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THE SHEARMEN AND THE FRAMEWORK KNITTERS 663 
had been no considerable improvement in the stocking frame. AD ie 
[t continued to be worked by human power, and the trade was ’ 
for the most part carried on by men who hired machines and 
worked them in their cottages. Still it was true that the 
stockingers and the shearmen were alike suffering from 
capitalist oppression—though in different forms—that the 
implements in their respective trades were known as frames, 
and that the destruction of these frames offered the most 
obvious means of revenging themselves on their employers. 
Framework knitting was carried on both in the hosiery and When the 
lace trades, and the circumstances of the industry had hardly redylation 
altered during sixty years preceding 1812% New machines the 
were being devised in the lace trade, but had hardly Gompany 
been introduced, and did not affect the stockingers. Up 
till the middle of the eighteenth century the Framework 
Knitters’ Company had been successful in exercising a certain 
control over the trade, in Godalming, Tewkesbury and Not- 
tingham, as well as in London ; but there was good reason for 
saying that they acted as a mere monopoly’, and passed 
regulations which restricted the trade, while they did little to 
improve it in any way. After a long enquiry the House of 
Commons resolved to set their by-laws altogether aside in 
17534 Shortly after this time, however, there were serious complaints 
complaints from the workmen in London, Nottingham, of rg 
Leicester, Tewkesbury, and other places, of the hardships to the hands. 
which they were subjected? especially by the fact that they 
1 The evidence appears to show that the Luddites were engaged in executing 
popular vengeance ob wealthy, or hard, owners of frames, and it is difficult to see 
that their action was in any way connected with the great mechanical progress of 
the time. On the other hand, the riots in Yorkshire were directed against a newly 
introduced machine. The mob in the West Riding was carefully discriminating, 
and concentrated its attention almost exclusively on those parts of the buildings 
where shearing frames and gig-mills were in operation (Annual Register, 1812, 54; 
Chronicle, pp. 89, 51, 114). As the work done by the machines was cheaper and 
better, the rioters were unfortunate in trying to secure a position which 
Parliament had treated as untenable. 
1 Btrutt’s apparatus had been patented in 1758 (Felkin, History of Machine. 
wrought Hosiery, 93) ; and Heathcote applied power to the frames in 1816, £5. 243. 
8 In 1720, they had attempted to raise a capital of £2,000,000 and carry on the 
rade as a joint-stock company. Commons Journals, Xxv1. 785. 4 Tb. 788. 
b In 1779 John Long, a frame-work knitter, gave evidence to the effect that 
whereas workmen used to be able to earn 2s. 1d. per day now they could only earn 
lg. 6d. Out of that they had to pay 3d. for frame-rent and about 3d. more for