Note 604 — Chapter IX

The workers in the woollen and worsted trades, whose organisation went to pieces early in the nineteenth century on the extensive introduction of women and the successive transformations of the industry by machinery, have, during the past thirty years, developed extensive Trade Unions, which have steadily gained strength. In 1892 we could count only 18,000 Trade Unionists in the whole industry. In 1920, whilst the National Society of Woolcombers and Kindred Trades has 12,000 members and there are strong organisations of wool-sorters, warp-dressers, and over-lookers, the General Union of Textile Workers, established in 1881, now includes a membership, in the West of England as well as in Yorkshire, principally male and female weavers, numbering more than 100,000 (The Heavy Woollen District Textile Workers’ Union, by Ben Turner, 1917). During the war these Unions were accorded equal representation with the employers and with the Government on the Wool Control Board, by which the Government supplies of wool were “rationed” among the manufacturers, and the prices fixed.

In the dyeing and finishing branch of the textile industry the Amalgamated Society of Dyers, Bleachers, Finishers, and Kindred Trades (established 1878), with 30,000 members, has outstripped the older National Society of Dyers and Finishers (established 1851; 12,000 members), and has entered into remarkable agreements with the monopolist combination of employers. (The Amalgamated Association of Bleachers and Dyers, centred at Bolton, which has over 22,000 members, occupies a similar leading position as regards the dyeing of cotton goods.) A recently formed National Association of Unions in the Textile Trades seeks to co-ordinate the influence of all the woollen workers and dyers, and counts a membership of about 150,000, in 35 societies, which are grouped in four sections (“Raw Wool,” “Managers and Overlookers,” “Textile Workers,” and “Dyers’ Societies”).