Before a blanket can be made, we must have the material for making a blanket. Tanner had not the material, because he was not a cultivator. Before wool can be grown there must be, as we have shown, appropriation of land. When this appropriation takes place, the owner of the land either cultivates it himself, which is the earliest stage in the division of agricultural employment,—or he obtains a portion of the produce in the shape of corn or cattle, or in a money payment. Hence a tenantry. But the tenant, to manufacture wool at the greatest advantage, must possess capital, and carry forward the principle of the division of employment by hiring labourers. We use the word manufacture of wool advisedly; for all farming processes are manufacturing processes, and invariably reduce themselves to change of form, as all commercial processes reduce themselves to change of place. If the capital of the farmer is sufficient to enable him to farm upon a large scale, he divides his labourers; and one becomes a shepherd, one a ploughman,—one sows the ground, and one washes and shears the sheep, more skilfully than another. If he has a considerable farm, he divides his land, also, upon the same principle, and has pasture, and arable, and rotation of crops. By these divisions he is enabled to manufacture wool cheaper than the farmer upon a small scale, who employs one man to do everything, and has not a proper proportion of pasture and arable, or a due rotation of crops. At every division of employment skill must be called forth in a higher perfection than when two or more employments were joined together; and the chief director of the skill, the capitalist himself, or farmer, must require more skill to make all the parts which compose his manufactury work together harmoniously.
But we have new divisions of employment to trace before the wool can be got to the manufacturer. These employments are created by what may be called the local division of labour. It is convenient to rear the sheep upon the mountains of Wales, because there the short and thymy pastures are fitted for the growth of wool. It is convenient to manufacture the wool into cloth at Leeds, because coals are there at hand to give power to the steam-engines, with which the manufacture is carried on. The farmer in Wales, and the manufacturer of cloth at Leeds, must be brought into connection. In the infancy of commerce one or both of them would make a journey to establish this connection; but the cost of that journey would add to the cost of the wool, and therefore lessen the consumption of woollen cloth. The division of employment goes on to the creation of a wool-factor, or dealer in wool, who either purchases directly from the grower, or sells to the manufacturer for a commission from the grower. The grower, therefore, sends the wool direct to the factor, whose business it is to find out what manufacturer is in want of wool. If the factor did not exist, the manufacturer would have to find out, by a great deal of personal exertion, what farmer had wool to sell; or the farmer would have to find out, with the same exertion, what manufacturer wanted to buy wool. The factor receives a commission, which the seller and buyer ultimately unite in paying. They co-operate to establish a wool-factor, just as we all co-operate to establish a postman; and just as the postman, who delivers a number of letters to a great many individuals, does that service at little more cost to all, than each individual would pay for the delivery of a single letter, so does the wool-factor exchange the wool between the grower and the manufacturer, at little more cost to a large number of the growers who employ him, than each would be obliged to pay in expenses and loss of time to travel from Wales to Leeds to sell his wool.
We have, however, a great many more divisions of employment to follow out before the wool is conveyed from Wales to Leeds or Bradford. If the packs are taken on shipboard, and carried down the Mersey to Liverpool, we have all the variety of occupations, involving different degrees of skill, which make up the life of a mariner; if they go forward upon the railroad to Manchester, we have all the higher degrees of skill involved in their transport which belong to the business of an engineer; or if they finally reach their destination by canal, we have another division of labour that adjusts itself to the management of boats in canals. But the ship, the railroad, the canal, which are created by the necessity of transporting commodities from place to place, have been formed after the most laborious exercise of the highest science, working with the greatest mechanical skill; and they exist only through the energy of prodigious accumulations of capital, the growth of centuries of patient and painful labour and economy.
We have at length the wool in a manufactury at Leeds or Bradford. The first class of persons who prepare the wool, are the sorters and pickers. It is their business to separate the fine from the coarse locks, so that each may be suited to different fabrics. There is judgment required, which could not exist without division of labour; and the business, too, must be done rapidly, or the cost of sorting and picking would outweigh the advantage. The second principal operation is scouring. Here the men are constantly employed in washing the wool, to free it from all impurities. It is evident that the same man could not profitably pass from the business of sorting to that of scouring, and back again,—from dry work to wet, and from wet to dry. When the wool is out of the hands of the scourers it comes into those of the dyers, who colour it with the various chemical agents applied to the manufacture. The carders next receive it, who tear it with machines till it attains the requisite fineness. From the carders it passes to the slubbers, who form it into tough loose threads; and thence to spinners, who make the threads finer and stronger. There are subdivisions of employment which are not essential for us to notice, to give an idea of the great division of employment, and the consequent accumulation of peculiar skill, required to prepare wool to be made into yarn, to be made into woollen cloth.
The next stages in the manufacture are the spinning, the warping, the sizing, and the weaving. These are all distinct operations, and are all carried forward with the most elaborate machinery, adapted to the division of labour which it enforces, and by which it is enforced.
But there is a great deal still to be done before the cloth is fit to be worn. The cloth, now woven, has to be scoured as the wool was. There is a subsequent process called burling, at which females are constantly employed. The boiling and milling come next, in which the cloth is again exposed to the action of water, and beaten so as to give it toughness and consistency. Dressers, called giggers, next take it in hand, who also work with machinery upon the wet cloth. It has then to be dried in houses where the temperature is sometimes as high as 130 degrees, and where the men work almost naked. It is evident that the boilers and dressers could not profitably work in the dry-houses: and that there must be division of employment to prevent those sudden transitions which would destroy the human frame much more quickly than a regular exposure to cold or heat, to damp or dryness. The cloth must be next cropped or cut upon the face, to remove the shreds of wool which deform the surface in every direction. When cut, it has to be brushed dry by machinery, to get out the croppings which remain in its texture. This done, it is dyed in the shape of cloth, as it was formerly dyed in the shape of wool. Then come a variety of processes, to increase the delicacy of the fabric:—singeing, by passing the cloth within a burning distance of red-hot cylinders; frizing, to raise a nap upon the cloth; glossing, by carrying over it heavy heated plates of iron; pressing, in which operation of the press red-hot plates are also employed; and drawing, in which men, with fine needles, draw up minute holes in the cloth when it has passed through the last operation. Then comes the packing; and after all these processes it must be bought by a wholesale dealer, and again by a retailer, before it reaches the consumer. Between the growth of the fleece of wool, and the completion of a coat by a skilful tailor,—who, it is affirmed, puts five-and-twenty thousand stitches into it,—what an infinite division of employments! what inventions of science! what exercises of ingenuity! what unwearied application! what painful, and too often unhealthy labour! And yet if men are to be clothed well and cheaply, all these manifold processes are not in vain; and the individual injury in some branches of the employ is not to be compared to the suffering that would ensue if cloth were not made at all, or if it were made at such a cost that the most wealthy only could afford to wear it. But for the accumulation of knowledge, and the division of employments, engaged in the manufacture of cloth, and set in operation by large capital, we should each be obliged to be contented with a blanket such as John Tanner desired, and very few indeed would even obtain that blanket: for if skill and division of labour were, not to go on in one branch, they would not go on in another, and then we should have nothing to give in exchange for the blanket. The individual injury to health, also, produced by the division of labour, is not so great, upon the average, as if there were no division. All the returns of human life in this country show an extremely little difference in the effect upon life, even of what we consider the most unhealthy trades; and this proceeds from that extraordinary power of the human body to adapt itself to a habit, however apparently injurious, which is one of the most beautiful evidences of the compensating principle which prevails throughout the moral world.
The wool manufacture of Great Britain employs very nearly three hundred thousand persons; in the various processes connected with the production of cloth, worsted, flannel, blankets, and carpets. What a contrast to all this variety of labour is the history of the earlier stages of the manufacture of woollen cloth. It is unnecessary to go back to the time of Henry III., when the production of wool was in such an imperfect state through flocks of sheep being scattered over immense tracts of waste land, that a manor in Surrey was held under the crown by the tenure of gathering wool for the Queen. According to the record, Peter de Baldewyn was to gather the wool from the thorns that had torn it from the sheep's back; and if he did not choose to gather it he was to forfeit twenty shillings.[23] In the time of Edward III., according to Fuller, in his 'Church History,' the English clothiers were wholly unskilful; "knowing no more what to do with their wool than the sheep which wear it, as to any artificial and curious drapery, their best cloth being no better than frieze, such their coarseness for want of skill in the making." When the Flemish clothiers came into England, the manufacture improved; in spite of the regulating power of the state, which was perpetually interfering with material, quality, and wages. In time wool became the chief commodity of England. The woolsack of the House of Lords was typical of this staple industry; and of the mode also in which the majesty of legislation sat heavy upon the produce. To encourage the manufacture nothing was to be woven but wool. From the cradle to the grave all were to be wrapt in wool. The genius of prohibition prevented the exchange of wool with other manufactured commodities; and, therefore, to keep up rents, Narcissa was "odious in woollen," and a Holland shirt—for British linen did not exist—was a rare commodity, cheap at "eight shillings an ell," as in the days of Dame Quickly.
This was the state of things at the end of the 17th century, and somewhat later. The manufacturers clamoured against the exportation of wool; and the agriculturists at the same time resisted the importation of Irish and Scotch cattle. The parliament listened to both sets of clamourers. It said to the people:—You of trade shall not be ruined by the land selling wool to foreigners—there shall be no competition; you shall buy the wool at the lowest price. And then parliament turned round to the complaining grazier, and said,—the cloth-maker and his men shall not ruin you by buying meat cheap—no Irish cattle or Scotch sheep shall come here to lower your prices. From 1664 to 1824 the exportation of wool was strictly prohibited. The importation was sometimes prevented by high duties—sometimes encouraged by low. The manufacture was constantly struggling with these attempts of the state to hold a balance between what were so universally considered as conflicting interests. In 1844 the whole system was abandoned. In 1853, we imported one hundred and seventeen million lbs. of sheep and lamb's wool—of which three-fifths came from Australia—and two million of alpaca and llama wool. The wool-growers at home still found a ready market; the great body of the population had good coats and flannels and blankets; and, in addition, we exported ten million pounds sterling of woollen manufactures.
