206 A HISTORY OF 



build a stove tenter house in the Liberties, which it was 

 estimated would cost about 3500, when Mr. Thomas 

 Pleasants, whose liberality was unbounded, offered a 

 sum of ^10,000 for the erection of the tenter house. 1 



The arguments urged against the woollen ware- 

 house seem materially the same as those used in opposi- 

 tion to the silk warehouse, but in this case it was 

 thought that a radical mistake had been made from 

 the time of the introduction of the woollen manufacture 

 into the kingdom, in establishing it in the capital city. 

 Industry and frugality among the artisan class do not 

 prevail to any extent in a large city, where its members 

 estimate the value of their labours by the excessive prices 

 that have to be paid for necessaries. Time, too, was 

 more wasted, and much of it spent in amusement. 

 Moreover, the system of apprenticeship necessary in 

 the city was not suitable in the case of this industry in 

 the country, and only augmented the dearness of labour. 

 Great expense also attended the obtaining and preparing 

 the raw material. The industry was essentially one for 

 small communities scattered through the country, as in 

 England, and the working people connected with it 

 should be judiciously distributed, as the conditions of 

 their labour would then be entirely favourable, and the 



1 In the process of the woollen manufacture, certain stages were 

 reached at which the materials had to be sized and dried, which was 

 accomplished by suspending them on tenters (hooks for stretching 

 cloth on a frame), in the open air. The Irish climate was too un- 

 certain for this being regularly or satisfactorily carried out, and during 

 rainy seasons work had frequently to be given up for lengthened 

 periods, which entailed on the weaving population a great deal of 

 suffering and privation. In 1815, Pleasants, finding that no help was 

 being afforded either by the government or the municipality, though 

 much had been written and said on the subject, and sympathising, 

 as he did, with the weavers in their trials, erected at his own expense, 

 on an open space in Brown street, at the back of Weavers' square, a 

 large tenter house, fitted with proper stoves, furnaces, and appliances, 

 in which work could be carried on at all seasons. The building was 

 said to have cost ,12,964. 



