoned in the 

 weaving of woollen cloth served to soften the 

 transition between the old form of industry and 

 the new. About the middle of the nineteenth 

 century two new branches of textile manufacture 

 were introduced into the county, which are still 

 entirely retained by the hand-loom the weaving 

 of horse-hair and of cocoanut fibre. 2 At the 

 present time there are altogether about 1,800 

 hand-loom weavers in Suffolk, half of whom are 

 men engaged in making mats and matting, and 

 the other half mainly women weaving horse-hair 

 and silk. That these representatives of the old 

 Suffolk textile industry should still be so numerous 

 is a striking proof of the tenacity of an industrial 

 tradition and of its adaptability in the hands of 

 the enterprising capitalist. 



But if to this body of workers are added the 

 power-loom weavers, the total, which will be 

 somewhere near 3,000, will be far from an 

 equivalent for the numbers who found employ- 

 ment in the woollen manufacture in the middle 

 of the eighteenth century. According to a very 

 moderate estimate there were then 1,500 combers 

 and 36,000 spinners. The spinners were all 

 women and children, and though their earnings 

 were very small, there must have been consider- 

 able economic pressure upon them to find some 

 other employment when the woollen manufac- 

 ture failed them. This large fund of cheap 

 labour eagerly seeking occupation has at different 

 times attracted various industries into the county, 

 in addition to the new textile manufactures 

 already mentioned. Straw-plaiting was one of 

 these. It was carried on in the south-western 

 corner of the county as early as 1831 ; in 1851 

 there were 2,200 women and girls employed in 

 this way ; in 1871 they numbered 2,335 ; but 

 in 1 88 1 they were reduced to 781. They are 

 said to have earned from 8s. to los. a week, but 



1 About this time the cultivation of flax was being 

 much advocated in Suffolk agricultural meetings, and 

 a flax netting mill was started at Eye which employed 

 nearly loo hands, but it has long been closed. White, 

 Direct. 1855, p. 594, and J. L. Green, Rural Indus- 

 tries of England, III. 



253 



