MACHINERY, AND THE FEARS OF THE POTTERS

UP to the year 1845 the potting industry had remained almost completely unaffected by the scientific and mechanical improvements which had greatly modified some trades, and had revolutionised others. 

The whole range of mechanical science was almost solely represented in the manufacture of potting by the thrower's wheel — identical in mechanical principle, and practically so in form, with that used by the ancient Egyptians — and the turner's lathe. 

What contrivances had been introduced had been confined to the improvisations of some ingenious members of the trade, which was a sphere into which the engineer had not yet penetrated. These contrivances, moreover, had not succeeded, and the conviction grew in the minds of the potters that their industry, owing to the peculiar nature of the material employed, would remain a stranger to mechanical innovation. 

The introduction of machinery into the potting trade

In 1844 and 1845 that conviction began to be dispelled. In the summer of the former year, the news that a manufacturer had obtained a machine which would make toilet "paste-boxes" ran through the district, and, after the incredulity with which it was first received had given place to a realisation of the awful truth, sent a thrill of horror through the working potters.

The dreaded thing had come. More, it was said to do its work well. The potters spoke of " a new principle " having been established, and asked where it would end. If paste-boxes could be made by machinery, why not plates, cups, jugs, bowls, and every other article? The obvious answer, at that time, was that no machine had been contrived which would make them, but when the potters asked that question they asked it from the standpoint of morality. 

To them, machinery was an unholy and an accursed thing. They pointed to the starving populations of Lancashire and Yorkshire, and attributed their misery to the introduction of machinery into the cotton and woollen trades upon which they were dependent, and they drew the same moral from the stocking-frame workers of Derbyshire, and the weavers of Nottingham. 

Their imagination leapt to prophecy, and gloomy forebodings of streets crowded with unemployed and poorhouses full to overflowing, were indulged in. 

The employer (Mr Ridgway) who had introduced the machine for the manufacture of paste-boxes, a man widely respected, and occupying a prominent position in local publicity, pleaded that he had not taken the departure without " satisfying himself that it would not displace labour but would modify and increase it." 

An ominous reference, however, to the "whole agency of men, boys, and ways and means by which his arrangements would shortly be complete," was seized upon by the workmen as a text to illustrate the displacement of adult and skilled labour by boys and unskilled workmen which those "arrangements" would bring about. 

The paste-box machine seems to have been frightened by the scare it created, and modestly withdrew from public notice, and the potters breathed again. 

Their breathing-time, however, was not long. The little cloud of the pastebox machine gave place to a larger one.

It was announced that a machine had been invented which superseded the flat-presser, and that such a machine was about to be introduced into the potteries. It was no longer a question of paste-boxes and such trifling bric-a-brac, but the commonest articles of the trade, which were manufactured at every pottery in their hundreds of dozens each week, were to be made no more by the hands of the workmen, but by a mechanical monster which only required the presence of a woman or a child to turn out its hundreds of dozens a day. The news created what may truthfully be described as a panic. 

Reports came pouring in from the out-districts saying that the machine was known there, that it was certain to succeed, that each alteration was an improvement, and that it had given practical proof of its power. It could make six hundred dozens of plates in one day. The potters in the out-districts had written to warn their more numerous fellows in Staffordshire of the impending evil, but it was already upon them. The flat-pressers, one of the largest branches of the trade, were particularly threatened, but the whole trade apprehended the general danger.

FEAR OF THE POTTERS
Alarm of the workpeople & some employers

The machine was first introduced at the manufactory of Mr Mason, but it was known that other manufacturers were only waiting to see with what degree of success it worked to decide upon its adoption at their own works. 

And among the ranks of the employers were some who dreaded the introduction of machinery as a step in the dark for themselves, and who perhaps would have been relieved to feel that their old methods of manufacture, which had sufficed so far, would not be superseded by a revolution to which their minds were not yet accustomed. 

They gave their word to their workmen that they would not introduce machinery unless they were compelled, in self-defence, to do so ; and whether a fear of commercial consequences, or a humanitarian motive were behind that promise, the men felt that they could rely, in their opposition, upon the active support of some manufacturers, and the passive help of others. 

They made a direct appeal, in fact, to the interests of the smaller manufacturers, who, they asserted, would inevitably be left behind in the race of steam by those manufacturers who had a large capital at their command, and the workmen asked them to join with labour in common cause against a common enemy. 

It is undoubted that this view of the matter impressed those upon whom it was urged. The cost of the machinery so far introduced was, indeed, trivial enough, and could not have been beyond the means of the most unpretentious manufacturer, but they reflected that when once the first step had been taken, Capital would make the pace. The men, therefore, were in an alliance with interest and sentiment on the part of the manufacturers — the former quality being possessed by those of small financial resources, and the latter divided amongst the conservative members of a trade singularly conservative in its methods, and those — though it is to be feared, a very small minority — whose views were tinctured by any appreciation of the effect that the introduction of machinery would have upon the men. 

Looked at in the light of later days, when the tendency is one of impatience at older methods, and when a feverish succession of mechanical improvements make the methods of yesterday out-of-date, the opposition of the workman, no doubt, seems strangely hopeless; and, regarded from the standpoint of a broader conception of social and political economy, their talk of " a new principle " and their appeals to morality, equally no doubt seem childishly narrow ; but it must be remembered that at the time of which we write, the stage coach still performed its daily journeys in many parts of the country, and the lines of railway laid down could be measured by a few score miles. The potters, therefore, fought an element unfamiliar to them, which they could not look at in perspective, but saw towering over them, threatening and strange.

Turned to the Union

They turned to their Union to avert the danger. The Central Committee called together meetings of every lodge, "for the purpose of taking into consideration the best means of avoiding the evil which was about to be entailed upon them," and appealed to every potter "to use all legal and constitutional means within his power to obstruct the introduction of these principles into his trade, which must inevitably, if allowed to proceed, bring beggary and starvation on himself and his family."

Perhaps an adequate idea of the gravity of the situation, as it appeared to the Union and its members, is afforded by the fact that what may be called an Act of Indulgence was passed for the benefit of their fellow -workmen who were not in the Union. They pointed out to their brethren that this was no trifling struggle in which they were engaged, and not a question of higher wages or shorter hours, but one of the "conservation of their lives and homes." They magnanimously refrained from calling them any hard names for not having joined the Union, forgot all the quarrels of the past, and asked that all should join hands. The appeal was not in vain, and the Union grew in strength. Meetings of potters were held all over the district, and the Central Committee was everywhere active. The outcome of the agitation was that it was determined to raise a fund of £5000, by eight levies of half-a-crown per man, to combat the evil.

Fund to purchase land in America
Surplus labour and emigration projects

The application of this fund, however, was peculiar. It was to be devoted to the purchase of land in America, and the emigration of the surplus labour of The Potteries which it was predicted would follow from the introduction of machinery ! 

The levy was at once made, and it was determined that at the payment of the first instalment the employees of the manufacturer who had introduced the machine should leave their employ. Meanwhile, amidst all this hubbub, and before the first instalment had come in, the announcement was quietly made that Mr Mason had withdrawn the obnoxious machine. The effect upon the workmen was that of magic. The second and third levy were paid with enthusiasm, and the campaign, having secured such an unexpected victory, was carried on as a warning to others.

Here we may pause for a moment to say that, in one respect particularly, the gloomy predictions of the men as to the results which would follow the introduction of machinery have been justified by time. The movement was, of course, doomed to failure from the first, and fruitless in the end. 

The early victories that they obtained were merely over the first waves of the advancing tide, which afterwards, in the " seventies " and " eighties," rolled in resistlessly. A generation was then required to adjust the trade to its altered conditions, and after the first shock, it recovered its equilibrium without having tottered to its fall, as the workmen of the " forties " feared and predicted ; but although at first little labour was displaced, and increased production alone was the result, yet as machinery became more general, the amount of labour employed ceased to maintain its former proportion to the amount of production, and the altered conditions and prices did not leave the worker in as good a position as a wage-earner as when he made fewer articles by the older methods. All that was to be foreseen, and was inevitable. 

WOMEN WORKERS AND MACHINERY

But the particular prediction to which we refer as having come so unhappily true, was that which related to the effect that machinery would have upon the women workers.

The men were concerned to think that their labour would be displaced — they were no less concerned at the substitution of their labour by that of their wives and daughters, but their concern was on a higher plane of consideration. 

It is exemplified in the following passage, taken from an address issued by the Central Committee : 

" To maidens, mothers, wives, we say, machinery is your deadliest enemy. Of all the sufferers by mechanical improvements, you will be the worst. It is a systematised process of slow murder for you. It will destroy your natural claims to home and domestic duties, and will immure you and your toiling little ones in over-heated and dusty shops, there to weep, and toil, and pine, and die." 

It is unquestionable that whatever has been the general effect of machinery upon the potting industry, its saddest result has been produced upon the women of the district. Before the introduction of machinery, the proportion of women to the total labour engaged was comparatively small ; and subsequent to the introduction of machinery, it rose to nearly one half; and as the women workers increased in number, so the character of their occupation became more and more unfit to their sex. 

In certain departments machinery has banished men, and demanded women, and the demand has been supplied, but at the cost of both men and women ; for, whilst the former have suffered in wage-earning power, the latter, though new avenues of employment have been opened to them, have suffered no less in the moral and physical It will now be necessary to retrace our steps for a few months. 

The movement against machinery had become linked with another movement, which had its origin a short time before, and which furnishes one of the most interesting chapters in the history of the Staffordshire potter. In the first years of the existence of the new Union, trade had flourished, and the potters had, at two succeeding Martinmases, signed their hiring agreements on improved terms. No strike was necessary to enforce this — trade was brisk, there was a competition for labour, and the bidding favoured the men. Then trade fell off, and the unemployed became more numerous. 

EMIGRATION

The members of some families had emigrated to the United States of America, and they wrote letters to those they had left behind telling of a land of liberty and plenty, and giving exasperating details of the sumptuousness of their daily fare. 

Each writer desired to be remembered to friends in The Potteries, and appealed to them to leave the old and worn-out country, and to go to the younger world across the sea. Then some of the letters were published in their paper, and became a regular weekly series. The publication of these letters formed the germ of a movement which afterwards grew to extraordinary proportions, and transformed the Potters' Union into an Emigration Society.

William Evans 

Its inception, however, was not due to the Union, but originated in the abstract speculations of one of their number — William Evans. 

He was a man of extraordinary energy, and of high moral principle, and exercised a predominant influence in the councils of the Union. He at first urged emigration in the abstract, as a desirable and proper action under suitable conditions, but the idea grew until it mastered him, and he became the apostle of emigration. He convinced himself that they must look to emigration as the panacea for all the ills of the working potters, and, unfortunately, soon convinced the Union, of which he was so prominent a member. 

The problem he saw was that there were more workers than work, and his solution was that each unemployed member of the trade should be deported to America. Then, when they had depleted their ranks, those left behind would find themselves at an enhanced market value, and those who had gone away would have gone to a better land, where the others would follow in course of time. 

In theory, no doubt, the scheme was perfection itself, but many good theories are notoriously bad in practice, and, in painting his picture of an idealised future, to be realised by emigration, Mr Evans exaggerated the artistic effects of light and shade. He painted in broad lines, and used two colours — white and black. With the former he irradiated the West ; and the old country, and particularly the Staffordshire Potteries, were immersed in the gloom of the latter. This Rembrandtesque effect was viewed by the Executive Committee of the Union, and they pronounced it perfect.

Formation of "The Potters' Joint-Stock Emigration Society " 

Thus sanctioned by the Union, the idea developed into a plan, and in May 1844 a Society, called the Potters' Joint Stock Emigration Society, was formed, and registered according to Act of Parliament. 

Upon the foundation of this Society, the details of the scheme were disclosed to the potters generally. It was proposed to purchase, in one of the Western States of the North American Union, twelve thousand acres of land, payment for which should be made by instalments extending over a period of ten years. 

As soon as the funds of the Society were sufficient to pay the first instalment on the land, the land would be divided into allotments of twenty acres each, and five acres of each allotment would be cultivated, and buildings erected thereon. 

Then lotteries were to take place amongst the shareholders of the Society, and the successful ones would be sent out to their allotment, and all the expenses of their migration paid. The lotteries, thereafter, would be continued until the colonisation of the twelve thousand acres was completed, and then more land would be bought, and the operations of the Society continued indefinitely. 

The necessary capital was to be raised by shares of one pound each, and the whole operations of the Society were to be restricted to members of the potting trade, who alone were eligible as shareholders, with the exception that, at the commencement of the colony, any individual, of whatever trade, would be allowed to purchase an allotment at the original value. This provision was designed to encourage the early settlement of the land, and would not be acted upon when the colony had fairly started. 



"TO MAKE LABOUR SCARCE"

The Union proclaimed their object, in inaugurating the Emigration Society, to be that of " making labour scarce " in The Potteries. For six months they had been paying £70 a week as "unemployed pay" to unemployed members of the Union, and still the unemployed increased. There was no intention of ceasing to give this relief from the funds of the Society, but they had asked themselves where it would end, and they came to the conclusion that the unemployed condition of so many of their members was merely the symptom of a derangement of the industrial situation — surplus labour. 

They therefore had determined to go to the root of the matter, and they looked to the Emigration Society as offering a better application for the funds of the Union than their payment to its unemployed members.



THE POTTERS' EMIGRATION SOCIETY

The scheme, then, was fairly launched, and public meetings of potters were held, at which resolutions were passed to support the Emigration Society. In a few weeks four hundred individual shares were taken out, and various branches of the Union devoted some of their funds to the purchase of collective shares. Any individual engaged in the potting trade, whether a member of the Union or not, was an eligible shareholder, and many non-Union potters became shareholders.

"too novel"

The scheme, however, was too novel and far-reaching to command universal approval. A proposal to increase wages and shorten hours would have appealed to the general mass as a simple and straightforward movement which they could easily understand, but their breath was taken away by a proposal to deplete The Potteries on such a wholesale scale. 

The population was essentially indigenous. They were engaged in a trade which was native to their soil, and into which no outsiders ever penetrated. 

All their associations and interests were centred in the district in which they were born and had always lived, and the Emigration Society seemed to them an organisation which would snap all ties of family and home. 

And, apart from this recoil of sentiment, the plan seemed to many of them to be necessarily impracticable, because it was bold, new, and so desperately heroic. 

It was too plausible to be trusted — too extensive to be possible. And so, from its first inception, it begot partisanship. 

Its adherents had all the advantages of argument on their side, and could appeal triumphantly to the contrast presented by the state of affairs as realised at home, and the alluring prospect which opened out to them over the sea, but they were answered by blank and obstinate incredulity. 

On the part of the promoters there was no lack of enthusiasm. In their imagination they had constructed another Utopia. They saw their little straggling colony grow into a village, and then into a town, with wide streets, and imposing public buildings — a little civilised state set in the midst of beautiful country, peopled by an industrious community which would merely be a large family ; and, in their speculations on the future development of their colony, they only stopped short at that point in its progress when they would have reverted to the old conditions which they were leaving behind in England, and would have evolved, from the same elements of human nature, a state of society like that which they were about to forsake.

Feargus O'Connor's alternative scheme rejected 

And so, in the glow of their enthusiasm, they laughed to scorn the objections of the unconverted, and the fears of the timid. They encountered some opposition from outside their own ranks. 

Feargus O'Connor, the champion of the Chartists, and subsequently Member of Parliament for Nottingham, came down to the district to expound a rival plan for home colonisation, but he was laughed at by the supporters of the Emigration Society, and unheeded by those who were opposed to it. 

The former reflected that they were going to buy land in America at five shillings an acre, and thought it a better bargain than Mr O'Connor's estimate of £5O an acre for land in England ; the latter thought that if they left their home at all, they might as well leave it for America as Lincolnshire or Essex. 

So Mr O'Connor went away again, leaving behind him little more than a further excuse of irreconcilability on the part of the few who actively opposed the emigration scheme, from motives of perversity rather than of principle.

TO FIGHT MACHINERY
The introduction of machinery gives an impetus to emigration

At this juncture, when the scheme had made little progress beyond that which came from the first impetus of its promotion, the advent of the paste-box machine and Mr Mason's more sensational innovation was like a gale of wind to a ship becalmed. 

Nothing could have been more opportune for the emigration enthusiasts. It is, of course, impossible to say definitely, but the probability certainly is that the emigration movement would have languished to an early death but for the fortuitous circumstance of the introduction of machinery. 

That happy chance was at once turned to good account by the emigrationists. They had pointed out already the growing evil of surplus labour, but now they thundered out this unexpected fulfilment of their prophecies. If labour was too plentiful before, what would the state of affairs be now that machinery had come to make it almost unnecessary? 

Their appeals and arguments acquired a tenfold force from this timely development of the situation, and those appeals found, in the genuine fears of the potters at the introduction of machinery, a sympathetic response. And so the £5000 fund was started, which was to be invested in the funds of the Emigration Society, to purchase twelve thousand acres of land, and to provide for the emigration thereto of all those potters who might leave their employment as a protest against the introduction of machinery. 

 Strikes condemned : Emigration the order of the day

Resolutions were passed by the different lodges, declaring in so many words that machinery could only be fought by emigration. Thenceforward the movement against machinery was merged into, or lost in, the larger scheme of emigration. Strikes were condemned as useless expedients, wages and hours of labour became questions of little moment, and the ordinary functions of the Potters' Union were forgotten or neglected in the consideration of an all-absorbing enterprise.

previous: Revival of Unionism in the "Forties"
next: Emigration - and after