Tailors' wages are not
to exceed 2s. per day and their hours of work are to be 6 a.m. to 8
p.m. for the next three months, and 1s.8d. per day for the rest of
the year. A master tailor paying more shall forfeit 5 pounds. A
journeyman receiving more shall be sent to the House of Correction
for 2 months. Justices of the Peace may still alter these wages
and hours depending on local scarcity or plenty. Despite this
statute, the journeymen tailors complained to Parliament of their
low wages and lack of work; their masters called them to work only
about half the year. There was much seasonal fluctuation in their
trade as there was in all trades. The slack period for the tailors
was the winter, when the people of fashion retired to their
country estates. After their complaint, their wages then rose from
1s.10d. per day in 1720, to 1s.8d.- 2s. in 1721, to 2s.- 2s.6d. in
1751, to 2s.2d.- 2s.6d. in 1763, to up to 2s.71/2 d. in 1767, and
to 3s. in 1775. Foremen were excluded from wage control. When they
complained of their long hours, which were two hours longer than
the 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. of most handicraft trades, their hours were
reduced in 1767 by one hour to 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. and their pay was
set at 6d. per hour for overtime work at night during periods of
general mourning, e.g. court mourning. Their work hours were
lowered to from 6 a.m to 6 p.m. in 1768.
The stocking frame-knitters guild, which had been chartered in
1663, went on strike to protest the use of workhouse children as
an abuse of apprenticeship which lowered their wages.
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