Northrop Loom - Economics

Economics

The principal advantage of the Northrop loom was that it was fully automatic; when a warp thread broke, the loom stopped until it was fixed. When the shuttle ran out of thread, Northrop's mechanism ejected the depleted pirn and loaded a new full one without stopping. A loom operative could work 16 or more looms whereas previously they could only operate eight. Thus, the labour cost was halved. Mill owners had to decide whether the labour saving was worth the capital investment in a new loom. By 1900, Draper had sold over 60,000 Northrop looms and were shipping 1,500 a month, were employing 2,500 men and enlarging their Hopedale works to increase that output. In all 700,000 looms were sold.

By 1914, Northop looms made up 40% of American looms. However, in the United Kingdom labour costs were not as significant and Northrop had only 2% of the British market. Northrops were especially suitable for coarse cottons, but it was said not particular suitable for fines, thus the financial advantage in their introduction into Lancashire was not as great as it had been in the United States. Henry Philip Greg imported some of the first Northrops into Britain in 1902, for his Albert Mill in Reddish, and encouraged his brother Robert Alexander Greg to introduce Northrops into Quarry Bank Mill in 1909. Greg bought 94 looms and output increased from 2.31 lbs/man-hr in 1900, to 2.94 lbs/man-hr in 1914. Labour costs decreased from 0.9d per pound to 0.3d per lb.

Draper's strategy was to standardise on a couple of models which they mass-produced. The lighter E-model of 1909 was joined in the 1930 by the heavier X-model. Continuous fibre machines, say for rayon, which was more break-prone, needed a specialist loom. This was provided by the purchase of the Stafford Loom Co. in 1932, and using their patents a third loom the XD, was added to the range. Because of their mass production techniques they were reluctant and slow to retool for new technologies such as shuttleless looms.