It was in these circumstances that the worsted smallware weavers of Manchester began to show a greater activity than hitherto, and issued their _Apology_. They complained of the rise in the prices of provisions and asserted that, eighteen or twenty years before, undertakers could have kept five apprentices for what it now cost to keep three. In 1756 they had commenced to hold meetings once a month. The hands employed by each manufacturer were regarded as a “shop.” Each shop appointed a person to represent the whole shop, and when the representatives met once a month they formed the trade society.[154] Already the manufacturers suspected that the proceedings were to their detriment, and the weavers were aware that they were likely to meet with a great deal of censure and scornful sneers, but they consoled themselves with the thought that they were as the Nazarenes, and those who held them in contempt were as the Jews. [Footnote 154: _Smallware Weavers’ Apology_, p. 9. There is no reason to think the word “shop” referred to a workshop in the ordinary sense. Possibly the place where work was given out and taken in was called a shop.] The next evidence of the existence of the society appears in January, 1759, when the following notice was issued in _The Manchester Mercury_[155]:--“Whereas all combinations and meetings among Weavers or other handicraft workmen or servants to consult how to raise wages, or make other rules or orders among themselves that have a tendency to ruin and destroy the trade in which they are employed is contrary to the Laws of the Kingdom. And whereas there is at this time in and about this town an unlawful combination among the Worsted smallware weavers, under the name of being members or being connected with or payers to a Box. This is to give notice that all persons who are in any ways concerned in those unlawful combinations, or are in any ways aiding or assisting thereto, will be prosecuted to the utmost rigour of the law; and that no weavers will be taken to work that are in any ways concerned in those unlawful combinations.” [Footnote 155: 9th January.]