The Norwich Textile Industry

Captain John Smith was an explorer from England, a solider and a colonial governor. John’s teenage years were rough to say the least. At sixteen years of age, his father passed away tragically. He joined volunteers in fighting for independence from Spain. While fighting for Hungary he was promoted to captain, but in 1602 was captured and sold as a slave. He escaped and fled, then proceeded to travel at several different places until he went back to England.

Do you think that English textile factories were bad for the health of working class families. Use evidence from at least two of the documents to support your claim.

In his book, “Class and Community the Industrial Revolution in Lynn”, Alan Dawley carefully examines the structure and culture of Lynn shoemakers. The key issue Dawley wants to address and convey to the reader is that the American Revolution opened the doors for different radical actions and ideology to take place. Overall, the book explores the causes and effects of the 19th century revolution in the shoemaking community of Lynn,

The earliest factories in England came up by the 1730s and, with the technology enabled production processes like carding, twisting, spinning and rolling became faster and easier consequentially, between 1760 and 1787 raw cotton imports to British cotton industry rose from 2.5 million pounds to 22 million pounds. On the contrary, the traditional market of cotton cloth from India witnessed a steady decline from 30 per cent around 1800 to 15 per cent by 1815 and to 3 percent in 1870s. While exports of cloth declined rapidly, export of raw materials increased equally fast. Between 1812 and 1871, the share of raw cotton exports rose from 5 per cent to 35 per cent. This was not something triggered by the industrial revolution but the protectionist measures of the British t which imposed tariffs on cloth imports. The creation of cotton mill by Richard Arkwright brought processes under one roof and management, allowing better supervision, quality control, and the regulation of labour. Thus not only the trade the way business of production was handled also underwent a quantum change.

The Industrial Revolution began in Britain during the late 1700s. It took place during the 18th and 19th centuries. Document 3 displays the look of the environment at the beginning of this shift in society. It is filled with smoky chimneys. Machines and factories led to great productions, such as new systems of transportation, more efficient communication, banking systems, a variety of manufactured goods, and an overall improvement of living. Britain was the perfect place for the Industrial Revolution to begin due to its coal and iron. Factories became a necessity because of the increase in demand for British goods (Staff, 2009). Before the Industrial Revolution, transportation consisted of wagons, led by horses. “In the early 1800s, American Robert Fulton built the first commercially successful steamboat” (Staff, 2009). Along

British cotton textile industry grew into the worlds most productive; its railway network became the nation’s principal means of inland transportation and communication; and a new fleet of steam-powered ships enabled Britain to project its new productivity and power around the globe.

The New England settlers produced much of England’s economy and they relied heavily on artisan industries like printing, shipbuilding, and carpentry.

In the 19th century, America saw major expansions and technological advances that paved way for the grand expansion of agriculture that boosted the nation’s economy. Regardless of the fact that Great Britain had tried to keep secrets regarding machinery and inventions, most of America’s advances were propelled by inventions such as the cotton gin by Eli Whitney in 1793, steel plow by John Deere, railway, steamboats, telegraph, and canals. In addition, technology’s profound effect on agriculture also led to the rise of the textile industry whereby factories produced materials such as cotton thread and cloth. Many of these initial factories are recognized in historical texts, but the Lowell factory system is one that is famous – precisely the

Industrialisation and urbanisation developed during the late 1700’s. This was the process of companies removing physical labour and replacing this with machinery. The iron and the textile industries we’re two fields of work which played a big impact on the industrial revolution and the people who mainly benefited from these occupations were the very poor and working class.

The Lowell system was a production and labor model employed in the U.S., also in New England, during the early years of the American textile industry in the early 19th century. Moreover, the success of the early spinning mills of southern New England in 1810 and the uncertainties of shipping led the son of a leading Boston merchant family, Francis Cabot Lowell, to seek a haven for his fortune in manufacturing. After that, There Lowell and his entrepreneur later called the "Boston Associates”.

Lowell factories started to be made so the owners needed workers; the owners chose to use girls to work in the factories. Women got paid less during that time period so it would be cheaper for the owners. The women who worked in the mills were called mill girls, they were usually 15 to 35 years old. Mill girls worked 12 hours for 6 days a week, and lived in boarding houses. The textile corporations of Lowell paid higher wages than textile cities even though the work was difficult and tiring and that it was bad for their health. The mill girls protested the wage cuts few have succeeded.

Local artisans, laborers, and small merchants who traded outside of the British Empire, embraced the boycott of British goods and severance with England entirely because it afforded them economic opportunities that made the risk of revolution worthwhile (p. 145, Berkin). These groups had been living under the yoke of unfair taxation and an inexhaustible source of British competition in labor and goods. Revolution, for them, meant “a release from Britain’s mercantile policies, which restricted colonial trade with other nations, held out the promise of expanded trade and an end to the risks of smuggling (p. 145, Berkin).”

A recently discovered leather daybook dating within the period of 1837-1857 accurately depicts the activities of a small crafts business prior to the arrival of the industrial revolution.

During the 1800’s Great Britain’s empire stretched around the world, and with raw materials easily available to them this way, they inevitably began refining and manufacturing all stages of many new machines and other goods, distributing locally and globally. However, despite being the central ‘workshop of the world,’ Britain was not producing the highest quality of merchandise. When comparing factory-made products made in England to surrounding countries, most notably France, those products could not compare as far as craftsmanship and sometimes, simply innovation. It was suggested by Prince Albert that England host a sort of free-for-all technological exposition to bring in outside crafts into the country and also

The textile industry, which came to make up the majority of Britain’s factory system, was going through a period of substantial change. The pre-industrial cloth industry, consisting mainly of wool, was organized on the domestic system by using hand-powered machinery. By 1850, this system was giving way to steam power and the factory system, and the primacy of wool was replaced with the primacy of cotton . The invention of James Hargreaves’ ‘Spinning Jenny’ and Richard Arkwright’s ‘Water Frame’ had already revolutionized the textile industry, however, the development of the ‘Mule’, so-called because it was a cross between the Jenny and Water Frame, by Samuel Crompton, led to the rapid establishment of many cotton mills. The ‘Mule’, which incorporated the steam engine to increase its output, would produce seven times as much cloth as hand operated looms. This led many employers rushing to replace male hand weavers with machines, as noted by Richard Guest in his 1823 publication Compendium History of Cotton-Manufacture: ‘the same