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.