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spirit, in its highest, its most feverish state, is the spirit of the persecutor.

Edmund Burke once said- As a great deal of the ancient furniture of tyranny is torn to rags, the rest is entirely out of fashion.** Our philosopher, it will be seen, speaks only of the furniture of tyranny. Ancient bigotry, too, has lost its racks and stakes, and its dungeons are somewhat out of favour in this country; but the spirit is the same. If you cannot burn a man, calumniate him; if you cannot safely attack his private character, whisper insinuations, hint motives, hold him up to suspicion in quarters where your influence will work against him; make him feel, if not after the manner of the old times, yet as much as possible after the manner of your own time, that he had better not differ from you, or that, if he does, it may be prudent for him to keep unpalatable notions to himself. In the name of candour, we ask, is not this the tendency of excessive party spirit? And in the name of common sense, we ask, what is this, if it be not persecution? There is the slime of the serpent, the crawl, the hiss, and-all that remains of-the sting.

Gladly would we invoke the power which prevails with good men, and stimulate to the prayer which prevails with God, if we might by any means see this evil spirit' cast out, and a penitent and restored church sitting calmly, and in her right mind,' at

the feet of Incarnate Love!

The volume at the head of this article includes Eight Essays on Christian Union, adapted to the present state and obligations of religious parties in Great Britain. They are from the pens of the Rev. Doctors Chalmers, Balmer, Candlish, King, Wardlaw, Struthers, and Symington, and the Rev. J. A. James. mention of these names will be sufficient to recommend the volume, without any comment on our part.

The

* Thoughts on the Causes of the present Discontent; Burke's Works, 4to, vol. i.

117

Art. IV. (1.) Debates on the Bill for Regulating Factory Labour, Session of 1844. HANSARD'S Parliamentary Debates.

(2.) Factories and the Factory System. By W. COOKE TAYLOR, LL.D. 1844.

(3.) The Factory Question, considered in relation to its effects on the health and morals of those employed in Factories.

And the

Ten

Hours' Bill,' in relation to its effects upon the Manufactures of England, and those of Foreign Countries. By ROBERT HYDE GREG, Esq. 1837.

(4.) Inventions and Hours of Labour.

A Letter to Master Cotton

By

Spinners, Manufacturers, and Mill Owners in General.

WILLIAM KENWORTHY.

1842.

(5.) On the Employment of Children, in Factories and other Works in the United Kingdom, and in some Foreign Countries. By LEONARD HORNER, F.R.S., Inspector of Factories. 1840.

(6.) Reports of the Inspectors of Factories to Her Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for the Home Department. 1834 to 1844.

(7.) Facts and Observations relative to the Influence of Manufactures upon Health and Life. By DANIEL NOBLE, Member of the Royal College of Surgeons in London, &c. 1843.

(8.) A Letter to the Right Hon. Sir James Graham, Bart. M.P., on the bearing of the proposed Amended Factory Bill on Education, in the Manufacturing Districts. By A MAGISTRATE of Lancashire. 1844. (9.) Factories Inquiry. Supplementary Report from Commissioners.

1834.

THE most important branch of the national industry, after the cultivation of the soil, is the manufacture of the fabrics used for clothing; of which the chief processes are carried on in factories moved by steam or water power. Familiar at the present day as are these vast collections of machinery, where hundreds of work-people prosecute their labours under one roof, it is difficult. to realize the fact, that seventy years since they were wholly unknown. With the exception of the old fulling mills, where a single process of the woollen manufacture was performed with very few workmen,—of a small number of silk mills,-and of the experimental, but unsuccessful establishments of Paul and Wyatt, at Birmingham and Northampton, where the first attempts were made to spin by rollers, with the aid of water power, the factories of the present day had not even a prototype before the year 1770. The The process of spinning was then, as in all former ages and in all other countries, performed on that invariable appendage of the cottage, the one-thread wheel. The process of carding

was performed by hand-cards or stock-cards. That of batting, by beating with sticks. Cloth of every kind was woven by the hand-loom, not differing materially in principle from the looms of the earliest times used in Egypt and India. The shearing and finishing of woollen cloth was executed by hand, with shears and teazles. In short, nearly every process of the clothing manufactures was performed by implements which the workman could handle alone; more powerful and complicated machinery was unknown; there was, therefore, no motive for gathering work-people in great numbers within one building; and in point of fact, the workshops of those days were altogether insignificant, compared with the factories of the present.

The factory system arose out of the invention of machines, to do, on a large scale, the work which had before been done on the small scale by hand; and not of one machine alone, but of a series of machines for the several processes of the manufacture, which it was found advantageous to place in juxtaposition, so as to save time and labour in transferring the material from process to process. It was one of the suggestions of Arkwright's genius, to combine and arrange the machines invented by himself and others in a large building, where the whole might be moved by water power. To economize both space and power, he compressed his machinery into the smallest dimensions that were consistent with the due execution of the work; and thus, whilst performing the work of thousands and ten thousands of hands by means of hundreds, he brought those hundreds together in one great building, and placed all the machinery and workmen in a connected series of operations.

It was at Cromford, in the romantic valley of Matlock, and on the banks of the rapid Derwent, that the first considerable cotton factory was built, by Arkwright and his ingenious partner, Jedediah Strutt.* Here the factory system had its birth and in this neighbourhood the two families have amassed splendid fortunes, whilst they have enriched the towns of Cromford and Belper.

At the very time that Arkwright was perfecting the spinning machinery, James Watt was adapting the steam-engine, hitherto only employed to pump the water out of mines, for the manifold purposes to which it is now applied; and thus these admirable inventions, which may be called the heart and the hands of our great manufactories, came into being together. Without the new moving power, the spinning machinery could only have been worked by running streams, and therefore the quantity put up in England must have been very restricted; and without

They had first built a mill, turned by horses, at Nottingham; but they soon adopted the greater and cheaper power of water.

the masses of machinery then called into existence, the new moving power would have been of comparatively little use. In the steam-engine a power was created, which might be placed in any locality, made of any extent that was required, and that was independent of drought or floods.

Several important ends are answered by the arrangement of machinery within small space, and under one moving force. First, and principally, it economizes power; second, it saves machinery itself and building; third, it saves time and labour in transferring the material from one machine to another; fourth, it places the workmen and the materials under easier inspection; and fifth, it ensures punctuality of attendance, and steady and quick application on the part of the work-people. There are other minor advantages, but these are the principal; and they are so important, that no manufacture where workmen laboured in their former comparative isolation, could be carried on in competition with the factories.

A steam-engine of one hundred horse-power, occupying a few square yards, exerts at each stroke a force equal to the combined strength of all the adult males of a small town. Spinning frames of three thousand spindles, under the care of a single spinner, standing in a space less than twenty yards square, produce more yarn than could have been produced by the population of a considerable district with the one-thread wheel. There has, therefore, been an extraordinary compression of manufacturing power, as well as multiplication of its products. But that compression is acquired by great delicacy of mechanism, which makes the outfit of a mill very expensive. There is no comparison between the unwieldy tools and machines formerly employed, which were made chiefly of wood, and the spindles, shafts, wheels, and rollers, of polished steel, which, by their smooth and rapid revolutions, turn out the amazing produce of our modern factories. It is obvious that the cost of the machinery must bear some proportion to the material of which it is constructed, and the delicacy and finish of the workmanship. Accordingly, it is now not very uncommon to find fifty or a hundred thousand pounds expended on a single factory.

The fixed capital invested, therefore, in the buildings and machinery of the various clothing manufactures, must be of very large amount. For every individual man, woman, and child, employed in a factory, there needs an outlay of more than a hundred pounds. To a rich country like England it is an advantage, in its competition with poorer countries, that manufacturing processes should require so large an expenditure. To the work-people, the new system is on several accounts highly advantageous,-First, because they participate to some degree in the

productiveness of these masses of machinery, and receive high wages; second, because it identifies their interests with the interests of their employers, who by their extensive dealings acquire great mercantile skill, and by their large capital are able to bear up in times of bad trade; and third, because it secures to them the utmost possible steadiness of employment,-seeing that this delicate machinery cannot be allowed to stand still without suffering injury.

But if, on the one hand, the investment of large capitals in manufactures is advantageous to the country, and especially to the work-people employed, so, on the other hand, it is plain that the interests of the country, and especially of the work-people, would be prejudiced by whatever should diminish the profits of the capitals thus invested. In the long run, the interests of capitalists and workmen must correspond. If the high value or productiveness of the machinery gives better wages to the operatives who attend upon it, a reduced value or productiveness of that machinery would of necessity give reduced wages. There may be occasional and temporary deviations from this rule; but it is too obvious to admit of a doubt, that on the whole the workmen must share the prosperity or adversity of their employers. If from any event the machinery should become profitless, the workmen connected with it would lose their subsistence.

The new modes of manufacturing, which are now seen in so high a perfection, did not of course attain that perfection at once. The splendid inventions of Arkwright and Watt gave, indeed, the great spring to the manufacturing prosperity of England, but the course of invention and improvement has continued from their day to the present. The spinning-jenny of Hargreaves was as nearly as possible contemporary with the waterframe of Arkwright; and the mule of Crompton combined, as its name indicates, the different principles of both. The carding machine of Lewis Paul, after having been improved upon by others, was perfected by Arkwright, who patented at the same time, the carding-machine, the drawing-frame, and the rovingframe. William Kelly and others invented self-acting mules, which were brought to great perfection by Roberts. The powerloom proceeded from the mechanical genius of the Rev. Dr. Cartwright. Radcliffe and Johnson produced the dressingmachine; Snodgrass, the scutching-machine; the late Mr. Arkwright, son of Sir Richard, the spreading or lapping machine. In bleaching and calico-printing, improvements were made only inferior to those in the spinning machinery, by Berthollet, Henry, Tennant, Bell, and Lockett.*

For the detailed history of all these inventions, see History of the Cotton Manufacture in Great Britain,' by Mr. Edward Baines, jun.

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