This chapter deals with credit practice in the supply of important inputs to wool textile production other than raw wool. The first two sections deal with raw materials and capital equipment respectively whilst the third section concerns itself with the supply of services such as fulling, scribbling, dyeing, dressing and carriage. The final section deals with that most important of production costs: labour, with the complex nature of ‘wages’ at this time, and with the devices used by manufacturers to create credit for themselves in this sphere.

Raw materials

At the end of the eighteenth century the use of fibres other than wool was insignificant in the woollen and worsted trades, but by the 1850s cotton warps accounted for about 6–7% of prime costs in the worsted branch and 1% in the woollen branch of the industry nationally. In Yorkshire these proportions were higher as this was the first area to incorporate cotton warps on a large scale, from the 1830s, in the making of a wide range of cheap cloths. Even in woollen production cotton warps were used extensively in Yorkshire by the 1840s especially in the heavy woollen areas where they were found to mix well with shoddy wefts. Cotton warp purchases were thus of great importance to a large proportion of West Riding concerns, especially those making particular sorts of cheap cloths. For these firms, like Robert Clough of Keighley, cotton warps accounted for as much as a third of the cost of total fibres purchased by the 1840s.