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Source 17.4: A Weaver’s Lament

As industrialization generated new work in the factories, it also destroyed older means of livelihood, particularly that of skilled artisans. By the early 1860s, the silk weavers of Coventry, England, a long-established and previously thriving group of artisans, were in desperate straits, owing in part to a decline in the fashion of wearing silk ribbons. Many individual weavers had to sell their looms to the larger manufacturers who were organizing more efficient production in factories. The song that follows was sung by unemployed weavers as they paraded through the streets of Coventry on their way to relief work, often in stone quarries. It reflects the costs of the Industrial Revolution for a body of proud and skilled artisans and their distress at an economic system that seemed to cast them adrift.

Questions to consider as you examine the source:

Who or what does the song blame for the plight of the weavers?
What does the song mean by mentioning the “commercial plan” and “political economy”? And how do you understand the line “He’s only a weaver that no one owns”?
How might you compare the life of an unemployed weaver with that of a factory worker like Elizabeth Bentley?

Only a Weaver, 1860s

Who is that man coming up the street

With weary manner and shuffling feet;

With a face that tells of care and grief

And in hope that seems to have lost belief.

For wickedness past he now atones

He’s only a weaver that no one owns.

He’s coming no doubt from breaking stones

With saddened heart and aching bones.

But why should he grumble, he gets good pay

A loaf and six pence every day.

He thought if he worked both night and day

He ought to receive equivalent pay;

But he’s just an inconsistent man

Who doesn’t understand the commercial plan.

Political economy now must sway

And say when a man shall work or play.

If he’s wanted his wages may be high

If he isn’t, why then, he may starve and die.

If you employ him, don’t mend the price

He’s starving, you know and has no choice —

And give him to weave the worst of silk

For it’s only a weaver’s time you bilk. . . .

Yet take no heed of his sighs and groans

His careworn face, his agonized moans;

For wickedness past he now atones

He’s only a weaver that no one owns.

Source: Joseph Gutteridge, Light and Shadows in the Life of an Artisan (1893), 153, abridged and adapted in Poverty Knock, edited by Roy Palmer (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1974), 24. Copyright © Cambridge University Press, 1974. Reprinted with permission of Cambridge University Press.