collapse, as the figures given will show. A cambric weaver, who earned from twenty to twenty-four shillings a week in the years 1798–1803, was earning from twelve to sixteen shillings during the years 1804–1816, after which he could earn no more than six or seven shillings. Prices for weaving in some cases fell as much as 80 per cent during the same period.[1] This collapse was rendered more destructive by the more rapid introduction of power-looms after the period of abnormal trade was over. Thus in 1803 there were but 2400 such looms; in 1820, 12,150; in 1829 there were 45,000; in 1835 nearly 100,000, of which 90,000 were used in the cotton trade alone.[2] The lot of the weavers was not improved by the subterfuges of the small employers, who cut and abated wages without mercy in their efforts to avoid bankruptcy. Though the number of handloom-weavers constantly decreased, the process was delayed by the influx of still poorer labourers from Ireland, and by the practice of the weavers, in many cases compelled by poverty, of bringing up their children to the loom, a practice which was encouraged by the evil state of the conditions of labour in the factories, which were often the only alternative.
By 1835 the handloom cotton-weavers were mostly employed by large manufacturers, who in many cases had powerloom factories as well. Thus the handloom-weavers fell into two classes—those who competed with power and those who did not. The former were the worse off. They formed a kind of fringe around the factory, a reserve of labour to be utilised when the factory was overworked. Thus they were employed only casually, but helped, with the aid of doles out of the poor rates, to keep down the general level of wages for weaving in and out of the factory. Terrible are the descriptions of the privations of these men. The weavers of Manchester made a return in 1838 of 856 families of 4563 individuals whose average earnings amounted to two shillings and a penny per head per week. Of this amount one-half was devoted to food and clothing. Exactly half of these poor souls lived on only one-half of these amounts—or one penny per day for food and clothing.[3] Such reports are confirmed from other towns such as Carlisle, where the average earnings were somewhat, but little, larger.[4] A much smaller average was reported by the weavers of Ashton-under-Lyne.[4] Without relying wholly on these ex parte state-
