The Farm Waggons of England and Wales by James Arnold (review)

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, The Hollingworth Letters will stand to complement them. Mr. Leavitt, director of the Merrimack Valley Textile Museum, is to be commended for his very helpful introduction and concise footnotes describing textile processes and machines, identifying obscure manufac­ turers and resolving other allusions. A number of detailed criticisms, however, can be offered. The title is rather misleading since, in com­ parison with Crump’s Leed’s Woollen Industry, 1180-1820, information on textile technology does not, in the letters themselves, extend beyond lists of names of machines. The index is quite inadequate. At a few points additional explanatory notes seem necessary: “A Manks girl” (p. 34) would have been a native of the Isle of Man; satinet, which the Elollingworths manufactured, deserves a precis of Cole’s American Wool Manufacture (1, pp. 123, 199-201) as a note; the modification of wool looms for satinet weaving (pp 67-70) involved, probably, installing finer reeds and heddles for the cotton warps, more sets of harnesses (to bring the total up to at least five), and possibly a narrower warp beam. David J. Jeremy The Farm Waggons of England and Wales. By James Arnold. London: John Baker, Ltd., 1969. Pp. 24; 24 text plates. 130r. For at least 200 years, dozens of distinctive types of farm wagons have served the farmers of England and Wales. Throughout the 19th century TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 639 these wagons were at the height of their development in the lowland areas, each of the many varieties being peculiar to a particular region or county. The resulting vehicles not only served the needs of each specific area, but likewise presented a most attractive array of colors and pleasing lines, each serving as the centerpiece of one of the annual har­ vest festivals that were once of such importance in rural England. This work does not attempt either to describe the building of wagons or to present a history of them, for these aspects have been covered, Arnold points out, by George Sturt’s The Wheelwrights'' Shop and Geraint Jenkins’s The English Farm Wagon. It is in the author’s words, “a de­ scription of waggons,” based on twenty-five years of careful research and the personal examination of a great number of surviving examples. Several drawings show the general construction of the wagons. One of these drawings is keyed to a chart that lists the names of the various parts of the wagons in ten different regions, sometimes resulting in as many as nine different names for the same part. Then follows a descrip­ tion of the principal components of the wagon—undercarriage, wheels, body, brake, and ladders—with variations in each construction. In some instances even the final, decorative chamfering of parts, and the colors, helped to identify the region in

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