Note 176-1 — Chapter III

Even Boisguillebert, Traité des Grains, was acquainted with instances of this kind in which from 600 to 800 workmen simultaneously left their masters. There are much earlier instances in Italy. Thus, in Sienna, in 1381 and 1384, in which the nobility sided with the workmen. (Rerum Ital. Scriptores, XV, 224, 294.) Strikes of journeymen began to be much more frequent in Germany in the guilds, from the time of the prospect of their becoming masters themselves, and of their living in the family of the masters had decreased. On similar strikes at Spires,[TN 15] in 1351, at Hagenau in 1409, and Mainz in 1423, see Mone's, Zeitschrift, XVII, 56; XIII, 155, and Hegel, Strassb. Chr., II, 1025. A remarkable strike of the Parisian book printers under Francis I. (Hildebrand's Jahrb., 1873, II, 375 ff.) In so-called "home manufactures," where the "manufacturer" is both orderer, preparer and seller, but strikes are scarcely possible without much fixed capital. The strike of the factory spinners in Lancashire in 1810 caused 30,000 workmen to stop work for four months.

Among the next following coalitions of labor, those of the Glasgow weavers in 1812 and 1822 were very important. In the latter, two workmen who would not participate with the strikers were blinded with sulphuric acid. In 1818, great strike by the Scotch miners. The Preston strike of 1853 lasted 36 weeks. It is said that 6,200 male and 11,800 female working people took part in it. (Athenæum, 30 Sept., 1854.) Compare Morrison, Essay on the Relations between Labor and Capital, 1854. For a history of Swiss strikes, especially of the Zürich compositors' strike in 1873, see Böhmert, Arbeiterverhältnisse, II, 287 ff. Comic type of a strike of married women in Aristophanes, Lysistrata. A practical one in Rome at the departure of the plebeians for the holy mountains, 492 before Christ. (Livy, II, 32,) then, on a small scale, on the removal of the pipers after Tiberius, 311 before Christ. (Liv., IX, 30.)