reduction in status from respectable artisans to workers on the edge of starvation represented an important cultural shift within a significantly large section of the labouring population. It is easy to write them off simply as unfortunate casualties of the Industrial Revolution, outmoded handworkers who were unable to compete with the machine. But this is by no means the whole story, and obscures the essential nature of the impact of industrialism on the labouring poor. Only in the 1830s in the cotton, and in the 1840s in the woollen, industries did power looms in the factories compete fully and directly with handlooms. Until that time the two existed side by side, with the handloom weaver reduced to being an auxiliary of the factory, but not yet driven out of existence by competition. His role was to take up the slack in busy times, and to bear the first brunt of a recession. He also acted as a check on the wages of power loom operators, most of whom were women. The plight of the weavers was a vivid illustration of how helpless a section of labouring men could be when caught between the relics of the domestic system and the full force of competitive industrial capitalism. In classical economic theory the handloom weaver should no doubt, under the stress of severe competition, have transferred his labour to some other sector of the economy. But in fact this did not happen. Weavers for the most part would not, and could not, find other employment. ‘Too great attachment to the occupation is the bane of the trade,’ commented Dr Mitchell, one of the Assistant Handloom Weavers’ Commissioners, in the 1841 Report. Quite apart from their strong desire to cling to an occupation which enabled them to preserve something of their traditional way of life, their opportunities of alternative jobs were strictly limited. They were barred from entering, or apprenticing their children to, skilled handicrafts by the trade societies; they were not required in the mills, where power loom weavers were usually women and girls; and they seldom had the physique or strength for an outdoor labouring job. Their occupation, protected neither by unions nor trade customs, was wide open to anyone who wished to take it up; and the supply of weavers was always in excess of the demand for their labour. At the same time, as earnings and conditions of work deteriorated, more people became weavers; for poor as the remuneration was, it was better than starvation and for some sections of the labouring poor this was the choice in the 1830s.
Thus was the handloom weaver degraded. The story was told many times over by contemporary observers and fully documented in government enquiries. Engels’ vignette, written in 1844, may well stand for many others:
‘Of all the workers who compete against machinery the most oppressed are the handloom weavers in the cotton industry. These workers receive the lowest wages and even when in full employment cannot earn more than 10s a week. One branch of hand weaving after another is challenged by the power-loom. Moreover handloom weaving is the refuge of workers who have lost their livelihood in other sections. The result is that there is always a surplus of handloom weavers, and they consider themselves fortunate if on the average they can earn between 6s and 7s a week for fourteen to eighteen hours a day spent behind the loom…. I have visited many of these weavers’ workshops, which are usually in cellars, situated down obscure, foul courts and alleys. Frequently half a dozen of these handloom weavers – some of them married people – live together in a cottage which has one or two workrooms and one large common bedroom. They live almost entirely upon potatoes, supplemented perhaps with a little porridge. They seldom drink milk and they hardly ever eat meat. A large number of them are Irish or of Irish descent. These poor wretches are the first to be thrown out of work when there is a commercial crisis and last to be taken on again when trade improves.’8
Other outworkers, such as the framework knitters in the hosiery industry, suffered similar though not identical experiences. In order to sharpen our focus and thereby penetrate a little deeper than is possible in generalised statements, it will be helpful to look in some detail at the nature of this one selected industry. Hosiery manufacture was localised almost entirely in Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire and south Derbyshire, and this Midlands trade provides a case history in which the condition of a section of the labouring poor, the outworkers, can be studied. By the 1830s the industry had developed various branches in addition to the old staple product, stockings. Shirts, cravats, braces, socks and gloves were all manufactured. Most of the worsted hosiery was made in Leicester, the cotton and silk in Nottingham and Derby. In Leicester, there had also developed a cheap line of stocking manufacture, the cut-ups, or straight down hose. The traditional wrought (i.e. fully fashioned) hose was made mainly in the county. The basis of all this manufacture was the hand knitting frame, which was worked either in the stockinger’s own home or in the small ‘shop’ belonging to a master stockinger. Steam power was not introduced into the industry until 1845, and the domestic basis of framework knitting remained until well into the 1850s. Like the handloom weavers, the knitters had suffered a steady fall in their earnings since 1815, until by 1838 they averaged only 7s for a full week’s work.
From the early nineteenth century two factors had combined to undermine the independence of the stockinger – the system of frame letting and the growth of middlemen. Although in the eighteenth century some stockingers had owned their own frames, by the 1830s this independence had disappeared, and virtually all frames were hired. The owners of the frames were of three different types – hosiers (or manufacturers), middlemen (bagmen), and persons not connected with the trade who let the frames solely for the profits of their rents. Among the varieties of middlemen it was not always possible to categorise exactly. But in addition to the ‘putter out’ who simply gave out the yarn for the hosier and collected the hose when it had been made, there were two types of genuine contractor. The undertaker, or master stockinger, contracted with the larger hosiers to supply hose, and then put out the work to a number of framework knitters. Similar to, and often indistinguishable from, this type was the bagman or bag hosier. He flourished particularly in certain country districts, and manufactured on his own account. It was from the twin institutions of frame letting and middlemen that most of the grievances of the framework knitters stemmed.
Frame rents were by no means the only grievance, but the struggle for their abolition became synonymous with, and symbolic of, the general struggle to improve the stockinger’s lot. Traditionally the rent for a frame was ninepence per week, but with the introduction of the new wider frames the rent went up. A constant complaint of the stockingers was the uncertainty and variability of frame rents. A full week’s rent was paid whether or not there was a full week’s work, and it was paid whether the frame was in the stockinger’s home or in the employer’s shop. In the latter case an additional charge for standing room was also made, together with charges for light, fuel and needles. Thus it was not uncommon in 1844 for 3s in charges to be deducted from weekly earnings of 10s; and there were cases where men who had had work for only two or three days in the week found that they had worked for nothing else than the frame rent.
But, as Thomas Cooper discovered:
‘… it was by a number of petty and vexatious grindings, in addition to the obnoxious “frame rent”, that the poor framework knitter was worn down, till you might have known him by his peculiar air of misery and dejection, if you had met him a hundred miles from Leicester. He had to pay, not only “frame rent”, but so much per week for the “standing” of the frame in the shop of the “master”, for the frames were grouped together in the shops, generally, though you would often find a single frame in a weaver’s cottage. The man had also to pay threepence per dozen to the “master” for “giving out” of the work. He had also to pay so much per dozen to the female “seamer” of the hose. And he had also oil to buy for his machine, and lights to pay for in the darker half of the year. All the deductions brought the average earnings of the stocking-weaver to four and sixpence per week. I found this to be a truth confirmed on every hand.
‘And when he was “in work”, the man was evermore experiencing some new attempt at grinding him down to a lower sum per dozen for the weaving, or at “docking” him so much per dozen for alleged faults in his work; while sometimes – and even for several weeks together – he experienced the most grievous wrong of all. The “master” not being able to obtain full employment for all the frames he rented of the manufacturer, but perhaps only half employ for them – distributed, or
