“Textiles,” or “textile fabrics,” may be properly described as stuffs made by weaving together of threads of any sort to produce a material with a nearly solid surface. “A fishing net,” says the Encyclopedia Americana, “is not a textile, because the cords which compose it are not woven together but merely cross one another at equally distant intervals and are strongly knotted at those points. But mosquito-netting is a textile, although very open, because the threads are merely held by their own friction.” Textiles in the usual sense are made of the twisted fibers spun into thread of flax or linen, cotton, hemp, jute, silk or wool, woven together by the use of a loom. “The general nature of a loom,” says the above quoted authority, “is that the threads of the warp are divided into two sets, one of which is thrown upward, while the other is thrown down, and at the same moment a shuttle carrying a thread of the woof is driven through between the two sets of warp
threads. The next movement of the loom reverses the two sets of warp threads, throwing the upper one down and the lower one up, compressing and drawing tight the woof thread into the loops which show on the surface of the stuff and go to form the surface, and the shuttle is driven through again in the opposite direction. The constant repetition of this forward and backward movement of the shuttle gives a strip of woven fabric which constantly grows: and as each movement of the shuttle is made, an appliance drives the last thread of the woof back against the others, so that this growing strip of woven stuff is kept at a uniform state of firmness and solidity. It is in this way that the simplest fabrics of linens and cottons are made. If it be desired to produce a somewhat more elaborate weave, this is done by raising two threads of the warp and dropping one; or by raising three threads of the warp and dropping one, and so on. In this way the threads of the woof are seen lying in loops, or what seems to be stitches longer than those of the simplest weave.... If we take a step further and use three or four warp threads, say, of red, while the rest remain white, and do the same thing with the woof threads, we produce stripes and where these stripes cross one another there will be a little square of the solid color of the three or four threads, while the stripes elsewhere remain of the half-way tint.... In such weaving of patterns it is here assumed that the threads are dyed before the weaving is begun. The matter of printing colors upon calico, thin silk, or the like, is entirely apart from consideration of the textile fabric. Printing is done from blocks (or rolls) with color almost exactly as if the material receiving the pattern were paper instead of a woven stuff.”
The above description of the method of producing textiles is sufficiently elaborate for a study of this character. The methods of producing brocades, satins, velvets and other elaborately figured textiles of any sort may be studied
more in detail by reference to any standard encyclopedia or work of this character.
The fact that cotton is, as has been already shown, the most important of the textile industries, utilizing larger sums of capital, turning out greater values of product, distributing its products over a wider area and to a larger number of people than any other of the textiles, justifies a somewhat more elaborate discussion of this industry and its development during the period in which the manufacturing industries of the world have been transferred from hand labor to that of machines, and in which capital has come to form so important a factor in production.
The manufacture of textiles from cotton is, like that of iron and steel, “older than written history.” The art of cotton spinning and weaving is believed to have been practised in India, still a great cotton-producing section of the world, from 20 to 30 centuries ago. From India the production of cotton and manufacture of cotton goods moved westward into Persia, thence to the area immediately east of the Mediterranean, then to Egypt, and even southern Europe. The Moors are said to have introduced the cultivation and manufacture of cotton into Spain during their control of that section of Europe, but the cotton-manufacturing industry which existed at Seville, Cordova and Grenada fell into decay after their expulsion from Spain and was only resumed after the British, followed by the French and Germans, had developed the art of manufacturing cotton goods by machine methods. While the manufacture of yarn or threads from cotton declined in Spain, it later made its appearance in Italy in the fourteenth century and in Germany, Prussia, the Netherlands and England in the sixteenth century, and France in the seventeenth century, but it was not thought practicable to manufacture cloth exclusively from cotton until toward the close of the eighteenth century, the cotton yarn being used only for woof, while the warp used in conjunction therewith
was either wool, flax, or silk. The so-called “Manchester cottons” of earlier date were composed in part of cotton and in part of wool or linen. The first acquaintance of western Europe with cloths made entirely from cotton seems to have been in those brought from Calcutta, India (and therefore called calicoes); but the calicoes made in Europe at that time and for more than a century after were made, in part at least, of wool or linen.
Prior to the latter part of the eighteenth century all cloths, whether of wool, cotton, silk, or flax, were manufactured by hand labor. The natural fabrics were, as described elsewhere in this work, spun into threads by the use of the simple spinning wheel, chiefly by the labor of women who were termed “Spinsters.” The threads thus obtained were made into cloth by the use of a loom upon the general principles above described, but of extremely simple design and operated solely by human power. Up to this time the making of threads or yarn and their transformation into cloth by the weavers, chiefly men, kept pace fairly with one another, the supply of thread or yarn being about equal to the demand by the weavers. “One good weaver,” says Dr. Ure, “could keep three active women at work spinning weft. In operating the loom, the shuttle which carried the thread back and forth between the raised and lowered sections of the warp was thrown back and forth with the hand, which required a constant extension of the hands to each side of the warp. In 1738 John Kay, an Englishman, devised a system by which the shuttle was thrown back and forth by means of strings attached at opposite ends of the lathe in which the shuttles ran, enabling a weaver to double the amount of cloth which he could manufacture within a given space of time, thus making the demand for yarn in excess of the supply.” “It was no uncommon thing,” says a writer on that subject, “for a weaver to walk three or four miles in a morning, and call on four or five spinners, before he
could collect weft to serve him for the remainder of the day.”
This stimulated active minds in those industries to devise some method for increasing the facilities for turning the wool or cotton or flax into the needed yarn, and James Hargreaves, a weaver, devised about 1764 a machine which he called the “spinning jenny,” in which were set eight spindles in a frame put in motion by a single wheel, and by moving backward and forward a moveable carriage containing a horizontal clasp to hold the material being twisted into threads, the quantity of yarn which one person could produce in a given length of time was greatly increased. Subsequently the number of spindles in the frame was increased to 20 or 30, and in time to more than 1,000. Hargreaves kept this invention secret for a time, using it merely to manufacture yarn for his own weaving, but it finally became known and the spinners of the neighborhood, believing that it would throw many out of employment, broke into his establishment and destroyed the machine. He, however, retired to Nottingham, erected a small mill and took out a patent for the “spinning jenny,” and in time it became to be an established method of manufacturing yarn and in a more elaborate form is the principal factor in the manufacture of cotton yarns in the great factories today, the number of spindles which a modern machine of this character now uses being often in excess of 1,000, instead of the 8 utilized by the original spinning jenny.