The yarn, having been reeled and warped in the simplest possible manner, is given to the weaver whose loom is as rude a piece of apparatus as can be imagined. It consists merely of two bamboo rollers, one for the warp and the other for the web, and a pair of headles. The shuttle performs the double office of shuttle and lay, and for this purpose is made like a large netting needle, and of a length rather more than the breadth of the web[456]. This apparatus the weaver carries to a tree, under which he digs a hole (which may be called the treadle-hole) large enough to contain his legs and the lower tackle. He then stretches his warp by fastening his bamboo rollers at a proper distance from each other by means of wooden pins. The headle-jacks he fastens to some convenient branch of the tree over his head (See [Plate V.]): two loops underneath, in which he inserts his great toes, serve instead of treadles; and his long shuttle, which also performs the office of lay, draws the weft through the warp, and afterwards strikes it home to the fell. “There is not so much as an expedient for rolling up the warp: it is stretched out to the full length of the web, which makes the house of the weaver insufficient to contain him. He is therefore obliged to work continually in the open air; and every return of inclement weather interrupts him[457].”
[456] The shuttle is not always of this length. Hoole, in his “Mission to India,” represents it as requiring to be thrown, in which case it must be short; and a drawing of a Candyan weaver, in the Magazine of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, shows the shuttle of the same size as our modern shawl shuttle. Indeed we have abundant evidence that the Indians employed shuttles of this latter description from time immemorial. The Chinese also use shuttles of the same description. (See Chinese loom, [Plate I.])
[457] Mill’s History of British India, book ii. ch. 8.
Forbes describes the weavers in Guzerat, near Baroche, as fixing their looms at sun-rise under the shade of tamarind and mango trees. In some parts of India, however, as on the banks of the Ganges, the weavers work under the cover of their sheds, fixing the geer of their looms to a bamboo in the roof (See [Plate V.]). They size their warps with a starch made from the root called kandri. When chequered muslins are wrought, three persons are employed at each loom.
Some authentic particulars concerning the habits and remuneration of the Hindoos engaged in the making of cotton cloth, are contained in an unpublished account of the districts of Puraniya (Purneah,) Patna, and Dinajpur, by Dr. Francis Hamilton, better known as Dr. F. Buchanan, (he having taken the name of Hamilton,) the author of the “Journey from Madras to Mysore, Canara, and Malabar.” This account of the above-named provinces near the Ganges is in several manuscript volumes in the library of the India House, in London. We learn from his elaborate survey that the spinning and weaving of cotton prevails throughout these provinces. The fine yarns are spun with an iron spindle, and without distaff, generally by women of rank; no caste is disgraced here by spinning, as in the south of India; the women do not employ all their time at this work, but only so much as is allowed by their domestic occupations. The coarse yarns are spun on a small wheel turned by the hand. The hand-mill is used to free the cotton from its seeds, and the bow to tease it. The following capital is required for the weaver’s business: a loom, 2½ rupees; sticks for warping and a wheel for winding, 2 anas; a shop, 4 rupees; thread for two ready money pieces, worth 6 rupees each, 5 rupees;—total 11 rupees 10 anas; to which must be added a month’s subsistence. The man and his wife warp, wind, and weave two pieces of this kind in a month, and he has 7 rupees (14 shillings stg.) profit, deducting, however, the tear and wear of his apparatus, which is a trifle. A person hired to weave can in a month make three pieces of this kind, and is allowed 2 anas in the rupee of their value, which is 2¼ rupees (4s. 6d.) a month. The finest goods cost 2 rupees a piece for weaving. Dr. Hamilton, in his observations on another district, states the average profit of a loom engaged in weaving coarse goods to be 28 rupees (£2. 16s.) a year, or something less than 13d. a week. At Puraniya and Dinajpur the journeymen cotton-weavers usually made from 2 to 2½ rupees (from 4s. to 5s.) a month. At Patna a man and his wife made from 3 to 4 rupees (from 6s. to 8s.) a month by beating and cleaning cotton; and each loom employed in making chequered muslins, has a profit of 108½ rupees a year (£10. 16s.), that is, 1s. 4d. a week for each of the three persons who work the loom. The average earnings of a journeyman weaver, therefore, appear to be from 1s. to 1s. 4d. per week. At Bangalore, and in some other parts of southern India, this author states that weavers earn from 3d. to 8d. a day, according as they are employed on coarse or fine goods[458]; but this is so much above the usual remuneration for labor in India, that, if the statement is not erroneous, it must be of extremely limited application. On the same authority, a woman spinning coarse yarn can earn 1⅔d. per day[459].
[458] Buchanan’s Journey through Mysore, vol. i. pp. 216-218.
[459] Ibid. vol. iii. p. 317.
A fact is mentioned by Dr. Hamilton, in his unpublished account of Patna, which affords a striking indication as to the national character of the Hindoos—“All Indian weavers, who work for the common market, make the woof of one end of the cloth coarser than that of the other, and attempt to sell to the unwary by the fine end, although every one almost, who deals with them, is perfectly aware of the circumstance, and although in the course of his life any weaver may not ever have an opportunity of gaining by this means, yet he continues the practice, with the hope of being able at some time or other to take advantage of the purchaser of his goods.”
The East India Company has a factory at Dacca, and also in other parts of India,—not, as the American use of the word “factory” might seem to imply, a mill, for the manufacture is entirely domestic—but a commercial establishment in a manufacturing district, where the spinners, weavers, and other workmen are chiefly employed in providing the goods which the Company export to Europe. This establishment is under the management of a commercial resident, who agrees for the kinds of goods that may be required, and superintends the execution of the orders received from the presidencies. Such is the poverty of the workmen, and even of the manufacturers who employ them, that the resident has to advance beforehand the funds necessary in order to produce the goods. The consequence of this system is, that the manufacturers and their men are in a state of dependence almost amounting to servitude. The resident obtains their labor at his own price, and, being supported by the civil and military power, he establishes a monopoly of the worst kind, and productive of the most prejudicial effects to industry. The Act of 1833, which put an end to the commercial character of the Company, will of course abolish all the absurd and oppressive monopolies it exercised.
It cannot but seem astonishing, that in a department of industry, where the raw material has been so grossly neglected, where the machinery is so rude, and where there is so little division of labor, the results should be fabrics of the most exquisite delicacy and beauty, unrivalled by the products of any other nation, even those best skilled in the mechanic arts. This anomaly is explained by the remarkably fine sense of touch possessed by that effeminate people, by their patience and gentleness, and by the hereditary continuance of a particular species of manufacture in families through many generations, which leads to the training of children from their very infancy in the processes of the art. Mr. Orme observes—“The women spin the thread destined for the cloth, and then deliver it to the men, who have fingers to model it as exquisitely as these have prepared it. The rigid, clumsy fingers of a European would scarcely be able to make a piece of canvass with the instruments which are all that an Indian employs in making a piece of cambric (muslin). It is further remarkable, that every distinct kind of cloth is the production of a particular district, in which the fabric has been transmitted perhaps for centuries from father to son,—a custom which must have conduced to the perfection of the manufacture[460].” The last mentioned fact may be considered as a kind of division of labor.