Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/197

Rh were the beginning of a series of protective and restrictive statutes in Great Britain, relating to wool and its manufacture, which, extended over a period of nearly five centuries. Sometimes this legislation was wise and beneficial; at others it hampered, by almost incredible restrictions, both the growing and the manufacturing interests. A curious study of the relations of legislation to industrial enterprise is offered by the experience of England on this subject.

The development of the industry was certainly very rapid at the commencement of this policy. At the beginning of the reign of Edward III more than half of the cloth worn in England was imported; and, in his twenty-eighth year, it is stated that the exports of cloth were threefold the imports. From that time the progress of the industry was steady, if not rapid; for in England, as everywhere else, until toward the close of the eighteenth century, the manufacture remained a hand operation, and, therefore, essentially the same operation as throughout the middle ages. Some improvements in hand-spinning and in the hand looms were made, but they were not of a kind that radically changed processes or notably facilitated production. The advance consisted largely in the modification of patterns, the introduction of new designs, and the better application of the art of dyeing. With our present knowledge we may indeed wonder how the capacity of this hand-machinery sufficed to supply the clothing of the world. These were centuries of almost constant war, in which great armies were uniformed in wool. Occupation enough there must certainly have been for the weavers, notwithstanding the fact that there are repeated accounts in the contemporary histories of great depressions and constant dispersion of the cloth manufacture. They were nimble-fingered experts, and could perform feats at the loom which would astonish a modern day weaver. Some of the fabrics they wove, specimens of which remain to us, were marvels of ingenuity both in pattern and coloring. We have not greatly gained upon them in any of these respects. But the advantages of machine-made cloth over handmade are obvious, apart from greater productive capacity. No hand-spinner, however dexterous, can impart absolute uniformity to a yarn. Machinery can accomplish a uniformity so perfect that when the scales will detect the variation of the fraction of an ounce it is attributable to carelessness. For the same reason the spinning of the very light yarns, such as are used in that wonderful creation of French genius, the all-wool dress-goods—yarns as fine as two-eighties or two-nineties—was an impossibility before the application of power to spinning. No human skill, however trained and expert, can throw the shuttle with the precision of power.