LAISSEZ FAIRE 
A.D 27% it had become much worse in 1845, when Mr Muggeridge 
reported on the state of the trade’, All the old evils existed, 
The evils and new causes of complaint are mentioned as well. There was 
aggravated much loss of time to the workers, who did not receive yarn 
when they gave back the finished goods at the end of the 
week, but had to wait till mid-day on Monday®. As the 
weavers wrought at home they were able to requisition the 
assistance of their wives and children, and the whole family 
were occupied for very long hours and at starvation wages, 
from which the frame-rents had always to be deducted. The 
business was easily learned, and owing to the conditions in 
which it was carried on, the supply of labour, male and 
female, was practically unlimited. In periods of occasional 
depression, even benevolent masters had believed they were 
doing "the kindest thing in spreading the work among many 
families, so as to give all a little to do, on the principle that 
a little pay was better than none’. There was thus a stint 
on the employment of each hand, and the irregularity of their 
earnings was in itself a serious evil. Mr Muggeridge rightly 
regarded this practice of spreading work as the main cause of 
by the 
practice of 
spreading 
work. 
1 According to his figures wages had fallen 35 0/; between 1811 and 1842. 
Reports, etc., 1845, xv. p. 51. In 1819 a special appeal to the charity of the 
nation was made on behalf of the framework knitters by Robert Hall, but the 
distress was constantly recurring, p. 107. 
3 Reports, etc., 1845, xv. 117. The long-established custom of idling on 
Saturday to Monday to which the Factory Commissioners calied attention in 1833 
was not so entirely without excuse as they believed, but seems to have been 
originally due to this unsatisfactory trade usage. Ib. 1833, xx. 534. Report, 
Factories Inquiry Commission. 3 Reports, ete., 1845, Xv. 65. 
4 “The practice of ‘stinting’ being resorted to in most periods of depression in 
the trade with the twofold object of keeping the machinery going, and deriving 
the full amount of profits from its use in the shape of frame-rents, the workman 
instead of being driven to seek other employment, as he must necessarily do if 
left wholly unemployed, is kept, sometimes for months together, on the borders of 
starvation with just enough of work to prevent him seeking a more extended field 
of occupation, and too little to maintain either himself or his family in any state 
approaching to comfort or respectability. * * * Time after time the operatives in 
particular qualities of goods have been stinted to two or three or four days’ work 
in a week only, for weeks or months together; every obstacle thrown in the way 
to check their facilities of production, such as deferred or scanty supplies of the 
material for manufacture from the warehouse; complaints of the work when 
made and heavy abatements on one pretext or another deducted from the scanty 
pittance of wages earned * * * until at length the continued pressure on the 
market of goods so produced necessarily sold at any sacrifice by needy manu- 
tactnrers has forced down prices to 8 level which has often. for a eonsiderable