Yorkshire Almanac The Wool Combers and Weavers Union of Bradford, meeting at the Roebuck Inn, signs off a poster condemning the anti-strike petition issued by the employers, meeting at the Sun

20 June 1825: The Wool Combers and Weavers Union of Bradford, meeting at the Roebuck Inn, signs off a poster condemning the anti-strike petition issued by the employers, meeting at the Sun

Wool Combers and Weavers Union. 1825/06/20. The Non-Signers of Bradford and Its Neighbourhood. Marxists Internet Archive. Ed. Mitchell Abidor Get it:

Unedited excerpt

If an excerpt is used in the book, it will be shorter, edited and, where applicable, translated.

Fellow non-signers,

Those hot-headed Fellows, the Inhabitants of the Sun, seem to think, because they have more Light and Heat, that they have more Sense and Wisdom, also, than we poor Mortals of the lower Regions.

It has lately also been driven into their empty Noddles, that they have a Right to rule or govern us, who are only the poor and simple Inhabitants of Earth.

On account of our independent Spirit, we did not so easily submit to this, as they the Inhabitants of the SUN had at first imagined. They have therefore solicited their Brethren, who live in neighbouring STARS, to come to their Assistance and help them in putting down the Upstarts of the Earth.

Not being able, with the Assistance of their zealous Brethren of the Stars, together with the King of that scorching COMET nightly seen at BOWLING, to curb by Force our independent Spirit, they have now Recourse to Stratagem.

They mean to assail us separately with a Request to sign. To sign what? We do not know. Cannot you think or guess? Yes. We think we are to sign away our independence. We think we are to sign away our children’s Bread. We think we are to sign away our Labour at any price which these Inhabitants of the higher Regions may be pleased to give. This we certainly shall do if we sigh against the UNION. No sooner shall we have done this than they will ascend to their high Abode, laugh at our Cowardice and Ignorance, bind us to future Slavery through our present Conduct, and we being exposed more to the to the Pride and greediness of the Sun’s Inhabitants than to the Heat of the Sun itself, shall be dried and shriveled up, until we are reduce to Skin and Bone.

Committee-Room, Roebuck Inn, Bradford, June 20th, 1825

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

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20 September 1853: Ballad composed for the inauguration this day of Titus Salt’s palace for the manufacture of woollen fabrics

2 May 1844: The Bradford Observer reports a 10% increase in the borough’s population in two years

8 June 1561: A York official explains why textile manufacturing has left his city for the West Riding

16 May 1881: J. Gill (72) of Sugden & Briggs, wool spinners, Bradford, dies of pulmonary anthrax, and his successor, J.R. Baker (58), is fatally infected with cutaneous anthrax

4 October 1831: The end of a 33-week strike by weavers at Gott’s, Leeds

3 February 1825: The last great festival at Bradford for Bishop Blaize, the wool-combers’ patron

30 May 1835: Alfred Austin, future poet laureate, “Banjo-Byron that twangs the strum-strum,” is born into rural splendour at Ashwood, 48 Headingley Lane, Leeds

10 October 1857: Questions from the floor of the Leeds Chamber of Commerce to the explorer and missionary David Livingstone during his exposition of the wonders of Africa

21 October 1555: Wool middlemen are readmitted to Halifax to avoid the destruction of the local economy

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Comment

I think that the convention applies here that acts passed by the Parliament of England were deemed to have come into effect on the first day of the session in which they were passed. Philip and Mary’s fourth parliament ran 21 October-9 December 1555.

This legislation (2 & 3 Ph. & M. c. 13), like several other localised acts, attempted to correct damage inflicted several years before:

The 1552 Act [5 & 6 Edw. 6 c. 7], which outlawed wool middlemen, came at the behest of the Merchants of the Staple, who held a monopoly on the export of wool and had seen their profits eroded as domestic manufactures retained increasing amounts of the raw material… The law stated that only members of the Staplers’ Company and cloth producers could purchase wool from growers directly. Though originating with private interests, the Act was consonant with firmly held beliefs that middlemen unduly raised prices and vitiated quality by deceptively intermixing inferior wool. If strictly enforced, in addition to eliminating middlemen, this law would have effectively bankrupted all producers who possessed neither the wherewithal nor the time to travel to wool-growing districts; nor could they purchase in the large quantities that growers desired to sell. It was precisely on these grounds that a host of exemptions to the Act were granted before it was ultimately repealed in 1624 (Gendron 2021).

William Shakespeare’s father, John, was alleged on the basis of the 1552 legislation to have been a brogger, an illegal intermediary in the wool market (Bearman 2005).

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