their example.[1] But in two important respects their position differed from that of the organized workers of more recent times. The master weavers and spinners were small capitalists in respect of the implements of their calling, and they stood to their employer in the twofold relation of debtor and of creditor. Normally each had a ledger account opened for him where he was debited on the one hand with the materials given out to him and credited on the other hand with his labour.[2] A ledger of this kind, complete except for the loss of about a score of its initial and final pages, gives a full and continuous account of Oldknow's relations with the weavers of the Stockport district for almost two years after he set up business there in February 1784; and fragments of similar ledgers exist for 1786 and 1790–1 (60 folios). There is also a daily record of the goods delivered by the weavers from November 1786 to April 1787, and complete sets of daily bundles of weavers' pay-tickets for the months of December 1793 and June 1794, from which an account of the output and the earnings of the weavers for these periods can be compiled. A day-book record of the sales of the firm has been recovered which, though in tattered fragments, constitutes a complete account of the output for twenty-seven of the forty-four months between June 1786 and January 1790. Other records that have survived are nine warping-mill books, giving a continuous record of the character of about half the output from 1787 to 1792, several weavers' piece-work price-lists, the accounts of three stock-takings, and an invaluable costing-book which analyses the composition and estimates the cost (including a profit of 20 to 30 per cent.) of a great variety of calicoes, shirtings, and muslins.
By a careful study of all these data it should be possible to give a far more detailed account of the cotton industry before the coming of the factory system than has yet been attempted. All that can be done here is to place some of the broader statistical results of the investigation in relation to our previous sources of information.
The locus classicus on this subject is the retrospective account of William Radcliffe written in 1822, which distinguishes between three periods, (1) before 1770, (2) 1770–88, (3) 1788 and after. In the first period—before the spinning inventions or even the fly-shuttle had come into common use—
the father of a family would earn from eight shillings to half a guinea at his loom, and his sons, if he had one, two or three alongside of him, six or
- ↑ Manchester Mercury, 21 January 1785. Advertisement by Friendly Society of Cotton Spinners of Stockport.
- ↑ The weaver was never, and the spinner seldom actually, debited in cash value with the materials. The amount of the cotton or yarn delivered was placed to his debit, no doubt with a view to its being recovered, if necessary, at law. The establishment of small debt courts, with the employing class as assessors, is one of the most significant developments of the period. Cf. 17 Geo. III. c. xv.
