ABSTRACT
Large industrial employers in the eighteenth century were even less likely to be paternalistic, since most did not own their workers' housing. In contrast to the community solidarity found among workers in domestic industry, the craft workshops which formed the other lynchpin of eighteenth-century British industry were cradles of vertical solidarity between employers and workers. In these circumstances, a common occupation remained the criterion for union formation, but the aim of the unions became the protection and enhancement of the wages and conditions of particular occupational groupings, rather than of an entire industry. Hence unions were not an expression of collectivism, but of individualism. In an age when long-term price levels did not change much, employers could not simply pass on wage rises by increasing prices, a fact which strengthens the likelihood that there may have been an effect of this nature.
