[Footnote 177-1: Thus even 34 Edw. III., c. 9. Journeymen builders were forbidden by 3 Henry VI., c. 1, to form conspiracies to enhance the rate of wages, under pain of felony. Finally, 39 and 40 George III., c. 106, threatened any one who, by mere persuasion, should induce a workman to leave his master's service, etc., with 2 months in the work-house, or 3 months' imprisonment. In France, as late as June and September, 1791, all conspiracies to raise wages were prohibited under penalty, the incentive to such prohibition being the opposition to all _intérêts intermédiaries_ between the _intérêts particulier_; and the _intérêt general_ which is characteristic of the entire revolution. Compare the law of 22 Germinal, 11. The German Empire on the 16th of August, 1731, threatened journeymen strikers even with death, "when accompanied by great refractoriness and productive of real damage." (Art. 15.)] [Footnote 177-2: The strike of the spinners of Preston, to compel equal wages with those of Bolton, lasted from October to the end of December, 1836. The spinners got from their treasury 5 shillings a week (previously 22½ shillings wages); twisters, 2 to 3 shillings; carders and weavers lived on alms. In the middle of December, the funds of the union were exhausted. Altogether, the workmen lost 400,000 thalers; the manufacturers, over 250,000; and many merchants failed. (_H. Ashworth_, Inquiry into the Origin and Results of the Cotton Spinners' Strike.) The Preston strike of 1853 cost the employers £165,000, the workmen, £357,000. (Edinburgh Rev., July, 1854, 166.) The North-Stafford puddlers' strike, in 1865, cost the workmen in wages alone £320,000. Concerning 8 strikes that failed, mostly between 1859 and 1861, which cost in the aggregate £1,570,000, of which £1,353,000 were wages lost, see Statist. Journ., 1861, 503. A great mortality of the children of workingmen observed during strikes!]