About this time the weavers met at Manchester, and put forward a set of proposals for a settlement of the dispute, which was followed by two other sets, one drawn up at Ashton, and the other by Mr. Percival himself. In the first, the weavers proposed that a statute length of eighty yards should be fixed for check, and of sixty yards for cotton hollands, cotton linen and similar articles, and that, if the length was different, the price paid for weaving should vary in proportion. Also, that the masters should not employ unfair weavers, so called because they would not subscribe to the charity stock to assist poor weavers and to prosecute offenders. The weavers insisted that they had no other object in view but to support and maintain their trade with experienced and honest workmen, and to bring it under the statute 5 Eliz.[164] [Footnote 164: _Letter to a Friend_, App. I. The Act referred to is the Statute of Apprentices, 1563, and it is evident that the check-weavers were giving to it, as did other workpeople during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, an interpretation which was not in the minds of its originators. The two clauses of the Act upon which they invariably fixed were those relating to the assessment of wages and to apprentices. The original Act, among other things, authorised Justices of the Peace to assess wages, taking into account “the plenty or scarcity of the time.” The wages thus assessed were maxima not minima, and penalties were provided for those who paid or received more than the maxima. In 1603 the statute was re-enacted, and, at this time, so far as the workers in the woollen industry were concerned, the rates fixed were to be minima, but it appears that few assessments were made on this basis--they were made on the “not more” basis, not on the “not less.” In the industrial changes of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries workpeople desired the latter, and frequently requested the enforcement of the Act with this object in view, and it figured prominently in the demands of the rising organisations. The clause relating to apprenticeship laid down that after the passing of the Act no one should exercise “any art, mistery, or manual occupation” without first serving a seven years’ apprenticeship, and why the workpeople in the eighteenth and the early nineteenth centuries desired the enforcement of this clause is clearly explained by the same reasons as underlay their desire for the assessment of wages. The Statute of Apprentices cannot be fully understood unless it is read as a whole, with a background given by the conditions in the middle of the sixteenth century. When this is done the statute becomes important not as a great constructive piece of statesmanship, but as indicating the outlook of statesmen on the social and industrial problems of their day, and as a futile attempt to check the operation of forces which for long had been irresistibly making for change. The wages clause was