The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1930-01-30
Textile Manufacturing-World Pioneer
By JACK HARDY.

IN examining the struggles now being waged
1 by the textile workers of this country, under
the leadership of the National Textile Work
ers Union, it is important that the working
class understand the role played by the textile
industry in the evolution of industrial civiliza-
ton. In most sections of the world the tex
tile industry was the advance guard of the
Industrial Revolution. When the transforma-
ton was made from agriculture to industry,
from handicraft production to power ma
chinery and the factory system, it was through
the manufacture of textile fabrics that the
ground was broken. This held true when the
Industrial Revolution took place for the first
time in England; it was also true when the
basis of New England's prosperity was being
transformed from agriculture to manafactur-
ing 1t is similarly so in the South today, as
well as in India and China. In whichever di-
recton we turn we find industrialism being
1shered in by textile manufacturing.
The reasons for this are not far to seek.
The basic requirements of man are food, cloth
ing and shelter. The production of food did
not of course, lend itself so easily to factory
methods nor did the provision for shelter.
Cloth, on the other hand, could be adapted to
factory methods with comparative ease. 1t is
small wonder, therefore, that as author
has put it, "The industrialization of cotton in
English factories was the first move in our
present Mechanical Age" Textiles have been
the worlds industrial pioneers.
Industrial Revolution in England
Modern industry, of course, began with the
Industrial Revolution in England. 1t is mat
ter of Importance to note that practically all
of the inventions of that remarkable period
were associated with the production of textiles.
AS early as 1738 John Kay invented simple
device, the "fly shuttle which enabled hand
weaver to make cloth as wide as desired and
to work twice as fast as formerly. This neces-
STATED the production of considerably greater
quantities of thread, which was Forthcoming
when a Lancashire weaver, James Hargraves,
patented his so-called spinning jenny" in ITO.
This enabled the spinner to turn eight spin
ming wheels simultaneously. About the same
time Richard Arkwright, father of the fac
tory" patented "water frame" which enabled
water power to be applied to spinning. In 1779
Samuel Crompton perfected the mule" and in
1855 Edmund Cartwright patented the power
LOOM" If we add to these names those OF ELI
Whitney, an American, who patented the cot
ton gin in 1894, and James WHAT, who in
vented the steam engine in 1874, we have prac-
tically exhausted the names of those who are
associated with the beginnings of the Industrial
Revolution With the possible exception of
What, these names are exclusively those of
inventors of textile machinery
Marked similarites are to be noted in the
manner of recruiting the early labor forces
In England, when the ordinary recruiting
methods did not produce workers in sufficient
numbers paupers were brought into the mills.
Likewise, in early America, when sufficient
labor force could not be collected through other
means, almost similar methods were resorted
to. We have the record, for example, of one
Colonel Humphreys, who sought apprentices,
just as the English cotton manufacturers had
done before him. At one time he got 73 boys
from the New York Almhouse, and others from
nearby villages, all being duly bound under the
form of indenture" (Cole, A. H., The Ameri-
can Manufacture, p. 1851 Virtual peonage is
far from an uncommon practice in the textile
mills of China and India today
The use of labor recruiting agents has al
ways been one common way OF getting labor
in the early stages of textile development. To-
day the hills of the South are filled with the
agents of the mill bosses who tell false tales
to the workers of the paradise which awaits
them if they will abandon farm life and come
to the mill villages to live. The practice is not
new. 1t is as old the industry. worker
in the mills of Lowell, Mass, in 1882 tells us
of how labor was secured for the mills in those
days. "Men were employed to collect them at
so much a head, and deliver them at the fac
tories" she writes. "Help was in great de-
n1and and stories were told all over the coun-
try of the new factory place, and the high
wages that were offered to all classes Of work
people, (Robinson, H. H., Early Factory L.
Dor in Neao England, p. A. Then, as in the