The South Staffordshire Examiner. — 1874-09-05 (Wednesbury, West Midlands, England)

VIII. it seas en. acted that master carpenters, masons,brieklayers, tilers, glaziers, join rs, and other employers of such skilled workmen should give to each of their journeymen—if no drink was allowed-61 a day for the summer half of the year, and sd. a day for the winter half, while the common labourers or unskilled workmen received Oil. a day for the summer half of the year, and 3 1. a day for the winter half. Coming down to a much later date, we find it enacted in the reign of George 111., in 1768, "That the hours of working tailors within the city of Loudon and five miles thereof, shall be from six o'clock in the morning to seven o'clock in the evening, with an interval of one hour only for refreshment; and that their wages shall be any sum not exceeding Is. lid per diem, except during a general mourning, when, for a month, they shall not exceed Is. 713. per tiem. Masters giving, or journeymen accepting, higher than these statutory wages, may he sent to the House of Correction." One can hardly imagine the British Parliament, in the year of grace 1874, trying 40 regulate wages in this fashion. To attempt to do so would simply be to sound the tocsin for a general revolution, and the overthrow of any Government that sought so far to restrain the liberty of the subject. In , those days strikes were unknown, or nearly so, because workmen had not the personal independence necessary , to take so decided a step against capital, and the strength of the two great interests that form the basis of industry was not no evenly balanced as they are in our own day. When the men of a former generation were throwing off the shackles that bound them—in 1 many cases body and soul—to their employers, strikes ' were perhaps necessary. But they were also much more perilous to those who took part in them, and they were seldom undertaken without due premeditation and great provocation. As labour became more equal to cope with capital, strikes became more and more frequent, until within recent years, the very mention of nay alteration in the nide of wages has become almost synonymous for a strike or a lock-out. In 1810 a great strike of cotton spinners took place, with a Tiow of bringing up to the level of the Manchester list the wages of spinners employed outside that city. Thirty thousand persons were idle for four months, and then returned to their employment, not only without the desired advance, but with a comiderable reduction cf wages. Another great strike took place in Manchester in 1829, arising oat of the price to be paid for labour when the large-mnle spinning machine was substituted for the one formerly employed. Like too many others that have since occurred, this strike was accompanied by a riot and murder, and after a loss of £250,000 iu wages the spinners returned to work at a reduction on the wages previously paid, and having undergone almost incredible hardship end misery. In Ashton and Staley. bridge another strike arose on the same occasion, and 30,000 cotton workers 'were idle for ten weeks. In 1836 there was a strike of srinners in Preston. Upwarde of 8,000 persons were out of employment for 13 weeks, and as it was the winter time intense snifering took place, not a few dying of absolute starvation. The monetary loss by the strike was estimated at £107,196. Another strike took place in Preston in 1833, when 17,000 persons were idle for 36 weeks. They returned to work without the advance of 10 percent. for which they had struck, and after incurring a loss of over half a million sterling. A large strike of amalgamated engineers took place in 1852, but, after grout hard,hip and loss the strike terminated by a resumption of work on the old terms. In a paper read by Dr. Watts before the British Association, in 1861, the folloning strikes are mentioned : Name of town. No. of hands. Weeks on Total strike. loss. lb 29 6 3 6 50 28  Mr. Lowe arrived in town on Sunday morning f rem Norway, where the right hon. gentleman has been sojourning for a month.