Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

approval from the workers, who feared that mechanisation would cause redundancies and
that safety measures would reduce wages. For example, there were riots in 1830, when
new needle-stamps were destroyed. 293
After initial discontent most innovations generally
became accepted by the workers, though many had to adjust their working practices. By
contrast, strikes concerning pay in 1826 and 1830 ended in favour of the workers. 294
The organisation of the industry was complex. Although more and more workers
were concentrated in larger workshops, mills and factories, which utilised water or steam
power for certain processes, there were still needlemakers who worked in their own small
cottage workshops. Some families specialised in certain processes, others carried out
most or all the processes themselves. Some cottage-workers were independent,
(sometimes co-operating with their neighbours), others were out-workers for the large
firms. Needle-factors and merchants then marketed the products on behalf of producers,
large or small.
Smithian specialisation went hand in hand with a pull in the opposite direction, a
tendency towards diversification. Some firms made many types of needles, others made
bodkins or sailmakers’ needles. Perhaps surprisingly, only a few firms branched into pinmaking,
but from the mid-eighteenth century the manufacture of fish-hooks had spread in
the locality. By 1839 there were 25 firms making fish-hooks in Redditch alone and four
firms making other fishing tackle. 295
Some of these firms also made needles.
As the various firms’ commercial travellers built up links with customers at home
and abroad, fish-hook manufacturers started to branch out into making other types of
fishing tackle. Whereas the diversification from needle to fish-hook manufacture had
293 A. Bradford, ed., Old Redditch, (being an early history of the town from 1800 to 1850 by William
Avery), (Redditch, Hunt End Books, 1999), pp. 11-16. Berrow’s Worcester Journal 9 December 1830.
294 Bradford, Old Redditch, pp. 11-13.
295 Robson’s Birmingham and Sheffield Directory 1839.
309