As the nineteenth century advanced, steam power gradually replaced hand and water power on the pot-banks. Before 1800, steam had been introduced to drive the flint mills; the glaze-grinding mills, the pumps and lawn sifters came next. But lathes and throwers’ wheels were still driven by hand, and so were the “jiggers”—revolving moulds on which flat bats of clay were “flat-pressed” to make plates and saucers. A tramway was laid about 1815 from Longton and Fenton to the canal wharf at Stoke; but transport along both tramway and canal was still drawn by horses. With the opening of the Manchester and Liverpool Railway, however, in 1830, a new era began in transport, as important as the first canal for the potting industry.

Land transport had, of course, become thoroughly organized and cheapened, and coaches, carrier carts and wagon transport had kept increasing in speed and numbers. In the 1818 Directory, for instance, we find that no less than eleven coaches passed through the district each way every day. Every afternoon the “Light Post Coach,” from Liverpool to Burton and London, ran through the Potteries from the “Red Bull” at Lawton to Lane End; and two hours later the “Prince Coburg” from Liverpool passed through, branching off from the other route at Stoke, and going through Trent Vale, Stone and Lichfield to London. The “Regulator” too, on three days of the week, ran through the Potteries by the same route on its journey from Liverpool to Birmingham. In addition to these coaches three others ran from Liverpool to London, and one from Manchester to London, passing through Newcastle, as did also one from Liverpool and two from Manchester on their way to Birmingham. You could travel from Newcastle at 6 a.m. to the “Swan with Two Necks,” in Fetter Lane, in fifteen hours.

In 1833, however, the Bill for the Grand Junction Railway, from Birmingham to Manchester, was passed, and by the completion of this railway in 1837, Whitmore, the nearest station, five miles from the Potteries, was brought within seven hours of London by four trains a day.

Coal gas had been introduced in 1826 into Burslem, and by 1840 the beginnings of a water supply were visible. At this period, just before modern sanitation, locomotion, economies and “civilization” took root, John Ward, in his “Stoke-on-Trent,” gives us a table showing the dimensions of the trade. It runs as follows:[177]

It will be noticed that the Stourbridge bricks were already in request for the pot-ovens, and that the total weight of ware exported out of the district amounted to 72,500 tons, of which nearly three-quarters went abroad. Through the courtesy of Mr Philips, Manager of the N. S. Ry. Co., I am able to give some corresponding figures for later dates, as follows:

This shows an export trade from the North Staffordshire Potteries of 184,000 tons of ware in 1906 against 72,500 tons exported in 1836, but it must be remembered that ware is now much finer and lighter than it was seventy years ago, so that the real increase in value is more marked than the increase in weight seems to indicate.

As trade and population increased within the narrow limits of the Potteries the conditions of life became harder and poverty more severe. Already in 1792 we read of troops being sent, to Wolverhampton of all places, to keep order during a strike in the Potteries of Staffordshire.[178] While in 1813 a Chamber of Commerce was formed and attempted to fix a uniform increased price for earthenware. A price list was in fact drawn up for the commoner sorts of ware, and remained in force for twenty years or more, though it was regularly evaded by special rebates and discounts.[179]

The first Trade Union is heard of in 1824. It was formed immediately on the passage of the combination laws, and the men struck for a rise at Martinmas 1825. The men were utterly beaten and their union destroyed. Little capital was required to start a pot-factory in those days, and the strikers tried to employ themselves in an early example of a co-operative factory. They were however before their time and the experiment only hastened their defeat.[180]

The best days for the Trade Unions came in 1833, when Robert Owen, the socialist, visited the Potteries and brought them all the enthusiasm of a great cause. A new union was founded, and was welcomed by many of the best employers as a lever to raise prices as well as wages. Chas. J. Mason, who was then supplying the world with his “ironstone” china, formed a Masters’ Association to work with the men’s union; and wages were raised. The dissentient masters refused to grant the rise, and a four months’ strike began at Martinmas 1834, and ended in a victory for the men.[181]

During the years 1833-5 wages are said to have increased by 25 per cent.[182] But in March 1836 the masters united in a Pottery Chamber of Commerce and preparations were made for war. Before however an account is given of what is still known as “the great strike,” the two customs of the trade must be described, against which, then and for years thereafter, the men struggled in vain.

By the “Annual Hiring” Agreement men were engaged only at Martinmas (Nov. 11). They were bound to serve all the following year to make ware at fixed prices, and if they broke their agreement they could be, and were, imprisoned. It was entirely a one-sided bargain. An employer could keep a man tied to a situation which gave him but one day’s work a week, yet if the man left he might be prosecuted. Even if not prosecuted, nobody could engage him without a written discharge. The system was similar to the Native Pass Laws of South Africa.

The greatest number of male workers were flat or hollow-ware pressers and throwers. These men were paid by piece, and only for those pieces which were good. By a strange trade custom, however, they were not paid for those pieces which left their hands in good condition, but only for those that ultimately came good from the oven. In other words, they suffered for other people’s breakages and carelessness. The men could get no proof that the ware was bad at all. They had no appeal. Some masters were even said to refuse to pay for what they themselves afterwards sold as “seconds.”

Against these customs the men decided to strike. They demanded the right to give a month’s notice to leave and to be paid for all ware which came “good-from-hand.” The masters replied that they “could not allow the old usages of the trade to be broken up,” and they drew up a new clause to be added to the annual agreements in future. By this new clause the agreement was to be suspended if work at a factory ceased, but only till work was resumed again. In fact the men were to be suspended from work and wages but not from servitude. If they found work during the “suspension” they were to throw it up as soon as their old master wanted them back.[183]

As soon as notice of the new agreement was given to the men, the workmen at fourteen factories came out. This was on Sept. 1, 1836. When Martinmas came round sixty-four more of the biggest factories were laid idle, and seven-ninths of the trade stopped. It is doubtful whether the whole history of Trade Unionism records a more desperate fight than the one that followed. Strike pay never exceeded 6s. for married men and 4s. for single men, but the funds became exhausted. Help came—£7,000 of it—from Sheffield and Manchester, and that too vanished. Twenty thousand potters were out of work, and so were the retail tradesmen and all allied trades. The men began to dribble back at Christmas, for it was a very hard winter and the savings were all gone. Then several hundred devoted men, taking the remains of their clothes and household furniture, marched in procession to the pawn-shops and paid over all the money they could raise into the common fund. This example inspired the last 10,000 to hold out three weeks longer, and at least got terms for the men. A conference was presided over by Mr Twemlow of Betley on January 20, 1837, and the masters agreed to guarantee four days’ work a week, and to break in the presence of the man all ware for which they refused to pay him, on the ground that it came “bad from oven.”[184]

But even these concessions were futile for the union was broken. The men took what they could get. Gradually all the old wrongs crept back again into the trade customs, and even the wage-prices of 1833-6 were whittled away by a system of “allowances.” A potter of 1843 gives an account of his engagement. He applied for work as a journeyman, and was asked what kind of a journeyman he wanted to be, as there were several kinds. “There were,” said the manufacturer, “some, like those of so-and-so, who took pay in provisions; others, like those of such a one, who took their pay in haberdashery and jewellery; but the class to which he wished to direct particular attention was the one which allowed 2d. in the shilling, which class was divided into two parties; those who consented to the twopences being stopped out of their wages on Saturday evening, and those who preferred to compound with their dignity, get their money in full on Saturday and pay back the twopences on Monday morning.”[185]

Wages in fact sank to subsistence level, and the smaller the master the more he beat down his men by allowances and undercut his selling prices. Some of them kept shops as well as factories, and broke the Truck Act every day. The Chamber of Commerce in 1836 stated the average wages as follows: In 1833-4, men 17s. to 21s., women 6s. to 11s., child of 14, 3s. to 3s. 6d.; in 1836, men 21s. to 28s., women 10s. to 15s., child 3s. 6d. to 4s. 6d. These figures probably exaggerate slightly the rise in wages, and under the allowance system they soon sank again to the pre-union level.

The general election took place in the middle of the black year 1837, and the return of the two Conservative masters, Davenport and Copeland, for Stoke-on-Trent, resulted in rioting on the part of the wage-earners who were then non-voters. These riots were repeated in a more serious form at the election of 1841, but it was the houses rather than the factories of the unpopular side that were demolished.

During those busy years of the railway boom, the Trade Unions again raised their head in North Staffordshire. The third union was started in September 1843. It began with a small success—a partial strike lasting nine months—but as a rule it avoided conflicts and tried to work by moral suasion and public opinion. With this end in view they published a paper, “The Potters’ Examiner,” in which the more flagrant cases of “truck” and “allowance” were exposed. They succeeded in gradually levelling up the bad masters. A few prosecutions stopped the truck system, and allowances vanished in 1844 under gentle pressure from a strong union and doubts as to their legality. It is only fair to say that the best firms had never countenanced the “allowances,” and were glad to see the worse makers forced to drop them.

A development, however, that helped the union at first more than anything else, was the invention of pot-making machines. The potting industry had survived so long without machinery, that the workmen had begun to think themselves safe. These flat and hollow ware-pressers had skill, and they were paid by the piece. At one fell swoop, and in the middle of their settled lives, they saw themselves suddenly deprived of all the value of their skill and training, and likely to be replaced by women and lads. During 1845-6 Mr Ridgway tried a “paste-box” machine, and Chas. J. Mason bought some sort of a plate “jolly.”[186] The men promptly struck and prevented their adoption, but the panic was intensified when Messrs Copeland introduced a similar dread machine, which the potters in their terror called the “Scourge.” This machine too was withdrawn, but not because of the union. The general election of 1847 was approaching and Alderman Copeland stood for Stoke-on-Trent. It is curious to think that the panic fear of the workers postponed the introduction of these machines for twenty years. And indeed the pottery workers themselves have lost something through the introduction of machinery. The proportion of women and young persons employed in the industry is double what it was in 1850, and the work of married women is not good for the rest of the people.

Incidentally this machinery panic broke down the union. Encouraged by William Evans, their leader and the editor of the “Examiner,” the union attempted to emigrate the unemployed—almost to emigrate en masse and fly from the wrath to come. They bought a great estate in Wisconsin, called it Pottersville, and to it in 1846 they sent out settlers as to a new Utopia. The scheme failed, and with it, in 1849, collapsed the third potters’ union. Drained of money for America, it had been growing weaker ever since 1847—they could only humbly petition against Copeland’s “Scourge,” and as the union weakened “allowances” crept back into use, while “good-from-oven” and the annual hiring flourished as before.[187]

It is said that but for the opposition of the Newcastle innkeepers the main line of the London and Manchester Railway would have run up the Trent valley, and Newcastle would now occupy the position of Crewe as a universal junction. However that may be, in 1846 a company was formed for giving the potteries direct railway communication with the main trunk lines. The moving spirit in this enterprise was Alderman Copeland, M.P. for Stoke, and senior partner in Messrs Copeland and Garrett—the pottery firm that had once been Spode’s.

William Taylor Copeland (1797-1868),[188] son of William Copeland, the partner of the second Spode, had become sole owner of the old Spode china factory at Stoke in 1833. He had been Lord Mayor of London in 1835, and from 1837 till 1865 was generally Conservative member for Stoke-on-Trent. With the help of his partner, Thomas Garrett, Lord Ingestre, Richard Cobden, and some London financiers, the North Staffordshire Railway was formed. Bills were passed through Parliament in 1846, and by the end of 1849 Stoke was connected up with Stafford, Derby, Crewe, and Manchester. They were forced by Parliament to buy out the Canal Company’s monopoly at a very high figure—£1,700,000—which large addition to the capital of the company has always been urged as an excuse for any exceptionally high transport rates on this railway.

We may add here that the loop line through Tunstall was finished in 1875; while the tramways with horse draft were commenced in 1861, turned into steam traction in 1895, and into the present electric system by the British Electric Traction Company in 1902.

The railway at first affected principally the passenger traffic, and it was only gradually that it came into use for the carrying trade of the district, as the following figures show:

Total weight of goods and minerals carried by N.S.R. in 1,000 tons

The partnership between Copeland and Garrett was dissolved in 1847, and the firm took the title of “W. T. Copeland, late Spode.” This was again changed in 1867 when Alderman Copeland’s four sons were admitted into the business, and the name became “W. T. Copeland & Sons.” It was about 1846 that Messrs Copeland developed the “Parian” body, a hard white stoneware second only to marble as a material for statuettes and bas-reliefs. It is composed largely of feldspar, and figures in this material, modelled by some of the best artists of the last half century, still form a large part of Messrs Copeland’s productions.

Alderman Copeland, who was also a great patron of the Turf, died in 1868 and his son, Richard Pirie Copeland, then became sole owner of the works. Mr R. P. Copeland bought Kibblestone Hall, and served as High Sheriff for the county in 1902. His sons have now joined him in the management of the historic works at Stoke.