A HISTORY OF GLOUCESTERSHIRE 



ordinary room. The journeymen who sold the 

 yarn were apt, it is true, to drive rather hard 

 bargains with these home-workers, but on the 

 whole the latter could earn a very fair living. 

 An old weaver, who worked a hand-loom till 

 about thirty years ago, computes the weekly earn- 

 ings of himself and his wife together at about 30*. 

 Each of them worked a loom, and could weave 

 a piece (60 yds.) in a fortnight. For a piece 

 they would be paid 30*. at the factories where 

 also they got their yarn, a chain and a half at a 

 time. Most of the weavers were old men in 

 his young days, says another of these survivors, 

 who remembers the introduction of power- 

 looms. The old men refused to be troubled 

 with the new machinery, and it was chiefly 

 women who took it up. 



The hereditary prejudices of their operatives 

 thus combined with the general fall in prices 

 after 1815 to give the Gloucestershire clothiers 

 a hard struggle in the first half of the nineteenth 

 century. A Blue Book of 1800, called 'An 

 account of the proceedings of the merchants, 

 manufacturers, and others concerned in the wool 

 and woollen trade of Great Britain,' contains the 

 complaints of a west-country witness on the first 

 score. ' The opposition that we generally meet 

 with in the West of England to introducing 

 machinery is so great,' he declared, ' that, until 

 the Yorkshire manufacturers have stolen the 

 article away from us, we are almost afraid to 

 introduce it.' l Thus an improvement in the 

 shearing process, called 'The Lewis cutting- 

 machine,' though invented towards the end of 

 the 1 8th century by a Stroud manufacturer, 

 was rejected by the operatives. In 1820 the 

 hand-mule was introduced a species of machinery 

 which, though not worked by steam, yet greatly 

 reduced the amount of labour required for spin- 

 ning. But up to 1851, when Gloucestershire 

 broadcloth won high honours at the Great Exhi- 

 bition, very little machinery was in use beyond 

 the 'stubbing billy,' the hand-mule, and the 

 power-loom. Between 1840 and 1850, how- 

 ever, the old system of milling, or hammering, 

 the cloth by ' stocks ' was superseded by a felting- 

 machine, composed of a continuous series of 

 rollers through which the cloth was passed, some- 

 times for so long a period as forty or fifty hours. 

 In the course of the next decade an automatic 

 spinning-mule, invented by Roberts, superseded 

 both the hand-mule and the 'billy' ; nor have later 

 inventions been able to surpass the 'scroll ' method 

 of this mule for spinning woollen yarn. (Worsted, 

 on the other hand, is now spun almost entirely 

 upon a frame.) By about the year 1870 Mr. 

 James Hollingworth had perfected his ' Dobcross' 

 power-looms, which were rapidly taken up by 

 woollen manufacturers and valued at what was 

 then considered the high price of ^50 apiece. 

 Other improvements in machinery quickly 



1 For this and other pieces of information see 

 Stroud Journal Supplement, \ 3 May, 1 904. 



followed. The addition of a second warp-bar 

 enabled ' backed ' cloths to be made, while the 

 multiplication of shuttles and healds permitted 

 a far greater variety in weight and pattern than 

 was ever dreamed of by workers of the old 

 simple looms, on which threads were merely 

 lifted alternately. Another advantage of the 

 double warp-bar was that the same loom could 

 be used for the production of either light or 

 heavy cloths. Again, in 1882, Mr. Hol- 

 lingworth produced a better and even more 

 adaptable loom an improved species of the 

 ' Knowles ' loom, all rights to which he had 

 purchased from its American inventor. Thus 

 to the same man we owe both the ' Knowles ' 

 and the ' Dobby,' the two great looms of the 

 present day. 



These improved methods of manufacture, to- 

 gether with the removal, in 1828, of the duties 

 on the import of foreign wool, gave a great 

 impetus to the Stroud clothing industry. Be- 

 tween 1851 and 1861 the number of persons in 

 Gloucestershire engaged in all branches of the 

 woollen industry rose from 4,459 to 7,050. The 

 census figures for the next decade, however, show 

 a decline in numbers by about a thousand ; by 

 1 88 1 the numbers had sunk to 4,958, and by 

 1901 to 3,321. More than one mill has failed 

 since then, while others close occasionally, or 

 are often worked at a loss. 



The first decline in numbers between 1861 

 and 1871 must be accounted for by the dis- 

 placement of labour due to the introduction of 

 mechanical appliances if manufacturers are right 

 in admitting no diminution of prosperity until 

 after 1875. While the same arguments may 

 apply in some degree to the subsequent decline, 

 there is no masking the general tendency of the 

 trade during the last thirty years. In this 

 period not a single new woollen mill has been 

 built, and about twenty woollen businesses have 

 come to an end. This may be ascribed to three 

 main causes foreign competition, slowness of 

 manufacturers to follow changes of fashion, and, 

 recently, high cost of raw material. 



The high protective tariffs of America and the 

 continent have undoubtedly had an effect on the 

 Stroud woollen industry. New York alone now 

 imports not much over a fortieth of what she 

 took ten years ago. The cutting down of prices, 

 consequent on the dumping of foreign woollen 

 goods in England, falls with especial severity 

 upon the broadcloth manufacture, which must 

 always, and necessarily, be a costly one. This 

 is due to the far more numerous and more 

 elaborate processes required to produce smooth, 

 highly finished cloth. Woven of woollen yarn, 

 which is spun less tightly and strongly than 

 worsted, broadcloth has to pass through the 

 felting, fulling, and dressing processes in order to 

 acquire proper strength and compactness. These 

 are followed by finishing processes, which may 

 be repeated an almost indefinite number of 



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