ABSTRACT
Full employment ended with the Napoleonic Wars; the enforcement of wage reductions by the master printers in 1816 was possible only because of a pool of unemployed journeymen. The men sent a memorial to the employers asking them to refrain from using the rolling machines. The hand pressmen whose trade was threatened by the use of steam driven printing machinery seem to have put up little concerted opposition, although there were numerous cases of isolated, and therefore ineffective, protests against the way in which the new machines were operated. A practical difficulty lay in the fact that the problem was a national one, and until all unions could agree to co-ordinate their efforts, there was little point in any one society making an attempt to reform conditions in its area. The strategy of the printing unions of the nineteenth century cannot be understood without a knowledge of the tramping system.
