Description:When trade unionists protested about wages or welfare, their employers rarely agreed whole-heartedly.
In the Spring of 1831, a notice had appeared in which North Staffordshire miners campaigned for their right to join a trade union and receive a fair wage for their work.
One coal master, Hugh Henshall Williamson of Pinnox Colliery at Greenway Bank, here puts forward his side of the story.
"Injustice and inhumanity..."
The miners had accused the coal owners of refusing to pay them a fair wage.
At this time, many businessmen believed in 'the iron law of wages,' a fashionable idea developed by a renowned banker named David Ricardo.
Williamson shared these beliefs, and here argues that wages should be left to 'the natural course of competition.'
In theory this meant that when business and profits were healthy, workers' wages would follow.
In practice, wages rarely rose very much, and businessmen did not share their profits.
In fact, Williamson accuses the miners of promoting injustice by interfering with the natural order.
"Ruin..."
Williamson then attacks the miners' union for threatening the coal industry with ruin by making unreasonable demands.
He dismisses their requests to monitor his own profits and to take control of his mining operations.
Finally he reminds them that his employees have usually earned over 24 shillings per week, and therefore underlines his determination not to meet their demands.
Finally he condems the union as:
"A society unlawful in its spirit and destructive in its arts."
This item, produced by Burslem printer M. Brougham, is now among the collections at Stoke-on-Trent Museums.