Movement of the Modern Cotton Textile Industry in the Northern Kawachi

There were two cotton textile centers in Osaka prefecture before the Meiji era. Those were Izumi and Kawachi. Although the cotton industrial region was developed in Izumi after the Meiji era, in Kawachi a few textile workshops were located but the modern factory system was not developed. And then the cotton production center of Kawachi was declined. Hitherto it was pointed out that the decline in the Kawachi region was caused by the lack of the industrial capital such as was found in the Izumi region. In Kawachi the upper class of the peasants turned mainly not to industrial capital, but to commercial capital in the Meiji era. In contrast, a lot of peasants in Izumi turned to the workshop owners between the last of the Meiji and the Taisyo era. Thus we have had two development models of the cotton production center in Osaka, namely the Izumi type and the Kawachi type. But the Kawachi type model can not be applied to the northern part of Kawachi, because the germ of the modern factory system was found in the cotton production center of that area. In this paper I will analyze the movement of the cotton manufacturers in the northern Kawachi (Naka-Kawachi county and Kita-Kawachi county) in the latter half of the Meiji era. And I will prove that the development of 'the Izumi type' also existed germinatively in the northern part of Kawachi by that analysis. The analysis is based on the statistical year books, the factory directory and the documents for the foundation of the two textile trade associations. The traditional cotton production center of 'Kawachi Momen' was in the southern Kawachi, but the newly introduced textiles such as cotton flannel, towelling and 'Unsai' were actively produced in the northern Kawachi during the Meiji era. The non-powerd workshops which manufactured those kinds of textiles increased in the latter half of the Meiji era and then a part of those workshops changed to the powered cotton textile factories. In Naka-Kawachi county the producers of 'Unsai' and 'Atsushi' aimed to establish the trade association which controlled all of Osaka prefecture, but resultantly they organaized only the producers in that county. They failed to control all of the producers and traders of 'Unsai' and 'Atsushi' in Osaka prefecture, because the producers of those textiles were mainly concentrated in Kosaka village in the northern part of Naka-Kawachi county, but almost all of the traders of those textiles were concentrated in Osaka city. Only a part of those producers in that county turned to the textile workshop owners. In Kita-Kawachi county the producers of cotton flannel, towelling and the other cotton textiles located respectively in each producing center. Those producers were mainly from the cotton traders or the small and medium landowners. And then, though a large number of those producers turned to the textile workshop owners, those workshop owners were not followed by the new ones. The textile factories stopped to increase in the northern Kawachi after the end ofthe Meiji era. The factors of that stagnation were the shortage of the labor and the high wage level in the countryside, because of the migration to the city or the location of a various kind of factories owing to the accessibility to Osaka city. Furthermore those manufacturers carried out insufficiently the technical innovation. Though they had few effect on the market, they was influenced by the merchants of Osaka for the distribution of products. Those weak points of the manufacturers were owed to their small capital. Resultantly, though a few precursory factories appeared in northern Kawachi, the following factories scarcely appeared and the cotton textile industry was not developed in this area. But I can confirm that the appearance of workshop-owners in the northern Kawachi was equivalent not to 'the Kawachi type' model, but to 'the Izumi type' model.