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were certainly out of date; there was no doubt that clothiers 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