Manufacturing broke loose from traditional confines in several ways. To avoid the monopolistic confines of chartered towns, many entrepreneurs set up new industries in Birmingham or Manchester, which grew enormously. Manchester had no municipal corporation and was still under the jurisdiction of a manor court. It sent no representative to the House of Commons. All over the country the Justices of the Peace had largely ceased regulating wages, especially in the newer industries such as cotton, where apprenticeship was optional. Apprenticeship lapsed in many industries, excepting the older crafts. Several legal decisions had declared seven years practice of a trade as good as an apprenticeship.
Apprentices still lived in their masters' houses and were still treated as family members. The regulations of the Cutlers' Company remained in force as its masters used their great manual skill to make cutlery in their own homes with the help of their children and apprentices. Trades in some towns which had guild regulations that had the force of law hung on to their customs with difficulty.
Although there were few large factories in the country under effective management of a capitalist, trade unionism was beginning as two distinct classes of men were being formed in factories. The factory owner was so high above his workmen that he found himself on the same level as other capitalists, the banker, who gave him credit, and the merchant, who gave him customers. Journeymen in factories could no longer aspire to become masters of their trade and no longer socialized with their employers. Hard and fast rules replaced the freedom of the small workshops. Each worker had his allotted place and his strictly defined and invariable duty. Everyone had to work, steadily and without stopping, under the vigilant eye of a foreman who secured obedience by means of fines, physical means, or dismissals. Work started, meals were eaten, and work stopped at fixed hours, signaled by the ringing of a bell. Factory hours were typically fourteen hours or more. Organized resistance, as usual, began not with those most ill-treated, but with those men who had some bargaining power through their skills.
Wool-combers, who worked next to a charcoal stove where they heated the teeth of the comb, were the most skilled of the cloth industry were hard to replace. Since they were nomadic, they quickly organized nation-wide. They agreed that if any employer hired a comber not in their organization, none of them would work for him. They also would beat up and destroy the comb-pot of the outsider. In 1720 and 1749, the Tiverton wool-combers objected to the import of combed wool from Ireland by burning Irish wool in clothiers' stores and attacking several houses. They had strike funds and went on strike in 1749. Their bloody brawls caused the military to intervene. Then many of them left town in a body, harming the local industry. The earnings of wool-combers was high, reaching from 10s. to 12s. a week in 1770, the highest rate of a weaver.
In 1716, the Colchester weavers accused their employers of taking on too many apprentices. When the weavers organized and sought to regulate the weaving trade, a statute was passed in 1725 making their combinations void. Strike offenses such as housebreaking and destruction of goods or personal threats had penalties of transportation for seven years. Still in 1728, the Gloucester weavers protested against men being employed who had not served their apprenticeship.
When the journeymen tailors in and around London organized, a statute made their agreements entering into combinations to advance their wages to unreasonable prices and to lessen their usual hours of work, illegal and void, because this had encouraged idleness and increased the number of poor. Tailors' wages are not to exceed 2s. per day and their hours of work are to be 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. for the next three months, and 1s.8d. per day for the rest of the year. A master tailor paying more shall forfeit 5 pounds. A journeyman receiving more shall be sent to the House of Correction for 2 months. Justices of the Peace may still alter these wages and hours depending on local scarcity or plenty. Despite this statute, the journeymen tailors complained to Parliament of their low wages and lack of work; their masters called them to work only about half the year. There was much seasonal fluctuation in their trade as there was in all trades. The slack period for the tailors was the winter, when the people of fashion retired to their country estates. After their complaint, their wages then rose from 1s.10d. per day in 1720, to 1s.8d.- 2s. in 1721, to 2s.- 2s.6d. in 1751, to 2s.2d.- 2s.6d. in 1763, to up to 2s.7 1/2 d. in 1767, and to 3s. in 1775. Foremen were excluded from wage control. When they complained of their long hours, which were two hours longer than the 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. of most handicraft trades, their hours were reduced in 1767 by one hour to 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. and their pay was set at 6d. per hour for overtime work at night during periods of general mourning, e.g. mourning for a deceased courtier. Their work hours were lowered another hour to 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. in 1768.
The stocking frame-knitters guild, which had been chartered in 1663, went on strike to protest the use of workhouse children as an abuse of apprenticeship which lowered their wages. They broke many of their frames, which belonged to their employers, to limit their number.
In 1749, combinations to advance wages, decrease hours of work, or regulate prices were declared void for journeymen dyers, journeyman hot pressers, all wool workers, brickmakers and tilemakers, journeymen servants, workmen, laborers, felt and hat makers, and silk, linen, cotton, iron, leather, and fur workers in and around London. The penalty was prison or hard labor at a House of Correction for three months without bail. In 1756, Justices of the Peace were to determine the rates of wages of wool workers according to numbers of yards. But this was repealed the next year to prevent combinations of workers. Wage agreements between clothiers and weavers were declared binding. Clothiers not paying wages within two days of delivery of work were to forfeit 40s.
In 1763 the silk weavers in east London drew up a scale of wages, and upon its being rejected, 2000 of them broke their tools, destroyed the materials, and left their workshops. A battalion of guards had to take possession of the area. In 1765, the silk weavers marched on Westminster to stop the import of French silks. In 1768, the weavers rebelled against a 4d. per yard reduction in their wages, filling the streets in riotous crowds and pillaging houses. After the garrison of the Tower came, the workmen resisted with cudgels and cutlasses, resulting in deaths and woundings. The throwsters [those who pulled the silk fibers from the cocoons of the silk worms and twisted them together to make a thread] and the handkerchief weavers also became discontent. A battle between soldiers and silk weavers at their meeting place resulted in several men on both sides being killed. In 1773, wages and prices for the work of journeymen silk weavers in and around London were designated to be regulated by the Mayor and Justices of the Peace. Foremen were excluded. No silk weaver was to more than two apprentices or else forfeit 20 pounds. Journeymen weavers entering into combinations shall forfeit 40s. This statute satisfied the weavers, but they formed a union to ensure that it was followed.
In 1750, 1761, and 1765, there were strikes which stopped the work of the coal industry and harbor at Newcastle for weeks. In 1763, the keelmen formed a combination to force their employers to use the official measure fixed by statute for the measurement of loads of coals.