In the cotton mills of Lancashire there was a rigid hierarchical pay structure. Spinners, who were exclusively men, were paid 40 shillings a week. [1] In the weaving sheds, men's wages were 25 shillings a week and women's 21 shillings. Although theoretically the rate for women was the same as for men, in practice because men earned more because they worked four or six-loom machines, and women three or four-loom machines, which paid a lower rate.
The process of changing raw cotton into woven cloth was complex, dangerous and monotonous. 'When cotton first arrived at the mill, the bales were broken open by men swinging axes against them, and the raw cotton was fed into a series of machines that opened, cleaned and blended the fibres. It emerged as a 'lap' (a thick loose blanket) which the men then carried to the carding machines. Here women 'card' tenters fed the laps through rotating cylinders, covered in wire spikes, which removed any remaining tangles or dirt and turned out the cotton as a 'sliver', or a thick rope of loose cotton. Skilled men, working as strippers and grinders, removed odd bits of cotton from the spikes and ground the wires so that they were all precisely the same height.
'The sliver then went through a drawframe, speed frames and jack frame - all minded by a woman tenter - until it emerged as a manageable yarn, known as a 'roving', still thick and soft, but with a little bit of twist. The cotton was now ready for the spinners.'
[1] There were twelve pennies in a shilling and twenty shilling in a pound.
[2]These quotations are taken from the book One Hand Tied Behind Us:The Rise of the Women's Suffrage Movement by Jill Liddington and Jill Norris, Virago: London, 1978.
