SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY 



postponed the erection of a station there. The stimulus to invention, 

 however, which the new steam power gave appears from the fact that 

 between i8i6and 1852 nineteen patents were granted to Nottinghamshire 

 inventors for discoveries connected with steam power or with railways. 802 



As time went on the condition of the workpeople gradually improved ; 

 by 1860 wages varied from i6s. to 24^. for women home workers, and 

 young and aged persons. Men earned from i6j. to 30^. at various species 

 of work; and factory workers (an increasing class) received, the men 2OJ. 

 to 25-f. and the women from 1 2s. to 2OJ., while the wages in the various 

 auxiliary trades had also improved. 303 



Despite this improvement in wages, this very year (1860) saw three 

 or four strikes ; but it also saw the creation of the machinery whereby 

 these conflicts were for a considerable time kept in check, to wit, the 

 establishment of the Hosiery Board. The principal creator of this body 

 was Mr. Mundella ; it consisted of a board formed of representatives of 

 both employers and employed, and its function was to regulate the various 

 disputed points in the trade. Among the first objects of its attack was the 

 Truck system, and the inconvenient custom of paying workmen at about 

 12 o'clock on Saturday night. For more than twenty-five years it averted 

 serious conflicts in the hosiery trade, and its breakdown at a time of com- 

 mercial stress in 1886 was followed by its revival in iSgo. 304 



From 1 86 1 onward the history of Nottinghamshire has practically 

 been the record of life in the chief towns. This development has been 

 peculiarly marked. Between 1831 and 1861 the whole population of the 

 county increased by about one-third, that of Nottingham by not quite a 

 half ; 306 in other words, though the town was gaining on the country, the 

 great industries of Nottinghamshire were still village industries. But about 

 the end of this period the application of steam power to the hosiery and lace- 

 making industries began. In 1870 machines existed which worked eighteen 

 hours a day in four or five-hour shifts. 306 The result appeared, of course, in 

 the redistribution of the population. In the thirty years from 1861 to 1891 

 the whole population of the county increased by 200,000, i.e. more than 

 one-third, but the population of Nottingham town had trebled; it had risen 

 from 74,531 to 213,877. The villages were deserted or absorbed in the town. 

 The men and women who had worked in their own homes were now all 

 gathered into large factories. With the growth of factory life came 

 naturally the growth of trade unionism. This had already taken root 

 between 1831 and 1861, and in the ensuing thirty years it so increased that 

 in 1891 there were 31,050 trade unionists in Nottinghamshire. 307 Town 

 life and town industries have absorbed what was once an agricultural popu- 

 lation. In only one respect does the condition of Nottinghamshire resemble 

 what it was 200 years back. In spite of inclosures it still includes one or 

 two of the few remaining parishes where the open-field system still exists, 



m Prosser, MS. List of Patents. 



308 W. Felkin, Hist, of Machine-wrought Hosiery, &c. 514. 



104 D. Schulze Gaevernitz, Social Peace. 



M * Population Abstract and Official Census Tables. 



soe w Feik;,^ ffj jt ofMachlne-wrought Hosiery, &c. 155. 



"' S. and W. Webb, Hist, of Trade Unionism, 414. 



"* e.g. Laxton and Eakring. Slater, Engl. Peasantry and Incksures. 



2 35 39 



808 



