Chapter 173 Traveling Through the Middle Ages 173

Chapter 173 Time-Traveling to the Middle Ages 173

When Mr. Ross, the steward of Goathorn Manor, learned that Louisa intended to establish a spinning workshop at Goathorn Manor and appointed him as its manager, he was both surprised and delighted.

Being remembered by Louisa was already a great boon for a steward like him, let alone the tangible benefits of managing a spinning workshop itself! Being in charge of operations meant opportunities—financial, personnel-related, and organizational—too many to count.

"Congratulations on being assigned this task by Her Highness... If you do well, you might even earn a place by her side! You know Her Highness doesn’t care much about one’s origins—many of those she now favors are of humble birth, much like yourself. It’s just that they had talent and happened to catch her eye..." The handmaiden sent to inform Mr. Ross spoke with genuine admiration.

Mr. Ross thanked her repeatedly, inquired about the details of the project, and received two spinning machines, along with four wool carders and four combs—carding equipment was easier to manufacture, so they had already produced this many.

"...These are the new machines Her Highness ordered, for carding and spinning," the handmaiden pointed at the equipment. "Shearing season hasn't come around yet, so you can gather some raw materials first to train the spinsters. Once shearing begins, more machines will be delivered, and the spinning workshop will properly get underway."

"By the way, has the wool-washing pool been dug?" This was something Louisa had ordered earlier, alongside preparing the site for the spinning workshop. After all, such infrastructure couldn’t materialize overnight—it had to be arranged in advance.

Mr. Ross quickly replied, "Construction has already begun. When Her Highness gave the command, it coincided with the spring planting, so... Rest assured, it won’t delay the workshop’s operations! Everything will be ready before the shearing season starts!"

Between the spring and summer planting, there was a brief period of relative downtime, allowing the manor to mobilize labor for infrastructure projects—though Goathorn Manor was primarily livestock-raising, that was in terms of land use. In terms of population, agricultural laborers slightly outnumbered livestock workers.

This was inevitable—the same amount of land could support far more people under agriculture than under livestock-raising.

Thus, even in a livestock-raising manor like Goathorn, labor allocation had to be carefully balanced with agricultural needs.

As a local, Mr. Ross’s explanation was reasonable, and the handmaiden didn’t press further. Calling for labor during planting or harvest time was impractical—even lords struggled to enforce such orders without work-arounds. Forcing non-urgent construction projects would only lead to inefficiency.

With the timeline settled, after the handmaiden left, Mr. Ross urged the workers digging the wool-washing pool to hurry while also looking for women to hire. The spinning workshop’s site was already prepared—an abandoned granary in the manor could be refurbished for the purpose.

With Louisa’s appointment, Mr. Ross easily leveraged his authority, gathering the other stewards, bailiffs, and agricultural officers to announce, "Her Highness wants our manor to process its own wool into yarn and sell it directly to merchants. From now on, the manor’s wool won’t be sold unprocessed."

"This applies to both the lord's flocks and those raised by tenant farmers—all wool must be sold to the manor. Of course, everything will follow custom: the wool can offset rents or be paid for in cash, at market rates."

Someone frowned and said, "When the manor buys grain or livestock at market rates, it’s advantageous since it saves transport costs. But with wool, there’s little appeal—wool merchants already come here to buy. The herders have standing agreements with them. Forcing sales to the manor would break those agreements..."

At this time, wool wasn’t traded as a futures commodity, so "breaking agreements" didn’t refer to formal contracts. At most, it was an informal understanding built over time—though such "understandings" could easily dissolve if, say, merchants found cheaper or better wool elsewhere, or if competitors offered herders better prices.

In short, these arrangements had some binding force, but not much.

Mr. Ross had anticipated this objection and replied, "The spinning workshop will need workers—women who've spun before will be hired first, but we’ll still need more hands. Beyond spinners, we’ll also need laborers for washing and carding wool. No one would turn down the chance to earn extra."

The spinning workshop, wool-washing pool, and carding operations all required labor—some full-time, but most would be seasonal hires between planting and harvest. This was common practice: workshops often operated unevenly throughout the year due to raw material availability, with stark differences between busy and slow times.

Under such conditions, workshops couldn’t afford to retain excess labor during slow periods, so aside from a few full-time workers, most hires were temporary.

Wool wasn’t a perishable raw material, so its processing seasons weren’t as rigid. Local production schedules could be adjusted flexibly—though peak production usually fell in the latter half of the year, aligning with summer shearing and winter cloth sales.

For the manor, scheduling around agricultural cycles was simplest. During farming lulls, labor was plentiful, making it ideal to hire temporary workers. This minimized disruption to core production while keeping spinning costs low. For tenants, it provided much-needed off-season income.

Mr. Ross’s implication was clear: herding families who sold wool to the manor would get hiring priority—a cost-free yet effective incentive.

The others agreed it was a clever, low-cost solution. They then discussed notifying the wool merchants who previously bought wool from the manor, informing them their services were no longer needed... Strictly speaking, no notice was required, but since these merchants had likely paid their dues to operate here, outright dismissal would be poor form.

Giving them advance warning allowed them to source wool elsewhere, avoiding sudden shortages.

"...Actually, we could tell the merchants outright that Goathorn Manor will now produce its own yarn," someone suggested as the meeting wound down. "Don’t merchants also buy yarn? No one refuses extra supply. They might even purchase ours, solving the sales issue too."

This struck Mr. Ross as brilliant—he took note. Wool merchants and manufacturers typically controlled multiple production stages to maximize profits. Others lacked the capital to compete, as buying upstream materials required substantial funds most small workshops couldn’t muster—or if they could, the risks of a bad batch were prohibitive.

One misstep, and they'd be ruined! So compared to high-risk, high-reward ventures, they preferred steady but modest earnings.

Cloth merchants rarely accepted 'semi-finished' products from others, as it would cut into their profits, and there was always the risk of dealing with a competitor looking to steal their bread. No one wanted to 'arm the competition'! But yarn was an exception—it had long been in short supply, and many cloth merchants simply couldn’t produce enough themselves, forcing them to scrounge for yarn wherever they could.

So, Mr. Ross informed the cloth merchants who dealt with Horn Manor that they no longer needed to come for wool but could purchase yarn instead. Naturally, the merchants were displeased with the former arrangement, but there was little they could do—it had never been a contractual obligation. Moreover, Horn Manor came with Louisa’s dowry, and its owner was effectively their master (these merchants were all from Brundu). They wouldn’t dare cross their master’s dowry estate over a bit of wool...

As for the latter proposal, the merchants showed considerable interest, quick to promise they'd inspect the goods when the time came.

While managing these merchants, Mr. Ross also had to secure agreements with the shepherds to sell all their wool to the manor this year. Beyond that, he had to find ways to source enough wool from outside the manor—fortunately, the spinning mill was just getting started, and they could still source enough wool from other estates.

Well, Horn Manor was the pilot site for the spinning mill. Other estates under Louisa’s influence didn’t yet have spinning mills, making it easy for Horn Manor to acquire their wool. The wool from the lord’s demesne was a simple matter—just a word would suffice. The shepherds’ own wool was slightly more complicated, but not by much. As the saying goes, "The distant magistrate is less effective than the local official." Even without extra incentives, many shepherd families, after some consideration, would prioritize selling to the manor.

Of course, this was contingent on the manor’s terms being no worse than those offered by outside merchants.

In fact, Horn Manor was currently selective in its wool purchases, focusing on nearby estates with water access or at least short overland routes—land transport was prohibitively expensive at the time! The Dutch Low Countries, bordering the North Sea with its abundance of natural harbors, saw a boom in woolen textile production precisely because they could source high-quality wool via cheap maritime transport.

Naturally, within the Kingdom of Gauden, wool was transported by both land and water. So, Horn Manor’s procurement strategy actually resulted in lower transport costs compared to the Low Countries’ sourcing of Gauden wool.

While tackling the wool supply issue, Mr. Ross didn’t neglect the training of female workers. He gathered over a dozen full-time spinners from Horn Manor and had them learn to operate the spinning machines—full-time spinners were that scarce! Even though Horn Manor was primarily a pastoral estate, its population was small for a large estate, yet it still fell within the category of a major estate. Even so, there were only about a dozen full-time spinners.

This wasn’t unusual. Women who supported themselves entirely were rare in this era—not because they were lazy, but because societal norms discouraged it, and opportunities for women to earn independently were few. Full-time spinners were mostly unmarried women for various reasons, widows, or housewives whose husbands earned little and bore heavy family burdens.

Still, Mr. Ross believed a dozen was enough. Each would operate a spinning machine, supplemented by a few laborers handling tasks like feeding material into the machines and fetching spun yarn. This would ensure Horn Manor’s spinning mill could meet its production targets—when he saw the machines in motion, with dozens of spindles turning at once, his eyes widened in amazement!

While juggling a dozen spindles didn't equate to a dozen times the efficiency of a single-spindle spinning wheel (since the spinner had to monitor multiple threads, slowing the pace), with practice and laborer assistance, the difference was negligible. Or at the very least, it was easily a dozen times more efficient than hand-spinning.

Typically, six or seven women using spinning wheels could barely supply enough yarn for one loom. Now, a single spinning machine, purely in terms of yarn output, could supply two looms.

Of course, the math wasn’t that simple. Yarn from spinning wheels was inferior to hand-spun yarn and was only suitable for weft threads. The yarn from spinning machines was similar, if slightly worse, meaning it would likely also be limited to weft use. A single spinning machine couldn’t supply two looms entirely, but it could provide weft threads for multiple looms—which wasn’t bad. In Louisa’s plan, this left room for spinners in estates without spinning mills to continue their work.

Hand-spun yarn would remain in demand for a long time, possibly even growing! With increased weft production, more hand-spun yarn would be needed for warp threads.

"You’re doing wonderfully, Lisa! Quick-eyed and nimble-fingered young folks are just better suited for these new machines," Mr. Ross remarked during a visit to check on the spinners’ progress. He watched as a young woman turned the spinning machine’s large wheel while adjusting the tension rod, guiding the threads up and down.

Occasionally, she’d spot a broken or fraying thread and swiftly mend it. The wheel, carried by inertia, would continue turning briefly, so the machine never missed a beat! By the time she finished, her hands were back in place—the entire process seamless!

This display left Mr. Ross thoroughly impressed, and he praised her repeatedly. The spinner, Lisa, beamed with pride. She hadn’t stood out much among hand-spinners—her speed was good but not the fastest, and her yarn quality had always been average at best. But with the spinning machine, her quick reflexes and sharp eyes became assets, suddenly making her shine.

Hand-spinning had limited returns once a certain speed was reached, and multitasking offered little advantage. But juggling a dozen spindles? That played perfectly to her strengths.

In contrast, one of the former top spinners, an elderly woman, struggled more. Her fading eyesight and slower reflexes weren’t what they used to be, though decades of muscle memory kept her hand-spinning skill sharp. Even so, she preferred working at the spinning mill—the base pay alone surpassed what she could earn through laborious hand-spinning.

Yes, Louisa had set wage standards for the spinning mill workers. While fixed wages defied 'market economy' principles—setting them too high risked sinking both mill and workers—reasonable increases were justifiable.

After all, machine-spinning was novel, and the wages she set were like setting a precedent. As long as they weren’t outright unreasonable, subsequent adjustments would follow precedent—benefiting the spinners.

The spinning mill paid weekly, with a base wage of 12 pennies.

Even the most efficient hand-spinner could only earn about one and a half pennies per day on a piece-rate basis. Working seven days a week, that was just 10.5 pennies! And considering such spinners often worked sunup to sundown, with only essential breaks, the spinning mill’s conditions were far superior.

At the mill, there were fixed hours—no 'flexible work' that really meant working every waking moment. Hand-spinners couldn’t afford to slack; every moment not spent spinning was lost income.

In reality, most full-time spinners averaged just 1 penny per day, and even that was often delayed by merchants. At the mill, even teenagers—expected to fetch yarn from under the machines—earned 10 pennies weekly, matching the best hand-spinners. The work wasn’t overly strenuous, and children could easily handle tasks like retrieving yarn.

As for the spinners, if their machines exceeded weekly targets, bonuses were possible. But even without bonuses, the base wage alone was an improvement—with no worries about unpaid wages. Given the choice, they'd select the mill without hesitation!

"Mr. Ross, uh, I heard the spinning mill is also hiring carders..." Just as Mr. Ross was expressing satisfaction with the spinners' progress, one of them, who had been resting, came over and said (with only two spinning machines available, everyone took turns using them).

Mr. Ross didn’t need to hear the rest of her words to understand her meaning. He didn’t agree outright but said, "We’ll have to wait and see on that. Of course, I’d prefer to take care of you spinners first, but we’ve already promised to give herding families first dibs on jobs. Your household doesn’t raise sheep or supply wool to the spinning mill."

The spinner seeking Mr. Ross’s favor was a widow with several children. When her husband died, the children were still young, and he had no brothers. In such circumstances, the family couldn’t maintain the land they had previously rented, so most of it was taken back. Only the vegetable plot remained, where they grew food for themselves and kept a few geese in a small shed.

The family’s main income relied on her spinning—not just her, but her two daughters as well. However, the girls were young and weak, and with the added responsibility of tending the vegetable plot and geese, they couldn’t be considered full-time spinners, just pitching in part-time to help make ends meet.

Her idea was for her two daughters to work at the spinning mill, either as assistants in the spinning machine area or as carders—both would be good jobs. The spinners had "being in the right place at the right time," having seen the new wool-carding machines, and believed even older children could handle the work with such tools...

Mr. Ross was inclined to favor "his own people," but some things had to follow the rules. He had already promised short-term work opportunities to the herders to ensure they sold all their wool to the estate—it wouldn’t do to make exceptions here. Of course, if there were leftover positions after assignments, he would naturally consider the "insiders" who were already full-time workers at the spinning mill.

In these times, nepotism was considered perfectly normal! Anyone who didn’t practice it would be seen as odd!

Mr. Ross said as much, but the spinner didn’t give up. She kept chattering beside him, trying to persuade him to hire her children—preferably all of them. Even when Mr. Ross clearly showed impatience, she refused to leave.

This wasn’t necessarily because she couldn’t read his mood—more likely, life was just too hard! With a chance to change their fate right in front of them, and only a bit of persistence required to seize it, who would hold back out of false modesty? The only hesitation came from the risk of annoying Mr. Ross by pushing too hard, which might backfire.

But everyone who had dealt with Mr. Ross knew he was one of the "good ones" among the estate’s management—even if irritated, he wouldn’t can them. That’s why they dared to persist. There was street smarts in this, not just reckless stubbornness.