The history of silk, cotton, linen, wool, and other fibrous ... - Cd3wd.com

THE COTTON MANUFACTURE. 345
the funds necessary in order to produce the goods. Tlie con-
sequence of this system is, that the manufacturers and their
men are in a state of dependence ahnost amounting to servi-
tude. The resident obtains their labor at his own price, and,
being supported by the civil and military power, he estabUshes
a monopoly of the worst kind, and productive of the most preju-
dicial effects to industr)^ The Act of 1833, which put an end
to the commercial character of the Company, will of course
abolish all the absurd and oppressive monopolies it exercised.
It cannot but seem astonishing, that in a department of in-
dustry, where the raw material has been so grossly neglected,
where the machinery is so rude, and where there is so little
division of labor, the results should be fabrics of the most exquisite
deUcacy and beauty, unrivalled by the products of any
other nation, even those best skilled in the mechanic arts.
This anomaly is explained by the remarkably fine sense of
touch possessed by that effeminate people, by their patience and
gendeness, and by the hereditary continuance of a particular
species of manufacture in families through many generations,
wdiich leads to the training of children from their very infancy
in the processes of the art. Mr. Orme observes— " The women
spin the thread destined for the cloth, and then deliver it to the
men, who have fingers to model it as exquisitely as these have
prepared it. The rigid, clumsy fingers of a European would
scarcely be able to make a piece of canvass with the instru-
ments which are all that an Indian employs in making a piece
of cambric (muslin). It is further remarkable, that every dis-
tinct kind of cloth is the production of a particular district, in
which the fabric has been transmitted perhaps for centuries
from father to son,
—
a custom which must have conduced to
the perfection of the manufacture*P The last mentioned
fact may be considered as a kind of division of labor.
Mr. Mill thus explains the unequalled manual skill of the In-
dian weaver :— " It is a sedentary occupation, and thus in harmony
with his predominant inclination. It requires patience,
of which he has an inexhaustible fund. It requires little
* Ormes's Historical Fragments of the Mogul Empire, p. 413.