II
Fortunately, there is ample evidence of the organisation of the check and smallware trades in the fifties of the eighteenth century, and this evidence is important in that it shows clearly the relations which existed between the employers and the workpeople engaged in these trades at that time. In both trades the relations were exceedingly strained, and in both the workpeople attempted, through combination, to maintain and advance their economic position. As a matter of fact, the worsted smallware weavers had had some form of combination for some years. In 1756 their articles contained regulations concerning their trade which dated back to 1747. The articles show that there were two main classes engaged in the trade: first, the manufacturers, who were the real employers; second, the undertakers, journeymen, and apprentices. Their aim was to protect the interests of the latter class, particularly of the undertakers. The difficulties they were intended to meet are revealed in The Worsted Smallware Weavers’ Apology issued in 1756,[144] and the Apology also throws light on the development of the trade during the preceding thirty years.
Before that time the work had been performed in a single loom, but, about that time, this loom was displaced by a Dutch loom,[145] which, instead of weaving one piece at a time wove twelve or fourteen, and also improvement took place in the character of the product. In 1756, the weavers asserted, there were three times as many Dutch looms in use in Manchester as there ever had been single looms. As a consequence of the improvements, the scope of employment had widened and many of the poorer sort of people had entered the trade, while the generality of manufacturers had acquired such large fortunes as enabled them to vie with some of the best gentlemen in the county. With the weavers the case was different, owing, they asserted, to their own conduct in taking too many apprentices on any terms, and for any length of time, and also, for a small sum of money, taking persons into the trade who were immediately recognised as journeymen. As a result, the trade had become overcrowded with labour, and many who had entered it had gone back to their old occupations, while others had turned to day labouring in the summer and returned to the loom only in the winter, when they were content to work on any terms, which soon became the general rule. Moreover, men who had served only a year or two lowered the standard of workmanship, as in such a short time they were unable to learn the theory of the trade.
The first article, dated 1747, laid down that no undertaker should take apprentices for less than seven years, unless they were fifteen years of age, when they might be taken for six years. Masters taking apprentices had to enter them in the weavers’ register-book, twopence to be paid on entry, and, when an apprentice had served his time, a blank had to be taken out for which fourpence had to be paid. Afterwards the apprentice was free to work either as a journeyman or as an undertaker. In a later article it was agreed that if any member went to work, or undertook work, for any master that had never made goods before 1st January 1753, “the same shall not be accounted one of us.” Later in the year, it was agreed that no undertaker should take more than three apprentices, and, in the next year, it was further agreed that every undertaker should demand a blank from any journeymen or journeywomen when they came to work with him, and if an undertaker failed to comply with this regulation he must forfeit five shillings to the box. In the last article, dated 11th August 1753, it was agreed that any undertaker bringing up his sons or daughters to the trade should enter them in the register at twenty years of age, when they should receive a blank which would enable them to work as journeymen or undertakers for any master in the trade.
There are several points of interest in these articles. In the first place, it is evident that the master manufacturers as well as the weavers took apprentices, and that the weavers wished to bring them under their control. In the second place, it appears that women were recognised in the trade as subject to the same conditions as men. Thirdly, the increasing stringency of the articles suggests either that the combination was developing, or that the articles were not attaining the end in view. Probably both suggestions are correct.
In 1756 the problem of remuneration had become acute, and the organisation was evidently on the point of taking an active interest in the matter. This increased activity was the beginning of trouble which culminated at the Lancaster Lent Assizes in 1760. To understand the position during these years it will be advisable to glance at the general situation in the country.
As early as 1753 there had been serious disturbances consequent upon a rise in the price of food. At Bristol it had been necessary to call out the military to prevent the plundering of corn vessels in the harbour, and similar measures had been adopted to maintain the peace at Manchester and Leeds, which was only accomplished with loss of life.[146] At the beginning of the year the price of wheat in Manchester ranged from 18s. to 20s. per load—20 Winchester pecks—and other cereals in proportion. Then there began a rise which in August had brought the average price of wheat to 25s. to 26s., which continued throughout 1754.[147] Early in 1755 the prices had come down, and remained almost without change at 21s. to 22s. for more than twelve months. From about May, 1756, prices began to rise again. In June they stood at 27s. to 28s., in December at 34s. to 36s., in February, 1757, at 39s. to 40s., and in July at 43s. to 45s. Then they began to fall, reaching 30s. to 31s. in December, and in October, 1758, the old price of 21s. to 22s. had been regained.
Reports of rioting in every part of the country began in the autumn of 1756, and were constantly repeated until the end of the following year,[148] and the distress extended to Scotland and Ireland, the King subscribing £20,000 for relief in the latter country.[149] At Liverpool in November, 1756, it was decided to buy several thousand pounds’ worth of grain, at the expense of the town, to be retailed to the poor at cost price, and a subscription list was opened at Manchester in the following month for a similar purpose, when between £700 and £800 were immediately subscribed.[150]
In the view of the populace the evil was due to the action of trading middlemen engrossing and holding back supplies, and in Manchester, as in other places, when a riot broke out, in which a number of colliers from Clifton took part, the object of attack was certain corn dealers, who vainly protested that, instead of engrossing, they had imported corn from remote parts of the kingdom and thus lowered prices.[151] A proclamation of the King against the forestalling, regrating and engrossing of corn was issued in Manchester,[152] and apparently in every other town in the country, while threats of prosecution, of which the gentlemen of the town were prepared to bear the expense, were issued against the guilty persons, could they be discovered.[153]
It was in these circumstances that the worsted smallware weavers of Manchester began to show a greater activity than hitherto, and issued their Apology. They complained of the rise in the prices of provisions and asserted that, eighteen or twenty years before, undertakers could have kept five apprentices for what it now cost to keep three. In 1756 they had commenced to hold meetings once a month. The hands employed by each manufacturer were regarded as a “shop.” Each shop appointed a person to represent the whole shop, and when the representatives met once a month they formed the trade society.[154] Already the manufacturers suspected that the proceedings were to their detriment, and the weavers were aware that they were likely to meet with a great deal of censure and scornful sneers, but they consoled themselves with the thought that they were as the Nazarenes, and those who held them in contempt were as the Jews.
The next evidence of the existence of the society appears in January, 1759, when the following notice was issued in The Manchester Mercury[155]:—“Whereas all combinations and meetings among Weavers or other handicraft workmen or servants to consult how to raise wages, or make other rules or orders among themselves that have a tendency to ruin and destroy the trade in which they are employed is contrary to the Laws of the Kingdom. And whereas there is at this time in and about this town an unlawful combination among the Worsted smallware weavers, under the name of being members or being connected with or payers to a Box. This is to give notice that all persons who are in any ways concerned in those unlawful combinations, or are in any ways aiding or assisting thereto, will be prosecuted to the utmost rigour of the law; and that no weavers will be taken to work that are in any ways concerned in those unlawful combinations.”
The next important act in the life of this association was performed at Lancaster Assizes in the following year, when a number of worsted smallware weavers answered to an indictment for a combination to raise wages. The prosecution was not proceeded with as the defendants handed in the following submission, which was read in the open court, and afterwards signed by them. “We do hereby, each for himself, and as far as we can for the other weavers of the same Trade agree to work for the prices already agreed upon with our respective masters, or such other wages as the circumstances of the Trade make reasonable for the time being. We hereby promise and engage, each for himself that we will never enter into, or promote, or encourage any Combination whatsoever, for the raising wages, or any other unlawful purpose whatsoever. And we declare against, and will oppose, any agreement or Combination ... or that any money shall be applied ... to the support of any person, or persons, who shall refuse to work for reasonable, or the usual wages, being able and requested so to do, or in any wise whatsoever towards the forming or supporting any combination to raise wages or other unlawful purpose whatsoever. That the Box or contribution may be permitted till the debt already incurred be discharged and the defendants promise to produce the Box and show their accounts therein, to any of the Masters in any part of Manchester upon a reasonable notice for that purpose, and that when the Debt is discharged, the contribution shall cease and the Box be destroyed, and in the meantime, the Indentures shall be delivered to the Parties thereto if they desire it.”[156]
The combination of the worsted smallware weavers was not the only one in the Manchester district in the late fifties of the eighteenth century. As already mentioned, the check-weavers had also combined. So acute had the position become that at the Autumn Assizes held at Lancaster in 1758 Lord Mansfield “had been informed of great disturbances in Lancashire, occasioned by several thousands having left their work and entered into combinations for raising their wages, and appointed meetings at stated times, formed themselves into a committee at such meetings, and established Boxes and fixed stewards in every Township for collecting money for supporting such weavers as should by their Committee be ordered to leave their masters, and made other dangerous and illegal regulations; that they had insulted and abused several weavers who had refused to join in their schemes and continued to work; and had dropt incendiary letters, with threats to masters that had opposed their designs; his Lordship sensible of the pernicious consequences of such illegal proceedings as being not only destructive of Trade and Manufactures, but of the Peace of the Public adapted his charge to the occasion, and strongly urged to the Jury the necessity of suppressing all such combinations and conspiracies on any pretence whatsoever; gave them an account of all the attempts of the like nature that had been made at different times and in different parts of the kingdom, and told them that an active and vigilant execution of the Laws in being, had always been sufficient to suppress such attempts, and, if properly executed, would have the same effect upon the present that it had always met with on similar occasions.” As the judge had spoken without notes, he could not oblige the Grand Jury with this charge in writing, as they requested, but he issued a warrant for the apprehension of nineteen stewards concerned in the combination, and prosecutions were recommended against others as being equally culpable.[157]
The judge’s charge was intended, no doubt, to be of general application, but it appears that it had particular reference to the check-weavers. The story of their combination can be gathered from the pages of The Manchester Mercury, supplemented by A Letter to a Friend: occasioned by the late Disputes betwixt the Check-makers of Manchester and their Weavers, written by Thomas Percival[158] in 1759. Mr. Percival had been mentioned to the judge as one who had assisted the weavers in their efforts to combine,[159] and his letter was a pungent reply to the charges. It appears that originally there were two main points of dispute between the check manufacturers and the weavers: first, the question of a standard length of cloth for weaving, and second, the question of “unfair weavers.”[160] Ultimately these questions led to a combination and a turn-out of several weeks in which the weavers in Manchester and for many miles around were involved.
According to Mr. Percival’s account, he was approached by some of his neighbours, check-weavers, about a year before he wrote his letter, when they informed him that they had been solicited to enter a Box to oppose the unlawful practices of their masters. At the time he advised them not to do so, but some of them became members and later the dispute became an open breach.[161]
In April, 1758, a notice was issued in The Manchester Mercury drawing attention to the fact that “Weavers employed in manufactures carried on in Manchester and neighbouring towns, had formed themselves into unlawful clubs and societies, and had entered into combinations and subscriptions,” and that anyone who would not enter, or would withdraw, would be protected and employed.[162] This notice had not the desired effect, and it seems probable that the turn-out began in May or at the beginning of June. Early in July the situation had become acute and the weavers of Ashton sent to ask Mr. Percival whether they were doing right, to which he replied that “if they were doing what the world said, they were doing excessive wrong.”[163]
About this time the weavers met at Manchester, and put forward a set of proposals for a settlement of the dispute, which was followed by two other sets, one drawn up at Ashton, and the other by Mr. Percival himself.
In the first, the weavers proposed that a statute length of eighty yards should be fixed for check, and of sixty yards for cotton hollands, cotton linen and similar articles, and that, if the length was different, the price paid for weaving should vary in proportion. Also, that the masters should not employ unfair weavers, so called because they would not subscribe to the charity stock to assist poor weavers and to prosecute offenders. The weavers insisted that they had no other object in view but to support and maintain their trade with experienced and honest workmen, and to bring it under the statute 5 Eliz.[164]
It appears that, about this time, a suggestion was made that the dispute should be referred to the country gentlemen for settlement, or to Mr. Percival alone, and also that he saw the above proposals, and that he disapproved of them.[165]
In any case, a second set of proposals was addressed to him from Ashton by the weavers, with the request that, if he thought proper, he would put them into form and make such alterations as he might find necessary for bringing about an accommodation between the parties.[166] In these proposals, it was suggested that seven men should be appointed by each side, including one or two magistrates, and that the magistrates should choose (presumably from among those who had been thus appointed) four persons who had been in the trade, but who had no present connection with it, to settle the differences. Cases of spoiled work, which the master and weaver concerned could not settle, were to be referred to two persons chosen by them, both parties to submit to their decision. The masters were to allow the weavers to keep a charity box, and the weavers were to have liberty to take two or more apprentices, but not for a shorter period than seven years, and no person was to be acknowledged as a weaver unless he or she had served that time, although all weavers then engaged in the trade were to be recognised. The weavers still asked that a standard length of eighty yards should be fixed for certain kinds of goods, but the length of other kinds was to be fixed by the committee, and wages were to be agreeable to the times as heretofore.[167]
Evidently Mr. Percival did not consider that these proposals would effect a settlement, and proceeded to draw up a set of his own. Generally, his proposals did not differ from the proposals from Ashton, except in the vital point of the “box.” He proposed that a box should be kept up for the relief of poor weavers, and for the prosecution of offenders, but that the funds should not be used to the detriment of the masters. To disarm the suspicion of the masters, he proposed that they should become contributors to the box, and that no money should be taken out of it (except for the relief of the poor) without the knowledge of at least two of them, which arrangement the weavers thought very hard, and Mr. Percival himself was afraid that they would not agree to it, but they did so.[168] A further proposal made by him was that an Act of Parliament should be moved for, on the joint-petition and at the joint-expense of the masters and weavers, to fix the lengths and breadths of cloth, and to enforce a seven years’ apprenticeship in the trade.[169]
Mr. Percival’s proposal as regards the box, and also the proposals from Ashton, will be best understood by noticing the masters’ case as it was stated in a letter addressed to him by one of them. In this letter it was claimed that it was impossible with justice to fix a standard length of cloth as the weavers proposed, but that the masters were willing to agree upon a length “as near as possible.” Further, it was insisted that the weavers must give up their combination, and sign a paper to that effect, and that the masters must not be obliged to turn off unfair weavers. Apparently, the master who wrote this letter was an extremist, as Mr. Percival expressly excepts from his indictment some masters who did not take up this attitude concerning the combination.[170]
The paper which the weavers were required to sign appeared in The Manchester Mercury on the same date as the letter sent to Mr. Percival, and ran as follows:—
“We whose names are hereunto subscribed being members of the Weavers Society, and contributed or promised to contribute to their Box, do hereby engage that we will quit the said Box; and neither by ourselves or (sic) any person for us, pay towards supporting it, nor have any further concern therein.”[171] In the following month the charge already referred to was delivered by Lord Mansfield, and in October a notice was published setting forth that “The Manufacturers in the Check Trade having found on Enquiry that the principal Boxes are destroyed, and the collections or contributions ceased, Work will now be delivered throughout the Town, and the Weavers may apply where they choose as usual.”[172]
In the meantime, however, it appears that the threatened apprehensions had been effected, and at the Lancaster Spring Assizes in 1759 thirteen check-weavers from Manchester, two from Pendleton, two from Salford, and one from Rusholme, were charged with “having unlawfully met and assembled together and illegally and unjustly combined and confederated that they would not work at less than 2s. the piece above the usual wage or price of eighty yards check.”[173] At the trial a plea for lenity was put in, and, as the weavers conducted themselves in a correct manner, the only penalty imposed was a fine of 1s. each. In his address to them, Lord Mansfield suggested that they had been drawn into the combination by designing men, and pointed out the danger of combinations in raising wages above what had been customary and what the trade would bear, thus driving capital away. His remarks on the apprenticeship clauses of the Elizabethan Act deserve notice, seeing that they were made more than half-a-century before the clauses were repealed: “If none must employ, or be employed, in any branch of trade, but who have served a limited number of years to that branch, the particular trade will be lodged in few hands, to the danger of the public, and the liberty of setting up trades, and the foundations of the present flourishing condition of Manchester will be destroyed. In the infancy of trade, the Act of Queen Elizabeth might be well calculated for public weal, but now when it is grown to that perfection we see it, it might perhaps be of utility to have those laws repealed, as tending to cramp and tie down that knowledge it was first necessary to obtain by rule.” In conclusion, the Judge admonished the check-weavers to “Go home and sin no more lest a worse thing happen unto you.”[174]
This account of these two combinations in Manchester and district in the fifties of the eighteenth century is of considerable interest in several respects. Mr. and Mrs. Webb have drawn attention to the fact that, in these years, we get the final breakdown of the mediæval authoritative system of regulation of industrial relationships, and the above account supports their view.[175] Also they have shown that from the early years of the century combinations of wage-earners were coming into existence in various trades. Such combinations were especially prominent among the West of England textile workers[176]: it is evident that the textile workers in Lancashire were proceeding on similar lines. But even more interesting is the link which these Manchester combinations provide between the older forms of association on the one hand and the modern trade union on the other. The proposals put forward by Mr. Percival, which the check-weavers reluctantly accepted, would have involved almost exactly the same arrangements as those described by Professor Unwin as existing between the members of the Yeomanry Organisations and the members of the Livery Companies.[177] As the arm of the law intervened, it is not likely the proposals came to anything, but this does not necessarily mean that the law quashed the combinations. Judging from the later history of the smallware weavers, it appears that they gained in strength. The next glimpse we get of their combination is in 1781, when a dispute was in existence which certainly continued for more than two months. The first evidence of it is a notice which the weavers delivered to their employers, in which it was stated that the whole trade had unanimously resolved that if they did not set their men to work, agreeable to a list of prices accompanying the notice, no smallware weaver in Lancashire would ever work for them again.[178] On their side, the masters asserted that they were willing to adjust wages, but insisted that the real difficulty was that the weavers had adopted the “extraordinary” step of “swearing two masters out of the trade,”[179] which, they claimed, was contrary to all law and equity. Ultimately the masters delivered the following proposals to the weavers, which are interesting not only as an indication of the respectful way in which the weavers had to be dealt with, but also as the reference to the “shop” suggests that even if there had been a break in the life of their combination, re-establishment had taken place on the same basis of organisation as that of twenty-five years before: “It is hereby mutually agreed between the smallware manufacturers and their weavers (the masters and one of each shop having subscribed the same) that all differences are settled and adjusted, and that all the said weavers look upon and esteem all their said employers as fair and upon an equal footing in the Trade, notwithstanding whatever may have been inconsiderately said or done during our late difference or dispute; and we the said weavers on behalf of the whole trade consider every workman at full liberty to take work for any of the said employers without exception.” Apparently these proposals were not altogether satisfactory to the weavers, who replied that it had been unanimously determined by the whole trade that no other notice except one that they transmitted should be published: “By mutual agreement betwixt the Smallware Manufacturers and their Weavers the differences respecting prices subsisting between them are amicably settled to the satisfaction of both parties.”[180] The masters seem to have been equally reluctant to accept this notice, but as no others appear we may assume that the dispute was near its end.
Sometimes it is implied, particularly in popular writings, that the transition from the domestic system, as it existed in the early eighteenth century, to the factory system involved a great change in economic relationships, almost that it marked the emergence of capitalist employers. If disproof of this view were required, this account of the disputes in the smallware and the check trades in Manchester, a generation before factories definitely appeared in the district, would do something to supply it. The fact is, of course, that the domestic system was a system of capitalist employers, and the typical workpeople were in every essential respect related to these employers in the same way as after the factory made its appearance. In the domestic system the employer’s capital was mainly embodied in the materials that were given out to workpeople, and they received a wage remuneration from him for the operations they performed upon them. Between the journeymen and apprentices, and the employer, there frequently intervened persons such as the “undertakers” mentioned in connection with the smallware trade, but these men were essentially employees, even though in many cases, no doubt, they might own three or four looms. In the factory, the workpeople, who previously had been scattered over a more or less wide area, were drawn together under one roof, and their operations supervised by foremen and managers; the capital of the employers was now embodied in materials, buildings, plant and machinery; the least change was seen in the economic relationships between employers and workpeople. If it is true that labour became more dependent upon capital, it is equally true that capital became more dependent upon labour—on both sides the dependence involved was one of a greater co-operation in the processes of production.
But there was an important social change, closely connected with the decay of authoritative regulations which had been proceeding from the seventeenth century. As these regulations disappeared, the way was opened for the workpeople to begin to organise themselves as a new social class. Along with the development of the system of organisation which became dominant from the eighteenth century, the modern trade union movement was born, and through the greater part of the century it was also developing. Unfortunately, before the end of the century, under the stress of conditions consequent upon the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, its natural growth was checked, and it did not begin to thrive again until these conditions had passed away.