ABSTRACT
Trade unionism in the cotton industry is of a different type from any of those which have been described so far. The principal crafts in the cotton industry are staffed preponderantly by female labour. In the card and blowing rooms, where the raw cotton is prepared for spinning, women are in a very great majority; and ring spinning, the alternative, highly mechanised process to spinning on the mule, is also a women’s trade. For purposes of collective bargaining the cotton industry falls into two main sections, spinning and manufacturing, with smaller separate sections for dyeing and finishing, calico printing, and certain other groups. The methods of piece-work payment in the cotton trades are exceedingly complicated, and the most continuous task of the Union official is to argue about them with the parallel employers’ official. Since the war the cotton trade has undergone a great contraction, owing to the shrinkage of its foreign markets.
