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

West Riding – West of the Rhineland, 1780-1840 46
Alfred Reckendrees, University of Cologne reckendrees@wiso.uni-koeln.de
7. Explanations for divergence and similarities
The implementation of the factory system in the two regions of the West Riding and the
west of the Rhineland followed different lines that are analysed in this paper. The differences
can be explained by the structure of the respective traditional system of cloth production
and by different types of products, the similarities by production costs and by responses
to changing market conditions.
The emergence of the factory in the woollen cloth industry of the West Riding is related to
the implementation of the scribbling and fulling mills of the 1780s and 1790s many of
them employed steam engines from the early beginnings, howver this machine were often
only used as water hoisting machines. The sribbling mills concentrated on the production
of slubbings which were processed to yarn by domestic spinners (who mostly owned little
spinning jennies). Most of these domestic spinners worked on behalf of clothiers, others
sold the yarn at the market. The rate of vertically integrated firms was relative low, yet
there were some firms like Benjamin Gott & Comp. in Leeds which operated on a very
large scale. One of the characteristics of the industrial structure of the West Riding was the
great number of firms that were working only on one or two stages of production (scribbling
and fulling mills counted for 50% in the 1830s). Though there were sometimes serious
conflicts regarding the quality of work between the clothiers on the one hand and the
runners of the fulling mills or the dressing masters on the other hand, the specific traditional
industrial division of labour was preserved until the midth of the 19 th century. However,
the rate of negotiated market relations increased.
In the west of the Rhineland two different systems of industrial cloth production emerged
since the 1810s. The dominating system was the vertically integrated “cloth factory” that
was mainly established in the cities of Aix-la-Chapelle and Düren (and to a lower degree in
Eupen). These cloth factories processed raw wool from scouring to woollen yarn, they
wove the woollen cloth, finished it to fine woollen cloth, and they even brought it to the international
markets by own sales agencies (e.g. in North America). Conforming with the
general concept of “economic backwardness” (Gerschenkron) the cloth industry of the
Rhineland took the advantages of industrial latecomers. From the very beginning in the
first two decades of the 19 th century the emering cloth factories implemented up-to-date
factory equipment that consisted of complete sets of spinning machines comprehending the
willy (or teaser), scribbling and carding machines, slubbing billys, and spinning jennies 153
on the one hand and gig mills, shearing frames, pressing machines, gas heating etc. on the
other hand. Labour conflicts regarding the implementation of machinery were only temporary.
154 In Aix-la-Chapelle woollen yarn was seldom sold or bought because the quality of
153
These spinning jennies were larger than the “simple” machines that were usually employed in the cottage
industry of the West Riding, see: May, Kammgarn-Maschinenspinnerei (1826); Fahrbach,
Geschichte (1932), 81; Heaton, Yorkshire (1965), 352.
154
I could not address this issue in this paper but there were only two remarkable riots in the period of
1790 to 1840, one in Eupen in 1821 that opposed against shearing machines, the second uproar (1830
in Aix-la-Chapelle) was mainly opposed to wage shortages by the entrepreneurs, see: Venedey, Darstellung
(1831); Volkmann, Strukturwandel (1973); Althammer, Herrschaft (2002).