The Handloom Weavers

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 441 since it is primarily this part that affects the vehicle’s efficiency. Several chapters discuss the stagecoach, omnibus, and hackney carriage, again showing the author’s emphasis on commercial vehicles. Proceeding to mechanical transport, the book contains an extensive treatise on the steam road vehicles that lumbered about the English countryside during the 1830s and on the efforts after 1860 that resulted in the traction engine. The author points out that the sudden halt in the development of the earlier steam carriages was not entirely the fault of Parliament, but due also to opposition from the highway and turnpike interests and to mechanical problems. Finally, the study is closed by the introduction of the motor vehicle. Throughout his work, Bird is justifiably critical of Parliament, but he is fair in assessing the other obstacles that continually plagued British progress—separate interests, antiquated and impractical designs and ideas, and a general resistance to change. The various subjects in this book are carefully and thoroughly covered, though it does not seem entirely appropriate for inclusion in the Industrial Archaeology Series, which of course does not detract from it. For a work that deals so much with objects, it could have been considerably improved by a more generous selection of illustrations. For example, some of the more important subjects of the book are not illustrated at all, such as Telford and McAdam road surfaces, typical freight wagons, and ordinary wheel and axle construction. There is some tendency to illustrate the unusual rather than the commonplace, for numerous carriages are shown that would have been used by the more affluent, but few that a more rustic neighbor might have used. Don H. Berkebii.e* The Handloom Weavers: A Study in the English Cotton Industry dur­ ing the Industrial Revolution. By Duncan Bythell. Cambridge: Cam­ bridge University Press, 1969. Pp. 302. $12.50 Although they are, in R. M. Hartwell’s words, “the leading example of technological unemployment during English industrialization” (p. xi), the handloom weavers of Lancashire have lacked a definitive biog­ rapher. Mr. Bythell, a lecturer in economic history at the University of Durham, has performed that role diligently inside the pages of this attractively printed book. His subjects could not have hoped for fuller treatment. Birth, life, and death: each of these crucial events is carefully examined. In doing so, Bythell has assembled a great deal of new information on the com­ position of this part of the labor force, on standards of living, and—of special interest to readers of this journal—on the impact of the power loom. * Mr. Berkebile, of the Division of Transportation of the Smithsonian Institution, is the author of many articles on transportation history and coauthor, with Smith Hempstone Oliver, of The Smithsonian Collection of Automobiles and Motorcycles. 442 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE The conventional portrait of the English cotton handloom weaver depicts a skilled laborer who is first threatened, then tortured, and finally killed by the machine. Toppled from a well-paid position in which he enjoys both moral and physical health, the handloom weaver appears before one parliamentary committee after another to recite a' tale of woe. Put down by the Establishment, beset by poverty, he seeks solace in fundamentalist religions, radical politics, and illegal labor organizations. But Bythell claims the portrait is a poor likeness at best, painted by those who loved the handloom weaver more for not having known him well. His handloom weaver has warts and, often as not, is himself responsible for his dismal plight. This is, in other words, a revisionist history. As he reads it, the businessman who has felt guilty about the immediate consequences of the First Industrial Revolution cannot help but sense a burden being lifted from his shoulders. The body of handloom cotton weavers came into being in the wake of the radical advances in spinning technology effected by Hargreaves and Arkwright. They included former wool and linen weavers, domes­ tic spinners, and farm laborers. Their numbers included many men, women, and children for whom weaving was a casual “domestic by­ trade” (p. 270). The group was never a stable one. The apprenticeship system which we usually associate

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