In Work, Society and Politics, Patrick Joyce maintains that in the quarter century after I850 there was general acceptance in many Lancashire textile districts of the 'wider social order of capitalist industry'.1 The origins of this accommodating and quiescent attitude were twofold. First, accompanying the near completion of the mechanization of spinning and weaving was the emergence of a workforce cut off from its artisan and craft roots; second, with the end of rapid population movements in cotton textile towns, the period after I850 witnessed the reconstitution of the family economy in the factory. The attitudes of employers to their workforces also changed in this period. Such was the shift that Joyce refers to the policies and strategies pursued as the 'new paternalism' because, unlike the old, it cut deeply into the lives of operatives inside and outside the factory. Joyce has made an important contribution in his attempt to describe the experiences of a majority of workers in the industry and not its labour aristocracy. Despite this strength, Joyce's analysis of the subordination of workers is flawed because its historical weaknesses have led to serious theoretical limitations. Among the leading proponents of this view is Richard Price, who argues that Joyce's analysis cannot account for the origins and continuity of labour market strategies.2 The shift from old to new paternalism was not a's dramatic as Joyce proposes, because the transition from artisan to craft status and finally to factory operative was a long process.3 In fact, it is likely that some of the policies of the new paternalism, such as a seniority system among spinners, and those strategies which Joyce ignores, such as short-hour working, reflected the resolution of earlier conflicts between workers and employers. According to Price this inadequacy calls into question Joyce's central thesis of subordination. Recognizing that he 'overemphasize[d] the degree of textile operatives' internalization