These workers typically worked in their stone or
brick houses in a rural setting, with gardens, a cow, a horse,
pigs, and poultry around them on 2-6 acres. They now ate wheaten
bread instead of rye bread, much meat and cheese, and drank tea.
These people also worked in the harvesting of grain. Some
consolidation of work was starting. For instance, the weaver, who
had furnished himself with warp and weft, worked it up, and
brought it to market himself was being displaced by weavers who
worked under supervision for one merchant in a town on looms the
merchant had acquired. Many women and children were so employed.
It was not unusual for a man to work 13 hours a day for 6 days a
week. Real wages were higher than at any time since the mid-1400s.
The wage earners were well above the subsistence level as long as
trade was good. Working men could now afford leather shoes and
white bread. But eventually, as the employer came to realize how
dependent the weaver had become on him, wages tended to fall. In
1757 a Gloucester weaver, with his wife to help him, could earn,
when work was good, from 13s. to 18s. a week. A few years later,
he could only earn about 11s. A woman spinner earned 10-15d. a day
in 1764, but 3-5d. in 1780. In the same period, men's wages fell
from 17d. to 10d. a day. Only certain workers, whose special
occupation needed greater skill, e.g. the wool-combers, whose wool
was longer and of better quality than carded wool, and shearers,
were better paid.
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