Part 2 (1/2)
The frame-work knitters were incorporated under Charles II., and the company made rather drastic rules, trying to exclude women from apprentices.h.i.+p, though they might become members on widowhood, as in so many of the old guilds. Frame-work knitting also gave employment to women and children in seaming up the hose. In the eighteenth century the trade became sweated and underpaid. The hours of work were as much as fifteen a day. Women, however, were paid at the same rates per piece, and were subject to the same deductions, and some of them were good hands and could earn as much as men.
_Silk._--The broad difference between linen and woollen on the one hand, and silk and cotton on the other, is that the two former, so ancient that their origins are lost to history, arose as household industries at the very early stage of civilisation in which the family is self-sufficient, or nearly so, providing for its own needs and consumption by the work of its own members; the two latter, on the contrary, appear chiefly as trades carried on not for use but for payment, and are also sharply differentiated from the more ancient industries by the fact that the raw materials--silk and cotton--are not indigenous to these islands, but have to be imported.
In the manufacture of silk, women early appear as independent producers and manufacturers, for in the fifteenth century they were sufficiently organised to be able collectively to pet.i.tion Parliament for measures to check the importation of ribbons and wrought silk, and on their behalf was pa.s.sed an Act (1455) 33 Hen. VI. c. 5, which states that ”it is shewed ...
by the grievous complaint of the silk women and spinners of the mystery and occupation of silk-working, within the city of London, how that divers Lombards and other strangers, imagining to destroy the said mystery and all such virtuous occupations of women in the said realm, to enrich themselves and to increase them and such occupations in other strange lands, have brought and daily go about to bring into the said realm such silk so made, wrought, twined, ribbands and chains falsely and deceitfully wrought, all manner girdels and other things concerning the said mystery and occupation, in no manner wise bringing any good silk unwrought, as they were wont to bring heretofore, to the final destruction of the said mysteries and occupations, unless it be the more hastily remedied by the King's Majesty.” The importation of silk, ribbons, etc., was forthwith prohibited, and we find similar prohibitions in 3 Edw. IV. c. 3 and c. 4, 22 Edw. IV. c. 3, 1 Rich. III. c. 10, and 1 Hen. VII. c. 9. Henry VII.
dealt with several silk women for ribands, fringes, and so forth, as recorded in his accounts. A statute of Charles II. 14 Ch. II. c. 15 says many women in London were employed in working silk.
The manufacture of silk was introduced into Derbys.h.i.+re at the beginning of the eighteenth century. John Lombe's silk mill was the first textile mill at work in that county. A rather considerable manufacture of piece silks and silk ribbons and braid grew up in Derby and Glossop, a large proportion of women and girls being employed. The numbers of operatives in this industry increased up to the census of 1851 and 1861, when about 6000 operatives were employed, after which it began to go down, reaching the low figure of 662 in the county in 1901; in 1911, 442.
In Macclesfield silk-throwing mills were erected in 1756, the manufacture of silk goods and mohair b.u.t.tons having been already carried on for centuries. The silk throwsters of Macclesfield for many years worked for Spitalfields and supplied them with thrown silk through the London manufacturers. In 1776, it is recorded, the wages paid to the millmen and stewards were 7s. a week, the women doublers 3s. 6d., children 6d. to 1s.
The manufacture of broad silk was established at Macclesfield in 1790. We know by inference that many women must have been employed, but information is unfortunately scanty in regard to the social conditions of this trade, so specially adapted to industrial women. It is evident, however, that women kept their place in it, for the apprentices.h.i.+p rules laid before the Committee on Ribbon Weavers in 1818 expressly included women, both as apprentices and journeywomen.
The inherent delicacy of many of the processes, and the fact that silk as a luxury trade is especially susceptible to changes of fas.h.i.+on, have r.e.t.a.r.ded the use of machinery and preserved the finer fabrics as an artistic handicraft. But this, in itself a development to be welcomed, must also indicate that capital and labour can be more advantageously employed in the industries that have evolved more fully on modern lines, for the silk trade is undoubtedly declining in England.
_Other Industries._--If information respecting the traditional employments of women in the linen and woollen trades is spa.r.s.e and unsatisfactory, much more is it difficult to trace out their conditions in other industries of a less ”womanly” character. Yet even in such callings it is sufficiently evident that women were employed. Traill's _Social England_ tells us of women making ropes as early as the thirteenth century. Women are known to have worked in the Derbys.h.i.+re lead mines, _temp._ Edward II.
They washed and cleaned the ore at 1d. a day, and were a.s.sisted by four girls at 3/4d. a day, men being employed at the same time at 1-1/2d. a day. Mr. Lapsley, in his account of a fifteenth-century ironworks, records that two women, wives of the smith and foreman respectively, performed miscellaneous tasks, from breaking up the iron-stone to blowing the bellows. In 1652 a Parliamentary commission found that many of the surface workers employed in dressing the ore (_i.e._ freeing it from the earth and spar with which it was mixed) were women and children. An _Account of Mines_, dated 1707, tells us that vast numbers of poor people at that time were employed in ”working of mines, the very women and children employed therein, as well as the men, especially in the mines of lead.” Women worked in coal-mining at Winterton, ”for lack of men,” in 1581, and with children were employed in the ”great coal-works and workhouses” started by Sir Humphrey Mackworth at Neath. They evidently worked underground, as several deaths of women in mine explosions are recorded. In 1770 Arthur Young found women working in lead mines and earning as much as 1s. a day, a man earning 1s. 3d.
In Birmingham trades, especially the making of b.u.t.tons and other small articles, women were employed as far back as we can find any records. At Burslem, Young found women working in the potteries, earning 5s. to 8s. a week. Near Bristol he found women and girls employed in a copper works for melting copper ore, and making the metal into pins, pans, etc. At Gloucester he found great numbers of women working in the pin manufacture.
In the Sheffield plated ware trade he found girls working, but does not mention women. Of the Sheffield trades generally he says that women and girls earn very good wages, ”much more than by spinning wool in any part of the kingdom.”
It is unfortunate that we have, so far, very little information in regard to women's work in non-textile trades previous to the industrial revolution. It is tolerably safe to infer that the above scattered hints indicate a state of things neither new nor exceptional. There can be little doubt that women constantly worked in these trades, either a.s.sisting the head of the family, or as a wage-worker for an outside employer. But we know so little that we cannot attempt to enlarge on the subject.
CHAPTER II.
WOMEN AND THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION.
He! an die Arbeit!
Alle von hinnen!
Hurtig hinab!
Aus den neuen Schachten schafft mir das Gold!
Euch grusst die Geissel, grabt ihr nicht rasch!
Das keiner mir mussig burge mir Mime, sonst birgt er sich schwer meines Armes Schwunge:
Zogert ihr noch?
Zaudert wohl gar?
Zittre und zage, gezahmtes Heer!
WAGNER, _Das Rheingold_.
The cotton trade is the industry most conspicuously identified with the series of complex changes that we call the Industrial Revolution. Its history before that period is comparatively unimportant; we have therefore left it over from the previous chapter to the present.
Cottons are mentioned as a Manchester trade in the sixteenth century, but it seems probable that these were really a coa.r.s.e kind of woollen stuff, and not cotton at all. Cotton wool had, it is true, been imported from the East for some time, but was used only for candle wicks and such small articles, not for cloth. In the Poor Law of Elizabeth, cotton is not included among the articles that might be provided by overseers to ”set the poor on work.” The first authoritative mention of the cotton manufacture of Manchester occurs in Lewis Roberts' _Treasure of Traffike_.
It appears from this tract, which was published in 1641, that the Levant Company used to bring cotton wool to London, which was afterwards taken to Manchester and worked up into ”fustians, vermilions, dimities, and other such stuffs.” The manufacture had therefore become an established fact by the middle of the seventeenth century, but its growth was not rapid for some time. Owing to the rudeness of the spinning implements used fine yarn could not be spun and fine goods could not be woven. In the second quarter of the eighteenth century, however, Manchester and the cotton manufacture began to increase very markedly in size and activity, and the resulting demand for yarn served to stimulate the invention of machinery. ”The weaver was continually pressing upon the spinner. The processes of spinning and weaving were generally performed in the same cottage, but the weaver's own family could not supply him with a sufficient quant.i.ty of weft, and he had with much pains to collect it from neighbouring spinsters. Thus his time was wasted, and he was often subjected to high demands for an article on which, as the demand exceeded the supply, the spinner could put her own price.” Guest says it was no uncommon thing for a weaver to walk three or four miles in a morning, and call on five or six spinners, before he could collect weft to serve him for the remainder of the day, and when he wished to weave a piece in a shorter time than usual, a new ribbon or a gown was necessary to quicken the exertions of the spinner. The difficulty was intensified in 1738 by Kay's invention of the fly-shuttle, which enabled the weaver to do twice as much work with a given effort, and consequently of course to use up yarn in a similar proportion. John Hargreaves, a Blackburn weaver, contrived a spinning machine which multiplied eightfold the productive power of one spinner, and was, moreover, simple enough to be worked by a child. Subsequent developments and improvements were effected by Paul Wyatt and Arkwright, and the latter being a good business man, unlike some other inventors, made money out of his ideas.