ABSTRACT
Accounts of Stockport district trade unions and Jacobin societies obviously remain incomplete without a careful examination of the handloom weavers. The story of handloom weaving also has an intrinsic interest for any study of labour in the early Industrial Revolution because of the tumultuous and protracted character of the decline of this once-flourishing cottage industry. This chapter presents a discussion of the means by which weavers initially but ineffectually reacted to these problems provides the background necessary to understand the more violent responses which followed. The attractiveness of handloom weaving was enhanced by the high wage rates which resulted from the growing demand for labour. A primary cause for the long and occasionally tumultuous decline of the handloom weavers was the conflict with France and the disruptions in trade and wildly fluctuating patterns of supply and demand that it engendered.
