“The power-looms employed, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, in the worsted stuff trade, increased from 2,763 in 1836, to 19,121 in 1845 (and are probably not far from 28,000 at the present time). Worsted goods formerly consisted chiefly of bombazets, shalloons, calamancoes, lastings for ladies’ boots, and taminies. Now the articles in the fancy trade may be said to be numberless, and to display great artistic beauty. These articles, made with alpaca, Saxony, fine English and Colonial wools, and of goats’ hair for weft, with fine cotton for warp, consist of merinoes, Orleans, plain and figured Parisians, Paramattas, and alpaca figures, checks, etc.”
The machines for combing and carding, of the most improved make, will work wool of one and a half inch in the staple, while for the old process of hand-combing four inches was the minimum.
But we must not enter further into these details, as it is our purpose rather to indicate the interest and importance of certain manufactures than to describe the process minutely.
The Yorkshire woollen manufacture is distributed over an area of nearly forty miles by twenty, occupied by clothing towns and villages. Leeds, Bradford, Halifax, Huddersfield, Dewsbury, and Wakefield, are the great manufacturing centres. Mixed or coloured cloths are made principally in villages west of Leeds and Wakefield; white or undyed cloths are made chiefly in the villages occupying a belt of country extending from near Wakefield to Shipley. These two districts are tolerably distinct, but at the margins of the two both kinds of cloth are manufactured. Flannels and baizes are the principal woollen articles made in and near Halifax, together with cloth for the use of the army. Blankets are made in the line between Leeds and Huddersfield. Bradford provides very largely the spun worsted required for the various manufactures. Stuffs are made at Bradford, Halifax, and Leeds, and narrow cloths at Huddersfield. Saddleworth furnishes broadcloth and kerseymeres. As a specimen of the variety of articles produced in one factory, take the following list, exhibited in the Crystal Palace by a Huddersfield manufacturer:—“Summer shawls; summer coatings; winter woollen shawls; vestings; cloakings; table covers; patent woollen cloth for gloves; do. alpaca do.; do. rabbits’ down do.; trowserings; stockingnett do.”
We may observe, that there is no more pleasant mode of investigating the processes of the woollen manufacture, for those resident in the south of England, than a visit to the beautiful valley of the Stroud, in Gloucestershire, where the finest cloths, and certain shawls and fancy goods, are manufactured in perfection in the midst of the loveliest scenery. White-walled factories, with their resounding water-wheels, stand not unpicturesque among green-wooded gorges, by the side of flowing streams, affording comfortable well-paid employment to some thousand working hands of men and women, boys and girls.
THROUGH LINCOLNSHIRE TO SHEFFIELD.
On leaving Leeds there is ample choice of routes. It is equally easy to make for the lake districts of Cumberland and Westmoreland, or to proceed to York, and on by Newcastle to Scotland, or to take the road to the east coast, and compare Hull with Liverpool—a comparison which will not be attended with any advantage to the municipal authorities of Hull.
The aldermen of Hull are of the ancient kind—“slow,” in the most emphatic sense of the term. For proof,—we have only need to examine their docks, piers, and landing-places; the last of which are being improved, very much against the will of the authorities, by a Lincolnshire railway company.
From Hull there is a very convenient and swift railway road open to London through Lincolnshire, which, branching in several directions, renders easy a visit either to the Wolds, where gorse-covered moors have been turned, within the last century, into famous turnip-land, farmed by the finest tenantry in the world; or to the Fens, where the science of engineers learned in drainage, greatly aided by the pumping steam-engine, has reclaimed a whole county from eels and wild ducks.
Lincolnshire is not a picturesque county; both the wet half and the dry half, both the Fen district and the Wold district, are treeless; and the Wolds are only a line of molehills, of great utility, but no special beauty. But it is the greatest producing county in England, and the produce, purely agricultural, is the result of the industry and intellect of the men who till the soil. In Devonshire and Somersetshire we are charmed by the scenery, and amazed by the rich fertility of the soil, while we are amazed by the stolidity of the farmers and their labourers—nay, sometimes of the landlords—whose two ideas are comprised in doing what their forefathers did, and in hating every innovation. There fences, guano, pair-horse ploughs, threshing machines, and steam-engines, are almost as much disliked as cheap bread and Manchester politics. But on the Wolds of Lincolnshire a race of agriculturists are to be found who do not need to be coddled and coaxed into experiments and improvements by the dinners and discourses of dilettanti peers; but who unite the quick intelligence of the manufacturer with the hearty hospitality for which the English used to be famous. Among the Lincolnshire farmers rural life is to be seen in its most agreeable aspect. The labourers are as superior to the southern peasantry as their employers to the southern tenantry. Books, newspapers, and music may be found in the farm-houses, as well as old ale and sound port wine. At Aylsby, six miles from Great Grimsby, Mr. William Torr has a fine herd of short horns and a flock of pure Leicester sheep, well worth a visit. The celebrated Wold farmers are about ten miles distant. Any one of them is worth six Baden barons.