ABSTRACT
Warpdressers, whose task it was to prepare the yarn preparatory to weaving (hence the title of 'preparatory workers' which they later adopted) seem to have appeared relatively late on the trade union scene in the late 1880s and in the 1890s, though warpers and warptwisters were at least partially organised at a considerably earlier date (see Amalgamated Society of Mill Warpers and Yorkshire Warp Twisters Society). Turner connects the warpdressers' late unionisation with their early status as independent contractors, 'a small class of individual specialists who possessed equipment of their own and sometimes set up as individual artisans, taking work on commission. They earned more than mule spinners up to the 1890s when they still had twice the average weavers's wage. Old members of their association say that early in the present century warpdressers still emphasised their independence and status by refusing to enter the mill of a morning until all the other operatives were at work, and insisted on leaving first'.' Warpers, as distinct from warpdressers, were frequently in membership of weavers societies (see Cotton Weaving).
