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

West Riding – West of the Rhineland, 1780-1840 6
Alfred Reckendrees, University of Cologne reckendrees@wiso.uni-koeln.de
specific British regional division of labour (that was not a strict division) run criss-cross
within the Rhenish industry. - However, a comparison must to be based on criteria. And
the basic idea of the paper is the comparison of the two industrially leading woollen cloth
regions in Britain and Germany. 13
Spinning, weaving, and finishing cloth is an old technology. It is, however, not trivial and
its products are not homogenous. There is also a relation between the technology used, the
extent of the unit of production, and the division of labour on the one hand and the quality
of the cloth on the other hand. Section 2 provides therefore, at first, general information on
the techniques of the woollen cloth production. The following section 3 will provide some
terms and definitions (firm, machine, factory); and then section 4 gives a general picture of
the two region’s pre-industrial systems of production. The paper will be continued by an
analyses of the introduction of machinery (e.g. stages of production, kinds of machinery)
that results in a comparison of the structure of the regions’ respective “typical factory” or
“typical factories” in section 5. The following section 6 will provide some information on
the diffusion of the mechanical production into the regional industry and data of production,
sales and markets as far as this is possible. The conclusive section will suggest an explanation
for for divergence and similarities of the British and the German developments.
2. Production of Woollen Cloth
Research on the textile industries has not only to distinguish different branches based on
the raw materials cotton, flax, silk, and wool, but it has also to consider that there are two
woollen industries: the worsted industries and the woollen cloth industries. Both are working
up sheep’s wool, however, they are using different raw materials that require different
techniques of production: worsteds are made of long wool fibres and woollen cloths are
made of short wool fibres. These different fibres need a special preparation in order to be
spun, there are different processes of spinning, and the cloths are finished differently,
though the technical progress in textiles made this less important in the last decades of the
20 th century. However, the production techniques of the worsted industries of the 18 th and
19 th century was generally more similar to cotton textile manufacturing than to the woollen
cloth production that is the only subject of this paper.
The woollen cloth production, in the first instance, may be characterised sufficiently by
four basic processes: 1. selecting the wool; 2. scouring the wool, preparing it for spinning
and spinning the yarn; 3. preparing the loom and weaving the yarn; and 4. scouring, fulling
and finishing the cloth. Dyeing, the fifth basic process, could be done after having scoured
the wool (“in the wool”) or it could be done “in the piece” (i.e. the completed cloth).
Weaving coloured yarn allowed, of course, for different patterns, while dyeing “in the
piece” allowed for more brilliant and durable colours. Apart from this general statement,
dyeing will not be considered further. The following abstract on the technical process of
13 I will get back to the West of England at the end of this paper.