Against these customs the men decided to strike. They demanded the right to give a month’s notice to leave and to be paid for all ware which came “good-from-hand.” The masters replied that they “could not allow the old usages of the trade to be broken up,” and they drew up a new clause to be added to the annual agreements in future. By this new clause the agreement was to be suspended if work at a factory ceased, but only till work was resumed again. In fact the men were to be suspended from work and wages but not from servitude. If they found work during the “suspension” they were to throw it up as soon as their old master wanted them back.[183] As soon as notice of the new agreement was given to the men, the workmen at fourteen factories came out. This was on Sept. 1, 1836. When Martinmas came round sixty-four more of the biggest factories were laid idle, and seven-ninths of the trade stopped. It is doubtful whether the whole history of Trade Unionism records a more desperate fight than the one that followed. Strike pay never exceeded 6s. for married men and 4s. for single men, but the funds became exhausted. Help came—£7,000 of it—from Sheffield and Manchester, and that too vanished. Twenty thousand potters were out of work, and so were the retail tradesmen and all allied trades. The men began to dribble back at Christmas, for it was a very hard winter and the savings were all gone. Then several hundred devoted men, taking the remains of their clothes and household furniture, marched in procession to the pawn-shops and paid over all the money they could raise into the common fund. This example inspired the last 10,000 to hold out three weeks longer, and at least got terms for the men. A conference was presided over by Mr Twemlow of Betley on January 20, 1837, and the masters agreed to guarantee four days’ work a week, and to break in the presence of the man all ware for which they refused to pay him, on the ground that it came “bad from oven.”[184] But even these concessions were futile for the union was broken. The men took what they could get. Gradually all the old wrongs crept back again into the trade customs, and even the wage-prices of 1833-6 were whittled away by a system of “allowances.” A potter of 1843 gives an account of his engagement. He applied for work as a journeyman, and was asked what kind of a journeyman he wanted to be, as there were several kinds. “There were,” said the manufacturer, “some, like those of so-and-so, who took pay in provisions; others, like those of such a one, who took their pay in haberdashery and jewellery; but the class to which he wished to direct particular attention was the one which allowed 2d. in the shilling, which class was divided into two parties; those who consented to the twopences being stopped out of their wages on Saturday evening, and those who preferred to compound with their dignity, get their money in full on Saturday and pay back the twopences on Monday morning.”[185]