[In the following excerpt, Vicinus explores the response of weavers to the mechanization of their trade as described in popular working-class broadside literature, which the critic says protested against the factory system and insisted on the rights and personal dignity of the individual.]

Broadsides contain a wealth of commentary on industrialization. Many works praise various inventions and improvements, such as ‘Steam Boots’, about a ‘Hollander bold’ who wears steam boots to rocket about Europe. But far more common was anger and resistance to change. The intensification of work in the mines and cottages and the development of the factory system meant the death of an older, more varied life. With these changes songs became more critical of the present and nostalgic for the past. The deepest reactions to change came in those areas or occupations that were long established, with their own songs and lore. In contrast, the railways did not yield many songs until after the first two waves of building. (In the United States and Canada the industry was one of the richest in tales and songs; it was the American missionaries who first brought to England the familiar metaphor of the railway to heaven or hell.)¹ The situation was even bleaker in entirely new industries, such as chemistry, or in new towns, such as Middlesbrough. A full generation of an industry was necessary before customs grew up. A new culture, albeit unsettled and fragmented, only came out of settled living patterns.

Cotton was the first major commercial enterprise to alter radically through industrialization; the change from self-sufficient families weaving and spinning at home to the employment of hundreds under one roof to run the new power-driven machinery caused severe cultural and economic dislocation.² Stories about those suffering in the ‘dark Satanic mills’ were all set in Lancashire and the adjoining West Riding—and yet the county's long and respected weaving traditions continued in spite of these enormous changes. The poems and songs dating from the sixteenth century about hand-loom weavers and their lasses were replaced by factory songs, and writing and singing continued unabated. The first and most severe process of industrialization existed side by side with the continuation of a rich and powerful literature and customs.

In eighteenth-century songs the weaver is presented as the backbone of the economy. As one ‘Weaver's Garland’ declared, ‘If weaving and spinning should totally stop, / I am sure the whole nation will instantly drop.’ In ‘The Weaver’ (1769) the young man falls in love with a servant girl. His father is scornful that he should so lower himself, ‘When there is ladies fine and gay / Dressed like the Queen of May.’ It is a love song, so the young man successfully wins his love, and she spins for him, but clearly the independent weaver was superior to any servant. At times the weaver was made the hero of tales unrelated to his occupation. In ‘Will Weaver’ a husband who suspects his wife is unfaithful returns home to find Will hiding in the chimney. He builds an enormous fire, sending Will running, with the warning ‘Come no more to stop my smoak.’ ‘Will Weaver’ was a favourite in the nineteenth century and was frequently reprinted by Harkness and the Manchester printers.

The tradition of boldness in the face of adversity and comic self-awareness flourished during the golden age of handloom weaving, the years 1790-1810 of the French Wars. Anyone connected with the weaving trade was a natural hero or heroine. At this time the new Dobbie looms, permitting the weaving of elaborate patterns, were widespread in Lancashire. They needed frequent and skilful attention, so an itinerant joiner was usually called upon to ‘square’ or fix these looms. Like so many earlier picaresque figures he was soon characterized as a free-and-easy blade who attracted the village women. One of the most popular poems celebrating the life of a joiner was ‘The Bury New Loom’, first published as a broadside in 1804:

As I walked between Bolton and Bury, 'twas on a moonshiny night,
I met with a buxom young weaver whose company gave me delight.
She says: Young fellow, come tell me if your level and rule are in tune.
Come, give me an answer correct, can you get up and square my new loom?
I said: My dear lassie, believe me, I am a good joiner by trade,
And many a good loom and shuttle before me in my time I have made.
Your short lams and jacks and long lams I quickly can put in tune.
My rule is in good order to get up and square a new loom.
She took me and showed me her loom, the down on her warp did appear.
The lams, jacks and healds put in motion, I levelled her loom to a hair.
My shuttle run well in her lathe, my treadle it worked up and down,
My level stood close to her breast-bone, the time I was reiving her loom.
The cords of my lams, jacks and treadles at length they began to give way.
The bobbin I had in my shuttle, the weft in it no longer would stay.
Her lathe it went bang to and fro, my main treadle still kept in tune,
My pickers went nicketty-nack all the time I was squaring her loom.
My shuttle it still kept in motion, her lams she worked well up and down.
The weights in her rods they did tremble; she said she would weave a new gown.
My strength now began for to fail me. I said: It's now right to a hair.
She turned up her eyes and said: Tommy, my loom you have got pretty square.
But when her foreloom-post she let go, it flew out of order amain.
She cried: Bring your rule and your level and help me to square it again.
I said: My dear lassie, I'm sorry, at Bolton I must be by noon,
But when that I come back this way, I will square up your jerry hand-loom.(3)

The familiar form of sexualizing the implements of one's craft has here a new emphasis on its technicalities. The special knowledge needed to understand the poem must have been relished by the Lancashire weaving community. The vocabulary is an amusing combination of technical terms with overtly sexual images, such as ‘reiving her loom,’ ‘the down on her warp’, and ‘nicketty-nack’, which is not only onomatopoeic for the motion of the loom but also was slang for the female sexual organs.

‘The Bury New Loom’ combines highly specific details with complete impersonality, partially because it deals with sexual intercourse and not individuals, but also because the writer speaks in complete confidence that his audience will understand the world he describes, and the nature of the symbols used. There is no distance between them and the poem since it is based on their own knowledge of the harmonious movement of an intricate machine as representative of the most important human actions. The richness of the weaving community life can be seen in its contribution to the creative imagination of both poet and reader; only a deeply felt and understood vocation can become symbolic of basic needs and desires—and be within the good humour and comedy implicit in this poem. The weaver and joiner are part of a society in which their identity and actions are furnished by the machinery that is central to their respective vocations. Their energy does not go into acquiring each other or material goods, but into enjoying each other. The competitive pace of power-loom weaving and factory work was reflected in later poems by the acquisitive, materially-oriented nature of the verse, but this poem is based on mutual harmony and good will. It is both a celebration of sexual pleasure and a reflection of the cultural strength of a vital community.

The close identification of the couple with the implements of their craft would not be possible at a later date when factory work left the operative with less knowledge of the machinery he worked, and responsibility for only one part of the process of production. Although a good bit of skill and understanding were needed to work such imperfect machinery as power looms, the weaver worked under conditions that divided him or her from the family and from a close association with all parts of the cloth-making trade. Inevitably the meaningfulness of a vocation as the symbol of human life was lost; few persons could feel the necessary intimacy with their work and its tools to identify with them.

Separate processes during work rather than the work itself became topics for working-class verse. Factories were rarely described in songs or poems, other than political works, after about 1830. The work place became an accepted part of the background, with the emphasis instead upon plot and characterization. Among the skilled craftsmanship still flourished, but for the majority of cotton operatives work was a monotonous routine. They were most interested in whatever might interrupt this work, be it gossip, courtship or an accident. Illicit courtship during working hours was a popular subject for many factory broadsides during the 1830s and '40s. ‘Sam Shuttle and Betty Reedhook’ describes the overlooker's love for a steam-loom weaver; he courts her by coming ‘oft her loom to fettle’ [fix]. Betty, however, prefers the cut looker, Billy Crape, who never bates [fines] her for faults in her cuts of cloth. Billy and Sam fight on Lacky Moor, and:

When Betty yeard that Sam had lost,
          On him no notice took, sir,
But went walkin' out on Sunday last,
          With that sly old Cut Looker.
Sam swore he could not stand it,
          And on 'em no more he'd look,
He'd blow his brains out wi' his Shuttle
          Or stab him wi' his Reedhook.
                    Tow, row, row, etc.(4)

The jaunty rhythms, realistic details and humorous names make this an amusing and attractive song, but there has been a loss in comparison with ‘The Bury New Loom’. The richness and subtlety of the earlier song have been reduced to a simple use of vocational names. The commonplace is defined in and of itself.

‘The Bury New Loom’ was frequently reprinted as a broadside; in a later version, ‘The Steam Loom Weaver’, the joiner becomes an engine driver and the woman a power-loom weaver. Poems of a similar type about faithless soldiers, handsome rakes and aristocratic strangers remained popular throughout the century. The old tale of the prince marrying the beautiful and virtuous peasant maid became the tale of the factory girl marrying a rich stranger. In this sort of song the language is usually more elevated, as if references to Venus and Cupid were necessary to confirm the authenticity of the story. Unlike the handsome young gentlemen factory girls may have met coming home from work, this stranger proves his honorable intentions:

I said lovely maid if you'll not be my bride,
My life I will waste in some foreign land.
What pleasure in treasure where love it is wanting.
Your beauty upon me has now cast a spell,
I'll marry you speedy and make you a lady,
If you'll be mine dear factory girl.(5)

The reverse story of a wealthy damsel in love with a factory boy also existed. In this case the angry father has the boy impressed, but the lady buys his freedom; they marry and live happily ever after. These broadsides seemed within the realm of the probable because they were built upon realistic details, even when the action was improbable. But narratives about ‘the fortunate factory girl’ and the like were purely escapist. They were most appealing to those many operatives who found their lives uneventful and unnoticed—in contrast to the more tumultuous lives of the very poor discussed earlier.

The general message of this type of broadside is that inexplicable fate rules the characters' lives. In songs that end unhappily for the lovers, such as ‘Old Weaver's Daughter’ about a girl who turns down a rich courter to remain with her father or ‘Factory Girl’ about Betsey Gray who proves unfaithful and dies on the streets, events move forward in an inexorable pattern beyond the control of the lovers. Chance guides personal virtue, good fortune or the probable future; it appeared to be the prime mover of life, just as it had appeared to a much earlier peasantry. Only through chance could the monotony of the factory be broken and excitement, happiness or adventure be found. But chance was also the cause of inexplicable periods of unemployment, a poor marriage or personal unhappiness. The theme of virtue rewarded—particularly active, earned virtue—is quite rare, and as a theme would appear to be prominent only in the literature of a more upwardly mobile class or among the religious.

‘The Bury New Loom’ came out of a well-established community in the midst of prosperity. Although conditions were changing Saint Monday and other holidays could still be celebrated as an escape from work, with the assurance of a well-earned rest. But even then, times of sharp and sudden unemployment could bring a family to the edge of starvation. As industrialization brought a temporarily-improved standard of living, it also meant a change in traditional ways that many older men and women were unwilling to accept. The transitional years of 1780-1830 fell harshly on those in traditional trades, and protest songs were widespread. Many of these songs have survived only in fragments. Those that urged violent actions against factory owners or the putter-out (a middleman who gave out the warps and yarn, and paid for the finished weaving) often circulated orally, lest the printer or seller be arrested. A far more common style of song is the ‘consolatory verse’, lamenting changes brought about by forces beyond any single person's control. Usually written under the impact of cultural change or economic distress, the best examples rise above the limitations of a specific occasion; they were frequently reprinted later in the century during hard times. These songs and poems were a remarkably powerful form of consolation because they were true to the conditions and attitudes of those who read them both for solace and as an explanation of their plight. Generally few solutions were offered, as in most cases none was available, except the passage of time.

Reactions to the new factories could be swift and bitter. In 1790 Robert Grimshaw attempted to introduce power-loom weaving to the town of Gorton, near Manchester. No sooner was the mill completed and the looms working than the place was burned down. A man named Lucas who could not write and could barely read composed a song in commemoration of the fire; it was very popular at the time but now survives only in a fragment. One verse runs,

For coal to work his factory
          He sent unto Duke, sir;
He thought that all the town
          Should be stifled with smoke, sir;
But the Duke sent him an answer,
          Which came so speedily,
That the poor should have the coal,
          If the Devil took th' machinery.(6)

When the Devil did not take the machinery, poor men took matters into their own hands. The underlying justification for fighting the factory system was God and nature—it was against natural laws for men to work such devilish machinery. Weavers were particularly bitter about those who became so extraordinarily wealthy from the new methods of weaving. ‘The Hand-Loom Weavers' Lament’ has a chorus declaring ‘You tyrants of England, your race may soon be run, / You may be brought unto account for what you've sorely done.’ (see Appendix). All the time they are growing rich from the labour of the poor, they claim that hard times are the fault of the wars, but the author, John Grimshaw (no relation to Robert), bitterly comments,

If there be a place in heaven, as there is in the Exchange,
Our poor souls must not come near there; like lost sheep they must range.(7)

Poor men, of course, were not to wander like lost sheep, but to go like sheep into the new factories. Violent protest against factories went hand in hand with a sense of doom. In ‘Hand-Loom v. Power-Loom’ John Grimshaw recommended capitulation to the inevitable:

Come all you cotton-weavers, your looms you may pull down;
You must get employ'd in factories, in country or in town,
For our cotton-masters have found out a wonderful new scheme,
These calico goods now wove by hand they're going to weave by steam.
In comes the gruff o'erlooker, or the master will attend;
It's ‘You must find another shop, or quickly you must mend;
For such work as this will never do; so now I'll tell you plain,
We must have good pincop-spinning, or we ne'er can weave by steam.’
The weavers' turn will next come on, for they must not escape,
To enlarge the master's fortunes they are fined in every shape.
For thin places, or bad edges, a go, or else a float,
They'll daub you down, and you must pay three pence, or else a groat.
If you go into a loom-shop where there's three or four pair of looms,
They all are standing empty, incumbrances of the rooms;
And if you ask the reason why, the old mother will tell you plain,
My daughters have forsaken them, and gone to weave by steam.
So, come all you cotton-weavers, you must rise up very soon,
For you must work in factories from morning until noon:
You mustn't walk in your garden for two or three hours a-day
For you must stand at their command, and keep your shuttles at play.(8)

A song such as this opposes the factory system because it destroys a traditional way of life, even when it brings prosperity. The young women left their handlooms because they made more money in the factories, and were willing to accept the harsh regulations and orders from ‘the gruff o'erlooker.’ (A generation later Betty Reedhook flirts with the overlooker Sam Shuttle.) But in the eyes of many cotton weavers the factories were humiliating places for pauper children. Others were fearful for the character of their daughters; the masters or the overlooker might threaten blacklisting if a woman refused their sexual overtures. The hand-loom weaver was a proud maker of cloth who controlled his own working hours and could look upon his finished product with pride; to enter the factory meant becoming a ‘hand’, controlled by a machine. One hand-loom weaver declared in 1834, ‘I am determined for my part, that if they will invent machines to supersede manual labour, they must find iron boys to mind them.’⁹

A later poem, ‘The Factory Bell,’ dating from before 1840 protests against the factory system because it forced men to compete against each other for jobs, and because of the lack of good will within the factory. While just as fatalistic as Grimshaw's song, the author recommends ‘man to man do what is right’, and then ‘Each would enjoy his little store, / And die in peace when life is o'er.’

Oh, happy man, oh happy thou
While toiling at thy spade and plough,
While thou amidst thy pleasures roll,
All at thy labour uncontroll'd
While at the mills in pressing crowds
Where high build chimneys puff black clouds
And all around the slaves do dwell,
Who are called to labour by a Bell.
You have just got time to eat & sleep
A man is set your time to keep;
And if you chance to come too late,
You'r mark'd on paper or on slate
No matter e'er what be the cause,
You must abide by their own laws,
All the time you draw your wage
For coming late there's so much charged.
And if a word chance to be spoke,
Some catches it that wears a cloak
Be it right or wrong, be it truth or lies,
It quickly to the master flies.
But Masters, they are not to blame,
The men are worst, you know the same,
For man to make himself a king,
Cares not who sink if he but swim
Some wheedling foreman every hour
Makes big himself with stolen powers;
He hectoring goes in every place,
Few know his heart who see his face
But a time will come that will forsooth,
And show that man that wears a cloak;
Altho' well clothed long time ere past
He must be naked stript at last(10)

The poem, published anonymously and with no publisher's name, appears to refer to a specific factory where ‘unknown spies / For envy long sits forging lies.’ It contains a veiled threat to the foreman in the metaphor of naked at death. Starting with a familiar lament for the freer life outside factories, and criticizing the discipline within, it soon becomes an attack upon the nastiness engendered by a group of men working closely together in competition. Petty lies, gossip and general ill-will further undermine the already unhappy worker. Although these tensions must have been common in factories few broadsides commented upon them except for politics or vengeance.

This eerie poem contrasts with the most famous figure of protest in Lancashire during the nineteenth century—Jone o' Grinfilt. In the 1790s, during the first patriotic enthusiasm for the French Wars, a poem was written by a schoolmaster, Joseph Lees, about John of Greenfield, a small village near Oldham. One story goes that Lees and a friend were on their way home from Manchester without any money and wanted to stop for a drink; during a rain storm they composed the song under a hedge. They intended to sing a few verses at all the inns as they walked home. It was three days before they had the song printed, but it soon became a best seller among Lancashire broadsides.¹¹ The theme was simple and appropriate to the times. Since the weaving trade was temporarily depressed Jone decides to enlist in the army and help his country ‘ha'e a battle wi'th' French.’ This first publication soon led to dozens of imitations throughout the North. A discontented weaver who leaves poor conditions at home to find redress or a better life was a loose enough narrative to fit almost any occasion. In the best folk tradition Jone was soon capable of prodigies of sight-seeing, bravery and political insight. Queen Caroline's trial, the Reform Bill of 1832, the New Poor Law and the Crimean War were all reasons for Jone to leave Greenfield. Like Bob Cranky, Jone was a comic, pugnacious character who took on every foe. All of the Jone poems contain a good deal of sardonic conversation between the hero and others, exaggerating his prowess, and sometimes that of the enemy. But Jone, unlike the pitman, was less tied to particular customs and became the proverbial wise common man.¹²

The version of Jone's adventures that became best known was written during the post-war period of 1815-19 when economic and political repression were at their greatest. ‘The Oldham Weaver’, or ‘Jone o' Grinfilt, Jr.’ is a magnificently laconic description of the hand-loom weaver's situation at the time. In many ways this song is the summation of all protest against the new conditions brought by industrialization. Although no mention is made of power-loom weaving, clearly Jone's poverty is a direct result of his inability to compete with factory woven goods. By the end of the French Wars the hand-loom weaver had become a symbol of all that was valued from the past and was disappearing. Throughout the century working men referred to the hand-loom weaver as a symbol of their own cultural and economic losses. Versions of ‘Jone o' Grinfilt, Jr.’ were still being sold in the 1860s, and a few years ago Ewen McColl discovered an old power-loom weaver from Delph, a small village in the Pennines, who sang a starker and harsher version than any printed in the nineteenth century.¹³

The following version comes from a broadside published in Manchester in the early 1860s. The American Civil War had brought the Lancashire cotton mills to a virtual standstill, and so the song was reprinted as a statement of current conditions. The dialect is clearer than earlier versions and a few words have been altered, but otherwise it is unchanged from the earliest version:

I'm a poor cotton weaver as many one knows,
I've nowt to eat i'th house an I've worn out my cloas,
You'd hardly give sixpence for all I have on,
My clogs they are brossen and stockings I've none,
You'd think it wur hard to be sent into th' world,
                    To clem and do th' best ot you con.
Our church parson kept telling us long,
We should have better times if we'd hold our tongues,
I've houden my tongue till I can hardly draw breath,
I think i' my heart he means to clem me to death;
I know he lives weel by backbiting the de'il,
                    But he never picked o'er in his life.
I tarried six week an thought every day wur t' last,
I tarried and shifted till now I'm quite fast;
I lived on nettles while nettles were good,
An Waterloo porridge were best of my food;
I'm telling you true I can find folks enew,
                    That are living no better than me.
Old Bill o' Dan's sent bailiffs one day,
For a shop score I owed him that I could not pay,
But he wur too late for old Bill o' Bent,
Had sent tit and cart and taen goods for rent,
We had nou bur a stoo, that wur a seat for two,
                    And on it cowered Margit and me.
The bailiffs looked round assly as a mouse,
When they saw aw things were taen out ot house,
Says one to the other all's gone thou may see,
Aw sed lads never fret you're welcome to me;
They made no more ado, but nipp'd up th' owd stoo,
                    And we both went wack upoth flags.
I geet howd of Margit for hoo wur strucken sick,
Hoo sed hoo ne'er had such a bang sin hoo wur wick
The bailiffs scoured off with owd stoo on their backs,
They would not have cared had they brook our necks,
They're mad at owd Bent cos he's taen goods for rent,
                    And wur ready to flee us alive.
I sed to our Margit as we lay upoth floor,
We shall never be lower in this world I'm sure,
But if we alter I'm sure we mun amend,
For I think in my heart we are both at far end,
For meat we have none nor looms to weave on,
                    Egad they're as weel lost as found.
Then I geet up my piece and I took it em back
I scarcely dare speak mester looked so black,
He said you wur o'erpaid last time you coom,
I said if I wur 'twas for weaving bout loom,
In a mind as I'm in I'll ne'er pick o' er again,
                    For I've woven myself thoth' fur end.
Then aw coom out and left him to chew that,
When aw thought again aw wur vext till aw sweat,
To think that we mun work to keep them and awth set,
All the day o' my life and still be in their debt;
So I'll give o'er trade an work with a spade,
                    Or go and break stones upoth road.
Our Margit declared if hoo'd cloas to put on,
Hoo'd go up to Lundun an see the big mon
An if things didn't alter when hoo had been,
Hoo swears hoo'd feight blood up toth e'en,
Hoo's nought again th' Queen but likes a fair thing,
                    An hoo says hoo can tell when hoo's hurt.(14)

Much protest verse, indeed verse by working men, was awkward in phrasing and veered between a stilted literary language and the vernacular, giving the work an odd tone and inconsistent form. This poem, on the other hand, is taut and flexible in its conversational tone and easy use of the weaver's dialect. A clear narrative of events is presented and the available consolation honestly recorded.¹⁵

A dominant characteristic of this poem is its insistence on the rights and personal dignity of the individual; the weaver knows his position in the world and has no desire to overturn its hierarchic order, but oppression he will not tolerate. The poem combines a highly specific attack on those in power—the church parson, the putter-out, the shopkeeper and the houseowner—with a general acceptance of economic instability as an uncontrollable factor in life. Thus, the main threat of the poem in the final stanza is based on an if-clause which negates the possibility of ever visiting the King (or Queen, as this updated version reads). This stanza comes out of a long tradition of appealing to justice at its source, the crown, and of struggling as individuals. The political unity of the workers was an ideal that only slowly became an integral part of working-class consciousness, although its appeal was always present. The poem conveys no sense of the larger economic forces at work, nor of any revolutionary possibilities for change; rather, it emphasizes the continuation of self-respect—and a willingness to fight for it—in spite of social and economic repression. Both the limits and the strengths of this view partially explain why the English weavers did not rise up violently against their ‘mesters’, but sought redress through appeals to justice and to Parliament, or simply waited for a turn of fate.¹⁶

This sardonic song of protest did not yield any imitations; its continuation almost unchanged through the nineteenth century is a mark of its power within folk memory, and of the hold a printed broadside held in comparison with oral transmission. But the comic Jone lived on in many different forms. By 1840 he had become Johnny Green in the songs of Alexander Wilson. For some twenty years, along with his father and brother, Wilson wrote occasional verse in Manchester. The family, who entertained in the local pubs, came from an old hand-loom weaving family, but had adapted to the new age; they all made a good living as small-ware manufacturers. They took many traditional songs and altered them to fit the most recent events in the city. The father wrote ‘Jone's Ramble fro Owdem to Karsey Moor Races’. Alexander used Johnny Green as a visitor to the sights of modern Manchester, including a balloon ascent, Tinker's Gardens (Manchester's pleasure gardens), and the new railway to Liverpool. The charm of these songs rests entirely on the familiarity of both places and characters.

We seed sich lots o' jerry shops,
Boh we'd na stay to drink their slops,
Eend-way we went an' made no stops,
                              An' just i' toime we nick'd um;
For helter-skelter sich a crew,
Wur comink in fro' Liverpoo;
Aw'm shure they could no faster goo,
                              If th' devil i' hell had kick'd um.(17)

So goes a description of a visit to see the first train. Obviously the comic Jone could be used by song writers as a handy commentator for almost any event. His very popularity meant that Wilson and others did not have to supply much comedy in their songs, but could depend upon a built-in response from their audience. The technique was commonly used by the next generation of local writers, who created a single comic hero for their sketches and stories.

Jone was again revived in the 1880s by Ben Brierley, a Lancashire dialect writer, in ‘The Wayver of Wellbrook’. Brierley imitated the sounds of an old hand-loom in his poem, a nostalgic lyric of contentment. Jone praises his lot with Margit at his side working the spinning wheel. He is happy with ‘a quiet heawse nook,—a good wife an' a book,’ forgetting the reality of ‘I've nowt to eat i'th house and I've worn out my cloas.’ Brierley's distortion of the traditional Jone, both comic and serious, illustrates well the decline of the broadside. Conditions had changed by the 1880s—life was still hard enough, but new traditions, including greater literacy, union activities, and a warm family life, had replaced the harsh subsistence level endured by the original Jone. Relative stability in the present cast a glow of warm nostalgia across the past, strengthening the myth of the golden age.

The broadside celebrated many positive attributes of factory life before it died. Betty Reedhook and Sam Shuttle knew no other life but working in a factory; by their time hand-loom weavers were usually the poorest of the Irish. By the 1840s, in spite of the undeniably bad conditions during certain years, factory life was increasingly accepted. Songs were written praising the liveliness and vitality of factory towns. ‘Oldham Workshops’ and ‘Owdam Streets at Dinner Time’ both describe the many factories in Oldham and the pleasures of the workers freed for an hour,

Till half-past one they're never still—
          It's like a fair at Lousey Banks.
The lasses then, who think they're fair,
Blackball their heels and curl their hair,
Sayin', ‘Put up my hair nicely Nelly,
For to day at noon I'st meet my felly.’(18)

Another song speaks triumphantly of ‘The Fair maids of Manchester, the factory belles’. The acceptance of the factory system and the changed conditions of life meant a change in the type of literature working people wrote and read. Although they might return to ‘Jone o' Grinfilt, Jr.’ in hard times, increasingly they turned to creating new songs that defined the new issues. But these early industrial songs served the people well when they came to forge a new literature and language for propaganda, pleasure and education.

Notes

1. For a discussion of the lack of railway navvy songs, see Terry Coleman, The Railway Navvies (London: Hutchinson, 1965), pp.139-43. After the railways were a flourishing and established form of transportation, a number of railway poets arose. The most famous was Alexander Anderson. He wrote, among other volumes, A Song of Labour and other Poems (Dundee: Advertiser Officer 1873) and Songs of the Rail (London: Simpkin and Marshall, 1878). His works are very like those discussed in chapter 4.

2. The most detailed examination of industrial dislocation and its impact upon individual workers and their families is Neil J. Smelser's Social Change in the Industrial Revolution: An Application of Theory to the British Cotton Industry (Chicago: University Press, 1959). See also R. S. Fitton, and A. P. Wadsworth, The Strutts and the Arkwrights 1785-1830 (Manchester: University Press, 1958); William Radcliffe, The Origin of Power Loom Weaving (Stockport, 1828); and Andrew Ure, The Cotton Manufacture of Great Britain, 2 vols. (London: H. G. Bohn, 1861).

3. Broadside Collection, John Johnson Collection, Bodleian Library, Oxford. It should be noted that the weaver is a woman in a trade traditionally associated with men. See Duncan Bythell, The Handloom Weavers: A Study in the English Cotton Industry during the Industrial Revolution (Cambridge: University Press, 1969), pp.60-1, for an analysis of the number of women in the trade. See also Ivy Pinchbeck, Women Workers and the Industrial Revolution 1750-1850 (London: George Routledge & Sons, 1930).

4. (Preston: Harkness, n.d.). Harris Public Library, Preston.

5. (Manchester: G. Jacques, n.d.). Harris Public Library, Preston. Catnach also published this under the title ‘The Factory Girl’.

6. John Harland and T. T. Wilkinson, Ballads and Songs of Lancashire, Ancient and Modern, 3rd ed. (Manchester: John Heywood, 1882), pp.202-4.

7. Harland and Wilkinson, pp.193-5.

8. ibid., pp.188-9.

9. Select Committee on Hand-Loom Weavers' Petitions (1834). Quoted by E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (London: Gollancz, 1963), p.307.

10. Since this poem is undated and has no publisher or place of publication it is difficult to date or to give a place of origin. It is accompanied by a poem called ‘The Ashes of Napoleon’, describing the return of Napoleon's ashes to Paris in 1840. ‘The Factory Bell’, however, probably dates from an earlier time. This particular version comes from the Leeds Public Library.

11. The authorship of the original ‘Jone o' Grinfilt’ is under some dispute. For the best known account, see Harland and Wilkinson, pp.162-75. For a correction, see Charles Higson, ‘“Jone o' Grinfilt, Jr.” and “Oldham Rushbearing”’, Oldham Standard, 1 May 1926.

12. John of Greenfield appears frequently in political anecdotes. The Chartist leader Feargus O'Connor in a speech given at Carlisle said, ‘… he thought it unnecessary that those who were to choose the persons who were to make the laws should be educated; it was sufficient for them to possess plain common sense. This reminded him of a story told of John of Greenfield, who said that all the stuff in the world was made for all the people in the world. Some one told John that he knew nothing about making laws, to which he replied, ‘No and I know nothing about making a shoe, and yet I can tell when the shoe pinches—(A laugh)—and so I would be d d fool to go a second time to a man who made a shoe to pinch me, so I would be a d d fool to go a second time to the man who made a bad law.’ Carlisle Patriot, 19 January 1839. I am indebted to Thomas Milton Kemnitz for drawing my attention to this reference.

13. Ewen McColl, The Shuttle and the Cage (London: Workers' Music Association, 1954), p.3. One hundred and fifty years of oral circulation changed ‘Jone o' Grinfilt, Jr.’ into a song much closer in form and emotion to a traditional ballad.

14. (Manchester: Bebbington, n.d.), Broadside collection, Chetham's Library, Manchester. Mrs. Gaskell in Mary Barton (1848) changes the lines attacking the parson. ‘Our church parson’ is changed to ‘Owd Dicky o' Billy's’, and ‘I know he lives weel by backbiting the de'il’ is changed to ‘Owd Dicky's weel crammed, he never wur clemmed.’ The final threat of Margit is softened. ‘Hoo swears hoo'd feight blood up toth e'en’ is changed to ‘Hoo's fully resolved t' sew up meawth an' eend.’

15. There seems, however, to be a break between the seventh and eighth stanzas; whether by intention or because all surviving versions read this way is unclear. The weaver declares that things are at ‘fur end’, using a weaving term that means the end of a piece of woven cloth, to describe the plight of himself and his wife. There seems to be no way out of their dilemma of no looms, no furniture and no money, except to argue as he does, that since they have nothing left, things must improve. Then, the next two stanzas describe an event one would have supposed occurred previous to the confiscation of the furniture. Since he says that he was weaving ‘bout loom’ the previous week where does the final piece of cloth come from? It may be that these verses come after his comment to Margaret in order to indicate that he could indeed he made lower in the world by means of his master's degrading attitude. Or, his declaration to ‘ne'er pick o'er again’ may be a defiant recognition of the inevitable; accepting poor relief and its required labour of stone breaking or spadework is made to seem a choice by his refusal to work any longer for the putter-out (who has no work for him anyway). Given the combination of melancholy tone and sardonic comment, it seems that the weaver accepts poor relief and all it entails, but as the final stanza indicates, demands justice; indeed, the final three lines became proverbial in Lancashire as a comment on hard times.

16. The exceptions to this generalization are such movements as the early nineteenth-century Luddite and Captain Swing movements that largely attacked machinery and not men. See Frank Peel The Risings of the Luddites, Chartists and Plug-Drawers 4th ed. (London: Frank Cass, 1968); and E. J. Hobsbawm and George Rudé, Captain Swing (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1968).

17. The Songs of the Wilsons, ed. John Harland (Manchester: John Heywood, n.d. [1842]), p.62.

18. Broadside Collection, Manchester Central Reference Library.