As soon as notice of the new agreement was given to the men, the workmen at fourteen factories came out. This was on Sept. 1, 1836. When Martinmas came round sixty-four more of the biggest factories were laid idle, and seven-ninths of the trade stopped. It is doubtful whether the whole history of Trade Unionism records a more desperate fight than the one that followed. Strike pay never exceeded 6s. for married men and 4s. for single men, but the funds became exhausted. Help came—£7,000 of it—from Sheffield and Manchester, and that too vanished. Twenty thousand potters were out of work, and so were the retail tradesmen and all allied trades. The men began to dribble back at Christmas, for it was a very hard winter and the savings were all gone. Then several hundred devoted men, taking the remains of their clothes and household furniture, marched in procession to the pawn-shops and paid over all the money they could raise into the common fund. This example inspired the last 10,000 to hold out three weeks longer, and at least got terms for the men. A conference was presided over by Mr Twemlow of Betley on January 20, 1837, and the masters agreed to guarantee four days’ work a week, and to break in the presence of the man all ware for which they refused to pay him, on the ground that it came “bad from oven.”[184]
But even these concessions were futile for the union was broken. The men took what they could get. Gradually all the old wrongs crept back again into the trade customs, and even the wage-prices of 1833-6 were whittled away by a system of “allowances.” A potter of 1843 gives an account of his engagement. He applied for work as a journeyman, and was asked what kind of a journeyman he wanted to be, as there were several kinds. “There were,” said the manufacturer, “some, like those of so-and-so, who took pay in provisions; others, like those of such a one, who took their pay in haberdashery and jewellery; but the class to which he wished to direct particular attention was the one which allowed 2d. in the shilling, which class was divided into two parties; those who consented to the twopences being stopped out of their wages on Saturday evening, and those who preferred to compound with their dignity, get their money in full on Saturday and pay back the twopences on Monday morning.”[185]
Wages in fact sank to subsistence level, and the smaller the master the more he beat down his men by allowances and undercut his selling prices. Some of them kept shops as well as factories, and broke the Truck Act every day. The Chamber of Commerce in 1836 stated the average wages as follows: In 1833-4, men 17s. to 21s., women 6s. to 11s., child of 14, 3s. to 3s. 6d.; in 1836, men 21s. to 28s., women 10s. to 15s., child 3s. 6d. to 4s. 6d. These figures probably exaggerate slightly the rise in wages, and under the allowance system they soon sank again to the pre-union level.
The general election took place in the middle of the black year 1837, and the return of the two Conservative masters, Davenport and Copeland, for Stoke-on-Trent, resulted in rioting on the part of the wage-earners who were then non-voters. These riots were repeated in a more serious form at the election of 1841, but it was the houses rather than the factories of the unpopular side that were demolished.
During those busy years of the railway boom, the Trade Unions again raised their head in North Staffordshire. The third union was started in September 1843. It began with a small success—a partial strike lasting nine months—but as a rule it avoided conflicts and tried to work by moral suasion and public opinion. With this end in view they published a paper, “The Potters’ Examiner,” in which the more flagrant cases of “truck” and “allowance” were exposed. They succeeded in gradually levelling up the bad masters. A few prosecutions stopped the truck system, and allowances vanished in 1844 under gentle pressure from a strong union and doubts as to their legality. It is only fair to say that the best firms had never countenanced the “allowances,” and were glad to see the worse makers forced to drop them.
A development, however, that helped the union at first more than anything else, was the invention of pot-making machines. The potting industry had survived so long without machinery, that the workmen had begun to think themselves safe. These flat and hollow ware-pressers had skill, and they were paid by the piece. At one fell swoop, and in the middle of their settled lives, they saw themselves suddenly deprived of all the value of their skill and training, and likely to be replaced by women and lads. During 1845-6 Mr Ridgway tried a “paste-box” machine, and Chas. J. Mason bought some sort of a plate “jolly.”[186] The men promptly struck and prevented their adoption, but the panic was intensified when Messrs Copeland introduced a similar dread machine, which the potters in their terror called the “Scourge.” This machine too was withdrawn, but not because of the union. The general election of 1847 was approaching and Alderman Copeland stood for Stoke-on-Trent. It is curious to think that the panic fear of the workers postponed the introduction of these machines for twenty years. And indeed the pottery workers themselves have lost something through the introduction of machinery. The proportion of women and young persons employed in the industry is double what it was in 1850, and the work of married women is not good for the rest of the people.
Incidentally this machinery panic broke down the union. Encouraged by William Evans, their leader and the editor of the “Examiner,” the union attempted to emigrate the unemployed—almost to emigrate en masse and fly from the wrath to come. They bought a great estate in Wisconsin, called it Pottersville, and to it in 1846 they sent out settlers as to a new Utopia. The scheme failed, and with it, in 1849, collapsed the third potters’ union. Drained of money for America, it had been growing weaker ever since 1847—they could only humbly petition against Copeland’s “Scourge,” and as the union weakened “allowances” crept back into use, while “good-from-oven” and the annual hiring flourished as before.[187]
It is said that but for the opposition of the Newcastle innkeepers the main line of the London and Manchester Railway would have run up the Trent valley, and Newcastle would now occupy the position of Crewe as a universal junction. However that may be, in 1846 a company was formed for giving the potteries direct railway communication with the main trunk lines. The moving spirit in this enterprise was Alderman Copeland, M.P. for Stoke, and senior partner in Messrs Copeland and Garrett—the pottery firm that had once been Spode’s.
