work in 1784 and 115 in 1785, and the average earnings in the November of these two years is 14s. 7d. for weavers with one loom, 26s. for those with two looms, and 30s. for those with three. The taking-in book of 1786–7 enables us to identify the number of looms under the management of each small master. There were 300 weavers with 475 looms, subdivided as follows:
| With 1 loom 193 |
With 2 looms 68 |
With 3 looms 19 |
With 4 looms 15 |
With 5 looms 2 |
With 6 looms 2 |
With 7 looms 1 |
| Average weekly earnings of each class: | ||||||
| 13s. 11d. | 28s. 7d. | 38s. 4d. | 48s. 4d. | 65s. 10d. | ||
Unfortunately there is no record of the same completeness for the two years of exceptional prosperity. A considerable fragment of a weavers' ledger for July–December 1790 enables us only to ascertain the average earnings of a score of individual looms, a few of which were engaged on calicoes and shirtings and the rest on muslins. One weaver of figured muslins earned as much as 33s. a week, and the earnings of three others were 23s. 9d., 23s. 1d., and 20s. 3d., but the average of all the twenty weavers is only 12s. 7d. A complete set of weavers' pay-tickets for June 1794, when trade was very bad and Oldknow was just about to abandon the muslin manufacture, and representing 180 weavers and 223 looms, shows the average earnings to have been:
| 1 loom | 2 looms | 3 looms | 4 looms | |
| 145 | 26 | 4 | 3 | weavers. |
| 7s. 1d. | 14s. 8d. | 19s. 7½d. | 23s. 6d. | earnings per week.[1] |
If we accept the estimate of Radcliffe for 1770 as a base, our records show at the end of the second period, i.e. from 1784 to 1787, an increase of about 50 per cent, in the earnings per loom. They do not substantiate any marked increase in earnings per loom after 1788, but are not inconsistent with a considerable increase in family earnings due to extended employment in 1789–90. This latter, indeed, may be regarded as certain, but it cannot have been on the scale represented by Radcliffe, and it is very improbable that the earnings of even patriarchal households of two or three families amounted to 6 or even 5 a week.
(To be continued)
- ↑ The above statistics, drawn from the Oldknow records, were furnished by the calculations of Miss F. Collier, M.A., in her thesis on 'The Family Income and the Family Economy of the Working-Classes in the Cotton Industry during the Industrial Revolution', and by Mr. G. Taylor, B.A., who is preparing a thesis on 'The Handloom Weavers of the Stockport District, 1784–94'
