Note 495 — Chapter VI
Reading edition
The operatives’ case is well put in the Weavers’ Manifesto of June 1878:
“Fellow-workers—We are and have been engaged during the past nine weeks in the most memorable struggle between Capital and Labour in the history of the world. One hundred thousand factory workers are waging war with their employers as to the best possible way to remove the glut from an overstocked cloth market, and at the same time reduce the difficulties arising from an insufficient supply of raw cotton. To remedy this state of things the employers propose a reduction of wages to the extent of ten per cent below the rate of wages agreed upon twenty-five years ago. On the other hand, we have contended that a reduction in the rate of wages cannot either remove the glut in the cloth market or assist to tide us over the difficulty arising from the limited supply of raw material. However, this has been the employers’ theory, and at various periods throughout the struggle we have made the following propositions as a basis of settlement of this most calamitous struggle:
“1. A reduction of ten per cent, with four days’ working, or five per cent with five days’ working, until the glut in the cloth market and the difficulties arising from the dearth of cotton had been removed.
“2. To submit the whole question of short time or reduction, or both, to the arbitrement of any one or more impartial gentlemen.
“3. To submit the entire question to two Manchester merchants or agents, two shippers conversant with the Manchester trade, and two bankers, one of each to be selected by the employers and the other by the operatives, with two employers and two operatives, with Lord Derby, the Bishop of Manchester, or any other impartial gentleman, as chairman, or, if necessary, referee.
“4. To split the difference between us, and go to work unconditionally at a reduction of five per cent.
“5. Through the Mayor of Burnley, to go to work three months at a reduction of five per cent, and if trade had not sufficiently improved at that time, to submit to a further reduction.
“6. And lastly, to an unconditional reduction of seven and a half per cent.”