banks of the Aire, Calder, Wharfe, or some other West Riding stream. Great as were the conveniences of these mills to the clothiers, yet there were countervailing disadvantages, which, to us at the present day, seem rather formidable. It was customary, for instance, for carts to come as many as twelve miles into the clothing districts for wool three times a week, which wool had to be brought first into the district from neighbouring towns; when scribbled, it had to be returned to be spun and woven; then it had to be re-sent to the mill to be fulled, and lastly to be returned for sale at the market. Hence the clothiers situated at a distance from these mills found it to their interest to club their means together, and build other mills for their own use. The invention of the steam-engine gave a great impetus to the change; for, with the aid of beds of coal lying immediately beneath the district, the clothiers became more and more independent of the rivers. The same cause also led to the more frequent centralization of the manufacture in large towns than in the country districts. The first Company Mill,' near Leeds, according to the new order of things, was erected at Stanningley, about five-and-thirty years ago; the next was built at Ecclesfield; and they have since multiplied with great rapidity. Each Company Mill' is a joint-stock undertaking, of which all the partners must be clothiers. In the formation of such an enterprise, a number of clothiers, varying from ten to fifty (generally about thirty), determine on the amount of capital to be raised, and divide it into shares, generally of 25l. each, which they appropriate according to the means and inclination of each one individually. Deeds of partnership are drawn up, land is purchased, a mill is erected, machinery is put into it, a manager is appointed, and work is taken in to be scribbled, or fulled, or both-the price of the work being matter of agreement, and the work being executed, both for those who are not, and for those who are, partners in the mill. At pany-mills, matters are not left in such a rude state. There is a regular deed of partnership drawn up; and it is specified to exist for a definite number of years. Some of the partners are appointed regular trustees for the whole. The maximum number of shares to be held by each partner is limited; and the shares are paid for by regular instalments. The clothier-partners all reside near the mill. All the partners are bound by penalty to act in turn on the committee; and all committee proceedings are duly entered. Each member's subscribed share is held as a security for the due fulfilment of his engagements towards his co-partners. The money is deposited in a bank. All work done at the mill, whether for the partners or others, is paid for once a month. The accounts are made up at a general meeting of the partners every four months. This, then, is the general character of the 'Company Mill' system;-a system to which we do not remember anything exactly similar in any other branch of manufacture. At Sheffield, it is true, there are wheels,' or grinding establishments, at which are a large number of workmen, employed independently of each other; but they simply rent a certain amount of standing-room and of steam-power, each one for himself, and have no share in the proprietorship of the building itself. In the best of these West Riding jointstock mills, the processes carried on therein are scribbling, carding, and slubbing the wool, and fulling the cloth after the weaving has been effected; the processes of spinning, warping, weaving, and burling are done at home by the members of the clothier's family. The whole of the cloth so produced is sold in the 'balk,' or rough state, at the cloth halls, unfinished and undyed; the purchasers either possessing or employing the requisite manufacturing means for conducting the finishing processes. The cloth generally brought to these Company-mills is of inferior quality, varying from four to seven shillings a yard in the state. The Shoddy Mill,' (another West Riding idea) is a remarkable exponent of our age-of the spirit which leads men to grind, and cut, and melt, and alter any or every thing that can by possibility come into use. There are many such mills on the river Calder, between Leeds and Dewsbury, or in the vicinity of Dewsbury. The more simple and less systematic of these Com-balk' pany-mills are managed somewhat as follows:-There is neither partnership deed nor printed regulations; but the company is governed by a president and a committee, chosen from the partners, who meet once a week for the transaction of business, and who make byelaws for their own guidance. At one of these meetings they appoint a person, who takes upon himself the multifarious duties of manager, book-keeper, treasurer, and secretary; he receives and pays all moneys. subsequent meetings the committee give him directions what to do, and he acquaints them with what he has done during the week. He accounts to the partners, at any time when called on, for the business which he has transacted, and the money which he holds or has disbursed. When his funds are run out, he asks for more, which the partners severally and equally advance. The partners have no legal hold on each other, or on their manager. It is an understanding that whatever work the partners have to do must be done at their own mill,-the joint-stock shop is to be dealt at by all. But in the more recent and better managed Com Shoddy' is the very homely name for old woollen rags when torn or cut up into infinite fragments; and 'devil' is the very emphatic name for the machine by which the process is conducted. The ruthless tearing which the rags undergo is effected in machines carefully enclosed or boxed in, and containing cylinders armed with hooks, and rotating in opposite directions. The rags are put in at the top of each machine, and come out at the bottom like coarse dirty wool. The shoddy thus prepared, by being moistened with oil, and mixed with a little new wool, is coaxed and persuaded into the assumption of the various forms of carding and yarn, and at length takes part in the formation of cloth which-though perhaps smart and glossy without-is somewhat hollow-hearted within. As a feature in the 'Home Tour' of Sir George Head, this shoddy process came in for its share of good-humoured satire:-"The trade or occupation of the late owner, his life and habits, or the filthiness and antiquity of the garment itself, oppose no bar to this wonderful process of regeneration: whether from the scarecrow or the gibbet, it makes no difference; so that, according to the changes of human affairs, it no doubt frequently does happen, without figure of speech or metaphor, that the identical garment to day exposed to the sun and rain in a Kentish cherry orchard, or saturated with tobacco-smoke on the back of a beggar in a pot-house, is doomed in its turn, 'perfusis liquidis odoribus,' to grace the swelling collar, or add dignified proportion to the chest of the dandy. Old flannel petticoats, serge, and bunting, are not only unravelled and brought to their original thread by the claws of the devil; but this machine effectually, it is said, pulls to pieces and separates the pitch-mark of the sheep's back-which latter operation really is a job worthy of the very devil himself. Those who delight in matters of speculation have here an ample field, provided they feel inclined to extend their researches on this doctrine of the transmigration of coats; their imagination may freely range in unfettered flight, from the blazing galaxy of a regal drawing-room, down to the night cellars and lowest haunts of London, Germany, Poland, Portugal, &c. But as such considerations only tend to put a man out of conceit with his own coat, or may afflict some of my fair friends with an antipathy to flannel altogether, they are much better let alone." THE CLOTH FACTORIES, AND THE CLOTH HALLS. The manufacturing arrangements of the large woollencloth factories of course differ from those of the domestic manufacturers, the Company-mills, and the Shoddymills. They are fine examples of that centralization, combined with subdivision, which marks in so striking a degree the system of modern industry. The town of Leeds, as well as Huddersfield and Halifax, contains cloth factories only a little less vast and comprehensive than the cotton factories of the Manchester district. The grasp of mind required in the chief conductors, the perpetually-recurring claim on the inventive skill of engineers to devise new adaptations of machinery, the economy of space in the whole building, the marshalling of the industrial forces, so that neither confusion nor delay shall occur in the order of processes, the watchful attention to the fluctuations of taste and fashion, the invention of new designs, as a means of leading (instead of always following) public taste, the means of varying the productive strength of the establishment according to the fluctuations of home and foreign commerce, the endeavours (now made by most of the larger manufacturers) to encourage various arrangements for the moral and social benefit of the work-people,-all combine to give great largeness of character to the general features of such establishments. The western suburbs of Leeds are rich in these great woollen factories. Taking as a type one of the most complete of these, and assuming that the rest display the same characteristics in more or less complete development, we find the following arrangements. An immense pile of buildings encloses two or three large open quadrangles; more resembling a small town than one establishment. Here we have wool-warehouses, five or six stories in height, laden with clothing-wools from all available quarters, with all the mechanical appliances for raising and lowering and transferring the wool. At another point are ranges of buildings where various handicraft employments are carried on, not requiring the aid of steam-power. At another, where this giant agent is brought into requisition, we find one range of buildings employed in the carding and other preparatory processes, another in the spinning, another in the weaving (for broad-cloth weaving is now brought within the grasp of the power-loom), another in the fulling, another in the shearing, and so on. Then we see dye-houses and drying-houses, storerooms for dye-stuffs and oils, shops for the repairs of machinery, engine-rooms and boiler-rooms, warming and ventilating apparatus, and various departments which it would be no easy matter to enumerate. All these within one boundary wall, all under one supervision, with subordinate heads of departments, all brought within a system of book-keeping and tabulating, so that every one knows where he ought to be and what he ought to be doing,-this constitutes a woollen-cloth factory, such as we find existing in the great towns of the West Riding. We can as little undertake to describe in this work all the processes of the woollen manufacture as those of flax; both would be a departure from the general plan. A mere enumeration of the designations of the artizans employed becomes a formidable list: we find sorters, scourers, beaters, pickers, scribbler-feeders, carder-feeders, roller-joiners, slubbers, jenny-spinners, mule-spinners, mule-piecers, warpers, weavers, millmen, roughers, dyers, cutters, brushers, markers, drawers, pressers, and packers. Even here it is not quite certain that all are included. We may, however, just indicate the order in which the chief processes succeed each other. First, then, the crude wool. Some of this is derived from our own grazing districts, some from Germany, and some from Australia; the wool from any or all other places now imported is but small in quantity. It is brought to the factories in bags or packages of various dimensions. The sorter' sets to work; he opens a package, spreads out some of the wool before him, slightly loosens and disentangles it, and by a nice discrimination of hand and eye, separates it into five or six parcels, according to the varying quality-softness, strength, colour, cleanness, regularity, are all taken note of in this sorting. The wool is next ' scoured' o. cleansed in hot alkaline liquor; and if the cloth is to be wool-dyed,' the wool passes through the dying process at this period; but if it be 'piece 6 dyed,' the dyeing is deferred to a much later stage of elongation and twisting which transforms the 'slubbing' the operation. Then come the remarkable processes by which the locks of wool are disentangled fibre from fibre. The wool is oiled, and put into the 'willy,' where a revolving motion causes the locks to be caught and torn asunder by sharp spikes. The wool next goes to the scribbling-machine,' where cylinders, armed with innumerable teeth, and revolving in opposite directions, tear and draw the wool from one to the other, until the fibres become combed out to something like an orderly arrangement. This order is still further attained by the 'carding-machine,' where the fibres are arranged into a kind of delicate band or sheet, about thirty inches long by six wide; and these bands are rolled up into 'cardings,' which are pipes or loose rods of wool, about half an inch thick. Then come into requisition the services of the 'slubbing-machine' or 'slubbingbilly' (what oddities we meet with among technical terms!) Children place the cardings end to end on a sloping apron or band; and these cardings are caught up by the machine, joined permanently end to end, drawn out or elongated, and slightly twisted to the form of a delicate kind of cord, or slubbing,' of which from one to two hundred yards are produced from an ounce of wool. Lastly, the beautiful 'mule spinning-machine,' ormule-jenny,' gives that final 6 6 into yarn' for the use of the weaver. The weaver requires to pass the yarn through many processes to fit it for his purpose. He selects one quality for the warp or long thread, and another for the weft or cross thread; he sees that it is properly stiffened by immersion in a glutinous liquid; he requires that the winding,' the warping,' the beaming,' and the drawing-in,' (which relate to the adjustment of the yarn upon the loom and the shuttle) shall be properly performed; and he then produces his clack, clack, clack'- the invariable accompaniment of the weaving of yarn into cloth. In the Domestic manufacturer's system, all the cloth is woven by hand; but in the large factories there is an admixture of the hand-loom and the power-loom systems. The woven cloth is scoured or cleansed, and is then milled, felted, or fulled-that is, beaten and rubbed until the fibres of wool have become so interlaced, as almost to hide the threads which form the cloth. The burlers' then pick out with tweezers all irregular knots, burs, or hairs; and many minor processes are about this time adopted. In the finishing of the cloth, the 'raiser' rubs it with a kind of brush studded with teazle-heads, which raise up all the little woollen fibres so as to give great roughness to the cloth. The 'croppingmachine,' by a very delicate and remarkable action, The whole of the cloth made by the domestic manufacturers, is sold in the Cloth Halls before the finishing processes; these latter being conducted by, or at the expense of, those who purchase the cloth. To the Cloth Halls, then, we must bend our steps. We have said that the Cloth Market used to be held in the Briggate this inconvenient arrangement was put an end to in 1711, when a Cloth Hall was built. A second superseded the first, in 1755; this was destroyed or pulled down and in 1758 and 1775 were built the two Cloth Halls, which still exist, and where more cloth has been sold, perhaps, than in any other existing buildings in the world. First, for the Coloured or Mixed Cloth Hall. This is represented, internally and externally, in two of our illustrations (Cuts, pp. 36 and 38). The Hall is in the busiest centre of Leeds, near the Commercial Buildings, and near the spot to be shortly occupied by the great central station of the railways. It is a quadrangular brick building, enclosing an open area of large dimensions. It is divided into six departments or streets, which have their own distinctive names, such as 'Cheapside,''Change-alley,' &c. Each street or avenue contains two rows of stalls, one on either side of a walk or passage. Each stall is about two feet in width, and is marked with the name of the person who owns or rents it. There are two thousand of these stalls, all occupied by the domestic or country clothiers. Then comes the busy market-day. At about nine o'clock on the mornings of Tuesdays and Saturdays, a bell rings, the hall is opened, and the clothiers flock into it, each having brought (mostly by horse and cart) the fruit of three or four days' labour. The stalls are set out with wonderful celerity, and the buyers make their appearance. Who are these buyers? it may be asked. Sometimes they are merchants who have no manufactories of their own; sometimes they are persons who combine the characters of merchants and manufac turers; and sometimes they are experienced buyers' in the pay of the larger firms. All the cloth in this hall has been dyed in the wool, prepared, spun, woven, and fulled, but not sheared or finished: the purchaser has to attend to the latter, in whatever way he deems best. The buyers are sharp, quick, business-like men; the sellers-some possessed of a little property, but others in humble circumstances-are plain, homely, shrewd, and honest-looking personages. Bargains are made with great quickness. The buyers pace up and down the avenues, look at the stalls as they pass, listen to the invitations of the sellers, examine the specimens exposed, and make a short contest about price; but it is always short, the 'chaffering' is speedily brought to an end either by one party or the other. All the sellers know all the buyers; and the discussions about 'olives,' or browns,' or 'pilots;' about 6-quarter' or "8-quarter;" about 'English' or 'Foreign;' about high quality' and 'low quality'-are heard on all sides. These Yorkshiremen can set a good example to dealers elsewhere; for the market only lasts one hour and a quarter, during which time dealings to a large amount are conducted. Directly the Coloured Cloth Hall closes, the White Cloth Hall is opened. This is situated in a more eastern part of Leeds. It is conducted much on the same principle as the one described above. The cloth sold here is in an undyed state, and presents a kind of yellowish white colour. The hall business being concluded, the clothier takes the cloth to the warehouses of the respective purchasers; where, after measuring, examining, and entering in books, the buyer receives his cloth, and the seller receives his money: the former proceeds to finish what he has bought, and the latter proceeds to buy wool in anticipation of another market-day. He walks, or rides, or drives, or 'rails' back to his clothing village among the hills and valleys, and then sets to work again as before. Thus is the cloth traffic conducted. At Halifax, Bradford, and Huddersfield, there are cloth halls like those of Leeds (in principle if not in size): each one serving as a market for the surrounding clothing villages. It is a pleasant hour for a southron in these halls on market-days. He sees the kind of cloth and the kind of people; he observes the mode of conducting the clothier traffic: and he hears the peculiar dialect of the Yorkshiremen-a dialect which, like that of the lowlands of Scotland, bears many traces of the Danish occupation of those districts a thousand years ago; mixed with other traces of the Flanders or Frieseland emigrants to Yorkshire in later times. There is a rhyme current in Halifax, to the effect, that "Gooid brade, botter, and cheese, Is gooid Halifax, and gooid Friese." We feel very much tempted to give two or three stanzas from an 'Address to Poverty,' contained in a Glossary of the Yorkshire dialect. Those who are familiar with any of the West of England dialects, will perceive here many marked points of difference : "Ah've hed thy cumpany ower lang, Ill-leakin weean! thoo must be rang Thus to cut short my jerkin. Ah ken thee weel-Ah knaw thy ways, |