West Riding – Western Rhineprovince, 1790-1840: Diverse Paths to ...

West Riding – West of the Rhineland, 1780-1840 22
Alfred Reckendrees, University of Cologne reckendrees@wiso.uni-koeln.de
had been rather similar some decades earlier in a more comprehensive way. The clothmerchants
also integrated, in addition to selecting, sorting, and scouring the wool, the finishing
process (shearing, dressing, pressing) in own workshops and manufactures. But
spinning and weaving was not integrated into the cloth-merchants own business until the
end of the 18 th century, when Scheibler in Montjoie established the first weaving manufacture.
86 Generally, spinning and weaving, especially in Eupen, Montjoie, and Verviers, was
the work of proto-industrial domestic workers (on putting-out basis) in the hinterland of
the towns in order to reduce production costs. 87 As the domestic workers usually owned at
least a spinning wheel and many of them also a loom, this business did not afford any larger
investment. They were provided with wool and oil by so-called “baasen”, middlemen
who also incurred the yarn or the wool against piece-wage. The proto-industrial producers
did not visit the markets with their products, they rather offered a service to the clothmerchant,
who employed the work laying fallow. Though the precise relations of clothmerchants,
middlemen, and domestic workers are fairly unknown it is assumed that the latter
were dependent on the cloth-merchants because they could only spin or weave if they
were provided with materials and if the middlemen collected the products. These domestic
producers became similar to working people, but they worked in their own houses without
control, they employed own tools, and they owned a rural subsistence that allowed for selling
the work cheaper than the journeymen in the workshop or in the manufacture. 88
The cloth-makers of Aix-la-Chapelle remained free artisans who worked on behalf of different
cloth-merchants or even other cloth-makers. They offered a “service” to the market
by coordinating the spinning, the weaving, and the finish of cloth (while the importance of
the last diminished); they were able to contract with different buyers (cloth-merchants).
And they can, therefore, be regarded as single “firms”. During the French occupation the
system of putting-out cloth-merchants became pre-dominant in Aix-la-Chapelle, but it
soon suffered competition from the implementation of the factory system.
5. The Implementation of Machinery, the Diffusion of Mechanical Production, and
the Emergence of the Factory
It seems questionable whether the gild system in the Rhineland was as obstructive as the
older literature on manufacturing assumes. 89 I argued above that at least in the second half
of the 18 th century the gilds of Aix-la-Chapelle could no longer enforce their regulations;
and in Düren they became meaningless. There is some reason to argue that the structure of
cloth-merchant and artisan production under the gilds of Aix-la-Chapelle even favoured
the transition to the factory. Ebeling argues that the artisans industrial training (apprentice-
86
The Burgau manufacture (1793), Weingarten, Tuchindustrie (1922), 31; Barkhausen, Tuchindustrie
(1925), 63, 48.
87
Hammer, Betrachtungen (1937), 21; Dechesne, L'industrie (1926).
88
Hammer, Betrachtungen (1937), 21; Feine Tuchmanufaktur (1796); Anonym, [Clermont] Freymüthige
Betrachtungen (1788).
89
For a discussion of this literature, Ebeling, Möglichkeiten (2001), 588; also Müller, Reichsstadt
(1992/93).