WOOL

Techniques for the home production of cloth from natural fibers were common knowledge in early America. Like all fibers, wool had to be cleaned, combed, spun into yarn, and woven into cloth. The card, spinning wheel, and loom had a place in most homes, along with a flock of sheep in many pastures. Woolens were the most commonly used fabric for making clothing. During the colonial period fine woolens, such as broadcloth, were imported from Britain, but the girls and women of America's households produced most of the rougher homespun and flannel.

Wishing to suppress any competition, Britain passed laws aimed at preventing woolen production in the colonies. The laws barred textile machinery and machine operators from leaving Britain and, for a time, prohibited the importation of sheep or wool into America. However, most colonists used whatever coarse wool they could obtain from their existing sheep to fill their household needs.

The boycotts of the pre-Revolutionary years and the war itself encouraged greater home textile production and, by necessity, decreased reliance on British textile imports. At the same time, the Continental army desperately needed woolens for uniforms. American households could not begin to fulfill that need, and the slaughter of many sheep to feed the army made matters worse. A lively wartime trade in smuggled British woolens ensued. When the war ended, Americans resumed the importation of fine British woolens but bought considerably less of the coarser grade. As a patriotic gesture, George Washington wore a domestic homespun suit for his inauguration as president.

Carding, the laborious hand-combing process, was the first wool production task to be mechanized in the new nation. People increasingly took advantage of mechanical advances to produce finer cloth. Carding machines were developed in Britain and probably smuggled to America; they were operating in New England by the late 1780s. Householders brought their wool fiber to carding mills for machine processing and then took the processed fiber home for spinning. In 1810 more than seven hundred wool-carding mills were operating in New England alone. Improvements to the spinning wheel considerably sped up home production of wool yarn as well. After weaving cloth at home, people brought their home-produced woolen cloth to local fulling and finishing mills.

Although a commercial mill began producing woolen cloth from homespun yarns in Connecticut in 1788, the enterprise lasted just a few years. Not until Colonel David Humphreys imported a flock of fine-wooled merino sheep from Spain in 1802 did domestic flocks begin to improve and commercial woolen manufacture become economically viable. Whereas American-grown wool was relatively coarse, merino wool fibers were finer and better suited to the new spinning machinery from Britain. Humphreys began woolen production in a Connecticut factory in 1806. Others soon followed, and by 1812 at least two dozen woolen mills were operating in the United States. The Embargo Act (effective 1807–1809) and the War of 1812 (1812–1815) again cut off foreign trade and further boosted domestic woolen manufacture. One estimate values factory-made woolens during this period at about $19 million a year.

The estimated total factory production in 1812 of 200,000 yards accounted for only about 4 percent of all American woolen production. As late as the 1820s, two-thirds of all woolens in New England were still homemade.

The gradual introduction of merino sheep and improved machinery, aided in 1828 by a hefty tariff on woolen imports, led to the expansion of woolen manufacturing in America. By 1830 it was well established as a profitable industry.

See alsoNew England; Textiles Manufacturing; Work: Domestic Labor; Work: Women's Work .

bibliography

Dunwell, Steve. The Run of the Mill: A Pictorial Narrative of the Expansion, Dominion, Decline, and Enduring Impact of the New England Textile Industry. Boston: Godine, 1978.

Rivard, Paul E. A New Order of Things: How the Textile Industry Transformed New England. Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 2002.

Roberta Wiener