ABSTRACT
In the Lancashire cotton weaving industry, the opening of the twentieth century saw the harbinger of potentially momentous change in the shape of a new piece of essential production technology, the Northrop loom. Cotton weaving had remained untroubled by technological innovation since 1784, when Edmund Cartwright had invented the first, admittedly crude and short-lived, powerloom to operate in an early kind of factory environment. The course of events around the introduction of the Northrop demonstrates the relevance of gender to an understanding of the eventual outcome of the struggle. Yet both the significance of the events at Ashton Bros, for the composition of the weaving workforce and the crucial role played by gender have been ignored by historians of the cotton industry. The compromise which brought the strike of 1908 to a close appears to have encouraged Ashton Bros, to continue their policy of large-scale replacement of conventional with automatic looms.
