A HISTORY OF LANCASHIRE 



and in 1844 was formed the Northern Counties Association ot Operative 

 Spinners, who assigned inequality of wages as the cause of their combination. 

 They claimed that the object of their union was to secure fair reward of 

 their labour, putting an end to all differences between employers and employed, 

 if possible without having recourse to strikes, and also to secure the enforce- 

 ment of the Factory Acts and their amendment if necessary.*" 



By the end of the fifties it is important to note that the weavers and 

 other operatives employed in the manufacture of cotton had associated them- 

 selves into large societies of this character, such as the North Lancashire 

 Power Loom Weavers' Association, founded in 1858. The origin of this 

 league was admittedly ' The tyranny to which the men were forced to submit 

 from the defenceless position of the trade after the " great " lock-out of 

 1853-4.'"* - Its confessed object was — 



To keep up the present rate of wages, to know when to ask for an advance, to resist 

 any attempt at reduction when the state of trade will not justify the same, ... to 

 prevent one employer paying less than another for the same amount and quality of work 

 performed, and to render assistance to strikes when such become necessary and cannot be 

 evaded, and also to members who may be made victims through furthering the objects of 

 the Society, and for insuring a certain sum of money at the death of its members.*'" 



By the sixties nearly every imaginable trade and occupation had its 

 society for the protection of its members and for the furthering of their 

 rights."" The detailed object of the North of England Amalgamated Associ- 

 ation of Beamers, Twisters, and Drawers which was established in 1866 was, 

 like that of the Associated Spinners and Weavers, ' To keep the present state 

 of wages up to the standard list, to resist attempts to reduce the same, . . . 

 and the redressing of any grievances between the employers and employed.' *" 



By the seventies the working man's cause had sufficiently triumphed 

 to place him beyond the reach of any danger either to his social or financial 

 welfare. The two systems of trade unionism and co-operation were as lions in 

 the path to guard him effectually from the onslaughts of capital. The main 

 social movement of the close of the century was towards the better housing 

 of the working classes and for the workman's more efficient education. 



The author of the History of Co-operation deplores the comparative failure 

 of the Mechanics' Institutes,*" which had been founded with such enthusiasm 

 in the thirties. But a second wave of impulse, started by the disquieting 

 reports of foreign trade competition, swept over the country in the eighties, 

 and as the result of the investigations of a royal commission in 1882-4, 

 many technical schools were started in the industrial centres of Lancashire. 



Another commission in the eighties took evidence upon the housing of 

 the poor, and out of all Lancashire selected Liverpool alone as a place where 

 much reform was, in this particular, urgently needed. The 2,500 ' Courts' 

 occupying a strip of 4 miles along the Mersey, containing 14,500 houses 

 constructed before 1846 and largely occupied by poor Irish, were condemned 

 as highly conducive to the persistent fostering of infectious diseases, and to 

 the high mortality which prevailed in Liverpool. The corporation received 



*" Trade Unions Commission, App. to Eleventh and Final Rep. p. 72, No. xxvi 

 «' Ibid. 74, No. xxx. «3 ibij 



"' Ibid. On pages 316-29 of this Report may be seen tables of all the trade societies within the know- 

 ledge of the commissioners. Of these nearly fifty appertain to Lancashire industries. 



"' ^'°'^- App- 68' ^"''- "' Holyoake, Hist, of Co-operation, n, 261. 



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