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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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.

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