Following the invention of Cartwright's power loom in 1785, the income of >home-based handloom weavers slowly but continuously declined, from about 20 >shillings a week in 1785 to as low as 4 or 5 shillings a week in 1840. By >this time, they were in abject poverty, attempting to live on earnings that >would not even supply sufficient food.
If Adam Smith's theory in "The Wealth of Nations" is correct, the handloom >weavers in such poverty ought to have left their trade and found alternative >employment, on a much shorter time-scale than 55 years.
My questions are:-
1. Why did they not leave the trade?
2. Were they trapped by loans, initially taken out to pay for their
expensive handlooms, which they became unable to repay as their earnings >declined? (They would also be unable to re-sell their useless looms in order >to pay off their loans, because there would be no buyers).
3. Were there other reasons that I have not thought of, that would explain >their failure to leave the trade and find other work?
I am not a historian, and have not been able to find the answer to these >specific questions on the internet, which are the reasons I have ended up >here. I need the information for a talk that I shall be giving on Adam Smith >at our local Philosophy Club, of which I am an ordinary member. Thank you
for any information you can provide. If you can also provide citations to >support your information, so much the better.
Richard Chambers Leeds UK. >==========================================
In message <f313n0Fn53kU1@mid.individual.net>, Ian Goddard <goddai01@hotmail.co.uk> writes:
[]
One factor affecting the longevity of the domestic system is that it[]
could be combined with other trades such as farming. In 1861 my
That's a very good point. As well as the logistics of the trade itself (sourcing the wool, for example), I can see that it would be something
that could be done when other factors - primarily weather - prevented anything else on the farm being done. (OK, bad weather probably also
includes dim light, but that may or may not affect weaving, depending on
what cloth is being made.)
On Tue, 26 Sep 2017 16:46:29 +0100, "Richard Chambers" <dick.chambers@metercare.co.uk> wrote:
Following the invention of Cartwright's power loom in 1785, the income of<
home-based handloom weavers slowly but continuously declined, from about 20 >> shillings a week in 1785 to as low as 4 or 5 shillings a week in 1840. By
this time, they were in abject poverty, attempting to live on earnings that >> would not even supply sufficient food.
If Adam Smith's theory in "The Wealth of Nations" is correct, the handloom >> weavers in such poverty ought to have left their trade and found alternative >> employment, on a much shorter time-scale than 55 years.
My questions are:-
1. Why did they not leave the trade?
2. Were they trapped by loans, initially taken out to pay for their
expensive handlooms, which they became unable to repay as their earnings
declined? (They would also be unable to re-sell their useless looms in order >> to pay off their loans, because there would be no buyers).
3. Were there other reasons that I have not thought of, that would explain >> their failure to leave the trade and find other work?
Interesting questions.
I had some family members who were handloom weavers, including my
great great grandfather, who lived in Ayrshire in Scotland. He
committed suicide, and what you have written above may throw light on
that.
One factor affecting the longevity of the domestic system is that it[]
could be combined with other trades such as farming. In 1861 my
On 27/09/17 13:25, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
In message <f313n0Fn53kU1@mid.individual.net>, Ian Goddard
<goddai01@hotmail.co.uk> writes:
[]
One factor affecting the longevity of the domestic system is that it[]
could be combined with other trades such as farming. In 1861 my
That's a very good point. As well as the logistics of the trade itself
(sourcing the wool, for example), I can see that it would be something
that could be done when other factors - primarily weather - prevented
anything else on the farm being done. (OK, bad weather probably also
includes dim light, but that may or may not affect weaving, depending on
what cloth is being made.)
I should have mentioned that the weaving is only part of the process. >Spinning and carding were all originally done at home by wives &
children. That took longer than the weaving so the weaver had time to
look after the farm. It almost seems as if a man had to be married to
set up as a clothier. In my previous post I referred to the Beardsells
whose development from clothiers is well documented by Day. In a
previous generation one of them was described as a labourer before he
was married and a clothier afterwards. His first wife died and he was a >labourer again and then a clothier after he remarried.
Similarly a Dearnley, described as a labourer at the time of his
marriage, subsequently became a clothier. The couple were childless and
took on a Dearnley nephew, in part, I suspect, because the absence of >children of their own was an impediment to developing as a clothier.
I have another relative, in an earlier century, (before
mechanisation), who was described as a "clothier". He was from a
different branch of my family tree, and lived in Devon. He was quite
wealthy, and there is a local legend to the effect that he was able to
set himself up in business as a clothier because he had found a bag of
gold discarded in the Civil War by royalist soldiers fleeing from a republican advance. More about him here:
https://hayesgreene.wordpress.com/2009/08/11/tombstone-tuesday-john-and-mary-stooke/
On 29/09/17 04:22, Steve Hayes wrote:
On Wed, 27 Sep 2017 15:09:39 +0100, Ian Goddard
<goddai01@hotmail.co.uk> wrote:
<
This raises a question for me -- what does it mean if someone is
described as a "clothier".
and taken it back to market the next week. There were markets in
Halifax, Huddersfield, Leeds and Wakefield. The wool sellers and cloth >buyers were travelling merchants. In the C16th there was legislation
to stop the wooldrivers, the salesmen of raw wool, but the threat that
this posed resulted in the Halifax Act to allow them to continue to
service this area.
I had always naively assumed that this word had to do with clothing (tailoring, if you like) rather than cloth, and was pronounced with a
long o, as in holier or hosiery. From this discussion, it's clear I've
been wrong about what it involved; I'm curious about the pronunciation -
was it more like cloth ear?
Following the invention of Cartwright's power loom in 1785, the income of home-based handloom weavers slowly but continuously declined, from about
20 shillings a week in 1785 to as low as 4 or 5 shillings a week in 1840.
By this time, they were in abject poverty, attempting to live on earnings that would not even supply sufficient food.
If Adam Smith's theory in "The Wealth of Nations" is correct, the
handloom weavers in such poverty ought to have left their trade and found alternative employment, on a much shorter time-scale than 55 years.
My questions are:-
1. Why did they not leave the trade?
2. Were they trapped by loans, initially taken out to pay for their
expensive handlooms, which they became unable to repay as their earnings declined? (They would also be unable to re-sell their useless looms in
order to pay off their loans, because there would be no buyers).
3. Were there other reasons that I have not thought of, that would explain their failure to leave the trade and find other work?
I am not a historian, and have not been able to find the answer to these specific questions on the internet, which are the reasons I have ended up here. I need the information for a talk that I shall be giving on Adam
Smith at our local Philosophy Club, of which I am an ordinary member.
Thank you for any information you can provide. If you can also provide citations to support your information, so much the better.
Richard Chambers Leeds UK. ==========================================
On 29/09/17 10:56, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
I had always naively assumed that this word had to do with clothing
(tailoring, if you like) rather than cloth, and was pronounced with a
long o, as in holier or hosiery. From this discussion, it's clear I've
been wrong about what it involved; I'm curious about the pronunciation -
was it more like cloth ear?
Your initial assumption is correct.
I have doubts about the original meaning of tailor which are almost the >converse of your supposition about clothier.
In the 1379 subsidy rolls Penistone township had 2 taylours by
occupation in 12 households. I don't think an extremely remote parish
was that well dressed. Although no other townships were quite so well
supplied it does appear as an occupation or an occupational surname*.
The earliest reference to a clothier I've seen so far was in another >Penistone township, Thurlstone, in 1558. Were the taylors what we'd
now call clothiers and does the term "merchant taylor" retain this
meaning?
*Declaring an occupation raised the tax from 4d to 6d which makes me
wonder how many of those occupational surnames reflect current
occupations.
In message <f36leaF42vvU1@mid.individual.net>, Ian Goddard <goddai01@hotmail.co.uk> writes
On 29/09/17 10:56, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
I had always naively assumed that this word had to do with clothing
(tailoring, if you like) rather than cloth, and was pronounced with a
long o, as in holier or hosiery. From this discussion, it's clear I've
been wrong about what it involved; I'm curious about the pronunciation - >>> was it more like cloth ear?
Your initial assumption is correct.
But the remainder of the (very interesting) posting to which I was
replying _did_ seem to suggest that the clothiers it was telling us all
about were involved with the manufacture and trade of cloth, rather than clothes.
On Wed, 27 Sep 2017 15:09:39 +0100, Ian Goddard
<goddai01@hotmail.co.uk> wrote:
<
This raises a question for me -- what does it mean if someone is
described as a "clothier".
My gg grandfather, whom I referred to earlier, was described as a
weaver or a handloom weaver. He lived at Girvan in Ayrshire, and I
pictured him as doing piecework, and would have thought of whoever he
sold it to as a "clothier". He committed suicide in 1890.
I have another relative, in an earlier century, (before
mechanisation), who was described as a "clothier". He was from a
different branch of my family tree, and lived in Devon. He was quite
wealthy, and there is a local legend to the effect that he was able to
set himself up in business as a clothier because he had found a bag of
gold discarded in the Civil War by royalist soldiers fleeing from a republican advance. More about him here:
https://hayesgreene.wordpress.com/2009/08/11/tombstone-tuesday-john-and-mary-stooke/
The implication of that is that setting up as a clothier required
quite a bit of capital.
Now the OP's description of handloom weavers also implies that capital
was required, and that many were impoversihed because they lacked it,
but would they be described as "clothiers"?
Clothier _looks_ as if it _is at least related to cloth - as, of course,
does clothing and clothes.
I don't have an etymological dictionary to hand, but I _think_ tailor
derives from the French taille, figure (i. e. body). So someone who
makes things to fit the body.
(2) The Poor Law. Smith describes this law as a restriction that impeded the >change of employment. It was the duty of the parish to provide minimal >sustenance to the destitute of that parish. Each parish attempted to reduce >this expense as much a possible. The poor that migrated into an adjoining >parish could not receive alms from the new parish until they had provably >lived there for six weeks. In order to prove this point, they had to
register in their new parish. Rather than run the risk that the registrant >might be another mouth to feed, the authorities in the new parish would >immediately return the registrant to his original parish (at the expense of >the latter). Thus the Poor Law made migration from one parish to the next,
in search of work, extremely difficult for an impoverished weaver. This >restriction would particularly affect weavers who lived in a parish where no >indusrial-revolution factory had yet been set up to provide alternative >employment. Was this the case for your 2xggrandfather who committed suicide? >What sort of parish did he live in? Any other comments?
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