of the industry, and considering the bad situation of the knitters as regards collective action, the wonder is that wages were not lower. Wages had been artificially reduced by the action of the old poor-law administration in paying out-relief as subsidies to wages. That had of course ceased when the inquiry was made, but a prolonged depression during 1839–42 had reduced thousands of stockingers to destitution.[1] The whole industry was stagnating, so that there seemed little prospect of improvement in the condition of the poor knitters. At the time of the inquiry thousands of them were earning for sixty or seventy hours' labour five or six shillings a week. At the same time it must be remarked that extreme lowness of wages was apparently chronic in the trade, and it is probable that the distress of the 'forties was not exceptional. It was, however, unaccompanied by the extended out-relief of former days since the introduction of the New Poor Law, and the operatives who had formerly borne privation with some resignation were now, through the agency of Chartist and Syndicalist orators, furnished with explanations of their evil situation. The district had been a hotbed of Owenism in 1833–34 and of Chartism ever since 1839, facts which show that the spirit of resignation had given way to a spirit of revolution.
It is necessary to dwell at some length upon the situation of the handloom-weavers and the "stockingers." These two classes of workers were the most ardent of Chartist recruits. They graduated for the most part through the school of Anti-Poor Law Agitation, and furnished many "physical force" men. Furthermore it is clear from the Chartist speeches that the weavers and stockingers were regarded as the martyrs of the economic system and as an indication of the inevitable tendency of the system—an awful example to the workers as a whole.
A modern reader may ask why these workers persisted in an occupation so ill requited. Apart from the natural inertia which makes man of all baggage the least easy to move, there were special causes operating at the time under survey. One was that occupation in other trades was not easy to get owing to trade depression. This was especially the case with the one occupation for which stockingers and weavers were suitable—factory labour. There were sufficient and good reasons too, as every one knows, for avoiding factories in those days.
- ↑ See Life of Thomas Cooper, 1872, pp. 123-43; also Report, pp. 95 et seq.
