This does not necessarily mean that, at this time, there were no small semi-independent producers in the rising cotton industry. Probably there were, and for a long time afterwards, but it is extremely doubtful whether they should be regarded as the typical workpeople. Rather, the evidence points to the contrary. In 1702 a petition was presented from the West Country clothing district complaining of the master weavers paying their workpeople in truck, instead of in money, and the allegations of the petition were found to be true,[133] with the result that a Bill was ordered to deal with the matter, which in the same year became an Act.[134] In the Act provision was made to restrain workpeople from embezzling materials delivered to them by clothiers and others, and within the scope of the Act those engaged in the cotton and fustian manufactures were included. At first the Act was a temporary measure, and referred only to the woollen, fustian, cotton, and iron manufactures of the kingdom. In 1710 it was made perpetual,[135] and in 1740 the leather manufacture was included.[136] In 1749 the scope of the Act was extended to the fur, hemp, flax, mohair and silk manufactures, and a provision was inserted for preventing unlawful combinations of all persons employed in all the trades mentioned.[137] None of the petitions presented from Lancashire in the first part of the eighteenth century gives the slightest reason for thinking that the system of organisation implied in the provisions of the 1702 Act did not generally obtain in the county during the first half of the eighteenth century. In the check and smallware branches of Manchester trade it certainly did, and it is extremely probable that long before 1770 the same can be said of the fustian branch. [Footnote 133: _J.H.C._, xiv., p. 67.] [Footnote 134: 1 Anne, c. 18.] [Footnote 135: 9 Anne, c. 32.] [Footnote 136: 13 Geo. II., c. 8.] [Footnote 137: 22 Geo. II., c. 27. Professor Ashley has drawn attention to the significance of these Acts (_Economic Organisation of England_ (1914), p. 145). _Cf._ _J.H.C._, xvi., p. 311, 1709: “Petition of divers principal traders and dealers in linen manufactures on behalf of themselves and several thousand workmen employed by them in the said trade in Manchester and adjacent parts.”]