ABSTRACT
The silk industry owed its birth to the willingness of Krefeld’s rulers to tolerate divergent faiths. The religious troubles of the sixteenth century caused a number of Protestant merchant families to leave Antwerp. As the large number of handlooms suggests, the area’s silk industry had not mechanized significantly by 1880. Just why this should have been so is not clear. Hans van der Upwich reports that attempts in the 1850s to mechanize the industry were not successful. A general characteristic of the Kreis of Gladbach, for instance, the possession of a house and garden by a significant proportion of the silk weavers, prevailed in the Landkreis of Krefeld and in most of Kempen and Geldern. Housing conditions, too, were often less than desirable. The dream of every domestic weaver allegedly was to acquire a small house and garden.
