Crossword-Solution: PIECERS 7 letters, 3 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 11

Before its invention, the working of the entire machinery of the cotton-mill, as well as the employment of the piecers, cleaners, and other classes of operatives, depended upon the spinners, who, though receiving the highest rates of pay, were by much the most given to strikes; and they were frequently accustomed to turn out in times when trade was brisk, thereby bringing the whole operations of the manufactories to a standstill, and throwing all the other operatives out of employment.

There are two poor boys from Bollington, who begin life as piecers at one shilling or eighteen-pence a-week, and the father of one of whom was cut to pieces by the machinery at which he worked, but not before he had himself founded the institution in which this son has since come to be taught.

They earn very good wages and look healthy; but, where the wool is dyed, what with the dye and what with the oil, the piecers are all ready toileted to sing to a banjo; and sometimes, with rubbing their faces with their dirty hands, they get sore eyes.

For, whereas one spinner, with a couple of children for piecers, formerly set six hundred spindles in motion, he could now manage fourteen hundred to two thousand spindles upon two mules, so that two adult spinners and a part of the piecers whom they employed were thrown out.

Homer, October, 1844: "The state of things in the matter of wages is greatly perverted in certain branches of cotton manufacture in Lancashire; there are hundreds of young men, between twenty and thirty, employed as piecers and otherwise, who do not get more than 8 or 9 shillings a week, while children under thirteen years, working under the same roof, earn 5 shillings, and young girls, from sixteen to twenty years, 10-12 shillings per week." {143a} Report of Factories' Inquiry Commission.