In common with other workers in industries organized on a capitalist, private-enterprize basis, the cotton handloom weavers' most immediate and direct method of putting pressure on their employers lay in some form of ‘industrial’ action. A combination of workmen, using the ultimate sanction of a strike, is the ‘normal’ retaliation against any threatened deterioration in the conditions of work or fall in wages, regardless of whether or not the employers seem directly responsible for it. At a time when parliament was slow to act, and when political reform offered only a vague panacea, the most obvious response to some sudden challenge was prompt local action against those masters whose decision to lower wages had thrown down the challenge in the first instance.

As the handloom weavers suffered many wage reductions, one might expect them to have turned frequently toindustrial action in their efforts to halt the decline. Yet it was a matter of general comment among contemporaries that they seldom did so. The docility of the cotton weavers was often contrasted with the violence of the factory spinners, who in the 1820s and 1830s were usually regarded as the most ardent of trade unionists.