A HISTORY OF DORSET 



is highly specialized and successful results depend 

 on the individual skill of the worker. 



The use of machinery has brought into the 

 mills most of the home workers on rope, twine, 

 thread, and sail-cloth, but in netting it has only 

 affected certain kinds of work. At present there 

 is no satisfactory machine for making nets with 

 square meshes or making nets which decrease 

 and increase in size, consequently there is a large 

 field open to the home worker. 



Nets are fabrics in which the threads cross each other 

 at right angles, leaving a comparatively wide open 

 space between them. The threads are also knotted 

 at the intersection. The open spaces in the net are 

 called meshes." 



The machinery by which nets are made is 

 very ingenious, but it is the same at Bridport as 

 at Musselburgh or in the United States. The 

 art of net-making by hand is also universal, and 

 has been practised from the earliest times by the 

 most savage as well as the most civilized nations, 

 but its organization as a by - industry seems 

 peculiar to this neighbourhood. 



Net-making is called 'braiding' in Dorset; 

 it is chiefly carried on by women. There is a 

 great deal of competition for the work, which 

 can be done at home in the intervals of house- 

 work. The twine is given out from the mill ; 

 some mills have special net foremen. It is 

 generally brought by the carriers to the various 

 villages where the women live. Different 

 arrangements are made by the different mills 

 as to the payment of the carriage of the twine 

 and the nets. At one time there existed a set 

 of middlemen who carried the work to and fro, 

 and many of these thoroughly understanding the 

 business were able to render considerable services 

 both to the manufacturers and the braiders. 

 A few black sheep among the middlemen used 

 their position to trade on the ignorance of the 

 women ; but this has now been effectually 

 stopped, and when a woman receives twine she 

 receives also full particulars of the work required, 

 the length and breadth which the net is to be 

 made, and the rate of pay which will be given 

 her. 



The work is paid either by the length of net 

 made, or by the weight or length of the twine 

 worked up, and varies in accordance with the 

 size of the mesh. The ordinary measure of pay- 

 ment is so much per ' ran,' a local standard of 

 length. The industry is said to circulate a large 

 sum of money annually in the cottage homes in 

 the neighbourhood of Bridport. 



Braiding is in itself pleasant, healthy, and 

 clean, and is a very popular form of work. It is 

 very picturesque in the summer in those villages 

 where the women work out of doors, securing 

 their nets to a hook in the wall and talking busily 

 as they braid. When the work is carried on 



** Chambers, Encyclopedia. 



indoors in the general living-room of the family, 

 the larger nets take up too much room to be 

 very convenient, but they can be easily put aside 

 and packed away into a very small space. 



Though braiding is only a branch of the hemp 

 industry, it is itself very much subdivided and 

 localized. The lines of division follow the 

 mesh which the women net, and are in no 

 way dependent on the firms which may chance 

 to employ the women. Thus small-meshed 

 netting is made in one district and large-meshed 

 in another. There is not much change in the 

 kind of mesh which any particular village makes. 

 This is handed down from mother to daughter, 

 and any innovation is regarded with disfavour. 

 This rule is so universal that if a firm which 

 usually supplies large - meshed nets chances to 

 want small -meshed nets, or vice-versa, it is 

 obliged to send to a village where the nets it 

 may require are made, even if it has had no 

 previous connexion with that village and has 

 employed a totally different set of women. 



The successive generations of workers are 

 trained from childhood. They are quite young 

 when they begin to take their turn in helping 

 their mothers to braid. The elder women com- 

 plain that the present school regulations prevent 

 the children from learning to work as well or 

 as fast as the previous generation ; but then, 

 even before school regulations were invented, 

 the same complaint was made, though some 

 other reason was given to explain the inferiority 

 of the younger generation. 



The hemp industry is fixed in this neighbour- 

 hood by the hand-made nets, as the produc- 

 tion of these is dependent on home-workers. 

 Machinery and factories might be trans- 

 planted ; but one can scarcely conceive any- 

 thing more immovable than the inhabitants of 

 small Dorset villages, the houses of which 

 seem to have become one with the hillsides on 

 which they are built. And this impression is 

 true despite the apparently contradictory fact 

 that many of the workers have changed their 

 homes annually, as their husbands, who are 

 usually agricultural labourers, have seen fit to 

 change their masters, for the custom of engaging 

 men by the year is not far-reaching, and often 

 it only involves a re-apportioning of houses and 

 families on 6 April, when the change takes 

 place. The establishment of a by-industry is 

 often suggested as an adequate method of pre- 

 venting the exodus from the country to the 

 town, but people who are of the opinion that 

 such a course of action is sure to succeed will 

 do well to shut their eyes to the facts about 

 the country districts of South and West Dorset, 

 where braiding is carried on, as there the popula- 

 tion is rapidly decreasing, and it would be hard 

 to say that the by-industry had any counter 

 effect. 



According to the census of 1 901, 597 men. 



352 



