University of Guelph thesis template - Atrium - University of Guelph

CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Was the labour of man esteemed as it ought to be,
according to its usefulness, the weaver would hold
a high claim for honour. 1
The relationship between handloom weaver, John Campbell and his customers in
nineteenth-century rural south-western Ontario is a model of the social and economic
interdependence of rural communities. The following study addresses the essence of that
relationship: Campbell’s production and his customers’ consumption of hand-woven cloth. The
unassuming exchange of cloth for capital might be viewed solely as a business transaction
between producer and consumer: the customer needed cloth, the weaver needed a livelihood.
Due to the multi-stepped nature of pre-industrial textile production and Campbell’s expertise as a
weaver, the relationship was far from simple and far from single-purposed. The role of producer
and consumer crossed boundaries, as Campbell depended on the dyeing, spinning and rag sewing
by his customers and his customers depended on Campbell to transform their homespun into a
skillful end-product. 2
In nineteenth-century Britain and North America, handloom weavers like Campbell
persisted parallel to factory-produced cloth because of the appealing nature of the work of the
handloom weaver, the independence that it afforded them and the continuing demand for handwoven
cloth from the customer. 3
Motivations and means for handloom weavers like John
Campbell were fairly basic – they needed to make a living, they had a skill and they had a market
1 Weaver’s magazine and literary companion. Volume II, no. 7. Jan. 1819 (Paisley, Scotland: John Neilson, 1819), 84.
2 Gail F. Mohanty, Labor and Laborers of the Loom: Mechanization and Handloom Weavers, 1780-1840 (New York: Routledge, 2006),
43.
3 Cloth was being woven in factories such as the Rosamond Mill in Almonte, Ontario in 1857. Richard Reid, “The Rosamond Woollen
Company of Almonte: Industrial Development in a Rural Setting,” Ontario History 75 (1983): 266-89. Cloth was woven on
power looms at Frasher & Crashaws in Cobourg in 1849 and Andrew Paton’s woollen mill in Galt in 1855. Sedley Anthony
Cudmore, Economics (Toronto, The Shaw Correspondence School, 1912), 14.
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