Although there is some truth in the comment made by Canon Barnett, rector of St Jude's, Whitechapel, and founder of Toynbee Hall, that the issue in 1909 of the Report of the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws “may mark the beginning of a new epoch in our social life”, the precise reasons for the appointment of the Commission on December 4th, 1905, are not yet known. The Conservative government, which made the appointment almost on the eve of its defeat, had been in power for ten years, first under the prime ministership of Lord Salisbury and then, until his resignation in December 1905, of A. J. Balfour. During that time the cost of the Poor Law had risen steadily, and yet, until the end of 1904, either through social myopia or a preoccupation with the greater drama of events abroad, the government displayed little interest in the problem of the Poor Law or, indeed, in any of the wider questions of social reform.

Of all the political and ideological debates which confronted the French Socialist movement between the Paris Commune and the Great War, the problem of anticlericalism was one of the most complex. The concept of anticlericalism gives rise to a certain degree of confusion, partly because of the fact that it was a war-horse ridden jointly by the radical republicans and by the Socialists. The simplest definition of anticlericalism is that offered by the dictionary of Robert: “opposition à toute immixtion du clergé dans la politique”.

In his study of the effect of technological change on families working in the Lancashire cotton industry in the first half of the nineteenth century, Smelser has argued that the family as a work unit was disrupted by the introduction of larger mules, which required more child assistants in the spinning mill than one family alone could provide. The result was the disruption of the family work unit, hitherto preserved in the earlier cotton mills, and the decline of the old apprentice-ship system based on kinship.1 It should be instructive, therefore, to attempt a comparative investigation of conditions in the family work unit in Black Country nailing in the second half of the nineteenth century, when the trade faced increasing competition from factory-made nails and died a lingering death similar in some ways to that of handloom weaving.2 For the purposes of this article, the family work team of the nailers of Stourbridge and district will be examined in the light of the quantitative evidence of the 1851 census returns, and then the decline and disintegration of the work unit will be discussed, with particular reference to changes in familial roles. Here of course it will be impossible to separate work roles from social roles within the family, since so much time was spent by all members within the nailshop, and the distinctive life-style of nailers was strongly conditioned by their mode of work. Lastly, some suggestions will be made as to the causes of decline, and the general significance of the changes which took place in the family.

Asa Briggs has pointed out that the parliamentary-reform movement of the early 1830's differed considerably in nature and direction between one city and another. In Birmingham, the middle and working classes usually co-operated. Class distinctions were blurred. Steam power and the factory – socially disruptive forces – were lacking. Master and artisan worked together in small workshops, frequently changed places with each other in a socially mobile city, and united in advancing an inflationary paper-money programme appropriate to the Midlands iron interests. These were concerned with the home market and the need for expansionist credit. In Manchester and Leeds, on the other hand, the classes were separated by the factory, and had competing reform movements. Manchester's middle-class reformers were concerned with the needs of the cotton industry's export markets; they wanted a stable metallic currency, and stressed the encouragement to trade that would follow the repeal of the Corn Laws. Often they presented repeal in terms the working class found uncongenial

The effectiveness of the strike weapon in early-nineteenth-century England depended in some measure upon the response of public opinion. Obviously the state of trade and the relative cohesion and determination of masters and men were more significant factors, but the attitude of non-participants could not be discounted. The readiness of civil and military authorities to intervene, the reaction of the general public to requests for contributions to relief funds, the willingness of politicians to contemplate changes in the laws concerning combination: all these were influenced by the state of public opinion. It would be an oversimplification to regard “public opinion” and “newspaper opinion” as synonymous. The platform, the pulpit, the placard and the popular song were other means of public expression, not that they necessarily provided a complete or reliable guide to the public mind. Nevertheless the newspaper, particularly in the nineteenth century, was in an advantageous position to influence the response of the public to current controversies.

By the time labor unrest in the Lancashire cotton industry had taken the form of the strike, trade-union development was being hindered by the Combination Laws of 1799–1800, which were to outlaw unions of workers (and supposedly employers) until their repeal in 1824–25. Although the cotton operatives resorted to the strike weapon during this period, the movements were indeed dismal failures. While the Lancashire handloom weavers seem to have won partial concessions from their employers in 1808, the raises were only temporary, and the weavers remained in their state of almost habitual poverty until being extinguished as a class of workmen by the power-loom. And the spinners, whose unions were noted for their superior organization, failed entirely in their strikes of 1810 and 1818. Given this set of circumstances, labor historians Sidney and Beatrice Webb have stressed the “ephemeral combinations” of the early cotton workers and their “passionate struggles to maintain a bare subsistence wage”, alternating with “intervals of abject submission”. Similarly, G. D. H. Cole has depicted the textile workers, along with the miners, as “latecomers to trade unionism”.