exorbitant.  Some of these frames have been worked for thirteen years with little or no repair.  But circumstances occasionally arise which throw them out of employment, either temporarily or permanently.  Some years since, an article was introduced called cut-up work, by which the price of stocking-frames was greatly deteriorated.  From the evidence of Mr J. Rawson, it appears that, in consequence of this change in the nature of the work, each frame could do the work of two, and many stocking frames were thrown out of employment, and their value reduced full threefourths.(3*)

This information is of great importance, if the numbers here given are nearly correct, and if no other causes intervened to diminish the price of frames; for it shews the numerical connection between the increased production of those machines and their diminished value.

347.  The great importance of simplifying all transactions between masters and workmen, and of dispassionately discussing with the latter the influence of any proposed regulations connected with their trade, is well examplified by a mistake into which both parties unintentionally fell, and which was productive of very great misery in the lace trade.  Its history is so well told by William Allen, a framework knitter, who was a party to it, that an extract from his evidence, as given before the Framework Knitters’ Committee of 1812, will best explain it.

“I beg to say a few words respecting the frame rent; the rent paid for lace frames, until the year 1805, was 1s. 6d. a frame per week; there then was not any very great inducement for persons to buy frames and let them out by the hire, who did not belong to the trade; at that time an attempt was made, by one or two houses, to reduce the prices paid to the workmen, in consequence of a dispute between these two houses and another great house:  some little difference being paid in the price amongst the respective houses, I was one chosen by the workmen to try if we could not remedy the impending evil:  we consulted the respective parties, and found them inflexible; these two houses that were about to reduce the prices, said that they would either immediately reduce the price of making net, or they would increase the frame rent:  the difference to the workmen was considerable, between the one and the other; they would suffer less, in the immediate operation of the thing, by having the rent advanced, than the price of making net reduced.  They chose at that time, as they thought, the lesser evil, but it has turned out to be otherwise; for, immediately as the rent was raised upon the percentage laid out in frames, it induced almost every person, who had got a little money, to lay it out in the purchase of frames; these frames were placed in the hands of men who could get work for them at the warehouses; they were generally constrained to pay an enormous rent, and then they were compelled, most likely, to buy of the persons that let them the frames, their