ABSTRACT
Easily distinguished from some kinds of textile production, the wool textile industry remains an umbrella term, encompassing a broad range of products from carpets to fine worsteds. This great diversity of interests has been reflected in the complex development of wool textile employers’ organisations in the twentieth century. The associations of employers in Bradford occupied a central role in the textile employers’ organisational network. Wartime conditions strengthened the tendency of consultation between different groups of employers. These involved Government pleas for co-operation on recruitment, rationing, the postponement of local holidays, and wage claims where it was thought that separate, sectional settlements might, as employers’ put it, ‘prejudice the interests of the trade’. In view of the increasing number of textile producing countries and the decreasing volume of world trade, employers resorted to a number of devices in an attempt to maintain profitability.
