KIRKHAMFurniture-Making1982.pdf

profit, goods could be supplied more cheaply than the large comprehensive
39
firms could make them . By mid-century even the best West End firms
were forced, on occasions, to use inferior materials or lower the earnings
of their workers because their customers were not always prepared to pay
for quality production. Contracts from the Office of Works, for instance,
were nearly always given to the lowest tender submitted by one of the half-
dozen or so leading furniture-making firms chosen to estimate for the work.
A representative of the firm of Holland, whose tenders were sometimes a
great deal lower than those of its rivals 40 , confessed to lowering prices
for jobs and using inferior materials on government work because of the
pressure to produce cheap work41.
It was this pressure to produce cheaply together with the
competition from the East End trade, which led to the decline of the West
End trade based on the manufacture of quality goods. By 1861 the
percentage of furniture-makers working in the East End was slightly greater
than that in the West End, the former accounting for 31% and the latter
for 28% of the total number of London furniture-makers . The number of
43
West End furniture-making establishments declined in the 1860s and, in
the 1870s, the East End superseded the West End as the largest furniture-
making centre in London, in terms of both workers and number of establishments4
The era of the comprehensive manufacturing firm producing quality goods
with skilled labour, much of it organised in trade societies, had passed.
Hf.