Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/483

 WOMEN'S ' WORK IN LEEDS 461 avenue of industry to women. Even as late as 1857 Baines tells us that in the villages the domestic system still survived, the clothiers having established oint stock mills for cleaning, dyeing, carding, and spinning, and the finishing processes, and having the warp or weft taken to their own workshops and worked up on the hand loom. In this way they were still able to compete with the Leeds manufacturers, the power loom not having been as yet well enough adapted to cloth weaving to give it the great advantage over the hand loom that had been at once obtained in the cotton trade. In 1856, according to the factory returns quoted in Baines' Wooll Mnufaeture in England, there were in the dtrict of Leeds, comprising most of the towns and villages between the Aide and the Calder, touching Wakefield and m- cluding Dewsbury, Heckmondwike, and Mirfield, only 2,344 cloth power looms and above 23,328 factory operatives. In the whole county of York there were only 6,275 cloth power looms. Samuel Jubb, in his History of the Shoddy Trade in Batley (1860) mentions the reluctance with which the men weavers came to the power loom. The power looms in the shoddy cloth district were 'chiefly attended by upgro.wn females,' under the supervision of men termed 'tuners.' The earnings of these women averaged about 10s. per week. He goes on 'to say that men and boys were only employed in a small degree in weaving, and that ' it seems strange that men should not have engaged in this occupation in greater number; man assisted by  lad or lass can manage two looms, enabling both to earn fair wages. There has evidently been a. disinclination on the part of hand-loom weavers to take to the power loom .... The wages paid to hand- loom weavers are good, and substantially the same as before the use of such a large number of power looms.' There were in. Batley in 1858 altogether 1,260 hand-loom weavers, averaging 18s. a week in full work, and 500 power-loom weavers earning 9s. to 10s. a week. Women, according to Jubb, were at a premium. Baines gives table of wages in the Leeds woolien district in 1858. The hand-loom weavers are described as being men earning about 15s. a week, the power-loom weavers being women earning 12s. a week, the wages of the hand-loom weavers being the lowest earned by men in any branch of the wooHen trade. The other branches in which women and girls were employed are the same as those already mentioned. In 1870, Baines writes: ' The hand loom has long been giving way to the power loom, and the process is now well nigh complete.' The process is now quite complete, and it is no longer