Oldham Limiteds facts for kids
Oldham Limiteds were special companies that owned and ran cotton mills in Oldham, a town in northwest England. Most of these companies were started between 1873 and 1875. What made them unique was that many ordinary workers could own shares in them!
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History of Oldham's Cotton Mills
Oldham was a bit late to the cotton industry compared to other towns like Manchester. It didn't have many huge mills owned by just one person or family. Instead, Oldham had lots of smaller companies. These companies often worked out of "room and power mills," where they rented space and machinery.
In the 1850s, Oldham was a big fan of the idea of working together, called the co-operative movement. People formed groups like friendly societies and co-operative stores. These groups, along with new laws about companies (the Joint Stock Companies Acts of 1855-56), made it easier for people to start companies where many people could own a small part.
The very first of these new companies was the Oldham Building and Manufacturing Co. Ltd. It was started by skilled workers who wanted to share in the profits and have more equal incomes. Owning shares in the company was like a way of sharing the profits. By 1875, about 75% of mill workers in Oldham owned shares in these "Limiteds." That's a huge number – about 20% of everyone living in Oldham!
Sun Mill: A Special Example
One of the most important "Oldham Limiteds" was Sun Mill in Chadderton. It was built between 1860 and 1862. The company that built it was started in 1858 by members of the Oldham Industrial Co-operative Society.
A man named William Marcroft helped set up Sun Mill. He wanted the company to be run democratically, meaning everyone had a say. He believed in "producer co-operation," where the employees themselves had control. The company was managed by committees that were elected by the shareholders. The idea of "limited liability" (where shareholders only lose the money they invested, not more) was also important.
Sun Mill was huge for its time. It was designed to hold 60,000 spindles, which is three times more than the average mill back then. Later, the company expanded it to 142,000 spindles! The Sun Mill Company is often called the very first of the Oldham Limiteds. The shareholders were skilled workers at the mill. Even though they didn't get much involved in running the company, they earned a great dividend (a share of the profits) of over 12%.
The Big Boom of 1873-1875
Workers were very keen to invest in these companies. There were two big waves of growth for the Limiteds: one between 1870 and 1873, and an even bigger one from 1873 to 1875. Many new companies were formed, sometimes by taking over older, struggling private businesses. By the time this boom ended, a hundred new companies had been created.
An average worker back then might earn about £1.75 a week. A share in a mill could cost £5.00. Workers would often buy shares in their own mill and maybe another one too, to spread out the risk. These companies got money from both shares (called equity) and loans, usually about half and half.
Workers were almost guaranteed to earn more from their share dividends (always over 5%) than they would from a savings bank. Shares were even traded on tables in local pubs, and Oldham eventually got its own stock exchange! It was in the workers' best interest for the mill to do well, so they would get the biggest dividend.
In 1875, there was a change in how textile workers were paid. But because the dividends were so important, the change went smoothly. Wages went up, and mills made up the cost by using slightly lower quality cotton. William Ewart Gladstone, a famous politician, even said in 1867 that the working class had become "an association of small capitalists employing other work people." This shows how much things had changed!
What are 'Oldham Counts'?
Lancashire, the region where Oldham is, was famous for making the finest, thinnest cotton yarn. But when the Oldham Limiteds started to grow, they decided to make a different kind of yarn: coarse yarn.
The "count" of cotton yarn tells you how thick or thin it is. It's measured by how many "hanks" (lengths of 840 yards) weigh one pound.
- In the United Kingdom, a count of 1 to 40 is called "coarse."
- 40 to 80 is "medium."
- 80 to 160 is "fine."
So, an "Oldham count" became known as a coarse count, usually between 1 and 40. This was a way for Oldham mills to compete by specializing in a certain type of product.
Challenges and Changes
There were two more periods of growth for the Limiteds, in 1883–84 and 1889–90. In total, from 1858 to 1896, Oldham started 154 Limiteds. This was more than twice as many as in Bolton, another big cotton town. The only other place where this type of company was so popular was in the Irish linen trade.
The companies were run democratically, with "one man, one vote" for shareholders. They could be tough, even firing the whole board of directors if they weren't doing a good job!
However, a period of economic trouble from 1890 to 1896, called the Depression, put a lot of strain on this worker-owned system. Stock market prices dropped for 48 months. Trade unions, which hadn't been very strong in Oldham before, started to offer more security than owning shares.
The boards of the Oldham Limiteds became more secretive, and the original co-operative idea started to fade. In 1893, a big workers' dispute called the Brooklands Lockout was settled by the Brooklands Agreement. This meant that wage negotiations were no longer done at each mill. Instead, they were handled by professional negotiators from the main unions and the employers' federation.
As keeping the dividend high became the main goal, the mills didn't invest enough money in new machinery or improvements. The good times for Oldham mills peaked around 1926. Because Oldham had focused on coarse counts, it was more affected by competition from new cotton industries in India and Japan than other towns in Lancashire.
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