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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1L.D. 1776 —1850. hy the habitual spreading of work. 796 LAISSEZ FAIRE southern centres of the trade this employment gave early instances of the phenomena of spreading work, and of an industrial reserve army’. One of the Braintree witnesses Jescribes how “a manufacturer would give out work to twelve men, where seven would have been enough to do it, if warp and shute had been given to them as fast as they worked it up. The object of this system evidently was to keep a great number of hands in the trade always at com- mand, in order that when there was a great demand for goods the manufacturer might have it in his power to oroduce them. * * * Thus the earnings of the weavers were tept down, though they were said to be employed. This system also kept a greater number of hands in the trade and thereby kept up a greater competition for employment, and prevented a rise of price when there was an increased demand for goods.” The chief remedies which the weavers themselves proposed were, either a more rigid system of apprenticeship by which the number of competitors might be kept down, or an authoritative price-list, such as they had had under the Spitalfields Act; but even under that Act they had not enjoyed constant employment, and the system had proved inworkable®. It was absurd to ask for elaborate rules of apprenticeship, which were not needed for the purpose of training the workmen properly*; this limitation was merely intended to be an arbitrary restriction on the number of com- petitors®. Such an expedient could not possibly help them to stand better against the competition of English machinery or L See above, p. 667. $ Reports, 1840, xxim. 126. 3 As Dr Mitchell, an assistant commissioner, stated: ‘The Spitalfields Acts secured to the weavers a fixed price for their labour; but no Act of Parliament sould secdre to them full employment, and when from the caprices of fashion or from any other cause there ceased to be a demand for the goods, a part of the weavers who made them were necessarily out of employment, and such of them as aad not laid by some of their earnings to meet an evil day were in distress. There was however, this difference between the periods of distress in those times and the distress at present, that whatever work was given out was paid for at the fall price, and when a demand for goods and for labour arose the weavers returned to a state of prosperity, whereas distress now may occasion reduction of wages, and when full employment returns the weaver is not paid as he was before.” Reports, 1840, xx111. 200. t The trade was not at all hard to learn (Ib. 215). 8 Ib. 221.

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