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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SPINNING-JENNIES FOR WOOL 655 complaint as early as 1784, when the price was unusually a high for a time. Governor Pownall urged in 1788 that wages for spinning must be raised, so that the spinners might have enough to live on, or that machines must be introduced and the manufacture ‘broken up.’ He calculated that a spinner walked thirty-three miles, stepping back and for- wards to the wheel, in order to earn 2s. 81. The lack of employment, with starvation wages for spinning, would of course be most noticeable in districts from which the trade was migrating, as for example in the Eastern Counties; the rates had fallen to 4d. a day as compared with 7d. or 8d. forty years before’. To whatever cause these starvation payments for spinning in the old centres of the manufacture may have been due, the effects were very serious, Spinning was ceas- even as ory . ; aby | ing? to be remunerative, even as a by-occupation. In 1795, occupation. when Davies was pleading the case of the rural labourers, he insisted on the importance to domestic economy of the possibility of obtaining an income from this source. But the opportunities of getting work of this sort were being curtailed, at all events in the old centres of manufacture ; the fine spinning, which was so much in demand, was badly paid, while the inferior hands were left idle altogether. During the wars, the interruption of the wool supply from Germany and Spain‘, and the closing of the ordinary channels for exporting cloth, caused violent fluctuations; and these changes, together with the migration of industry to the West Riding, involved thousands of families in the rural districts of Southern England in great want. The course of this revolution is somewhat obscured by the success of the measures which were intended to relieve this distress. It had been recognised from Tudor times onward, shat it was necessary for the government to take special action In times when trade was bad: the difficulties under lL Annals of Agriculture, xX. 546. 2 Ib, xv. 261. 3 In 1793 Mr Maxwell notes in regard to Huntingdonshire that * women and shildren may have constant employment in spinning yarn, which is put out by the generality of the country shopkeepers; though at present it is but a very in- lifferent means of employment, and they always prefer out of door’'s work when he season comes on.” Annals of Agriculture, xx1. 170. t Reports, Misc. 1802-3, v. 266.

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