It is in connection with the Chethams, however, and particularly with Humphrey Chetham, whose life covered the period from 1580 to 1653,[124] that we get the most valuable information concerning the organisation of the cloth industry in the Manchester district in the seventeenth century. Besides Humphrey, three of his brothers were engaged in “Manchester trade.”[125] In 1597 he was apprenticed to Mr. Samuel Tipping, a Manchester linendraper, to whom his eldest brother, James, was also apprenticed, while another brother, George, was apprenticed to Mr. George Tipping, the younger brother of Samuel, who again was a “grosser and linen draper.”[126] About 1605 George and Humphrey Chetham entered into a partnership which was renewed and continued until the death of the former at the end of 1626, though after 1619, rather than to extend their mercantile business, they invested their capital in land.[127]

Their concern consisted of two branches, one in Manchester and the other in London, where George was a citizen and a member of the Merchant Taylors’ Company.[128] In 1619, when a new deed of partnership was drawn up, Humphrey was described as a “chapman” and his brother as a “grocer,” and their business was said to consist “in the trade of buying and selling fustians and other wares and merchandises.” George had to manage “the factory and business of the joint-trade in and about the city of London,” and Humphrey had to do the same in and about Manchester, and in any other parts of England. At this time they had a joint stock of about £10,000.[129]

When Fuller wrote his account of Humphrey Chetham he stated that three brothers of the family were engaged in the Manchester trade, and that they dealt chiefly in fustians purchased in the Bolton market, which they sent to London, and from this account it has been generally deduced that they were simply dealers in fustians. With the publication of an authentic life of Humphrey Chetham it has become apparent that he was more than this. In the Manchester district he bought “friezes, fustians, coattons, and haberdasherye,” which he not only sent in large quantities to the London market, but sold them by retail in Manchester. He was a general merchant who purchased a large variety of goods in all parts of the Manchester district. In addition he was a “manufacturer” employing people over an extensive area in spinning yarn, and in weaving and finishing cloth, and other members of the family were similarly engaged.[130]

In 1626 his accounts reveal several significant facts[131]:

Money lent in various sums (the highest
being £200 and the lowest £1, 10s. 		£78594
To Wool sold to a great many persons (the
regular price being £21 for 1 pack of
Cypress wool 12xx (score weight)) 		124188
For Irish yeorne (yarn) 89134
For (dossen) dozen yeorne 1146
Wooll sould by retale 1880
Ditto 210130
In all £12301610

From these accounts it is evident that Chetham dealt in cotton (Cypress wool) and also in linen yarn (Irish yarn), the two principal materials for the manufacture of fustians. The next fact has reference to the economic relationships which existed between him and those who worked the materials. A popular view is that in Lancashire up to the coming of the factory, in the latter years of the eighteenth century, the majority of the workpeople were more or less independent producers who usually bought their materials, and after working them into cloth sold it to traders such as Chetham. That this was not generally the case in the first half of the eighteenth century is certain, and that it obtained as a general rule in the previous century is seriously open to question. As already mentioned, Chetham employed spinners and weavers, and the above accounts suggest that when he sold cotton and yarn, much of it was sold in small quantities, and also that it was sold on credit. This means that Chetham, if he did not employ the buyers in the ordinary sense, financed them to the extent of the cost of their raw materials, and if so to this extent they were economically dependent upon him, as they probably were for the disposal of the product. The probability is that, in his day, Chetham’s position in the economic organisation was little different, if any, from that of the typical capitalist “clothier” of the domestic system who gave out work to workpeople, and paid them for their labour when its product was returned to him.[132]

This does not necessarily mean that, at this time, there were no small semi-independent producers in the rising cotton industry. Probably there were, and for a long time afterwards, but it is extremely doubtful whether they should be regarded as the typical workpeople. Rather, the evidence points to the contrary. In 1702 a petition was presented from the West Country clothing district complaining of the master weavers paying their workpeople in truck, instead of in money, and the allegations of the petition were found to be true,[133] with the result that a Bill was ordered to deal with the matter, which in the same year became an Act.[134] In the Act provision was made to restrain workpeople from embezzling materials delivered to them by clothiers and others, and within the scope of the Act those engaged in the cotton and fustian manufactures were included. At first the Act was a temporary measure, and referred only to the woollen, fustian, cotton, and iron manufactures of the kingdom. In 1710 it was made perpetual,[135] and in 1740 the leather manufacture was included.[136] In 1749 the scope of the Act was extended to the fur, hemp, flax, mohair and silk manufactures, and a provision was inserted for preventing unlawful combinations of all persons employed in all the trades mentioned.[137] None of the petitions presented from Lancashire in the first part of the eighteenth century gives the slightest reason for thinking that the system of organisation implied in the provisions of the 1702 Act did not generally obtain in the county during the first half of the eighteenth century. In the check and smallware branches of Manchester trade it certainly did, and it is extremely probable that long before 1770 the same can be said of the fustian branch.

In considering the position in this branch, it must be borne in mind that, at first, it was probably not carried on in and immediately about Manchester to the same extent as the other two. Taking Ogden as our authority he speaks of Manchester chapmen going to Bolton and other markets to buy fustian pieces from the weavers, “every weaver then procuring yarn or cotton as they could” as the original system.[138] When this original system was general he does not state, but the general impression he gives is that it was not later than the early years of the eighteenth century. In any case, the system was not sufficient to meet the demands of the traders, and “To remedy this inconvenience, some of them furnished warps and wool to the weavers and employed persons to put warps out to weaving by commission; and encouraged many weavers to fetch them from Manchester, endeavouring to secure the honesty and care of their workmen, upon bringing in the piece, by the force of good usage and prompt payment; but reserving to themselves a power of abatement, for deficiency in the spinning and workmanship.”[139]

The next quotation carries us to the sixties, when the jenny was introduced for spinning. “From the time that the original system was changed in the fustian branch, of buying pieces in the grey from the weavers, by delivering them out work, the custom of giving them out weft in the cops, which obtained for a while grew into disuse, as there was no detecting the knavery of spinners till a piece came in woven; so that the practice was changed, and wool given with warps, the weaver answering for the spinning; and the weavers, in a scarcity of spinning, have been paid less for the weft than they gave the spinner, but durst not complain, much less abate the spinner lest their looms should stand unemployed: but when jennies were introduced, and children could work on them, the case was altered, and many who had been insolent before, were glad to be employed in carding and slubbing for these engines.”[140] It will be noticed that the change mentioned in this quotation did not mean a reversion to the original system—the giving out of work continued—but the weaver was made responsible for the spinning as well as for the weaving. This change is easily understood and may well have taken place owing to the friction that would arise through abatements for bad work.

But during the period covered by the two quotations, another change had taken place which is referred to by Guest. He informs us that it was in 1740 that “the Manchester merchants began to give out warps and raw cotton to the weavers, receiving them back in cloth and paying for the carding, roving, spinning and weaving”[141] and that about 1750 there arose, chiefly in the country districts, a class of “second-rate merchants called fustian-masters,” who “gave out a warp and raw cotton to the weaver, paying the weaver for the weaving and spinning.”[142]