Note 20 — TEXTILE FABRICS (continued 2)

They certainly were not unknown at Valencia. I have before me a copy of the work, Disertacion descriptiva de la Hilaza de la Seda, segun el antiguo modo de hilar y el nuevo llamado de Vaucanson, written by the priest Francisco Ortells y Gombau, and published at Valencia in 1783, by order of the Royal Council of Commerce and Agriculture. This book, which clearly sets forth the superiority of Vaucanson's method over those which had preceded it, states that at first the Valencians were strongly opposed to the Vaucanson wheel, believing that it caused a loss and waste of silk. Probably the real reason was that it prevented the manufacturers from adding spurious weight to the silk by mixing it with oil. This practice, says Ortells, was then “so widespread an evil in the kingdom of Valencia, that there is hardly anybody who does not resort to it: notwithstanding it has been so often prohibited by His Majesty, yet openly, where all the world may witness, do the workers spin with much oil added to the silk.”

The Vaucanson form of wheel was also more expensive. In the region of Valencia its cost was about thirty pesos, that of the older wheels being only fifteen or sixteen pesos. However, this difficulty was not insuperable, for in the year 1779 the Royal Council of Commerce presented a hundred and twenty Vaucanson wheels to the peasants who had raised a minimum crop of a hundred pounds of silk, requiring, in return, that the recipients of the gift should spin not less than fifty pounds of silk per annum.