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The Hollingworth Letters: Technical Change in the Textile Industry, 1826–1831 ed. by Thomas W. Leavitt (review)

1970; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 11; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/tech.1970.a894061

1097-3729

David J. Jeremy,

Australian History and Society

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 637 and Guest (1823); figure 21 from Guest derives from the earlier plate in Rees; Arkwright need not have used a mechanical device to open his cotton (p. 62) since the manual beating frame was more effective, espe­ cially with finer and longer staples, until the late 19th century; in the diagram on page 72, the mule-carriage spindles should be inclined from the vertical for the twist to be inserted; and, contrary to page 116, Robert Owen claimed to have spun 300s counts with a mule as early as 1792. Written in nontechnical language by a practicing textile engineer who has illustrated his admirable machine descriptions with extremely helpful diagrams and plates, this book should serve readers who wish to understand and appreciate the technological achievements in one sector of the Industrial Revolution but want fuller and simpler explanations than those found in Singer’s History of Technology. For historians of technology and industrial archaeologists, it paves the way for mono­ graphs on early surviving machines, for surveys of the development of types of textile machines, and for investigations of various ancillary aspects (like machine building) of the textile industry. David J. Jf.remy* The Hollingworth Letters: Technical Change in the Textile Industry, 1826-1837. Edited by Thomas W. Leavitt. Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press and Society for the History of Technology, 1969. Pp. 120. $5.95 ($4.50 to members of SHOT). The thirty-three letters (dated 1826-32) and one inventory (dated 1837) of this collection were mostly written by George Hollingworth and his five sons, woolen workers who emigrated from Huddersfield, England, to New England after 1825—spurred by the unreformed fac­ tory system, whose evils were compounded in 1825 by depression, and lured by the prospect of upward economic and social mobility in the New World. When New England factories proved as oppressive as those of Yorkshire, the family (hoping thereby also to realize an Owenite socialist community) united to lease and operate a factory of their own at Woodstock, Connecticut. Only hints of their failure, occurring before 1837, are found in these earlier letters: two threats, competition from rivals, and internal family quarrels, arose soon after the enterprise began. Being a family correspondence, there are the usual immigrants’ notes on the new climate, diet, land quality, standard of living, and society, together with gossip about the affairs of relatives and friends. In the * Mr. Jeremy, formerly a visiting research associate at the National Museum of History and Technology in the Smithsonian Institution, has just been appointed curator of the Merrimack Valley Textile Museum. His current studies are on the transmission of textile skill and technology between Britain and the United States, 1770-1835. He is the author of Henry Wansey and His American Journal. 638 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE quest for permanent settlement (which took some of the family briefly into Ohio) and deliverance from “Factory Thraldom” (p. 57), these shrewd Yorkshiremen aimed at obtaining “a small Manufacturing Estab­ lishment” surrounded by some land or else “a Farm with a Water privi­ lege thereon” (p. 58). Their view of agriculture as an insurance against failure in manufacturing, a sound commercial approach for newcomers, sprang from their Yorkshire experience of the small capitalist manu­ facturer. Yet it may not have encouraged much industrial initiative in the American context. The letters give no hint that the family was enterprising enough to develop new machinery or techniques. Only their business records, which have not survived, could possibly settle the point. Essentially the Elollingworths typify a countless number of quite ordinary, skilled, British textile workers who passed through the New England textile industry during the early 19th century. As the editor says in his introduction, “It is because the Elollingworths are, statisti­ cally at least, so common, that their letters are valuable to us” (p. xvii). This is true, but in view of our ignorance about the transmission of technology (a subject which is only just beginning to be appreciated and studied), I would like to have seen an edition of the papers of pio­ neering textile immigrants like the Scholfield brothers or Samuel Slater appear first. When these are published...