Ipswich Books

HE average housewife of 1922, even though she does a large part of her own housework, takes so much of the benefits of modern civilization and the products of so much modern machinery for granted that she and her family fail to realize they live on a scale of luxury known a century ago only to the very rich who could employ a vast amount of labor. Behind every invention which has lightened or eliminated some part of her work is a long history, the history of men of vision and imagination struggling against the common prejudice of doing things the way they have always been done. Even in the production of so obvious and unromantic a necessity as stockings there is, between the hand-made product and the machine knitted article a tale of romance, civil war, heart-break and success which results in a minimum of effort and a maximum of satisfaction to those of us today who wear machine-made stockings.

Three hundred and twenty-seven years ago, in 1595, William Lee, student of Cambridge University in England, took unto himself a wife, a proceeding against the rules of that institution. He was expelled and lost thereby whatever income he may have possessed. To tide them over until Lee could earn a living, his bride took up the work of knitting stockings for sale, and watching her at work, Lee invented a machine which imitated  the action of the knitting needles 

and eventually succeeded in producing a crude stocking by machinery. Although his invention was to revolutionize a great industry, Lee, himself, died in poverty striving to obtain a patent which was later granted to his brother. History does not tell us what became of his faithful wife. His machine, now called the "hand frame" was put to work in England where it not only knit stockings, but also made an imitation of hand-made lace Its value in the saving of time was at once recognized and it became generally used in homes and among groups of workers. But the transition period between cottage industries and wholesale manufacture is a story of bitter struggle between labor and capital which frequently verged on civil war. The British workman was easily convinced that machinery was destined to supplant his labor instead of increasing his power of production and the feeling against machinery ran so high in England that by 1752 there developed the Luddite, riots, which were little less than an organized mob, bent on the destruction of machinery. The "Luddites" were named after a boy named Ludlam, whose father was the owner of a shop where fishing stocking machines were used. The boy had been told to do certain things, but instead of obeying he took a hammer and wrecked the machine he was running. The " Luddites '' assembled at night and proceeded to different shops, with hammers and axes, destroying machinery and taking all law and order into their own hands.

Title Page   Ipswich   Page 2