INDUSTRIAL NOTTINGHAM 43 



In the matter of organization Nottingham's businesses show some very 

 interesting cases. There are manufacturers, for example, who concen- 

 trate ail their production in one big factory or works; this is seen in 

 tobacco, chemicals and engineering : there are others who have plants 

 in various parts of the area; this is notably so in hosiery, probably due 

 to the distribution of female labour in the mining districts. Again, in 

 the lace trade there is one large firm which conducts all the processes from 

 the yarn to the market, while the general practice is for the lace makers 

 to sell their produce to warehousemen or merchants, and these latter, 

 after having certain final processes carried through, put the goods into 

 the market. There is an amazing variety of organization in this trade, 

 almost every process being worked to some extent in independent business- 

 es and to some extent in conjunction with others. Nottingham is the 

 ' lace market ' and the manufacturing is done there, at Beeston and other 

 places on to Long Eaton. Further, some of the large businesses of 

 Nottingham are branches of ' national ' businesses, some even of inter- 

 national concerns; some produce to distribute in their own shops, in 

 Nottingham and elsewhere, Messrs. Boots being the outstanding example. 

 The sizes of businesses also vary; the characteristic size is probably small 

 though the area has many very large ones indeed. In textiles the variety 

 of size is striking, some manufacturers owning two or three machines only. 



There is one industry which, in its organization, is almost a survival: 

 the Shetland industry. Here the usual practice is to produce on a hand 

 frame — a modification of the stocking frame. Now-a-days a manu- 

 facturer has a factory holding a number of these frames, a dozen or 

 more, and he sells the product to a warehouseman, though it is only a 

 few years ago that a man would have a frame of his own and work for 

 a manufacturer or warehouseman himself. A very interesting practice 

 in this trade is that of the framework knitter producing the new designs : 

 it is said that he used to do this on Good Friday or Easter Monday. 

 The trade has in some ways the flavour of a century ago though in recent 

 years it has extended its products from the old shawls and falls to various 

 other articles of ladies' dress unthought of then. 



A passing reference was made above to the power of adaptation which 

 Nottingham has shown in her economic life. It might be better described 

 as initiative. That she possessed it at the end of the eighteenth and the 

 beginning of the nineteenth century is clear from the history of the textile 

 trade. Felkin, in his ' History of Machine-wrought Lace and Hosiery ' 

 gives a vivid picture of the sizzhng enthusiasm of the Nottingham frame- 

 smiths and framework knitters experimenting with a hundred and one 

 machines to produce a lace fabric. They were in hot pursuit for years 

 before Heathcoat succeeded. And when this was done the same restless 

 spirit of the area pursued improvements and modifications of all the 

 various lace and hosiery machines: always it sought for something new. 



But not only in technical inventions were Nottingham's textile men 

 alert; they showed the same energy and driving power in business organiz- 

 ation and great firms were born then that still stand; Birkin, I. & R. 

 Morley and others. As time passed on, this technical and business 

 dynamism continued to show itself in the textile trade and has done so 



