RIBBON MANUFACTURE. Ribbon, or riband, signifies a long narrow web of silk worn for ornament or use. Ribbons of linen, worsted, gold, or silver thread were formerly included in the term, but the designation Is now geuerally confined to those made of silk. Ribbon, in German, is band; Danish, baand ; Swedish, band ; French, ruban ; Dutch, lint ; Russian, lea-la; Spanish, cinta ; Portuguese, flea di seta, from the Latin rata ; Italian, del nastro, fettoccia.
Silk was early wrought into ribbons. They formed a branch of the silk manufacture during its progress from Greece to Sicily, and from thence to Italy and Spain ; but the ribbon trade seems first to have as sumed distinct importance in France. Paris, Tours, Lyon, and Avignon were the chief seats of the trade; • the two last cities were rivals until the year 1723, when, partly owing to the regulations which the jealous Lyonnese had prevailed upon the government to make in their favour, partly to a plague of two years' continuance, the trade of Avignon was ruined, and in great ineastn-o transferred to Lyon. Figured ribbons were made chiefly at Paris. About the year 1690, there was a rage for ribbons gauffres, or embossed, on account of their novelty. The stamping was performed by hot plates of steel, on which a pattern was engraved, being applied successively along the picee. A master weaver named Chandelier, tired of this slow process, contrived a machine which would save his labour. He engraved his figures on two cylinders of steel, between which, when heated, the ribbon was compressed and drawn rapidly by simple machinery : so that a piece of ribbon was embossed in less time than his brother workmen con sumed over a single ell. „The ribbons called double lime (double warp), which were considered the richest and best, were made at Tours. Before the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the ribbon-looms of Tours amounted to 3000 ; but this measure, which banished the Protestants, banished with them their trade, and both Tours and Lyon suffered severely from its effects; the trade Of Lyon afterwards revived. Savary, inspector-general of French manufactures, in his ' Dictionary,' published in 1723, says, that the trade in ribbons was much diminished in his time ; but it became very largo in the next generation. In the enumeration of the different kinds of ribbon, a double satin is men tioned, that is, one alike on both sides in texture, although sometimes of different colours.
Coventry is the bead-quarters of the English ribbon-trade. The weaving is done on several systems. The undertaking system applies now only to the single-hand trade in the country districts—Bedworth, Nuneaton, Hartshill, &a: it is the same that the French have employed since the days of Colbert. According to this plan, the undertaker, or master-weaver, receives the silk dyed in the hank from the manu facturer, arid returns it in finished ribbons to his order ; all the inter mediate operations being included in the price of weaving, two-thirds of which are paid to the journey-hand for his labour. Three-fourths of the single-hand weavers are women, and nearly one-half of the remainder are youths under 20. Boys and girls are considered competent weavers at 16 or 17. On the journey work system, by which the great proportion
of the engine-looms in Coventry and its neighbourhood are worked, the manufacturer gives the silk, already wound and warped, to the first hand journeyman, who is also the owner of the looms. The shoot-silk is given in hank, for the winding of which the manufacturer allows Id, per oz., besides the price for weaving, in which is included the filling, or the winding of the shoot on the small revolving pins within the shuttles. About one-fourth of the hands employed on this system are women. On the hand factory system the manufacturer is the owner of the looms. The journey-hands work them in the loom-shop of the proprietor, who gets the winding and warping done at his own charge, leaving only the filling to the weaver, which is included in the price of his work, and is often clone by very young children. This plan is adopted by many manufacturers of small capital, who, by personally superintending the work, and becoming in fact their own under takers, are enabled to economise to the utmost in the cost of pro. duction ; while their hands are all reduced to the lowest condition of the weever—the journey-hand, who supplies the labour, and has no property in the looms. A modern innovation, encouraged by the last syst&m, is the employment of two hands to a loom, the one being occupied uninterruptedly in shooting down, or passing the shuttle, and making the ribbon ; the other in picking up, or fastening broken threads, picking out knots, &c. On the straw factory system, the manu facturer gets every preparatory process done, and by the steam-power one-half of the weaving process itself—the shooting down : all that is left for the weaver being the picking up and superintendence. The profitable application of steam-power to silk-weaving was long con sidered to be almost impossible, so large a portion of time being consumed in the handling and trimming of the silk, in proportion to the time that the loom is in motion. and a consequent waste of power. A small factory was built in Coventry in 1S31, for the purpose of making the experiment on ribbons. It was burnt, however, during a disturbance relating to prices ; but within a few years there were numerous stearn-factoriee at work at Congleton, Leek, Derby, and other places, which made large quantities of plain ribbons, chiefly black sarsenets. The Coventry manufacturers had more difficulties to contend against, but ultimately they introduced steam-power under certain circumstances. In these power ribbon-looms, each loom is tended by one pair of hands, which pick up and keep the machinery in order. The gain consists, not in a more rapid motion of the shuttles, the delicacy of the materials not allowing of this, but in the shooting down being seldom interrupted during the picking up, as in hand-loom weaving ; in the greater regularity of the fabric, the same number of shuota to the inch being uniformly maintained; and also in the addition of more shuttles, for which one workman suffices, the loom being so constructed as to enable him to reach from the front over the batten to the warps behind.