Differing Responses to an Industrialising Economy - eTheses ...

population needed food and other commodities, so agriculture continued to develop,
while workers in the building, transport and allied trades were also in demand, but the
leather and textile trades were in decline.
In the early nineteenth century the success of the needle and fishing tackle trade
brought prosperity to this zone, but progress was not smooth. Both competition and cooperation
existed between large and small firms, and, as Hudson comments about the
west midlands region: ‘diversification of products and markets… left a place for smaller
firms in the industrial structure’. 435
‘Capital deepening’ in the factories introduced
technological innovation, which allowed less skilled, poorer paid wheel-turners to replace
skilled workers. 436
their fears felt. 437
Some workers lost out and therefore rioted or struck in order to make
The wage-earning needlemakers in Redditch’s Victorian factories
lived a very different life from their great-grandfathers on Sambourne Heath. 438
Women
and children played an important role in needlemaking, and there are signs that some
unmarried female needlemakers managed to support themselves. 439
The industrial focus had shifted within the Needle District as proto-industry
evolved into a more mature industrialisation and urbanisation around Redditch along the
lines of other places in the midland hardware district. 440
As in Smith’s Nottinghamshire
towns, demographic growth brought with it more trades and services to cater for the
435 Hudson, The Industrial Revolution, p. 126.
436 The term ‘capital deepening’ is taken from Atack, ‘Capital deepening and the rise of the factory’, p. 586.
437 As well as the riots and strikes mentioned above, Richardson, The Book of Redditch, p. 65, mentions the
year-long strike which commenced in 1846, when needle-pointers objected to new extractor fans to remove
metal dust, which they feared would reduce their pay.
438 Like the workers described in Mendels, ‘Proto-industrialization: the first phase of the industrialization
process’, p. 261, and in Frost, ‘Yeomen and metalsmiths: livestock in the dual economy in south
Staffordshire 1560-1720’.
439 This needs further investigation, but several unmarried women needlemakers (with or without children)
remain unmarried from the 1820s through to 1851.
440 As described in various studies such as Hopkins, The Rise of the Manufacturing Town, and Court, The
Rise of the Midland Industries, and Timmins, Birmingham and the Midland Hardware District.
336