INDUSTRIES 



a number of these men took to that branch of 

 the trade, and the term shoemaker is no longer 

 used, except among the hand-makers, for several 

 hands contribute now in the making of a pair of 

 boots the riveters, sewers, and finishers and 

 several others all carrying on a specialized part 

 of the work. At one or two factories the 

 welting machine has been introduced and then 

 discarded as not satisfactory for the somewhat 

 stronger classes of boots for which Chesham has 

 become noted. For many years these classes of 

 boots formed the staple of the Chesham factories, 

 and to a large extent this is still the case. The 



boots, when finished, are sent all over the country 

 and a considerable quantity of them are exported. 

 The conditions of the trade at the present time 

 are said to be good. 'The families engaged in 

 the boot trade here are very well paid and gene- 

 rally occupy good class cottages of the better 

 order ; a strike is scarcely ever heard of ... 

 employers and employed appear to get on very 

 well together. There is no trade union here, 

 from time to time efforts have been made from 

 outside to establish one. There is sufficient 

 demand for labour that an unreasonable employer 

 would find his men leave him.' ' 



STRAW-PLAITING 



A second home industry, which still employs 

 a certain number of people in Buckinghamshire, 

 is the manufacture of straw-plait for hats and 

 bonnets. The manufacture first became import- 

 ant in Italy, Leghorn hats being still famous, 

 but it does not seem to have been introduced 

 into England until the i8th century, when the 

 French War stopped the importation of foreign 

 plait. The industry spread quickly in Bedford- 

 shire, Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire, where 

 the wheat-straw produced was the most favour- 

 able for English plait. In 1768 when Arthur 

 Young visited Dunstable, 1 the manufacture of 

 straw-plait was established, but had not grown 

 to much importance, basket-work being still the 

 chief industry of the neighbourhood. Probably 

 in the neighbouring county of Buckingham 

 there was then no straw-plaiting, but by the end 

 of the 1 8th century it had spread all over the 

 county. 



In 1813 lace and straw-plaiting were the 

 chief industries* of the county, occupying so 

 many women and girls that none of them 

 worked in the fields. 



When foreign plait was unprocurable, the Eng- 

 lish article was much used, but the large size 

 of the wheat-straws used made it very inferior to 

 the Italian plait. 1 To overcome this defect the 

 straws were split and the narrow ' splints ' used 

 instead of the whole straw. At first this process 

 was done by hand with a pen-knife, but it was 

 tedious and difficult to obtain uniformity in the 

 size of the splints. A straw-splitting machine was 

 then introduced, which greatly added to the suc- 

 cess of the industry. It is not certain who was 

 the original inventor, several stories existing as 

 to the first machine made. One of these, how- 

 ever, claims that the honour belongs to a Bucking- 



' Information given by Messrs. J. & E. Reynolds. 

 1 Si* Months' Tour, i, 1 6. 

 ' St. John Priest, Agr'u. Surv. of Bucks. 346. 

 1 Penny Cyclopaedia xziii. 



2 113 



hamshire man. In an account of straw-plaiting 

 written in 1822, the following story is given 4 : 



Our informant states that his father, Thomas Sim- 

 mons (now deceased), was residing when a boy, about 

 the year 1785, at Chalfont St. Peter's, Buckinghamshire, 

 and that when amusing himself one evening by cutting 

 pieces of wood, he made an article upon which he put 

 a straw and found that it divided it into several pieces. 

 A female who was present asked him to give it to her, 

 observing that if he could not make money of it, she 

 could. She had the instrument, and gave the boy a 

 shilling. He was subsequently apprenticed to a black- 

 smith ; and on visiting his friends, he found them 

 engaged in splitting straws with a pen-knife. Per- 

 ceiving that the operation might be better performed 

 by an apparatus similar to that which he had made 

 some time before, he then made some machines of 

 iron on the same principle. 



The straw-splitting machine does not seem to 

 have come into general use until about 1815. 



The most successful period of the manufacture 

 was during the French War, when foreign plaits 

 were prohibited. The latter were in many ways 

 superior to English plait, but various efforts were 

 made to improve its quality, especially by the 

 Society of Arts.* These efforts maintained the 

 industry for a considerable period and it was in a 

 flourishing condition in the middle of the iQth 

 century. Lipscomb, writing at that time,* says 

 that at Broughton ' the female population were 

 chiefly employed, formerly in lace-making but 

 more recently in platting straw or chip hats and 

 bonnets ' and at High Wycombc lace-making had 

 been almost entirely superseded by straw and chip 

 plaiting. 7 



Very good wages, for the time, were earned at 

 the trade. In 1813 women were able to earn 

 3<3J. a week, 8 but this was probably the highest 



4 Ibid. 109. 'Johnson, Universal Cyclopaedia. 



* Hist, of Bucks, iv, 77. ' Ibid, iii, 644. 



St. 

 346. 



John Priest, Gen. View of Agric. of Bucks. 



