A Merseyside Town in the Industrial Revolution by T.C. Barker Professor J R Harris J.R. Harris

Author:T.C. Barker, Professor J R Harris, J.R. Harris [T.C. Barker, Professor J R Harris, J.R. Harris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General
ISBN: 9781136298660
Google: tdPFBQAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2012-10-12T01:16:42+00:00

Although William Bromilow may have been present as an impartial chairman without interests in the Wigan district, it seems much more probable that at this well-attended meeting were proprietors from both the Wigan and St. Helens fields and that Bromilow, a man who commanded universal respect, was voted to the Chair. If we are correct in this supposition, the meeting at Wigan was the precursor of the West Lancashire Coal Association which, according to a very cautious witness to a Royal Commission at the end of the century, dealt with “ wages questions or with matters of difference arising between employers and employed.”11

Unfortunately there is no first-hand evidence to allow hard and fast conclusions to be formed about the scope of this association of coal proprietors. People still believed (with Adam Smith) that such meetings were a conspiracy against the public. They were therefore held with as little publicity as possible, only the results which could not be concealed—the raising or lowering of prices or wages—being permitted to come out into the light of day. Consequently, it is extremely difficult to discover how effective and all-embracing the organisation was : whether talk was matched by action and whether gentlemen’s agreements were honoured. On the one hand, the coal proprietors certainly appear to have avoided cut-throat competition and long periods of fighting trade. The leaders in the industry at St. Helens were already “ great people,” safely established. There was no need for them to undercut their neighbours in order to secure a footing in the market or to make their position secure. On the other hand, however, it is quite possible that the fixing of prices was only effective in the domestic market ; as a trade union leader was later to remark with some misgiving, it was very difficult to discover the trade price :12

“ In a large colliery there must be contracts made which are generally private contracts and those who make them do not like to divulge the prices at which they are made. Therefore it is very difficult… to ascertain the exact price of the whole coal produced at any colliery … the retail price … often misleads … as to the average price obtainable.”13

Price-fixing appears to have established the ceiling figure from which discounts were privately given.

Associations which regulated output were much more effective because they called for regular returns of production. This was the case in the salt industry where printed forms were circulated containing the production of every firm and the amounts by which each had exceeded or failed to reach its quota. It is just possible that the collieries at St. Helens had a similar quota system in operation in the 1830s, for a printed list headed An Account of the quantity of COAL and SLACK shipped at the under-mentioned COLLIERIES on the SANKEY NAVIGATION was sent monthly to the local coal masters.14 Although the lists do not mention the amounts over and short, thereby pre-supposing a quota, the very existence of

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