Silk. Silk was used in the East as a fabric for the nobility. It was first used in China and later in India. It was brought into Europe about the sixth century. Up to that time the Chinese had a monopoly of the industry. By the tenth and eleventh centuries silk fabrics were made in Spain and Italy. At the close of the sixteenth century silk was being produced at Lyons, France. It was afterwards introduced into England, and the English silk for a long time replaced the French in the European market.
History of the Organization of Textile Industries
The development of the textile industry may be divided into four stages or periods: first, the family system; second, the guild system; third, the domestic system; and fourth, the factory system.
The Family System. Under the family system the work of spinning and weaving was carried on by members of a household for the purpose of supplying the family with clothing. There were no sales of the product. Each class in society, from the peasant class to that of the nobleman, had its own devices for making clothing. This was the system that existed up to about the tenth century.
The Guild System. As communities became larger and cities sprang up, the textile industry became more than a family concern. There was a demand for better fabrics, and to meet this demand it became necessary to have a large supply of different parts of looms. The small weaver who owned and constructed his own loom was not able to have all these parts, so he began to work for a more prosperous weaver. The same conditions applied to spinning, and as early as 1740 spinning was carried on by a class distinct from the weavers. As a result the small weaver was driven out by the growth of organized capital, and a more perfect organization, called the guild system, arose. By this system the textile industry was carried on by a small group of men called masters, employing two, three or more men (distinguished later as journeymen and apprentices). The masters organized associations called guilds and dominated all the conditions of the manufacture to a far greater extent than is possible under present conditions.
It was the family system that existed in the American colonies at the beginning of the settlement, and for many years after. The guild system was not adopted in America because it was going out of existence on the Continent.
The Domestic Period. By the middle of the eighteenth century the textile industry began to break away from the guilds and spread from cities to the rural districts. The work was still carried on in the master’s house, although he had lost the economic independence that he had under the old guild system where he acted both as merchant and manufacturer. He now received his raw material from the merchant and disposed of the finished goods to a middleman, who looked after the demands of the market.
The Factory System. The domestic period was in turn crowded out of existence by the factory system. A factory is a place where goods are produced by power for commercial use. The factory system first came into prominence after the invention of the steam engine. No record has been found showing its existence prior to this invention.
English weavers and spinners became very skilful and invented different mechanical aids for the production of yarn and cloth. These mechanical aids not only enabled one man to do twenty men’s work, but further utilization was made of water and steam power in place of manual labor. Then began the organization of the industry on a truly gigantic scale, combining capital and machinery and resulting in what is known as the factory system.
Previous to the development of the factory system there was no reason why any industry should be centered in one particular district. Upon the utilization of steam power the textile industry became subdivided into a number of industries, each one becoming to a great extent localized in convenient and suitable portions of the country. Thus in Bradford the wool of Yorkshire (England) meets the coal of Yorkshire and makes Bradford the great woolen and worsted center of the world. The same thing took place in Manchester, where the cotton of America meets the coal of England under satisfactory climatic conditions, and around Manchester is the greatest cotton manufacturing of the world.