ABSTRACT
The 'finishing' of textiles of any kind, whether wool, cotton, linen or silk, involves a similar series of processes. Broadly, depending on the fabric, the woven material needs to be cleaned, bleached or washed, to be dyed and dried, to be stretched, damped or calendered, to be beetled, dressed or stiffened, to be printed, when required, with a pattern and finally to be made up, mended, folded and packed. Traditionally each part of the process has been the work of a different occupational group often employed at a different place of work. In the cotton industry 66 such groups were identifiable for payment purposes by the end of the nineteenth century.1 For the most part, the concentration of spinning and weaving or making-up in specific localities led to local provision of finishing facilities and hence to local trade union organisation attached to each particular branch of the textile trade, whether this was cotton, wool, linen, silk or hosiery and knitwear. Insofar as the finishing processes were carried out one after the other, often in separate establishments and involving different techniques, this suggested that such organisation should be horizontal, catering, in different localities, for particular groups of workers, bleachers and dyers, for example, trimmers, calendermen and schreiners etc. One consequence was for such groups to regard themselves as an industry separate from, though ancillary to, the main product of their area, for they were traditionally, as in cotton, regarded as of no great interest by the main bodies of organised spinners and weavers; nor, by the more aristocratic spinners were they considered, for the most part, as any better than labourers.
