The Staffordshire potter;

Front matter

Cordull University Library

3 1924 001 651 193

QJarncU HtttogtHitg 2Iibrarg

Chapter I

The artistic and industrial development'of the potting trade in the eighteenth century — Masters and workmen in pre-Trades Union days — The first Potters' Union — The strike and collapse of 1825 — Robert Owen's first visit — The Union of 1833 — Its praiseworthy objects — Co-operation of masters and men to chepk competition — Opposition of the main body of employers — The strike of 1834 — Victory of the Union ......

Chapter II

The employers close their ranks — The Potteries Chamber of Commerce — The customs of the trade attacked by the men — " Good-from-oven " and Annual Hiring — Failure of negotiations— The great strike of 1836-37 — Heroic struggle of the men — Help from other Unions — Sacrifices by those on strike — Their destitution — The Betley Conference — Demoralisation and break-up of the Union — The "Allowance System " crops up . . . . . .27

Chapter III

Revival of unionism in 1S43 — TTie Potters^ Examiner started — Guerilla warfare — Unionism in out-potteries — The "muffin" becomes a "twiffler"— The Truck Act evaded — Lack of uniformity in working and selling prices — The " Allowance System " abolished — " Good-from-oven " again 47 vi CONTENTS

Chapter IV Page

The introduction of machinery into the potting trade — Alarm of the workpeople — Surplus labour and emigration projects — William Evans— "The Potters' Joint-Stock Emigration Society" — Feargus O'Connor's alternative scheme rejected — The introduction of machinery gives an impetus to emigration^ — Strikes condemned: Emigration the order of the day . . • ■ • ■ -63

Chapter V

The Five Thousand Pounds Fund — The Emigration Scheme in operation — Pioneers for America — Funds come slowly in — " Pottersville, U.S.A." — Dissensions in the Union — Rival emigration schemes — The functions of the Union forgotten — Land purchased in Wisconsin — -"The Scourge" makes its appearance — Flagging faith in emigration — Proposed " Potters' Store" — Dissensions at home and in Wisconsin — Collapse of the emigration movement — The Union buried in its ruins — Employers' efforts to advance selling prices — Neglected opportunities by the Union — Reductions in wages — Disorganisation of the men . . . .78

Chapter VI

Trades Unions and the Legislature — Their general growth — Revival of Unionism in the Potteries — The Potter^ Examiner (1863) — The lock-out of 1865 — The last of Annual Hiring — Industrial Arbitration — The Potteries Board of Arbitration (1868) — " Good-from-oven" before the Board — Constitutional effort to abolish it — Opposition of the employers — Workmen's continued efforts to alter "trade usages" — The Board of Arbitration in danger — Preparing for a strike — " Good-from-oven " re-affirmed . 106

Chapter VII

A period of prosperity — Workmen's wages advanced (1871-2) — The wave gradually subsides — The employers appeal for a reduction in wages — The "selling-price" doctrine examined

CONTENTS vii

— Its injustice to the workmen — The Arbitration of 1877 — Award against the employers — The Umpire's reasons — The effect of the award : Increase of machinery — "Compensation for disturbance " to the workmen . . . .142

Chapter VIII

The employers appeal again — Lord Hatherton, Umpire (1879) — Selling prices again — Incidents of the Arbitration — Difficulties of the workmen — Increase of trade, but decrease in selling prices — Award against the men — " Lord Hatherton's Penny" — General effect of the award . . . 160

Chapter IX

The workmen try to get their pennies back — The Brassey Arbitration (1880) — The workmen fight the selling-price doctrine— The Umpire sympathises with them — Difficulties of Arbitration — Verdict against the men— They are angry with Arbitration — The Board broken up — The men prepare for a strike — Their leaders endeavour to restrain them — A scheme of arbitration suggested — The strike of 1881 — Defeat of the men . . . . . .177

Chapter X

Attempts to reconstruct the Board — Apathy of men and masters — Difficulties in reviving the Board — Weakness of the workmen's unions — The Manufacturers' Association — Their attitude to uniformity of selling prices . . .201

Chapter XI

Minor Disputes before the new Board — Manufacturers take action to raise selling prices — Failure to agree — The workmen ask : "Will you agree to let us coerce you?" — Scheme to raise selling prices and wages — The employers reject the offer — A reduction in wages "imperatively called for" — The workmen appeal for an advance — The masters proscribe viii CONTENTS

the workmen's advocate — The last of The Potteries Board of Arbitration — An informal court created — The employers object to the workmen's arbitrator — The Arbitration of 1891 — Its negative result — Arbitration has had its day — Lock-out and strike of 1892 — Continual decline in selling prices — The American tariffs— Proposal of the American Potters — New schemes of trade organisation — An idea strikes the employers — Proposal to combine with their workpeople — Hope for a new era ......

Epilogue

An unfulfilled prophecy — The Masters'and Workmen's Alliance — The "solemn compact" signed — The movement collapses — The strike of 1900 — The Duchess of Sutherland intervenes — Amicable settlement of the dispute — Five per cent, advance — Co-operation between Master and Man — Objections to the scheme — The scheme examined — Its ethics and its economics— A fair profit and a living wage — The necessity of the Staffordshire Potter — And his opportunity — What will he do with it ? .

ON THE DANGEROUS PROCESSES IN THE POTTING INDUSTRY. By The Duchess OF Sutherland .....

APPENDICES

I. W^es and Hirings in Olden Times

II. The Use of Machinery and its Effect on Wages

III. The Wages of Potters

IV. The Weakness of their Unions V. Where and how the Workers live .

Prologue

There is a chain of towns in North Staffordshire, stretching some five or six miles from Longton at the South of the chain to Tunstall at the North, which together produce nine-tenths of the earthenware manufactured in the United Kingdom ; and more than half their population of a quarter of a million is more or less directly engaged in, or concerned with, the industry which has procured for the chain of towns the name of "The Potteries." That comprehensive designation was originally bestowed upon them from outside, and though in course of time it became accepted by the inhabitants of the district — to whom the names of Longton, Fenton, Stoke, Hanley, Burslem, and Tunstall, had an individual and sufficient significance — there still lingers in the minds of the people of " The Potteries " a parochial resentment of the hasty generalisation which could not stop, or stoop, to discriminate between municipal boundaries, but merged the identity of each unit into one colloquial, though undeniably convenient, name for all.

Sheffield would have successfully resisted any attempt to describe it as "The Cutleries"; Northampton had acquired an honoured place in history A before the circumstance of its manufacture of boots could have filched its good name, and substituted one less euphonious ; and the cluster of towns in the south-east corner of Lancashire, whose chief industry has given to Manchester the proud title of Cottonopolis, and enabled her to carve her way to the sea, still preserve their separate identity as Burnley, Bury, or Blackburn, and have escaped the degradation of being lumped together as "The Spinneries." And as to that quarter of the county of Nottingham where Welbeck, Thoresby, and Clumber cluster together in unwonted opulence, it merely exhibits, by accepting the bantering alias of "The Dukeries," that gracious condescension which is the prerogative of conscious superiority, and not a single strawberry leaf in the neighbourhood droops at the familiarity.

One other district in England has suffered the injustice which has been done to Hanley and Burslem and their sister towns. At the other end of the county of Stafford lies a manufacturing and mineral-producing district as uninviting to the eye as that in the North, and travellers who have returned from those remote regions have spoken of their visit to the " Black Country." Yet even here Wolverhampton emerges with proud distinctness from the surrounding darkness ; — but Longton and Tunstall, what and where are they?

There are legends to the effect that in the days of stage coaches, those that ran from London to Liverpool and Chester regularly stopped at Burslem and Stoke, and changed their horses ; and it is conceivable that the travellers who passed by the smoking potters' ovens — then surrounded by pleasant ■fields, and now by other potters' ovens — inquired and learned that they were in Burslem, where Josiah Wedgwood lived and worked, or in the town of Stoke, upon the River Trent. But the main iron highways of to-day avoid "The Potteries," and it lies from the path of the travellers who go from London to the North, in an "isolation" that may be " splendid " for the travellers, but is regretted by its inhabitants as the legacy of the cupidity and stupidity of some of their land-owning predecessors. And so, to the Man in the Street, " The Potteries " is a place "somewhere in the Midlands," and if you ask him for a more precise location, he will tell you that it is " part of the Black Country " ; and thus this laxity of geographical expression perpetrates a fresh injustice to the small chain of towns in the North — or to the longsuffering cluster in the South ? — of the county of Stafford. But should you come across a man in the street who really knows "The Potteries," and something about it, you will hear that it is a strange place where men fight dogs — and, in truth, Americans have descended upon "The Potteries," asking which was the veritable house in the salubrious quarter of Tinkersclough where a certain ill - authenticated encounter occurred, and perhaps have found local guides — anxious to turn an ill-wind to comparatively honest account, at trifling expense of imagination and sacrifice of scruple — to show them ; but assuredly have found many houses in Tinkersclough.

But it is to be feared that there are others who remain in the outer darkness, and have not even heard of that legendary hero, " Brummy " — (a name which suggests that, viewed from the distance of Fleet Street, Birmingham too may be geographically mixed up with the Black Country and The Potteries) — nor of his canine antagonist ; and by such " The Potteries " may never have been consciously assigned to any more precise location' than is allotted to Utopia. But lately, special correspondents have gone down from London to Tinkersclough and its environs, and have written special articles in their newspapers concerning the men and women and children who work in the potteries, and certain evils of lead-poisoning which they have long borne, and others have just discovered, which articles have led in turn to questions and even debates in Parliament, and these newspaper articles and Parliamentary debates may have stimulated geographical research. But at any rate they have quite overshadowed the legend of the Man and the Dog, and given "The Potteries" a new notoriety, and certainly have dispelled any lingering ideas which may have associated it with Utopia.

It is with the industrial struggles of the working potters in this district that the following pages are concerned. The author has no better claim to tell their story than that the materials which supply it have been peculiarly accessible to him ; but whilst he cannot pretend to have made any deeper study of the industrial and economic questions to which it is related than that made by anyone who endeavours to follow the drift of the chief movements of his own time, he hopes that the book may be of some interest to the general reader on the ground of at least an equal endeavour ; and he can only ask for the indulgence of any industrial experts into whose hands the book may fall, in the hope that they will be able to winnow some grain from the gleanings he has gathered from a corner of that field in which they have reaped their harvest.

But there are two obvious divisions in the class of general readers who may be induced to read the book : those who may look in it for some corroboration of their own views of the malign influence exercised by Trades Unions upon " trade " — by which "capital" is meant — and those who, sympathising with the efforts of Trades Unions, may hope to find in it some justification of their faith, or who, living in a day when political economy (which theorised on the inevitability of effects produced by mutable conditions) has given place to a broader social science (which challenges the inevitability, and investigates the causes of those conditions, and leaves to statesmanship the task of changing them) take an interest in the labour question merely as a branch of the social problem.

The days of cavilling at the existence of Trades Unions are over, and the working-classes of the kingdom are as free in the management of their industrial affairs as they are in the enjoyment of political power. One condition could not exist without the other; and the desire for, and gradual acquirement of the one, inevitably brought corresponding progress in the parallel path. Both movements — if they can really be distinguished — were warmly championed and hotly opposed ; but though a generation has been born which found Trades Unions legalised, farm labourers and working-men voting in the security of the ballot, and schools built in part from the money of the rich or the childless ratepayer, into which troop the children of the poor; and though this generation reads as history the struggles and battles which enabled it to come into the world, with the hurlyburly done, and these things accomplished facts, there undoubtedly exists in the minds of the ancient enemies of the democratic movement — who fought in or witnessed the struggle — or of their intellectual descendants, who review the field of buried controversy, a distrust of the powers and privileges conferred on the "lower classes," as workers or as voters, which has not wholly been dispelled by the falsification of the predictions which were made in regard to the use to which they would be put.

To such, the perusal of the detailed story of the aims and efforts of several generations of working-men, engaged in one trade, and concentrated in one district, to work out their industrial progress, may help to dissipate the prejudice which only sees in a Trades Union a sinister instrument, unwisely placed in the hands of working-men by a weak legislature, for "upsetting trade and driving capital out of the country " ; and may present an aspect of the activities of such organisations which will lead to some modification of their opinions, even if it does not change their point of view.

In the narrative told in the following pages, there is abundant testimony to the intelligence, moderation, and far-sightedness of the working potters, varied only by such aberrations from the strict path of prudence — as in their emigration movement — as involved no injustice, in intention or effect, to their employers, but recoiled on themselves. Their dealings with their employers have not been those of a disciplined but unscrupulous army of thoughtless labourers, holding helpless Capital by the throat, but those of a body of peaceful, orderly, and self-respecting men, negotiating and fighting for what they believed to be right, with a body of gentlemen who often believed them to be wrong, and still oftener refused their demands, but who were, at any rate, always well able to take care of themselves. The employers of the Staffordshire Potteries have, indeed, generally shown an enlightened appreciation of the right of their workmen to combine — even in the days when there was legal sanction for the fashion which held Trades Unions as "things accursed." So far as their main body is concerned, they have not assumed any lofty pretence of their respect for " the sacred rights of labour " by endeavouring to persuade their Union workmen that they were sacrificing their independence by their foolish combinations. They have implicitly recognised the justice of their workmen's Unions by uniting themselves, and have given practical effect to the recognition by generally seeking to deal with the accredited organisations of the men through their own. They have not sought, in times of crisis, to get at the men behind their leaders, but, on the contrary — and especially in later times — have themselves invoked the interference, and upon occasions have unreservedly accepted the mediation, of the leaders of the men in disputes with the latter. To those, therefore, who are more royalist than the king, the assurance may be given that the employers of the Staffordshire Potteries have not given known utterance to the hope that they could be relieved of the tyranny of their workmen's Unions.

By thus frankly " accepting service " of the complaints preferred by the Unions on behalf of those for whom they acted, the employers of the Staffordshire Potteries have simplified the situation and narrowed the issues that are dealt with in the following pages. The history of the Potters' Unions, therefore, affords an excellent example of how, given a frank and even cordial acceptance by the employers of the existence and official responsibility of their workmen's Unions, those Unions affect the relations between employers and employed, and of the points of conflict that may arise between the two, and allows the general observer to form a judgment upon the reasonableness and justice of the demands made and resistance offered by the one side or the other.

The narrative shows that the disputes between the two sides have not always presented the simple issue of whether more wages could be forced, or less imposed, to be determined by the relative strength of the combatants. The questions of " annual hiring," " good - from - oven," and " allowances " involved matters of principle connected with the basis of the conditions of employment and remuneration, and will be admitted to have been at least subjects for legitimate controversy. And even the simple issue of wages has been complicated by a "principle." The working potters fought for higher wages, and thought they deserved them, but they were innocent of any sinister desire — so often strangely attributed to their class — to take the bread and butter out of their own mouths ; and had no more deliberate intention of driving the Staffordshire potting industry to Germany than the bricklayers of London ever had of sending the building trade to France. The employers, of course, almost invariably resisted their demands for higher wages, and predicted at each period of unrest that the trade must inevitably succumb to any increase in the cost of production. The workmen, on the other hand, insisted that they knew better than their masters, and that there were other means of preserving the trade than by a reduction in wages, when one was asked for by the employers "to save the trade," and other possibilities of compensating for any increase in the cost of production when the masters contested a claim for an advance in wages on the ground that to concede it would destroy the trade. And, through the latter half of the history of the Potters' Trades Unions, there run these opposing contentions of employers and employed : on the lo THE STAFFORDSHIRE POTTER

part of the former, that wages must fall with selling prices, or could not rise because selling prices had not risen ; and on the part of the employed that such a regulating principle could only be enforced if as much attention were given by employers to collectively keeping up selling prices as was collectively bestowed upon the effort to keep down wages, and that, in such case, both sides would be the gainers. The workmen offered co-operation to that end, and it was refused. The views of the employers prevailed with successive arbitrators over the arguments of the men, and selling prices continued to fall, and wages too, and both sides wondered when the decline of each would stop.

Quite recently, and after the writing of this narrative was thought to be concluded, a remarkable movement in The Potteries opportunely supplied a probable solution to that question. Many employers came to the conclusion that they must look within their own ranks for the greatest enemy of prosperity to their trade. The workmen had named him over and over again in years gone by, and had offered their assistance in coercing him into better conduct, or exterminating him altogether. He was, and is, the "cutter" of the trade. Sometimes he is a man of much capital, sometimes of none. In the former case, he uses his capital as a weapon ; in the latter it is the circumstance of his lack of capital that is the motive force, and he is the helpless, though willing instrument. In both cases labour is equally necessary, and often equally ill-paid. The main body of employers are in a condition between the two extremes, and suffer by the deliberation of the one and the helplessness of the other. They have now asked their workmen to join them in fighting a common enemy — the manufacturer who beggars his class by unrestrained and ill-regulated competition — and the Trades Unionists have responded to an invitation which they asked to be extended to them years ago. It is a safe prediction that, if the projected movement becomes ratified and complete, the enemy will either be vanquished or absorbed. Either consummation would be good, but the latter better. At any rate, a position has to-day been reached in which both sides combine to extract the best possible results to each from the trade in which they are engaged. Whether it will yield the full fruits of its promise remains to be seen, but all the indications are favourable. The effort, in itself, is at least a satisfactory outcome of long years of strenuous controversy ; and being, as it is, the fulfilment of the hopes and efforts of the leaders of the workmen, is an adventitious aid to the desire of the author to show that the motives and actions of Trades Unions are, whilst necessary to the protection of the class which they are primarily designed to serve, not irreconcilable with the interests of the class which they are popularly supposed to oppose ; and it enables him to close his narrative with the fair promise of a future — only usually assured in narratives of a more imaginative and interesting character — summarily described as " Happy ever after." L-ONDON, January 1899.

Chapter I The Early Days Of Union

It was not until after the second decade of this century that any attempt was made by the workmen engaged in the potting trade of Staffordshire to exert any organised influence over their employers* The possession of natural advantages, arising from the clay-beds and coal-fields foiirid in the locahty, fixed the future trade of The Potteries; but though the manufacture of earthenware can be definitely traced to Burslem so long ago as 1600, the date of its introduction into the district remains uncertain. The rough products of its earliisr years belonged, however, in character if not in chronology, to the remote ages of the rudest conception and practice of the plastic art ; and the industry, as carried on in Staffordshire, had derived no

* There is a paragraph in the London Star of Wednesday, November 26, 1792, which says: "Country News. — Staflfordshire. — The workmen employed in the different potteries here have combined to obtain an increase of wages ; hitherto the masters have denied their demands, and the men remained inactive, except in punishing some of their comrades, who attempted to work at their usual price. A troop of dragoons has been ordered from Leicester to Wolverhampton, to act should necessity require." — There seems, however, to be no local evidence connecting this with The Potteries, and Wolverhampton in any case would have been almost two days' ride from where any necessity would have required the presence of the dragoons. It probably points, however, to some such sporadic movement as is referred to on p. 15, which has escaped a local chronicler.

r2

THE "BUTTER-POT" PERIOD 13

assistance from the development of that art in intermediate ages, nor from its contemporaneous advancement on the Continent. Until the earlier half of last century it was still in the rudimentarystage, and there was but little distinction between the character of its products theii and those of a century earlier, when Burslem-^— the seat and home of Staffordshire potting — was marked on the maps as " Butter-pot Town," and an Act of Parliament of the reign of Charles II. regulated the size and weight of the butter-pot which formed the staple item of its manufactures. But with the glazing of the red clay butter-pots, and the subsequent introduction of the finer white clays of Devonshire and Cornwall, began the process of that evolution and development which was soon carried to an immeasurably greater height by Wedgwood and Brindley and their contemporaries, who transformed a handicraft into an art.

This transformation in the character of the work produced no less a change in the worker, and a generation of skilled workmen — of artisans — arose. New processes and methods produced fresh branches of labour, and to each branch a distinctive skill was necessary. For example, the importation from the Continent of the process of making ware from Plaster of Paris moulds produced a distinct class of workmen called " pressers," who were again divided into two classes, — the flat-ware and the hollow-ware pressers. And so, with more than fifty years of progress and education, the beginning of the nineteenth century saw a generation of working potters almost as far advanced from their ancestors of the "butter-pot" period as the letterpress printer of to-day is from Caxton and Gutenberg. And, as the industry became more complex — each succeeding innovation demanding a change in technical method, or the acquirement of a totally distinct practice — the old system by which prices were regulated required constant modifications, and it was to this cause and opportunity, and to the individual disputes which constantly recurred between an individual master and his workmen in the settlement of what price should be paid for a fresh article of production or for a fresh process in its manufacture, that we must trace the beginnings of a workmen's Union*

* Mr Ward, in his history of the old Borough of Stoke-on-Trent (which comprised practically the whole of The Potteries), ascribes the beginning of Potters' Unions to political agitation : " During the years 1817, 1818, and 1819, when the epidemic of political reform .was extremely rife throughout the nation, several radical gatherings took place in different parts of this Borough, particularly one at Burslem on 27th January 1817, and one at Hanley on the ist November 1819," which were addressed "by itinerant orators," and at which "strong resolutions were passed in favour of Parliamentary reform, voting by ballot, and the exclusion of placemen and pensioners from Parliament. Attempts were also made to form political clubs, to carry the views of the reformers into practice ; but most of the manufacturers and respectable inhabitants stood aloof from these associations, either from disapprobation of their measures or fear that the peace of the neighbourhood might be endangered by their proceedings. . . . The demagogues, however, affected to excite no ill-feeling among the working-class towards their employers ; but the tendency of their levelling doctrines, whatever they might profess, could hardly fail to produce such a result, and we do not expect to be contradicted in asserting that from the excitement of that period dates whatever political fervour the Operative classes in this district have since maniested, as well as the combinations or Trades Unions by which they

BEGINNINGS OF UNION 15

The progress of this Union was indeed a matter of evolution. It began with those branches of the trade which were most affected by the innovations and improvements in methods of manufacture ; and, for a time, the workers in other branches who had been little, if at all, affected by these innovations, or whose condition and affairs had been modified or confirmed in the early days of the general development, remained wholly outside this movement. The whole tendency of the trade, indeed, had been — and long continued so — that the successive changes in process had introduced themselves so insidiously and imperceptibly that it was only by the introduction of some process of a revolutionary character that not only those concerned in that branch, but the workers in other branches, appreciated to the full the change that had passed over their heads. But the genesis of the movement must be traced to the disaffections felt by this or that particular branch of labour feeling that its rights were violated, and that they were adversely affected by the technical development, and very improvement of the trade. A movement, perhaps, it can scarcely be called, for it was but the momentary rebellion or defence of an isolated group of workers in a particular branch, a protest called up by the circumstances of the moment, to be silenced by defeat or satisfied by victory, and then

have since greatly injured themselves and inconvenienced their employers. " — These meetings, however, were only part of the general political agitation which culminated in 1832, and their relation to Potters' Unions was only that of the general to the particular.