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.