The adventurers are turning their cotton mills into jersey mills, and new ones are daily erecting; and our masters show what their expectations are by undervaluing our work and beating down our wages.[71]
1800. Broadsheet, pp. 942, 72, L. 15 (M/c Library).
(This broadsheet records the resolutions carried at a special meeting of merchants, manufacturers, and cotton spinners held at Manchester, May 2, 1800, to consider proceedings of meetings recently held for the purpose of getting Parliament to put a duty on exportation of cotton twist.)
Resolved—1. That cotton spinning is a manufacture of the first importance to this country. That it gives employment to a considerable part of the national capital and to a very large portion of the poor of this county and of several other counties, the chief part consisting of women and children who, by means of this manufacture, are rendered highly useful to the community at large instead of being a burthen on it, as they would be if not employed in cotton mills (italics added).
Broadsheet in Manchester Library (n. d.).
(Purports to be by an old weaver, deprecating attacks on machinery.) “If machinery is destroyed, how are your children to be employed, who now, at an age in which children in other countries gain nothing, can support themselves? Yes, and not only this, but can earn as much, or even more, than a hardworking man in other countries, where there are not these improvements? It is thus that our poor are enabled to marry early and support a family, as the children, instead of being a deadweight upon their parents, can more than do for themselves. So great, indeed, have been our comforts from the demand for our cheap manufactures and the plenty of employ, that people have flocked into Lancashire from all parts of the kingdom by thousands, tens of thousands, aye, and hundreds of thousands too.
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“If they (machines) are destroyed, how then are you to find support for yourselves and your families? Where will your children of seven, eight, or nine years old find employment and money to contribute to the comforts of all? Will our barren moors support them?”
From Alfred’s History of the Factory Movement, vol. i. p. 16.