Our Barlick workers have plenty of work in the new weaving sheds, we need to look at how the condition of their lives had changed and what the wages were. Ever since the advent of the putting-out trade the clothiers main complaint was lack of control over their workers. If the hand loom weavers had a good week and felt they had made enough money they would take a day off, perhaps work in the garden or during harvest go to a local farmer for better pay. There was also dishonesty. A good weaver could weave his piece and have some yarn left over from what the clothier had provided. Many of them saw this as their property because they had accumulated it by their own skill and would save it until they had enough to exchange for groceries or some other necessity. Unscrupulous small traders toured the textile districts and bought the 'ronge' or 'white iron' as it was called and there is good evidence this practice was rife in Barlick. Another flaw in the system from the manufacturer's point of view that in times of cloth shortage, when piece prices were high, the weaver was most likely to take what was known as 'Saint Monday' off, a long weekend. The dandy shops were the first move to getting this control and the new mills were the perfect solution. The workers could be locked in and made to work as hard and as long as the manufacturer could press them.
In terms of quality of life the weavers had lost their freedom and they resented this. Their income was steadier from mill work but the manufacturers constantly strove to hold wages down. The advent of the trades unions gave the workers some power but in the case of weaving it was many years before proper scales of wages were agreed. One factor that helped the manufacturers in their quest for lower wages was that most of the weavers were women and thus had less influence. Another was the concept of 'the family wage'. A major feature of the mills was that there was employment for young children. As late as the 1920s, schoolchildren in their last year at school who had a good education record could work half the day in school and the other half in the mill, they alternated between mornings and afternoons weekly. My mother started like this and many of my older readers will remember the practice. Mother always said she preferred school in the morning because she didn't have to get up so early! If a family had children of working age, the income of them all was often sufficient to buy a house. Emma Clark told me this was how her family afforded the move from Forester's Buildings to a new house on Gisburn Road in 1913. Some even built houses to rent and a shop on the end of the row. A good living!
A corner shop and two houses on Hill Street.
