Part 92

There still existed customary freeholders, who owned their land subject to certain customary obligations to the lord of a manor.

The people displaced by enclosure became laborers dependent on wages or paupers. Their discontent was expressed in this poem:

"They hang the man and flog the woman That steals a goose from off the common But leave the greater criminal loose That steals the common from the goose."

Eventually there was some relief given to the poor workers. By statute of 1773, wastes, commons, and fields having several owners with different interests may by three-quarters vote in number and in value of the occupiers cultivate such for up to six years. However, cottagers and those with certain sheep walks, or cattle pasture, may not be excluded from their rights of common. By statute of 1776, the Elizabethan statute restricting locations where cottages could be erected and their inhabitants was repealed because the industrious poor were under great difficulties to procure habitations.

Land could be rented out at ten times the original value. Land was typically rented out for 7, 14, or 21 years. Great fortunes were made by large landowners who built grand country estates. The manufacturers and merchants made much money, but agriculture was still the basis of the national wealth. As the population grew, the number of people in the manufacturing classes was almost that of the agriculturalists, but they had at least twice the income of the agriculturalists.

The greatest industry after agriculture was cloth. Most of this activity took places in the homes, but families could earn more if each family member was willing to exchange the informality of domestic work for the long hours and harsh discipline of the factory or workshop. More wool was made into cloth in the country. Dyed and finished wool cloth and less raw wool and unfinished broadcloth, was exported. Bleaching was done by protracted washing and open-air drying in "bleach fields". There were great advances in the technology of making cloth.

Thomas Lombe, the son of a weaver, became a mercer and merchant in London. He went to Italy to discover their secret in manufacturing silk so inexpensively. He not only found his way in to see their silk machines, but made some drawings and sent them to England hidden in pieces of silk. He got a patent in 1718 and he and his brother set up a mill using water power to twist together the silk fibers from the cocoons into thread [thrown silk] in 1719. His factory was five hundred feet long and about five stories high. One water wheel worked the vast number of parts on the machines. The machines inside were very tall, cylindrical in shape, and rotated on vertical axes. Several rows of bobbins, set on the circumference, received the threads, and by a rapid rotary movement gave them the necessary twist. At the top the thrown silk was automatically wound on a winder, all ready to be made into hanks for sale. The workman's chief task was to reknot the threads whenever they broke. Each man was in charge of sixty threads. There were three hundred workmen. Lombe made a fortune of 120,000 pounds and was knighted and made an alderman of London. After his patent expired in 1732, his mill became the prototype for later cotton and wool spinning mills in the later 1700s. There were many woolen manufacture towns. Clothiers might employ up to three thousand workers. At these, the spinning was done by unskilled labor, especially women and children in villages and towns. Weaving, wool combing, and carding were skilled occupations.

In 1733, clockmaker and weaver John Kay invented a flying shuttle for weaving. It was fitted with small wheels and set in a kind of wooden groove. On either side there were two wooden hammers hung on horizontal rods to give the shuttle and to and fro action. The two hammers were bound together by two strings attached to a single handle, so that with one hand the shuttle could be driven either way. With a sharp tap by the weaver, first one and then the other hammer moved on its rod. It hit the shuttle, which slid along its groove. At the end of each rod there was a spring to stop the hammer and replace it in position. It doubled the weavers' output. Now the broadest cloth could be woven by one man instead of two. This shuttle was used in a machine for cotton. But the manufacturers who used the flying shuttle combined together and refused to pay royalties to Kay, who was ruined by legal expenses. Now the price of thread rose because of increased demand for it. The weavers, who had to pay the spinners, then found it hard to make a living. But the process of spinning was soon to catch up.

In 1738, John Wyatt, a ship's carpenter who also invented the harpoon shot from a gun, patented a spinning machine whereby carded wool or cotton was joined together to make a long and narrow mass. One end of this mass was drawn in between a pair of rotating rollers, of which one surface was smooth and the other rough, indented, or covered with leather, cloth, shagg, hair, brushes, or points of metal. From here, the mass went between another set of rollers, which were moving faster than the first pair. This stretched the mass and drew it into any degree of fineness of thread by adjusting the speed of the second pair of rollers. Then the thread went by a flier, which twisted it. After this the thread was wound off onto spindles or bobbins, whose rotation was regulated by the faster pair of rollers. Or the mass could be drawn by rotating spindles directly from one pair of rollers. This machine was worked by two donkeys and was tended by ten female workers. Because of bankruptcy in 1742, the invention was sold to Edward Cave, the editor of "Gentleman's Magazine". He set up a workshop with five machines, each fitted with fifty spindles and worked by water wheels. Carding was done by cylindrical carding machines invented by Lewis Paul. In 1764, the plant was bought by carpenter and weaver James Hargreaves. His work with it resulted in his invention of the very successful spinning jenny, which was patented about 1770. He conceived the idea by watching a spinning wheel that had been knocked over lying on its side and still revolving for a few seconds, while the thread, held between two fingers, seemed to go on spinning itself. The machine consisted of a rectangular frame on four legs. At one end was a row of vertical spindles. Across the frame were two parallel wooden rails, lying close together, which were mounted on a sort of carriage and slid backwards and forwards as desired. The cotton, which had been previously carded, stretched, and twisted passed between the two rails and then was wound on spindles. With one hand the spinner worked the carriage backwards and forwards, and with the other he turned the handle which worked the spindles. In this way, the thread was drawn and twisted at the same time. No longer did it take ten spinners to keep one weaver busy. But manufacturers refused to pay him royalties for his invention. He was offered 3,000 pounds for his rights in the jenny, but refused it. The courts held that the model of his jenny had been used in industry before it was patented and any rights he may have had were declared to have lapsed. Nevertheless, he made over 4,000 pounds. The spinning jenny was used in many homes.

Richard Arkwright, came from a poor family and was taught to read by an uncle. He became a barber and made wigs. Although he was not a craftsman of any sort, he patented in 1769 a spinning frame worked by water power and erected the first practical cotton mill factory. It produced a much stronger thread than could have been made with a spinning wheel. With capital from two rich hosiers, he set up a workshop next to a swift and powerful river running down a narrow gorge. Then he turned his attention to weaving this thread. In 1773, he set up weaving workshops making pure cotton calicoes which were as good as Indian calicoes. But there was a statute of 1721, that no one may wear or use printed, painted, stained or dyed calicoes e.g. in apparel, bed, chair, cushion, window curtain, furniture, except those dyed all in blue, or forfeit 20 pounds by a seller, 5 pounds by a wearer, and 20 pounds by other users. This prohibition was to provide wool working jobs to the poor, who had been increasing excessively because of lack of work. A clarification was made in 1735 that the statute did not include printed or painted cloth made of an all linen warp (for strength) and a cotton weft (for fineness) manufactured in Great Britain because such was a branch of the ancient fustian manufacture. There was also a statute of 1720, that any one who willfully and maliciously assaults a person in the public streets or highways with an intent to tear, spoil, cut, burn, or deface the garments or clothes of such person and carries this out is guilty of felony and may be transported for seven years. This was the way the wool weavers had expressed their opposition to imported printed cottons and calicoes. The prohibition against the manufacture and wearing and using of pure cotton fabrics came to an end in 1774 on arguments of Arkwright made to Parliament that his pure cottons would bleach, print, wash and wear better than fustians. This was the first all cotton cloth made in England.

In 1775, Arkwright added machines to do work prefatory to spinning. Raw cotton was first fed by a sloping hose to a feeder that was perpetually revolving. From here it went a carding machine of three rollers of different diameters covered with bent metal teeth. The first, with teeth bent in the direction of its revolution, caught up the cotton fibers. The second, revolving in the same direction but much faster, carded the fibers into the requisite fineness by contact with the third, whose teeth and motion were in the opposite direction. Next, a crank and comb detached the carded cotton so that it came off as a continuous ribbon. Then the ribbon went into a revolving cone, which twisted it on itself. Eventually Arkwright became rich from his creation of the modern factory, which was widely imitated. He established discipline in his mills and he made his presence felt everywhere there, watching his men and obtaining from them the steadiest and most careful work. He provided housing and services to attract workers.

After cotton, the inventions of the spinning jenny and the water- powered frame were applied to wool. Silk and cotton manufacture led the way in using new machinery because they were recently imported industries so not bound down by tradition and legal restraint. Yarn production so improved that weavers became very prosperous. Cards with metal teeth were challenging the use of wood and horn cards with thistles in carding wool. Merchants who traveled all over the world and saw new selling opportunities and therefore kept encouraging the manufacturers to increase their production and improve their methods. Factory owners united to present suggestions to Parliament.

Manufacturing broke loose from traditional confines in several ways. To avoid the monopolistic confines of chartered towns, many entrepreneurs set up new industries in Birmingham or Manchester, which grew enormously. Manchester had no municipal corporation and was still under the jurisdiction of a manor court. It sent no representative to the House of Commons. All over the country the Justices of the Peace had largely ceased regulating wages, especially in the newer industries such as cotton, where apprenticeship was optional. Apprenticeship lapsed in many industries, excepting the older crafts. Several legal decisions had declared seven years practice of a trade as good as an apprenticeship.

Apprentices still lived in their masters' houses and were still treated as family members. The regulations of the Cutlers' Company remained in force as its masters used their great manual skill to make cutlery in their own homes with the help of their children and apprentices. Trades in some towns which had guild regulations that had the force of law hung on to their customs with difficulty.

Although there were few large factories in the country under effective management of a capitalist, trade unionism was beginning as two distinct classes of men were being formed in factories. The factory owner was so high above his workmen that he found himself on the same level as other capitalists, the banker, who gave him credit, and the merchant, who gave him customers. Journeymen in factories could no longer aspire to become masters of their trade and no longer socialized with their employers. Hard and fast rules replaced the freedom of the small workshops. Each worker had his allotted place and his strictly defined and invariable duty. Everyone had to work, steadily and without stopping, under the vigilant eye of a foreman who secured obedience by means of fines, physical means, or dismissals. Work started, meals were eaten, and work stopped at fixed hours, signaled by the ringing of a bell. Factory hours were typically fourteen hours or more. Organized resistance, as usual, began not with those most ill-treated, but with those men who had some bargaining power through their skills.

Wool-combers, who worked next to a charcoal stove where they heated the teeth of the comb, were the most skilled of the cloth industry were hard to replace. Since they were nomadic, they quickly organized nation-wide. They agreed that if any employer hired a comber not in their organization, none of them would work for him. They also would beat up and destroy the comb-pot of the outsider. In 1720 and 1749, the Tiverton wool-combers objected to the import of combed wool from Ireland by burning Irish wool in clothiers' stores and attacking several houses. They had strike funds and went on strike in 1749. Their bloody brawls caused the military to intervene. Then many of them left town in a body, harming the local industry. The earnings of wool-combers was high, reaching from 10s. to 12s. a week in 1770, the highest rate of a weaver.

In 1716, the Colchester weavers accused their employers of taking on too many apprentices. When the weavers organized and sought to regulate the weaving trade, a statute was passed in 1725 making their combinations void. Strike offenses such as house-breaking and destruction of goods or personal threats had penalties of transportation for seven years. Still in 1728, the Gloucester weavers protested against men being employed who had not served their apprenticeship.

When the journeymen tailors in and around London organized, a statute made their agreements entering into combinations to advance their wages to unreasonable prices and to lessen their usual hours of work illegal and void, because this has encouraged idleness and increased the number of poor. Tailors' wages are not to exceed 2s. per day and their hours of work are to be 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. for the next three months, and 1s.8d. per day for the rest of the year. A master tailor paying more shall forfeit 5 pounds. A journeyman receiving more shall be sent to the House of Correction for 2 months. Justices of the Peace may still alter these wages and hours depending on local scarcity or plenty. Despite this statute, the journeymen tailors complained to Parliament of their low wages and lack of work; their masters called them to work only about half the year. There was much seasonal fluctuation in their trade as there was in all trades. The slack period for the tailors was the winter, when the people of fashion retired to their country estates. After their complaint, their wages then rose from 1s.10d. per day in 1720, to 1s.8d.- 2s. in 1721, to 2s.- 2s.6d. in 1751, to 2s.2d.- 2s.6d. in 1763, to up to 2s.71/2 d. in 1767, and to 3s. in 1775. Foremen were excluded from wage control. When they complained of their long hours, which were two hours longer than the 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. of most handicraft trades, their hours were reduced in 1767 by one hour to 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. and their pay was set at 6d. per hour for overtime work at night during periods of general mourning, e.g. court mourning. Their work hours were lowered to from 6 a.m to 6 p.m. in 1768.

The stocking frame-knitters guild, which had been chartered in 1663, went on strike to protest the use of workhouse children as an abuse of apprenticeship which lowered their wages. They broke many of their frames, which belonged to their employers, to limit their number.

In 1749, combinations to advance wages, decrease hours of work, or regulate prices were declared void for journeymen dyers, journeyman hot pressers, all wool workers, brickmakers and tilemakers, journeymen servants, workmen, laborers, felt and hat makers, and silk, linen, cotton, iron, leather, and fur workers in and around London. The penalty was prison or hard labor at a House of Correction for three months without bail. In 1756, Justices of the Peace were to determine the rates of wages of wool workers according to numbers of yards. But this was repealed the next year to prevent combinations of workers. Wage agreements between clothiers and weavers were declared binding. Clothiers not paying wages within two days of delivery of work shall forfeit 40s.

In 1763 the silk weavers in east London drew up a scale of wages, and upon its being rejected, 2000 of them broke their tools, destroyed the materials, and left their workshops. A battalion of guards had to take possession of the area. In 1765, the silk weavers marched on Westminster to stop the import of French silks. In 1768, the weavers rebelled against a 4d. per yard reduction in their wages, filling the streets in riotous crowds and pillaging houses. After the garrison of the Tower came, the workmen resisted with cudgels and cutlasses, resulting in deaths and woundings. The throwsters [those who pulled the silk fibers from the cocoons of the silk worms and twisted them together to make a thread] and the handkerchief weavers also became discontent. A battle between soldiers and silk weavers at their meeting place resulted in several men on both sides being killed. In 1773, wages and prices for the work of journeymen silk weavers in and around London are to be regulated by the Mayor and Justices of the Peace. Foremen were excluded. No silk weaver may have more than two apprentices or forfeit 20 pounds. Journeymen weavers entering into combinations shall forfeit 40s. This statute satisfied the weavers, but they formed a union to ensure that it was carried out.

In 1750, 1761, and 1765, there were strikes which stopped the work of the coal industry and harbor at Newcastle for weeks. In 1763, the keelmen formed a combination to force their employers to use the official measure fixed by statute for the measurement of loads of coals.

The book "Consideration upon the East-India Trade" dating from 1701 advocated free foreign trade. It argued that the import of goods from India not only benefited the consumer but also the nation, because it was a waste of labor to use it in producing goods which could be bought cheap abroad. This labor could be better put to use in new industries, at easily learned plain work. Also the low cost of imported goods would motivate the invention of machines in the nation which would be even more efficient in manufacturing these goods. But English manufacturers were still suspicious of free trade.

Making beer and distilling gin from barley were widespread. The pastimes of gambling and drinking were popular with all classes. In the trades, this was promoted by the uncertainties of life and work and a general sense of instability. Many London tradesmen started their day with a breakfast of beer, bread, and cheese, the traditional breakfast of countrymen. Gambling and dissipation reduced some London men with good businesses to destitution, the work house, or street begging. Drunken gentlemen played pranks such as imitating a woman in distress or throwing a person in a horse trough. Some innkeepers had "straw houses" where customers who were so drunk they were unable to walk home could sleep in fresh straw. A person could get drunk for a few pence. Gambling with cards was a popular pastime after dinner. Cricket matches were played by all classes instead of just by humbler people; there were county cricket matches. Gentlemen often took their coachmen with them to public events such as cricket matches. Tennis was a sport of the wealthy classes. Billiards, chess, and games with cards or dice were played, especially in alehouses. There was horse racing on any open ground to which people brought their horses to race. Jockeys tried to unseat each other. Hunting of rabbits and then foxes replaced deer hunting. Bird and duck hunting was usually with flint lock guns instead of hawks, as the hedges provided cover from hawks. There was fishing with line, hook, and bait. Watching the hanging of felons, about 35 a year in London, was popular, as was going to Bedlam to watch for a fee the insane being flogged. People went to the Tower to try to get a glance at a famous prisoner looking through a window or taking a walk along the battlements. Besides the grand pleasure gardens for gentry, there were lesser pleasure gardens in London for working families, which offered fresh air, tea, beer, swimming, fishing, courting, bowling, and cheap entertainment. Running, vaulting, and leaping were still popular in the countryside. Fairs had amusements such as fire swallowers, ventriloquists, puppet shows, acrobats, jugglers, animal performances, pantomimes, boxing, dwarfs, and albinos, but less trading. In 1769 was the first circus. Circuses included feats of horsemanship and clowns. There was also eating and drinking competitions, foot races, football, archery, some wrestling, and some bowling on greens or alleys. In winter there was ice skating with blades and sliding. The right of public access to St. James Park became entrenched by the 1700s. There was sailing, rowing, swimming, and hopscotch. George III made sea-bathing popular and it was supposed to be good for one's health. There was steeple chasing as of 1752. Horse-racing was given rules. On Sunday, there was no singing, music playing, dancing, or games, but the Bible was read aloud, prayers were said, and hymns were sung. Sabbath-breakers were fined by magistrates. Men often spent Sunday in a tavern.

In general, commodity prices were stable. But when harvests were poor, such as in 1709 when there was famine, and between 1765 and 1775, bread prices rose. The price of wheat in London, which since 1710 had been between 25s. and 45s., rose to 66s. in 1773. Then the poor engaged in food riots. These riots were often accompanied by burning; looting of grain mills, shops, and markets; and mob violence. The English economy was so dependent on foreign trade, which had trebled since the 1710s, that the slightest disturbance in the maritime trade threatened the English with starvation. In many localities the men in need of parochial relief were sent around from one farm to another for employment, part of their wages being paid from the poor rates. The poor often went from parish to parish seeking poor relief. Settled people tended to fear wandering people. Parishes sought to keep down their poor rates by devices such as removing mothers in labor lest the infant be born in the parish. So a statute was passed that a child born to a wandering woman may not have the place of birth as his settlement, but takes the same settlement as his mother. Some farmers hired laborers for only fifty one weeks and some apprentices were bound by means other than indenture so that they could not establish settlement in that parish. Laborers who came to work in industries were refused settlement and sent back to their original parishes whenever they seemed likely to become dependent on the rates. Statutes then provided that a parish must give settlement to apprentices bound for forty days there, not only by indenture, but by deed, writings, or contracts not indented. In 1722, parishes were authorized to purchase houses in which to lodge or employ the poor and to contract with any person for the lodging, keeping, maintaining, and employing of the poor. These persons could take the benefit of the work, labor, and service of these poor, which would be used for the relief of other poor. The poor refusing such lodging could not then get relief. Many of the poor starved to death. The propertied classes turned a blind eye to the predicament of the poor, opining that they were idle or could save more and did not need higher earnings.

Charitable organizations gave to the poor and set up all day Sunday schools to set wayward children on a moral path. The Sunday schools could accommodate children who worked during the week. Punishment of children by parents or others could be by whipping or even sitting in stocks. About half of the people were dependent on poor relief or charities.

Desertion by a man of his family was a common offense. Parishes providing upkeep for the family sent men to find the errant husbands. The parish would ask unmarried mothers who was the father of their child and then force him to marry her or pay for the upkeep of the child. He often made a bargain with the parish to release him of his obligation for a sum of money paid to the parish. But many young parish children died of neglect, and later, parishes were required to list children under four to aid in accounting for them. Divorces were still few and expensive, but increasing in number; there were more 60 in this period. It was easier for a man to get a divorce for one act of adultery by his wife, than for a wife to get one for habitual unfaithfulness.

Vagrants and other offenders could be committed to Houses of Correction as well as to county gaols, because of the expense of the latter.