The Industrial Revolution

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 1027928145

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-159926

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Cunningham, William http://d-nb.info/gnd/128907487

Title:: The Industrial Revolution

Place of publication:: Cambridge

Publisher:: The University Press

Year of publication:: 1922

Scope:: xxii S., S. 404-886

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

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334 LAISSEZ FAIRE A.D. 1776 —1850. those who have kept to it to a state of starvation.” The good times did not last, however; the interruptions caused by the war reduced the opportunities for employment. Not only was there a danger, which was severely felt during the war of 1812, of an interruption of the supplies of material for the spinners, and consequent diminution of the demand for weaving, but times of peace brought no corresponding advan- tage to weavers, though they benefited the spinners. English yarn was exported and woven by German manufacturers, so that there was little market on the continent for English woven cloth®. The wages paid in the overcrowded trade fell to lower and lower rates. In 1808 the cotton weavers seem to have worked for about a half of the wages they had received eight years before’, and the depression continued to get worse and worse’. This newly developed and suddenly dis- tressed industry was the field on which the battle, between the old method of regulating wages and the new system of depending on competition, was to be fought out. The first attempt at affording any sort of relief was made immediately after the tide of prosperity had turned. The The arti. Arbitration Act of 1800° was intended to provide a cheap ration Act : . 1800 and summary mode of settling disputes. It empowered the weavers and their employers to go before Arbitrators in case of any difference as to wages, and arranged that the rates thus fixed should be enforced; but this proved in- operative; the general uncertainty which affected the trade rendered the scheme nugatory. Prices could not be main- tained, and the masters again and again lowered wages, with disastrous effects. The diminution of wages® only tended to . Gaskell, Artisans and Machinery (1836), 84. + Radcliffe, New System of Manufacture, p. 49 fol. 3 Reports, 1808, mm. 103. It is difficult to calculate precisely, as the length of the piece was increased, while the wages decreased and the outgoings were heavier proportionally on the lower wages. For the piece (two weeks’ work) in 1797, fifty shillings was paid, and in 1808, only eighteen shillings. Ib. 116. 4 See the figures in Baines, op. cit. 489: * Fluctuation was a greater evil perhaps than the lowness of the rate; previous to that period (1811) fluctuations to the extent of 30 per cent. took place in the course of a month in the price of labour.” Reports (Artisans and Machinery), 1824, v. 60. 5 40 Geo. IIL. ¢. 90. 8 It also affected the home demand prejudicially; with starvation wages, \abourers could not buy cloth so largely. Brentano, Anfang und Ende der englischen Kornzolle, p. 13. but were s00n reduced to recerving starvation rates of pay.

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