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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LAISSEZ FAIRE AD nim were good workmen, and chose to work hard, could make very large earnings indeed. The price of cloth in 1803 was said to those . 7 : woollen to have risen 30°/,, while weavers’ wages had increased who found 100°/y; there is ample evidence that the weavers looked inplo back on the period of the war as one of exceptional prosperity. This gain took place, however, at the expense of the weavers who were thrown out of employment altogether; owing to the scarcity of material it was inevitable that the trade should contract rather than expand. It could not maintain all the labour that had been previously engaged in it. It cannot be a matter of surprise that, despite the high payments made but the un- to the employed weavers, there was much discontent among employed . ’ z 3 commenced the class, and this found expression especially in the West of agitation England district, where capitalism was in vogue. The trade was developing in the Yorkshire district, and the Gloucestershire and Wiltshire weavers had difficulty in holding their own. Like all the other workmen's agitations of the time, the demand of the woollen weavers took the form of insisting foren- that the old laws regulating the cloth trade should be carried Loving the out. These were very numerous; and in so far as they laid down definite rules for the size and weight of cloth, they were certainly out of date; there was no doubt that clothiers were liable to punishment for infringing them, and in 1803 Parliament passed a temporary measure for preventing prosecution under these Acts, until there should be time to The obli- consider the whole subject. A Select Committee of the yin of House of Commons reported, in 1806, on the question of the years vice. Tegulation of the clothing trade. The most pressing diffi- shir culties arose in connection with the Elizabethan Statute of Artificers. This had fixed on seven years as the period of apprenticeship, and since weaving could be learned in two or three years, many of the best workmen had failed to serve a regular apprenticeship”. There was little cause for surprise 1 Reports, 1840, xx. 417. 2 This was the case even in Yorkshire, where apprenticeship had a firmer hold than in the West of England. .Mr John Lees, Merchant and Woollen Manu- facturer of Halifax, stated in his evidence before the Committee on the Yorkshire Woollen Petition in 1803: “Not one in Ten of the Workmen employed in the woollen manufactory has served a regular Apprenticeship; many have not been apprenticed at all, and the others have been apprenticed for Three, Four, or Five Years according to their Ages, Apprenticeships for Seven Years are quite

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