ABSTRACT
The 1850s have long been recognised as a turning point in industrial relations, particularly in the cotton industry. Whereas in the 1840s considerable violence attended disputes between masters and operatives, the conflicts of the following decade were characterised by order and discipline. Unions among cotton power-loom weavers were not new in the 1850s and 1860s, but their previous appearance had been ephemeral. Piece rate lists had originated with the old hand-loom weavers as the only reliable method an employer had of paying ‘outworkers’ beyond their supervision. In the new spinning factories of the late eighteenth century and the powerloom weaving sheds of the 1830s, individual employers usually adopted a list of their own, or one borrowed from a neighbouring mill, as a stimulus towards maximising production. Any theory of pragmatism over principle, however, must be able to take account of those opposing trade unions as much as those willing to see their introduction to promote the employers’ purposes.
