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The Creation of a Gendered Division of Labor in Mule Spinning: Evidence from Samuel Oldknow, 1788–1792
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 January 2024
Abstract
The spinning mule was one of the most important innovations in the rise of the British cotton industry during the Industrial Revolution. First introduced in 1780, the mule’s diffusion overturned the traditional division of labor in spinning from women to men. This article produces new insights on this process by examining the business records of Samuel Oldknow, a pioneer of fine cotton manufacturing and an early adopter of the technology during the understudied transition period of the late 1780s and early 1790s, when the machine was still hand powered before the factory system. It demonstrates that strength was the most important factor in shaping the gendered division of labor in mule spinning. Although no direct gender-pay discrimination is evident, men’s earnings were higher because of the physical effort required to operate the larger mules that more easily produced the finest yarns that secured the highest piece rates. Crucially, this shift of the gender division of labor predated factory mule spinning.
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- © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Business History Conference
References
Bibliography of Works Cited
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Styles, John. “Re-Fashioning Industrial Revolution. Fibres, Fashion, and Technical Innovation in British Cotton Textiles,” in La Moda come Motore Economico: Innovazione di Processo e Prodotto, Nuove Strategie Commerciali, Comportamento dei Consumatori / Fashion as an Economic Engine: Process and Product Innovation, Commercial Strategies, Consumer Behavior, ed. Nigro, Giampiero, 45–70. Firenze: Firenze University Press, 2022.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sugden, Keith. “An Occupational Study to Track the Rise of Adult Male Mule Spinning in Lancashire and Cheshire, 1777–1813,” Textile History 48 (2017): 160–175.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Minoletti, Paul. The Importance of Gender Ideology and Identity: The Shift to Factory Production and Its Effect on Work and Wages in the English Textile Industries, 1760–1850. D.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 2011.Google Scholar
Schneider, Benjamin. “Technological Unemployment in the British Industrial Revolution: The Destruction of Hand Spinning,” Oxford Economic and Social History Working Papers 207 (2023).Google Scholar
Tertzakian, Alexander. Wages, Employment, and Technological Change in English Cotton Spinning, c.1780–1850. Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, 2022.Google Scholar
Bolton Archives and Local Studies (BALS), Bolton, EnglandGoogle Scholar
University of Manchester John Rylands Library (JRL), Manchester, EnglandGoogle Scholar
London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), London, EnglandGoogle Scholar
B.P.P. 1834 (167) Part I, XIX, Royal Commission on Employment of Children in Factories, Supplementary Report.Google Scholar
Howe, A.C. “Oldknow, Samuel (1756–1828), Cotton Manufacturer.” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, January 2008. https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/onb-9780198614128-e-37821Google Scholar
Allen, Robert. The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aspin, Chris, and Chapman, S. D.. James Hargreaves and the Spinning Jenny, Helmshore: Helmshore Local History Society, 1964.Google Scholar
Baines, Edward. History of the Cotton Manufacture in Great Britain, London: H. Fisher, R. Fisher and P. Jackson, 1835.Google Scholar
Brunton, Robert. A Compendium of Mechanics, or, Text Book for Engineers, Mill-Wrights, Machine-Makers, Founders, Smiths, &c, Glasgow: John Niven, 1824.Google Scholar
Burnette, Joyce. Gender, Work and Wages in Industrial Revolution Britain, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chapman, S. D. The Cotton Industry in the Industrial Revolution, London: Macmillan, 1972.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Daniels, G. W. The Early English Cotton Industry, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1920.Google Scholar
Denton, M. J., and Daniels, P. N., eds. Textile Terms and Definitions, 11th ed., Manchester: The Textile Institute, 2002.Google Scholar
Edwards, M. M. The Growth of the British Cotton Trade, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1967.Google Scholar
Fitton, R. S. The Arkwrights: Spinners of Fortune, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989.Google Scholar
Fitton, R. S., and Wadsworth, A. P.. The Strutts and the Arkwrights, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1958.Google Scholar
Huberman, Michael. Escape from the Market: Negotiating Work in Lancashire, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.Google Scholar
Marsden, Richard. Cotton Spinning: Its Development, Principles, and Practice, London: George Bell & Sons, 1903.Google Scholar
Parthasarathi, Prasannan. Why Europe Grew Rich and Asia Did Not: Global Economic Divergence, 1600–1850, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Riello, Giorgio. Cotton: The Fabric That Made the Modern World, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Singer, Charles, Holmyard, E. J., Hall, A. R., and Williams, Trevor, eds. A History of Technology , Volume 2, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1956.Google Scholar
Smelser, Neil J. Social Change in the Industrial Revolution: An Application of Theory to the Lancashire Cotton Industry, 1770–1840, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959.Google Scholar
Tunzelmann, G. N. von. Steam Power and British Industrialization to 1860, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978.Google Scholar
Unwin, George. Samuel Oldknow and the Arkwrights, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1924.Google Scholar
Valenze, Deborah. The First Industrial Woman, New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Wrigley, E. A. Energy and the English Industrial Revolution, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Allen, Robert. “The Industrial Revolution in Miniature: The Spinning Jenny in Britain, France, and India,” Journal of Economic History 69 (2009): 901–927.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Allen, Robert. “Spinning Their Wheels: A Reply to Jane Humphries and Benjamin Schneider,” Economic History Review 73 (2020): 1128–1136.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Atwood, Rollin. “Localization of the Cotton Industry in Lancashire, England,” Economic Geography 4 (1928): 187–195.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berg, Maxine. “Quality, Cotton and the Global Luxury Trade,” in How India Clothed the World: The World of South Asian Textiles, 1500–1850, eds. Riello, Giorgio and Roy, Tirthankar, 391–414. Leiden: Brill, 2009.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chapman, S. D. “The Arkwright Mills—Colquhoun’s Census of 1788 and Archaeological Evidence,” Industrial Archaeology Review 6 (1981): 5–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Daniels, G. W. “Samuel Crompton’s Census of the Cotton Industry in 1811,” The Economic Journal 40 (1930): 107–110.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Farnie, Douglas. “Cotton, 1780–1914,” in The Cambridge History of Western Textiles , Volume II, ed. Jenkins, David, 721–760. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.Google Scholar
Freifeld, Mary. “Technological Change and the ‘Self-Acting’ Mule: A Study of Skill and the Sexual Division of Labour,” Social History 11 (1986): 319–343.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Huberman, Michael. “Industrial Relations and the Industrial Revolution: Evidence from M’Connel and Kennedy, 1810–1840,” Business History Review 65 (1991): 345–378.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Humphries, Jane, and Schneider, Benjamin. “Spinning the Industrial Revolution,” Economic History Review 72 (2018): 126–155.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Humphries, Jane, and Schneider, Benjamin. “Losing the Thread: A Response to Robert Allen,” Economic History Review 73 (2020): 1137–1152.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jeremy, David. “British and American Yarn Count Systems: An Historical Analysis,” Business History Review 45 (1971): 336–368.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lazonick, William. “Industrial Relations and Technical Change: The Case of the Self-Acting Mule,” Cambridge Journal of Economics 3 (1979): 231–262.Google Scholar
Maw, Peter. “Provincial Merchants in Eighteenth-Century England: The ‘Great Oaks’ of Manchester,” The English Historical Review 136 (2021): 568–618.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maw, Peter, Solar, Peter, Kane, Aidan, and Lyons, John S.. “After the Great Inventions: Technological Change in UK Cotton Spinning, 1780–1835,” Economic History Review 75 (2022): 22–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Minoletti, Paul. “The Importance of Ideology: The Shift to Factory production and Its Effect on Women’s Employment Opportunities in the English Textile Industries,” Continuity and Change 21 (2013): 121–146.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Muldrew, Craig. “‘Th’ancient Distaff’ and ‘Whirling Spindle’: Measuring the Contribution of Spinning to Household Earnings and the National Economy in England, 1550 1771,” Economic History Review 65 (2012): 498–526.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Raman, Alka. “Indian Cotton Textiles and British Industrialization: Evidence of Comparative Learning in the British Cotton Industry in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” Economic History Review 72 (2022): 447–474.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Styles, John. “Spinners and the Law: Regulating Yarn Standards in the English Worsted Industries, 1550–1800,” Textile History 44 (2013): 145–170.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Styles, John. “Re-Fashioning Industrial Revolution. Fibres, Fashion, and Technical Innovation in British Cotton Textiles,” in La Moda come Motore Economico: Innovazione di Processo e Prodotto, Nuove Strategie Commerciali, Comportamento dei Consumatori / Fashion as an Economic Engine: Process and Product Innovation, Commercial Strategies, Consumer Behavior, ed. Nigro, Giampiero, 45–70. Firenze: Firenze University Press, 2022.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sugden, Keith. “An Occupational Study to Track the Rise of Adult Male Mule Spinning in Lancashire and Cheshire, 1777–1813,” Textile History 48 (2017): 160–175.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Minoletti, Paul. The Importance of Gender Ideology and Identity: The Shift to Factory Production and Its Effect on Work and Wages in the English Textile Industries, 1760–1850. D.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 2011.Google Scholar
Schneider, Benjamin. “Technological Unemployment in the British Industrial Revolution: The Destruction of Hand Spinning,” Oxford Economic and Social History Working Papers 207 (2023).Google Scholar
Tertzakian, Alexander. Wages, Employment, and Technological Change in English Cotton Spinning, c.1780–1850. Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, 2022.Google Scholar
Bolton Archives and Local Studies (BALS), Bolton, EnglandGoogle Scholar
University of Manchester John Rylands Library (JRL), Manchester, EnglandGoogle Scholar
London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), London, EnglandGoogle Scholar
B.P.P. 1834 (167) Part I, XIX, Royal Commission on Employment of Children in Factories, Supplementary Report.Google Scholar
Howe, A.C. “Oldknow, Samuel (1756–1828), Cotton Manufacturer.” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, January 2008. https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/onb-9780198614128-e-37821Google Scholar