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British and American Yarn Count Systems: An Historical Analysis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2012

David J. Jeremy
David J. Jeremy
Affiliation:
Curator, Merrimack Valley Textile Museum
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Abstract

Mr. Jeremy traces since the Middle Ages the interaction of technology and business organization in shaping the measuring systems for yarn in the British and later the American textile industries. Despite the attendant confusion and difficulties, a remarkable motley of such systems arose and has persisted.

Type
Research Article
Information
Business History Review , Volume 45 , Issue 3 , Autumn 1971 , pp. 336 - 368
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1971

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References

1 For the opportunity to prepare the groundwork for this article, I am very grateful to the Smithsonian Institution which awarded me a Visiting Research Associateship at its National Museum of History and Technology (1969–1970) where the Division of Manufacturing, headed by Dr. Philip W. Bishop, generously sponsored my work.

2 Ramsey, David, The Weaver and Housewife's Pocket-Book; Containing Rules for the Right Making of Linen Cloth (Edinburgh, 1750), 8Google Scholar: “all along thro' this Book, it is supposed the Yam is just reeled, and right telled; for in an exact Calculation of this kind, there is no allowance for Deficiency, either of bad Tell or short Reels.”

3 Stinchcombe, Arthur L.. “Social Structure and Organizations,” in March, James G. (ed.), Handbook of Organizations (Chicago, 1965), 142–193Google Scholar. I wish to thank the editors of the Business History Review for drawing my attention to this article and to the wider implications of the history of numbering systems; Glenn Porter has been especially helpful in persuading me to emphasize organizational as much as technological aspects and in providing constructive criticism of the shape of this essay.

4 For further illustrations and discussions of the niddy-noddy see Schwarz, A., “The Reel,” Ciba Review, LIX (August, 1947), 2130–33Google Scholar; Livingston, Charles H., Reels, Skein Winding: Studies in Word History and Etymology (Ann Arbor, 1957), 1–14Google Scholar; Johnson, Laurence A., “The Niddy-Noddy,” The Chronicle of the Early American Industries Association, Inc., XI (March, 1958), 4–7Google Scholar; Channing, Marion L., “From Spindle to Loom,” Spinning Wheel, XXIII (December, 1967), 24–25, 50Google Scholar.

As an anonymous writer observed in 1733, the use of hand reels is “a Method of making up Yarn so uncertain and precarious, that no Persons who use them, can possibly be exact in their Numbers of Threads.” Quoted in Duncan, John, Practical and Descriptive Essays on the Art of Weaving (Glasgow, 1807), 243Google Scholar.

5 “Schwarz, “The Reel,” 2132–2133, 2138–2139; Forbes, Robert J., Studies in Ancient Technology (11 vols., Leiden, 1955—), IV, 165–167Google Scholar. However, evidence for a cranked, rotary reel earlier than 1405 cannot be found according to White, Lynn Jr., Medieval Technology and Social Change (Oxford, 1962), 111Google Scholar. See also Livingston, Skein Winding Reels, 1–14. Because they were more accurate than hand-reels, ten thousand check reels were distributed by the Board of Trustees in Ireland during the early eighteenth century. See Duncan, Essays, 245.

6 7 Jac. 1, c. 7 (1609). The text of British statutes has been taken from Danby Pickering's edition while dates are those given in Great Britain, Chronological Table of the Statutes Covering the Period from 1235 to the End of 1969 (London, 1970)Google Scholar.

7 25 Edw. 3, stat. 4, c. 1 (1350).

8 Marshall, Leslie C., The Practical Flax Spinner (London, 1885), 221–22Google Scholar.

9 These conclusions are drawn from an examination of the sixty spinning wheels in the collections of the Merrimack Valley Textile Museum, North Andover, Mass.

10 A point made in Murphy, William S. (ed.), The Textile Industries: A Practical Guide to Fibres, Yarns and Fabrics in Every Branch of Textile Manufacture (8 vols., London, 1910–1911), III, 169Google Scholar.

11 This is another inference from the wheels in the Merrimack Valley Textile Museum's collections.

12 For the location of reels in colonial homes (in garret, kitchen, bedroom, or sideroom) see Cummings, Abbott L. (ed.), Rural Household Inventories Establishing the Names, Uses and Furnishings of Rooms in the Colonial New England Home, 1675–1775 (Boston, 1964)Google Scholar, passim. Presumably English practice was similar.

13 Rees, Abraham (ed.), The Cyclopaedia; or Universal Dictionary of Arts, Sciences and Literature (45 vols., London, 1802–1819)Google Scholar, s.v. “Worsted.”

14 Woodhouse, Thomas, Yarn Counts and Calculations (London, 1921), 5Google Scholar; also emphasized in Partridge, William, A Practical Treatise on Dying (New York, 1823), 66Google Scholar.

15 At some point it was realized that the number of yards in the Yorkshire skein (1,520) was almost equal to the number of drams in the 6 lb. watern (1,536), the weight unit of the Yorkshire woolen count system. As a short cut, counts were calculated as the number of yards weighing one dram. The difference reached a skein's length at no. 95 which was really a no. 96 on the 1,520 yd. scale. Convenience proved stronger than custom and by the 1890's the old 1,520 yd. skein had been all but abandoned in preference for the 1,536 yd. one. See Vickerman, Charles, Woollen Spinning (London, 1894), 342–344Google Scholar. See text note 46 and tables note 35 infra for sample reel references and Duncan, Essays, 318 for an example of the convenient relation between warp length and linen reel size.

16 Berriman, Algernon E., Historical Metrology (London, 1953), 146–151Google Scholar.

17 Great Britain, Parliamentary Papers (House of Commons) 1820 (314), VII, “Second Report of the Commissioners … [on] Weights and Measures,” Appendix A.

18 For an early design for precisely-calibrated yarn scales see Ludlam, W., “An Account of a Balance of a New Construction Supposed to Be of Use in the Woollen Manufacture,” Philosophical Transactions, LV (1765), 205–217CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Dr. Philip W. Bishop kindly supplied this reference.

19 For comparative fiber structures see von Bergen, Werner and Krauss, Walter (eds.), Textile Fiber Atlas (2nd ed., New York, 1945)Google Scholar and Mauersberger, Herbert R. (ed.), Matthews' Textile Fibers (New York, 1947)Google Scholar.

20 23 Hen. 6, c. 4 (1444) and 7 Edw. 4, c. 1 (1467) both complain of “the slaies and thread” of worsted goods “falsly made and wrought” or “not well made and wrought.”

21 6 Hen. 8, c. 9 (1514).

22 Quoted in Duncan, Essays, 244. In seventeenth century Dutch spinning schools, the infant spinners were seated in tiers, according to their ability to spin fine yarn, and their managers “sort and size all the Threads so, that they can apply them to make equal Cloaths.” Yarranton, Andrew, England's Improvement by Sea and Land (2 vols., London, 1677), I, 46Google Scholar.

23 Carus-Wilson, Eleanora, “The Woollen Industry,” The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, vol. II, Postan, M. M. and Rich, E. E. (eds.), Trade and Industry in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1952), 408–428Google Scholar.

24 Lipson, Ephraim, The Economic History of England, vol. II The Age of Mercantilism (London, 1961), 13Google Scholar n; Ramsay, George D., The Wiltshire Woollen Industry in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (London, 1965), 31–49Google Scholar, 90–99.

25 Heaton, Herbert, The Yorkshire Woollen and Worsted Industries from the Earliest Times up to the Industrial Revolution (Oxford, 1965), 296–97Google Scholar.

26 Yarranton, England's Improvement, I, 46; Great Britain, Parliamentary Tapers (House of Commons) 1802–1803 (95), VII, “Minutes of Evidence Taken before the Committee, to Whom the Bill, Respecting the Laws Relating to the Woollen Trade, Is Committed,” 301.

27 The acts of 4 Edw. 4, c. 1 (1464) and 3 Hen. 8, c. 6 (1511) ordained that textile workers should perform their several duties while 6 Hen. 8, c. 9 (1514), noticed above, legislatively recognized for the first time that dishonest carding and spinning were becoming a problem. A study of medieval guild and corporation records is really needed to confirm that yarn embezzlement was a minor problem until the putting-out system came into the hands of large country clothiers. I have relied on the standard studies by Lipson and Carus-Wilson already cited.

After the defeat of a 1593 draft bill against “divers faultes” of spinners and weavers (including, among the former, “deceitfull spinning their yarne”), the tensions between workers and clothiers mounted in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. See Tawney, R. H. and Power, Eileen, Tudor Economic Documents (3 vols., London, 1924), I, 372Google Scholar; Ramsay, Wiltshire Woollen Industry, 14, 94; Lipson, , Economic History of England, II, 48–49Google Scholar; Wadsworth, Alfred P. and Mann, Julia de L., The Cotton Trade and Industrial Lancashire, 1600–1780 (Manchester, 1931), 395–400Google Scholar.

28 Cooper, J. P., “Economic Regulation and the Cloth Industry in Seventeenth-Century England,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., XX (1970), 73–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 Heaton, Yorkshire Woollen and Worsted Industries, 91–101.

30 Rimmer, William G., Marshall's of Leeds, Flax Spinners, 1788–1886 (Cambridge, 1960), 1–9Google Scholar; Robert, and Scott, William, Scott's Practical Cotton Spinner and Manufacturer (Preston, Lanes., 1840), 337–38Google Scholar; Sharp, Peter, Flax, Tow, and Jute Spinning (Dundee, 1882), 173Google Scholar; Carter, H. R., Flax and Its Products (London, 1920), 85Google Scholar.

31 Mantoux, Paul, The Industrial Revolution in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1961), 199–203Google Scholar, though he has probably overstated the effects of the 1721 act which did not prohibit cotton goods for export, as Wadsworth and Mann noted in Cotton Trade, 118.

The cotton yarn numbering system apparently did not derive from Indian practice. At Dacca in Bengal, the center of fine hand spinning, reels were not standardized and yam was measured by the häth (cubit) of 19¾ inches, fineness being expressed as the number of hāths weighing one ruttee (2 grains troy). Anon, A Descriptive and Historical Account of the Cotton Manufacture of Dacca, in Bengal by a Former Resident of Dacca (London, 1851), 16–24Google Scholar.

32 7 Jac. 1, c. 7 (1609).

33 Wadsworth and Mann. Cotton Trade, 89, 276.

34 Bowden, Peter J., The Wool Trade in Tudor and Stuart England (London, 1962), xvii–xviiiCrossRefGoogle Scholar. Scobell, Henry (ed.), The Collection of Acts and Ordinances of General Use Made in the Parliament … 1640 … to 1656 (London, 1658), 146–48Google Scholar for c. 36 (November, 1650). 14 Car, 2, c. 5 (1662).

35 Heaton, Yorkshire Woollen and Worsted Industries, 418–437; Wadsworth and Mann, Cotton Trade, 395–99.

36 Cooper, “Economic Regulation and the Cloth Industry,” 83.

37 For the general economic development of the Scottish linen industry see Campbell, Roy H., Scotland since 1707: the Rise of an Industrial Society (Oxford, 1965), 58–59Google Scholar.

According to T. Woodhouse and Kilgour, P., The Jute Industry (London, 1921), 70, the Convention of Estates had advocated a 90 inch reel in 1665. The 1693 act is found in Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland (12 vols., Edinburgh, 1814–1824), IX, 311–313Google Scholar. The English statute confirming its reel size was 13 Geo. 1, c. 26 (1726).

38 See Gill, Conrad, The Rise of the Irish Linen Industry (Oxford, 1925), 61–82Google Scholar for the background to 4 Anne, c. 4 (1705) which is printed in Statutes at Large Passed in the Parliament Held in Ireland (11 vols., Dublin, 1760–1769), IV, 73–75Google Scholar. Miss Edith Henderson of the Harvard Law Library kindly supplied me with copies of the Scottish and Irish acts cited in this article.

39 Scott, Practical Cotton Spinner is one example.

40 M'Lennan, Blair, & Co., Yam Merchants, Glasgow (computed and arranged), Comparative Yarn Tables (Glasgow, 1883)Google Scholar, kindly transmitted to me by Mr. James Hunter of the Paisley Museum, is one I have seen.

41 The best available figures are in Mitchell, Brian R. and Deane, Phyllis (eds.), Abstract of British Historical Statistics (Cambridge, 1962), 195–97Google Scholar, 293–295, 302–306. Contemporary estimates suggest that Britain exported no woolen yarn whatsoever at mid-century. In 1864 Jacob Behrens computed that England exported 31,824,296 lbs. of worsted yarn. See Ponting, Kenneth G. (ed.), Baines's Account of the Woollen Manufacture of England (New York, 1970), 141Google Scholar. This is equivalent to the total amount of woolen and worsted yarn exported that year by Britain, according to Mitchell and Deane (p. 196).

42 English mercantile agents in Germany, arranging imports of British worsted yarn between the 1840's and 1870's, certainly quoted English worsted numbers to Yorkshire manufacturers. See, for example, Sigsworth, Eric M., Black Dyke Mills. A History (Liverpool, 1958), 284–317Google Scholar.

43 Ponting (ed.), Baines's Account, 100–105, 110–14.

44 Not until the 1880's was technical education in the textile industry successfully organized and structured. See W. English, “Beginnings and Early Growth of Textile Technical Education in Britain,” The Textile Manufacturer, September, 1969, 345–49.

45 Though a hand spinner could have spun up to two spyndles (each of 14,400 yards) of yarn in six days, and perhaps more if others carded for her, uneven hand spinning made such a length unit impracticable before mechanization. I therefore assume that the Aberdeen system was a product of industrialization. No evidence of origin has apparently survived locally according to Mr. A. R. Alexander, Designer for J. & J. Crombie Ltd. of Aberdeen. Letter to Aberdeen Public Library, October 14, 1970, in response to mine of October 1, 1970 to Aberdeen Public Library.

46 Montgomery, James, The Cotton Spinner's Manual; or a Compendium of the Principles of Cotton Spinning (Glasgow, 1835), 62–64Google Scholar and Leigh, W., The Practical Cotton Spinner and Manager's Assistant (Skipton, 1892), 28–34Google Scholar, 121–27 are two evidences of this practice. See Herzfeld, J., The Technical Testing of Yarns and Textile Fabrics with Reference to Original Specifications (Eng. trans., London, 1898), 77–79Google Scholar for a late nineteenth century discussion of these reels.

47 For shoddy see Jubb, Samuel, History of the Shoddy Trade (London, 1860)Google Scholar and Ponting (ed.), Barnes's Account of the Woollen Manufacture, 100–105, 109, 111, 163; for spun silk, Warner, Frank, The Silk Industry of the United Kingdom. Its Origin and Development (London, 1921), 390–439Google Scholar; for waste cotton, Nasmith, Joseph, The Students' Cotton Spinning (Manchester, 1893), 377–387Google Scholar.

48 Sir Sinclair, John (ed.), The Statistical Account of Scotland (21 vols., Edinburgh, 1791–1799), II, 308–313Google Scholar, VIII, 529, for Galashiels and Hawick respectively; Mr. William P. H. Sinclair of Galashiels kindly directed my attention to this source.

49 Herzfeld, Technical Testing of Yarns, 71. At least two other congresses, at Paris in 1878 and 1900, were held.

50 According to James, John, History of the Worsted Manufacture in England (London, 1857), 470–76Google Scholar, the use of cotton warps with worsted filling commenced in England in 1826; the combination gained widespread favor after the 1830's. Summaries of late nineteenth century fancy yarn types are in The Encyclopaedia Britannica (29 vols., Cambridge, 1910–1911), s.v. “Yarn,” and Murphy, , Textile Industries, III, 162–66Google Scholar.

51 British Standards Institution, Specification for a Universal System for Designating Linear Density of Textiles (Tex System). B.S. 947: 1970 (London, 1970)Google Scholar; Linton, George E., The Modern Textile Dictionary (New York, 1963), 929–938Google Scholar. The numerous compelling reasons for adopting a single universal yarn numbering system have been lucidly set out in Bergen, Werner von (ed.), Wool Handbook (2 vols., New York, 1963–1970), II, Part I, 230–33Google Scholar.

52 Jeremy, David J. (ed.), Henry Wansey and His American Journal, 1794 (Philadelphia, 1970), 133Google Scholar.

53 Partridge, Treatise on Dying, 31, 65–66.

54 Memo from Bolleu (?), dated May 18, 1816, transmitted in a letter from Anthony Girard to Raphael Duplanty, June 16, 1816, Accession 500, Duplanty, McCall & Co. Papers, Eleutherian Mills Historical Library, Greenville, Delaware.

55 Raphael Duplanty's Notebook, 11 (my pagination), Longwood MSS, Group 6, Box 2, Eleutherian Mills Historical Library. On p. 14 he wrote “at McKell & R reel for Thread (sewing & floss) 42 Inches round (reel for) Dyers Bleachers & y[arn?] 54 Inches round.” Patrick McKell of the Philadelphia firm of McKell and Rickman first appears in the city directories as a thread manufacturer in 1813; in 1818 he was described as a cotton manufacturer. See Paxton's Philadelphia Directory for 1813, 1814, 1818, 1819; Robinson's Philadelphia Directory for 1816, 1817.

56 Tryon, Rolla M., Household Manufactures in the United States, 1640–1860 (Chicago, 1917), 36Google Scholar n.

57 A helpful summary and bibliography of the English origins of early New England settlers is in Bridenbaugh, Carl, Vexed and Troubled Englishmen, 1590–1642 (New York, 1968), 463–66.Google Scholar

58 Tryon, , Household Manufactures, 144, 190–91Google Scholar. The account book of one late seventeenth century weaver which has been carefully studied is not especially revealing about yarn numbering: John Gould of Topsfield, Mass., quantified his yarn in pounds weight and only once referred to a linear amount — a “bottom,” a synonym for a skein. Unless Gould, deliberately or carelessly, omitted to list the counts he bought (which is most likely, I think) either he produced very coarse cloth or else he re-reeled the yarn he purchased. Forman, Benno M., “The Account Book of John Gould, Weaver, of Topsfield, Massachusetts, 1697–1724,” Essex Institute Historical Collections, CV (1969), 36–49Google Scholar; Murray, James A. H. and others (eds.), A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (13 vols., Oxford, 1888–1933)Google Scholar, s.v. “Bottom” (15).

59 So the Woodstock factory of the Hamilton Woolen Company, of Southbridge, Mass., numbered its yarn by the run system in the 1820's and 1830's. See Spinning and Weaving Accounts, 1823–1838 (Woodstock Factory), Hamilton Woolen Company Records, LA-1, Baker Library, Harvard University.

60 Because Pennsylvania was the only sparsely-populated state that guaranteed religious liberty, the Scotch-Irish from northern Ireland flooded into it during the eighteenth century; by 1790, it has been estimated, they composed 80 per cent of the state's population.

In the early nineteenth century one community in western Pennsylvania was applying the Philadelphia cut system to cotton as well as wool. See Dunaway, Wayland F., The Scotch-Irish of Colonial Pennsylvania (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1944)Google Scholar; Frederick Kapp to Daniel Fetter, August 5, 1815, Letterbook CO 2, 54, Harmony Society Letterbooks, Pennsylvania Archives (Harrisburg), kindly transmitted by Daniel Reibel, Curator, Old Economy.

61 “Spinning Book, 1838, 1839, 1840” and “Inventory, January 1, 1850-January 1, 1861,” Nathaniel Stevens (1786–1865) group, Stevens Papers, MS 60, Merrimack Valley Textile Museum.

62 Any further clarification of the history of American yarn count systems is most likely to come from written records because the artifact evidence is generally inconclusive. A survey (which I carried out under the auspices of the Division of Manufacturing in the National Museum of History and Technology) of reels in some two hundred British and American museums disclosed only one reel bearing both the maker's name and date of construction (see illustration 3). Not until 1750 and then only in Scotland were makers of reels (and also heckles, spinning wheels, looms and reeds) legally obliged, by 24 Geo. 2, c. 31 (1750), to brand their products with their name and place of residence. Otherwise such inscriptions were motivated by affection for the reel's recipient or by pride in craftsmanship.

63 Boyd, Julian P. and others (eds.), The Papers of Thomas Jefferson (Princeton, 1950—), XVI, 603Google Scholar (Madison to Monroe, April 28, 1785).