THE REGULATION OF INDUSTRY BY THE STATE
1. Proposals for the Regulation of the Cloth Manufacture (temp Henry VIII)—2. Administrative Difficulties in the Regulation of the Manufacture of Cloth, 1537—3. An Act Touching Weavers, 1555—4. Enactment of Common Council of London as to Age of Ending Apprenticeship, 1556—5. William Cecil's Industrial Programme, 1559—6. The Statute of Artificers, 1563—7. Proposals for the Better Administration of the Statute of Artificers, 1572—8. Draft of a Bill Fixing Minimum Rates for Spinners and Weavers, 1593—9. Draft Piece-list Submitted for Ratification to the Wiltshire Justices by Clothiers and Weavers, 1602—10. An Act Empowering Justices to fix Minimum Rates of Payment, 1603-04—11. Administration of Acts Regulating the Manufacture of Cloth, 1603—12. Assessment made by the Justices of Wiltshire, dealing mainly with other than Textile Workers, 1604—13. Assessment made by the Justices of Wiltshire dealing mainly with Textile Workers, 1605—14. Administration of Wage Clauses of Statute of Artificers, 1605-08—15. Administration of Apprenticeship Clause of the Statute of Artificers, 1607-08—16. The Organisation of the Woollen Industry, 1615—17. Proceedings on the Apprenticeship Clauses of the Statute of Artificers, 1615—18. A Petition to Fix Wages Addressed to the Justices by the Textile Workers of Wiltshire, 1623—19. Appointment by Privy Council of Commissioners to Investigate Grievances of Textile Workers in East Anglia, 1630—20. Report to Privy Council of Commissioners appointed above, 1630—21. High Wages in the New World, 1645—22. Young Men and Maids Ordered to Enter Service, 1655—23. Request to Justices of Grand Jury of Worcestershire to Assess Wages, 1661—24. Proceedings on the Apprenticeship Clauses of the Statute of Artificers, 1669.
The documents in this section illustrate the regulation of industrial relationships by the government of the Tudors and of the first two Stuarts. The principal aims of their policy were to check the movement of the textile industries from the town to country districts (Nos. 3 and 6), to prevent the concentration of industry in the hands of capitalists (Nos. 3 and 11), or the creation of a necessitous proletariat (No. 4), to exercise a police supervision over the movement of labour (Nos. 6, 7 and 14), to maintain the quality of English goods (No. 2), to prevent class encroaching on class (Nos. 5 and 6) either through the wage earner demanding excessive wages (No. 5) or through the employer beating them down unduly (Nos. 8, 10, 19, 20), in short to crystallize existing relationships with such changes only as the economic developments of recent years, particularly the fall in the value of money (No. 6), and the spread of the textile industries into rural districts (No. 3) made inevitable.
The system was developed in numerous Acts, of which the most important are given below (Nos. 3, 6 and 10). The most comprehensive measure was the Statute of Artificers of 1563 (No. 6). There was little original in this Act. Just as the Statutes forbidding depopulation (Part II, section I) really only developed manorial customaries into a national system, and the Poor Law Statutes (Part II, section IV) were based on the experiments of municipal authorities, so the Statute of Artificers was based partly on the practices of gilds (Part II, section II), partly on the mediæval Statutes of Labourers (see Part I, section VI, Nos. 12—19). Indeed, Cecil's original proposal (No. 5) seems to have been to re-enact 12 Richard II, cap. 3, which the rise in prices had made out of date. If seriously entertained, this idea must have been discarded. The most important innovation introduced by the statute in its final form was the substitution of a system of industrial regulation applying to almost the whole country for regulations applying to particular localities and particular trades.
The most important parts of the Statute of Artificers were those relating to apprenticeship and to the assessment of wages. The former, if we may judge by the proceedings of the County Justices (Nos. 11 & 15) and of municipal authorities (Part II, section II, Nos. 9, 10, 11, 15), seem to have been administered with considerable strictness, which was only to be expected in view of the interest which gilds, boroughs, traders and craftsmen generally had in seeing that they were carried out. Judicial interpretations seem, however, to have begun at an early date to whittle them away to some extent (No. 17), for the Judges disliked rules "in restraint of trade" (No. 24 and section II, No. 18).
The wage clauses of the Statute present a more difficult problem. There is no doubt that their object was to fix a maximum (not a minimum) wage for agricultural labour (Nos. 6 and 14), which, however, should move with movements in prices. This policy was not so oppressive as it appears to us, because of the wide distribution of landed property, the consequent fact that comparatively few rural workers depended entirely upon wages for their living, and the relatively small difference between the social position of the small farmer or master craftsman and the hired persons whom they employed. In a colony like Massachusetts, where the policy of fixing maximum wages was adopted, its motive was seen in the simplest form (No. 21). Even in England, however, the same motives were at work to a less degree (Nos. 5, 22 and 23). The policy of fixing a maximum wage was, in fact, on a par with that of fixing prices, and probably popular with the small masters and small landholders, who formed a large proportion of the urban and rural population. It did not come to an end with the destruction of the absolute monarchy, but continued, with fair regularity, down to 1688, and, after that, with much less regularity, at any rate to 1762.
The regulation of wages did not, however, only aim at fixing a maximum. It also aimed on some, perhaps rare, occasions at fixing a minimum, at any rate for workers in the textile industries. These latter were treated in a special way, because the development of capitalism in the textile industries (Nos. 2, 3, 8, 16 and 19) had created a wage problem of a modern kind, at any rate in the south and east of England, such as did not yet exist in agriculture. Municipal authorities had in the past fixed minimum rates for textile workers (section II, No. 5). In 1593 four Bills were drafted which proposed to do the same by legislation, of which one is printed below (No. 8), and in 1603-04 an Act (No. 10) was passed to this effect. Two examples of the establishment of minimum rates are given from the proceedings of the Wiltshire Quarter Sessions, in 1602 and 1623. In the former case (No. 9) a piece list was drafted by a committee of clothiers and weavers, which was subsequently issued without alteration by the Justices (No. 13). In the latter case (No. 18) the textile workers of Wiltshire asked the Justices to enforce the assessment of wages on their employers, and the Justices complied by ordering the rates to be published at Devizes. This shows that the regulation of wages did in some cases protect the workers. Naturally, however, the Justices required stimulating in this part of their duties, and during the period of Charles I's personal government the Privy Council intervened to compel them to fix rates, as it did to compel them to administer the Poor Laws. In 1630 it received a petition from the textile workers of Suffolk and Essex complaining that their wages had been reduced, and appointed commissioners to investigate the matter (No. 19), who compelled the employers to raise wages (No. 20). The policy of fixing minimum rates seems to have come to an end with the fall of the absolute monarchy in 1640, though it was occasionally revived by Parliament in the sixteenth century. (Part III, section III, Nos. 3, 4 and 15).
AUTHORITIES
The more accessible of the modern writers dealing with the subject of this section are:—Cunningham, English Industry and Commerce, Modern Times, Part I; Ashley, Economic History, Vol. I, Part II, Chap, iii; Unwin, Industrial Organisation in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries; Abram, Social England in the Fifteenth Century; Dunlop and Denman, English Apprenticeship and Child Labour; Rogers, Six Centuries of Work and Wages; Hewins, English Trade and Finance in the Seventeenth Century; Schanz, Englische Handelspolitik Gegen Ende des Mittelalters; Tawney in Die Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial und Wirtschaftsgeschichte, Band XI and XII, Heft 8 and 9; Macarthur, in E.H.R., Vols. IX, XIII and XV; Hewins in Economic Journal, Vol. VIII; Hutchins, ibid., Vol. X.
Bibliographies are given by Cunningham, op. cit., pp. 943-998; Unwin, op. cit., pp. 263-270; Ashley, op. cit., pp. 190-1, 243-8; Abram, op. cit., pp. 229-238; Dunlop & Denman, op. cit., pp. 355-63; the student may also consult the following:—