CALICO PRINTERS AND OVERSTOCKING WITH APPRENTICES 639 
support them, and they were forced to try to fight their AN. Lr 
own battle by engaging in the great strike of 1813 in which 
10,000 weavers took part’. At that date the organisation of 
such a movement was a criminal offence ; the police intervened, di 
and the strikers were sent to gaol. This great struggle, liable to 
resulting as it did in the abandonment of all attempts at the pt 
State-regulation of wages’, testifies alike to the miserable “4% 
condition of the workmen in this great industry, and to the 
inability of the government #o suggest any remedy. It is 
well to remember that the distress in this trade cannot be 
assigned to the introduction of machinery, as the power-loom 
was still in its infancy. In fact, it appears that the low rates 
to which the wages of hand-loom weavers were driven down 
interfered to prevent the introduction of the power-loom ; 
the cost of production was so low that there was little prospect 
of any saving from the use of machines?; there was not 
sufficient economic motive to induce manufacturers generally 
bo incur the risk and unpopularity of sinking their capital in 
costly plant. 
250. The weavers were not the only body of artisans The intro- 
smployed in the cotton trade who suffered severely during i) 
the long wars. The calico printers were also in a pitiable aie 
condition, but there was a reason for their distress which was 
entirely independent of the trade fluctuations which had 
affected the weavers. An ingenious and expensive machine 
for calico printing had been introduced, with the result that 
the labour of skilled men was hardly required at all; the 
employment of boys was substituted for that of men on quite 
1 An admirable account of the whole proceeding will be found in Mr Richmond's 
svidence. Reports (Artisans and Machinery), 1824, v. pp. 59—64. 
i There is a curious parallel in the story of the agitation which had occurred in 
Gloucestershire and Wilts in 1756. The woollen weavers in the Stroud Valley 
and other centres of the trade had demanded that the practice of assessing wages 
should be re-introduced, and obtained a new Act of Parliament (29 Geo. II. c. 33) 
mnder which a list was published (C. J. xxvm. 732). The clothiers of the West of 
England would not abide by this schedule of payments, and petitioned Parliament 
0 repeal the new Act and allow wages to be settled by competition. The 
Committee of the House of Commons reported that the clothiers had proved their 
‘ase and that attempts to assess weavers’ wages were impracticable and injurious. 
Mr Richmond alleged, however, in 1824 that the measure passed under George II. 
had “been acted on repeatedly in England, on a small scale.” Reports, 1824, 
y. 60. 
* See below, p. 791.