Spinning did not present itself to such women as a means of filling up vacant hours which they would otherwise have spent in idleness, but as an alternative to some other profitable occupation, so numerous were the opportunities offered to women for productive industry within the precincts of the home. Therefore to induce women of independent position to work for him, the Clothier was obliged to offer higher wages than would have been accepted by those whose children were suffering from hunger. Somewhat apart from economics and the rate of wages, is the influence which the developments of the woollen trade exercised on women’s social position, through the disintegration of the social organisation known as the village community. The English village had formed a social unit almost self-contained, embracing considerable varieties of wealth, culture and occupation, and finding self-expression in a public opinion which provided adequate sanction for its customs, and determined all the details of manners and morals. In the formation of this public opinion women took an active part. The seasons of depression in the Woollen Trade brought to such communities in the “Clothing Counties” a desolation which could only be rivalled by Pestilence or Famine. Work came to a standstill, and wholesale migrations followed. Many fathers left their starving families, in search of work elsewhere and were never heard of again. The traditions of family life and the customs which ruled the affairs of the village were lost, never to be again restored, and with them disappeared, to a great extent, the recognised importance of women in the life of the community. The social problems introduced by the wages system in its early days are described in a contemporary pamphlet. It must be remembered that the term “the poor” as used at this time signified the pauper class, hard-working, industrious families who were independent of charity or assistance from the poor rates being all included among the “common people.” “I cannot acknowledge,” the writer says, “that a Manufacture maketh fewer poor, but rather the contrary. For tho’ it sets the poor on work where it finds them, yet it draws still more to the place; and their Masters allow wages so mean, that they are only preserved from starving whilst they can work; when Age, Sickness, or Death comes, themselves, their wives or their children are most commonly left upon the Parish; which is the reason why those Towns (as in the _Weald of Kent_) whence the clothing is departed, have fewer poor than they had before.”[292] Footnote 292: _Reasons for a Limited Exportation of Wooll_, 1677. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER V CRAFTS AND TRADES.