Textile industry in Eastern Switzerland
The textile industry in Eastern Switzerland was the main economic factor in the areas of today's cantons St. Gallen , Appenzell Inner- and Ausserrhoden and Thurgau as well as in the neighboring Austrian state of Vorarlberg in the Middle Ages and the early modern period. For centuries, thousands of families and workers lived from the trade and production of textiles . Particularly well-known and significant the eastern Swiss textile industry in the second half of the 19th century was St. Gallen embroidery , which is the main export product of Switzerland before the First World War was.
history
The development of the textile industry in eastern Switzerland can be roughly divided into three phases: The linen trade flourished from the earliest Middle Ages to the beginning of the 18th century. The linen was replaced by the production of cotton fabrics . The cotton industry was finally replaced by embroidery around 1850 with the invention of the hand embroidery machine . The flowering of embroidery lasted until the end of the Belle Époque , i.e. the beginning of the First World War and a little beyond that. Since the Second World War , the textile industry in Eastern Switzerland - measured by its former size - has been of little importance; St. Gallen embroidery in particular is still considered to be groundbreaking for embroidery worldwide.
Canvas trade
The beginnings of the textile industry in St. Gallen go back to the eighth century. Documents from the monastery mention that farmers had to hand over flax or canvas . The first flourishing of the textile industry began in the 12th century with the introduction of long-distance trade. Towards the end of the following century, the more important cities in the Lake Constance area had an expanded canvas industry. These cities included Augsburg , Ulm , Kempten , Ravensburg , Wangen , Kaufbeuren , Lindau , Constance , Schaffhausen and St. Gallen . Around 1350 the city of St. Gallen began to break away from abbot rule (see history of the city of St. Gallen ). She got the right to elect her own mayor and gave herself a guild constitution . The city introduced strict canvas statutes that determined how the quality of the canvas produced should be assessed. So-called “screen showers” were used by the city to check the quality of the goods and then mark them with a quality label. While the statutes were initially very similar to those of Konstanz, they were greatly refined towards the end of the 15th century, when further gradations in the quality criteria became possible.
The St. Gallen screen show soon had a de facto monopoly in the screen market , thanks in part to the clever policy of the city that was becoming independent . The entire quality control, as well as the bleaching , dyeing , cutting and packaging of the goods as well as later export were limited to the city. The St. Gallen canvas was the epitome of high quality fabric throughout Europe and was exported everywhere: merchants brought it to Venice , Milan , Genoa , Lyon , Barcelona , Valencia , Granada , Frankfurt am Main , Antwerp , Nuremberg , Wroclaw , Warsaw , Gdansk , Krakow and Vienna . These early trade relations made St. Gallen a wealthy city and led to its second great heyday - the first it experienced at the time of Othmar and his first successors, when the prince abbot was still mainly an abbot and directed the monastery as a center of knowledge rather than as Prince to seek fame with the sword far from home.
The great demand for St. Gallen products resulted in a steady increase in production: in 1400 around 2000 cloths of 100 meters were produced, in 1530 it was already around 10,000 and in 1610 almost 24,000 good cloths. The city of St. Gallen alone could never have met this demand. The farmers in the area produced the flax needed for cloth manufacture and sometimes used it to stretch the yarn themselves. Over time, the increasing number of looms began to be set up in the country as well . In contrast to other places, the rural weavers in St. Gallen were able to offer their goods on the same terms as the guild weavers of the city, provided the quality was right. They even had a certain advantage, as they were not subject to the guild rules, and so, for example, could also use unskilled auxiliary staff and children. The fact that the rural population in the hinterland did not have to rely exclusively on industrial activity made their work even cheaper. Weaving was soon so widespread in the Appenzellerland that the flax and yarn produced in-house were no longer enough and had to be imported. As early as the second half of the 17th century there were more and more families who made their living exclusively by weaving and giving up agriculture. In the good years at the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries, this new source of income led to a sharp increase in the population. This early industrialization made the population very dependent on the distant sales markets and the prices of goods (see section living conditions).
At the end of the 17th and beginning of the 18th century, the villages in the vicinity of St. Gallen began to export the canvas themselves, which had previously failed repeatedly due to the intense resistance of the city, which was defending its trade monopoly. At the beginning of the 17th century, the St. Gallen canvas show was in a serious crisis due to the Thirty Years' War and outbreaks of the plague . The city's policy of resisting innovations and adhering to its traditional high quality standards restricted the freedom of movement of merchants too much, so that they increasingly bought their goods in the smaller towns in the area. Here they could also buy cheaper and inferior goods, because not all customers expected the absolute top quality of the St. Gallen city canvas. There was also no longer any need to have the canvas bought in the city finished there.
cotton
At about the same time as the exclusive sales monopoly for the canvas of the city of St. Gallen was lost, the first major restructuring of the textile industry in eastern Switzerland began. It was the switch from canvas to cotton. The main brain behind this restructuring was Peter Bion , probably a Huguenot religious refugee who fled to St. Gallen and opened a business there. There he mainly offered goods from the Far East, in addition to spices, above all valuable fabrics such as silk or mousseline or cotton fabrics from Zurich. In 1721, Bion was the first to start manufacturing Barchent , a blend of canvas and the new cotton . This initially brought him into trouble with the weavers 'guild, as he himself belonged to the tailors' guild and was therefore not allowed to weave or have woven cloth due to the guild rules. He then joined the weavers' guild and gave up his shop. However, he continued to ignore the guild rules as best he could and began to have cotton yarn produced for the weavers he had employed in the Zurich hinterland and in Glarus, where the cotton industry had already gained a foothold.
From 1730 the cotton industry slowly began to take hold. In the canton of Appenzell, cotton spinning and weaving began to spread in addition to the linen industry. Trade in the new cotton products flourished so much that the traditional linen industry fell into a major crisis in the mid-18th century. Canvas was no longer modern and even more expensive than cotton products. Attempts to regulate the cotton industry, which had previously been able to develop freely and was not subject to the guild order in the city of St. Gallen, and to place it under the guild order, i.e. to strictly supervise the trade and processing of cotton yarn and cotton towels, failed in 1748 and in 1759 at the resistance of the Commercial Directory . This was the union of urban merchants and, for a long time, the essential liberal counterpoint to the otherwise very conservative urban policy. In particular, the later political and economic changes in the 19th century had a major influence on the Commercial Directorate, also as a potent financier. This political success in the middle of the 18th century showed for the first time the new political power emanating from the economy and the drive for freedom of trade and industry .
The second half of the 18th century was now largely part of the trade in and production of cotton products. Barchent, mousseline and cotton cloths were selling extremely well, so that good money could be earned, especially in the Appenzellerland, and the population experienced another significant increase. The flowered canvas - that was one that was provided with flower patterns by means of a special process, in some cases already through the use of the jacquard loom - was also in great demand from the "old" type of textile.
In addition to weaving , the supply of raw materials, especially yarn , became increasingly important. Between 1750 and 1780, cotton spinning spread across large parts of the Appenzellerland, Toggenburg and the Rhine Valley . On the other side of the Rhine and Lake Constance, in southern Germany and in Vorarlberg, yarn was spun for the St. Gallen cotton industry. Around 1780, cotton spinning alone probably employed 40,000 people.
The cotton cloths produced were produced and offered in different shapes, different qualities and different color patterns. Some of these were later printed or embroidered. The finishing industry, which printed, dyed or embroidered cloths, naturally experienced significant growth rates with the upturn in production, so that large numbers of textile printing plants were opened towards the end of the 18th century and many people were given work. Embroidery was to occupy a special position in the finishing industry by 1850 at the latest, because around this time, with the invention of the hand embroidery machine, it gradually overtook weaving and later even ousted it.
| 1760 | 1771 | 1817 | 1820 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| food | ||||
| 1 quarter grain | 50 kr | 6 fl 30 kr | 11fl | 1 bottle 10 kr |
| 1 Haber quarter | 18 kr | 2 fl | 3 fl | 22 kr |
| 1 quarter white flour | 1 fl 4 kr | 5 fl 52 kr | 14 fl | 1 bottle 26 kr |
| 1 quintals of potatoes | 40 kr | 1 bottle 30 kr | 11 fl | 40 kr |
| 1 pound of beef | 4 kr | 10 kr | 15 kr | 9 kr |
| 1 pound butter | 10 kr | 20 kr | 44 kr | 17 kr |
| 1 pound of bread | 2 kr | 16 kr | 30 kr | 3 ½ kr |
| Wages | ||||
| Crazy wages per faster | 12-15 kr | 2/3 kr | 2/3 kr | |
| Weber wages per week | 5 fl 24 kr | 1 bottle 48 kr | 2-4 fl | |
| fl = guilder , kr = cruiser; 60 cruisers corresponded to one guilder | ||||
Before the last soaring in cotton weaving, however, there were two serious cuts: The great famines of 1771 and 1817. Sales had already slumped before that and unemployment had risen. Most of the textile workers no longer had any support in agriculture, and when a bad harvest ensued, many homeworkers became impoverished. At first they were able to keep themselves afloat by selling or pledging land and houses, but later that didn't help either. Around 5,000 people died in the cantons of St. Gallen, Appenzell Innerrhoden and Ausserrhoden either directly as a result of starvation or from diseases such as dysentery , smallpox or typhoid as a result of insufficient or poor nutrition. Even between these famines, the situation for most strata of the population was more difficult than fair to master. Because even in the 1790s, food prices were very high, despite good harvests. Germany needed the grain itself because of various wars. The local farmers used the situation to their advantage and kept the prices of their own food artificially high.
In this environment of difficult economic times, the increasing conflict between the lower classes of the population and the authorities is hardly surprising. Both on the Catholic side in the Princely Land and in the Reformed City, famines and other evils have so far been given as God and scourged as a result of human misconduct towards the Creator. But the Enlightenment thoughts had also reached Eastern Switzerland, and the longer the clergy were less able to suppress them (see History of the Canton of St. Gallen ). In terms of the economy, this resulted in the breakup from serfdom, the end of tax advantages for the upper class and finally the free market economy.
The age of mechanization began with spinning . Spinning machines were first installed in England around 1790, and the machine yarn produced with them soon conquered the mainland. It was better quality than the hand-spun yarn and cheaper as well. The industrial revolution in England had reached the textile sector and hit the European textile centers in their hearts. However, many spinners who now lost their jobs soon found new ones in the still-booming weaving or embroidery industry. The continental barrier temporarily improved the situation on the mainland, since during this time it was no longer possible to import English goods. In 1801 the General Society of the English Cotton Spinning Mill opened in St. Gallen , the first stock company and also the first machine embroidery in Switzerland. Success was not granted to this one - it went bankrupt after a few years - but several decisive impulses came from it. As a result, further spinning factories were opened in Eastern Switzerland and the St. Georgen machine factory was founded in 1828 to maintain old and new textile machines, which later became one of the largest machine factories in Switzerland. The advent of machine embroidery was very beneficial for the cotton and embroidery industry, because in earlier years the thread had always run out.
The first half of the 19th century was still firmly in the hands of cotton weaving. Some significant improvements to the handloom made the weavers more productive to keep up with the increased demand. So after 1800 the so-called Schnellschützen was introduced, a device with which the shuttle could be shot through the fabric with a lever, which significantly increased the weaver's working speed and also allowed wider looms. In 1801, with the rapid bleaching or chlorine bleaching, the previously expensive sun bleaching became superfluous. This in turn had a massive impact on the landscape, especially in the area around the city of St. Gallen, as the areas in front of the city walls that had previously been used as bleaching could now be used for settlement construction. Place names like “Kreuzbleiche” or “Bleicheli” have remained.
A few new weaving processes were also introduced, each of which temporarily increased sales through new product options: in 1821 the jacquard loom , which made it possible to weave almost any pattern using punch cards, in 1823 the satin stitch loom , which allowed embroidery and weaving to be combined, and 1840 the Spickplatte . Mechanical weaving was first introduced in Switzerland in Rheineck in 1825. This first machine weaving factory was later relocated to Vorarlberg, and there were no reasonable further attempts at mechanical looms until 1837 in Wängi, Thurgau. The English weaving mills were much more successful here, as in the spinning mill. Most of the eastern Swiss merchants and manufacturers began to avoid the English competition to produce special fabrics, which could not be made with the mechanical looms or at least not in the same quality. This had various advantages for the local merchants, in particular that it was possible to maintain the low-capital-intensive home industry.
The last big upswing in weaving for Eastern Switzerland was achieved with the increased production of colorful fabrics, because these could not yet be reasonably produced with machines. In 1850 this was gradually mechanized. By combining all the work processes from spinning to dyeing and weaving to finishing in a single factory, these were now gradually competitive. Between 1850 and 1865, at least 17 new colored weaving factories with well over 2000 looms were built. In addition, various factories for white weaving opened, these became more and more important, especially in the second half of the 19th century, because the white fabrics were needed as embroidery base (starting material) for most embroidery. Towards the end of the century, around a third of mechanical looms were designed for colored weaving, while in 1880 it was the other way around. In hand weaving in the canton of St. Gallen, 2417 looms were designed for white weaving and 9691 for colored weaving in 1868. In 1880 there were only 366 for white fabrics, but still 2796 for colored fabrics. In 1900 hand weaving had almost completely collapsed, there were still 59 looms for white weaving and 425 for colored weaving.
embroidery
After all, embroidery was supposed to enable St. Gallen to have the third and by far the greatest flowering in its textile history. In 1753 the trading house Gonzenbach had mousseline embroidered by hand for the first time. This new textile trade also spread incredibly quickly, so that by 1790 around 50,000 women were already doing hand embroidery for St. Gallen trading houses - hand embroidery was and remained, in contrast to machine embroidery, purely women's work throughout the entire period.
The first functioning hand embroidery machines came onto the market around 1850, and they soon found huge sales and were spread throughout Eastern Switzerland. In some regions of the canton of St. Gallen, at least every second house had such a hand embroidery machine, not counting the embroidery factories. Embroidery soon replaced weaving in many places and became Switzerland's largest export branch at the turn of the century.
The second development step in embroidery was the development of the Schiffli embroidery machine by Isaak Gröbli . This made it possible to work much faster and to lengthen the working threads, which made it possible to shorten the interruptions caused by changing and re-threading the needles. The work process was further simplified in 1884 with the invention of the threading machine , which made the time-consuming individual threading of the many needles superfluous.
living conditions
For a long time, working from home was the norm in the textile industry. In almost every house, especially in the canton of Appenzell Ausserrhoden, there was a loom or at least a spinning wheel at the beginning of the 19th century. Large parts of the population no longer had their own land for agriculture. Even where agriculture was still practiced, at least during the winter months, embroidery, weaving or spinning was used.
The working hours were long: 13 or 14 hours a day, except on Sundays, were the norm and the work was very monotonous. The only change in weaving was the time when a cloth was finished and new warp threads had to be drawn in. The spinners - spinning was mostly women's work - were, unlike the weavers, not tied to a locality. They worked in the living room or, if the weather was good, outdoors or together with other spinners on the village square.
Much of the side work in the textile industry was child labor . Sometimes the children had to help out in their parents' business at the age of six, threading embroidery needles or cutting out ready-made embroidered fabrics. At twelve years of age, 3 to 4 hours of threading or other auxiliary work were the rule, at fourteen four to seven hours - in addition to school.
“As soon as I get up in the morning, I have to go down to the cellar to thread, and then I can enjoy the morning meal. Afterwards I have to thread again until it's time for school. When this is finished at eleven o'clock, I go home quickly and have to thread again until twelve o'clock. Then I can enjoy the midday lake and have to thread again until a quarter to 1 a.m. Then I'll go back to school […]. When I get home, I have to thread again until it gets dark, and then I can enjoy dinner. After dinner I have to thread again until ten o'clock; sometimes, when the work is urgent, I have to thread the cellar until eleven o'clock. [...] It goes like this every day. "
That this monotonous and long work of the children was not beneficial for their development and for their ability to concentrate in school does not need to be discussed further. In addition to embroidery, there was also a strong emphasis on child labor in the spinning mill. The spinning mills let their workers and children work 15 or more hours a day on the machines under absolutely adverse working conditions, at starvation wages. Only with the slow improvement of the market situation and the associated modernization did the working conditions improve a little. Working hours have also been reduced over the decades. Until the 1860s, working hours in the factories were gradually reduced to twelve hours a day.
The workers in the factories were practically completely at the mercy of the manufacturers. The employers dictated wages and working hours and demanded discipline and absolute obedience. It was also customary to withhold deductions from the agreed wages for unclean work, necessary rework and so on. Such were unpredictable and often arbitrary for the worker, and their scope was shaped purely by the employer's greed for profit. This was not only true for factory workers, but also for home stickers and weavers.
A certain improvement in the situation of the workers and especially of the children was not achieved until 1878 with the passing of the Federal Factory Act . It completely banned child labor in factories and required employers to clearly and in advance agree working conditions and deductions with workers. Of course, the employers did not particularly like that, and the politicians in St. Gallenland initially looked the other way generously, so that the law could only be enforced slowly. The law only applied to factories, so it indirectly promoted homework. In the home stick factories, the children could still be used without restriction, and the maximum working time of 11 hours a day was not binding here either. Even the homeworkers themselves did not oppose the (exploitation) use of child labor, since it was simply a necessity to secure their own existence.
The home stickers got their orders in most cases from so-called Ferggern and only rarely directly from the exporters. The Ferggers took over the orders from a trading company and distributed them to their stickers. When the order was handed over, the wages for the work were negotiated. Often the Fergger sold the stickers also necessary for the production of yarn . From his wages, the embroiderer had to wait for the re-embroiderer who had to correct any errors. Because not only the client but also Fergger wanted to earn as much as possible, these deductions were sometimes very high. There were hardly any alternatives for the sticker, at most he could only try to change the Fergger with the grossest excesses. He could not use the rest of the wages for himself either, because the payment of his assistants, especially the threading woman who had to support him with the work on the machine, was his business. The threader's wages stayed in the family if the sticker was able to use his children or his wife for this work, which happened very often for precisely this reason. Despite this bad situation with regard to his wages, the stickers were usually not too badly placed and were considered to be respected people with technical skills. Accordingly, the individual stickers had a very high reputation for themselves. They saw themselves as distinguished industrial workers and by no means as proletarians . They wanted to see themselves apart from the "normal" factory workers because they were self-employed workers and their own masters. Income and wealth depended on their skill. However, many of them never made their fortune in the long term, as the money they earned was quickly spent, especially in a pub for good wine or for clothes that were appropriate to their position.
In general, clothing was very important to the textile workers, and sometimes more was spent on new clothes than on better food. Last but not least, the young generation wanted to attract potential partners through this display of their financial possibilities. Because marriage was often almost the only way to free yourself from the dependency of your parents, to move away and to be able to weave or embroider at your own expense instead of at that of your parents.
Financial situation
As indicated in the previous paragraph, the income of the textile workers was essentially dependent on the arbitrariness of the client. In addition, however, the economy in particular also had a major influence on the well-being of workers. If sales stalled, wages were cut or dropped entirely. Textiles as an export product made the workers, and with them the whole region, dependent on the boom in the global markets, which could not be assessed by exporters either. The homeworkers were hit particularly hard, as they simply stopped receiving jobs in difficult times. The flexibility with which the production orders could be placed through working from home affected the workers practically directly during the crisis. Even in good times, wages were low. From the situation of homeworkers in detail the Baumwollfergger reported Ulrich Braker (1735-1798) attributed to its highly regarded and world literature work . He is considered to be one of the very few writers who have described the textile industry in eastern Switzerland from the direct point of view of the lower class.
A Weber earned in 1835, at a good time, between 1 fl 20kr and 2fl 30kr per week. To feed his family of five he needed 34 kreuzers a day, with savings of 31. That makes between £ 3 37kr and £ 58 kr per week (the guilder breaks down into 60 kreuzers), which is obviously not enough. So he was absolutely dependent on the cooperation of his family members. Rent, clothes, wood, etc. are not even included in the previous invoice.
However, things got really bad when the economy was bad. The de facto monoculture that the textile industry had created in eastern Switzerland made the whole landscape dependent on it. When exports fell, wages sometimes plummeted. In many places the textile workers had long since lost their support in agriculture or their own land to feed them, and so the need immediately became very obvious. Open labor disputes were very rare up until the 20th century . There are several reasons for this. On the one hand the already mentioned professional pride of the hand machine stickers, on the other hand their mutual isolation through home work and their aversion to unionized associations. The first big protests came in the first decade of the 20th century through the better organized ship tickers. They had lost their aversion to the merger, as they worked together in a factory much more often than the hand machine stickers. Despite rising sales, wages had already been revised significantly downwards twice in 1904 and 1908. At that time, of course, any loss of work or short-time work were not insured.
The old image still lingered in the minds of the company owners that they alone knew what was best for the workers. The Arbon factory owner and “sticker king” Arnold B. Heine (1849–1923) told the New Yorker Handelszeitung during a lockout in his company: “The workers [must] learn that they are the managers of the factory establishments and not the agitators and their confidants have to follow, [for these] are better able to judge their interests and care more about them than their irresponsible [strike] leaders. ”But the time when factory owners could set wages and employment conditions at will was over. The workers have now been able to assert themselves in such disputes, including the Arbon industrial action of 1908. The workers actually had no choice but to win, because their wages were already "too little to live, too much to die". The American leadership style, according to which individual workers can be replaced almost at will, brought the workers of such companies together in unions.
Urban politics until 1798
The textile industry and trade were central drivers of the politics of the free imperial city of St. Gallen. This was officially supported by the 6 guilds since the 16th century, but with increasing duration it is described more and more as aristocratic . The purposeful orientation of politics towards the linen trade began in the second half of the 15th century. At that time, the city's first agreements with the Swiss Confederation were signed, which enabled it to benefit from the Swiss Confederation's free trade agreements, for example with France. These allowed duty-free trade with important French markets, which was a clear advantage over the competition. St. Gallen also knew how to use its extremely protectionist policy to drive competition from other Swiss locations. In order to protect the processing industry, which enjoys a very good reputation, measures were taken to prevent the copying of the procedures and traders willing to leave the country who wanted to settle in other places were persuaded to return with significant sums of money.
In addition to the guild government of the city, for its part already influenced by the nature of the guilds, the commercial corporation existed since 1730 , which had been formed from interest groups of the trading houses. This corporation was comparable to the chambers of commerce in other cities and had a decisive influence on politics, not least because it was very financially strong. Their proposals were almost always waved through by the city councils. In contrast to urban politics, which was completely turned inside out with the arrival of the Helvetic , the commercial corporation existed well into the 20th century.
One of the bearers of protectionist politics and also one of the reasons why the former city republic is mostly described as aristocratic from today's perspective was the complicated electoral process for the councils. The guilds proposed their candidates to the councils in a multi-stage process. Only after the councils had practically agreed on the candidates were they submitted to the popular assembly for a vote. However, since it was forbidden to discuss candidates before and after the election event, a real political discussion could never take place and the candidates were almost always chosen according to the proposals. What speaks against the view of an aristocracy in the city, however, are two different things: Firstly, it also happened once that the proposed candidate was rejected by the people, for example when displeasure with the authorities had pent up for too long. Second, it was often, but not always, that political offices were held by wealthy and important families. Even simple guild members could now and then be raised to political offices.
Of course, protectionism also had its disadvantages: Adjustments to new developments and new markets were made much more difficult and in some cases even impossible, which at times even led to unnecessary economic setbacks, for example when the value of the newly developed cotton industry was not recognized for a long time. If Peter Bion , actually a stranger, hadn't become a pioneer of the cotton industry in St. Gallen, the city would probably have stuck to linen processing for a hundred years longer and missed the structural change in the textile industry. For the urban economy, protectionism was a blessing in good times, but often a curse in bad.
This urban policy, dominated by the guild order, was replaced by more modern structures after the French invaded in 1798. Nonetheless, trade and economy remained an essential focus of urban politics, as the following 19th century is considered to be the most important heyday of the textile industry.
The end of the textile age
Up until now the textile industry had been able to recover again and again, albeit with changes, but around 1920 it finally got into a structural crisis. Fashion had changed, functional clothing was now in demand, and no more classy lace. In the difficult economic situation for other industries, which finally culminated in the Great Depression of 1929, the upper classes could not or would no longer afford expensive embroidery. After the First World War, high nobility in the narrower sense no longer existed in continental Europe. From 1914 to 1935, the value of exported embroidery fell from 200 million to 12 million francs, combined with huge waves of layoffs and a decline in orders. Many buyer states, including the USA in particular, now also pursued an extensive protection policy in favor of their domestic production by imposing excessive tariffs on embroidery imports or - like Germany - even banning them entirely. The state paid the stickers premiums for switching off and scrapping their machines, but that only helped those affected very temporarily. For decades, many of them only found odd jobs to keep themselves and their families afloat.
The economic crisis in Eastern Switzerland lasted well after the Second World War. It was also clearly evident in the population of the affected cantons and cities. The cantons of St. Gallen and Appenzell in particular lost many residents through emigration in the first half of the 20th century. The city of St. Gallen only had more inhabitants again in the 1960s than in 1910. In some villages in Ausserrhoden the decline was even more dramatic.
Only with the boom in the post-war period did sales rise again, albeit at a very low level and practically only for machine embroidery or automatic looms. The wages of the unskilled workers still employed there were low, and accordingly their purchasing power was poor, which slowed the general economic upturn in eastern Switzerland. Because despite the sharp decline to only 2% of the workforce in 1941, the textile industry was a very significant part of the industry in eastern Switzerland. Between 1940 and 1955 the number of employees even increased again for a short time. With the increase in the capital requirement for the new, expensive and high-performance embroidery machines, not only did the number of factories decline - home work was no longer an option - but again the number of workers required. The final end of an era could no longer be stopped. In 1970, 3943 people were still employed in the embroidery industry in the canton of St. Gallen, in the canton of Appenzell 1707 and in Thurgau 301.
literature
- Albert Tanner: The boat flies, the engine roars. Weavers, stickers and manufacturers in Eastern Switzerland . Union Publishing House; Zurich 1985; ISBN 3-293-00084-3
- Max Lemmenmeier: embroidery blossom . In: Sankt Galler Geschichte 2003, Volume 6, Die Zeit des Kantons 1861-1914 . Office for Culture of the Canton of St. Gallen, St. Gallen 2003, ISBN 3-908048-43-5
- Daniel Büchel: Merchants, councilors and noble shareholders: linen trade, society and regiment of the city of St. Gallen in the early modern period . In: Sankt Galler Geschichte 2003, Volume 4, Early Modern Times: Population, Culture . Office for Culture of the Canton of St. Gallen, St. Gallen 2003, ISBN 3-908048-43-5
- Georg Wyler: The rise and fall of the Thurgau embroidery industry . In: Thurgauer Jahrbuch , Vol. 58, 1983, pp. 9–33. ( e-periodica.ch )
Web links
- Albert Tanner: Embroidery. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
- Memories of hand embroidery
Individual evidence
- ↑ Anne Wanner-JeanRichard, Marcel Mayer: Production and marketing of Sankt-Gallen embroidery , in: St. Galler Geschichte; Volume 6; Page 147
- ↑ Embroidery tradition in St.Gallen . St. Gallen-Lake Constance Tourism. January 15, 2009. Archived from the original on August 12, 2014. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Accessed on February 20, 2011: “In 1912, embroidery was at the forefront of Swiss export goods, followed by the watch and machine industries. Over 50 percent of the world’s production of textiles at that time came from St. Gallen (today it is 0.5 percent). "
- ^ Tanner, p. 94
- ↑ 1 According to eastern Switzerland, faster corresponds to 769 meters. Depending on the thickness and quality of the yarn, the spinner needed about 6-10 hours on the hand spindle, about half of it with the spinning wheel .
- ^ Tanner, 166
- ↑ Entire section: Daniel Büchel; Merchants, councilors and distinguished shareholders: linen trade, society and regiment of the city of St. Gallen in the early modern period
