Labor and Laborers of the Loom: Mechanization and Handloom Weavers, 1780–1840 (review)

This monograph is based on Gail Mohanty’s 1984 University of Pennsylvania Ph.D. dissertation, and four of the book’s nine chapters have also appeared as articles. Although Mohanty’s title gives no indication of her geographical focus, she deals primarily with the state of Rhode Island. The main strength of Labor and Laborers of the Loom lies in its analysis of the transition from handloom weaving to power-loom weaving, presented at a level of empirical detail that is unprecedented. Mohanty deserves special praise for her intensive study of a wide range of manuscript materials, including not only major collections like the papers of Almy and Brown and Samuel Slater but also civil records (births, deaths, marriages, land evidence, wills, and probate) in no fewer than fifteen Rhode Island town halls. This is clearly research in depth.

As is true with most historical scholarship, the more the author unveils the findings of her research, the more complex the picture becomes. Handloom weavers included at least three categories: independent artisans; outworkers employed by a range of entrepreneurs, including factory owners; and those who worked in factory settings, typically in “weave sheds,” as Mohanty calls them. By assiduous collating of documents, Mohanty shows that one weaver might be included in more than one of these categories (or variants thereof), either successively or simultaneously. It was never a simple matter of independent workmen being dramatically overtaken by technological change. This is all the more true because, as Mohanty repeatedly demonstrates, women played prominent roles in the handloom weaving workforce, which also included many children and immigrants. One of the high points of the study is Mohanty’s insightful discussion of the complicated technical breakthroughs during the 1810s and 1820s that led to the triumph of powerloom weaving.

Yet the book has numerous weaknesses. Since not everyone is wellversed in Rhode Island geography, Mohanty should have included at least one map. The research for this work was mostly undertaken more than a quarter of a century ago, and Mohanty has not done enough to take recent scholarship into account. To be sure, she cites some works published from 1984 to 1990, but only a few after that, and she rarely incorporates the actual findings and conclusions of those works into her text. Her writing veers from the serviceable to the clumsy and solecistic. She informs her readers in one place: “The fabrics produced also represent similar qualities and varieties so that it becomes more and more difficult to differentiate except based on gender that does not relate to the outcome or the product” (p. 37). This reviewer’s favorite is not one of these all-too-common “huh?” sentences, but a long purple passage in which, among other things, “water powered textile mechanisms hearkened the awakening of the soon to be industrialized world” (p. 44).When mechanisms hearken, it becomes clear that Mohanty and her editors at Routledge should have been more diligent in preparing this work for publication.

Mohanty only occasionally discusses the relative quiescence of the handloom weavers when faced with ominous technical changes. In the British cotton textile districts, handloom weavers were often the leading occupational group in the disturbances that occurred between 1800 and 1830. Mohanty never satisfactorily explains why Rhode Island handloom weavers —and American handloom weavers in general—accepted their obsolescence so passively. Merely asserting that the American weavers were more flexible than their British counterparts begs the question. This national contrast defies easy explanation, but perhaps a glance at political issues would have provided some clues. In Britain, weavers often blamed an unresponsive and corrupt government for their predicament, and this wider political argument then gained support from philosophic radicals and others who had little direct interest in the fate of handloom weavers. Perhaps such arguments had much less impact when aimed at American democratic institutions. In such circumstances, “flexibility” may have been the easiest alternative...