Before the MOSI Google Hangout, we
did some preparation in class to get ready for the chat. We first looked on the
MOSI Textile Galleries website (www.mosi.org.uk/explore-mosi/explore-galleries/textiles-gallery.aspx).
We read the brief summary on the Textile Galleries and read the three attached
articles on Richard Arkwright, Manchester Textile Designers, and Paterson
Zochonis. We took notes on new things that we learned from these readings, and we
shared them with our classmates. This was just a brief introduction on the
background of the gallery. Then, we watched a video that Jamie, our tour guide
at the MOSI Textile Gallery in Manchester, sent us. He quickly went through the
machines that we would be seeing in the chat, and he wrote the names of the
machines and some of the materials in the video. We wrote down these vocabulary
words from the video, and we worked in groups to define these terms. The words were:
hopper feeder scutcher, carding engine, draw frame, sliver, speed frame,
slubbing, roving, and power loom. We found these definitions using our media
literacy skills that I discussed in an earlier blog post. We had to search for
these terms using additional keywords in the search because some of the terms
had other definitions that had nothing to do with the textile industry. So for
example, we would search for the term and add “textile industry” at the end so
that the definition would be related to textiles. We became familiar with these
terms so that when Jamie said them during the chat, we would already know what
he was referring to, and we would understand what he was talking about. Lastly,
we prepared questions to ask Jamie under 4 categories: the textile process, the
evolution of textile technology, the positive and negative impacts of the
Industrial Revolution, and being a historian/curator. Any questions that we had
from these categories, we wrote down to ask Jamie during the chat.
During the chat, Jamie talked a lot
about the difference between the cotton industry and the new technology in the
Industrial Revolution. Before industrialization, the cotton industry was
completely family based. Each family worked together to make cloth. Most
families had a large attic where they put their sewing frames. They put them in
the attic because it usually provided the most light for working. The frame was
powered by hand and was a very physical job done by the men or older boys of
the house. This process was considered only a man’s job. However, to spin the cotton
into thread was the women and children’s job. Women and children used a
spinning wheel. They would prepare the cotton for the spinning wheels using
brushes to detangle and extract the long fibers. They would then spin it on the
spinning wheel using pedals. The whole family was involved in making cloth
during the cotton industry. However, then the Arkwright water frame was
invented for spinning thread. It spun four threads at once which meant that the
water frame was 4 times more effective than the spinning wheel. The threads
also came out thinner. Next, the carding engine was invented which was powered
by water. The carding engine cleaned the raw cotton, and it disentangled it by
brushing through it and catching the long fibers. Any fibers that were too
short were not used in textiles but were still used for other lower quality products, and any dirty
cotton was considered “trash” but were used for mattresses. Many other machines
were invented, and with all the new inventions that helped with each step of
the cotton process, the machines became too big to keep in homes, and factories
were made to help mass produce cotton products. Typically, each factory would
specialize in only one step of the process, so cotton was sent to many
different factories to accomplish each step. This is why Jamie had a hard time
answering the question of how long it takes for cotton to go through the whole
process because it took many days for cotton to travel between all the
different factories. So the production of cloth was no longer a family’s job;
it was done at the factories. However, with these new, more effective machines
in the factories, there came many negative impacts. Families sent their kids to
these factories for cheap wages because they needed money, and there were horrible
conditions in the factories. The factories were more concerned about their profit
than the well-being of the workers. There were many accidents in the factories that
killed many workers. One example that Jamie talked a lot about was the spinning
mule.
 |
| The Spinning Mule |
This machine had many rows of threads being spun at the same
time, and the machine went back and forth quickly four times per minute. If you
zoom in to the bottom right corner of the picture, you can see a boy cleaning
under the threads of the machine.
 |
| Orphan cleaning under the spinning mule |
The boy’s job was to clean the dirt, dust,
and oil under the machine. The factory would usually have an orphan do this job
because an orphan was very cheap since there was no one to care for him. This
job was extremely dangerous because the orphan had to get out of the way of the
machine when it went back and forth. If they didn’t get out of the way in time,
they were cut in half. Many orphans were killed doing this job. There were many
other factory accidents just like this because the machines were very
dangerous. Another negative impact of industrialization was illness. Disease
was very easily spread in the factories because the workers shared machines and
lived very close to one another. A specific disease-spreading aspect of the
machines that Jamie talked about was the shuttles on spinning machines. To work
the spinning machines, women had to change the shuttles.
 |
| Jamie holding a shuttle |
In a shuttle, the spool of thread went in the middle, and
the end of the spool had to be thread through the hole in the shuttle. To
thread this through, women put their mouths on the shuttles and sucked the
thread through the hole. After one woman’s shift, another woman would take over
her machine and put her mouth on the same part that the first woman did. This
spread disease easily. Also, the oils from the thread would fill up in women’s
lungs and they would eventually get cancer from it. The dust from the cotton
would also settle in workers’ lungs over time in the factories causing
breathing problems later in life. Jamie said that there were much worse conditions
in the factories than during the cotton industry even though there was a much
faster and larger production rate in the factories.
I think
that this chat was a great way to have us learn about the textile industry.
This was a very memorable event, and a few months from now I will remember this
unique opportunity and the information about the factories much more than I
would have remembered it if we had learned about it by just copying notes or being
lectured. This different and interesting experience of being able to chat with
Jamie is going to stick in our minds, and with it the information is going to
stick as well. I also thought it was really neat to learn from an outside expert
in another continent. We were seeing machines and conversing with a tour guide
from a museum in England while sitting in our classroom in the United States. I
liked that we could ask Jamie questions and converse with him as if he was
standing in our classroom, as opposed to just watching a video of him talking. This
experience got us engaged in the information, and I would definitely want to do
this with other experts on different topics throughout the year.
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