Chapter IV · TEXTILES. (continued 2)
Reading edition
The seasons of depression in the Woollen Trade brought to such communities in the “Clothing Counties” a desolation which could only be rivalled by Pestilence or Famine. Work came to a standstill, and wholesale migrations followed. Many fathers left their starving families, in search of work elsewhere and were never heard of again. The traditions of family life and the customs which ruled the affairs of the village were lost, never to be again restored, and with them disappeared, to a great extent, the recognised importance of women in the life of the community.
The social problems introduced by the wages system in its early days are described in a contemporary pamphlet. It must be remembered that the term “the poor” as used at this time signified the pauper class, hard-working, industrious families who were independent of charity or assistance from the poor rates being all included among the “common people.” “I cannot acknowledge,” the writer says, “that a Manufacture maketh fewer poor, but rather the contrary. For tho’ it sets the poor on work where it finds them, yet it draws still more to 149the place; and their Masters allow wages so mean, that they are only preserved from starving whilst they can work; when Age, Sickness, or Death comes, themselves, their wives or their children are most commonly left upon the Parish; which is the reason why those Towns (as in the Weald of Kent) whence the clothing is departed, have fewer poor than they had before.”[292]
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