Many specialize in a particular type of raw material such as silk , cotton , nylon , or rayon. The mill includes facilities for cleaning and processing the raw material, spinning it, and dying it, along with facilities to turn the raw materials into fabrics.
Fabrics can also be dyed, printed, or embroidered. The base fabrics produced by a textile mill can be sold to members of the public, or used in other manufacturing processes. For example, a mill may specialize in making cotton prints for quilters to use, in which case it sells fabric bolts to companies which supply sewing and quilting stores. A facility that supplies fabric to clothing and other textile manufacturers , on the other hand, does not work directly with end consumers or companies which supply products to end consumers.
Historically, the production of textiles was highly labor intensive. People moved from farms and small towns to larger towns and cities to work in factories and the many support businesses that grew up around them. The success of the textile industry fostered many other factory systems. Craftsmen and artisans of all types were replaced as stores and mail-order catalogs marketed inexpensive manufactured goods to all. By the end of the 19th century, textile mills and other factories produced an incredible range of new products, and generated vast new support industries, financial institutions, and transportation and information networks.
The old artisan and agricultural way of life had disappeared. Although the woolen mills are nearly gone and other textile mills are disappearing in America, the commercial and economic system they engendered lives on. The industrial revolution completely changed the way people lived, worked and thought. The same changes are occurring today as the industrial revolution is replaced by the information revolution. Workers put long hours into low-productivity but labor-intensive tasks.
The logistical effort in procuring and distributing raw materials and picking up finished goods were also limitations of the system. Some early spinning and weaving machinery, such as a 40 spindle spinning jenny for about six pounds in , was affordable to cottagers. Later machinery such as spinning frames, spinning mules, and power looms were expensive especially if water-powered , giving rise to capitalist ownership of factories.
Many workers, who had nothing but their labor to sell, became factory workers in the absence of any other opportunities. By , an integrated brass mill was working at Warmley near Bristol. Raw material went in at one end, then smelted into brass to become pans, pins, wire, and other goods.
Housing was provided for workers on site. Josiah Wedgwood in Staffordshire and Matthew Boulton at his Soho Manufactory were other prominent early industrialists, who employed the factory system. However, Richard Arkwright is credited as the brains behind the growth of factories and, specifically, the Derwent Valley Mills.
After he patented his water frame in , he established Cromford Mill in Derbyshire, England. This early factory was established by the toy manufacturer Matthew Boulton and his business partner John Fothergill.
In , they leased a site on Handsworth Heath, containing a cottage and a water-driven metal-rolling mill. The mill was replaced by a new factory, designed and built by the Wyatt family of Lichfield, and completed in Between the s and , the nature of work transitioned from a craft production model to a factory-centric model.
Handloom weavers worked at their own pace, with their own tools, and within their own cottages. Factories set hours of work and the machinery within them shaped the pace of work. Factories brought workers together within one building to work on machinery that they did not own.
They also increased the division of labor, narrowing the number and scope of tasks. The work-discipline was forcefully instilled upon the workforce by the factory owners. The early textile factories employed many children. In England and Scotland in , two-thirds of the workers in water-powered cotton mills were children.
Sir Robert Peel, a mill owner turned reformer, promoted the Health and Morals of Apprentices Act, which was intended to prevent pauper children from working more than 12 hours a day in mills. Children started in the mills at around the age of four, working as mule scavengers under the working machinery until they were eight. They progressed to working as little piecers until they were During this time they worked 14 to 16 hours a day, often physically abused.
About half of workers in Manchester and Stockport cotton factories surveyed in and bagan work at under ten years of age. Most of the adult workers in cotton factories in midth-century Britain started as child laborers. The growth of this experienced adult factory workforce helps to account for the shift away from child labor in textile factories. While child labor was common on farms and under the putting-out system, historians agree that the impact of the factory system and the Industrial Revolution on children was damaging.
In the industrial districts, children tended to enter the workforce at younger ages. Child laborers tended to be orphans, children of widows, or from the poorest families. Cruelty and torture was enacted on children by master-manufacturers to maintain high output or keep them awake. Prior to the development of the factory system, in the traditional marriage of the laboring class, women would marry men of the same social status and marriage outside this norm was unusual.
Marriage during the Industrial Revolution shifted from this tradition to a more sociable union between wife and husband in the laboring class. Women and men tended to marry someone from the same job, geographical location, or social group.
The traditional work sphere was still dictated by the father, who controlled the pace of work for his family. However, factories and mills undermined the old patriarchal authority. Factories put husbands, wives, and children under the same conditions and authority of the manufacturer masters. Factory workers typically lived within walking distance to work until the introduction of bicycles and electric street railways in the s.
Thus the factory system was partly responsible for the rise of urban living, as large numbers of workers migrated into the towns in search of employment in the factories. Until the late 19th century, it was common to work at least 12 hours a day, six days a week in most factories, but long hours were also common outside factories. The transition to industrialization was not without opposition from the workers, who feared that machines would end the need for highly skilled labor.
For example, a group of English workers known as Luddites formed to protest against industrialization and sometimes sabotaged factories. They continued an already established tradition of workers opposing labor-saving machinery. Numerous inventors in the textile industry, such as John Kay and Samuel Crompton, suffered harassment when developing their machines or devices. However, in other industries the transition to factory production was not so divisive.
Although the Luddites feared above all that machines would remove the need for highly skilled labor, one misconception about the group is that they protested against the machinery itself in a vain attempt to halt progress. As a result, the term has come to mean a person opposed to industrialization, automation, computerization, or new technologies in general. The overall impact of the factory system and the Industrial Revolution more on adults has been the subject of extensive debate among historians for over a century.
Optimists have argued that industrialization brought higher wages and better living standards to most people. Pessimists have argued that these gains have been over-exaggerated, wages did not rise significantly during this period, and whatever economic gains were actually made must be offset against the worsening health and housing of the new urban sectors.
Since the s, many contributions to the standard of living debate has tilted towards the pessimist interpretation. Engels described backstreet sections of Manchester and other mill towns, where people lived in crude shanties and shacks, some not completely enclosed, some with dirt floors.
These shanty towns had narrow walkways between irregularly shaped lots and dwellings. There were no sanitary facilities. Population density was extremely high. Eight to ten unrelated mill workers often shared a room with no furniture, and slept on a pile of straw or sawdust.
Disease spread through a contaminated water supply. By the late s, Engels noted that the extreme poverty and lack of sanitation he wrote about in had largely disappeared.
Since then, the historical debate on the question of living conditions of factory workers has remained controversial. Privacy Policy.
Skip to main content. The Industrial Revolution. Search for:. Textile Manufacturing. The British Textile Industry The British textile industry drove the Industrial Revolution, triggering advancements in technology, stimulating the coal and iron industries, boosting raw material imports, and improving transportation, which made Britain the global leader of industrialization, trade, and scientific innovation.
Learning Objectives Evaluate the British textile industry and its place in the global market before and after the Industrial Revolution. Key Takeaways Key Points Before the 17th century, the manufacture of textiles was performed on a limited scale by individual workers, usually on their own premises. Some of the cloth was made into clothes for people living in the same area and a large amount of cloth was exported. In the early 18th century, the British government passed two Calico Acts to protect the domestic woolen industry from the increasing amounts of cotton fabric imported from competitors in India.
The key British industry at the beginning of the 18th century was the production of textiles made with wool from large sheep-farming areas. This was a labor-intensive activity providing employment throughout Britain. Exports by the cotton industry had grown tenfold during this time, but still accounted for only a tenth of the value of the wool trade. Starting in the later part of the 18th century, mechanization of the textile industries, the development of iron-making techniques, and the increased use of refined coal began.
If political conditions in a particular overseas market were stable, Britain could dominate its economy through free trade alone without resorting to formal rule or mercantilism. Apart from coal and iron, most raw materials had to be imported. Key Terms Calico Acts : Two legislative acts, one of and one of , that banned the import of most cotton textiles into England, followed by the restriction of sale of most cotton textiles.
It was a dominant form of production in prior to industrialization but continues to exist today. While products and services are often unique and distinctive, given that they are usually not mass-produced, producers in this sector often face numerous disadvantages when trying to compete with much larger factory-based companies. Manufacturing and industry, particularly of goods with military applications, was prioritized.
Technological Developments in Textiles The British textile industry triggered tremendous scientific innovation, resulting in such key inventions as the flying shuttle, spinning jenny, water frame, and spinning mule. Learning Objectives Describe the technology that allowed the textile industry to move towards more automated processes. Key Takeaways Key Points The exemption of raw cotton from the Calico Act saw two thousand bales of cotton imported annually from Asia and the Americas, forming the basis of a new indigenous industry.
This triggered the development of a series of mechanized spinning and weaving technologies to process the material. This production was concentrated in new cotton mills, which slowly expanded.
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