Modern History Sourcebook: Observations on the Loss of Woollen
Spinning, 1794
The new machines did not all come at once. It proved easier
to mechanize spinning than weaving. This is an account of the
effects of the loss of spinning work for those previously employed
in "cottage industry".
From Observations . . . on the Loss of Woollen
Spinning (c. 1794)
The Combers being men and boys may possibly turn to some other
work, but it is not so with the wife and daughters of the day-labourers,
whose occupation in a country parish where no particular manufactory
is carried on, must be within their own dwelling; who deprived
of Woollen Spinning have no other employment, (except when they
can go into the fields) to bring in any money towards the support
of the Family. To tell a poor woman with three, four or five children,
all under the age at which farmers will employ them to set her
children to work, where no Wool is to be had is a mockery of misery,
and if it is in a neighborhood distant from Machines, where some
hand-work is still put out, the low price that is paid for her
unwearied labour, of running with her children all day at the
Wheel, disheartens her. The scanty fare it enables them to eat
when the day's work is done, with want of firing makes her at
length prefer breaking a hedge for her own fuel, and often for
sale to the Village Tradesman, and bringing up her children to
the same idle habits.
Many things combine to make the Hand Spinning of Wool, the most
desirable work for the cottager's wife and children. - A Wooden
Wheel costing 2s. for each person, with one Reel costing 3s. set
up the family. The Wool-man either supplies them with Wool by
the pound or more at a time, as he can depend on their care, or
they take it on his account from the chandler's shop, where they
buy their food and raiment. No stock is required, and when they
carry back their pound of Wool spun, they have no further concern
in it. Children from five years old can run at the Wheel, it is
a very wholesome employment for them, keeps them in constant exercise,
and upright: persons can work at it till a very advanced age.
But from the establishment of the Spinning Machines in many Counties
where I was last Summer, no Hand Work could be had, the consequence
of which is the whole maintenance of the family devolves on the
father, and instead of six or seven shillings a week, which a
wife and four children could add by their wheels, his weekly
pay is all they have to depend upon…
. . . another advantage of this work was, that until these Machines
were introduced, it was equally to be obtained in every County,
unlike every manufactory, a child with a Wheel was never thrown
absolutely out of bread, by change of place when grown up. - But
all this is altered….
I then walked to the Machines, and with some difficulty gained
admittance: there I saw both the Combing Machine and Spinning
Jenny. The Combing Machine was put in motion by a Wheel turned
by four men, but which I am sure could be turned either by water
or steam. The frames were supplied by a child with Wool, and as
the wheel turned, flakes of ready combed Wool dropped off a cylinder
into a trough, these were taken up by a girl of about fourteen
years old, who placed them on the Spinning Jenny, which has a
number of horizontal beams of wood, on each of which may be fifty
bobbins. One such girl sets these bobbins all in motion by turning
a wheel at the end of the beam, a wire then catches up a flake
of Wool, spins it, and gathers it upon each bobbin. The girl again
turns the wheel, and another fifty flakes are taken up and Spun.
This is done every minute without intermission, so that probably
one girl turning that wheel, may do the work of One Hundred Hand
Wheels at the least. About twenty of these sets of bobbins, were
I judge at work in one room. Most of these Manufactories are many
stories high, and the rooms much larger than this I was in. Struck
with the impropriety of even so many as the twenty girls I saw,
without any woman presiding over them, I enquired of the Master
if he was married, why his Wife was not present? He said he was
not a married man, and that many parents did object to
send their girls, but that the poverty of others, and not having
any work to set them to, left him not at any loss for hands. I
must do all the parties the justice to say, that these girls appeared
neat and orderly: yet at best, I cannot but fear the taking such
young persons from the eyes of their parents, and thus herding
them together with only men and boys, must bring up a dissolute
race of poor.
These Machines then once set up, and the expence of them does
not appear very great, 20 Girls do the work of 2,000 Women and
Children, and when these Girls are of age to go into a Farmer's
Service, how can they endure the fatigue and exposure to weather,
necessary to their situation. Numbers confined together in one
room cannot make them so hardy and strong, as running at the wheel
in a cold cottage, and frequently at the outside of their door
in the open air. - If they marry, they can neither teach their
children to work, or spin, or bring in any earnings to maintain
them. Who then shall patch the clothes, mend the shoes, and economize
their little store?
Shut up from morning till night, except when they are sent home
for their meals, these girls are ignorant of, and unhandy at every
domestic employment, whereas if at her wheel in her mother's cottage,
the girl assists in every occupation of the family. She lights
the faggot, nurses the young children, gleans in the harvest,
takes charge of the house in her mother's necessary absence to
the shop, or when she can get work at neighbouring houses, becoming
an assistant to her parents in sickness and old age, and in her turn a good wife to a day labourer, a fit mother for his family
she lives with those to whom she ought to be attached, and therefore
will feel an affection towards them: but a girl taken from six
years old to sixteen, and employed at the machines, can know none
of these habits....
If these are the miseries that result from the Machines to the
day labourer's wife and children during his life, what
must be their lot when deprived by his death of all support, but
the pittance their own industry affords them. A widow could assist
to maintain herself and her children by her spinning when she
was paid Id. for every skain; but now, she must become a parish
pauper, a wretched inhabitant of a Workhouse...
The manufacturing of Cotton and Wool by Machines bear no resemblance
as to the detriment to the poor. Wool being in its raw state the
produce of every parish, Wool-staplers were consequently to be
found in every Market Town; Combers were set to work by them,
to prepare it for every Cottager, who was glad at the expence
of 2s. to find a wholesome employment within her own house for
herself, and all those children who were able to stand to the
wheel, and whom she could not place out. Thus from time immemorial
the Hand or Jazey Wheel, has been the pride of the English Housewife.
In bad and good weather it equally was a resource, and a better
fated neighbour, would lend her a trifle on a sick or lying-in
bed, she mortgaging the next hand-work her children should carry
to the shop. But now the Wheel must be laid aside as a useless
thing! - No Yarn is spun out of the ends to mend or knit a stocking,
or darn a woollen garment, all is bought ready made at the shop,
worn while it will hang together, and a lifeless slatternly race
of young people will swarm in every village....
The assistance women and girls may be of in husbandry is sometimes
proposed as a remedy for the loss of spinning: but for the mothers
of families, common humanity will point without need of much argument,
how frequently they must be unfit for working in the fields either
when big with child, or with an infant at the breast. If from
dire necessity they are thus obliged to expose themselves and
infants in all the seasons of our varying year, what must be the
consequence to their domestic happiness?
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(c)Paul Halsall Aug 1997
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