ABSTRACT

From the early part of the eighteenth century down to 1773 the London silk industry was plagued by 'grievous discontents' and not a few civil disturbances which became ever more serious as the years passed. It was, as we know, a fashion trade, subject to sharp fluctuations of fortune, peaks of temporary prosperity being followed by depressions which quickly plunged the poorer weavers, their families and auxiliary workers into the depths of privation. 'As soon as the market stops, they [the master weavers] stop. If they cannot sell their work they immediately knock off looms and the journeymen as immediately starve.' Certain masters might have to discharge from fifty to a hundred men and, perhaps, put a similar number on shorttime, Some, indeed, mindful of the distress which threatened their employees, were prepared to manufacture goods for stock; but to do so in the fashion sections of the trade was to run the risk of heavy losses--even bankruptcy-because a capricious fluke of fashion might suddenly render a master weaver's stock wellnigh valueless. Furthermore, there were, from time to time, dearths of raw materials -most of which had to be imported from Turkey and the Levant, Italy, India and China-arising from natural causes or the outbreak of foreign wars.