Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/694

Rh 654 WOOL country. The cloth fair in the church yard of the priory of St Bartholomew was instituted by Henry II. ; guilds of weavers were established ; and the exclusive privilege of exporting woollen cloth was granted to the city of London. Edward III. made special efforts to encourage woollen industries according to the manner in which it was supposed in mediaeval times that trade could be best encouraged. He brought weavers, dyers, and fullers from Flanders; he himself wore Flemish cloth; and to stimulate native industry he prohibited under pain of life and limb the exportation of English wool. Previous to the time of Edward III. English wool had been in larger demand on the Continent, where it had a reputation exceeded only by the wool of Spain, which for ages pro vided Europe with the best material for cloth-making. The customs duties levied on the export of wool were an important source of the royal revenue, and Edward III. s attempt to stop the trade appears to have been an honest though misguided attempt to foster native manufactures. His prohibitory law was, however, found to be unworkable, and the utmost that both he and his successors were able to effect was to hamper the export trade by vexatious restrictions and to encourage much &quot;running&quot; or smuggling of wool. Thus while Edward III. limited the right of exporting to merchant strangers, we find that Edward IV. decreed that no alien should export wool and that denizens should export it only to Calais. Legislation of this kind prevailed till the reign of Elizabeth, when the free exportation of English wool was permitted; and Smith, in his Memoirs of Wool, points out that it was during this reign that the manufacture made the most rapid progress in the country. In 1660 the absolute prohibition of the export of wool was again decreed, and it was not till 1825 that this prohibitory law was finally repealed. The pro hibition appears to have been based on the mistaken notion that England possessed a monopoly of the finest kinds of wool, and that by withholding it from foreign competitors the home manufacturers would command the markets of the world. The results of the prohibitory law were exceedingly detrimental : the production of wool far exceeded the consumption ; the price of the raw material fell; wool &quot;running&quot; or smuggling became an organized traffic; and the whole industry became disarranged. Extra ordinary expedients were resorted to for stimulating the demand for woollen manufactures, among which was an Act passed in the reign of Charles II. decreeing that all dead bodies should be buried in woollen shrouds, an enactment which remained in the Statute Book, if not in force, for a period of 120 years. On the opening up of the colonies, every effort was made to encourage the use of English cloth, and the manufacture was discouraged and even prohibited in Ireland. It was not without reason that the attention of monarchs and legislators was so frequently directed to the woollen industries. Wool was indeed &quot;the flower and strength and revenue and blood of England,&quot; and till the develop ment of the cotton trade, towards the end of the 18th century, the woollen industries were, beyond comparison, the most important sources of wealth in the country. What the actual value of the trade at any early period was it is impossible to ascertain, and the estimates of wool pro duction and the value of the manufactures in the 17th and 18th centuries vary widely. Towards the close of the 17th century the wool produced in England was estimated to be worth 2,000,000 yearly, furnishing 8,000,000 worth of manufactured goods, of which there was exported about 2,000,000 in value. In 1700 the official value of woollen goods exported was about 3,000,000, and in the third quarter of the century the exports had increased in value by about 500,000 only. In 1774 Dr Campbell (Political Survey of Great Britain) estimated the number of sheep in England at 10,000,000 or 12,000,000, the value of the wool produced yearly at 3,000,000, the manu factured products at 12,000,000, and the exports at 3,000,000 to 4,000,000. He also reckoned that the industry then gave employment to 1,000,000 persons. These figures, in the light of the dimensions of present day industries, may appear small, but they bore a predominant relationship to the other great sources of employment and trade of the period. In 1800 the native crop of wool was estimated to amount to 96,000,000 Ib ; and, import duty not being imposed till 1802, the quantity brought from abroad was 8,600,000 ft, 6,000,000 ft of which came from Spain. In 1825 the importation of colonial wool became free, the duty leviable having been for several previous years as high as 6d. per ft, and in 1844 the duty was finally remitted on foreign wool also. Sheep were introduced at Jamestown in Virginia in Wool in 1609, and in 1633 the animals were first brought to America. Boston. Ten years later a fulling mill was erected at Rowley, Mass., &quot; by Mr Rowley s people, who were the first that set upon making cloth in this western world.&quot; The factory woollen industry was, however, not established till the close of the 18th century, and it is recorded that the first carding machine put in operation in the United States was constructed in 1794 under the supervision of John and Arthur Schofield. The prevailing colour of sheep s wool is white, but it Tho must not be forgotten that there are races with black, sliee P- brown, fawn, yellow, and grey shades of wool. For manu facturing purposes generally white wool is, of course, most valuable, but for the homespuns, which in earlier times absorbed the bulk of wool, natural colours were in many cases desirable and used with good effect. In domestic spinning, knitting, and weaving, natural colours are still largely taken advantage of, as in the cases of rough yarns, Shetland knitted shawls, Highland tweeds, &c. As has already been indicated, the distinction between Cliarac- wool and hair lies chiefly in the great fineness, softness, teristics and waved delicacy of woollen fibre, combined with a wo * highly serrated surface. These peculiarities are precisely the characters which give wool its distinctive value as a textile fibre, and most distinctive of all is the serrated structure which specially belongs to wool and gives it the important property of felting, upon which many of its applications depend. The serrations of wool and the wavy structure it assumes are closely connected, those wools which have the greatest number of serrations being also most finely waved in structure. The appearance pre sented by wool under the microscope, as compared with the aspect of certain other animal fibres, is shown in fig. 1 (compare vol. ix. p. 133). The imbrications all lie in one direction, from the root, their growing point, upwards to the apex of the fibre, so that, while a lock of wool drawn between the finger and thumb from the root end outwards slips quite smoothly, if drawn in the contrary direction from point to root it offers a distinct resistance, and the fibre feels harsh and rough. Under the influence of moisture and pressure, tangled masses of wool thoroughly interlock and mat together, by the mutual clutching of the serrations of the fibres, and it is thus that the shrinking and thickening of woollen textures under washing is accounted for, and the capacity of cloth for felting or fulling is due to this condition of the fibre. The serrations are most numerous, acute, pointed, and distinct in fine merino wools, as many as 2800 per inch being counted in specimens of the finest Saxony wools. In the Leicester wool of England, on the other hand, which is a long bright staple, the serratures are not only much fewer in number, counting about 1800, but they are also less pronounced