THE GREAT STRIKE OF 1836

NOT unnaturally, the men were elated by such a signal victory, and they had scarcely begun to reap its fruit before they prepared for another campaign. They felt that a Union which could secure a large advance in prices would be no less successful in combating what they regarded as other abuses in the trade, and they soon evinced a disposition to re-model the system and usages upon which their employment and remuneration were based.

The employers close their ranks
The Potteries Chamber of Commerce
The customs of the trade attacked by the men

The division in the ranks of the employers, however, had become narrowed by the result of the strike. The pioneering minority were satisfied with that result, because it had brought about that equality in wages which was necessary to their own interests, after the concessions they had made and could not recall, and the opposition which the rest of the employers had shown to any sympathetic action with the Union had convinced them of the hopelessness of pursuing their efforts in that direction ; and as to the majority, they only saw in the strike and its result further justification of their attitude towards the Union which had brought it about. The signs of an impending attack by the Union upon the " usages " of the trade, finally closed the breach between the employers. They decided to meet Union by Union, and accordingly, in March 1836, they formed themselves into a body known as The Potteries' Chamber of Commerce. [footnote 1] Its professed object was to " protect the general interests of the trade," but its more proper purpose was indicated in an address which was issued to the members of its own body and to manufacturers not included in its membership, in which the members declared the folly of remaining inactive, and of making no combined effort to counteract the policy of the Potters' Union, which, they averred, " had destroyed the legitimate control of the masters over their business, and exposed them to constant and increasing annoyance."

Annual Hiring and "Good-from-oven" 

Both sides were then prepared for a conflict, which was waged on a broader issue than that out of which the workmen had just triumphantly emerged, and which involved practically every manufacturer of importance in The Potteries. The issue was not the simple one of the strike just concluded. The men had secured a liberal advance in wages, and now they determined to go further back and attack what they regarded as unfair fundamental conditions of employment, which had prevailed in the potting trade from the earliest days of its period of development. Their hostility was directed against two customs : firstly, that of an annual hiring-time ; and secondly, that which only credited the workman with payment for those articles which came in a perfect condition from the "biscuit-oven."


ANNUAL HIRING

A few words will be necessary to explain the operation of these customs, and the manner in which they affected the workmen. 

It would be difficult to say which of the two was regarded by them as the greater hardship. The "hiring agreement " bound the workman to the master for a whole year. He was engaged at Martinmas in one year, and could not leave his master's employment, except at the risk of imprisonment, until the following November, when the period of his service terminated. It was purely a custom, and there was no pretence on the part of the masters that it was reciprocal in character. An employer could, or did, discharge his workmen when he pleased, but no workman could leave his employment except at the general termination of all contracts in November. And not only was the period of service so fixed, but there could be no alteration of prices or conditions of labour except at Martinmas. Then and then only were prices subject to revision. It was against this system that the men rebelled. [footnote 2] 


"GOOD FROM OVEN"

The system of " good-from-oven " was their second grievance. It concerned two very important branches of the trade — the flat-pressers and the hollow-ware pressers. 

By this system, the men in those branches were only paid for the work which came in a perfect state out of the biscuit-oven. The master assumed that whatever ware came out in an imperfect state had come imperfectly from the hands of the workman who had fashioned it, and made no allowance for possible damage to the ware during its passage through the process of firing. 

It was chiefly during this ordeal of firing, and the accidents incidental to it, that the damage to the ware arose, but the risk of injury was not limited to this process. After it had left the hands of the workman who made it, the ware had to pass through several manipulations, and it was not until its arrival in the biscuit-warehouse, after being fired in the biscuit-oven, that the workman was allowed to inspect what was there put before him as the outcome of his labour. 

It was not always, indeed, that he was allowed even this satisfaction. The system was capable of many variations, at the caprice of the employer or his manager. An inquiry by the workmen was often unanswered ; a protest rewarded by dismissal. 

The system was defended by the employer on two grounds. He alleged, in the first instance, that it was a check upon the unskilfulness of the workman, and, as an alternative, pleaded that the workmen should share with the master the risk of loss. 

The first defence would have been valid if the test had been applied to the work immediately it had left the hands of the workman ; but the fact that the ware was only adjudged after it had passed through other hands and processes in which the risk of damage was notorious and admitted, rendered that defence altogether invalid. The workmen answered the second plea by saying that the loss should only be shared when the fault was apportioned. 

It was indeed obviously inevitable that such a system, upon which the workman was allowed no check, should have admitted the practice of many abuses. It was asserted by the men that at some manufactories no attempt was made by the employer to distinguish between bad and good ware, but that an average of bad ware was assumed, and deducted from the total amount ; and it was an admitted practice by the manufacturers to sell as " seconds " — that is, at a reduced price, as a damaged article — that for which they had refused to pay anything to the workman who made it. 

It is, at any rate, certain that the system allowed ample opportunities for injustice to be practised on the workmen ; and even if more restraint were conceded to the manufacturers than they claimed for themselves, the workmen would have had ground for objection against a system which gave such scope for abuse whilst offering an obvious means of reform. It has been thought necessary to dwell at some length upon this subject, for it will be found to form one of the chief causes of dispute in the trade, and it was at this day far from final settlement.

The employers refused to consent to any modification of the system of good -from -oven on the ground that they " could not allow the old usages of the trade to be broken up," and upon that point the two sides definitely joined issue. 

Attempt at negotiation on Annual Hiring 

Workmen proposal -  

But there were some attempts at negotiation upon the question of the annual hiring. The workmen drew up a draft agreement, submitted it to counsel, by whom it was approved, and then to the employers. It re-affirmed the custom of settling at Martinmas the prices for the year, and contained a clause providing that the period of employment could be terminated by a month's notice from either side. The employers rejected the proposed form of agreement, on the ground of the insertion of that clause. They maintained that it had only been inserted in order to enable the workmen "to make fresh demands, and to turn out upon those demands legally." The workmen replied that it had no other object than to be " a means of legal release when the bond ceased to be mutually agreeable," and that as the prices and terms were to be fixed for the whole year, no fresh demands could be made.

Employers proposal -

The employers, rejecting the proposals of the men, put forth their own. The first clause of their proposed agreement was :

"That the said (workman) agrees to be satisfied with what amount of work the said (employer) can fairly and reasonably find him during the said term." 

There was no variation in this clause from the provisions of the old form of agreement, but the workmen had already objected to it because they had experienced its hardship. 

Under its protection an employer could keep a workman tied to a situation which yielded him no more than one day's employment a week. If the workman left the situation, it would be at the risk of prosecution ; but even if his employer did not deem it worth while to so pursue him, he would be no better off, for he would be asked to present a written discharge to the next employer to whom he offered his services. 

The employers justified the clause in the following words: — 

"If what the master deems to be a fair and reasonable quantity of work is deemed otherwise by the workmen, the magistrates will define and decide between the two." 

But the workmen were not distinguished by their faith in the decisions of the magistracy in disputes between " master and servant " — as they were then respectively described in legal phrase — and they answered the employers by asking "why such a simple question could not be defined and decided in the terms of the agreement itself," and pointed out, reasonably and truly enough, that the employers were maintaining a system which, even if it admitted the remedy suggested, "would make an appeal to law a daily necessity," and so become practicably irremediable.

Employers propose new clause - 

The third clause in the employers' agreement was, however, entirely new. It was as follows : — 

" And that in case the said (master) shall at any time suspend the manufacturing of earthenware at the said manufactory, this agreement shall be thereupon suspended till the general work at such manufactory shall be resumed." 

This was rightly regarded by the workmen as an effort on the part of their masters to re-affirm with greater stringency the system of an annual hiring. The employers had rejected the proposal of the workmen because it provided for a termination of the service upon a month's notice, and now they calmly proposed that they should be allowed to dismiss their employees without any notice at all. There was this further difference, however, between the two proposals — that whereas the workman, when he left his employer after giving reasonable notice, would take his fate in his hands, and trust to all the vicissitudes of his class, his employer could close the entire manufactory, and dismiss all his hands, and then re-open business at pleasure, recalling to his service from any other employment which they might have obtained the men whose agreement, and livelihood, had been " suspended " meanwhile.

This monstrous provision was supported by the employers in these naive terms : - 

" The sole object of the suspension clause is to authorise the masters to suspend work unitedly, and the workman is expressly authorised to take employment elsewhere during the suspension. For the agreement to be suspended rather than to be cancelled is to the advantage of both parties, because in the first case a week's notice would bring all the men to work again ; but in the last much time would be required to hire all the men anew." 

Upon that it can only be said that each separate agreement entitled each separate manufacturer to suspend work as he pleased, and so provided both for free action in case of any individual dispute, or for a campaign in detail against the workmen. But even if the suspension clause were intended to be only set in force "unitedly" — upon which supposition the authorisation to the workman to find employment "elsewhere" merely attested the humour of the employers — it was an arrogation of a right denied to the workmen, who had proposed the reasonable operation of a month's notice. And as to the mutual " advantage " foreshadowed in the explanation given by the employers, the workmen not unnaturally asked where their advantage lay, in being liable to be suspended from work and wages, though not from servitude? 

The truth seems to be that the employers devised this stringent clause as an easy means of resisting any demands their men might make, or of imposing any fresh conditions themselves ; but they could not have been oblivious of the flagrant injustice involved in the means by which they wished to attain their end, and all the contingencies which they wished to avoid, or to provide for, would have been amply met by the sane proposal of their workmen that a month's notice should determine the period of employment. 

Failure of negotiations

The men were sufficiently determined in the first instance in their opposition to the annual hiring, in its old form, but they were incensed by this fresh effort to maintain it in its integrity by an added stringency. The manufacturers, through the Chamber of Commerce, intimated to their employees that on the 5th of September 1836 they would be prepared to enter into engagements for the ensuing year, to commence at Martinmas, November 11th, and they, at the same time, announced that the Suspension Clause would form part of the agreements which those engaged would have to sign. 

Employees cease work

This intimation found an immediate answer from the workmen. The employees at fourteen manufactories, numbering 3500, did not wait for Martinmas to come, but ceased work at once. This was a proceeding unexpected by the employers. Burke said that he could not draw up an indictment against a whole nation. 

The manufacturers could not contemplate, as a practical step, the issue of several thousand summonses against workmen who had broken their annual agreements by declining to wait for the fall of the knife at Martinmas. The whole body of manufacturers met, and took counsel. 

The fourteen manufacturers were urged to resist the demands of the men, and the Chamber of Commerce undertook to recompense them for the loss they sustained by their works being closed for the period that intervened between then and Martinmas — a period of nearly eleven weeks. It was fully expected that at Martinmas the number of employers whose workmen had ceased to work would be considerably reinforced, and that a united front of opposition could then be shown to their demands. This assumption was well founded. In the interim, the situation remained unchanged. No negotiations passed between the two sides. The fourteen manufactories remained closed, and the workmen were drawing upon the funds of their Union.

Employers close manufactories

Martinmas came, and sixty -four manufactories were at once closed. The total number of employees now out on strike amounted to nearly 20,000. 

The average amount of the weekly wages paid at the fourteen manufactories closed in September was £2560, and at the sixty-four manufactories which were affected at Martinmas, £11,238, making a total £13,798. 

At this time there were about 130 manufactories in The Potteries, so that only a little more than half of the total number were concerned in the strike, but inasmuch as they included the largest firms, and employed seven-ninths of the labour engaged in the trade, it will be seen that the stoppage of work involved practically the whole industry.



THE GREAT STRIKE OF 1836
Heroic struggle of the men 

There was no vacillation on the part of the masters in 1836. They proposed no conferences, nor suggested any compromise. 
The men were of like temper, and it was evident from the outset that the battle would be à outrance. The effect of such an almost complete stoppage in the staple trade of the district was to spread distress throughout The Potteries. 

The auxiliary trades, though not concerned in the dispute, shared in the disaster, and the shopkeepers had little need to keep open their shops. The funds of the Union only allowed of the distribution of five or six shillings per week to men having families dependent on them, and this fact alone gives a vivid idea of the privations which the potters endured for their cause. 

Un-married men could only receive three or four shillings a week, and the working women and children had no share whatever of the funds dispensed by the Union. 

Help from other Unions

It early became obvious to the leaders of the men that some help must be sought from outside, and appeals were made to many organised trades throughout the kingdom. In one instance, the appeal was conspicuously successful. 

The Trades Unionists of Sheffield lent the potters a sum of £2084, and collected £108, which they sent as a gift. This generous example was followed by Trades Unionists in other parts of the country. No less a sum than £3794 came as free offerings to the coffers of the potters, and the handsome loan from Sheffield was followed by other loans which amounted to nearly £2000. Altogether, financial assistance to the amount of £7000, of which about half was given and half lent, came to the potters from sympathisers who were totally unconnected with the potting industry. 

Even more gratifying, however, than the generous help of these disinterested outsiders was that which came to them from within their own ranks. Amongst the leaders of the men, and in their general body, were some thrifty ones who had put by what, in the expressive phrase of the district, is known as a " stocking-leg " — that article of apparel conveniently lending itself to the purpose of a purse. They had saved a little money to meet times of adversity, or to console a feeble old age, and when the day of common difficulty came they did not hesitate to refuse to accept the help to which they were entitled from the common fund, and live upon the resources which their thrift had provided them. Others went still further, and gave their little savings to the common fund. [footnote 3] 

Nothing could attest more than such facts as these the determination of the men in their struggle, and their honest conviction of the justice of their cause. But they were fighting a forlorn hope. No whisper of weakness had been heard from the employers, and the men saw the end in sight. Their courage and self - sacrifice had carried them far, but it was their financial resources that fixed the final limit to which they could go. And their resources were exhausted. 

PRIVATIONS OF THE POTTERS
Sacrifices by those on strike
Their destitution

There was not one of them that had not undergone great privations, many had already passed through weeks of absolute want, all of them saw starvation staring them in the face. In a week, their unity was destroyed, and with it their Union, for to distribute its funds was its only remaining function, and those funds were now gone. There was a stampede to fill the long vacant places, and manufactories re -opened rapidly, at first by dozens, then by twos and threes. 

And then there came a rally. The leaders of the men had not abandoned their leadership, but exhorted the remnant of the men to remain firm. At first, theirs was a voice crying in the wilderness, and they were answered by scoffs and reproaches. But they could point with pride to their own record of effort and sacrifice in the struggle, and the men reflected that they who had held out for so long, and suffered so much, might hold out and suffer a little longer, in the hope of snatching their cause from final defeat. 

"NO MORE CLOTHES TO PAWN"

At a time when half of the body of workmen had returned to their benches, and a total rout seemed imminent, a courageous band of several hundreds had marched to the pawnshops to pledge the whole of their worldly belongings upon which money could be raised, and had given the scanty result to the common fund. Little wonder that with such examples before them the rest should take fresh courage.

The action of the leaders did not achieve all that such devotion may have deserved, but it undoubtedly left to the workmen some result for their struggle. 

It was evident to the masters that the strike was not over. So far from the partial surrender of the workmen proving a weakness to the whole body, the faithful and courageous potters who still fought on had caused it to prove a weakness to the manufacturers. To the latter, the strike had been irksome and costly, and though they had locked their manufactories and gone to their villas, determined not to unlock their works until the men came, subdued, to ask for the gates to be thrown open, they reflected with impatience upon their idle capital and lost profits. 

And so, after the partial submission of the workmen many manufacturers still remained unaffected, and they could turn their eyes from the smoking ovens and busy yards of rival works, dotted here and there in their midst, to their own silent and idle manufactories with a watchman at the wicket Those employers, indeed, who had opened their gates to the deserting workmen had been guilty of the same disloyalty to their own class, although they had upheld the terms dictated by the whole body. They had hailed the surrender of their men as a victory for themselves, but had left the remainder of their fellow-employers exposed to the unexpected stand of the faithful Unionists who pawned their clothes for food, and starved when they had no more clothes to pawn.

The Betley Conference

Here, then, was a situation created for compromise. The masters wished for peace ; the men could hold out no longer. Neither side, however, would make any overture, and a suggestion of mediation came from outside. The outcome was that a conciliation meeting was held at Betley, under the presidency of Mr Twemlow, a county magistrate, and there terms of peace were arranged. 

So far as the men were concerned, their efforts were directed to minimising the effects of their defeat — for they knew their cause had lost. The meeting did not pretend to be an arbitration. It did no more than enable each side to state its case to a neutral ear, and, after the issue had been thus defined, the combatants came to terms themselves. 

The benevolent impartiality of the Chairman kept them in good temper whilst they " talked it out." The result of this rapprochement was the termination of the strike upon terms that were regarded by the men as little more than a complete defeat. For years afterwards, indeed, it was a bitter lament by the potters that union had brought them no advantages, and that they had fallen ignominiously in the great fight — long remembered — of the winter of 1836 and 1837. 

But really the men who had made the last stand had plucked a brand from the burning. If they had got all they had asked for they would indeed have won a remarkable victory, but it was absurd to regard as an " ignominious defeat" what was really a compromise conceding to the men important advantages, though giving them far from the full measure of their demands. 

The masters held to the hiring agreement, and it was retained, but with this important modification : that the employer guaranteed to his workman sixteen days work per month at least, and that, if from any cause the employer were prevented from finding the stipulated amount of employment, the workman had the power to dissolve the contract by giving a month's clear notice. 

This, surely, was a solid gain. Before the strike there was no agreement worth the name. An employer might prevent his workmen from doing a single day's work for any other employer during the run of the year's agreement, although he might not provide more employment, on the average, than one day's work a week. A workman dissatisfied with his employment, and desiring to better his position under another employer, had to bring to the latter his "discharge" from the employment of the master to whom he had been hired — otherwise there was no hope of obtaining a new situation. 

Just as in feudal times the serf was forbidden to roam beyond the limits of his native parish, but was tied to the land upon which he was born, so the working potter had to surrender the freedom of his labour to work in annual periods. 

THE PRICE OF PEACE

The concession obtained, therefore, of the right to ask for work every other day in the year (for that is what it amounted to), in default of which the workman was free to offer himself to any employer who would employ him for sixteen days in every month, was, as things were then, a valuable one.

Modification of "good-from-oven"

Again, the masters insisted upon retaining the system of payment by good-from-oven, but they consented that that system should undergo these important modifications : 

that all ware declared to be bad by the fault of the maker should be broken ; 
that all ware damaged otherwise than by the maker should be paid for ; 
and that the men should be allowed to draw on account, weekly, a sum equal to two-thirds of the value of the ware from their hands then on the premises, unfired. 

The workman had still to wait until the ware had come from the oven before it was credited to him, but there was one temptation the less to abuse the system in the promise of the masters that such ware as they declared to be bad and unsaleable should be destroyed ; the workman still had to accept the decree of the master as to what ware was spoiled by him, and what was spoiled by causes over which he had no control ; but for the first time the employer was induced to distinguish between the two. 

The principle was conceded, even though the practice of it might leave matters much as before. And, on the third point, the workman might claim some payment for his visible work, and not be compelled to go home on Saturday night with pockets more or less empty, to await the time when his work, already completed so far as he was concerned, should undergo a process with which he had absolutely nothing to do.

These, then, were the results obtained by the memorable strike of 1836. 

Return to work

On January 2Oth, 1837, the men returned to work. It was twenty-one weeks since those employed at the fourteen manufactories had struck, and ten weeks from the general strike at Martinmas. It is worthy of remark that during this industrial struggle, which was of far greater magnitude than any which had occurred in the potting trade, and which took place at a time when Trades Unions were regarded with aversion by the general public, and when a strike was looked upon as little better than a rebellion, no outrage upon the person or property of any manufacturer was made. Feeling ran high, and the struggle was a desperate one, but the workmen conducted it with a restraint highly creditable to them.

BREAK-UP OF THE UNION
Demoralisation and break-up of the Union 

A period of absolute demoralisation followed. The Union had collapsed like a house of cards, and the principles of Union were held in contempt. The men set no value upon the terms gained at the Betley Conference. They felt that they had been roundly beaten, and that their last state was even worse than the first. They predicted that the concessions announced, rather as an act of grace than as a price for peace, by their employers, would be found to bring them no advantage in practice, however satisfactory they might appear in theory. They felt that they had attempted too much, and the pendulum swung back to the other extreme, for they were cowed, and became indifferent. In this way they helped to fulfil their own predictions. 

The masters soon saw that they had to deal with men broken in spirit, disgusted at their failure, full of recriminations against each other, and dwelling with bitter resignation upon their own helplessness. The employers were not slow to take advantage of this mood of despair. There was no longer any Union, even amongst the workers of a particular branch ; but each manufacturer was left to deal with his throwers, pressers, oven-men, and the rest, as he desired.

The " concessions " made at the close of the strike became a dead-letter, and the workmen had soon reverted to the position they occupied before the strike began. 

The system of "good -from -oven" recovered its lost abuses ; 
the annual hiring gathered to itself again its old stringency and restrictions. 

The "Allowance System " crops up

Having re-established these two "systems "in their integrity, the masters proceeded to institute a third. The "allowance system" made its appearance. 

It was merely a reduction of wages, and the process was complimented by being described as a " system." It consisted in subjecting the wages of the workmen to the method adopted in fixing those of an apprentice. 

An apprentice was, in the first years of his probation, paid at the rate of a quarter of a journeyman's wages ; afterwards he received two-thirds — that is, eightpence for that for which a journeyman received a shilling. 

The masters said trade was bad, and proposed that the journeyman should " allow " twopence in every shilling.

Nominally, by a pleasing fiction, his wages remained the same, but actually he submitted to a reduction in his wages of a little over sixteen per cent. This was not the result of any combined action on the part of the employers, and did not receive the sanction of the Chamber of Commerce as an official body. 

In truth, that Chamber had, to a large extent, lost its occupation. It existed to combat, by organised effort, the organised demands of their men. But the workmen were no longer organised, and each manufacturer now dealt with his own workmen without reference to the general body of the trade. 

The " allowance system," therefore, came into existence gradually, but finally involved nearly the whole of the manufactories in The Potteries. And so matters went on for seven years. 

FOOTNOTES

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