Series 5 > British Linen Company, 1745-1775

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THE BRITISH LINEN COMPANY
through their hands in six months than they were formerly in use to do in
thrice that time.
The prospect of promoting the linen manufacture by this scheme is so fair
that the Company have an inclination to make it universal. To this end they
submit the following proposals to the Convention of Royal Burghs, to be
promoted by them with such alterations and improvements as they shall please
to suggest.
The Company proposes to set aside ^5000 sterling of their capital stock for
advancing the linen manufactures within the Royal Burghs of Scotland, and
to enter in to contracts with the Magistrates of every Royal Burgh upon the
same plan that has hitherto been carried on with private dealers. Every burgh
which chooses to accept of the proposal shall have credit in the Company’s
books for the sum agreed on, upon condition of employing what they draw
out in manufacturing of coarse linens and offering the same to the Company
at an equal price.
In order to lay out to the best advantage the sums to be contracted for, ’tis
proposed that the indigent children of both sexes, with which most of the
burghs of Scodand but too much abound, shall be taken up, and taught to spin
and weave, for doing which the magistrates of Royal Burghs have sufficient
authority by repeated Acts of Parliament; that others should be received who
offer themselves; and that a proper person be chosen in every burgh skilled in
the manufacture to have the charge of educating the girls to spinning and the
boys to weaving to whom the Managen of the Linen Company will be
assisting, by giving directions about the manufacturing the different kinds of
coarse cloths.
Such contracts with the Company will be still more advantageous to Royal
Burghs than private dealers. Royal Burghs will find the sweets of such a
commerce in several particulars. In the first place, a boy of any capacity may
be brought in the course of three months to weave from five to six yards of
Osnaburg in a day. The boy’s labour, even in that coarse cloth, will be worth
to the employer a penny a yard, and proportionately more when he is carried
on to finer sorts. A girl in less than that time, may be brought to earn by
spinning from fourteen to twenty pence a week. This will afford a considerable
profit to the undertakers, as will be evident from the scheme annexed, which
has been put in practice several years by a gentleman in the neighbourhood of
Edinburgh, who maintains his boys at 14V^d a week; and at a distance from
the capital this expence will be proportionately less; at the same time the charge
of erecting a loom and providing utensils for these boys will not exceed twenty
eight shillings. And if profit can be made of the work of such young creatures,
almost from the beginning, how great must be the profit of their work on the