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Title: The History of Trade Unionism

Author: Sidney Webb
        Beatrice Webb

Release date: December 6, 2021 [eBook #66887]

Language: English

Credits: MWS, SF2001, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HISTORY OF TRADE UNIONISM ***




  THE HISTORY OF TRADE UNIONISM




  THE HISTORY OF TRADE UNIONISM:
  BY SIDNEY AND BEATRICE WEBB
  (REVISED EDITION, EXTENDED TO 1920).


  LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO.
  39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
  FOURTH AVENUE & 30TH STREET, NEW YORK
  BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS
  1920




INTRODUCTION TO THE EDITION OF 1920


The thirty years that have elapsed since 1890, down to which date we
brought the first edition of this book, have been momentous in the
history of British Trade Unionism. The Trade Union Movement, which
then included scarcely 20 per cent of the adult male manual-working
wage-earners, now includes over 60 per cent. Its legal and
constitutional status, which was then indefinite and precarious, has
now been explicitly defined and embodied in precise and absolutely
expressed statutes. Its internal organisation has been, in many cases,
officially adopted as part of the machinery of public administration.
Most important of all, it has equipped itself with an entirely new
political organisation, extending throughout the whole of Great
Britain, inspired by large ideas embodied in a comprehensive programme
of Social Reconstruction, which has already achieved the position
of “His Majesty’s Opposition,” and now makes a bid for that of “His
Majesty’s Government.” So great an advance within a single generation
makes the historical account of Trade Union development down to 1920
equivalent to a new book.

We have taken the opportunity to revise, and at some points to amplify,
our description of the origin and early struggles of Trade Unionism
in this country. We have naturally examined the new material that has
been made accessible during the past quarter of a century, in order
to incorporate in our work whatever has thus been added to public
knowledge. But we have not found it necessary to make any but trifling
changes in our original interpretation of the historical development.
The Home Office papers are now available in the Public Record Office
for the troubled period at the beginning of the nineteenth century;
and these, together with the researches of Professor George Unwin, Mr.
and Mrs. Hammond, Professor Graham Wallas, Mr. Mark Hovell, and Mr.
M. Beer, have enabled us both to verify and to amplify our statements
at certain points. For the recent history of Trade Unionism we have
found most useful the collections and knowledge of the Labour Research
Department, established in 1913; and we gratefully acknowledge the
assistance in facts, suggestions, and criticisms that we have had from
Mr. G. D. H. Cole and Mr. R. Page Arnot. We owe thanks, also, to Miss
Ivy Schmidt for unwearied assistance in research.

The reader must not expect to find, in this historical volume, either
an analysis of Trade Union organisation, policy, and methods, or
any judgement upon the validity of its assumptions, its economic
achievements, or its limitations. On these things we have written at
great length, and very explicitly, in our _Industrial Democracy_,
and in other books described in the pages at the end of this volume,
to which we must refer those desirous of knowing whether the Trade
Unionism of which we now write merely the story is a good or a bad
element in industry and in the State.

                                               SIDNEY and BEATRICE WEBB.

 41 Grosvenor Road,
 Westminster,
 _January 1920_.




PREFACE TO THE ORIGINAL EDITION OF 1894


It is not our intention to delay the reader here by a conventional
preface. As every one knows, the preface is never written until the
story is finished; and this story will not be finished in our time, or
for many generations after us. A word or two as to our method of work
and its results is all that we need say before getting to our main
business.

Though we undertook the study of the Trade Union movement, not to
prove any proposition of our own, but to discover what problems it had
to present to us, our minds were not so blank on the subject that we
had no preconception of the character of these problems. We thought
they would almost certainly be economic, pointing a common economic
moral; and that expectation still seems to us so natural, that if it
had been fulfilled we should have accepted its fulfilment without
comment. But it was not so. Our researches were no sooner fairly in
hand than we began to discover that the effects of Trade Unionism
upon the conditions of labour, and upon industrial organisation and
progress, are so governed by the infinite technical variety of our
productive processes, that they vary from industry to industry and
even from trade to trade; and the economic moral varies with them.
Where we expected to find an economic thread for a treatise, we found
a spider’s web; and from that moment we recognised that what we had
first to write was not a treatise, but a history. And we saw that
even a history would be impossible to follow unless we separated the
general history of the whole movement from the particular histories
of thousands of trade societies, some of which have maintained a
continuous existence from the last century, whilst others have cropped
up, run their brief course, and disappeared. Thus, when we had finished
our labour of investigating the records of practically every important
trade society from one end of the kingdom to the other, and accumulated
piles of extracts, classified under endless trades and subdivisions
of trades, we found that we must exclude from the first volume all
but a small selection from those documents which appeared to us most
significant with regard to the development of the general movement.
Many famous strikes and lock-outs, many interesting trade disputes,
many sensational prosecutions, and some furious outbursts of riot and
crime, together with many drier matters relating to particular trades,
have had either to be altogether omitted from our narrative, or else
accorded a strictly subordinate reference in their relation to the
history of Trade Unionism as a whole. All analysis of the economic
effects of Trade Union action we reserve for a subsequent volume on the
Problems of Trade Unionism, for which we shall draw more fully from the
annals of the separate unions. And in that volume the most exacting
seeker for economic morals will be more than satisfied; for there will
be almost as many economic morals drawn as societies described.

That history of the general movement, to which we have confined
ourselves here, will be found to be part of the political history
of England. In spite of all the pleas of modern historians for less
history of the actions of governments, and more descriptions of the
manners and customs of the governed, it remains true that history,
however it may relieve and enliven itself with descriptions of the
manners and morals of the people, must, if it is to be history at
all, follow the course of continuous organisations. The history
of a perfectly democratic State would be at once the history of a
government and of a people. The history of Trade Unionism is the
history of a State within our State, and one so jealously democratic
that to know it well is to know the English working man as no reader
of middle-class histories can know him. From the early years of the
eighteenth century down to the present day, Democracy, Freedom of
Association, _Laisser-faire_, Regulation of the Hours and Wages of
Labour, Co-operative Production, Free Trade, Protection, and many other
distinct and often contradictory political ideals, have from time to
time seized the imagination of the organised wage-earners and made
their mark on the course of the Trade Union movement. And, since 1867
at least, wherever the ideals have left their mark on Trade Unionism,
Trade Unionism has left its mark on politics. We shall be able to show
that some of those overthrows of our party governments which have
caused most surprise in the middle and upper classes, and for which the
most far-fetched reasons have been given by them and their journalists
and historians after the event, carry their explanation on the surface
for any one who knows what the Trade Unionists of the period were
thinking. Such demonstrations, however, will be purely incidental, as
we have written throughout of Trade Unionism for its own sake, and
not for that of the innumerable sidelights which it throws on party
politics.

In our concluding chapter, which we should perhaps offer as an appendix
rather than as part of the regular plan of the volume, we have
attempted to give a bird’s-eye view of the Trade Union world of to-day,
with its unequal distribution, its strong sectional organisation
and defective political machinery, its new governing class of trade
officials--above all, its present state of transition in methods, aims,
and policy, in the face of the multitude of unsettled constitutional,
economic, and political problems with which it stands confronted.

A few words upon the work of collecting materials for our work may
prove useful to those who may hereafter come to reap in the same field.
In the absence of any exhaustive treatment of any period of Trade
Union history we have to rely mainly upon our own investigations.
But every student of the subject must acknowledge the value of Dr.
Brentano’s fertile researches into English working-class history, and
of Mr. George Howell’s thoroughly practical exposition of the Trade
Unionism of his own school and his own time. Perhaps the most important
published material on the subject is the _Report on Trade Societies and
Strikes_ issued by the Social Science Association in 1860, a compact
storehouse of carefully sifted facts which compares favourably with the
enormous bulk of scrappy and unverified information collected by the
five historic official inquiries into Trade Unionism between 1824 and
1894. We have, moreover, found a great many miscellaneous facts about
Trade Unions in periodical literature and ephemeral pamphlets in the
various public libraries all over the country. To facilitate the work
of future students we append to this volume a complete list of such
published materials as we have been able to discover. For the early
history of combinations we have had to rely upon the public records,
old newspapers, and miscellaneous contemporary pamphlets. Thus, our
first two chapters are principally based upon the journals of the House
of Commons, the minutes of the Privy Council, the publications of the
Record Office, and the innumerable broadsheet petitions to Parliament
and old tracts relating to Trade which have been preserved in the
British Museum, the Guildhall Library, and the invaluable collection
of economic literature made by Professor H. S. Foxwell, St. John’s
College, Cambridge.[1] Most important of all, for the period prior
to 1835, are the many volumes of manuscript commentaries, newspaper
cuttings, rules, reports, pamphlets, etc., left by Francis Place,
and now in the British Museum. This unique collection, formed by the
busiest politician of his time, is indispensable, not only to the
student of working-class movements, but also to any historian of
English political or social life during the first forty years of the
century.[2]

But the greater part of our material, especially that relating to
the present century, has come from the Trade Unionists themselves.
The offices of the older unions contain interesting archives,
sometimes reaching back to the eighteenth century--minute-books
in which generations of diligent, if unlettered, secretaries, the
true historians of a great movement, have struggled to record the
doings of their committees, and files of Trade Union periodicals,
ignored even by the British Museum, through which the plans and
aspirations of ardent working-class politicians and administrators
have been expounded month by month to the scattered branches of their
organisations. We were assured at the outset of our investigation that
no outsider would be allowed access to the inner history of some of the
old-fashioned societies. But we have found this prevalent impression
as to the jealous secrecy of the Trade Unions without justification.
The secretaries of old branches or ancient local societies have
rummaged for us their archaic chests with three locks, dating from the
eighteenth century. The surviving leaders of a bygone Trade Unionism
have ransacked their drawers to find for our use the rules and minutes
of their long-forgotten societies. In many a working man’s home in
London and Liverpool, Newcastle and Dublin--above all, in Glasgow and
Manchester--the descendants of the old skilled handicraftsmen have
unearthed “grandfather’s indentures,” or “father’s old card,” or a
tattered set of rules, to help forward the investigation of a stranger
whom they dimly recognised as striving to record the annals of their
class. The whole of the documents in the offices of the great National
and County Unions have been most generously placed at our disposal,
from the printed reports and sets of rules to the private cash accounts
and executive minute-books. In only one case has a General Secretary
refused us access to the old books of his society, and then simply on
the ground that he was himself proposing to write its history, and
regarded us as rivals in the literary field.

Nor has this generous confidence been confined to the musty records
of the past. In the long sojourns at the various industrial centres
which this examination of local archives has necessitated, every
facility has been afforded to us for studying the actual working of
the Trade Union organisation of to-day. We have attended the sittings
of the Trades Councils in most of the large towns; we have sat through
numerous branch and members’ meetings all over the country; and one of
us has even enjoyed the exceptional privilege of being present at the
private deliberations of the Executive Committees of various national
societies, as well as at the special delegate meetings summoned by
the great federal Unions of Cotton-spinners, Cotton-weavers, and
Coal-miners for the settlement of momentous issues of trade policy, and
at the six weeks’ sessions in 1892 in which sixty chosen delegates of
the Amalgamated Society of Engineers overhauled the trade policy and
internal administration of that world-wide organisation.

We have naturally not confined ourselves to the workmen’s side of
the case. In almost every industrial centre we have sought out
representative employers in the different industries. From them we
have received many useful hints and criticisms. But, as might have
been expected, the great captains of industry are, for the most part,
absorbed in the commercial side of their business, and are seldom
accurately acquainted with the details of the past, or even of the
present, organisation of their workmen. Of more assistance in our task
have been the secretaries of the various employers’ associations.
Especially in the ship-building ports have these gentlemen placed
at our disposal their experience in collective negotiation with the
different sections of labour, and the private statistics compiled
by their associations. But of all the employing class we have found
the working managers and foremen, who have themselves often been
workmen, the best informed and most suggestive critics of Trade Union
organisation and methods. We have often regretted that precisely this
class is the most difficult of access to the investigator of industrial
problems, and the least often called as witnesses before Royal
Commissions.

The difficulty of welding into narrative form the innumerable details
of the thousands of distinct organisations, and of constructing out
of their separate chronicles anything like a history of the general
movement, has, we need hardly say, been very great. We are painfully
aware of the shortcomings of our work, both from a literary and from
a historical point of view. We have been encouraged in our task by
the conviction--strengthened as our investigation proceeded--that
the Trade Union records contain material of the utmost value to the
future historian of industrial and political organisation, and that
these records are fast disappearing. Many of the older archives are
in the possession of individual workmen, who are insensible of their
historical value. Among the larger societies it is not uncommon to find
only one complete set of rules, reports, circulars, etc., in existence.
A fire, a removal to new premises, or the death of an old secretary
frequently results in the disappearance of everything not actually in
daily office use. The keen investigator or collector will appreciate
the extremity of the vexation with which we have learnt on arriving at
an ancient Trade Union centre that the “old rubbish” of the office had
been “cleared out” six months before. The local public libraries, and
even the British Museum, seldom contain any of the internal Trade Union
records new or old. We have therefore not only collected every Trade
Union document that we could acquire, but we have made lengthy extracts
from, and abstracts of, the piles of minute-books, reports, rules,
circulars, pamphlets, working-class newspapers, etc., which have been
lent to us.

This collection of material, and, indeed, the wide scope of the
investigation itself, would have been impossible if we had not had
the good fortune to secure the help of a colleague exceptionally well
qualified for the work. In Mr. F. W. Galton we have found a devoted
assistant, to whose unwearied labours we owe the extensive range of our
material and our statistics. Himself a skilled handicraftsman, and for
some time secretary to his Trade Union, he has brought to the task not
only keen intelligence and unremitting industry, but also a personal
acquaintance with the details of Trade Union life and organisation
which has rendered his co-operation of inestimable value. We have
incorporated in our last chapter a graphic sketch from his pen of the
inner life of a Trade Union.

We have, moreover, received the most cordial assistance from all
quarters. If we were to acknowledge by name all those to whom our
thanks are due, we should set forth a list of nearly all the Trade
Union officials in the kingdom. Individual acknowledgement is in their
case the less necessary, in that many of them are our valued personal
friends. Only second to this is our indebtedness to many of the great
“captains of industry,” notably to Mr. Hugh Bell, of Middlesboro’,
and Colonel Dyer, of Elswick, and the secretaries of employers’
associations, whose time has been freely placed at our disposal. To
Professor H. S. Foxwell, Mr. Frederic Harrison, Professor E. S. Beesly,
Mr. Robert Applegarth, and Mr. John Burns, M.P., we are especially
indebted for the loan of many scarce pamphlets and working-class
journals, whilst Mr. John Burnett and Mr. Henry Crompton have been
good enough to go through one or more of our chapters in proof, and to
improve them by numerous suggestions. And there are two dear comrades
and friends to whose repeated revision of every line of our manuscript
the volume owes whatever approach to literary merit it may possess.

The bibliography has been prepared from our material by Mr. R. A.
Peddie, to whom, as well as to Miss Apple-yard for the laborious task
of verifying nearly all the quotations, our thanks are due.

                                               SIDNEY and BEATRICE WEBB.

 41 Grosvenor Road,
 Westminster,
 _April 1894_.


FOOTNOTES:

[1] Now in the Goldsmiths’ Library at the University of London.

[2] Place’s _Letter Books_, together with an unpublished autobiography,
preserved by his family, are now in the custody of Mr. Graham Wallas,
who is preparing a critical biography of this great reformer, which
will throw much new light on all the social and political events of
English history between 1798 and 1840 [published, 1st edition, 1898;
2nd edition, 1918].




CONTENTS


 CHAP.                                                      PAGE

       Introduction to the Edition of 1920                     v

       Preface to the Original Edition of 1894               vii

    I. The Origins of Trade Unionism                           1

   II. The Struggle for Existence [1799-1825]                 64

  III. The Revolutionary Period [1829-1842]                  113

   IV. The New Spirit and the New Model [1843-1860]          180

    V. The Junta and their Allies                            233

   VI. Sectional Developments [1863-1885]                    299

  VII. The Old Unionism and the New [1875-1890]              358

 VIII. The Trade Union World [1890-1894]                     422

   IX. Thirty Years’ Growth [1890-1920]                      472

    X. The Place of Trade Unionism in the State [1890-1920]  594

   XI. Political Organisation [1900-1920]                    677

 Appendix.--On the assumed connection between the Trade
  Unions and the Gilds in Dublin--The Rules of the Grand
  National Consolidated Trades Union--Sliding Scales--The
  Summons to the First Trade Union Congress--Distribution
  of Trade Unionists in the United Kingdom--The Progress in
  Membership of particular Trade Unions--Publications on
  Trade Unions and Combinations of Workmen--The Relationship
  of Trade Unionism to the Government of Industry            721

 Index                                                       765

 Other Works by Sidney and Beatrice Webb


THE HISTORY OF TRADE UNIONISM




CHAPTER I

THE ORIGINS OF TRADE UNIONISM


A Trade Union, as we understand the term, is a continuous association
of wage-earners for the purpose of maintaining or improving the
conditions of their working lives.[3] This form of association has, as
we shall see, existed in England for over two centuries, and cannot be
supposed to have sprung at once fully developed into existence. But
although we shall briefly discuss the institutions which have sometimes
been described as the forerunners of Trade Unionism, our narrative will
commence only from the latter part of the seventeenth century, before
which date we have been unable to discover the existence in the British
Isles of anything falling within our definition. Moreover, although
it is suggested that analogous associations may have existed during
the Middle Ages in various parts of the Continent of Europe, we have
no reason to suppose that such institutions exercised any influence
whatever upon the rise and development of the Trade Union Movement in
this country. We feel ourselves, therefore, warranted, as we are indeed
compelled, to limit our history exclusively to the Trade Unions of the
United Kingdom.

We have, by our definition, expressly excluded from our history any
account of the innumerable instances in which the manual workers have
formed ephemeral combinations against their social superiors. Strikes
are as old as history itself. The ingenious seeker of historical
parallels might, for instance, find in the revolt, 1490 B.C., of the
Hebrew brickmakers in Egypt against being required to make bricks
without straw, a curious precedent for the strike of the Stalybridge
cotton-spinners, A.D. 1892, against the supply of bad material for
their work. But we cannot seriously regard, as in any way analogous
to the Trade Union Movement of to-day, the innumerable rebellions of
subject races, the slave insurrections, and the semi-servile peasant
revolts of which the annals of history are full. These forms of the
“labour war” fall outside our subject, not only because they in no case
resulted in permanent associations, but because the “strikers” were not
seeking to improve the conditions of a contract of service into which
they voluntarily entered.

When, however, we pass from the annals of slavery or serfdom to those
of the nominally free citizenship of the mediæval town, we are on
more debatable ground. We make no pretence to a thorough knowledge of
English town-life in the Middle Ages. But it is clear that there were
at times, alongside of the independent master craftsmen, a number of
hired journeymen and labourers, who are known to have occasionally
combined against their rulers and governors. These combinations are
stated sometimes to have lasted for months, and even for years. As
early as 1383 we find the Corporation of the City of London prohibiting
all “congregations, covins, and conspiracies of workmen.” In 1387
the serving-men of the London cordwainers, in rebellion against the
“overseers of the trade,”[4] are reported to be aiming at making a
permanent fraternity. Nine years later the serving-men of the saddlers,
“called yeomen,” assert that they have had a fraternity of their
own, “time out of mind,” with a livery and appointed governors. The
masters declared, however, that the association was only thirteen years
old, and that its object was to raise wages.[5] In 1417 the tailors’
“serving men and journeymen” in London have to be forbidden to dwell
apart from their masters as they hold assemblies and have formed a kind
of association.[6] Nor were these fraternities confined to London. In
1538 the Bishop of Ely reports to Cromwell that twenty-one journeymen
shoemakers of Wisbech have assembled on a hill without the town, and
sent three of their number to summon all the master shoemakers to meet
them, in order to insist upon an advance in their wages, threatening
that “there shall none come into the town to serve for that wages
within a twelve month and a day, but we woll have an harme or a legge
of hym, except they woll take an othe as we have doon.”[7]

These instances derived from the very fragmentary materials as yet
printed, suggest that a more complete examination of the unpublished
archives might possibly disclose a whole series of journeymen
fraternities, and enable us to determine the exact constitution of
these associations. It is, for instance, by no means clear whether the
instances cited were strikes against employers, or revolts against
the authority of the gild. Our impression is that the case of the
Wisbech shoemakers, and possibly some of the others, represent the
embryo stage of a Trade Union. Supposing, therefore, that further
investigation were to prove that such ephemeral combinations by hired
journeymen against their employers did actually pass into durable
associations of like character, we should be constrained to begin our
history with the fourteenth or fifteenth century. But, after detailed
consideration of every published instance of a journeyman’s fraternity
in England, we are fully convinced that there is as yet no evidence
of the existence of any such durable and independent combination of
wage-earners against their employers during the Middle Ages.

There are certain other cases in which associations during the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, which are sometimes assumed to have
been composed of journeymen,[8] maintained a continuous existence. But
in all these cases, so far as we have been able to investigate them,
the “Bachelors’ Company,” presumed to be a journeymen’s fraternity,
formed a subordinate department of the masters’ gild, by the rulers
of which it was governed. It will be obvious that associations in
which the employers dispensed the funds and appointed the officers
can bear no analogy to modern Trade Unions. Moreover, these “yeoman”
organisations or “Bachelors’ Companies” do not appear to have long
survived the sixteenth century.

The explanation of the tardy growth of stable independent combination
among hired journeymen is, we believe, to be found in the prospects of
economic advancement which the skilled handicraftsman still possessed.
We do not wish to suggest the existence of any Golden Age in which each
skilled workman was his own master, and the wage system was unknown.
The earliest records of English town history imply the presence of
hired journeymen, who were not always contented with their wages. But
the apprenticed journeyman in the skilled handicrafts belonged, until
comparatively modern times, to the same social grade as his employer,
and was indeed usually the son of a master in the same or an analogous
trade. So long as industry was carried on mainly by small masters,
each employing but one or two journeymen, the period of any energetic
man’s service as a hired wage-earner cannot normally have exceeded
a few years, and the industrious apprentice might reasonably hope,
if not always to marry his master’s daughter, at any rate to set up
in business for himself. Any incipient organisation would always be
losing its oldest and most capable members, and would of necessity
be confined, like the Coventry journeymen’s Gild of St. George, to
“the young people,”[9] or like the ephemeral fraternity of journeymen
tailors of 1415-17, to “a race at once youthful and unstable,”[10] from
whose inexperienced ranks it would be hard to draw a supply of good
Trade Union leaders. We are therefore able to understand how it is
that, whilst industrial oppression belongs to all ages, it is not until
the changing conditions of industry had reduced to an infinitesimal
chance the journeyman’s prospect of becoming himself a master, that
we find the passage of ephemeral combinations into permanent trade
societies. This inference is supported by the experience of an
analogous case in the Lancashire of to-day. The “piecers,” who assist
at the “mules,” are employed and paid by the operative cotton-spinners
under whom they work. The “big piecer” is often an adult man, quite
as skilled as the spinner himself, from whom, however, he receives
very inferior wages. But although the cotton operatives display a
remarkable aptitude for Trade Unionism, attempts to form an independent
organisation among the piecers have invariably failed. The energetic
and competent piecer is always looking forward to becoming a spinner,
interested rather in reducing than in raising piecers’ wages. The
leaders of any incipient movement among the piecers have necessarily
fallen away from it on becoming themselves employers of the class
from which they have been promoted. But though the Lancashire piecers
have always failed to form an independent Trade Union, they are not
without their associations, in the constitution of which we may find
some hint of the relation between the gild of the master craftsmen
and the Bachelors’ Company or other subordinate association in which
journeymen may possibly have been included. The spinners have, for
their own purposes, brigaded the piecers into piecers’ associations.
These associations, membership of which is usually compulsory, form a
subordinate part of the spinners’ Trade Union, the officers of which
fix and collect the contributions, draw up the rules, dispense the
funds, and in every way manage the affairs, without in the slightest
degree consulting the piecers themselves. It is not difficult to
understand that the master craftsmen who formed the court of a mediæval
gild might, in a similar way, have found it convenient to brigade the
journeymen or other inferior members of the trade into a subordinate
fraternity, for which they fixed the quarterly dues, appointed the
“wardens” or “wardens’ substitutes,” administered the funds, and in
every way controlled the affairs, without admitting the journeymen to
any voice in the proceedings.[11]

If further proof were needed that it was the prospect of economic
advancement that hindered the formation of permanent combinations
among the hired journeymen of the Middle Ages, we might adduce
the fact that certain classes of skilled manual workers, who had
no chance of becoming employers, do appear to have succeeded in
establishing long-lived combinations which had to be put down by law.
The masons, for instance, had long had their “yearly congregations
and confederacies made in their general chapiters assembled,” which
were expressly prohibited by Act of Parliament in 1425.[12] And the
tilers of Worcester are ordered by the Corporation in 1467 to “sett
no parliament amonge them.”[13] It appears probable, indeed, that
the masons, wandering over the country from one job to another, were
united, not in any local gild, but in a trade fraternity of national
extent. Such an association may, if further researches throw light upon
its constitution and working, not improbably be found to possess some
points of resemblance to the Friendly Society of Operative Stonemasons
of the present day, which was established in 1832. But, unlike the
operative in the modern building trades, the mason of the Middle
Ages served, not a master _entrepreneur_, but the customer himself,
who provided the materials, supervised the work, and engaged, at
specified daily rates, both the skilled mechanics and their labourers
or apprentices.[14] In contrast with the handicraftsmen of the towns,
the masons, tilers, etc. remained, from the completion of their
apprenticeship to the end of their working lives, in one and the same
economic position, a position which appears to have been intermediate
between those of the master craftsman and the journeyman of the other
trades. Like the jobbing carpenter of the country village of to-day,
they were independent producers, each controlling the processes of
his own craft, and dealing directly with the customer. But unlike the
typical master craftsman of the handicraft trades they sold nothing but
labour, and their own labour only, at regulated customary rates, and
were unconcerned, therefore, with the making of profit, whether upon
the purchase and sale of materials or upon the hiring of subordinate
workers.[15] The stability of their combinations was accordingly not
prevented by those influences which, as we have suggested, proved fatal
in England to the corresponding attempts of the hired journeymen of the
handicrafts.

But if the example of the building trades in the Middle Ages supports
our inference as to the cause of the tardy growth of combination
among the journeymen in other trades, the “yearly congregations and
confederacies” of the masons might themselves demand our attention as
instances of early Trade Unionism. Of the constitution, function, or
ultimate development of these mediæval associations in the building
trades we know unfortunately next to nothing.[16] It is remarkable
that there is, so far as we are aware, no trace of their existence in
Great Britain later than the fifteenth century. During the eighteenth
century there is, as we shall see, no lack of information as to
combinations of workmen in nearly every other skilled trade. The
employers appear to have been perpetually running to Parliament to
complain of the misdeeds of their workmen. But of combinations in the
building trades we have found scarcely a trace until the very end of
that century. If, therefore, adhering strictly to the letter of our
definition, we accepted the masons’ confederacy as a Trade Union,
we should be compelled to regard the building trades as presenting
the unique instance of an industry which had a period of Trade
Unionism in the fifteenth century, then passed for several centuries
into a condition in which Trade Unionism was impossible, and finally
changed once more to a state in which Trade Unions flourished. Our
own impression is however that the “congregations and confederacies”
of the masons are more justly to be considered the embryonic stage
of a gild of master craftsmen than of a Trade Union. There appears
to us to be a subtle distinction between the economic position of
workers who hire themselves out to the individual consumer direct,
and those who, like the typical Trade Unionist of to-day, serve an
employer who stands between them and the actual consumers, and who
hires their labour in order to make out of it such a profit as will
provide him with his interest on capital and “wages of management.” We
suggest that, with the growing elaboration of domestic architecture,
the superior craftsmen tended more and more to become employers,
and any organisations of such craftsmen to pass insensibly into the
ordinary type of masters’ gild.[17] Under such a system of industry the
journeymen would possess the same prospects of economic advancement
that hindered the growth of stable combinations in the ordinary
handicrafts, and in this fact may lie the explanation of the striking
absence of evidence of any Trade Unionism in the building trades right
down to the eighteenth century.[18] When, however, the capitalist
builder or contractor began to supersede the master mason, master
plasterer, etc., and this class of small _entrepreneurs_ had again to
give place to a hierarchy of hired workers, Trade Unions, in the modern
sense, began, as we shall see, to arise. “Just as we found the small
master in the sixteenth century struggling to adapt and appropriate the
traditions of the superseded handicraft organisation, so we shall find
the journeyman at the close of the seventeenth century [in some trades
and at the close of the eighteenth century in others] endeavouring to
build up a new status out of the ruins of the small master.”[19]

We have dwelt at some length upon these ephemeral associations of
wage-earners and on the journeymen fraternities of the Middle Ages,
because it might plausibly be argued that they were in some sense
the predecessors of the Trade Union. But strangely enough it is not
in these institutions that the origin of Trade Unionism has usually
been sought. For the predecessor of the modern Trade Union, men have
turned, not to the mediæval associations of the wage-earners, but to
those of their employers--that is to say, the Craft Gilds.[20] The
outward resemblance of the Trade Union to the Craft Gild had long
attracted the attention, both of the friends and the enemies of Trade
Unionism; but it was the publication in 1870 of Professor Brentano’s
brilliant study on the “Origin of Trades Unions” that gave form to the
popular idea.[21] Without in the least implying that any connection
could be traced between the mediæval gild and the modern Trade Union,
Dr. Brentano suggested that the one was in so far the successor of the
other, that both institutions had arisen “under the breaking up of an
old system, and among the men suffering from this disorganisation, in
order that they might maintain independence and order.”[22] And when
George Howell prefixed to his history of Trade Unionism a paraphrase
of Dr. Brentano’s account of the gilds, it became commonly accepted
that the Trade Union had, in some undefined way, really originated from
the Craft Gild.[23] We are therefore under the obligation of digressing
to examine the relation between the mediæval gild and the modern Trade
Union. If it could be shown that the Trade Unions were, in any way, the
descendants of the old gilds, it would clearly be the origin of the
latter that we should have to trace.

The supposed descent in this country of the Trade Unions from the
mediæval Craft Gilds rests, as far as we have been able to discover,
upon no evidence whatsoever. The historical proof is all the other
way. In London, for instance, more than one Trade Union has preserved
an unbroken existence from the eighteenth century. The Craft Gilds
still exist in the City Companies, and at no point in their history
do we find the slightest evidence of the branching off from them of
independent journeymen’s societies. By the eighteenth century the
London journeymen had in nearly all cases lost whatever participation
they may possibly once have possessed in the Companies, which had for
the most part already ceased to have any connection with the trades
of which they bore the names.[24] It is sometimes suggested that the
London Companies have had an exceptional history, and that in towns
in which the gilds underwent a more normal development they may have
given rise to the modern trade society. So far as Great Britain is
concerned we have satisfied ourselves that this suggestion rests on no
better foundation than the other. Neither in Bristol nor in Preston,
neither in Newcastle nor in Glasgow, have we been able to trace the
slightest connection between the slowly dying gilds and the upstarting
Trade Unions. At Sheffield J. M. Ludlow, basing himself on an account
by Frank Hill, once expressly declared[25] that direct affiliation
could be proved. Diligent inquiry into the character and history of the
still flourishing Cutlers’ Company demonstrates that this exclusively
masters’ association at no time originated or engendered any of the
numerous Trade Unions with which Sheffield abounds. There remains the
case of Dublin, where some of the older unions themselves claim descent
from the gilds. Here, too, careful search reveals, not only the absence
of any affiliation or direct descent, but also the impossibility of
any organic connection between the exclusively Protestant gilds which
were not abolished until 1842, and the mainly Roman Catholic Trade
Unions which attained their greatest influence many years before.[26]
We assert, indeed, with some confidence, that in no case did any Trade
Union in the United Kingdom arise, either directly or indirectly, by
descent, from a Craft Gild.

It is often taken for granted that the Trade Union, whatever may have
been its origin, represents the same elements, and plays the same part
in the industrial system of the nineteenth century, as the Craft Gild
did in that of the Middle Ages. A brief analysis of what is known of
the gilds will be sufficient to show that these organisations were
even in their purest days essentially different, both in structure and
function, from the modern trade society.

For the purpose of this comparison it will be unnecessary for us to
discuss the rival theories of historians as to the nature and origin of
the Craft Gilds. We may agree, on the one hand, with Dr. Brentano[27]
in maintaining that the free craftsmen associated in order to stop
the deterioration of their condition and encroachments on their
earnings, and to protect themselves against “the abuse of power on the
part of the lords of the town, who tried to reduce the free to the
dependence of the unfree.” On the other hand, we may believe with Dr.
Cunningham[28] that the Craft Gilds were “called into being, not out of
antagonism to existing authorities, but as new institutions, to which
special parts of their own duties were delegated by the burgh officers
or the local Gild Merchant,” as a kind of “police system,” in fact, by
which the community controlled the local industries in the interest
of the consumer. Or again, we may accept the middle view advanced by
Sir William Ashley,[29] that the gilds were self-governing bodies of
craftsmen, initiating their own trade regulations, the magistrates or
town council having a real, if somewhat vague, authority to sanction or
veto these ordinances for the good of the citizens. Each of these three
views is supported by numerous instances, and to determine which theory
represents the rule and which the exception would involve a statistical
knowledge of Craft Gilds for which the material has not yet been
collected. It will be evident that, if Dr. Cunningham’s theory of the
Craft Gild is the correct one, there can be no essential resemblance
between these semi-municipal bodies and the Trade Unions of to-day.
Dr. Brentano, however, produces ample evidence that, in some cases
at any rate, the gilds acted, not with any view to the protection of
the consumer, but, like the Trade Unions, for the furtherance of the
interests of their own members--that is, of one class of producers.
Accepting for the moment the view that the Craft Gild, like the
Trade Union, or the Employers’ Association, belonged to the genus of
“associations of producers,” let us examine briefly how far the gild
was similar to modern combinations of wage-earners.

Now, the central figure of the gild organisation, in all instances, and
at all periods of its development, was the master craftsman, owning
the instruments of production, and selling the product. Opinions may
differ as to the position of the journeymen in the gild or to the
extent of the prevalence of subordinate or semi-servile labour outside
it. Different views may be entertained as to the reality of that
regard for the interests of the consumer which forms the ostensible
object of many gild ordinances. But throughout the whole range of gild
history the master craftsman, controlling the processes and selling
the products of the labour of his little industrial group, was the
practical administrator of, and the dominant influence in, the gild
system.[30] In short, the typical gild member was not wholly, or even
chiefly, a manual worker. From the first he supplied not only whatever
capital was needed in his industry, but also that knowledge of the
markets for both raw material and product, and that direction and
control which are the special functions of the _entrepreneur_. The
economic functions and political authority of the gild rested, not upon
its assumed inclusion of practically the whole body of manual workers,
but upon the presence within it of the real directors of industry of
the time. In the modern Trade Union, on the contrary, we find, not an
association of _entrepreneurs_, themselves controlling the processes
of their industry, and selling its products, but a combination of
hired wage-workers, serving under the direction of industrial captains
who are outside the organisation. The separation into distinct social
classes of the capitalist and the brainworker on the one hand, and the
manual workers on the other--the substitution, in fact, of a horizontal
for a vertical cleavage of society--vitiates any treatment of the Trade
Union as the analogue of the Craft Gild.

On the other hand, to regard the typical Craft Gild as the predecessor
of the modern Employers’ Association or capitalist syndicate would,
in our opinion, be as great a mistake as to believe, with George
Howell, that it was the “early prototype” of the Trade Union. Dr.
Brentano himself laid stress on the fact, afterwards brought into
special prominence by Dr. Cunningham, that the Craft Gild was looked
upon as the representative of the interests, not of any one class
alone, but of the three distinct and somewhat antagonistic elements
of modern society, the capitalist _entrepreneur_, the manual worker,
and the consumer at large. We do not need to discuss the soundness of
the mediæval lack of faith in unfettered competition as a guarantee
of the genuineness and good quality of wares. Nor are we concerned
with their assumption of the identity of interest between all classes
of the community. It seemed a matter of course to the statesman, no
less than to the public, that the leading master craftsmen of the
town should be entrusted with the power and the duty of seeing that
neither themselves nor their competitors were permitted to lower the
standard of production. “The Fundamental Ground,” says the petition
of the Carpenters’ Company in 1681, “of Incorporating Handicraft
Trades and Manual Occupations into distinct Companies was to the
end that all Persons using such Trades should be brought into one
Uniform Government and Corrected and Regulated by Expert and Skilful
Governors, under certain Rules and Ordinances appointed to that
purpose.”[31] The leading men of the gild became, in effect, officers
of the municipality, charged with the protection of the public from
adulteration and fraud. When, therefore, we remember that the Craft
Gild was assumed to represent, not only all the grades of producers
in a particular industry, but also the consumers of the product,
and the community at large, the impossibility of finding, in modern
society, any single inheritor of its multifarious functions will
become apparent. The powers and duties of the mediæval gild have, in
fact, been broken up and dispersed. The friendly society and the
Trade Union, the capitalist syndicate and the employers’ association,
the factory inspector and the Poor Law relieving officer, the School
Attendance officer, and the municipal officers who look after
adulteration and inspect our weights and measures--all these persons
and institutions might, with equal justice, be put forward as the
successors of the Craft Gild.[32]

Although there is an essential difference in the composition of the
two organisations, the popular theory of their resemblance is easily
accounted for. First, there are the picturesque likenesses which Dr.
Brentano discovered--the regulations for admission, the box with its
three locks, the common meal, the titles of the officers, and so forth.
But these are to be found in all kinds of association in England.
The Trade Union organisations share them with the local friendly
societies, or sick clubs, which have existed all over England for the
last two centuries. Whether these features were originally derived
from the Craft Gilds or not, it is practically certain that the early
Trade Unions took them, in the vast majority of cases, not from the
traditions of any fifteenth-century organisation, but from the existing
little friendly societies around them. In some cases the parentage of
these forms and ceremonies might be ascribed with as much justice to
the mystic rites of the Freemasons as to the ordinances of the Craft
Gilds. The fantastic ritual peculiar to the Trade Unionism of 1829-34,
which we shall describe in a subsequent chapter, was, as we shall see,
taken from the ceremonies of the Friendly Society of Oddfellows. But
we are informed that it bears traces of being an illiterate copy of a
masonic ritual. In our own times the “Free Colliers of Scotland,” an
early attempt at a national miners’ union, were organised into “Lodges”
under a “Grand Master,” with much of the terminology and some of the
characteristic forms of Freemasonry. No one would, however, assert
any essential resemblance between the village sick club and the trade
society, still less between Freemasonry and Trade Unionism. The only
common feature between all these is the spirit of association, clothing
itself in more or less similar picturesque forms.

But other resemblances between the gild and the union brought out
by Dr. Brentano are more to the point. The fundamental purpose of
the Trade Union is the protection of the Standard of Life--that is
to say, the organised resistance to any innovation likely to tend
to the degradation of the wage-earners as a class. That some social
organisation for the protection of the Standard of Life was necessary
was a leading principle of the Craft Gild, as it was, in fact, of the
whole mediæval order. “Our forefathers,” wrote the Emperor Sigismund
in 1434, “have not been fools. The crafts have been devised for this
purpose: that everybody by them should earn his daily bread, and nobody
shall interfere with the craft of another. By this the world gets rid
of its misery, and every one may find his livelihood.”[33] But in this
respect the Trade Union does not so much resemble the Craft Gild, as
reassert what was once the accepted principle of mediæval society,
of which the gild policy was only one manifestation. We do not wish,
in our historical survey of the Trade Union Movement, to enter into
the far-reaching controversy as to the political validity either of
the mediæval theory of the compulsory maintenance of the Standard of
Life, or of such analogous modern expedients as Collective Bargaining
on the one hand, or Factory Legislation on the other. Nor do we wish
to imply that the mediæval theory was at any time so effectively and
so sincerely carried out as really to secure to every manual worker a
comfortable maintenance. We are concerned only with the historical fact
that, as we shall see, the artisans of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries sought to perpetuate those legal or customary regulations of
their trade which, as they believed, protected their own interests.
When these regulations fell into disuse the workers combined to secure
their enforcement. When legal redress was denied, the operatives, in
many instances, took the matter into their own hands, and endeavoured
to maintain, by Trade Union regulations, what had once been prescribed
by law. In this respect, and practically in this respect only, do we
find any trace of the gild in the Trade Union.

Let us now turn from the hypothetical origin of Trade Unionism to the
recorded facts. We have failed to discover in the manuscript records of
companies or municipal corporations, in the innumerable trade pamphlets
and broadsheets of the time, or in the Journals of the House of
Commons, any evidence of the existence, prior to the latter half of the
seventeenth century,[34] or indeed much before the very close of that
century, of continuous associations of wage-earners for maintaining
or improving the conditions of their working lives. And when we
remember that during the latter decades of the seventeenth century
the employers of labour, and especially the industrial “companies” or
corporations, memorialised the House of Commons on every conceivable
grievance which affected their particular trade, the absence of all
complaints of workmen’s combinations suggests to us that few, if any,
such combinations existed.[35] We do, however, discover in the latter
half of the seventeenth century various traces of sporadic combinations
and associations, some of which appear to have maintained in obscurity
a continuous existence. In the early years of the eighteenth century
we find isolated complaints of combinations “lately entered into”
by the skilled workers in certain trades. As the century progresses
we watch the gradual multiplication of these complaints, met by
counter-accusations presented by organised bodies of workmen. From the
middle of the century the Journals of the House of Commons abound in
petitions and counter-petitions revealing the existence of journeymen’s
associations in most of the skilled trades. And finally, we may infer
the wide extension of the movement from the steady multiplication of
the Acts against combinations in particular industries, and their
culmination in the comprehensive statute of 1799 forbidding all
combinations whatsoever.

If we examine the evidence of the rise of combinations in particular
trades, we see the Trade Union springing, not from any particular
institution, but from every opportunity for the meeting together
of wage-earners of the same occupation. Adam Smith remarked that
“people of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment
and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the
public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”[36] And there is
actual evidence of the rise of one of the oldest of the existing Trade
Unions out of a gathering of the journeymen “to take a social pint of
porter together.”[37] More often it is a tumultuous strike, out of
which grows a permanent organisation. Elsewhere, as we shall see, the
workers meet to petition the House of Commons, and reassemble from
time to time to carry on their agitation for the enactment of some new
regulation, or the enforcement of an existing law. In other instances
we shall find the journeymen of a particular trade frequenting
certain public-houses, at which they hear of situations vacant, and
the “house of call” becomes thus the nucleus of an organisation. Or
we watch the journeymen in a particular trade declaring that “it has
been an ancient custom in the kingdom of Great Britain for divers
Artists to meet together and unite themselves in societies to
promote Amity and true Christian Charity,” and establishing a sick
and funeral club, which invariably proceeds to discuss the rates of
wages offered by the employers, and insensibly passes into a Trade
Union with friendly benefits.[38] And if the trade is one in which
the journeymen frequently travel in search of work, we note the slow
elaboration of systematic arrangements for the relief of these “tramps”
by their fellow-workers in each town through which they pass, and
the inevitable passage of this far-extending tramping society into a
national Trade Union.[39]

All these, however, are but opportunities for the meeting of journeymen
of the same trade. They do not explain the establishment of continuous
organisations of the wage-earners in the seventeenth and eighteenth
rather than in the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries. The essential
cause of the growth of durable associations of wage-earners must
lie in something peculiar to the later centuries. This fundamental
condition of Trade Unionism we discover in the economic revolution
through which certain industries were passing. In all cases in which
Trade Unions arose, the great bulk of the workers had ceased to be
independent producers, themselves controlling the processes, and
owning the materials and the product of their labour, and had passed
into the condition of lifelong wage-earners, possessing neither the
instruments of production nor the commodity in its finished state.
“From the moment that to establish a given business more capital is
required than a journeyman can easily accumulate within a few years,
gild mastership--the mastership of the masterpiece--becomes little more
than a name.... Skill alone is valueless, and is soon compelled to hire
itself out to capital.... Now begins the opposition of interest between
employers and employed, now the latter begin to group themselves
together; now rises the trade society.”[40] Or, to express this
Industrial Revolution in more abstract terms, we may say, in the words
of Dr. Ingram, that “the whole modern organisation of labour in its
advanced forms rests on a fundamental fact which has spontaneously and
increasingly developed itself--namely, the definite separation between
the functions of the capitalist and the workman, or, in other words,
between the direction of industrial operations and their execution in
detail.”[41]

It is often assumed that the divorce of the manual worker from the
ownership of the means of production resulted from the introduction
of machinery, the use of power, and the factory system. Had this been
the case we should not, upon our hypothesis, have expected to find
Trade Unions at an earlier date than factories, or in industries
untransformed by machinery. The fact that the earliest durable
combinations of wage-earners in England precede the factory system
by a whole century, and occur in trades carried on exclusively by
hand labour, reminds us that the creation of a class of lifelong
wage-servants came about in more than one way.

We may note, to begin with, the very old institution of the printers’
“chapel,” with its “father” and “clerk,” an informal association among
the compositors of a particular establishment for the discussion and
regulation, not only of their own workshop conditions, but also of
their relations with the employer, who must, in early days, have been a
man of superior education, with an outlook much wider than that of his
journeymen.

The “chapel” may possibly be nearly as old as the introduction of
printing into this country.[42] We have no evidence as to the date
at which the “chapels” of different printing offices entered into
communication with each other in London, so as to form a Trade
Union. But already in 1666 we have _The Case and Proposals of
the Free Journeymen Printers in and about London_, in which they
complain of the multiplication of apprentices and the prevalence of
“turnovers”--grievances which vexed every compositors’ Trade Union
throughout the nineteenth century.[43] Whether the “Free Journeymen
Printers” managed to continue in existence as a Trade Union is
uncertain. We have found no actual evidence of any other combination
among compositors than the “chapel” earlier than the eighteenth
century.

One of the earliest proven cases of continuous association
among journeymen is that of the hatters (or feltmakers), whose
combination--now the Journeymen Hatters’ Trade Union of Great Britain
and Ireland--may perhaps claim to trace its ancestry from 1667, the
very year in which the Feltmakers’ Company, consisting of their
employers, obtained a charter from Charles II. Within a few months
the journeymen in the various London workshops--each of which had
apparently a workshop organisation somewhat resembling the printers’
“chapel”--had combined to present a petition to the Court of Aldermen
against the Master, Wardens and Assistants of the Company. The Court
of Aldermen decided that, in order “that the journeymen may not by
combination or otherwise excessively at their pleasure raise their
wages,” a piecework list is to be annually settled and presented
for enactment by the Court of Aldermen. The journeymen seem to
have co-operated with the employers in presenting this list, and
in preventing the employment of non-freemen. The rates fixed did
not, however, always satisfy the journeymen, especially when the
employers were successful in getting them lowered; and in 1696 we
read of a deputation appearing before the Court to declare that they
had resolved among themselves not to accept any less wages than they
had formerly received, and to ask for a revision of the order. They
had, according to the masters’ statement, not confined themselves to
peaceful resolutions, but had made an example of a journeyman who had
remained at work at the reduced rates. “They stirred up the apprentices
to seize upon him as he was working, to tie him in a wheelbarrow,
and in a tumultuous and riotous manner to drive him through all the
considerable places in London and Southwark.” It was alleged that the
men were organised in “clubs,” which “raised several sums of money
for the abetting and supporting such of them who should desert their
masters’ service.” In 1697 the employers introduced the “character
note” or “leaving certificate,” the Company enacting that no master
should employ a journeyman who did not bring with him a certificate
from his previous employer. Successive prosecutions of journeymen took
place for refusing to work at the lawful rates, but the workmen seem
to have had good legal advice, and to have defended themselves with
skill. On one occasion they pleaded guilty, and promised amendment
and the abandonment of their combination, whereupon the prosecution
was withdrawn. On another occasion they got the case removed by writ
of _certiorari_ from the Lord Mayor’s session to the Assizes, where
Lord Chief Justice Holt referred the dispute to arbitration. The
award of June 1699 was a virtual victory for the journeymen, after a
three years’ struggle, as it gave them an increase of rates, with a
stoppage of all legal proceedings.[44] That the London Trade Clubs
of the journeymen hatters, or at any rate their several workshop
organisations, maintained a continuous existence we need not doubt;
though we do not hear of them again until 1771, when they seem to have
established a national federation of the local trade clubs existing
in more than a dozen provincial towns with those of Southwark and
the West End of London, very largely for the purpose of maintaining
and enforcing the statutory limitation of apprentices. In 1775 this
federation appears to have been strong enough, not only to obtain
increased rates of wages, but also the exclusive employment of
“clubmen.” There were “congresses” of the hatters in 1772, 1775,
and 1777, held in London for the adoption of “bye-laws” for the
whole trade; but we believe that these “congresses” were attended by
delegates from the workshops in and near London only. It is clear
that similar organisations existed in the other towns in which the
trade was carried on. The members who were unemployed “tramped” from
town to town, and regulations for their relief were framed. A weekly
contribution of 2d. appears to have been paid by each member. The
employers successfully petitioned Parliament in 1777 for a repeal
of the old limitation of apprentices and a renewed prohibition of
combination.[45]

More definite evidence is afforded by the development of the tailoring
trade. In tailoring for rich customers the master craftsmen appear at
the very beginning of the eighteenth century to have been recruited
from the comparatively small number of journeymen who acquired the
specially skilled part of the business--namely, the cutting-out.[46]
“The tailor,” says an eighteenth-century manual for the young
tradesman, “ought to have a quick eye to steal the cut of a sleeve,
the pattern of a flap, or the shape of a good trimming at a glance,
... in the passing of a chariot, or in the space between the door and
a coach.” There grew up accordingly a class of mere sewers, “not one
in ten” knowing “how to cut out a pair of breeches: they are employed
only to sew the seam, to cast the buttonholes, and prepare the work
for the finisher.... Generally as poor as rats, the House of Call runs
away with all their earnings, and keeps them constantly in debt and
want.”[47]

This differentiation was promoted by the increasing need of capital
for successfully beginning business in the better quarters of the
metropolis. Already in 1681 the “shop-keeping tailor” was deplored as
a new and objectionable feature, “for many remember when there were
no new garments sold in London (in shops) as now there are.”[48] The
“accustomed tailor,” or working craftsman, making up the customer’s
own cloth, objected to “taylers being sales-men,” paying high rents
for shops in fashionable neighbourhoods, giving long credit to their
aristocratic clients, and each employing, in his own workshops, dozens
or even scores of journeymen, who were recruited from the houses of
call in times of pressure, and ruthlessly turned adrift when the season
was over. And although it remained possible in the reign of King
William the Third, as it still is in that of King George the Fifth, to
start business in a back street as an independent master tailor with
no more capital or skill than the average journeyman could command,
yet the making of the fine clothes worn by the Court and the gentry
demanded, then as now, a capital and a skill which put this extensive
and lucrative trade altogether out of the reach of the thousands of
journeymen whom it employed. Thus we find that at the very beginning
of the eighteenth century the typical journeyman tailor in London and
Westminster had become a lifelong wage-earner. It is not surprising,
therefore, that one of the earliest instances of permanent Trade
Unionism that we have been able to discover occurs in this trade. The
master tailors in 1720 complain to Parliament that “the Journeymen
Taylors in and about the Cities of London and Westminster, to the
number of seven thousand and upwards, have lately entered into a
combination to raise their wages and leave off working an hour sooner
than they used to do; and for the better carrying on their design
have subscribed their respective names in books prepared for that
purpose, at the several houses of call or resort (being publick-houses
in and about London and Westminster) which they use; and collect
several considerable sums of money to defend any prosecutions against
them.”[49] Parliament listened to the masters’ complaint, and passed
the Act 7, Geo. I. st. 1, c. 13, restraining both the giving and the
taking of wages in excess of a stated maximum, all combinations being
prohibited. From that time forth the journeymen tailors of London
and Westminster have remained in effective though sometimes informal
combination, the organisation centring round the fifteen or twenty
“houses of call,” being the public-houses to which it was customary for
the workmen to resort, and at which the employers sought any additional
men whom they wished to engage. In 1744 the Privy Council was set in
motion against their refusal to obey the Act of 1720.[50] In 1750-51
they invoked the assistance of the Middlesex Justices, and obtained
an order requiring the masters to pay certain rates. In 1767 further
legislation was, in spite of their eloquent protests, obtained against
them.[51] In 1810 a master declared before a Select Committee that
their combination had existed for over a century.[52]

An equally early instance of permanent trade combination is the
woollen manufacture of the West of England. Here the rise of a class
of lifelong wage-earners took a form altogether different from that
in the London tailoring trade, but it produced the same result of
combinations among the workers. The “wealthy clothiers” of Somerset,
Gloucestershire, and Devon, who during the sixteenth century had
“mightily increased in fame and riches, their houses frequented like
kings’ courts,”[53] provided and owned the material of the industry
throughout the whole manufacturing process, but employed a separate
class of operatives at each stage. Buying the wool at one of the market
towns, the capitalist clothier gave this to one set of hand-workers to
be carded and spun into yarn in the village households. The yarn was
passed on to another set--the handloom weavers--to be made into cloth
in their cottages. The cloth was then “fulled” at the capitalist’s own
mill (usually a water-mill) and again given out to be “dressed” by a
new set of hand-workers, after which it was ready to be packed in the
warehouse, and dispatched to Bristol or London for shipment or sale.
In this case, as in that of the tailors, the operatives still retained
the ownership of the tools of their particular processes, but it was
practically impossible for them to acquire either the capital or the
commercial knowledge necessary for the success of so highly organised
an industry, and we accordingly find them entering into extensive
combinations from the closing years of the seventeenth century. Already
in 1675 the journeymen clothworkers of London combined to petition the
Court of the Clothworkers’ Company against the engagement of workmen
from the country. In 1682 we hear of them taking advantage of an
extensive shipping order to refuse, in concert, to work under 12s.
per week. But it is not clear whether any lasting association then
resulted.[54] In the West of England the ephemeral revolts of the early
part of the seventeenth century seem to have developed into lasting
combinations by the end of that century. We hear of them at Tiverton
as early as 1700.[55] In 1717 the Journals of the House of Commons
contain evidence of the existence of a widespread combination of the
woollen-workers in Devonshire and Somerset. The Mayor and Corporation
of Bradninch complain “that for some years past the woolcombers and
weavers in those parts have been confederating how to incorporate
themselves into a club: and have to the number of some thousands in
this county, in a very riotous and tumultuous manner, exacted tribute
from many.”[56] The House of Commons apparently thought the evil
could be met by Royal Authority and requested the King to issue a
Proclamation. Accordingly on February 4, 1718, a Royal Proclamation was
issued against these “lawless clubs and societies which had illegally
presumed to use a common seal, and to act as Bodies Corporate, by
making and unlawfully conspiring to execute certain By-laws or Orders,
whereby they pretend to determine who had a right to the Trade, what
and how many Apprentices and Journeymen each man should keep at once,
together with the prices of all their manufactures, and the manner
and materials of which they should be wrought.”[57] This kingly
fulmination, which was read at the Royal Exchange, failed to effect its
purpose, for the Journals of the House of Commons for 1723 and 1725
contain frequent complaints of the continuance of the combinations,[58]
which are constantly heard of throughout the whole of the eighteenth
century, dying away only on the supersession of the male by the
female weaver at the beginning of the nineteenth century, not to be
effectively revived until the beginning of the twentieth.

This early development of trade combinations in the West of England
stands in striking contrast with their absence in the same industry
where pursued, as in Yorkshire, on the so-called “Domestic System.”
The Yorkshire weaver was a small master craftsman of the old type,
himself buying and owning the raw material, and once or twice a week
selling his cloth in the markets of Leeds or Wakefield, to which, we
are told by Defoe in 1724, “few clothiers bring more than one piece.”
“Almost at every house,” he writes of the country near Halifax, “there
was a Tenter, and almost on every Tenter a piece of cloth, or kersey,
or shalloon, ... at every considerable house was a manufactory; ...
then, as every clothier must keep a horse, perhaps two, to fetch and
carry for the use of his manufacture, viz., to fetch home his wool and
his provisions from the market, to carry his yarn to the spinners,
his manufacture to the fulling mill, and when finished, to the market
to be sold, and the like; so every manufacturer generally keeps a cow
or two or more, for his family, and this employs the two or three or
four pieces of enclosed land about his house, for they scarce sow corn
enough for their cocks and hens.”[59] Not until the Yorkshire cloth
dealers began, about 1794, to establish factories on a large scale
do we find any Trade Unions, and then journeymen and small masters
struggled with one accord to resist the new form of capitalist industry
which was beginning to deprive them of their control over the product
of their labour.

The worsted industry appears everywhere to have been carried on rather
like the woollen manufactures of the West of England than the same
industry in Yorkshire. The woolcomber frequently owned the inexpensive
hand-combs and pots with which he worked. But the woolcombers, like
the weavers of the West of England, formed but one of several classes
of workers for whose employment both capital and commercial knowledge
was indispensable. We hear, already in 1674, of an attempt by the
Leicester woolcombers to “form a company,”[60] though with what success
we know not. In 1741 it was remarked that the woolcombers had “for a
number of years past erected themselves into a sort of corporation
(though without a charter); their first pretence was to take care
of their poor brethren that should fall sick, or be out of work;
and this was done by meeting once or twice a week, and each of them
contributing 2d. or 3d. towards the box to make a bank, and when they
became a little formidable they gave laws to their masters, as also to
themselves--viz., That no man should comb wool under 2s. per dozen;
that no master should employ any comber that was not of their club:
if he did they agreed one and all not to work for him; and if he had
employed twenty they all of them turned out, and oftentimes were not
satisfied with that, but would abuse the honest man that would labour,
and in a riotous manner beat him, break his comb-pots, and destroy his
working tools; they further support one another in so much that they
are become one society throughout the kingdom. And that they may keep
up their price to encourage idleness rather than labour, if any one of
their club is out of work, they give him a ticket and money to seek for
work at the next town where a box club is, where he is also subsisted,
suffered to live a certain time with them, and then used as before; by
which means he can travel the kingdom round, be caressed at each club,
and not spend a farthing of his own or strike one stroke of work. This
hath been imitated by the weavers also, though not carried through the
kingdom, but confined to the places where they work.”[61] The surviving
members of the Old Amicable Society of Woolstaplers retain a tradition
of local trade clubs dating from the very beginning of the eighteenth
century, and of their forming a federal union in 1785. Old members
of the United Journeymen Curriers’ Society have seen circulars and
tramping cards, showing that a similar tramping federation existed in
their trade from the middle of the century.[62]

In other cases the expensive nature of the raw material or the tools
aided the creation of a separate class. The Spitalfields silk-weavers,
whom we find forming a permanent organisation in 1773, could never have
owned the costly silks they wove.[63] The gold-beaters, whose union
dates at any rate from 1777, were similarly debarred from owning the
material.

Another remarkable instance of combination prior to the introduction of
mechanical power and the factory system is that of the “stockingers,”
the hosiery workers, or framework knitters, described by Dr. Brentano.
From the very beginning of the use of the stocking-frame, in the
early part of the seventeenth century, servants appear to have been
set to work upon frames owned by capitalists, though the bulk of the
trade was in the hands of men who worked upon their own frames as
independent producers. The competition of these embryo factories was
severely felt by the domestic framework knitter, and on the final
breakdown, in 1753, of the legal limitation of apprentices, it became
disastrous. There grew up a “ruinous practice of parishes giving
premiums to manufacturers for employing their poor,” and this flooding
of the labour market with subsidised child labour reduced the typical
framework knitter to a state of destitution. Though he continued to
work in his cottage, he rapidly lost the ownership of his frame, and a
system arose under which the frames were hired at a rent, either from
a small capitalist frame-owner, or from the manufacturer by whom the
work was given out. The operative was thus deprived, not only of the
ownership of the product, but also of the instruments of his labour.
Hence, although from the very beginning of the eighteenth century
there were ephemeral combinations among the framework knitters, in
which masters and men often joined, it was not until 1780, when the
renting of frames had become general, that a durable Trade Union of
wage-earners arose.[64]

The development of the industrial organisation of the cutlery
trades affords another example of this evolution. At the date of
the establishment in Sheffield of the Cutlers’ Company (1624) the
typical craftsman was himself the owner of his “wheel” and other
instruments, and a strict limitation of apprentices was maintained. By
1791, when the masters obtained from Parliament a formal ratification
of the prevalent relaxation in the customary restrictions as to
apprentices, we find this system largely replaced by something very
like the present order of things, in which the typical Sheffield
operative works with material given out by the manufacturer, upon
wheels rented either from the latter or from a landlord supplying
power. It is no mere coincidence that in the year 1790 the Sheffield
employers found themselves obliged to take concerted action against
the “scissor-grinders and other workmen who have entered into unlawful
combinations to raise the price of labour.”[65]

The shipwrights of Liverpool, and probably those of other shipbuilding
ports, were combined in trade benefit clubs early in the eighteenth
century. At Liverpool, where this society had very successfully
maintained the customary limitation of apprentices, the members were
all freemen of the municipal corporation, and as such entitled to the
Parliamentary franchise. As a result the shipwrights’ organisation
became intensely political, by which was meant chiefly the negotiation
of the sale of its members’ votes. At the election of 1790, when Whigs
and Tories compromised in order to avoid the expense of a contest, it
was the Shipwrights’ Society, then at the zenith of its power, which
insisted on forcing a contest by nominating its own candidate, and, in
the end, actually put him at the head of the poll. The society, which
had a contribution in 1824 of fifteen pence per month, and had built
almshouses for its old members, is reputed to have been at one time
so powerful that any employer who refused to obey its rules found his
business absolutely brought to a standstill.[66]

But the cardinal example of the conception of Trade Unionism with
the divorce of the worker from the instruments of production is seen
in the rapid rise of trade combinations on the introduction of the
factory system. We have already noticed that Trade Unions in Yorkshire
began with the erection of factories and the use of power. When, in
1794, the clothiers of the West Riding failed to prevent the Leeds
merchants from establishing large factories, “wherein it is intended
to employ a great number of persons now working at their own homes,”
the journeymen took the matter into their own hands, and founded “the
Clothiers’ Community,” or “Brief Institution,” professedly to gather
“briefs” or levies for the relief of the sick, and to carry on a
Parliamentary agitation for hampering the factory owners by a legal
limitation of apprentices. “It appears,” reports the Parliamentary
Committee of 1806, “that there has existed for some time an institution
or society among the woollen manufacturers, consisting chiefly of
clothworkers. In each of the principal manufacturing towns there
appears to be a society, composed of deputies chosen from the several
shops of workmen, from each of which town societies one or more
deputies are chosen to form what is called the central committee,
which meets, as occasion requires, at some place suitable to the local
convenience of all parties. The powers of the central committee appear
to pervade the whole institution; and any determination or measure
which it may adopt may be communicated with ease throughout the whole
body of manufacturers. Every workman, on his becoming a member of the
society, receives a certain card or ticket, on which is an emblematical
engraving--the same, the Committee are assured, both in the North
and the West of England--that by producing his ticket he may at once
show he belongs to the society. The same rules and regulations appear
to be in force throughout the whole district, and there is the utmost
reason to believe that no clothworker would be suffered to carry on
his trade, otherwise than in solitude, who should refuse to submit
to the obligations and rules of the society.”[67] The transformation
of cotton-spinning into a factory industry, which may be said to
have taken place round about the year 1780, was equally accompanied
by the growth of Trade Unionism. The so-called benefit clubs of the
Oldham operatives, which we know to have existed from 1792, and those
of Stockport, of which we hear in 1796, were the forerunners of that
network of spinners’ societies throughout the northern counties and
Scotland which rose into notoriety in the great strikes of the next
thirty years.[68]

It is easy to understand how the massing together in factories of
regiments of men all engaged in the same trade facilitated and
promoted the formation of journeymen’s trade societies. But with the
cotton-spinners, as with the tailors, the rise of permanent trade
combinations is to be ascribed, in a final analysis, to the definite
separation between the functions of the capitalist _entrepreneur_ and
the manual worker--between, that is to say, the direction of industrial
operations and their execution. It has, indeed, become a commonplace of
modern Trade Unionism that only in those industries in which the worker
has ceased to be concerned in the profits of buying and selling--that
inseparable characteristic of the ownership and management of the
means of production--can effective and stable trade organisations be
established.

The positive proofs of this historical dependence of Trade Unionism
upon the divorce of the worker from the ownership of the means of
production are complemented by the absence of any permanent trade
combinations in industries in which the divorce had not taken place.
The degradation of the Standard of Life of the skilled manual worker on
the break-up of the mediæval system occurred in all sorts of trades,
whether the operative retained his ownership of the means of production
or not, but Trade Unionism followed only where the change took the form
of a divorce between capital and labour. The Corporation of Pinmakers
of London are found petitioning Parliament towards the end of the
seventeenth century or beginning of the eighteenth, as follows:

“This company consists for the most part of poor and indigent people,
who have neither credit nor mony to purchase wyre of the merchant
at the best hand, but are forced for want thereof to buy only small
parcels of the second or third buyer as they have occasion to use it,
and to sell off the pins they make of the same from week to week,
as soon as they are made, for ready money to feed themselves, their
wives and children, whom they are constrained to imploy to go up and
down every Saturday night from shop to shop to offer their pins to
sale, otherwise cannot have money to buy bread. And these are daily so
exceedingly multiplyed and encreased by reason of the unlimited number
of apprentices that some few covetous-minded members of the company
(who have considerable stocks) do constantly imploy and keep....
The persons that buy the pins from the maker to sell again to other
retailing shopkeepers, taking advantage of this necessity of the poor
workmen (who are always forced to sell for ready mony, or otherwise
cannot subsist), have by degrees so beaten down the price of pins that
the workman is not able to live of his work, ... and betake themselves
to be porters, tankard bearers, and other day labourers, ... and many
of their children do daily become parish charges.”[69] And the glovers
complain at the same period that “they are generally so poor that they
are supplied with leather upon credit, not being able to pay for that
or their work-folk’s wages till they have sold the gloves.”[70]

Now, although these pinmakers and glovers, and other trades in like
condition, fully recognised the need for some protection of their
Standard of Life, we do not find any trace of Trade Unionism among
them. Selling as they did, not their labour alone, but also its
product, their only resource was legislative protection of the price of
their wares.[71] In short, in those industries in which the cleavage
between capitalist and artisan, manager and manual labourer, was not
yet complete, the old gild policy of commercial monopoly was resorted
to as the only expedient for protecting the Standard of Life of the
producer.

We do not contend that the divorce supplies, in itself, a complete
explanation of the origin of Trade Unions. At all times in the
history of English industry there have existed large classes of
workers as much debarred from becoming the directors of their own
industry as the eighteenth-century tailor or woolcomber, or as the
modern cotton-spinner or miner. Besides the semi-servile workers on
the land or in the mines, it is certain that there were in the towns
a considerable class of unskilled labourers, excluded, through lack
of apprenticeship, from any participation in the gild.[72] By the
eighteenth century, at any rate, the numbers of this class must
have been largely swollen, by the increased demand for common labour
involved in the growth of the transport trade, the extensive building
operations, etc. But it is not among the farm servants, miners, or
general labourers, ill-paid and ill-treated as these often were,
that the early Trade Unions arose. We do not even hear of ephemeral
combinations among them, and only very occasionally of transient
strikes.[73] The formation of independent associations to resist the
will of employers requires the possession of a certain degree of
personal independence and strength of character. Thus we find the
earliest Trade Unions arising among journeymen whose skill and Standard
of Life had been for centuries encouraged and protected by legal or
customary regulations as to apprenticeship, and by the limitation
of their numbers which the high premiums and other conditions must
have involved. It is often assumed that Trade Unionism arose as a
protest against intolerable industrial oppression. This was not so.
The first half of the eighteenth century was certainly not a period of
exceptional distress. For fifty years from 1710 there was an almost
constant succession of good harvests, the price of wheat remaining
unusually low. The tailors of London and Westminster united, at the
very beginning of the eighteenth century, not to resist any reduction
of their customary earnings, but to wring from their employers better
wages and shorter hours of labour. The few survivors of the hand
woolcombers still cherish the tradition of the eighteenth century,
when they styled themselves “gentlemen woolcombers,” refused to
drink with other operatives, and were strong enough, as we have seen,
to give “laws to their masters.”[74] The very superior millwrights,
whose exclusive trade clubs preceded any general organisation of the
engineering trade, had for “their everyday garb” a “long frock coat and
tall hat.”[75] And the curriers, hatters, woolstaplers, shipwrights,
brush-makers, basketmakers, and calico-printers, who furnish prominent
instances of eighteenth-century Trade Unionism, all earned relatively
high wages, and long maintained a very effectual resistance to the
encroachments of their employers.

It appears to us from these facts that Trade Unionism would have been
a feature of English industry, even without the steam-engine and the
factory system. Whether the association of superior workmen which arose
in the early part of the century would, in such an event, ever have
developed into a Trade Union Movement is another matter. The typical
“trade club” of the town artisan of this time was an isolated “ring”
of highly skilled journeymen, who were even more decisively marked
off from the mass of the manual workers than from the small class of
capitalist employers. The customary enforcement of the apprenticeship
prescribed by the Elizabethan statutes, and the high premiums often
exacted from parents not belonging to the trade, long maintained a
virtual monopoly of the better-paid handicrafts in the hands of an
almost hereditary caste of “tradesmen” in whose ranks the employers
themselves had for the most part served their apprenticeship. Enjoying,
as they did, this legal or customary protection, they found their
trade clubs of use mainly for the provision of friendly benefits, and
for “higgling” with their masters for better terms. We find little
trace among such trade clubs of that sense of solidarity between the
manual workers of different trades which afterwards became so marked
a feature of the Trade Union Movement. Their occasional disputes with
their employers resembled rather family differences than conflicts
between distinct social classes. They exhibit more tendency to “stand
in” with their masters against the community, or to back them against
rivals or interlopers, than to join their fellow-workers of other
trades in an attack upon the capitalist class. In short, we have
industrial society still divided vertically trade by trade, instead of
horizontally between employers and wage-earners. This latter cleavage
it is which has transformed the Trade Unionism of petty groups of
skilled workmen into the modern Trade Union Movement.[76]

The pioneers of the Trade Union Movement were not the trade clubs
of the town artisans, but the extensive combinations of the West of
England woollen-workers and the Midland framework knitters. It was
these associations that initiated what afterwards became the common
purpose of nearly all eighteenth-century combinations--the appeal to
the Government and the House of Commons to save the wage-earners from
the new policy of buying labour, like the raw material of manufacture,
in the cheapest market. The rapidly changing processes and widening
markets of English industry seemed to demand the sweeping away of
all restrictions on the supply and employment of labour, a process
which involved the levelling of all classes of wage-earners to their
“natural wages.” The first to feel the encroachment on their customary
earnings were the woollen-workers employed by the capitalist clothiers
of the Western counties. As the century advances we find trade after
trade taking up the agitation against the new conditions, and such
old-established clubs as the hatters and the woolcombers joining the
general movement as soon as their own industries are menaced. To the
skilled craftsman in the towns the new policy was brought home by the
repeal of the regulations which protected his trade against an influx
of pauper labour. His defence was to ask for the enforcement of the
law relating to apprenticeship.[77] This would not have helped the
operative in the staple textile industries. To him the new order took
the form of constantly declining piecework rates. What he demanded,
therefore, was the fixing of the “convenient proportion of wages”
contemplated by Elizabethan legislation. But, whether craftsmen or
factory operatives, the wage-earners turned, for the maintenance of
their Standard of Life, to that protection by the law upon which they
had been taught to rely. So long as each section of workers believed in
the intention of the governing class to protect their trade from the
results of unrestricted competition no community of interest arose. It
was a change of industrial policy on the part of the Government that
brought all trades into line, and for the first time produced what can
properly be called a Trade Union Movement. In order, therefore, to make
this movement fully intelligible, we must now retrace our steps, and
follow the political history of industry in the eighteenth century.

The dominant industrial policy of the sixteenth century was the
establishment of some regulating authority to perform, for the trade
of the time, the services formerly rendered by the Craft Gilds.
When, for instance, in the middle of the century the weavers found
their customary earnings dwindling, they managed so far to combine
as to make their voice heard at Westminster. In 1555 we find them
complaining “that the rich and wealthy clothiers do many ways oppress
them” by putting unapprenticed men to work on the capitalists’ own
looms, by letting out looms at rents, and “some also by giving much
less wages and hire for the weaving and workmanship of clothes than
in times past they did.”[78] To the Parliament of these days it
seemed right and natural that the oppressed wage-earners should turn
to the legislature to protect them against the cutting down of their
earnings by the competing capitalists. The statutes of 1552 and 1555
forbid the use of the gig-mill, restrict the number of looms that one
person may own to two in towns and one in the country, and absolutely
prohibit the letting-out of looms for hire or rent. In 1563, indeed,
Parliament expressly charged itself with securing to all wage-earners
a “convenient” livelihood. The old laws fixing a maximum wage could
not, in face of the enormous rise of prices, be put in force “without
the great grief and burden of the poor labourer and hired man.”
Circumstances were changing too fast for any rigid rule. But by the
celebrated “Statute of Apprentices” the statesmen of the time contrived
arrangements which would, as they hoped, “yield unto the hired person,
both in the time of scarcity and in the time of plenty, a convenient
proportion of wages.” Every year the justices of each locality were
to meet, “and calling unto them such discreet and grave persons ...
as they shall think meet, and conferring together respecting the
plenty or scarcity of the time,” were to fix the wages of practically
every kind of labour,[79] their decisions being enforceable by heavy
penalties. Stringent regulations as to the necessity of apprenticeship,
the length of its term, and the number of apprentices to be taken by
each employer, received the confirmation of law. The typical ordinances
of the mediæval gild were, in fact, enacted in minute detail in a
comprehensive general statute applying to the greater part of the
industry of the period.

We need not discuss the very debatable question whether this celebrated
law was or was not advantageous to the labouring folk of the time,
or whether and to what extent its provisions were actually put in
force.[80] But codifying and enacting as it did the fundamental
principles of the mediæval social order, we can scarcely be surprised
that its adoption by Parliament confirmed the working man in the once
universal belief in the essential justice and good policy securing by
appropriate legislation “the getting of a competent livelihood” by
all those concerned in industry.[81] Exactly the same view prevailed
at the beginning of the eighteenth century. We again find the newly
established associations of the operatives appealing to the King,
to the House of Commons, or to Quarter Sessions against the beating
down of their wages by their employers. For the first half of the
century the governing classes continued to act on the assumption that
the industrious mechanic had a right to the customary earnings of
his trade. Thus in 1726 the weavers of Wilts and Somerset combine to
petition the King against the harshness and fraud of their employers
the clothiers, with the result that a Committee of the Privy Council
investigates their grievances, and draws up “Articles of Agreement”
for the settlement of the matters in dispute,[82] admonishing the
weavers “for the future” not to attempt to help themselves by unlawful
combinations, but always “to lay their grievances in a regular way
before His Majesty, who would be always ready to grant them relief
suitable to the justice of their case.”[83] More often the operatives
appealed to the House of Commons. In 1719 the “broad and narrow
weavers” of Stroud and places round, petitioned Parliament to put down
the tyrannical capitalist clothiers by enforcing the “Act touching
Weavers” of 1555.[84] In 1728 the Gloucestershire operatives appealed
to the local justices of the peace, and induced them, in spite of
protests from the master clothiers, and apparently for the first time,
to fix a liberal scale of wages for the weavers of the country.[85]
Twenty years later the operatives obtained from Parliament a special
prohibition of truck.[86] Finally, in 1756 they persuaded the House of
Commons to pass an Act[87] providing for the fixing of piecework prices
by the justices, in order that the practice of cutting down rates and
underselling might be stopped. “A Table or Scheme for Rates of Wages”
was accordingly settled at Quarter Sessions, November 6, 1756, with
which the operatives were fairly contented.[88]

The next few years saw a revolutionary change in the industrial
policy of the legislature which must have utterly bewildered the
operatives. Within a generation the House of Commons exchanged its
policy of mediæval protection for one of “Administrative Nihilism.” The
Woollen Cloth Weavers’ Act of 1756 had not been one year in force when
Parliament was assailed by numerous petitions and counter petitions.
The employers declared that the rates fixed by the justices were, in
face of the growing competition of Yorkshire, absolutely impracticable.
The operatives, on the other hand, asked that the Act might be
strengthened in their favour. The clothiers asserted the advantages of
freedom of contract and unrestrained competition. The weavers received
the support of the landowners and gentry in claiming the maintenance by
law of their customary earnings. The perplexed House of Commons wavered
between the two. At first a Bill was ordered to be drawn strengthening
the existing law; but ultimately the clothiers were held to have proved
their case.[89] The Act of 1756 was, in 1757, unconditionally repealed;
and Parliament was now heading straight for _laisser-faire_.

The struggle over this Woollen Cloth Weavers’ Act of 1756 marks the
passage from the old ideas to the new. When, in 1776, the weavers,
spinners, scribblers, and other woollen operatives of Somerset
petitioned against the evil that was being done to their accustomed
livelihood by the introduction of the spinning-jenny into Shepton
Mallet, the House of Commons, which had two centuries before absolutely
prohibited the gig-mill, refused even to allow the petition to be
received.[90]

The change of policy had already affected another trade. The London
Framework Knitters’ Company, which had been incorporated in 1663 for
the express purpose of regulating the trade, found itself during
the first half of the eighteenth century in continual conflict with
recalcitrant masters who set its bye-laws at defiance. This long
struggle, in which the journeymen took vigorous action in support
of the Company, was brought to an end in 1753 by an exhaustive
Parliamentary inquiry. The bye-laws of the Company, upon the
enforcement of which the journeymen had rested all their hopes, were
solemnly declared to be “injurious and vexatious to the manufacturers,”
whilst the Company’s authority was pronounced to be “hurtful to the
trade.”[91] The total abandonment of all legal regulation of the trade
led, after numerous transitory revolts, to the establishment in 1778
of “The Stocking Makers’ Association for the Mutual Protection in the
Midland Counties of England,” having for its objects the limitation of
apprentices, and the enactment of a fixed rate of wages. Dr. Brentano
has summarised the various attempts made by the operatives during the
next two years to secure the protection of the legislature.[92] Through
the influence of their Union a sympathetic member was returned for the
borough of Nottingham. Investigation by a committee brought to light
a degree of “sweating” scarcely paralleled even by the worst modern
instances. A Bill for the fixing of wages had actually passed its
second reading when the employers, whipping up all their friends in
the House, defeated it on the third reading--a rebuff to the workmen
which led to serious riots at Nottingham, and thrust the unfortunate
framework knitters back into despairing poverty.[93]

By this time the town craftsmen were also beginning to be menaced
by the revolutionary proposals of their employers. The hatters, for
example, whose early combination we have already mentioned, had
hitherto been protected by the strict limitation of the number of
apprentices prescribed by the Acts of 1566 and 1603, and enforced by
the Feltmakers’ Company. We gather from the employers’ complaints that
the journeymen’s organisation, which by this time extended to most of
the provincial towns in which hats were made, was aiming at a strict
enforcement of the law limiting the number of apprentices which each
master might take. This caused the leading master hatters to promote,
in 1777, a Bill to remove the limitation. Against them was marshalled
the whole strength of the journeymen’s organisation. Petitions poured
in from London, Burton, Bristol, Chester, Liverpool, Hexham, Derby, and
other places, the “piecemaster hat or feltmakers and finishers” usually
joining with the journeymen against the demand of the capitalist
employers. The men asserted that, even with the limitation, “except
at brisk times many hundreds are obliged to go travelling up and down
the kingdom in search of employ.” But the House was impressed with the
evidence and arguments of the large employers, and their Bill passed
into law.[94]

The action of the House of Commons on occasions like these was not
as yet influenced by any conscious theory of freedom of contract.
What happened was that, as each trade in turn felt the effect of
the new capitalist competition, the journeymen, and often also the
smaller employers, would petition for redress, usually demanding the
prohibition of the new machines, the enforcement of a seven years’
apprenticeship, or the maintenance of the old limitation of the
number of boys to be taught by each employer. The House would as
a rule appoint a Committee to investigate the complaint, with the
full intention of redressing the alleged grievance. But the large
employers would produce before that Committee an overwhelming array
of evidence proving that without the new machinery the growing export
trade must be arrested; that the new processes could be learnt in a
few months instead of seven years; and that the restriction of the old
master craftsmen to two or three apprentices apiece was out of the
question with the new buyers of labour on a large scale. Confronted
with such a case as this for the masters even the most sympathetic
committee seldom found it possible to endorse the proposals of the
artisans. In fact, these proposals were impossible. The artisans had a
grievance--perhaps the worst that any class can have--the degradation
of their standard of livelihood by circumstances which enormously
increased the productivity of their labour. But they mistook the
remedy; and Parliament, though it saw the mistake, could devise nothing
better. Common sense forced the Government to take the easy and
obvious step of abolishing the mediæval regulations which industry had
outgrown. But the problem of protecting the workers’ Standard of Life
under the new conditions was neither easy nor obvious, and it remained
unsolved until the nineteenth century discovered the expedients of
Collective Bargaining and Factory Legislation, developing, in the
twentieth century, into the fixing by law of a Minimum Wage. In the
meantime the workers were left to shift for themselves, the attitude
of Parliament towards them being for the first years one of pure
perplexity, quite untouched by the doctrine of freedom of contract.

That the House of Commons remained innocent of any general theory
against legislative interference long after it had begun the work of
sweeping away the mediæval regulations is proved by the famous case of
the Spitalfields silk-weavers, in which the old policy of industrial
regulation was reverted to. In 1765 the Spitalfields weavers protested
that they were without employment, owing to the importation of foreign
silk. Assembling in crowds, they marched in processions to Westminster,
headed by bands and banners, and demanded the prohibition of the import
of the foreign product. Riots occurred sufficiently serious to induce
Parliament to pass an Act in the terms desired;[95] but this experiment
in Protection failed to maintain wages, and the riots were renewed
in 1769. Finally Sir John Fielding, the well-known London police
magistrate, suggested to the London silkweavers that they should
secure their earnings by an Act.[96] Under the pressure of another
outbreak of rioting in 1773, Parliament adopted this proposal, and
empowered the justices to fix the rates of wages and to enforce their
maintenance. The effect of this enactment upon the men’s combination
is significant. “A great man” had told the weavers, as one of them
relates, that the governing class “made laws, and we, the people,
must make legs to them.”[97] The ephemeral combination to obtain the
Act became accordingly a permanent union to enforce it. From this
time forth we hear no more of strikes or riots among the Spitalfields
weavers. Instead, we see arising a permanent machinery, designated the
“Union,” for the representation, before the justices, of both masters
and men, upon whose evidence the complicated lists of piecework rates
are periodically settled. Clearly the Parliaments which passed the
Spitalfields Acts of 1765 and 1773 had no conception of the political
philosophy of Adam Smith, whose _Wealth of Nations_, afterwards to be
accepted as the English gospel of freedom of contract and “natural
liberty,” was published in 1776. At the same time, so exceptional had
such acts become, that when Adam Smith’s masterpiece came into the
hands of the statesmen of the time, it must have seemed not so much a
novel view of industrial economics as the explicit generalisation of
practical conclusions to which experience had already repeatedly driven
them.

Towards the end of the century the governing classes, who had found
in the new industrial policy a source of enormous pecuniary profit,
eagerly seized on the new economic theory as an intellectual and
moral justification of that policy. The abandonment of the operatives
by the law, previously resorted to under pressure of circumstances,
and, as we gather, not without some remorse, was now carried out on
principle, with unflinching determination. When the handloom-weavers,
earning little more than a third of the livelihood they had gained
ten years before, and unable to realise that the factory system would
be deliberately allowed to ruin them, made themselves heard in the
House of Commons in 1808, a Committee reported against their proposal
to fix a minimum rate of wages on the ground that it was “wholly
inadmissible in principle, incapable of being reduced to practice by
any means which can possibly be devised, and, if practicable, would be
productive of the most fatal consequences”; and “that the proposition
relative to the limiting the number of apprentices is also entirely
inadmissible, and would, if adopted by the House, be attended with the
greatest injustice to the manufacturer as well as to the labourer.”[98]
Here we have _laisser-faire_ fully established in Parliament as an
authoritative industrial doctrine of political economy, able to
overcome the great bulk of the evidence given before this Committee,
which was decidedly in favour of the minimum wage. The House of Commons
had no lack of opportunities for educating itself on the question. The
special misery caused by bad harvests and the prolonged war between
1793 and 1815[99] brought a rush of appeals, especially from the newly
established associations of cotton operatives. In the early years of
the present century petition after petition poured in from Lancashire
and Glasgow, showing that the rates for weaving had steadily declined,
and reiterating the old demands for a legally fixed scale of piecework
rates and the limitation of apprentices. In 1795, and again in 1800,
and once more in 1808, Bills fixing a minimum rate were introduced into
the House of Commons, sometimes meeting with considerable favour. The
report of the Committee of 1808, which took voluminous evidence on the
subject, has already been quoted. Petitions from the calico-printers
for a legal limitation of the number of apprentices, although warmly
supported by the Select Committee to which they were referred, met with
the same fate. Sheridan, indeed, was not convinced, and brought in a
Bill proposing, among other things, to limit the number of apprentices.
But Sir Robert Peel (the elder), whose own factories swarmed with boys,
opposed it in the name of industrial freedom, and carried the House of
Commons with him.[100]

Meanwhile the despairing operatives, baffled in their attempts to
procure fresh legislation, turned for aid to the existing law.
Unrepealed statutes still enabled the justices in some trades to fix
the rate of wages, limited in others the number of apprentices; in
others, again, prohibited certain kinds of machinery, and forbade
any but apprenticed men to exercise the trade. So completely had
these statutes fallen into disuse that their very existence was in
many instances unknown to the artisans. The West of England weavers,
however, combined with those of Yorkshire in 1802 to employ an
attorney, who took proceedings against employers for infringing the old
laws. The result was that Parliament hastily passed an Act suspending
these statutes, in order to put a stop to the prosecutions.[101] “At
a numerous meeting of the cordwainers of the City of New Sarum in
1784,” says an old circular that we have seen, “it was unanimously
resolved ... that a subscription be entered into for putting the law
in force against infringements on the Trade,” but apparently without
result.[102] The Edinburgh compositors were more successful; on
being refused an advance of wages, to correspond with the rise in the
cost of living, they presented, February 28, 1804, a memorial to the
Court of Session, and obtained the celebrated “Interlocutor” of 1805,
which fixed a scale of piecework prices for the Edinburgh printing
trade.[103] But the chief event of this campaign for the enforcement
of the old laws began in Glasgow. The cotton-weavers of that city,
after four or five years of Parliamentary agitation for additional
legislation, resorted to the law empowering the justices to fix the
rates of wages. After an unsuccessful attempt to fix a standard rate by
agreement with a committee of employers, the men’s association which
now extended throughout the whole of the cotton-weaving districts in
the United Kingdom commenced legal proceedings at the Lanarkshire
Quarter Sessions. The employers in 1812 disputed the competence of
the magistrates, and appealed to the Court of Sessions at Edinburgh.
The Court held that the magistrates were competent to fix a scale of
wages, and a table of piecework rates was accordingly drawn up. The
employers immediately withdrew from the proceedings; but the operatives
were nevertheless compelled, at great expense, to produce witnesses
to testify to every one of the numerous rates proposed. After one
hundred and thirty witnesses had been heard, the magistrates at length
declared the rates to be reasonable, but made no actual order enforcing
them. The employers, with few exceptions, refused to accept the table,
which it had cost the operatives £3000 to obtain. The result was the
most extensive strike the trade has ever known. From Carlisle to
Aberdeen every loom stopped, forty thousand weavers ceasing work almost
simultaneously. After three weeks’ strike the employers were preparing
to meet the operatives, when the whole Strike Committee was suddenly
arrested by the police, and held to bail under the common law for the
crime of combination, of which the authorities, in that revolutionary
period, were very jealous on purely political grounds. The five
leaders were sentenced to terms of imprisonment varying from four to
eighteen months; and this blow broke up the combination, defeated the
strike, and put an end to the struggles of the operatives against the
progressive degradation of their wages.[104]

The London artisans, though they were not put down by prosecution and
imprisonment, met with no greater success than their Glasgow brethren.
Between 1810 and 1812 a number of trade societies combined to engage
the services of a solicitor, who prosecuted masters for employing
“illegal men,” that is to say, men who had not by apprenticeship
gained a right to follow the trade. The original “case” which the
journeymen curriers submitted to counsel in 1810 (fee two guineas),
with a view to putting in force the Statute of Apprentices, was in
our possession, together with the somewhat hesitating opinion of the
legal adviser.[105] In a few cases proceedings were even taken against
employers for having set up in trades to which they had not themselves
served their time. Convictions were obtained in some instances; but no
costs were allowed to the prosecutors, who were, on the other hand,
condemned to pay heavy costs when they failed. Lord Ellenborough,
moreover, held on appeal that new trades, such as those of engineer
and lockmaker, were not included within the Elizabethan Act. In 1811
certain journeymen millers of Kent petitioned the justices to fix a
rate of wages under the Elizabethan Act. When the justices refused
to hear the petition a writ of mandamus was applied for. Lord
Ellenborough granted the writ to compel them to hear the petition, but
said they were to exercise their own discretion as to whether they
would fix any rate. The justices, on this hint, declined to fix the
wages.[106] It soon became apparent that legal proceedings under these
obsolete statutes were, in face of the adverse bias of the courts,
as futile as they were costly. There was nothing for it then but
either to abandon the line of attack or to petition Parliament to make
effective the still unrepealed laws. This they accordingly did, with
the unexpected result that the “pernicious” law empowering justices to
fix wages was in 1813 peremptorily repealed.[107]

The law thus swept away was but one section of the great Elizabethan
statute, and its repeal left the other clauses untouched. A Select
Committee had already, in 1811, reported that “no interference of the
legislature with the freedom of trade, or with the perfect liberty
of every individual to dispose of his time and of his labour in the
way and on the terms which he may judge most conducive to his own
interest, can take place without violating general principles of the
first importance to the prosperity and happiness of the community;
without establishing the most pernicious precedent, or even without
aggravating, after a very short time, the pressure of the general
distress, and imposing obstacles against that distress being ever
removed.” The repeal of the wages clauses of the statute made this
emphatic declaration of the new doctrine law as far as the fixing of
wages was concerned; but there remained the apprenticeship clauses.
Petitions for the enforcement of these, and their extension to the new
trades, kept pouring in. They were finally referred to a large and
influential committee which included Canning, Huskisson, Sir Robert
Peel, and Sir James Graham among its members. The witnesses examined
were strongly in favour of the retention of the laws, with amendments
bringing them up to date. The chairman (George Rose) was apparently
converted to the view of the operatives by the evidence. The committee,
which had undoubtedly been appointed to formulate the complete
abolition of the apprenticeship clauses, found itself unable to fulfil
its virtual mandate. Not venturing, in the teeth of the manufacturers
and economists, to recommend the House to comply with the operatives’
demands, it got out of the difficulty by making no recommendation at
all. Hundreds of petitions in favour of the laws continued to pour in
from all parts of the country, 300,000 signatures being for retention
against 2000 for repeal, masters often joining in the journeymen’s
prayer. A public meeting of the “Master Manufacturers and Tradesmen
of the Cities of London and Westminster,” at the Freemasons’ Tavern,
passed resolutions strongly supporting the amendment and enforcement
of the existing law. On the other hand, a committee on which the
master engineers Maudsley and Galloway were prominent members, argued
forcibly in favour of freedom and against “the monstrous and alarming
but misguided association.” In 1814 Mr. Serjeant Onslow, who had not
served on the committee of the previous session, introduced a Bill to
repeal the whole apprenticeship law. The “Masters and Journeymen of
Westminster” were heard by counsel against this measure, but the House
had made up its mind in favour of the manufacturers, and by the Act
of 54 Geo. III. c. 96 swept away the apprenticeship clauses of the
statute, and with them practically the last remnant of that legislative
protection of the Standard of Life which survived from the Middle
Ages.[108] The triumphant manufacturers presented Serjeant Onslow with
several pieces of plate for his championship of commercial liberty.[109]

So thoroughly had the new doctrine by this time driven out the very
recollection of the old ideals from the mind of the governing class
that it was now the operatives who were regarded as innovators, and
we are hardly surprised to find another committee gravely declaring
that “the right of every man to employ the capital he inherits, or
has acquired, according to his own discretion, without molestation
or obstruction, so long as he does not infringe on the rights or
property of others, is one of those privileges which the free and
happy constitution of this country has long accustomed every Briton
to consider as his birthright.”[110] But it must be added that the
governing class was by no means impartial in the application of its
new doctrine. Mediæval regulation acted not only in restriction of
free competition in the labour market to the pecuniary loss of the
employers, but also in restriction of free contract to the loss
of the employees, who could only obtain the best terms for their
labour by collective instead of individual bargaining. Consequently
the operatives, if they had clearly understood the situation, would
have been as anxious to abolish the laws against combination as to
maintain those fixing wages and limiting apprenticeship; just as the
capitalists, better informed, were no less resolute in maintaining the
anti-combination laws than in repealing the others. We shall presently
see how slow the workers were to realise this, in spite of the fact
that the laws against combinations of workmen were maintained in force,
and even increased in severity. Strikes, and any organised resistance
to the employers’ demands, were put down with a high hand. The first
twenty years of the nineteenth century witnessed a legal persecution
of Trade Unionists as rebels and revolutionists. This persecution,
thwarting the healthy growth of the Unions, and driving their members
into violence and sedition, but finally leading to the repeal of the
Combination Laws and the birth of the modern Trade Union Movement, will
be the subject of the next chapter.


FOOTNOTES:

[3] In the first edition we said “of their employment.” This has been
objected to as implying that Trade Unions have always contemplated
a perpetual continuance of the capitalist or wage-system. No such
implication was intended. Trade Unions have, at various dates during
the past century at any rate, frequently had aspirations towards a
revolutionary change in social and economic relations.

[4] Riley’s _Memorials of London and London Life in the Thirteenth,
Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Centuries_ (1888), p. 495 (partly cited in
_Trade Unions_, by William Trant, 1884).

[5] _Ibid._ pp. 542-3.

[6] _Ibid._ p. 609; Clode’s _Early History of the Merchant Taylors’
Company_, vol. i. p. 63.

[7] _Calendars of State Papers: Letters and Papers, Foreign and
Domestic, Henry VIII._ vol. xiii. part i., 1538, No. 1454, p. 537.
Compare the ephemeral combinations cited by Fagniez, _Études sur
l’industrie et la classe industrielle à Paris_ (Paris, 1877), pp. 76,
82, etc.

[8] It has been assumed that, in the company of “Bachelors” or “Yeomen
Tailors” connected with the Merchant Taylors’ Company of London
between 1446 and 1661, we have “for the first time revealed to us the
existence, and something of the constitution, of a journeyman’s society
which succeeded in maintaining itself for a prolonged period.” More
careful examination of the materials from which this vivid picture of
this supposed journeyman’s society has been drawn leads us to believe
that it was not composed of journeymen at all, but of masters. This
might, in the first place, have been inferred from the fact that in
the ranks of the supposed journeymen were to be found opulent leaders
like Richard Hilles, the friend of Cranmer and Bullinger, who “became
a Bachelor in Budge of the Yeoman Company” in 1535 (Clode, _Early
History of the Merchant Taylors’ Company_, vol. ii. p. 64), and Sir
Leonard Halliday, afterwards Lord Mayor, who was in the Bachelors’
Company from 1572 to 1594, when “he was elected a member of the
higher hierarchy of the Corporation” (_ibid._ p. 237). The Bachelors’
Company, indeed, far from being composed of needy wage-earners, bore
the greater part of the expense of the pageant in connection with the
mayoralty, and managed the whole proceedings. The Bachelors “in Foynes”
and those “in Budge” are all named as marching in the procession in
“gownes to be welted with velvet, and there jackyttes, cassockes, and
doublettes to be either of satten damaske, taffataye” (_ibid._ pp.
262-6). And when, in 1609, the Company was assessed to contribute to
the Plantation of Ulster, the Bachelors contributed nearly as much as
the merchants (£155, 10s. from ten members as compared with £187, 10s.
from nine members (_ibid._ vol. i. pp. 327-9)). Whether the Bachelors’
Company ever included any large proportion of hired journeymen appears
extremely doubtful, though its object was clearly the regulation of
the trade. The members, according to the Ordinance of 1613, paid a
contribution of 2s. 2d. a quarter “for the poor of the fraternity.”
This may be contrasted with the quarterage of 8d. a year or 2d. per
quarter, levied, according to order of August 1578, on every servant or
journeyman free of the City. The funds of the two companies were kept
distinct, but frequent donations were made from one to the other, and
not only from the inferior to the superior (_ibid._ vol. i. pp. 67-9).
That the Bachelors’ Company was by no means confined to journeymen
is clear. Sir Leonard Halliday, for instance, became a freeman in
April 1564 on completing his apprenticeship, and at once set up in
business for himself, obtaining a charitable loan for the purpose.
Yet, although he prospered in business, “in 1572 we find him assessed
as in the Bachelors’ Company,” and he was not elected to the superior
company until 1594 (_ibid._ vol. ii. p. 237). And in the Ordinance of
1507, “for all those persons that shall be abled by the maister and
Wardeins to holde hous or shop open,” it is provided that the person
desiring to set up shop shall not only pay a licence fee, but also “for
his incomyng to the bachelers’ Company and to be broder with theym
iij^s iii^d” (Clode, _Memorials of the Merchant Taylors’ Company_, p.
209). Nor do the instances of its action imply that it had at heart
the interest of the wage-earners, as distinguished from that of the
employers. The hostility to foreigners, the desire to secure government
clothing contracts, and the preference for a limitation of apprentices
to two for each employer are all consistent with the theory that
the Bachelors’ Company was, like its superior, composed of masters,
probably less opulent than the governing clique, and perhaps occupied
in tailoring rather than in the business of a clothier or merchant. It
is not until 1675 and 1682 that can be traced in the MS. records of
the Clothworkers’ Company the existence of distinctively journeymen’s
combinations (_Industrial Organisation in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth
Centuries_, by George Unwin, 1904, p. 199). The other instances of
identification of “Bachelors’ Companies” or “Yeomen” organisation with
journeymen’s societies are no more convincing than that of the Merchant
Taylors. That the “valets,” serving-men, or journeymen in many trades
possessed some kind of “almsbox,” or charitable funds of their own
is indeed clear, but that this was ever used in trade disputes, or
was independent of the masters’ control, must at present be regarded
as highly improbable. The strongest instance of independence is
that of the Oxford cordwainers (_Selections from the Records of the
City of Oxford_, by William H. Turner, Oxford, 1880). See, on the
whole subject, the chapter on “Mediæval Journeymen’s Clubs,” in Sir
William Ashley’s _Surveys: Historic and Economic_, 1900; _Industrial
Organisation in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries_, by Professor
George Unwin, 1904; and an article on “The Origin of Trade Unionism,”
by Mr. W. A. S. Hewins, in the _Economic Review_, April 1895 (vol. v.).

[9] Dugdale’s _Antiquities of Warwickshire_ (1656), p. 125.

[10] Riley’s _Memorials_, p. 653; Clode, _Early History of Merchant
Taylors’ Company_, vol. i. p. 63.

[11] Compare Fagniez, _Études sur l’industrie et la classe industrielle
à Paris_ (Paris, 1877), p. 123.

[12] 3 Henry VI. c. 1; see also 34 Edward III. c. 9.

[13] “Ordinances of Worcester,” Art. lvii. in Toulmin Smith’s _English
Gilds_, p. 399.

[14] Compare the analogous instances given by Fagniez, _Études sur
l’industrie et la classe industrielle à Paris_, p. 203 (Paris, 1877).

[15] Dr. Brentano has noticed (p. 81) that the great majority of
the legal regulations of wages in the Middle Ages relate (if not to
agriculture) to the building trades; and it may be that these were,
like modern cab-fare regulations, intended more for the protection of
the customer than for that of the capitalist.

[16] See “Notes on the Organisation of the Mason’s Craft in England,”
by Dr. William Cunningham (_British Academy Proceedings_).

[17] Such a master craftsmen’s society we see in the Masons’ “Lodge of
Atchison’s Haven,” which, on December 27, 1735, passed the following
resolution: “The Company of Atchison’s Haven being mett together, have
found Andrew Kinghorn guilty of a most atrocious crime against the
whole Trade of Masonry, and he not submitting himself to the Company
for taking his work so cheap that no man could have his bread of it.
Therefore in not submitting himself he has excluded himself from the
said Company; and therefore the Company doth hereby enact that no man,
neither fellow craft nor enter’d prentice after this shall work as
journeyman under the said Andrew Kinghorn, under the penalty of being
cut off as well as he. Likewise if any man shall follow the example of
the said Andrew Kinghorn in taking work at eight pounds Scots per rood
the walls being twenty feet high, and rebates at eighteen pennies Scots
per foot, that they shall be cut off in the same manner” (_Sketch of
the Incorporation of Masons_, by James Cruikshank, Glasgow, 1879, pp.
131, 132).

[18] Thorold Rogers points out that the Merton College bell-tower was
built in 1448-50 by direct employment at wages. The new quadrangle,
early in the seventeenth century, was put out to contract with a master
mason and a master carpenter respectively, but the college still
supplied all the material (_History of Agriculture and Prices_, vol. i.
pp. 258-60; iii. pp. 720-37; v. pp. 478, 503, 629).

[19] _Industrial Organisation in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth
Centuries_, by George Unwin, 1904, p. 201. In this connection may
be mentioned the London watermen, who have always dealt directly
with their customers, and who possess a tradition of having been
continuously organised since 1350. Power to regulate the trade of
watermen was, in 1555, conferred by Act of Parliament upon the
then incorporated Thames Watermen and Lightermen’s Company, the
administration of which appears to have been, from the first,
entirely in the hands of the master lightermen. The watermen, who
had no masters, were compelled to take out the freedom of this
Company, and the existing Trade Union, the Amalgamated Society of
Watermen and Lightermen, was established in 1872 for the express
purpose of obtaining some representation of the working watermen
and the journeymen lightermen on the Court of the Company. Previous
associations of working watermen for trade purposes seem to have been
in existence in 1789 (a Rotherhithe Society of Watermen) and in 1799
(Friendly Society of Watermen usually plying at the Hermitage Stairs,
in the parish of St. John, Wapping); and Mayhew describes, in 1850,
local “turnway societies,” regulating the sharing of custom, and a
Watermen’s Protective Society, to resist non-freemen (_London Labour
and the London Poor_, 1851).

[20] Schanz, however, in his _Zur Geschichte der deutschen
Gesellenverbände_ (Leipzig, 1877), suggests that the associations of
journeymen which flourished in Germany side by side with the Craft
Gilds prior to the Thirty Years’ War (1618) were, in fact, virtually
Trade Unions. Compare Schmoller’s _Strassburger Tucher-und Weberzunft_
(Strassburg, 1879). Professor G. Des Marez, the learned archivist
of Brussels, supplies evidence of the persistence of journeymen’s
organisations in Belgium, resembling those of Germany, down to the
beginning of the sixteenth century; and of the rise of new ones towards
the end of the seventeenth century, without trace of continuity (in
_Le Compagnonnage des chapeliers bruxellois_, Brussels, 1909.) See
Professor Unwin’s article in _English Historical Review_ (October
1910); and compare _Les Compagnonnages des arts et métiers à Dijon aux
xvii^e et xviii^e siècles_, by H. House, 1909, and _Enquêtes sur les
associations professionnelles d’artisans et ouvriers en Belgique_, by
E. Vandervelde, 1891.

[21] Dr. Brentano’s essay was originally prefixed to Toulmin Smith’s
_English Gilds_, published by the Early English Text Society in 1870.
It was republished separately as _The History and Development of Gilds
and the Origin of Trades Unions_ (135 pp., 1870), and it is to this
edition that we refer. Dr. Brentano’s larger work, _Die Arbeitergilden
der Gegenwart_ (Leipzig, 2 vols., 1871-72), includes this essay, and
also his article in the _North British Review_ for October 1870 on
“The Growth of a Trades Union.” It is only fair to say that in this,
the ablest study of English Trade Union history down to that time, Dr.
Brentano lent no support to the popular idea of any actual descent
of the Trade Unions from the gilds. The _Cobden Club Essays_ (1872)
contain a good article on Trade Unions, by Joseph Gostick, in which it
is argued that these associations were, in England, unknown before the
eighteenth century, and had no connection with the gilds.

[22] Page 102.

[23] The first hundred pages of George Howell’s _Conflicts of Capital
and Labour_ (first edition, 1877; second edition, 1890) are a close
paraphrase of Dr. Brentano’s essay, practically the whole of which
appears, often in the same words, as Howell’s own. But already in 1871
Dr. Brentano, in his _Arbeitergilden der Gegenwart_ (vol. i. ch. iii.
p. 83), expressly connected the Trade Unions, like Schanz, not with the
gilds, but with the Journeymen Fraternities, which he suggests may have
“awaked under changed circumstances to new strength and life, and to a
new policy.” We gather that Sir William Ashley inclines to this view.
“My own impression,” he says, “is that we shall by and by find that,
like the usages of the German journeymen in the eighteenth century
that centred into Herbergen, the trade clubs of eighteenth century
England were broken-down survivals from an earlier period, undergoing,
with the advent of the married journeyman and other causes, the slow
transformation from which they emerged in the nineteenth century as the
nuclei of the modern Trade Union.” Sir William Ashley does not assert
that any continuity of organisation can be proved. “What is suggested
is only that the habit of acting together in certain ways, which we
find to characterise the journeymen of the eighteenth century, had been
formed in a much earlier period” (_Surveys: Historic and Economic_, by
Sir William Ashley, 1900).

[24] So long as the Companies continued to exercise any jurisdiction
over their trades, we find them (as in the cases of the London
Framework-knitters and the Dublin Silkweavers) supported by any
workmen’s combinations that existed. In exceptional instances, such
as the London Brushmakers, Basketmakers, and Watermen, we find this
alliance for the exclusion of “illegal men” continuing into the
nineteenth century, and (as regards the Watermen) down to the present
time.

[25] _Macmillan’s Magazine_ (February 1861), relying on the Social
Science _Report on Trade Societies and Strikes_ (1860), p. 521.

[26] See Appendix _On the Assumed Connection between the Trade Unions
and the Gilds in Dublin_.

[27] _Gilds and Trade Unions_ (1870), p. 54.

[28] _History of Industry and Commerce_, vol. i. p. 310. Dr. Gross, in
his _Gild Merchant_, apparently takes a similar view.

[29] See his _Introduction to Economic History and Theory_, vol. i.
(1891); vol. ii. (1893); see also his _Surveys: Historic and Economic_
(1900).

[30] Dr. Brentano himself makes this clear. “We must not forget that
these gilds were not unions of labourers in the present sense of the
word, but of persons who, with the help of some stock, carried on their
craft on their own account. The gild contests were, consequently, not
contests for acquiring political equality for labour and property,
but for the recognition of political equality of trade stock and real
property in the towns” (_Gilds and Trade Unions_, p. 73).

[31] Jupp’s _History of the Carpenters’ Company_, p. 313, second
edition, 1848. In certain cases we see the workmen seeking
incorporation as a gild or company, in order that they might themselves
lawfully regulate their trades. Thus, in 1670 the wage-earning
woodsawyers of the City of London, who were employed by the members of
the Carpenters’, Joiners’ and Shipwrights’ Companies, formally applied
to the Corporation to be made a Company. Their employers strongly
objected, alleging that they had already by combination raised their
wages during the past quarter of a century from 5s. to nearly 10s.
per load; that they were only day labourers who worked on material
provided by their employers, and consequently not entitled to rank as
masters; and that if their combination were recognised by incorporation
they would be able to bring the whole building trade to a standstill,
as experience had already demonstrated even without incorporation.
Moreover, their main object, it was alleged, was to exclude from
employment “all that sort of labourers who daily resort to the City
of London and parts adjacent, and by that means keep the wages and
prices of these sorts of labourers at an equal and indifferent rate;
and then success would be an evil precedent, all other labourers, the
masons, bricklayers, plasterers, etc., having the same reason to allege
for incorporation” (_Ibid._ p. 307). The London coal-porters in 1699
unsuccessfully petitioned the House of Commons that a Bill might be
passed to establish them as “a Fellowship in such government and rules
as shall be thought meet” (House of Commons Journals, vol. xiii. p.
69). Professor Unwin suggests that it was “by its failure along these
traditional lines” that “the wage-earning class was driven into secret
combinations, from the obscurity of which the Trade Union did not
emerge till the 19th century” (_Industrial Organisation in the 16th and
17th Centuries_, 1904).

[32] “The Trade Union of to-day is often spoken of as the lineal
descendant of the ancient Craft Gilds. There is, however, no direct
or indirect connection between the ancient and modern forms of trade
combination. Beyond the fact that they each had for their objects
the establishment of certain trade regulations, and the provision of
certain similar benefits, they had nothing in common.” “Trade Unions
as a Means of Improving the Conditions of Labour,” by John Burnett;
published in _The Claims of Labour_ (Edinburgh, 1886).

“To attempt to find an immediate connection between the Gild and
the Trade Union is like attempting to derive the English House of
Commons from the Saxon Witanagemot. In the one case as in the other
the two institutions were separated by centuries of development, and
the earlier one was dead before the later one was born” (_Industrial
Organisation in the 16th and 17th Centuries_, by Professor George
Unwin, 1904, p. 8).

[33] Goldasti’s _Constitutiones Imperiales_, tom. iv. p. 189, quoted by
Dr. Brentano, p. 60.

[34] A pamphlet of 1669 contains what appears at first sight to be a
mention of Trade Unionism. “The general conspiracy amongst artificers
and labourers is so apparent that within these twenty-five years the
wages of joiners, bricklayers, carpenters, etc., are increased, I mean
within 40 miles of London (against all reason and good government),
from eighteen and twenty pence a day, to 2/6 and 3/-, and mere
labourers from 10 and 12 pence a day unto 16 and 20 pence, and this
not since the dreadful fire of London only, but some time before. A
journeyman shoemaker has now in London (and proportionately in the
country) 14 pence for making that pair of shoes, which within these
12 years he made for 10 pence.... Nor has the increase of wages
amongst us been occasioned by quickness of trade and want of hands (as
some do suppose) which are indeed justifiable reasons, but through
an exacting humour and evil disposition in our people (like our
Gravesend watermen, who by some temporary and mean pretences of the
late Dutch war, have raised their ferry double to what it was, and
finding the sweet thereof, keep it up still), that so they may live
the better above their station, and work so much the fewer days by
how much the more they exact in their wages” (_Usury at Six Per Cent.
Examined_, by Thomas Manley, London, 1669). But we cannot infer from
this unique and ambiguous passage anything more than the possibility
of ephemeral combinations. It is significant that Defoe, with all his
detailed description of English industry in 1724, does not mention any
combinations of workmen.

[35] In an able pamphlet dated 1681, entitled _The Trade of England
Revived_, it is stated that “we cannot make our English cloth so
cheap as they do in other countries, because of the strange idleness
and stubbornness of our poor,” who insist on excessive wages. But
the author attributes this state of things, not to the existence of
combinations, of which he seems never to have heard, but to the Poor
Law and the prevalence of almsgiving.

[36] _Wealth of Nations_, bk. i. ch. x. p. 59 of McCulloch’s edition,
1863. In an operative’s description, dated 1809, of the gatherings
of the Paisley weavers, we see the Trade Union in the making. “The
Paisley operatives are of a free, communicative disposition. They
are fond to inform one another in anything respecting trade, and in
order to receive information in a collective capacity they have, for
a long course of years, associated in a friendly manner in societies
denominated clubs.... When met the first hour is devoted to reading
the daily newspapers out aloud.... At nine o’clock the chairman calls
silence; then the report of trade is heard. The chairman reports first
what he knows or what he has heard of such a manufacturing house or
houses, as wishing to engage operatives for such fabric or fabrics;
likewise the price, the number of the yarn, etc. Then each reports
as he is seated; so in the period of an hour not only the state of
the trade is known, but any difference that has taken place between
manufacturers and operatives” (_An Answer to Mr. Carlile’s Sketches of
Paisley_, by William Taylor, Paisley, 1809, pp. 15-17).

[37] See Dunning’s account of the origin of the Consolidated Society
of Bookbinders in 1779-80, in the Social Science Association’s _Report
on Trade Societies_, 1860, p. 93; also _Workers on their Industries_,
edited by F. W. Galton, 1895; _Women in the Printing Trades_, edited by
J. R. MacDonald, 1904, p. 30.

[38] _Articles of Agreement made and confirmed by a Society of Taylors,
begun March 25, 1760_ (London, 1812). In 1790 Francis Place joined the
Breeches Makers’ Benefit Society “for the support of the members when
sick and their burial when dead”--its real object being to support
the members “in a strike for wages” (_Life of Francis Place_, by
Professor Graham Wallas, new edition, 1918). Local friendly societies
giving sick pay and providing for funeral expenses had sprung up all
over England during the eighteenth century. Towards its close their
number seems to have rapidly increased until, in some parts at any
rate, every village ale-house became a centre for one or more of
these humble and spontaneous organisations. The rules of upwards of
a hundred of these societies, dating between 1750 and 1820, and all
centred round Newcastle-on-Tyne, are preserved in the British Museum.
At Nottingham, in 1794, fifty-six of these clubs joined in the annual
procession (_Nottingham Journal_, June 14, 1794). So long as they were
composed indiscriminately of men of all trades, it is probable that
no distinctively Trade Union action could arise from their meetings.
But in some cases, for various reasons, such as high contributions,
migratory habits, or the danger of the calling, the sick and burial
club was confined to men of a particular trade. This kind of friendly
society frequently became a Trade Union. Some societies of this type
can trace their existence for nearly a century and a half. The Glasgow
coopers, for instance, have had a local trade friendly society,
confined to journeymen coopers, ever since 1752. The London Sailmakers
Burial Society dates from 1740. The Newcastle shoemakers established a
similar society as early as 1719 (_Observations upon the Report from
the Select Committee of the House of Commons on the laws respecting
Friendly Societies_, by the Rev. J. T. Becher, Prebendary of Southwell,
1826). On the occurrence of any dispute with the employers their funds,
as this contemporary observer in another pamphlet deplores, “have also
too frequently been converted into engines of abuse by paying weekly
sums to artisans out of work, and have thereby encouraged combinations
among workmen not less injurious to the misguided members than to
the Public Weal” (_Observations on the Rise and Progress of Friendly
Societies_, 1824, p. 55). Similar friendly societies among workmen of
particular trades appear to have existed in the Netherlands in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, where they perhaps bridged the
gap between the mediæval fraternities and the modern Trade Unions (see
review in the _English Historical Review_, October 1918, of P. J.
Blok’s _Geschiedenes einer Hollandischen Stad_).

[39] Schanz (_Gesellenverbände_, p. 25) follows Brentano (p. 94) in
attributing the formation of journeymen’s fraternities in the Middle
Ages mainly to a desire to provide for the wandering craftsmen.
The connection between the “Herbergen” or “Schenken,” designed to
find lodging and employment, with the journeymen’s associations was
certainly close. (See Dr. Bruno Schoenlank’s article in 1894, quoted in
Sir William Ashley’s _Surveys: Historic and Economic_, 1900.) It may be
suggested that the contrast between the absence or scanty existence of
such fraternities in England and their spread in Germany is, perhaps,
to be ascribed in some measure to the fact that English journeymen seem
never to have adopted the German custom of “Wanderjahre,” or regular
habit of spending, on completing their apprenticeship, a few years in
travelling about the country to complete their training. When the local
privileges of the old gilds had fallen somewhat into abeyance, the
restrictions of the successive Settlement Acts must in England, to some
extent, have checked the mobility of labour. But, from the beginning of
the eighteenth century at any rate, we find it customary for journeymen
of certain trades--it is to be noticed that these are relatively new
trades in England--to “tramp” from town to town in search of work,
and the description, subsequently quoted, of the organisations of the
woolcombers and worsted weavers in 1741, shows that the relief of these
travelling journeymen was a prominent object of the early unions.
The hatters in the middle of the eighteenth century had a regular
arrangement for such relief. The compositors at the very beginning
of the nineteenth century had already covered the country with a
network of local clubs, the chief function of which appears to have
been the facilitation of this wandering in search of work. And the
calico-printers had a systematic way of issuing a ticket which entitled
the tramp to collect from each journeyman, in any “print-field” that he
visited, at first a voluntary contribution, and latterly a fixed relief
of a halfpenny per head in England, and a penny per head in Scotland
(_Minutes of evidence taken before the Committee to whom the petition
of the several journeymen Calico-printers and others working in that
trade, etc., was referred_, July 4, 1804, and the _Report_ from that
Committee, July 17, 1806).

[40] J. M. Ludlow, in article in _Macmillan’s Magazine_, February 1861.

[41] _Work and the Workman_, by Dr. J. K. Ingram (Address to the Trades
Union Congress at Dublin, 1880).

[42] Benjamin Franklin mentions the “chapel” and its regulations in
1725. A copy, dated 1734, of the _Rules and Orders to be observed by
the Members of this Chapel: by Compositors, by Pressmen, by Both_, is
preserved in the Place MSS. 27799--88.

[43] This petition (in the British Museum) is printed in Brentano’s
_Gilds and Trade Unions_, p. 97. Benjamin Franklin, who worked in
London printing offices in 1725, makes no mention of Trade Unionism.
The Stationers’ Company continued, so far as the City of London was
concerned, to regulate apprenticeship; and we see it, in 1775, taking
steps to prevent employers having an undue number. Regulations agreed
to by the employers and the compositors, as to the rates of pay for
different kinds of work, can be traced back to 1785, at least. A copy
of the rules of “The Phœnix, or Society of Compositors” meeting at “The
Hole in the Wall” tavern, Fleet Street, shows that this organisation
was “instituted March 12th, 1792.” In 1798 five members of the
“Pressmen’s Friendly Society” were indicted for conspiracy in meeting
for the purpose of restricting the number of apprentices (they sought
to limit them to three for seven presses). Although the secretary to
the “Society of Master Printers” had requested these men to attend
the meeting, in order to get settled the pending dispute, they were
convicted and sentenced to two years’ imprisonment (_Conflicts of
Capital and Labour_, by George Howell, 1890, p. 92).

[44] For this interesting case we are indebted to Professor George
Unwin’s researches in the records of the Feltmakers’ Company, whose
“Court Book” contains the record. See _Industrial Organisation in the
16th and 17th Centuries_, by George Unwin, 1904; “A Seventeenth-Century
Trade Union,” by the same, in _Economic Journal_, 1910, pp. 394-403;
the chapter “Mediæval Journeymen’s Clubs” in Sir William Ashley’s
_Surveys, Historic and Economic_, 1900.

[45] House of Commons Journals, vol. xxxvi.; 8 Eliz. c. 11; 1 James
I. c. 14; and 17 George III. c. 55; Place MSS. 27799--68; Committee
on Artisans and Machinery, 1824; _Industrial Democracy_, p. 11;
“A Seventeenth Century Trade Union,” by Professor George Unwin,
in _Economic Journal_, 1910, pp. 394-403; _Conflicts of Capital
and Labour_, by G. Howell, 1890, p. 83. The organisation evidently
continued in existence, at least in its local form; but the existing
national “Journeymen Hatters’ Trade Union of Great Britain and Ireland”
claims to date only from 1798. In 1806 the Macclesfield hatters were
indicted for conspiracy in striking for higher wages, and sentenced to
twelve months’ imprisonment. Particulars of this organisation will be
found in _The Trial of W. Davenport ... Hatters of Macclesfield for a
Conspiracy against their Masters_ ... by Thomas Mulineaux, 1806.

[46] For the whole history of this industry, see _The Tailoring Trade_,
by F. W. Galton, 1896.

[47] _The London Tradesman_, by Campbell, 1747, p. 192.

[48] _The Trade of England Revived_, 1681, p. 36.

[49] House of Commons Journals, vol. xix. pp. 416, 424, 481; _The
Case of the Master Taylors residing within the Cities of London and
Westminster, in relation to the great abuses committed by their
journeymen_; _An Abstract of the Master Taylors’ Bill before the
Honourable House of Commons, with the Journeymen’s Observation on
each clause of the said Bill_; _The Case of the Journeymen Taylors
residing in the Cities of London and Westminster_ (all 1720). These and
other documents relating to combinations in this trade have now been
published in a useful volume (_The Tailoring Trade_, by F. W. Galton,
1896), with an elaborate bibliography.

[50] _London_, by David Hughson (1821), pp. 392-3; House of Commons
Journals, vol. xxiv. Place MSS. 27799, pp. 4, 5. _The Case of the
Journeymen Taylors in and about the Cities of London and Westminster_
(January 7, 1745).

[51] _Gentlemen’s Magazine_, 1750, 1768.

[52] Place MSS. 27799--10; see _The Life of Francis Place, 1771-1854_,
by Professor Graham Wallas, 1898; second edition, 1918. There is
evidence of very similar organisation in other towns. At Birmingham,
for instance, there was a systematically organised strike in 1777
against a reduction of wages, which lasted for some months (Langford’s
_Century of Birmingham Life_, pp. 225, etc.; _The Tailoring Trade_, by
F. W. Galton, 1896).

[53] _A Declaration of the Estate of Clothing now used within this
Realme of England_, by John May, Deputy Alnager (1613, 51 pp., in B.M.
712, g. 16), a volume which contains many interesting pamphlets on the
woollen manufacture between 1613 and 1753. Already in 1622, a year of
depression of trade, we hear of numerous riots and tumults among the
weavers of the West of England, notably those of certain Devonshire
towns, who paraded the streets demanding work or food (_Quarter
Sessions from Elizabeth to Anne_, by A. H. A. Hamilton, 1878, pp.
95-6). But there is as yet no evidence of durable combinations at so
early a date.

[54] MS. Minutes, Court Book of the Clothworkers’ Company, December 10,
1675; August 16, 1682; _Industrial Organisation of the Sixteenth and
Seventeenth Centuries_, by George Unwin, 1904, p. 199.

[55] _History of Tiverton_, by Martin Dunsford (Exeter, 1790).

[56] House of Commons Journals, vol. xviii. p. 715, February 5, 1717.
Tiverton and Exeter petition to the same effect.

[57] Hughson’s _London_, p. 337. The proclamation was reprinted in
_Notes and Queries_, September 21, 1867, from a copy preserved by the
Sun Fire Office.

[58] See the petitions from Exeter and Dartmouth, February 24, 1723,
vol. xx. pp. 268-9; and those from Taunton, Tiverton, Exeter, and
Bristol, March 3 and 7, 1725, vol. xx. pp. 598, 602, 648. In 1729 the
Bristol weavers, “while the corporation was at church,” riotously
attacked the house of an obnoxious employer, and had to be repulsed by
the troops (_History of Bristol_, p. 261, by J. Evans; Bristol, 1824).
In 1738 they forced the clothiers to sign a bond that they would “for
ever forward” give fifteen pence a yard for weaving, under penalty of
£1000 (_Gentlemen’s Magazine_, 1738, p. 658; see also “An Essay on
Riots, their Causes and Cure,” published in the _Gloucester Journal_,
and reprinted in the _Gentlemen’s Magazine_, 1739, pp. 7-10). In 1756
there was an extensive and serious uprising (see _A State of the Case
and Narrative of Facts relating to the late Commotion and Rising of the
Weavers in the County of Gloucester_, in the Gough Collection, Bodleian
Library).

[59] Defoe’s _Tour_, vol. iii. pp. 97-101, 116 (1724). John Bright
mentions his father’s apprenticeship, about 1789, to “a most worthy
man who had a few acres of ground, a very small farm, and three or
four looms in his house” (speech reported in _Beehive_, February 2,
1867). For a less optimistic account of the Yorkshire clothiers, who
were, even in the seventeenth century, often mere wage-earners, see
Cartwright’s _Chapters of Yorkshire History_.

[60] _History of Leicester_, by James Thompson, 1849, pp. 431-2.

[61] _A Short Essay upon Trade in General_, by “A Lover of his
Country,” 1741, quoted in James’ _History of the Worsted Manufacture in
England_, p. 232.

[62] See, in corroboration, _Leicester Herald_, August 24, 1793;
_Morning Chronicle_, October 13, 1824; Place MSS., 27801--246, 247.

[63] The Dublin silk-weavers, owing perhaps to their having been
largely Huguenot refugees in a Roman Catholic town, appear to have
been associated from the early part of the eighteenth century; see,
for instance, _The Case of the Silk and Worsted Weavers in a Letter
to a Member of Parliament_ (Dublin, 1749, 8 pp.). Compare _A Short
Historical Account of the Silk Manufacture in England_, by Samuel
Sholl, 1811, and _Industrial Dublin since 1698 and the Silk Industry in
Dublin_, by J. J. Webb, 1913.

[64] The condition of the framework knitters may be gathered from
the elaborate Parliamentary Inquiry, the proceedings of which fill
fifteen pages of the Journals of the House of Commons, vol. xxvi.,
April 19, 1753. See also vols. xxxvi. and xxxvii., and the Report from
the Committee on Framework Knitters’ Petitions, 1812; and _Conflicts
of Capital and Labour_, by G. Howell, 1890. Felkin’s _History of the
Machine-wrought Hosiery and Lace Manufactures_, 1867, contains an
exhaustive account of the trade, founded on Gravener Henson’s _History
of the Framework Knitters_, 1831, now a scarce work, of which only one
volume was published.

[65] _Sheffield Iris_, August 7 and September 9, 1790. The
Scissorsmiths’ Friendly Society, cited by Dr. Brentano, was established
in April 1791. Other trade friendly societies in Sheffield appear to
date from a much earlier period.

[66] Sir J. A. Picton’s _Memorials of Liverpool_, 1875; _A Digest of
the Evidence before the Committee on Artizans and Machinery_, by George
White, 1824, p. 233; _Conflicts of Labour and Capital_, by G. Howell,
1890, pp. 82-3.

[67] _Report of Committee on the Woollen Manufacture_, 1806, p. 16; see
also _Conflicts of Labour and Capital_, by G. Howell, 1890.

[68] See Chapter III.

[69] In volume entitled _Tracts Relating to Trade_, in British Museum,
816, m. 13. Tankard-bearers were water carriers.

[70] _Reasons against the designed leather impositions on gloves_, B.M.
816, m. 13.

[71] We shall have occasion later to refer to the absence of effective
Trade Unionism in those trades which are still carried on by small
working masters.

[72] The assumption frequently made that the Craft Gilds, at their best
period, included practically the whole working population, appears
to us unfounded. The gild system at no time extended to any but the
skilled handicraftsmen, alongside of whom must always have worked a
large number of unapprenticed labourers, who received less than half
the wages of the craftsmen. We venture to suggest that it is doubtful
whether the Craft Gilds at any time numbered as large a proportion of
the working population as the Trade Unions of the present day. See
_Industrial Democracy_, p. 480.

[73] “Tumults,” or strikes, among the coal-miners are occasionally
mentioned during the eighteenth century, but no lasting combinations.
See, for those in Somerset, Carmarthenshire, etc., in 1757,
_Gentlemen’s Magazine_, 1757, pp. 90, 185, 285, etc. In 1765 there
was a prolonged strike against the “yearly bond” by the Durham miners
(_Calendar of Home Office Papers_, 1765; Sykes’ _Local Records_, vol.
i, p. 254). The Keelmen, who loaded coals on the Tyne, “mutinied”
in 1654 and 1671 “for the increase of wages”; and there were fierce
strikes in 1710, 1744, 1750, 1771, and 1794. We have, however, no
particulars as to their associations, which were probably ephemeral
(Sykes’ _Local Records_; Richardson’s _Local Historian’s Table Book_;
_Gentlemen’s Magazine_, 1750).

[74] Many instances of insolence and aggression by the woolcombers are
on record; the employers’ advertisements in the _Nottingham Journal_,
August 31, 1795, and the _Leicester Herald_ of June 1792, are only two
out of many similar recitals.

[75] _Jubilee Souvenir History of the Amalgamated Society of
Engineers_, 1901, p. 12.

[76] That such clubs were common in the handicraft trades in London as
early as 1720 appears from the following extract from _The Case of the
Master Taylors residing within the Cities of London and Westminster_,
a petition which led to the Act of 1720: “This combination of the
Journeymen Taylors ... is of very ill example to Journeymen in all
other trades; as is sufficiently seen in the Journeymen Curriers,
Smiths, Farriers, Sailmakers, Coachmakers, and artificers of divers
other arts and mysteries, who have actually entered into Confederacies
of the like nature; and the Journeymen Carpenters, Bricklayers, and
Joyners have taken some steps for that purpose, and only wait to see
the event of others.” And the Journeymen Tailors in their petition of
1745 allude to the large number of “Monthly Clubs” among the London
handicraftsmen. With regard to the curriers at this date, see Place
MSS, 27801--246, 247.

It may be conveniently noticed here that, although strikes are, as we
have seen, as old as the fourteenth century at least, the word “strike”
was not commonly used in this sense until the latter part of the
eighteenth century. The Oxford Dictionary gives the first instance of
its use as in 1768, when the _Annual Register_ refers to the hatters
having “struck” for a rise in wages. The derivation appears to be from
the sailors’ term of “striking” the mast, thus bringing the movement to
a stop.

[77] So much is this the case that Dr. Brentano asserts that “Trade
Unions originated with the non-observance of” the Elizabethan Statute
of Apprentices (p. 104), and that their primary object was, in all
cases, the enforcement of the law on the subject.

[78] Preamble to “An Act touching Weavers” (2 and 3 Philip and Mary, c.
xi.); see Froude’s _History of England_, vol. i. pp. 57-9; and W. C.
Taylor’s _Modern Factory System_, pp. 53-5.

[79] As expanded by 1 James I. c. 6 and 16 Car. I. c. 4; see R. _v._
Justices of Kent, 14 East, 395.

[80] See on these points, Dr. Cunningham’s _History of English Industry
and Commerce_, Mr. Hewins’ _English Trade and Finance chiefly in the
17th Century_, and Thorold Rogers’ _History of Agriculture and Prices_,
vol. v. pp. 625-6, etc. Adam Smith observes that the fixing of wages
had, in 1776, “gone entirely into disuse” (_Wealth of Nations_, bk. i.
ch. x. p. 65), a statement broadly true, although formal determinations
of wages are found in the MS. Minutes of Quarter Sessions for another
half century.

[81] This forms the constant refrain of the numerous broadsheets or
_Tracts relating to Trade_ of 1688-1750, which are preserved in the
British Museum, the Guildhall Library, and in the Goldsmith Company’s
Library at the University of London.

[82] Privy Council Minutes of 1726, p. 310 (unpublished); see also
House of Commons Journals, vol. xx. p. 745 (February 20, 1726).

[83] Privy Council Minutes, February 4, 1726.

[84] House of Commons Journals, vol. xix. p. 181 (December 5, 1719).

[85] Petition of “Several weavers of Woollen Broadcloth on behalf
of themselves and several thousands of the Fraternity of Woollen
Broadcloth Weavers” (House of Commons Journals, vol. xxvii. p. 503; see
also pp. 730-2).

[86] 22 Geo. II. c. 27.

[87] 29 Geo. II. c. 33.

[88] _Report of Committee on Petitions of West of England Clothiers_,
House of Commons Journals, vol. xxvii. pp. 730-2.

[89] For all these proceedings, see House of Commons Journals, vol.
xxvii.

[90] House of Commons Journals, vol. xxxvi. p. 7 (November 1, 1776).

[91] House of Commons Journals, April 13 and 19, 1753, vol. xxvi.
pp. 764, 779; Felkin’s _History of the Machine-wrought Hosiery and
Lace Manufacture_, p. 80; Cunningham, _Growth of English Industry and
Commerce in Modern Times_, 1903, vol. i. p. 663.

[92] _Gilds and Trade Unions_, pp. 115-21.

[93] House of Commons Journals, vols. xxxvi. and xxxvii.

[94] House of Commons Journals, vol. xxxvi. pp. 192, 240, 268, 287,
1777; Act 17 Geo. III. c. 55, repealing 8 Eliz. c. 11, and 1 Jac. 1.

[95] 5 Geo. III. c. 48; see _Annual Register_, 1765, p. 41; Cunningham,
_Growth of English Industry and Commerce in Modern Times_, 1903, pp.
519, 796.

[96] Act 13 Geo. III. c. 68; see _A Short Historical Account of the
Silk Manufacture in England_, by Samuel Sholl, 1811.

[97] _Ibid._ p. 4.

[98] _Reports on Petitions of Cotton Weavers, 1809 and 1811._

[99] “The period between 1795 and 1815 was characterised by dearths
which on several occasions became well-nigh famines” (Thorold Rogers,
_History of Agriculture and Prices_, vol. i. p. 692).

[100] _Minutes of Evidence and Report of the Committee on the Petition
of the Journeymen Calico-printers_, July 4, 1804, July 17, 1806. See
also Sheridan’s speech reported in Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates,
vol. ix. pp. 534-8.

[101] 43 Geo. III. c. 136, continued in successive years until the
definite repeal, in 1809, of most of the laws regulating the woollen
manufacture by 49 Geo. III. c. 109; see Cunningham, 1903, vol. ii. p.
659.

[102] It was reprinted in the 121st Quarterly Report of the Amalgamated
Society of Boot and Shoemakers. The proceedings were taken by the
Friendly Society of Cordwainers of England, “instituted the 15th of
November 1784.” Particulars of the London Bootmakers’ Society, which
was in correspondence with seventy or eighty provincial societies, are
given in _A Digest of the Evidence before the Committee on Artizans and
Machinery_, by George White, 1824, p. 97.

[103] Professor Foxwell kindly placed at our disposal a unique series
of pamphlets relating to these proceedings, which are now in the
Goldsmiths Company’s Library at the University of London, including
the _Memorials_ of the journeymen and the employers, the _Report in
the Process_ by Robert Bell, and the _Scale of Prices_ as settled by
the Court. A full account of the proceedings is given in the _Scottish
Typographical Circular_, June 1858.

[104] See, for these proceedings, the two _Reports of the Committee on
the Petitions of the Cotton Weavers_, April 12, 1808, and March 29,
1809; and Richmond’s evidence before the Committee on Artisans and
Machinery, 1824, Second Report, pp. 59-64.

[105] It is now in the British Library of Political Science at the
London School of Economics.

[106] R. _v._ Justices of Kent, 14 East, 395; see F. D. Longe’s
_Inquiry into the Law of Strikes_, 1860, pp. 10, 11.

[107] 53 Geo. III. c. 40 (1813).

[108] The Spitalfields Acts, relating to the silkweavers, were,
however, not repealed until 1824; and the last sections of 5 Eliz. c. 4
were not formally repealed until 1875.

[109] White’s _Digest of all the laws at present in existence
respecting Masters and Workpeople_, 1824, p. 59. Place wrote to
Wakefield, January 2, 1814: “The affair of Serjeant Onslow partly
originated with me, but I had no suspicion it would be taken up and
pushed as vigorously as it has been and is likely to be” (_Life of
Francis Place_, by Prof. Graham Wallas, p. 159).

The proceedings in this matter can be best traced in the House of
Commons Journals for 1813 and 1814, vols. lxviii. and lxix.; and in
Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates, vols. xxv. and xxvii. The master’s
case is given in a pamphlet, _The Origin, Object, and Operation of
the Apprentice Laws_, 1814, 26 pp., preserved in the _Pamphleteer_,
vol. iii. _The Resolutions of the Master Manufacturers and Tradesmen
of the Cities of London and Westminster on the Statute 5 Eliz. c.
4_, 1814, 4 pp., gives the contrary view (B.M. 1882, d. 2). The
contemporary argument for freedom is expressed in _An Estimate of the
Comparative Strength of Great Britain_, by G. Chalmers, 1810; see
_Cunningham_, 1903, vol. ii. p. 660. The Nottingham Library possesses
a unique copy of the _Articles and General Regulations of a Society
for obtaining Parliamentary Relief, and the Encouragement of Mechanics
in the Improvement of Mechanism_, printed at Nottingham in 1813. This
appears to have been a federation of framework knitters’ societies, and
possibly others, for Parliamentary action, as well as trade protection;
and its establishment in 1813 was perhaps connected with the movement
for the revival of the Apprenticeship Laws.

[110] _Report of the Committee on the State of the Woollen Manufacture
in England_, July 4, 1806, p. 12.




CHAPTER II

THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE

[1799-1825]


The traditional history of the Trade Union Movement represents the
period prior to 1824 as one of unmitigated persecution and continuous
repression. Every Union that can nowadays claim an existence of
over a century possesses a romantic legend of its early years. The
midnight meeting of patriots in the corner of a field, the buried box
of records, the secret oath, the terms of imprisonment of the leading
officials--all these are in the sagas of the older Unions, and form
material out of which, in an age untroubled by historical criticism, a
semi-mythical origin might easily have been created. That the legend is
not without a basis of fact, we shall see in tracing the actual effect
upon the Trade Union Movement of the legal prohibitions of combinations
of wage-earners which prevailed throughout the United Kingdom up
to 1824. But we shall find that some combinations of journeymen
were at all times recognised by the law, that many others were only
spasmodically interfered with, and that the utmost rigour of the
Combination Laws was not felt until the far-reaching change of policy
marked by the severe Acts of 1799-1800, which applied to all industries
whatsoever. This will lead us naturally to the story of the repeal of
the whole series of Combination Laws in 1824-5, the most impressive
event in the early history of the movement.

There is a clear distinction--at any rate, as regards England--between
the various statutes which forbade combination prior to the end of the
eighteenth century, and the general Combination Acts of 1799-1800. In
the numerous earlier Acts recited and repealed in 1824 the prohibition
of combination was in all cases incidental to the regulation of the
industry. It was assumed to be the business of Parliament and the law
courts to regulate the conditions of labour; and combinations could,
no more than individuals, be permitted to interfere in disputes for
which a legal remedy was provided. The object primarily aimed at by
the statutes was not the prohibition of combinations, but the fixing
of wages, the prevention of embezzlement or damage, the enforcement of
the contract of service or the proper arrangements for apprenticeship.
And although combinations to interfere with these statutory aims were
obviously illegal, and were usually expressly prohibited, it was an
incidental result that combinations formed to promote the objects of
the legislation, however objectionable they might be to employers, were
apparently not regarded as unlawful.[111]

Thus one of the earliest types of combination among journeymen--the
society to enforce the law--seems always to have been tacitly accepted
as permissible. Although it is probable that such associations came
technically within the definitions of combination and conspiracy,
whether under the common law or the early statutes, we know of
no case in which they were indicted as illegal. We have already
described, for instance, how, in 1726, the woollen weavers of
Wiltshire and Somersetshire openly combined to present a petition to
the King in Council against their masters, the broad clothiers. The
Privy Council, far from deeming the action of the weavers illegal,
considered and dealt with their complaint. And when the employers
persisted in disobeying the law, we have seen how, in 1756, the
Fraternity of Woollen Clothweavers petitioned the House of Commons
to make more effectual the power of the justices to fix wages, and
obtained a new Act of Parliament in accordance with their desires.
The almost perpetual combinations of the framework knitters between
1710 and 1800 were never made the subject of legal proceedings. The
combinations of the London silkweavers obtained a virtual sanction
by the Spitalfields Acts, under which the delegates of the workmen’s
organisations regularly appeared before the justices, who fixed and
revised the piecework prices. Even in 1808, after the stringency of
the law against combinations had been greatly increased, the Glasgow
and Lancashire cotton-weavers were permitted openly to combine for the
purpose of seeking a legal fixing of wages, with the results already
described. Nor was it only the combination to obtain a legally fixed
rate of wages that was left unmolested by the law. Combinations to
put in force the sections of the Statute of Apprentices (5 Eliz. c.
4), or other prohibitions of the employment of “illegal workmen,”
occurred at intervals down to 1813. In 1749 a club of journeymen
painters of the City of London proceeded against a master painter
for employing a non-freeman; and the proceedings led, in 1750, to
a conference of thirty journeymen and thirty masters with the City
Corporation, at which the regulations were altered.[112] No one seems
to have questioned the legality of the 1811-13 outburst of combinations
to prosecute masters who had not served an apprenticeship, or who
were employing unapprenticed workmen. One reason, doubtless, for the
immunity of combinations to enforce the law was that they included
employers and sympathisers of all ranks. For instance, the combinations
in 1811-13 to enforce the apprenticeship laws comprised both masters
and journeymen, who were equally aggrieved by the competition of the
new capitalist and his “hirelings.”[113] The Yorkshire Clothiers’
Community, or “Brief Institution,” to which reference has already been
made, included, in some of its ramifications, the “domestic” master
manufacturers, who fought side by side with the journeymen against the
new factory system.

On the other hand, combinations of journeymen to regulate for
themselves their wages and conditions of employment stood, from
the first, on a different footing. The common law doctrine of the
illegality of proceedings “in restraint of trade,” as subsequently
interpreted by the judges, of itself made illegal all combinations
whatsoever of journeymen to regulate the conditions of their work.
Moreover, with the regulation by law of wages and the conditions of
employment, any combination to resist the order of the justices on
these matters was obviously of the nature of rebellion, and was, in
fact, put down like any individual disobedience of the law. Nor was
express statute law against combinations wanting. The statute of 1305,
entitled, “Who be Conspirators and who be Champertors” (33 Edw. I.
st. 2), was in 1818 held to apply to a combination to raise wages
among cotton-spinners, whose leaders were sentenced to two years’
imprisonment under this Act. The “Bill of Conspiracies of Victuallers
and Craftsmen” of 1549 (2 and 3 Edw. VI. c. 15), though aimed primarily
at combinations to keep up the prices charged to consumers, clearly
includes within its prohibitions any combinations of journeymen
craftsmen to keep up wages or reduce hours.

It is some proof of the novelty of the workmen’s combinations in the
early part of the eighteenth century, that neither the employers nor
the authorities thought at first of resorting to the very sufficient
powers of the existing law against them. When, in 1720, the master
tailors of London found themselves confronted with an organised
body of journeymen claiming to make a collective bargain, seriously
“in restraint of trade,” they turned, not to the law courts, but to
Parliament for protection, and obtained, as we have seen, the Act “for
regulating the Journeymen Tailors within the bills of mortality” (7
Geo. I. st. 1, c. 13, amended by 8 Geo. III. c. 17).[114] Similarly,
when the clothiers of the West of England began between 1717 and
1725 to be inconvenienced by the “riotous and tumultuous clubs and
societies” of woolcombers and weavers, who made bye-laws and maintained
a Standard Rate,[115] they did not put in force the existing law, but
successfully petitioned Parliament for the Act “to prevent unlawful
combinations of workmen employed in the Woollen Manufactures” (12 Geo.
I. c. 34). Indeed, prior to the general Acts of 1799 and 1800 against
all combinations of journeymen, Parliament was, from the beginning
of the eighteenth century, perpetually enacting statutes forbidding
combinations in particular trades.[116]

In the English statutes this prohibition of combination was, as we have
seen, only a secondary feature, incidental to the main purpose of the
law. The case is different with regard to the early Irish Acts, the
terms of which point to a much sharper cleavage between masters and
men, due, perhaps, to difference of religion and race. The very first
statute against combinations which was passed by the Irish Parliament,
the Act of 1729 (3 Geo. II. c. 14), contained no provisions protecting
the wage-earner, and prohibited combinations in all trades whatsoever.
The Act of 1743 (17 Geo. II. c. 8), called forth by the failure of
the previous prohibition, equally confined itself to drastic penal
measures, including the punishment of the keepers of the public-houses
which were used for meetings. But in later years the English practice
seems to have been followed; for the laws of 1758 (31 Geo. II. c.
17), 1763 (3 Geo. III. 34, sec. 23), 1771 (11 and 12 Geo. III. c. 18,
sec. 40, and c. 33), and 1779 (19 and 20 Geo. III. c. 19, c. 24, and
c. 36) provide for the fixing of wages, and contain other regulations
of industry, amongst which the prohibition of combinations comes as a
matter of course.

By the end of the century, at any rate, the common law, both in England
and in Ireland, had been brought to the aid of the special statutes,
and the judges were ruling that any conspiracy to do an act which
they considered unlawful in a combination, even if not criminal in an
individual, was against the common law. Soon the legislature followed
suit. In 1799 the Act 39 Geo. III. c. 81 expressly penalised all
combinations whatsoever.

The grounds for this drastic measure appear to have been found in the
marked increase of Trade Unionism among workers of various kinds. The
operatives’ combinations were regarded as being in the nature of mutiny
against their employers and masters; destructive of the “discipline”
necessary to the expansion of trade; and interfering with the right of
the employer to “do what he liked with his own.” The immediate occasion
was a petition from London engineering employers, complaining of an
alarming strike of the millwrights. This led to a Bill suppressing
combination in the engineering trade, which was passed by the House of
Commons, in spite of the protests of Sir Francis Burdett and Benjamin
Hobhouse. The measure was, however, dropped in the House of Lords in
favour of a more comprehensive Bill, applicable to all trades, which
Whitbread had suggested. This was introduced on June 17, 1799, by
William Pitt himself, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, who referred
to the alarming growth of combination, not merely in the Metropolis but
also in the north of England. Subsequent stages of the Bill were moved
by George Rose, another member of the Administration; and the measure
was hurried through all its stages in both Houses with great rapidity,
receiving the Royal Assent only twenty-four days after its introduction
into the House of Commons. There was therefore little opportunity for
any effective demonstration against its provisions, but the Journeymen
Calico-printers’ Society of London petitioned against the measure, and
instructed counsel to put forward their objections. They represented
that, although the Bill professed merely “to prevent unlawful
combinations,” it created “new crimes of so indefinite a nature that no
one journeyman or workman will be safe in holding any conversation with
another on the subject of his trade or employment.” Only a few other
petitions were presented, and, though Benjamin Hobhouse opposed it in
the Commons and Lord Holland in the Lords, the Bill passed unaltered
into law.[117]

But the struggle was not yet over. The employers were not satisfied
with the 1799 Act; and _The Times_ announced in January 1800 that “one
of the first Acts of the Imperial Parliament [of the United Kingdom]
will be for the prevention of conspiracies among journeymen tradesmen
to raise their wages. All benefit clubs and societies are to be
immediately suppressed.”[118] On the other hand, the trade clubs in
all parts of the country poured in petitions of protest; and the Whig
and Tory members for Liverpool, General Tarleton and Colonel Gascoyne,
among whose constituents were the strongly combined shipwrights, who
were freemen and Parliamentary electors, united to bring in an amending
Bill. This was supported in a series of brilliant speeches by Sheridan,
whose attempts to reduce to a minimum the mischief of the 1799 Act were
strenuously resisted by Pitt and the Law Officers of the Crown. The
petitions were considered by a Committee, which recommended certain
amendments. Two justices were substituted for one as the tribunal;
no justice engaged in the same trade as the defendant could act;
the qualifying words “wilfully and maliciously” were introduced in
the description of the offences. A clause protecting trade friendly
societies was proposed but eventually rejected. A particularly odious
feature of the 1799 Act, under which defendants were required to give
evidence against themselves under severe penalties for refusal, was
left unaltered. A series of interesting clauses providing for the
reference of wage disputes to arbitration--copied from the contemporary
Act relating to the cotton trade[119]--aroused great opposition, as
tending “to fix wages” and as involving the recognition of the Trade
Union representative, but they were finally adopted; without, so far as
we are aware, ever being put in force.[120]

The general Combination Act of 1800 was not merely the codification
of existing laws, or their extension from particular trades to the
whole field of industry. It represented a new and momentous departure.
Hitherto the central or local authority had acted as a court of appeal
on all questions affecting the work and wages of the citizen. If the
master and journeyman failed to agree as to what constituted a fair
day’s wage for a fair day’s work, the higgling of the market was
peremptorily superseded by the authoritative determination, presumably
on grounds of social expediency, of the standard of remuneration.
Probably the actual fixing of wages by justices of the peace fell very
rapidly into disuse as regards the majority of industries, although
formal orders are found in the minutes of Quarter Sessions during
the first quarter of the nineteenth century, and deep traces of the
practice long survived in the customary rates of hiring. Towards the
end of the eighteenth century, at any rate, free bargaining between the
capitalist and his workmen became practically the sole method of fixing
wages. Then it was that the gross injustice of prohibiting combinations
of journeymen became apparent. “A single master,” said Lord Jeffrey,
“was at liberty at any time to turn off the whole of his workmen at
once--100 or 1000 in number--if they would not accept of the wages he
chose to offer. But it was made an offence for the whole of the workmen
to leave that master at once if he refused to give the wages they
chose to require.”[121] What was even more oppressive in practice was
the employers’ use of the threat of prosecution to prevent even the
beginnings of resistance among the workmen to any reduction of wages or
worsening of conditions.

It is true that the law forbade combinations of employers as well as
combinations of journeymen. Even if it had been impartially carried
out, there would still have remained the inequality due to the fact
that, in the new system of industry, a single employer was himself
equivalent to a very numerous combination. But the hand of justice
was not impartial. The “tacit, but constant” combination of employers
to depress wages, to which Adam Smith refers, could not be reached by
the law. Nor was there any disposition on the part of the magistrates
or the judges to find the masters guilty, even in cases of flagrant or
avowed combination. No one prosecuted the master cutlers who, in 1814,
openly formed the Sheffield Mercantile and Manufacturing Union, having
for its main rule that no merchant or manufacturer should pay higher
prices for any article of Sheffield make than were current in the
preceding year, with a penalty of £100 for each contravention of this
illegal agreement.[122] During the whole epoch of repression, whilst
thousands of journeymen suffered for the crime of combination, there
is no case on record in which an employer was punished for the same
offence.

To the ordinary politician a combination of employers and a combination
of workmen seemed in no way comparable. The former was, at most, an
industrial misdemeanour: the latter was in all cases a political crime.
Under the shadow of the French Revolution, the English governing
classes regarded all associations of the common people with the utmost
alarm. In this general terror lest insubordination should develop into
rebellion were merged both the capitalist’s objection to high wages and
the politician’s dislike of Democratic institutions. The Combination
Laws, as Francis Place tells us, “were considered as absolutely
necessary to prevent ruinous extortions of workmen, which, if not
thus restrained, would destroy the whole of the Trade, Manufactures,
Commerce, and Agriculture of the nation.... This led to the conclusion
that the workmen were the most unprincipled of mankind. Hence the
continued ill-will, suspicion, and in almost every possible way the
bad conduct of workmen and their employers towards one another. So
thoroughly was this false notion entertained that whenever men were
prosecuted to conviction for having combined to regulate their wages
or the hours of working, however heavy the sentence passed on them was,
and however rigorously it was inflicted, not the slightest feeling of
compassion was manifested by anybody for the unfortunate sufferers.
Justice was entirely out of the question: they could seldom obtain a
hearing before a magistrate, never without impatience or insult; and
never could they calculate on even an approximation to a rational
conclusion.... Could an accurate account be given of proceedings, of
hearings before magistrates, trials at sessions and in the Court of
King’s Bench, the gross injustice, the foul invective, and terrible
punishments inflicted would not, after a few years have passed away, be
credited on any but the best evidence.”[123]

It must not, however, be supposed that every combination was made the
subject of prosecution, or that the Trade Union leader of the period
passed his whole life in gaol. Owing to the extremely inefficient
organisation of the English police, and the absence of any public
prosecutor, a combination was usually let alone until some employer
was sufficiently inconvenienced by its operations to be willing
himself to set the law in motion. In many cases we find employers
apparently accepting or conniving at their men’s combinations.[124]
The master printers in London not only recognised the very ancient
institution of the “chapel,” but evidently found it convenient, at
any rate from 1785 onwards, to receive and consider proposals from
the journeymen as an organised body. In 1804 we even hear of a joint
committee consisting of an equal number of masters and journeymen,
authorised by their respective bodies to frame regulations for the
future payment of labour, and resulting in the elaborate “scale” of
1805, signed by both masters and men.[125] The London coopers had
a recognised organisation in 1813, in which year a list of prices
was agreed upon by representatives of the masters and men. This
list was revised in 1816 and 1819, without any one thinking of a
prosecution.[126] The Trade Union was openly reformed in 1821 as the
Philanthropic Society of Coopers. The London brushmakers in 1805 had “A
List of Prices agreed upon between the Masters and Journeymen,” which
is still extant. The framework knitters, and also the tailors of the
various villages in Nottinghamshire, were, from 1794 to 1810, in the
habit of freely meeting together, both masters and men, “to consider
of matters relative to the trade,” the conferences being convened by
public advertisement.[127] The minute books of the local Trade Union
of the carpenters of Preston for the years 1807 to 1824 chronicle an
apparently unconcealed and unmolested existence, in correspondence
with other carpenters’ societies throughout Lancashire. The accounts
contain no items for the expense of defending their officers against
prosecutions, whereas there are several payments for advertisements
and public meetings, and, be it added, a very large expenditure in
beer. And there is a lively tradition among the aged block printers
of Glasgow that, in their fathers’ time, when their very active Trade
Union exacted a fee of seven guineas from each new apprentice, this
money was always straightway drunk by the men of the print-field, the
employer taking his seat at the head of the table, and no work being
done by any one until the fund was exhausted. The calico-printers’
organisation appears, at the early part of the nineteenth century, to
have been one of the strongest and most complete of the Unions. In
an impressive pamphlet of 1815 the men are thus appealed to by the
employers: “We have by turns conceded what we ought all manfully to
have resisted, and you, elated with success, have been led on from
one extravagant demand to another, till the burden is become too
intolerable to be borne. You fix the number of our apprentices, and
oftentimes even the number of our journeymen. You dismiss certain
proportions of our hands, and will not allow others to come in their
stead. You stop all Surface Machines, and go the length even to destroy
the rollers before our face. You restrict the Cylinder Machine, and
even dictate the kind of pattern it is to print. You refuse, on urgent
occasions, to work by candlelight, and even compel our apprentices
to do the same. You dismiss our overlookers when they don’t suit
you; and force obnoxious servants into our employ. Lastly, you set
all subordination and good order at defiance, and instead of showing
deference and respect to your employers, treat them with personal
insult and contempt.”[128] Notwithstanding all this, no systematic
attempt appears to have been made to put down the calico-printers’
combination, and only one or two isolated prosecutions can be traced.
In Dublin, too, the cabinetmakers in the early part of the present
century were combined in a strong union called the Samaritan Society,
exclusively for trade purposes; “but though illegal, the employers
do not seem to have looked upon it with any great aversion; and when
on one occasion the chief constable had the men attending a meeting
arrested, the employers came forward to bail them. Indeed, they
professed that their object, though primarily to defend their own
interests against the masters, was also to defend the interests of
the masters against unprincipled journeymen. Many of the masters on
receiving the bill of a journeyman were in the habit of sending it
to the trades’ society committee to be taxed, after which the word
Committee was stamped upon it. One case was mentioned, when between
two and three pounds were knocked off a bill of about eight pounds
by the trade committee.”[129] And both in London and Edinburgh the
journeymen openly published, without fear of prosecution, elaborate
printed lists of piecework prices, compiled sometimes by a committee
of the men’s Trade Union, sometimes by a joint committee of employers
and employed.[130] “The London Cabinetmakers’ Union Book of Prices,”
of which editions were published in 1811 and 1824, was a costly
and elaborate work, with many plates, published “by a Committee of
Masters and Journeymen ... to prevent those litigations which have too
frequently existed in the trade.” Various supplements and “index keys”
to this work were published; and other similar lists exist. So lax was
the administration of the law that George White, the energetic clerk to
Hume’s Committee, asserted that the Act of 1800 had “been in general a
dead letter upon those artisans upon whom it was intended to have an
effect--namely, the shoemakers, printers, papermakers, shipbuilders,
tailors, etc., who have had their regular societies and houses of call,
as though no such Act was in existence; and in fact it would be almost
impossible for many of those trades to be carried on without such
societies, who are in general sick and travelling relief societies; and
the roads and parishes would be much pestered with these travelling
trades, who travel from want of employment, were it not for their
societies who relieve what they call tramps.”[131]

But although clubs of journeymen might be allowed to take, like the
London bookbinders, “a social pint of porter together,” and even, in
times of industrial peace, to provide for their tramps and perform all
the functions of a Trade Union, the employers had always the power of
meeting any demands by a prosecution. Even those trades in which we
have discovered evidence of the unmolested existence of combinations
furnish examples of the rigorous application of the law. In 1819 we
read of numerous prosecutions of cabinetmakers, hatters, ironfounders,
and other journeymen, nominally for leaving their work unfinished,
but really for the crime of combination.[132] In 1798 five journeymen
printers were indicted at the Old Bailey for conspiracy. The employers
had sent for the men’s leaders to discuss their proposals, when, as
it was complained, “the five defendants came, clothed as delegates,
representing themselves as the head of a Parliament as we may call it.”
The men were in fact members of a trade friendly society of pressmen
“held at the Crown, near St. Dunstan’s Church, Fleet Street,” which, as
the prosecuting counsel declared, “from its appearance certainly bore
no reproachable mark upon it. It was called a friendly society, but
by means of some wicked men among them this society degenerated into
a most abominable meeting for the purpose of a conspiracy; those of
the trade who did not join their society were summoned, and even the
apprentices, and were told unless they conformed to the practices of
these journeymen, when they came out of their times they should not be
employed.” Notwithstanding the fact that the employers had themselves
recognised and negotiated with the society, the Recorder sentenced all
the defendants to two years’ imprisonment.[133]

Twelve years later it was the brutality of another prosecution of
the compositors that impressed Francis Place with the necessity of
an alteration in the law. “The cruel persecutions,” he writes, “of
the Journeymen Printers employed in _The Times_ newspaper in 1810
were carried to an almost incredible extent. The judge who tried and
sentenced some of them was the Common Sergeant of London, Sir John
Sylvester, commonly known by the cognomen of ‘Bloody Black Jack.’... No
judge took more pains than did this judge on the unfortunate printers,
to make it appear that their offence was one of great enormity, to
beat down and alarm the really respectable men who had fallen into his
clutches, and on whom he inflicted scandalously severe sentences.”[134]
Nor did prosecution always depend on the caprice of an employer. In
December 1817 the Bolton constables, accidentally getting to know
that ten delegates of the calico-printers from the various districts
of the kingdom were to meet on New Year’s Day, arranged to arrest the
whole body and seize all their papers. The ten delegates suffered
three months’ imprisonment, although no dispute with their employers
was in progress.[135] But the main use of the law to the employers
was to checkmate strikes, and ward off demands for better conditions
of labour. Already, in 1786, the law of conspiracy had been strained
to convict, and punish with two years’ imprisonment, the five London
bookbinders who were leading a strike to reduce hours from twelve to
eleven.[136] When, at the Aberdeen Master Tailors’ Gild, in 1797, “it
was represented to the trade that their journeymen had entered into
an illegal combination for the purpose of raising their wages,” the
masters unanimously “agreed not to give any additional wages to their
servants,” and backed up this resolution of their own combination
by getting twelve journeymen prosecuted and fined for the crime of
combining.[137] In 1799 the success of the London shoemakers in
picketing obnoxious employers led to the prosecution of two of them,
which was made the means of inducing the men to consent to dissolve
their society, then seven years old, and return to work at once.[138]
Two other shoemakers of York were convicted in the same year for the
crime of “combining to raise the price of their labour in making
shoes, and refusing to make shoes under a certain price,” and counsel
said that “in every great town in the North combinations of this sort
existed.”[139] The coach-makers’ strike of 1819 was similarly stopped,
and the “Benevolent Society of Coachmakers” broken up by the conviction
of the general secretary and twenty other members, who were, upon
this condition, released on their own recognisances.[140] In 1819
some calico-engravers in the service of a Manchester firm protested
against the undue multiplication of apprentices by their employers,
and enforced their protest by declining to work. For this “conspiracy”
they were fined and imprisoned.[141] And though the master cutlers
were allowed, with impunity, to subscribe to the Sheffield Mercantile
and Manufacturing Union, which fixed the rates of wages, and brought
pressure to bear on recalcitrant employers, the numerous trade clubs of
the operatives were not left unmolested. In 1816 seven scissor-grinders
were sentenced to three months’ imprisonment for belonging to what
they called the “Misfortune Club,” which paid out-of-work benefit, and
sought to maintain the customary rates.[142]

But it was in the new textile industries that the weight of the
Combination Laws was chiefly felt. White and Henson describe the Act of
1800 as being in these trades “a tremendous millstone round the neck of
the local artisan, which has depressed and debased him to the earth:
every act which he has attempted, every measure that he has devised to
keep up or raise his wages, he has been told was illegal: the whole
force of the civil power and influence of the district has been exerted
against him because he was acting illegally: the magistrates, acting,
as they believed, in unison with the views of the legislature, to
check and keep down wages and combination, regarded, in almost every
instance, every attempt on the part of the artisan to ameliorate his
situation or support his station in society as a species of sedition
and resistance of the Government: every committee or active man among
them was regarded as a turbulent, dangerous instigator, whom it was
necessary to watch and crush if possible.”[143] To cite one only of
the instances, it was given in evidence before Hume’s Committee that
in 1818 certain Bolton millowners suggested to the operative weavers
that they should concert together to leave the employment of those who
paid below the current rate. Acting on this hint a meeting of forty
delegates took place, at which it was resolved to ask for the advance
agreed to by the good employers. A fortnight later the president
and the two secretaries were arrested, convicted of conspiracy,
and imprisoned for one and two years respectively, although their
employers gave evidence on the prisoners’ behalf to the effect that
they had themselves requested the men to attend the meeting, and had
approved the resolutions passed.[144] In the following year fifteen
cotton-spinners of Manchester, who had met “to receive contributions to
bury their dead,” under “Articles” sanctioned by Quarter Sessions in
1795, were seized in the committee-room by the police, and committed to
trial for conspiracy, bail being refused. After three or four months’
imprisonment they were brought to trial, the whole local bar--seven in
number--being briefed against them. Collections were made in London and
elsewhere (including the town of Lynn in Norfolk) for their defence.
The enrolment of their club as a friendly society availed little. It
was urged in court that “all societies, whether benefit societies or
otherwise, were only cloaks for the people of England to conspire
against the State,” and most of the defendants were sentenced to
varying terms of imprisonment.[145]

But the Scottish Weavers’ Strike of 1812, described in the preceding
chapter, is the most striking case of all. In the previous year certain
cotton-spinners had been convicted of combination and imprisoned,
the judge observing that there was a clear remedy in law, as the
magistrates had full power and authority to fix rates of wages or
settle disputes. In 1812 many of the employers refused to accept the
rates which the justices had declared as fair for weaving; and all
the weavers at the forty thousand looms between Aberdeen and Carlisle
struck to enforce the justices’ rates. The employers had already
made overtures through the sheriff of the county for a satisfactory
settlement when the Government arrested the central committee of
five, who were directing the proceedings. These men were sentenced
to periods of imprisonment varying from four to eighteen months; the
strike failed, and the association broke up.[146] The student of the
newspapers between 1800 and 1824 will find abundant record of judicial
barbarities, of which the cases cited above may be taken as samples.
No statistics exist as to the frequency of the prosecutions or the
severity of the sentences; but it is easy to understand, from such
reports as are available, the sullen resentment which the working class
suffered under these laws. Their repeal was a necessary preliminary
to the growth among the most oppressed sections of the workers of any
real power of protecting themselves, by Trade Union effort, against the
degradation of their Standard of Life.

The failure of the Combination Laws to suppress the somewhat
dictatorial Trade Unionism of the skilled handicraftsmen, and their
efficacy in preventing the growth of permanent Unions among other
sections of the workers, is explained by class distinctions, now
passed away or greatly modified, which prevailed at the beginning of
the present century. To-day, when we speak of “the aristocracy of
labour” we include under that heading the organised miners and factory
operatives of the North on the same superior footing as the skilled
handicraftsman. In 1800 they were at opposite extremes of the social
scale in the wage-earning class, the weaver and the miner being then
further removed from the handicraftsman than the docker or general
labourer is from the Lancashire cotton-spinner or Northumberland
hewer of to-day. The skilled artisans formed, at any rate in London,
an intermediate class between the shopkeeper and the great mass of
unorganised labourers or operatives in the new machine industries.
The substantial fees demanded all through the eighteenth century for
apprenticeship to the “crafts” had secured to the members and their
eldest sons a virtual monopoly.[147] Even after the repeal of the laws
requiring a formal apprenticeship some time had to elapse before the
supply of this class of handicraftsmen overtook the growing demand.
Thus we gather from the surviving records that these trades have
never been more completely organised in London than between 1800 and
1820.[148] We find the London hatters, coopers, curriers, compositors,
millwrights, and shipwrights maintaining earnings which, upon their
own showing, amounted to the comparatively large sum of thirty to
fifty shillings per week. At the same period the Lancashire weaver
or the Leicester hosier, in full competition with steam-power and
its accompaniment of female and child labour, could, even when fully
employed, earn barely ten shillings. We see this difference in the
Standard of Life reflected in the characters of the combinations formed
by the two classes.

In the skilled handicrafts, long accustomed to corporate government,
we find, even under repressive laws, no unlawful oaths, seditious
emblems, or other common paraphernalia of secret societies. The
London Brushmakers, whose Union apparently dates from the early
part of the eighteenth century, expressly insisted “that no person
shall be admitted a member who is not well affected to his present
Majesty and the Protestant Succession, and in good health and of a
respectable character.” But this loyalty was not inconsistent with
their subscribing to the funds of the 1831 agitation for the Reform
Bill.[149] The prevailing tone of the superior workmen down to 1848
was, in fact, strongly Radical; and their leaders took a prominent part
in all the working-class politics of the time. From their ranks came
such organisers as Place, Lovett, and Gast.[150] But wherever we have
been able to gain any idea of their proceedings, their trade clubs were
free from anything that could now be conceived as political sedition.
It was these clubs of handicraftsmen that formed the backbone of the
various “central committees” which dealt with the main topics of Trade
Unionism during the next thirty years. They it was who furnished such
assistance as was given by working men to the movement for the repeal
of the Combination Laws. And their influence gave a certain dignity and
stability to the Trade Union Movement, without which, under hostile
governments, it could never have emerged from the petulant rebellions
of hunger-strikes and machine-breaking.

The principal effect of the Combination Laws on these well-organised
handicrafts in London, Liverpool, Dublin, and perhaps other towns,
was to make the internal discipline more rigid and the treatment of
non-unionists more arbitrary. Place describes how “in these societies
there are some few individuals who possess the confidence of their
fellows, and when any matter relating to the trade has been talked
over, either at the club or in a separate room, or in a workshop or a
yard, and the matter has become notorious, these men are expected to
direct what shall be done, and they do direct--simply by a hint. On
this the men act; and one and all support those who may be thrown out
of work or otherwise inconvenienced. If matters were to be discussed
as gentlemen seem to suppose they must be, no resolution would ever be
come to. The influence of the men alluded to would soon cease if the
law were repealed. It is the law and the law alone which causes the
confidence of the men to be given to their leaders. Those who direct
are not known to the body, and not one man in twenty, perhaps, knows
the person of any one who directs. It is a rule among them to ask no
questions, and another rule among them who know most, either to give no
answer if questioned, or an answer to mislead.”[151]

In the new machine industries, on the other hand, the repeated
reductions of wages, the rapid alterations of processes, and the
substitution of women and children for adult male workers, had
gradually reduced the workers to a condition of miserable poverty.
The reports of Parliamentary committees, from 1800 onward, contain a
dreary record of the steady degradation of the Standard of Life in the
textile industries. “The sufferings of persons employed in the cotton
manufacture,” Place writes of this period, “were beyond credibility:
they were drawn into combinations, betrayed, prosecuted, convicted,
sentenced, and monstrously severe punishments inflicted on them: they
were reduced to and kept in the most wretched state of existence.”[152]
Their employers, instead of being, as in the older handicrafts, little
more than master workmen, recognising the customary Standard of Life
of their journeymen, were often capitalist _entrepreneurs_, devoting
their whole energies to the commercial side of the business, and
leaving their managers to buy labour in the market at the cheapest
possible rate. This labour was recruited from all localities and many
different occupations. It was brigaded and controlled by despotic
laws, enforced by numerous fines and disciplinary deductions. Cases of
gross tyranny and heartless cruelty are not wanting. Without a common
standard, a common tradition, or mutual confidence, the workers in
the new mills were helpless against their masters. Their ephemeral
combinations and frequent strikes were, as a rule, only passionate
struggles to maintain a bare subsistence wage. In place of the steady
organised resistance to encroachments maintained by the handicraftsmen,
we watch, in the machine industries, the alternation of outbursts of
machine-breaking and outrages, with intervals of abject submission and
reckless competition with each other for employment. In the conduct
of such organisation as there was, repressive laws had, with the
operatives as with the London artisans, the effect of throwing great
power into the hands of a few men. These leaders were implicitly obeyed
in times of industrial conflict, but the repeated defeats which they
were unable to avert prevented that growth of confidence which is
indispensable for permanent organisation.[153] Both leaders and rank
and file, too, were largely implicated in political seditions, and were
the victims of spies and Ministerial emissaries of all sorts. All these
circumstances led to the prevalence among them of fearful oaths, mystic
initiation rites, and other manifestations of a sensationalism which
was sometimes puerile and sometimes criminal.

The most notorious of these “seditions,” about which little is really
known, was the “Luddite” upheaval of 1811-12, when riotous mobs of
manual workers, acting under some sort of organisation, went about
destroying textile machinery and sometimes wrecking factories. To what
extent this had any direct connection with the Trade Union Movement
seems to us, pending more penetrating investigation of the unpublished
evidence, somewhat uncertain. That the operatives very generally
sympathised with the most violent protest against the displacement
of hand labour by machinery, and the extreme distress which it was
causing, is clear. The Luddite movement apparently began among the
Framework-knitters, who had long been organised in local clubs, with
some rudimentary federal bond; and the whole direction of the Luddites
was often ascribed, as by the Mayor of Leicester in 1812, to “the
Committee of Framework-knitters, who have as complete an organisation
of the whole body as you could have of a regiment.”[154] But money
was collected from men of other trades, notably bricklayers, masons,
spinners, weavers, and colliers, as well as from the soldiers in some
of the regiments stationed at provincial centres; and such evidence
as we have found points rather to a widespread secret oath-bound
conspiracy, not of the men of any one trade, but of wage-earners of all
kinds. We find an informer stating (June 22, 1812), with what truth
we know not, “that the Union extends from London to Nottingham, and
from thence to Manchester and Carlisle. Small towns lying between the
principal places are not yet organised, such as Garstang and Burton.
Only some of the trades have taken the first oath. He says there is a
second oath taken by suspicious persons.”[155] On the other hand, it
looks as if the various local Trade Clubs were made use of, in some
cases informally, as agents or branches of the conspiracy.

General Maitland, writing from Buxton (June 22, 1812) to the Home
Secretary, says that, in his opinion, “the whole of this business ...
originated in those constant efforts made by these associations for
many years past to keep up the price of the manufacturers’ wages; that
finding their efforts for this unavailing, both from the circumstances
of the trade and the high price of provisions, they in a moment of
irritation, for which it is but just to say they had considerable
ground from the real state of distress in which they were placed ...
began to think of effecting that by force which they had ever been
trying to do by other means; and that in this state the oath was
introduced.... I believe the whole to be, certainly a most mischievous,
but undefined and indistinct attempt to be in a state of preparation to
do that by force which they had not succeeded in carrying into effect
as they usually did by other means.” The whole episode has been too
much ignored, even by social historians; and “Byron’s famous speech and
Charlotte Brontë’s more famous novel give to most people their idea
of the misery of the time, and of its cause, the displacement of hand
labour by machinery.”[156]

The coal-miners were in many respects even worse off than the hosiery
workers and the cotton weavers. In Scotland they had been but lately
freed from actual serfdom, the final act of emancipation not having
been passed until 1799. In Monmouthshire and South Wales the oppression
of the “tommy shops” of the small employers was extreme. In the North
of England the “yearly bond,” the truck system, and the arbitrary
fines kept the underground workers in complete subjection. The result
is seen in the turbulence of their frequent “sticks” or strikes, during
which troops were often required to quell their violence. The great
strike of 1810 was carried on by an oath-bound confederacy recruited
by the practice of “brothering,” “so named because the members of the
union bound themselves by a most solemn oath to obey the orders of the
brotherhood, under the penalty of being stabbed through the heart or of
having their bowels ripped up.”[157]

Notwithstanding these differences between various classes of workers,
the growing sense of solidarity among the whole body of wage-earners
rises into special prominence during this period of tyranny and
repression. The trades in which it was usual for men to tramp from
place to place in search of employment had long possessed, as we have
seen, some kind of loose federal organisation extending throughout
the country. In spite of the law of 1797 forbidding the existence
of “corresponding societies,” the various federal organisations of
Curriers, Hatters, Calico-printers, Woolcombers, Woolstaplers, and
other handicraftsmen kept up constant correspondence on trade matters,
and raised money for common trade purposes. In some cases there existed
an elaborate national organisation, with geographical districts
and annual delegate meetings; like that of the Calico-printers who
were arrested by the Bolton constables in 1818. The rules of the
Papermakers,[158] which certainly date from 1803, provide for the
division of England into five districts, with detailed arrangements
for representation and collective action. This national organisation
was, notwithstanding repressive laws, occasionally very effective. We
need cite only one instance, furnished by the Liverpool Ropemakers in
1823. When a certain firm attempted to put labourers to the work, the
local society of ropespinners informed it that this was “contrary to
the regulations of the trade,” and withdrew all their members. The
employers, failing to get men in Liverpool, sent to Hull and Newcastle,
but found that the Ropespinners’ Society had already apprised the local
trade clubs at those towns. The firm then imported “blacklegs” from
Glasgow, who were met on arrival by the local unionists, inveigled
to a “trade club-house,” and alternately threatened and cajoled out
of their engagements. Finally the head of the firm went to London to
purchase yarn; but the London workmen, finding that the yarn was for
a “struck shop,” refused to complete the order. The last resource of
the employers was an indictment at the Sessions for combination, but a
Liverpool jury, in the teeth of the evidence and the judge’s summing
up, gave a verdict of acquittal.[159]

This solidarity was not confined to the members of a particular
trade. The masters are always complaining that one trade supports
another, and old account books of Trade Unions for this period abound
with entries of sums contributed in aid of disputes in other trades,
either in the same town or elsewhere. Thus the small society of London
Goldbeaters, during the three years 1810-12, lent or gave substantial
sums, amounting in all to £200, to fourteen other trades.[160] The Home
Secretary was informed in 1823 that a combination of cotton-spinners
at Bolton, whose books had been seized, had received donations,
not only from twenty-eight cotton-spinners’ committees in as many
Lancashire towns, but also from fourteen other trades, from coal-miners
to butchers.[161] A picturesque illustration of this brotherly help
in need occurs in the account of an appeal to the Pontefract Quarter
Sessions by certain Sheffield cutlers against their conviction for
combination: “The appellants were in court, but hour after hour passed,
and no counsel moved the case. The reason was a want of funds for the
purpose. At last, whilst in court, a remittance from the clubs in
Manchester, to the amount of one hundred pounds, arrived, and then the
counsel was fee’d, and the case, which, but for the arrival of the
money from this town, must have dropped in that stage, was proceeded
with.”[162] And although the day of Trades Councils had not yet come,
it was a common thing for the various trade societies of a particular
town to unite in sending witnesses to Parliamentary Committees,
preparing petitions to the House of Commons and paying counsel to
support their case, engaging solicitors to prosecute offending
employers, and collecting subscriptions for strikes.[163] This tendency
to form joint committees of local trades was, as we shall see, greatly
strengthened in the agitation against the Combination Laws from
1823-25. With the final abandonment of all legislative protection of
the Standard of Life, and the complete divorce of the worker from the
instruments of production, the wage-earners in the various industrial
centres became indeed ever more conscious of the widening of the old
separate trade disputes into “the class war” which has characterised
the past century.

It is difficult to-day to realise the naïve surprise with which
the employers of that time regarded the practical development of
working-class solidarity. The master witnesses before Parliamentary
Committees, and the judges in sentencing workmen for combination,
are constantly found reciting instances of mutual help to prove the
existence of a widespread “conspiracy” against the dominant classes.
That the London Tailors should send money to the Glasgow Weavers, or
the Goldbeaters to the Ropespinners, seemed to the middle and upper
classes little short of a crime.

The movement for a repeal of the Combination Laws began in a period of
industrial dislocation and severe political repression. The economic
results of the long war, culminating in the comparatively low prices
of the peace for most manufactured products, though not for wheat,
led in 1816 to an almost universal reduction of wages throughout the
country. In open defiance of the law the masters, in many instances,
deliberately combined in agreements to pay lower rates. This agreement
was not confined to the employers in a particular trade, who may have
been confronted by organised bodies of journeymen, but extended, in
some cases, to all employers of labour in a particular locality. The
landowners and farmers of Tiverton, for instance, at a “numerous and
respectable meeting at the Town Hall” in 1816, resolved “that, in
consequence of the low price of provisions,” not more than certain
specified wages should be given to smiths, carpenters, masons,
thatchers, or masons’ labourers.[164] The Compositors, Coopers,
Shoemakers, Carpenters, and many other trades record serious reductions
of wages at this period. In these cases the masters justified their
action on the ground that, owing to the fall of prices, the Standard
of Life of the journeymen would not be depressed. But in the great
staple industries there ensued a cutting competition between employers
to secure orders in a falling market, their method being to undersell
each other by beating down wages below subsistence level--an operation
often aided by the practice, then common, of supplementing insufficient
earnings out of the Poor Rate. This produced such ruinous results that
local protests were soon made. At Leicester the authorities decided
to maintain the men’s “Statement Price” by agreeing to wholly support
out of a voluntary fund those who could not get work at the full
rates. This was bitterly resented by the neighbouring employers, who
seriously contemplated indicting the lord-lieutenant, mayor, alder-men,
clergy, and other subscribers for criminal conspiracy to keep up
wages.[165] And in 1820 a public meeting of the ratepayers of Sheffield
protested against the “evil of parish pay to supplement earnings,” and
recommended employers to revert to the uniform price list which the
men had gained in 1810.[166] Finally we have the employers themselves
publicly denouncing the ruinous extent to which the cutting of wages
had been carried. A declaration dated June 16, 1819, and signed by
fourteen Lancashire manufacturers, regrets that they have been
compelled by the action of a few competitors to lower wages to the
present rates, and strongly condemns any further reduction; whilst
twenty-five of the most eminent calico-printing firms append an
emphatic approval of the protest, and state “that the system of paying
such extremely low wages for manufacturing labour is injurious to the
trade at large.”[167] At Coventry the ribbon manufacturers combined
with the Weavers’ Provident Union to maintain a general adherence to
the agreed list of prices, and in 1819 subscribed together no less
than £16,000 to cover the cost of proceedings with this object. This
combination formed the subject of an indictment at Warwick Assizes,
which put an end to the association, the remaining funds being handed
over to the local “Streets Commissioners” for paving the city. These
protests and struggles of the better employers were in vain. Rates
were reduced and strikes occurred all over the country, and were met,
not by redress or sympathy, but by an outburst of prosecutions and
sentences of more than the usual ferocity. The common law and ancient
statutes were ruthlessly used to supplement the Combination Acts,
often by strained constructions. The Scotch judges in particular, as
an eminent Scotch jurist declared to the Parliamentary Committee in
1824, applied the criminal procedure of Scotland to cases of simple
combination, from 1813-19, in a way that he, on becoming Lord Advocate,
refused to countenance.[168] The workers, on attempting some spasmodic
preparations for organised political agitation, were further coerced,
in 1819, by the infamous “Six Acts,” which at one blow suppressed
practically all public meetings, enabled the magistrate to search
for arms, subjected all working-class publications to the crushing
stamp duty, and rendered more stringent the law relating to seditious
libels. The whole system of repression which had characterised the
statesmanship of the Regency culminated at this period in a tyranny
not exceeded by any of the monarchs of the “Holy Alliance.” The effect
of this tyranny was actually to shield the Combination Laws by turning
the more energetic and enlightened working-class leaders away from
all specific reforms to a thorough revolution of the whole system of
Parliamentary representation. Hence there was no popular movement
whatever for the repeal of the Combination Laws. If we were writing
the history of the English working class instead of that of the Trade
Union Movement, we should find in William Cobbett or “Orator” Hunt, in
Samuel Bamford or William Lovett, a truer representative of the current
aspirations of the English artisan at this time than in the man who
now came unexpectedly on the scene to devise and carry into effect the
Trade Union Emancipation of 1824.

Francis Place was a master tailor who had created a successful business
in a shop at Charing Cross. Before setting up for himself he had worked
as a journeyman breeches-maker, and had organised combinations in his
own and other trades. After 1818 he left the conduct of the business to
his son, and devoted his keenly practical intellect and extraordinary
persistency first to the repeal of the Combination Laws, and next to
the Reform Movement. In social theory he was a pupil of Bentham and
James Mill, and his ideal may be summed up as political Democracy
with industrial liberty, or, as we should now say, thoroughgoing
Radical Individualism. No one who has closely studied his life and
work will doubt that, within the narrow sphere to which his unswerving
practicality confined him, he was the most remarkable politician of
his age. His chief merit lay in his thorough understanding of the
art of getting things done. In agitation, permeation, wire-pulling,
Parliamentary lobbying, the drafting of resolutions, petitions, and
bills--in short, of all those artifices by which a popular movement is
first created and then made effective on the Parliamentary system--he
was an inventor and tactician of the first order. Above all, he
possessed in perfection the rare quality of permitting other people to
carry off the credit of his work, and thus secured for his proposals
willing promoters and supporters, some of the leading Parliamentary
figures of the time owing all their knowledge on his questions to
the briefs with which he supplied them. The invaluable collection of
manuscript records left by him, now in the British Museum, prove that
modesty had nothing to do with his contemptuous readiness to leave the
trophies of victory to his pawns provided his end was attained. He was
thoroughly appreciative of the fact that in every progressive movement
his shop at Charing Cross was the real centre of power when the
Parliamentary stage of a progressive movement was reached. It remained,
from 1807 down to about 1834, the recognised meeting-place of all the
agitators of the time.[169]

It was in watching the effect of the Combination Laws in his own
trade that Place became converted to their repeal. The special laws
of 1720 and 1767, fixing the wages of journeymen tailors, as well
as the general law of 1800 against all combinations, had failed to
regulate wages, to prevent strikes, or to hinder those masters who
wished in times of pressure to engage skilled men, from offering the
bribe of high piecework rates, or even time wages in excess of the
legal limit. Place gave evidence as a master tailor before the Select
Committee of the House of Commons which inquired into the subject in
1810; and it was chiefly his weighty testimony in favour of freedom of
contract that averted the fresh legal restrictions which a combination
of employers was then openly promoting.[170] This experience of the
practical freedom of employers to combine intensified Place’s sense
of the injustice of denying a like freedom to the journeymen, whilst
the brutal prosecution of the compositors of the _Times_ in the same
year brought home to his mind the severity of the law. Four years
later (1814), as he himself tells us, he “began to work seriously to
procure a repeal of the laws against combinations of workmen, but
for a long time made no visible progress.” The employers were firmly
convinced that combinations of wage-earners would succeed in securing
a great rise of wages, to the serious detriment of profits. Far from
contemplating a repeal of the Act of 1800, they were in 1814 and 1816
pestering the Home Secretary for legislation of greater stringency
as the only safeguard for their “freedom of enterprise.”[171] The
politicians were equally certain that Trade Union action would
raise prices, and thus undermine the foreign trade upon which the
prosperity and international influence of England depended. The
working men themselves afforded in the first instance no assistance.
Those who had suffered legal prosecution were hopeless of redress
from an unreformed Parliament, and offered no support. One trade,
the Spitalfields silk-weavers, supported the Government because they
enjoyed what they deemed to be the advantage of legal protection from
the lowering of wages by competition.[172] Others were suspicious of
the intervention of one who was himself an employer, and who had not
yet gained recognition as a friend to labour. But Place was undismayed
by hostility and indifference. Knowing that with an English public
the strength of his cause would lie, not in any abstract reasoning
or appeal to natural rights, but in an enumeration of actual cases
of injustice, he made a point of obtaining the particulars of every
trade dispute. He intervened, as he says, in every strike, sometimes
as a mediator, sometimes as an ally of the journeymen. He opened up a
voluminous correspondence with Trade Unions throughout the kingdom,
and wrote innumerable letters to the newspapers. In 1818 he secured a
useful medium in the _Gorgon_,[173] a little working-class political
newspaper, started by one Wade, a woolcomber, and subsidised by Bentham
and Place himself. This gained him his two most important disciples,
eventually the chief instruments of his work, J. R. McCulloch and
Joseph Hume. McCulloch, afterwards to gain fame as an economist, was
at that time the editor of the _Scotsman_, perhaps the most important
of the provincial newspapers. A powerful article based on Place’s
facts which he contributed to the _Edinburgh Review_ in 1823 secured
many converts; and his constant advocacy gave Place’s idea a weight
and notoriety which it had hitherto lacked. Joseph Hume was an even
more important ally. His acknowledged position in the House of Commons
as one of the leaders of the growing party of Philosophic Radicalism
gained for the repeal movement a steadily increasing support with
advanced members of Parliament. Among a certain section in the House
the desirability of freedom of combination began to be discussed;
presently it was considered practicable; and soon many came to regard
it as an inevitable outcome of their political creed. In 1822 Place
thought the time ripe for action; and Hume accordingly gave notice
of his intention to bring in a Bill to repeal all the laws against
combinations.

Place’s manuscripts and letters contain a graphic account of the
wire-pullings and manipulations of the next two years.[174] In these
contemporary pictures of the inner workings of the Parliamentary
system we watch Hume cajoling Huskisson and Peel into granting him a
Select Committee, staving off the less tactful proposals of a rival
M.P.,[175] and finally, in February 1824, packing the Committee of
Inquiry at length appointed. Hume, with some art, had included in
his motion three distinct subjects--the emigration of artisans, the
exportation of machinery and combinations of workmen, all of which were
forbidden by law. To Place and Hume the repeal of the Combination Laws
was the main object; but Huskisson and his colleagues regarded the
Committee as primarily charged with an inquiry into the possibility of
encouraging the rising manufacture of machinery, which was seriously
hampered by the prohibition of sales to foreign countries. Huskisson
tried to induce Hume to omit from the Committee’s reference all mention
of the Combination Laws, evidently regarding them as only a minor and
unimportant part of the inquiry. But Place and Hume were now masters
of the situation; and for the next few months they devoted their whole
time to the management of the Committee. At first no one seems to have
had any idea that its proceedings were going to be of any moment; and
no trouble was taken by the Ministry with regard to its composition.
“It was with difficulty,” writes Place, “that Mr. Hume could obtain
the names of twenty-one members to compose the Committee; but when it
had sat three days, and had become both popular and amusing, members
contrived to be put upon it; and at length it consisted of forty-eight
members.”[176] Hume, who was appointed chairman, appears to have
taken into his own hands the entire management of the proceedings. A
circular explaining the objects of the inquiry was sent to the mayor
or other public officer of forty provincial towns, and appeared in the
principal local newspapers. Public meetings were held at Stockport
and other towns to depute witnesses to attend the Committee.[177]
Meanwhile Place, who had by this time acquired the confidence of the
chief leaders of the working class, secured the attendance of artisan
witnesses from all parts of the kingdom. Read in the light of Place’s
private records and daily correspondence with Hume, the proceedings of
this “Committee on Artisans and Machinery” reveal an almost perfect
example of political manipulation. Although no hostile witness was
denied a hearing, it was evidently arranged that the employers who
were favourable to repeal should be examined first, and that the
preponderance of evidence should be on their side. And whilst those
interests which would have been antagonistic to the repeal were neither
professionally represented nor deliberately organised, the men’s case
was marshalled with admirable skill by Place, and fully brought out
by Hume’s examination. Thus the one acted as the Trade Unionists’
Parliamentary solicitor, and the other as their unpaid counsel.[178]

Place himself tells us how he proceeded: “The delegates from the
working people had reference to me, and I opened my house to them.
Thus I had all the town and country delegates under my care. I heard
the story which every one of these men had to tell, I examined and
cross-examined them, took down the leading particulars of each case,
and then arranged the matter as briefs for Mr. Hume, and as a rule, for
the guidance of the witnesses, a copy was given to each.... Each brief
contained the principal questions and answers.... That for Mr. Hume was
generally accompanied by an appendix of documents arranged in order,
with a short account of such proceedings as were necessary to put Mr.
Hume in possession of the whole case. Thus he was enabled to go on with
considerable ease, and to anticipate or rebut objections.”[179]

The Committee sat in private; but Hume’s numerous letters to Place show
how carefully the latter was kept posted up in all the proceedings:
“As the proceedings of the Committee were printed from day to day
for the use of the members, I had a copy sent to me by Mr. Hume,
which I indexed on paper ruled in many columns, each column having an
appropriate head or number. I also wrote remarks on the margins of the
printed evidence; this was copied daily by Mr. Hume’s secretary, and
then returned to me. This consumed much time, but enabled Mr. Hume to
have the whole mass constantly under his view; and I am very certain
that less pains and care would not have been sufficient to have carried
the business through.”[180]

From Westminster Hall we are transported, by these private notes for
Hume’s use, all now preserved in the British Museum, into the back
parlour of the Charing Cross shop, where the London and provincial
artisan witnesses came for their instructions. “The workmen,” as
Place tells us, “were not easily managed. It required great care and
pains not to shock their prejudices so as to prevent them doing
their duty before the Committee. They were filled with false notions,
all attributing their distresses to wrong causes, which I, in this
state of the business, dared not attempt to remove. Taxes, machinery,
laws against combinations, the will of the masters, the conduct of
magistrates--these were the fundamental causes of all their sorrows and
privations.... I had to discuss everything with them most carefully,
to arrange and prepare everything, and so completely did these things
occupy my time that for more than three months I had hardly any
rest.”[181]

The result of the inquiry was as Hume and Place had ordained. A series
of resolutions in favour of complete freedom of combination and liberty
of emigration was adopted by the Committee, apparently without dissent.
A Bill to repeal all the Combination Laws and to legalise trade
societies was passed through both Houses, within less than a week, at
the close of the session, without either debate or division. Place and
Hume contrived privately to talk over and to silence the few members
who were alive to the situation; and the measure passed, as Place
remarks, “almost without the notice of members within or newspapers
without.”[182] So quietly was the Bill smuggled through Parliament that
the magistrates at a Lancashire town unwittingly sentenced certain
cotton-weavers to imprisonment for combination some weeks after the
laws against that crime had been repealed.[183]

Place and Hume had, however, been rather too clever. Whilst the
governing classes were quite unconscious that any important alteration
of law or policy had taken place, the unlooked-for success of Place’s
agitation produced, as Nassau Senior describes, “a great moral effect”
in all the industrial centres. “It confirmed in the minds of the
operatives the conviction of the justice of their cause, tardily and
reluctantly, but at last fully, conceded by the Legislature. That
which was morally right in 1824 must have been so, they would reason,
for fifty years before.... They conceived that they had extorted from
the Legislature an admission that their masters must always be their
rivals, and had hitherto been their oppressors, and that combinations
to raise wages, and shorten the time or diminish the severity of
labour, were not only innocent, but meritorious.”[184] Trade Societies
accordingly sprang into existence or emerged into aggressive publicity
on all sides. A period of trade inflation, together with a rapid rise
in the price of provisions, favoured a general increase of wages. For
the next six months the newspapers are full of strikes and rumours of
strikes. Serious disturbances occurred at Glasgow, where the employers
had been exceptionally oppressive, where the cotton operatives
committed several outrages, and where a general lock-out took place.
The cotton-spinners were once more striking in the Manchester district.
The shipping trade of the North-East Coast was temporarily paralysed by
a strong combination of the seamen on the Tyne and Wear, who refused
to sail except with Unionist seamen and Unionist officers. The Dublin
trades, then the best organised in the kingdom, ruthlessly enforced
their bye-laws for the regulation of their respective industries, and
formed a joint committee, the so-called “Board of Green Cloth,” whose
dictates became the terror of the employers. The Sheffield operatives
have to be warned that, if they persist in demanding double the former
wages for only three days a week work, the whole industry of the town
will be ruined.[185] The London shipwrights insisted on what their
employers considered the preposterous demand for a “book of rates”
for piecework. The London coopers demanded a revision of their wages,
which led to a long-sustained conflict. In fact, as a provincial
newspaper remarked a little later, “it is no longer a particular class
of journeymen at some single point that have been induced to commence
a strike for an advance of wages, but almost the whole body of the
mechanics in the kingdom are combined in the general resolution to
impose terms on their employers.”[186]

The opening of the session of 1825 found the employers throughout
the country thoroughly aroused. Hume and Place had in vain preached
moderation, and warned the Unions of the danger of a reaction. The
great shipowning and shipbuilding interest, which had throughout the
century preserved intact its reputation for unswerving hostility to
Trade Unionism, had possession of the ear of Huskisson, then President
of the Board of Trade and member for Liverpool. Early in the session he
moved for a committee of inquiry into the conduct of the workmen and
the effect of the recent Act, which, he complained, had been smuggled
through the House without his attention having been called to the fact
that it went far beyond the mere repeal of the special statutes against
combinations.[187] This time the composition of the committee was not
left to chance, or to Hume’s manipulation. The members were, as Place
complains, selected almost exclusively from the Ministerial benches,
twelve out of the thirty being placemen, and many being representatives
of rotten boroughs. Huskisson,[188] Peel, and the Attorney-General
themselves took part in its proceedings; Wallace, the Master of the
Mint, was made chairman, and Hume alone represented the workmen.
Huskisson regarded the Committee as merely a formal preliminary to the
introduction of the Bill which the shipping interest had drafted,[189]
under which Trade Unions, and even Friendly Societies, would have been
impossible. For the inner history of this Committee we have to rely on
Place’s voluminous memoranda, and Hume’s brief notes to him. According
to these, the original intention was to call only a few employers as
witnesses, to exclude all testimony on the other side, and promptly to
report in favour of the repressive measure already prepared. Place,
himself an expert in such tactics, met them by again supplying Hume
daily with detailed information which enabled him to cross-examine the
masters and expose their exaggerations. And, if Place’s account of the
animus of the Committee and the Ministers against himself be somewhat
highly coloured, we have ample evidence of the success with which he
guided the alarmed Trade Unions to take effectual action in their own
defence. His friend John Gast, secretary to the London Shipwrights,
called for two delegates from each trade in the metropolis, and
formed a committee which kept up a persistent agitation against any
re-enactment of the Combination Laws. Similar committees were formed
at Manchester and Glasgow by the cotton operatives, at Sheffield
by the cutlers, and at Newcastle by the seamen and shipwrights.
Petitions, the draft of which appears in Place’s manuscripts, poured
in to the Select Committee and to both Houses. If we are to believe
Place, the passages leading to the committee-room were carefully kept
thronged by crowds of workmen insisting on being examined to rebut the
accusations of the employers, and waylaying individual members to whom
they explained their grievances. All this energy on the part of the
Unions was, as Place observes, in marked contrast with their apathy
the year before. The workmen, though they had done nothing to gain
their freedom of association, were determined to maintain it. Doherty,
the leader of the Lancashire Cotton-spinners, writing to Place in the
heat of the agitation, declared that any attempt at a re-enactment
of the Combination Laws would result in a widespread revolutionary
movement.[190] The net result of the inquiry was, on the whole,
satisfactory. The Select Committee found themselves compelled to hear
a certain number of workmen witnesses, who testified to the good
results of the Act of the previous year. The ship-owners’ Bill was
abandoned, and the House of Commons was recommended to pass a measure
which nominally re-established the general common-law prohibition of
combinations, but specifically excepted from prosecution associations
for the purpose of regulating wages or hours of labour. The master
shipbuilders were furious at this virtual defeat. The handbill is still
extant which they distributed at the doors of the House of Commons
on the day of the second reading of the emasculated Bill.[191] They
declared that its provisions were quite insufficient to save their
industry from destruction. If Trade Unions were to be allowed to exist
at all, they demanded that these bodies should be compelled to render
full accounts of their expenditure to the justices in Quarter Sessions,
and that any diversion of monies raised for friendly society purposes
should be severely punished. They pleaded, moreover, that at any rate
all federal or combined action among trade clubs should be prohibited.
Place and Hume, on the other hand, were afraid, and subsequent events
proved with what good grounds, that the narrow limits of the trade
combinations allowed by the Bill, and still more the vague terms
“molest” and “obstruct,” which it contained, would be used as weapons
against Trade Unionism. The Government, however, held to the draft
of the Committee. The shipbuilders secured nothing. Hume induced
Ministers to give way on some verbal points, and took three divisions
in vain protest against the measure. Place carried on the agitation to
the House of Lords, where Lord Rosslyn extracted the concession of a
right of appeal to Quarter Sessions, which was afterwards to prove of
some practical value.

The Act of 1825 (6 Geo. IV. c. 129)[192]--which became known among the
manufacturers as “Peel’s Act”--though it fell short of the measure
which Place and Hume had so skilfully piloted through Parliament the
year before, effected a real emancipation. The right of collective
bargaining, involving the power to withhold labour from the market by
concerted action, was for the first time expressly established. And
although many struggles remained to be fought before the legal freedom
of Trade Unionism was fully secured, no overt attempt has since been
made to render illegal this first condition of Trade Union action.[193]

It is a suggestive feature of this, as of other great reforms, that
the men whose faith in its principle, and whose indefatigable industry
and resolution carried it through, were the only ones who proved
altogether mistaken as to its practical consequences. If we read the
lesson of the century aright, the manufacturer was not wholly wrong
when he protested that liberty of combination must make the workers
the ultimate authority in industry, although his narrow fear as to the
driving away of capital and commercial skill and the reduction of the
nation to a dead level of anarchic pauperism were entirely contradicted
by subsequent developments. And the workman, to whom liberty to combine
opened up vistas of indefinite advancement of his class at the expense
of his oppressors, was, we now see, looking rightly forward, though he,
too, greatly miscalculated the distance before him, and overlooked many
arduous stages of the journey. But what is to be said of the forecasts
of Place and the Philosophic Radicals? “Combinations,” writes Place to
Sir Francis Burdett in 1825, “will soon cease to exist. Men have been
kept together for long periods only by the oppressions of the laws;
these being repealed, combinations will lose the matter which cements
them into masses, and they will fall to pieces. All will be as orderly
as even a Quaker could desire.... He knows nothing of the working
people who can suppose that, when left at liberty to act for themselves
without being driven into permanent associations by the oppression
of the laws, they will continue to contribute money for distant and
doubtful experiments, for uncertain and precarious benefits. If let
alone, combinations--excepting now and then, and for particular
purposes under peculiar circumstances--will cease to exist.”[194]

It is pleasant to feel that Place was right in regarding the repeal as
beneficial and worthy of his best efforts in its support; but in every
less general respect he and his allies were as wrong as it was possible
for them to be. The first disappointment, however, came to the workmen.
Over and over again they had found their demands for higher wages
parried only by the employers’ resort to the law, and they now saw
the way clear before them for an organised attack upon their masters’
profits. Trades which had not yet enjoyed permanent combinations began
to organise in the expectation of raising their wages to the level of
those of their more fortunate brethren. The Sheffield shop-assistants
combined to petition for early closing.[195] The cotton-weavers of
Lancashire met in delegate meeting at Manchester in August 1824 to
establish a permanent organisation to prevent reductions in prices
and to secure a uniform wage, the notice stating that it was by
their secret combinations that the tailors, joiners, and spinners had
succeeded in keeping up wages.[196] In the same month the Manchester
dyers turned out for an advance, and paraded the streets, which they
had placarded with their proposals.[197] The Glasgow calender-men
struck for a regular twelve hours’ day, and carried their point. The
success of the shipwrights on the north-east coast[198] induced the
London shipwrights to convert their “Committee for conducting the
Business in the North” into the “Shipwrights’ Provident Union of the
Port of London,” which existed continuously until its absorption in the
twentieth century by the national society dominating the trade.

“Such is the rage for union societies,” reports the _Sheffield Iris_ of
July 12, 1825, “that the sea apprentices in Sunderland have actually
had regular meetings every day last week on the moor, and have
resolved not to go on board their ships unless the owners will allow
them tea and sugar.” Local trade clubs expanded, like the Manchester
Steam-Engine Makers’ Society, into national organisations. In other
cases corresponding clubs developed into federal bodies. The object in
all these cases was the same. The preamble to the first rules of the
Friendly Society of Operative House Carpenters and Joiners of Great
Britain, which was established by a delegate meeting in London in
1827, states that, “for the amelioration of the evils attendant on our
trade, and the advancement of the rights and privileges of labour,” it
was considered “absolutely necessary that a firm compact of interests
should exist between the whole of the operative carpenters and joiners
throughout the United Kingdom of Great Britain.”[199]

Nor was it only in the multiplication of trade societies that the
expansion showed itself. A committee of delegates from the London
trades meeting during the summer of 1825 set on foot the _Trades
Newspaper and Mechanics’ Weekly Journal_, a sevenpenny stamped paper,
with the motto, “They helped every one his neighbour, and every one
said to his brother, ‘Be of good cheer.’”[200] A vigorous attempt
was made to promote Trade Union organisation in all industries, and
to bring to bear a body of instructed working-class opinion upon the
political situation of the day.[201]

The high hopes of which all this exultant activity was the symptom
were soon rudely dashed. The year 1825 closed with a financial panic
and widespread commercial disaster. The four years that followed were
years of contraction and distress. Hundreds of thousands of workmen in
all trades lost their employment, and wages were reduced all round. In
many manufacturing districts the operatives were kept from starvation
only by public subscriptions.[202] Strikes under these circumstances
ended invariably in disaster. A notable stand made by the Bradford
woolcombers and weavers in 1825 resulted in complete defeat and the
break-up of the Union.[203]

During the greater part of the following year all Lancashire was
convulsed by incessant strikes of coal-miners and textile workers
against the repeated reductions of wages to which the employers
resorted--strikes which were marred by serious disorder, the
destruction of many hundreds of looms, and severe repression by the
troops.[204]

At Kidderminster, three years later, practically the whole trade
of the town was brought to a standstill by the carpet-weavers’ six
months’ resistance to a reduction of 17 per cent in their wages[205]--a
resistance in which the operatives received the sympathy and support
of many who did not belong to their class. In the same year the
silk-weavers of London and other towns maintained an embittered
resistance to a further cut at wages.[206] The emancipated combinations
were no more able to resist reductions than the secret ones had been,
and in some instances the workmen again resorted to violence and
machine-breaking.

For a moment the repeal seemed, after all, to have done nothing but
prove the futility of mere sectional combination, and the working men
turned back again from Trade Union action to the larger aims and wider
character of the Radical and Socialistic agitations of the time, with
which, from 1829 to 1842, the Trade Union Movement became inextricably
entangled. This is the phase which furnishes the theme of the following
chapter.


FOOTNOTES:

[111] An elaborate account of this legislation will be found in _Labour
Legislation, Labour Movements, and Labour Leaders_, by G. Howell, 1902,
pp. 21-42.

[112] Act of Common Council, November 22, 1750: Hughson’s _London_,
p. 422. There is evidence of at least one other club of painters in
London dating back to the eighteenth century, the “Original Society of
Painters and Glaziers” existing in 1779, which afterwards became the
St. Martin’s Society of Painters and Glaziers (_Beehive_, October 24,
1863).

[113] This term was used to denote men who had not served a legal
apprenticeship. See “Rules and Regulations of the Journeymen Weavers,”
reprinted in Appendix No. 10 to Report on Combination Laws, 1825.

[114] The case of R. _v._ the Journeymen Tailors of Cambridge in 1721
(8 Mod. 10) is obscurely reported; and it is uncertain under what law
the men were convicted. See Wright’s _Law of Criminal Conspiracies and
Agreements_, p. 53.

[115] See the petitions from Devonshire towns, House of Commons
Journals, 1717, vol. xviii. p. 715, which, with others in subsequent
years, led to a Select Committee in 1726 (Journals, vol. xx. p. 648,
March 31, 1726).

[116] See, for instance, the Acts regulating the woollen industry, 12
Geo. I. c. 34 (1725); against embezzlement or fraud by shoemakers, 9
Geo. I. c. 27 (1729); relating to hatters, 22 Geo. II. c. 27 (1749);
to silkweavers, 17 Geo. III. c. 55 (1777); and to papermaking, 36 Geo.
III. c. 111 (1795). Whitbread declared in the House of Commons that
there were in 1800 no fewer than forty such statutes.

[117] _A Full and Accurate Report of the Proceedings of the
Petitioners, etc._ By One of the Petitioners (London, January 1800,
19 pp.). A rare pamphlet in the Goldsmiths’ Library at the University
of London. “It is remarkable,” says Mr. Justice Stephen, “that in the
parliamentary history for 1799 and 1800 there is no account of any
debate on these Acts, nor are they referred to in the Annual Register
for those years” (_History of the Criminal Law_, vol. iii. p. 208).
That the measure excited some interest in the textile districts may
be inferred from the publication at Leeds of a pamphlet entitled an
_Abstract of an Act to prevent Unlawful Combinations among Journeymen
to raise Wages, etc._ (Leeds, 1799), which is in the Manchester Public
Library (P. 1735). Lord Holland’s speeches against it are said to have
been reprinted for distribution in Manchester and Liverpool (Lady
Holland’s _Journal_, vol. ii. p. 102).

Mr. and Mrs. Hammond have now traced fairly full accounts of the
proceedings, elucidating the scanty references in the Journals of the
House of Commons and House of Lords for 1799-1800 by quotations from
the _Parliamentary Register_, the _Senator_, _The Times_, _London
Chronicle_, _True Briton_, and _Morning Post_. See _The Town Labourer_,
1917, ch. vii. pp. 111-42; also Cunningham, _Growth, etc._, 1903, pp.
732-7.

[118] _Times_, January 7, 1800; _Labour Legislation, Labour Movements,
and Labour Leaders_, by George Howell, 1902, p. 23.

[119] 39 and 40 George III. c. 90; see _Cunningham_, 1903, p. 634.

[120] 39 and 40 George III. c. 60; see, for all this, _The Town
Labourer, 1760-1832_, by J. L. and B. Hammond, 1917, ch. vii. A case in
which an attempt to put the arbitration clauses in force was baulked by
the employers was mentioned to the Committee on Artisans and Machinery,
1824, p. 603.

[121] _Combinations of Workmen: Substance of the Speech of Francis
Jeffrey at the Dinner to Joseph Hume, M.P., at Edinburgh, November 18,
1825_ (Edinburgh, 1825).

[122] _Sheffield Iris_, March 23, 1814.

[123] Place MSS. 27798--7. The Act of 1800 was scathingly denounced by
Cobbett in the _Political Register_, August 30, 1823.

[124] This is a constant subject of complaint by other employers.

[125] Introduction to the London Scale of Prices (in London Society of
Compositors’ volume).

[126] House of Commons Return, No. 135, of 1834.

[127] Advertisements in _Nottingham Journal_, 1794-1810.

[128] _Considerations addressed to the Journeymen Calico-Printers by
one of their Masters_ (Manchester, 1815); see also the Report of House
of Commons Committee on the Case of the Calico-Printers, 1806.

[129] Evidence before Committee on Artisans and Machinery, 1824, as
summarised in the _Report on Trade Societies_ (1860) of the Social
Science Association: see also _A Digest of the Evidence before the
Committee on Artizans and Machinery_, by George White, 1824.

[130] _The Edinburgh Book of Prices for Manufacturing Cabinet Work_
(Edinburgh, 1805, 126 pp.), “as mutually agreed upon by the Masters
and Journeymen.” In 1825 the journeymen prepared a _Supplement_,
which, after the masters had concurred in it, was published by the men
(Edinburgh, 1825). Both these are in the Goldsmiths’ Library at the
University of London.

[131] _A Few Remarks on the State of the Laws at present in Existence
for regulating Masters and Workpeople_, 1823 (142 pp.), p. 84.
Anonymous, but evidently by George White and Gravener Henson.

[132] See, for instance, _The Times_ from 17th to 25th of June 1819.

[133] _An Account of the Rise and Progress of the Dispute between the
Masters and Journeymen Printers exemplified in the Trial at large, with
Remarks Thereon_, 1799, a rare pamphlet, in the Goldsmiths’ Library at
the University of London.

[134] Place MSS. 27798--8; _Times_, November 9, 1810.

[135] Report in _Manchester Exchange Herald_, preserved in Place MSS.
27799--156.

[136] _Bookfinishers’ Friendly Circular_, 1845-51, pp. 5, 21.

[137] Bain’s _Merchant and Craft Gilds of Aberdeen_, p. 261. An earlier
combination of 1768 is also mentioned.

[138] R. _v._ Hammond and Webb, 2 Esp. 719; see the _Morning Chronicle_
report, preserved in Place MSS. 27799--29.

[139] _Star_, November 26, 1799.

[140] R. _v._ Connell and others, _Times_, July 10, 1819.

[141] R. _v._ Ferguson and Edge, 2 St. 489.

[142] _Sheffield Iris_, December 17, 1816. The men’s clubs often
existed under the cloak of friendly societies. In the overseers’ return
of sick clubs, made to Parliament in 1815, the following trade friendly
societies are included, many of these, at any rate, being essentially
Trade Unions:

Tailors, with 360 members, and £740 Braziers, with 664 members,
and 1768 Masons, with 693 members, and 1852 Scissorsmiths, with
550 members, and 1309 Filesmiths, with 260 members, and 600 United
Silversmiths, with 240 members, and 299 Cutlers, with 65 members, and
450 Grinders, with 283 members _Sheffield Iris_, 1851.


[143] _A Few Remarks, etc._, p. 86.

[144] Committee on Artisans and Machinery, 1824, p. 395.

[145] See the _Gorgon_ for January and February 1819.

[146] Second Report of Committee on Artisans and Machinery, 1824, p.
62. For other cases, see _The Town Labourer_, by J. L. and B. Hammond,
1917, pp. 130-33.

[147] Throughout the century it seems to have been customary in
most handicrafts for the artisan to be allowed the privilege of
apprenticing one son, usually, the eldest, free of charge. For other
boys, especially for the sons of parents not belonging to the trade, a
fee of £5 to £20 was exacted by the employer. The secretary of the Old
Amicable Society of Woolstaplers thirty years ago informed us that, as
his brother had already entered the trade, his father had to pay £100
for his indentures.

[148] To take, for instance, the cabinetmakers and millwrights. When
Lovett came to London in 1819 he found that he could not get employment
without joining the Union (_Life of William Lovett_, by himself).
The millwrights at the beginning of the century were so strongly
organised--this probably led to the engineering employers’ petition
in 1799 out of which the Combination Acts sprang--that when Fairbairn
(after being actually engaged at Rennie’s works) was refused admission
into their society, he was driven to tramp out of London in search
of work in a non-union district (_Life of Sir William Fairbairn_, by
himself, 1877, pp. 89, 92). For the last three-quarters of the century
a considerable proportion of the cabinetmakers and engineers employed
in London have been outside the Trade Union ranks.

[149] _Articles of the Society of Journeymen Brushmakers, held at the
sign of the Craven Head, Drury Lane_, 1806; Minutes, April 27, 1831.

[150] John Gast, a shipwright of Deptford, was evidently one of the
ablest Trade Unionists of his time. We first hear of him in 1802, when
there was a serious strike in London that attracted the attention
of the Government (Home Office Papers in Record Office, 65--1, July
and August 1802), as the author of a striking pamphlet entitled _A
Vindication of the Conduct of the Shipwrights during the late disputes
with their Employers_ (1802, 38 pp.). In 1818 he is found advocating
the first recorded proposal for a general workmen’s organisation,
as distinguished from separate trade clubs--to be described in our
next chapter; and his _Articles of the Philanthropic Hercules for
the Mutual Support of the Labouring Mechanics_, which were printed
in the _Gorgon_, attracted the attention of Francis Place, who
described him (Place MSS, 27819--23) as having “long been secretary
to the Shipwrights’ Club: he was a steady, respectable man. He had
formed several associations of working men, but had been unable
to keep up any one of them.” He became one of Place’s most useful
allies in the agitation for a repeal of the Combination Laws, and
when, in 1825, their re-enactment was threatened, his “committee of
trades delegates” was Place’s strongest support. Gast was the leading
spirit in the establishment of the _Trades Newspaper_ in July 1825,
and became chairman of the committee of management, as well as a
frequent contributor. In the same year he was actively engaged in
the shipwrights’ struggle for a “Book of Rates,” or definite list of
piecework prices, and the energy with which he counteracted the design
of the Board of Admiralty, of allowing the London shipbuilders to
borrow men from the Portsmouth Navy Yard, contributed mainly to the
success of the fight.

[151] Place MSS. 27800--195.

[152] Place MSS. 27798--11; and _The Town Labourer, 1760-1832_, by J.
L. and B. Hammond, 1917. Between 1798-1803 and 1804-16 the piecework
wages for handloom cotton weaving were reduced in some cases by 80 per
cent at a time of war prices (_Geschichte der englischen Lohnarbeit_,
by Gustav Steffen, Stuttgart, 1900, vol. ii. pp. 19-20). See _History
of Wages in the Cotton Trade during the Past Hundred Years_, by G. H.
Wood, 1910; and Cunningham, _Growth, etc._, 1903, p. 634.

[153] See on all these points the evidence given before the Committee
on Artisans and Machinery, 1824; especially that of Richmond.

[154] Letter to the local Major-General, June 15, 1812, in Home Office
Papers, 40--1.

[155] _Ibid._

[156] _The Town Labourer, 1760-1832_, by J. L. and B. Hammond, 1917,
p. 15. Whether Gravener Henson, the bobbin-net maker of Nottingham,
subsequently author of a _History of the Framework-Knitters_ (1831),
who had long been a leader of the Framework-knitters, was the “King
Lud” under whose orders the machine-breakers often purported to act,
is yet unproven (_Life of Francis Place_, by Prof. Graham Wallas,
revised edition, 1918). The Report of the House of Commons Committee
on the Framework-knitters’ petitions (1812) affords evidence of the
all-pervading misery of the time. For other glimpses of the Luddite
organisation, see _An Appeal to the Public, containing an account of
services rendered during the disturbances in the North of England in
the year 1812_, by Francis Raynes, 1817 (in Home Office Papers, 40);
_Report of Proceedings under Commission of Oyer and Terminer, January
2 to 12, 1813, at York_, by J. and W. B. Gurney, 1813; _Digest of
Evidence of Committee on Artizans and Machinery_, by George White, 1824
(see p. 36, Richmond’s evidence as to the appeals of the Luddites to
the Glasgow cotton-spinners); and _Annual Register_, 1812.

[157] Evidence of a colliery engineer in the Newcastle district before
Committee on Combination Laws, 1825; summarised in _Report on Trade
Societies_, 1860, by Social Science Association. See also _A Voice from
the Coalmines_, 1825; _A Candid Appeal to the Coalowners and Viewers
of Collieries on the Tyne and Wear, including a copy of the Collier’s
Bond, with Animadversions thereon and a series of proposed Amendments,
from the Committee of the Colliers’ United Association_, 1826 (in Home
Office Papers, H.O. 40 (19), with Lord Londonderry’s letter of February
28, 1826); _The Miners of Northumberland and Durham_, by Richard Fynes,
pp. 12-16 (1873); _An Earnest Address ... on behalf of the Pitmen_, by
W. Scott, 1831.

[158] See Appendix to Report of Select Committee on Combinations, 1825.

[159] R. _v._ Yates and Others, Liverpool Sessions, August 10, 1823.
See newspaper report preserved in Place MSS. 27804--154.

[160] The entries in this old cash-book are of some interest:

May 29, 1810 Paid ye Brushmakers £15 0 0 Lent ye Brushmakers 10 0 0
Paid ye Friziers 20 0 0 June 26, 1810 Paid ye Silversmiths 10 0 0
Expenses to Pipemakers 0 4 10 July 24, 1810 Paid ye Braziers 10 10
0 Paid ye Bookbinders 10 0 0 Paid ye Curriers 10 0 0 Aug. 21, 1810
Lent ye Bit and Spurmakers 5 0 0 Lent ye Scalemakers 5 0 0 Paid ye
Leathergrounders 5 0 0 Oct. 26, 1810 Paid ye Tinplate Workers 30 0 0
Dec. 11, 1810 Lent ye Ropemakers 10 0 0 May 30, 1811 Received of Scale
Beam-makers 5 0 0 June 25, 1811 Expenses with Papermakers 0 12 6 July
20, 1812 Lent ye Sadlers 10 0 0 Oct. 12, 1812 Paid to Millwrights 50 0
0 Dec. 7, 1812 Borrowed from the Musical Instrument-makers 2 0 0


[161] Home Office Papers, 40--18, March 31, 1823.

[162] See report in the _Manchester Exchange Herald_, about 1818,
preserved in Place MSS. 27799--156.

[163] See, for instance, the witnesses delegated by the Glasgow and
Manchester trades to the Select Committee on Petitions of Artisans,
etc., report of June 13, 1811; or the joint action of the Yorkshire and
West of England Woollen-workers given in evidence before the Select
Committee of 1806. These cases are typical of many others.

[164] Printed handbill signed by thirty-two persons, issued in the
summer of 1816, preserved in Place MSS. 27799--141. Place has also
preserved the rejoinder of the workmen, which is unsigned, as he notes,
for fear of prosecution.

[165] _The Stocking Makers’ Monitor_, January 1818; _A few Remarks on
the State of the Law, etc._, by White and Henson, p. 88; _An Appeal
to the Public on the subject of the Framework-Knitters’ Fund_, by the
Rev. Robert Hall (Leicester, 1819); Cobbett’s _Weekly Register_, vol.
xxxix.; _A Reply to the Principal Objections advanced by Cobbett and
Others_, by the Rev. Robert Hall (Leicester, 1821); _Digest of Evidence
before the Committee on Artizans and Machinery_, by George White, 1824.

[166] _Proceedings at a public Meeting of the Inhabitants of the
Township of Sheffield, held at the Town Hall, March 15, 1820_
(Sheffield, 1820, 16 pp.).

[167] _Times_, August 5, 1819.

[168] Evidence of Sir William Rae, Bart., before Select Committee on
Artisans and Machinery, 1824, p. 486.

[169] An admirable biography has now been written, _The Life of Francis
Place, 1771-1854_, by Prof. Graham Wallas; first edition, 1898; revised
edition, 1918.

[170] Place MSS. 27798--8, 12, etc.; _Times_, November 9, 1810; _The
Tailoring Trade_, by F. W. Galton, 1896, pp. 110-11.

[171] See the petitions of the Master Manufacturers of Glasgow,
Lancashire, and Nottinghamshire, in the Home Office Papers (42--141,
149, 150, 195, etc.).

[172] When Place in 1824 urged the “Committee of Engine Silk-weavers”
of Spitalfields to petition for a repeal of the Combination Laws, the
meeting “Resolved, that protected as we have been for years under the
salutary laws and wisdom of the Legislature, and being completely
unapprehensive of any sort of combination on our part, we cannot
therefore take any sort of notice of the invitation held out by Mr.
Place.” When this resolution was put by the chairman, “an unanimous
burst of applause followed, with a multitude of voices exclaiming, ‘The
law, cling to the law, it will protect us!’” Place MSS. 27800--52;
_Morning Chronicle_, February 9, 1824.

[173] The volumes for 1818-19 are in the British Museum.

[174] The story has now been well told in _The Life of Francis Place_,
by Prof. Graham Wallas, revised edition, 1918, ch. viii.; and in _The
Town Labourer_, by J. L. and B. Hammond, 1917, ch. vii. A few other
details will be found in _Digest of Evidence before the Committee
on Artisans and Machinery_, by George White, 1824, and in _Labour
Legislation, Labour Movements, and Labour Leaders_, by G. Howell, 1902,
pp. 43-57.

[175] In 1823 George White, a “clerk of committees” of the House
of Commons, had formed an alliance with Gravener Henson, the
bobbin-net maker of Nottingham, who had long been a leader of the
framework-knitters’ combinations, to whom reference has been made in
preceding pages. Together they prepared an elaborate Bill repealing
all the Combination Acts, and substituting a complicated machinery
for regulating piecework and settling industrial disputes. Some of
these proposals were meritorious anticipations of subsequent factory
legislation; but the time was not ripe for such measures. This Bill,
promptly introduced by Peter Moore, the member for Coventry, had the
effect of scaring some timid legislators, and especially alarming the
Front Bench. Hume was at a loss to know how to act; but Place, in
a letter displaying great political sagacity, advised him to baulk
the rival Bill by putting its author on the Committee of Inquiry,
explaining that “Moore is not a man to be put aside. The only way to
put him down is to let him talk his nonsense in the Committee, where,
being outvoted, he will be less of an annoyance in the House.” See
Place MSS. 27798--12.

[176] Place MSS. 27798--30.

[177] This attracted the attention of the Home Secretary (Home Office
Papers, 40--18).

[178] Place offered to act as Hume’s “assistant”; but the members of
the Committee, whose suspicions had been aroused, refused to permit him
to remain in the room, on the double ground that he was not a member of
the House, nor even a gentleman!

[179] Place MSS. 27798--22.

[180] _Ibid._ 27798--23.

[181] Place MS. 27798--22.

[182] The Act was 5 George IV. c. 95. The question of the exportation
of machinery was deferred until the next session.

[183] Letter in the _Manchester Gazette_, preserved in the Place MSS.
27801--214.

[184] MS. Report of Nassau Senior to Lord Melbourne on Trade
Combinations (1831; unpublished; in Home Office Library).

[185] _Sheffield Iris_, April 2, 1825.

[186] _Sheffield Mercury_, October 8, 1825; see the _Manchester
Guardian_ for August 1824 to a similar effect.

[187] Later in the year Lord Liverpool, the Prime Minister, and Lord
Eldon, the Lord Chancellor, protested in debate that they had been
quite unaware of the passing of the Act, and that they would never have
assented to it.

[188] The _Annual Register_ for 1825 gives a fuller report of
Huskisson’s speech than Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates. Further
particulars are supplied in George White’s _Abstract of the Act
repealing the Laws against Combinations of Workmen_ (1824); in Place’s
_Observations on Mr. Huskisson’s Speech on the Law relating to
Combinations of Workmen_, by F. P. (1825, 32 pp.); in Wallas’s _Life
of Francis Place_, revised edition, 1918, ch. viii.; in Hammond’s _The
Town Labourer_, ch. vii.; and in Howell’s _Labour Legislation, Labour
Movements, and Labour Leaders_, pp. 51-7.

[189] This included a provision to forbid the subscription of any funds
to a trade or other association, unless some magistrate approved its
objects and became its treasurer.

[190] Place MSS. 27803--299.

[191] _Ibid._ 27803--212.

[192] Home Office Papers, letter of January 3, 1832 (H.O. 40--30).

[193] It is pleasant to record that some of the workmen expressed their
gratitude for Francis Place’s indefatigable services. “Soon after the
proceedings in 1825 were closed,” he writes, “the seamen of the Tyne
and Wear sent me a handsome silver vase, paid for by a penny-a-week
subscription; and the cutlers of Sheffield sent me an incomparable set
of knives and forks in a case” (Place MSS. 27798--66).

[194] June 25, 1825. _Ibid._ 27798--57.

[195] _Sheffield Iris_, September 27, 1825.

[196] Handbill preserved in Place MSS. 27803--255.

[197] _Manchester Guardian_, August 7, 1824; see also _On Combinations
of Trades_ (1830).

[198] This is expressly stated in the preamble to the rules adopted at
the meeting on August 16, 1824, and recorded in the first minute-book.

[199] This society afterwards developed into the existing General Union
of Carpenters and Joiners of Great Britain.

[200] Two rival journals, _The Journeyman’s and Artisan’s London
and Provincial Chronicle_, and _The Mechanic’s Newspaper and Trade
Journal_, were also started, but soon expired.

[201] The _Trades Newspaper_ was managed by a committee of eleven
delegates from different trades, of which John Gast was chairman, and
was edited, at first by Mr. Baines, son of the proprietor of the _Leeds
Mercury_, and afterwards by a Mr. Anderson. _The Laws and Regulations
of the Trades Newspaper_ (1825, 12 pp.) are preserved in the Place MSS.
27803--414. The issues from July 17, 1825, to its amalgamation with
_The Trades Free Press_ in 1828, are in the British Museum.

[202] £232,000 was raised by one committee alone between 1826 and 1829.
See _Report of the Committee appointed at a Public Meeting at the City
of London Tavern. May 2, 1826, to relieve the Manufacturers_, by W. H.
Hyett, 1829.

[203] _Wool and Wool-combing_, by Burnley, p. 169.

[204] Home Office Papers, 40--20, 21, etc.; _Annual Register_, 1826,
pp. 63, 70, 111, 128; Walpole’s _History of England_, vol. ii. p. 141.

[205] _A Letter to the Carpet Manufacturers of Kidderminster_, by the
Rev. H. Price (1828, 16 pp.); _A Letter to the Rev. H. Price, upon the
Tendency of Certain Publications of his_, by Oppidanus, 1828; and _A
Verbatim Report of the Trial of the Rev. Humphrey Price upon a Criminal
Information by the Kidderminster Carpet Manufacturers for Alleged
Inflammatory Publications during the Turn-out of the Weavers_, 1829.

[206] _Resolutions of the Meeting of Journeymen Broad Silk Weavers at
Spitalfields, April 16, 1829_; in Home Office Papers, 40--23, 24. See,
for this period, Cunningham’s _Growth of English Industry and Commerce
in Modern Times_, 1903, pp. 759-762; and also _The Skilled Labourer_,
by J. L. and B. Hammond, 1919, published too late for us to make use of
its interesting descriptions of the principal trades.




CHAPTER III

THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD

[1829-1842]


So far we have been mainly concerned with societies formed in
particular trades, nearly always confined to particular localities,
and known as institutions, associations, trade clubs, trade societies,
unions, and union societies. We have by anticipation applied the term
Trade Union to them in its modern sense; but in no case that we have
discovered did they call themselves so. It is in the leading articles
of the newspapers of 1830-4 that we first come upon references to
some great Power of Darkness vaguely described as “the Trades Union.”
We find, moreover, that there was in that day, as there has been
repeatedly since, an Old Unionism and a New Unionism, and that “the
Trades Union” represented the New Unionism, and the trade club, or
Trade Union, as we have called it, the Old. The distinction between a
Trade Union and a Trades Union is exactly that which the names imply.
A Trade Union is a combination of the members of one trade; a Trades
Union is a combination of different trades. “_The_ Trades Union,” the
bugbear of the _Times_ in 1834, means the ideal at which the Trades
Unionists aimed: that is, a complete union of all the workers in the
country in a single national Trades Union. The peculiar significance
of Trades Union as distinguished from Trade Union must be carefully
borne in mind throughout this chapter, as it has passed out of use and
occurs now only as a literary blunder. Our present unions of workers
in different though related trades are usually called Amalgamations or
Federations. But both Amalgamations and Federations, being definitely
limited to similar or related and interdependent trades, are in idea
essentially Trade Unions. The distinctive connotation of the term
Trades Union was the ideal of complete solidarity of all wage-workers
in “One Big Union”--that is to say, a single “universal” organisation.
It is the attempt, on the part of the Trade Union leaders, to form not
only national societies of particular trades, but also to include all
manual workers in one comprehensive organisation, that constitutes the
New Unionism of 1829-34.[207]

We are not altogether without information as to the genesis of the
idea. The first attempt at a General Trades Union of which we have
any record is that of the “Philanthropic Society” or “Philanthropic
Hercules” of 1818. This we hear of almost simultaneously in Manchester,
the Potteries and London, though it seems to have originated in
first-named town. A meeting of workmen of various trades, held at
Manchester in August 1818, convinced of the impotence of isolated
Trade Clubs, sought to establish a society on a federal basis, each
constituent trade raising its own funds and separately moving for
advances or resisting reductions; but pledged first to consult the
committee and the other trades, and promised the support of all,
both in approved trade movements and in case of legal prosecution or
oppression. A committee of eleven was to be chosen by ballot, one-third
retiring monthly by rotation; and was to be assisted by a similar local
organisation in each town.[208] How far the “General Union,” as the
“Philanthropic Society” seems also to have been called, got under way
in Lancashire or Staffordshire remains uncertain; but in London the
idea was taken up by one of the ablest Trade Unionists of the time--the
shipwright John Gast, whom we have already mentioned as an ally of
Francis Place, who became president and called upon “the general body
of mechanics” to subscribe a penny per week to a central fund for the
defence of their common interests.[209]

Whether anything came of the attempts at a General Union in 1818-19 we
have not discovered, but in all probability the project immediately
failed. Seven years later a similar effort met with no greater
success. “In 1826,” as we incidentally learn from a subsequent Labour
journal,[210] “a Trades Union was formed in Manchester, which extended
slightly to some of the surrounding districts, and embraced several
trades in each; but it expired before it was so much as known a large
majority of the operatives in the neighbourhood.”

What was aimed at is clear enough. It was being recommended to the
workmen by some of their intellectual advisers. An able pamphlet of
1827 tells them that “Against the competition of the underpaid of
surrounding trades, the ready remedy is a central union of all the
general unions of all the trades of the country. The remuneration of
all the different branches of artisans and mechanics in the country
might then be fixed at those rates which would leave such an equalised
remuneration to all as would take away any temptation from those in one
branch to transfer their skill in order to undersell the labour of the
well-remunerated in another branch: the Central Union fund being always
ready to assist the unemployed in any particular branch, when their own
local and general funds were exhausted; provided always their claims to
support were by the Central Union deemed to be just.”[211]

Experience seems to show that national organisation of particular
trades must precede the formation of any General Trades Union; and
it was in this way that the project now took form. In 1829 we see
renewed attempts at national organisation, in which the Lancashire
and Yorkshire textile and building operatives were pioneers. The year
1829, closing the long depression of trade which began in the autumn
of 1825, after the repeal of the Combination Laws, witnessed the
establishment of important national Unions in both industries, but that
of the Cotton-spinners claims precedence in respect of its more rapid
development.

The Cotton-spinners’ trade clubs of Lancashire date apparently from
1792, and they spread, within a generation, to thirty or forty towns,
remaining always strictly local organisations. In the early years of
the nineteenth century attempts had been made by the Glasgow Spinners
to unite the Lancashire and Scottish organisations in a national
association; but these attempts had not resulted in more than temporary
alliances in particular emergencies. The rapid improvement of spinning
machinery, and the enterprise of the Lancashire millowners, were, at
the date of the repeal of the Combination Laws, shifting the centre
of the trade from Glasgow to Manchester; and it was the Lancashire
Cotton-spinners who now took the lead in trade matters. The failure
of a disastrous six months’ strike in 1829 at Hyde, near Manchester,
led to the conviction that no local Union could succeed against a
combination of employers; and the spinners’ societies of England,
Scotland, and Ireland were therefore invited to send delegates to a
conference to be held at Ramsay, in the Isle of Man, in the month of
December 1829.

This delegate meeting, of which there is an excellent report,[212]
lasted for nearly a week. The proceedings were of a remarkably
temperate character, the discussions turning chiefly on the relative
advantages of one supreme executive to be established at Manchester,
and three co-equal national executives for England, Scotland, and
Ireland. No secrecy was attempted. John Doherty,[213] secretary
and leader of the Manchester Cotton-spinners, advocated a central
executive; while Thomas Foster (a man of independent means who
attended the conference at his own expense) favoured a scheme of home
rule. Eventually a “Grand General Union of the United Kingdom” was
established, subject to an annual delegate meeting and three national
committees. The union was to include all male spinners and piecers, the
women and girls being urged to form separate organisations, which were
to receive all the aid of the whole confederation in supporting them
to obtain “men’s prices.” The union was to promote local action for a
further legislative restriction of the hours of labour, to apply to all
persons under 21 years of age. Its income consisted of a contribution
of a penny per week per member, to be levied in addition to the
contribution to the local society. Doherty was general secretary, and
Foster and a certain Patrick McGowan were appointed to organise the
spinners throughout the United Kingdom.

The Boroughreeve and Constables of Manchester, on May 26, 1830,
wrote in alarm to Sir Robert Peel: “The combination of workmen, long
acknowledged a great evil, and one most difficult to counteract, has
recently assumed so formidable and systematic a shape in this district
that we feel it our duty to lay before you some of its most alarming
features.... A committee of delegates from the operative spinners of
the three Kingdoms have established an annual assembly in the Isle
of Man to direct the proceedings of the general body towards their
employers, the orders for which they promulgate to their respective
districts and subcommittees. To these orders the most implicit
deference is shown; and a weekly levy or rent of one penny per head
on each operative is cheerfully paid. This produces a large sum,
and is a powerful engine, and principally to support those who have
turned out against their employers, agreeable to the orders of the
committee, at the rate of ten shillings per week for each person. The
plan of a general turnout having been found to be impolitic, they have
employed it in detail, against particular individuals or districts,
who, attacked thus singly, are frequently compelled to submit to their
terms rather than to the ruin which would ensue to many by allowing
their machinery (in which their whole capital is invested) to stand
idle.”[214]

Whether this Cotton-spinners’ Federation, as we should call it, became
really representative of the three kingdoms does not appear. A second
general delegate meeting was held at Manchester in December 1830,
which intervened in the great spinners’ strike then in progress at
Ashton-under-Lyne. At this conference the constitution of 1829 was
re-enacted with some alterations. The three national executives were
apparently replaced by an executive council of three members elected
by the Manchester Society, to be reinforced at its monthly meetings by
two delegates chosen in turn by each of the neighbouring districts.
A general delegate meeting seems also to have been held, attended by
one delegate from each of the couple of scores of towns in which there
were local clubs.[215] Foster was appointed general secretary; and a
committee was ordered to draw up a general list of prices, for which
purpose one member in each mill was directed to send up a copy of the
list by which he was paid. Although another delegate meeting of this
“Grand General Union” was fixed for Whit Monday 1831 at Liverpool, no
further record of its existence can be traced. It is probable that the
attempt to include Scotland and Ireland proved a failure, and that the
union had dwindled into a federation of Lancashire societies, mainly
preoccupied in securing a legislative restriction of the hours of
labour.[216]

But the National Union of Cotton-spinners prepared the way for the
more ambitious project of the Trades Union. Doherty, who seems to have
resigned his official connection with the Cotton-spinners’ Union,
conceived the idea of a National Association, not of one trade alone,
but of all classes of wage-earners. Already in May 1829 we find him,
as Secretary of the Manchester Cotton-spinners, writing to acknowledge
a gift of ten pounds from the Liverpool Sailmakers, and expressing “a
hope that our joint efforts may eventually lead to a Grand General
Union of all trades throughout the United Kingdom.”[217] At his
instigation a meeting of delegates from twenty organised trades was
held at Manchester in February 1830, which ended in the establishment,
five months later, of the National Association for the Protection of
Labour. The express object of this society was to resist reductions,
but not to strike for advances. In an eloquent address to working
men of all trades, the new Association appealed to them to unite for
their own protection and in order to maintain “the harmony of society”
which is destroyed by their subjection. How is it, the Association
asks, that whilst everything else increases--knowledge, wealth,
civil and religious liberty, churches, madhouses, and prisons--the
circumstances of the working man become ever worse? “He, the sole
producer of food and raiment, is, it appears, destined to sink whilst
others rise.” To prevent this evil the Association is formed.[218]
Its constitution appears to have been largely borrowed from that
of the contemporary Cotton-spinners, which it resembled in being a
combination, not of directly enlisted individuals, but of existing
separate societies, each of which paid an entrance fee of a pound,
together with a shilling for each of its members, and contributed at
the rate of a penny per week per head of its membership. Doherty was
the first secretary, and the Association appears very soon to have
enrolled about 150 separate Unions, mostly in Lancashire, Cheshire,
Derby, Nottingham, and Leicester. The trades which joined were mainly
connected with the various textile industries--the cotton-spinners,
hosiery-workers, calico-printers, and silk-weavers taking a leading
part. The Association also included numerous societies of mechanics,
moulders, black-smiths, and many miscellaneous trades. The building
trades were scarcely represented--a fact to be accounted for by the
contemporary existence of the Builders’ Union hereafter described.
The list[219] of the receipts of the Association for the first nine
months of its existence includes payments amounting to £1866, a sum
which indicates a membership of between 10,000 and 20,000, spread over
the five counties already mentioned. A vigorous propaganda was carried
on throughout the northern and midland counties by its officials,
who succeeded in establishing a weekly paper, the _United Trades
Co-operative Journal_, which was presently brought to an end by the
intervention of the Commissioners of Stamps, who insisted on each
number bearing a fourpenny stamp.[220] Undeterred by this failure, the
committee undertook the more serious task of starting a sevenpenny
stamped weekly, and requested Francis Place to become the treasurer
of an accumulated fund. “The subscription,” writes Place to John Cam
Hobhouse, December 5, 1830, “extends from Birmingham to the Clyde; the
committee sits at Manchester; and the money collected amounts to about
£3000, and will, they tell me, shortly be as much as £5000, with which
sum, when raised, they propose to commence a weekly newspaper to be
called the _Voice of the People_.” Accordingly in January 1831 appeared
the first number of what proved to be an excellent weekly journal, the
object of which was declared to be “to unite the productive classes of
the community in one common bond of union.” Besides full weekly reports
of the committee meetings of the National Association at Manchester and
Nottingham, this newspaper, ably edited by John Doherty, gave great
attention to Radical politics, including the Repeal of the Union with
Ireland, and the progress of revolution on the Continent.[221]

From the reports published in the _Voice of the People_ we gather
that the first important action of the Association was in connection
with the almost continuous strikes of the cotton-spinners at
Ashton-under-Lyne, which flamed up into a sustained conflict on a large
scale, during which Ashton, a young millowner, was murdered by some
unknown person in the winter of 1830-31, in resistance to a new list
of prices arbitrarily imposed by the Association of Master Spinners in
Ashton, Dukinfield, and Stalybridge.[222] Considerable sums were raised
by way of levy for the support of the strike, the Nottingham trades
subscribing liberally. But the Association soon experienced a check. In
February 1831 a new secretary decamped with £100. This led a delegate
meeting at Nottingham, in April 1831, to decree that each Union should
retain in hand the money contributed by its own members. But the usual
failings of unions of various trades quickly showed themselves. The
refusal of the Lancashire branches to support the great Nottingham
strike which immediately ensued led to the defection of the Nottingham
members. Nevertheless the Association was spreading over new ground.
We hear of delegates from Lancashire inducing thousands of colliers
in Derbyshire to join, whilst other trades, and even the agricultural
labourers, were talking about it.[223] At the end of April a
delegate meeting at Bolton, representing nine thousand coalminers
of Staffordshire, Yorkshire, Cheshire, and Wales, resolved to join.
The Belfast trades applied for affiliation. In Leeds nine thousand
members were enrolled, chiefly among the woollen-workers. Missionaries
were sent to organise the Staffordshire potters; and a National
Potters’ Union, extending throughout the country, was established
and affiliated. All this activity lends a certain credibility to the
assertion, made in various quarters, that the Association numbered one
hundred thousand members, and that the _Voice of the People_, published
at 7d. weekly, enjoyed the then enormous circulation of thirty thousand.

Here at last we have substance given to the formidable idea of “the
Trades Union.” It was soon worked up by the newspapers to a pitch at
which it alarmed the employers, dismally excited the imaginations of
the middle class, and compelled the attention of the Government. But
there was no cause for apprehension. Lack of funds made the Association
little more than a name. Practically no trade action is reported in
such numbers of its organ as are still extant. The business of the
Manchester Committee seems to have been confined to the promotion of
the “Short Time Bill.” On April 23, 1831, at the general meeting of
the Association, then designated the Lancashire Trades Unions, it was
resolved to prepare petitions in favour of extending this measure to
all trades and all classes of workers. Active support was given in
the meantime to Mr. Sadler’s Factory Bill. Towards the end of the
year we suddenly lose all trace of the National Association for the
Protection of Labour, as far as Manchester is concerned. “After it had
extended about a hundred miles round this town,” writes a working-class
newspaper of 1832, “a fatality came upon it that almost threatened
its extinction.... But though it declined in Manchester it spread and
flourished in other places; and we rejoice to say that the resolute
example set by Yorkshire and other places is likely once more to revive
the drooping energies of those trades who had the honour of originating
and establishing the Association.”[224]

What the fatality was that extinguished the Association in Manchester
is not stated; but Doherty, to whose organising ability its initial
success had been due, evidently quarrelled with the executive
committee, and the _Voice of the People_ ceased to appear. In its place
we find Doherty issuing, from January 1832, the _Poor Man’s Advocate_,
and vainly striving, in face of the “spirit” of “jealousy and faction,”
to build up the Yorkshire branches of the Association into a national
organisation, with its headquarters in London. After the middle of 1832
we hear no more, either of the Association itself or of Doherty’s more
ambitious projects concerning it.[225]

The place of the National Association was soon filled by other
contemporary general trade societies, of which the first and most
important was the Builders’ Union, or the General Trades Union, as it
was sometimes termed. It consisted of the separate organisations of the
seven building trades, viz. joiners, masons, bricklayers, plasterers,
plumbers, painters, and builders’ labourers, and is, so far as we know,
the solitary example, prior to the present century, in the history
of those trades of a federal union embracing all classes of building
operatives, and purporting to extend over the whole country.[226]

The Grand Rules of the Builders’ Union set forth an elaborate
constitution in which it was attempted to combine a local and trade
autonomy of separate lodges with a centralised authority for defensive
and aggressive purposes. The rules inform us that “the object of this
society shall be to advance and equalise the price of labour in every
branch of the trade we admit into this society.” Each lodge shall be
“governed by its own password and sign, masons to themselves, and
joiners to themselves, and so on;” and it is ordered that “no lodge be
opened by any other lodge that is not the same trade of that lodge
that, opens them, that masons open masons, and joiners open joiners,
and so on;” moreover, “no other member [is] to visit a lodge that is
not the same trade unless he is particularly requested.” Each trade had
its own bye-laws; but these were subject to the general rules adopted
at an annual delegate meeting. This annual conference of the “Grand
Lodge Delegates,” better known as the “Builders’ Parliament,” consisted
of one representative of each lodge, and was the supreme legislative
authority, altering rules, deciding on general questions of policy, and
electing the president and other officials. The local lodges, though
directly represented at the annual meetings, had had apparently little
connection in the interim with the seat of government. The society
was divided into geographical districts, the lodges in each district
sending delegates to quarterly district meetings, which elected a
grand master, deputy grand master, and corresponding secretary for
the district, and decided which should be the “divisional lodge,”
or district executive centre. These divisional lodges or provincial
centres were, according to the rules, to serve in turn as the grand
lodge or executive centre for the whole society. Whether the members
of the general committee were chosen by the general lodge or by the
whole society is not clear; but they formed, with the president and
general corresponding secretary, the national executive. The expenses
of this executive and of the annual delegate meeting were levied on
the whole society, each lodge sending monthly returns of its members
and a summary of its finances to the general secretary. The main
business of the national executive was to determine the trade policy
of the Associations, and to grant or withhold permission to strike.
As no mention is made of friendly benefits, we may conclude that the
Builders’ Union, like most of the national or general Unions of this
militant time, confined itself exclusively to defending its members
against their employers.

The operative builders did not rest content with an elaborate
constitution and code. There was also a ritual. The Stonemasons’
Society has preserved among its records a MS. copy of a “Making Parts
Book,” ordered to be used by all lodges of the Builders’ Union on the
admission of members. Under the Combination Laws oaths of secrecy and
obedience were customary in the more secret and turbulent Trade Unions,
notably that of the Glasgow Cotton-spinners and the Northumberland
Miners. The custom survived the repeal; and admission to the Builders’
Union involved a lengthy ceremony conducted by the officers of the
lodge--the “outside and inside tylers,” the “warden,” the “president,”
“secretary,” and “principal conductor”--and taken part in by the
candidates and the members of the lodge. Besides the opening prayer,
and religious hymns sung at intervals, these “initiation parts”
consisted of questions and responses by the _dramatis personæ_ in
quaint doggerel, and were brought to a close by the new members taking
a solemn oath of loyalty and secrecy. Officers clothed in surplices,
inner chambers into which the candidates were admitted blindfolded,
a skeleton, drawn sword, battle-axes, and other mystic “properties”
enhanced the sensational solemnity of this fantastic performance.[227]
Ceremonies of this kind, including what were described to the Home
Office as “oaths of a most execrable nature,”[228] were adopted by
all the national and general Unions of the time: thus we find items
for “washing surplices” appearing in the accounts of various lodges
of contemporary societies. Although in the majority of cases the
ritual was no doubt as harmless as that of the Freemasons or the
Oddfellows, yet the excitement and sensation of the proceedings may
have predisposed lightheaded fanatical members, in times of industrial
conflict, to violent acts in the interest of the Association. At all
events, the references to its mock terrors in the capitalist press seem
to have effectually scared the governing classes.

The first years of the Builders’ Union, apparently, were devoted to
organisation. During 1832 it rapidly spread through the Lancashire and
Midland towns; and at the beginning of the following year a combined
attack was made upon the Liverpool employers. The ostensible grievance
of the men was the interference of the “contractor,” who, supplanting
the master mason, master carpenter, etc., undertook the management of
all building operations. A placard issued by the Liverpool Painters
announces that they have joined “the General Union of the Artisans
employed in the process of building,” in order to put down “that
baneful, unjust, and ruinous system of monopolising the hard-earned
profits of another man’s business, called ‘contracting,’” Naturally,
the little masters were not friendly to the contracting system; and
most of them agreed with the men’s demand that its introduction should
be resisted. Encouraged by this support, the several branches of the
building trade in Liverpool simultaneously sent in identical claims
for a uniform rate of wages for each class of operatives, a limitation
of apprentices, the prohibition of machinery and piecework, and other
requirements special to each branch of the trade. These demands were
communicated to the employers in letters couched in dictatorial and
even insulting terms, and were coupled with a claim to be paid wages
for any time they might lose by striking to enforce their orders. “We
consider,” said one of these letters, “that as you have not treated
our rules with that deference you ought to have done, we consider
you highly culpable and deserving of being severely chastised.” And
“further,” says another, “that each and every one in such strike shall
be paid by you the sum of four shillings per day for every day you
refuse to comply.”[229]

This sort of language brought the employers of all classes into line.
At a meeting held in June 1833 they decided not only to refuse all
the men’s demands, but to make a deliberate attempt to extinguish
the Union. For this purpose they publicly declared that henceforth
no man need apply for work unless he was prepared to sign a formal
renunciation of the Trades Union and all its works. The insistence
on this formal renunciation, henceforth to be famous in Trade Union
records as the “presentation of the document,” exasperated the
Builders’ Union. The Liverpool demands were repeated in Manchester,
where the employers adopted the same tactics as at Liverpool.[230]

In the very heat of the battle (September 1833) the Builders’ Union
held its annual delegate meeting at Manchester. It lasted six days;
cost, it is said, over £3000; and was attended by two hundred and
seventy delegates, representing thirty thousand operatives. This
session of the “Builders’ Parliament” attracted universal attention.
Robert Owen addressed the Conference at great length, confiding to it
his “great secret” “that labour is the source of all wealth,” and that
wealth can be retained in the hands of the producers by a universal
compact among the productive classes. It was decided, perhaps under his
influence, to build central offices at Birmingham, which should also
serve as an educational establishment. The design for this “Builders’
Gild Hall,” as it was termed, was made by Hansom, an architect who,
as an enthusiastic disciple of Owen, threw himself heartily into the
strike that was proceeding also in this town. It included, on paper,
a lecture-hall and various schoolrooms for the children of members.
The foundation-stone was laid with great ceremony on December 5, 1833,
when the Birmingham trades marched in procession to the site, and
enthusiastic speeches were made.[231]

We learn from the _Pioneer, or Trades Union Magazine_ (an unstamped
penny weekly newspaper published at first at Birmingham, at that time
the organ of the Builders’ Union[232]), the ardent faith and the vast
pretensions of these New Unionists. “A union founded on right and just
principles,” wrote the editor in the first number, “is all that is now
required to put poverty and the fear of it for ever out of society.”
“The vaunted power of capital will now be put to the test: we shall
soon discover its worthlessness when deprived of your labour. Labour
prolific of wealth will readily command the purchase of the soil; and
at a very early period we shall find the idle possessor compelled to
ask of you to release him from his worthless holding.” Elaborate plans
were propounded for the undertaking of all the building of the country
by a Grand National Gild of Builders: each lodge to elect a foreman;
and the foremen to elect a general superintendent. The disappointment
of these high hopes was rude and rapid. The Lancashire societies
demurred to the centralisation which had been voted by the delegate
meeting in September at the instigation of the Midland societies. Two
great strikes at Liverpool and Manchester ended towards the close of
the year in total failure. The Builders’ Gild Hall was abandoned;[233]
and the _Pioneer_ moved to London, where it became the organ of another
body, the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union, with which the
south country and metropolitan branches of the building trade had
already preferred to affiliate themselves. Nevertheless the Builders’
Union retained its hold upon the northern counties during the early
months of 1834, and held another “parliament” at Birmingham in April,
at which Scotch and Irish representatives were present.[234]

The aggressive activity and rapid growth of the Builders’ Union
during 1832-33 had been only a part of a general upheaval in labour
organisation. The Cotton-spinners had recovered from the failure of the
Ashton strike (1830-31) by the autumn of 1833, when we find Doherty
prosecuting with his usual vigour the agitation for an eight hours day
which had been set on foot by his Society for National Regeneration.
“The plan is,” writes J. Fielden (M.P. for Oldham) to William Cobbett,
“that about the 1st March next, the day the said Bill (now Act) limits
the time of work for children under eleven years of age to eight hours
a day, those above that age, both grown persons and adults, should
insist on eight hours a day being the maximum of time for them to
labour; and their present weekly wages for sixty-nine hours a week
to be the minimum weekly wages for forty-eight hours a week after
that time”; and he proceeds to explain that the Cotton-spinners had
adopted this idea of securing shorter hours by a strike rather than
by legislation on Lord Althorpe’s suggestion that they should “make a
short-time bill for themselves.”[235] Fielden and Robert Owen served,
with Doherty, on the committee of this society, which included a few
employers. The Lancashire textile trades followed the lead of the
Cotton-spinners, and prepared for a “universal” strike. Meanwhile
their Yorkshire brethren were already engaged in an embittered struggle
with their employers. The Leeds Clothiers’ Union, established about
1831, and apparently one of the constituent societies of the National
Association for the Protection of Labour, bore a striking resemblance
to the Builders’ Union, not only in ceremonial and constitution, but
also in its policy and history.[236] In the spring of 1833 it made a
series of attacks on particular establishments with the double aim of
forcing all the workers to join the Union and of obtaining a uniform
scale of prices. These demands were met with the usual weapon. The
employers entered into what was called “the Manufacturers’ Bond,” by
which they bound themselves under penalty to refuse employment to
all members of the Union. The men indignantly refused to abandon the
society; and a lock-out ensued which lasted some months, and was the
occasion of repeated leading articles in the _Times_.[237]

The Potters’ Union (also established by Doherty in 1830) numbered,
in the autumn of 1833, eight thousand members, of whom six thousand
belonged to Staffordshire and the remainder to the lodges at
Newcastle-on-Tyne, Derby, Bristol, and Swinton[238]--another instance
of the extraordinary growth of Trade Unions during these years.

How far these and other societies were joined together in any federal
body is not clear. The panic-stricken references in the capitalist
press to “the Trades Union,” and the vague mention in working-class
newspapers of the affiliation of particular societies to larger
organisations, lead us to believe that during the year 1833 there was
more than one attempt to form a “General Union of All Trades.” The
Owenite newspapers, towards the end of 1833, are full of references
to the formation of a “General Union of the Productive Classes.” What
manner of association Owen himself contemplated may be learnt from his
speech to the Congress of Owenite Societies in London on the 6th of
October. “I will now give you,” said he, “a short outline of the great
changes which are in contemplation, and which shall come suddenly upon
society like a thief in the night.... It is intended that national
arrangements shall be formed to include all the working classes in the
great organisation, and that each department shall become acquainted
with what is going on in other departments; that all individual
competition is to cease; that all manufactures are to be carried on
by National Companies.... All trades shall first form Associations of
lodges to consist of a convenient number for carrying on the business:
... all individuals of the specific craft shall become members.”[239]
Immediately after this we find in existence a “Grand National
Consolidated Trades Union,” in the establishment and extraordinary
growth of which the project of “the Trades Union” may be said to have
culminated. This organisation seems to have actually started in January
1834. Owen was its chief recruiter and propagandist. During the next
few months his activity was incessant; and lodges were affiliated all
over the country. Innumerable local trade clubs were absorbed. Early
in February 1834 a special delegate meeting was held at Owen’s London
Institute in Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square, at which it was resolved
that the new body should take the form of a federation of separate
trade lodges, each lodge to be composed usually of members of one
trade, but with provision for “miscellaneous lodges” in places where
the numbers were small, and even for “female miscellaneous lodges.”
Each lodge retained its own funds, levies being made throughout the
whole order for strike purposes. The Conference urged each lodge
to provide sick, funeral, and superannuation benefits for its own
members; and proposals were adopted to lease land on which to employ
“turn-outs,” and to set up co-operative workshops. The initiation
rites and solemn oath, common to all the Unions of the period, were
apparently adopted.

Nothing in the annals of Unionism in this country at all approached
the rapidity of the growth which ensued.[240] Within a few weeks
the Union appears to have been joined by at least half a million
members, including tens of thousands of farm labourers and women.
This must have been in great measure due to the fact that, as no
discoverable regular contribution was exacted for central expenses,
the affiliation or absorption of existing organisations was very
easy. Still, the extension of new lodges in previously unorganised
trades and districts was enormous. Numerous missionary delegates,
duly equipped with all the paraphernalia required for the mystic
initiation rites, perambulated the country; and a positive mania for
Trade Unionism set in. In December 1833 we are told that “scarcely a
branch of trade exists in the West of Scotland that is not now in a
state of Union.”[241] The _Times_ reports that two delegates who went
to Hull enrolled in one evening a thousand men of various trades.[242]
At Exeter the two delegates were seized by the police, and found to
be furnished with “two wooden axes, two large cutlasses, two masks,
and two white garments or robes, a large figure of Death with the dart
and hourglass, a Bible and Testament.”[243] Shop-assistants on the one
hand, and journeymen chimney-sweeps on the other, were swept into the
vortex. The cabinetmakers of Belfast insisted on joining “the Trades
Union, or Friendly Society, which had for its object the unity of all
cabinetmakers in the three kingdoms.”[244] We hear of “Ploughmen’s
Unions” as far off as Perthshire,[245] and of a “Shearman’s Union”
at Dundee. And the then rural character of the Metropolitan suburbs
is quaintly brought home to us by the announcement of a union of the
“agricultural and other labourers” of Kensington, Walham Green, Fulham,
and Hammersmith. Nor were the women neglected. The “Grand Lodge of
Operative Bonnet Makers” vies in activity with the miscellaneous “Grand
Lodge of the Women of Great Britain and Ireland”; and the “Lodge of
Female Tailors” asks indignantly whether the “Tailors’ Order” is really
going to prohibit women from making waistcoats. Whether the Grand
National Consolidated Trades Union was responsible for the lodges of
“Female Gardeners” and “Ancient Virgins,” who afterwards distinguished
themselves in the riotous demand for an eight hours day at Oldham,[246]
is not clear.

How the business of this colossal federation was actually managed
we do not know.[247] Some kind of executive committee sat in London,
with four paid officers. The need for statesmanlike administration was
certainly great. The avowed policy of the federation was to inaugurate
a general expropriatory strike of all wage-earners throughout the
country, not “to condition with the master-producers of wealth and
knowledge for some paltry advance in the artificial money price in
exchange for their labour, health, liberty, natural enjoyment, and
life; but to ensure to every one the best cultivation of all their
faculties and the most advantageous exercise of all their powers.”
But from the very beginning of its career it found itself incessantly
involved in sectional disputes for small advances of wages and
reduction of hours. The mere joining of “the Trades Union” was often
made the occasion of the dismissal by the employers of all those who
would not sign the “document” abjuring all combinations. Thus the
accession of the Leicester Hosiers in November 1833 led to a disastrous
dispute, in which over 1300 men had to be supported. In Glasgow a
serious strike broke out among the building trades at a time when the
Calico-printers, Engineers, and Cabinetmakers were already struggling
with their employers. The most costly conflict, however, which the
Grand National found on its hands during the winter was that which
raged at Derby, where fifteen hundred men, women, and children had been
locked out by their employers for refusing to abandon the Union. The
“Derby turn-outs” were at first supported, like their fellow-victims
elsewhere, by contributions sent from the trade organisations in
various parts of the kingdom; but it soon became evident that without
systematic aid they would be compelled to give way. A levy of a
shilling per member was accordingly decreed by the Grand National
Executive in February 1834. Arrangements were made for obtaining
premises and machinery upon which to set a few of the strikers to work
on their own account. The struggle ended, after four months, in the
complete triumph of the employers, and the return of the operatives to
work.

The “Derby turn-out” was widely advertised by the newspapers, and
brought much odium on the Grand National. But the denunciation of
“the Trades Union” greatly increased when part of London was laid
in darkness by a strike of the gas-stokers. The men employed by
the different gas companies in the metropolis had been quietly
organising during the winter, with the intention of simultaneously
withdrawing from work if their demands were not acceded to. The
plot was discovered, and the companies succeeded in replacing their
Union workmen by others. But weeks elapsed before the new hands were
able completely to perform their work,[248] and early in March 1834
Westminster was for some days in partial darkness. Amid the storm of
obloquy caused by these disputes the Grand National suddenly found
itself in conflict with the law. The conviction of six Dorchester
labourers in March 1834 for the mere act of administering an oath, and
their sentence to seven years’ transportation, came like a thunderbolt
on the Trade Union world.

To understand such a barbarous sentence we must picture to ourselves
the effect on the minds of the Government and the propertied classes
of the menacing ideal of “the Trades Union,” brought home by the
aggressive policy of the Unions during the last four years. Already
in 1830 the formation of national and General Unions had excited
the attention of the Government. “When we first came into office in
November last,” writes Lord Melbourne, the Whig Home Secretary, to Sir
Herbert Taylor, “the Unions of trades in the North of England and in
other parts of the country for the purpose of raising wages, etc., and
the General Union for the same purpose, were pointed out to me by Sir
Robert Peel [the outgoing Tory Home Secretary] in a conversation I had
with him upon the then state of the country, as the most formidable
difficulty and danger with which we had to contend; and it struck me as
well as the rest of His Majesty’s servants in the same light.”[249]

To advise the Cabinet in this difficulty Lord Melbourne called in
Nassau Senior, who had just completed his first term of five years
as Professor of Political Economy at Oxford, and directed him to
prepare, in conjunction with a legal expert named Tomlinson, a report
on the situation and a plan of remedial legislation. This document
throws light both on the state of mind and on the practical judgement
of the trusted economist. The two commissioners appear to have made
no inquiries among workmen, and to have accepted implicitly every
statement, including hearsay gossip, offered by employers. The evidence
thus collected naturally led to a very unfavourable conclusion. It
produced, as the commissioners recite, “upon our minds the conviction
that if the innocent and laborious workman and his family are to be
left without protection against the cowardly ferocity by which he
is now assailed; if the manufacturer is to employ his capital and
the mechanist or chemist his ingenuity, only under the dictation of
his short-sighted and rapacious workmen, or his equally ignorant
and avaricious rivals; if a few agitators are to be allowed to
command a strike which first paralyses the industry of the peculiar
class of workpeople over whom they tyrannise, and then extends
itself in an increasing circle over the many thousands and tens of
thousands to whose labour the assistance of that peculiar class of
workpeople is essential;--that if all this is to be unpunished, and
to be almost sanctioned by the repeal of the laws by which it was
formerly punishable;--it is in vain to hope that we shall long retain
the industry, the skill, or the capital on which our manufacturing
superiority, and with that superiority our power and almost our
existence as a nation, depends.” They accordingly conclude with a
series of astounding proposals for the amendment of the law. The Act
of 1825 could not conveniently be openly repealed; but its mischievous
results were to be counteracted by drastic legislation. They
recommend that a law should be passed clearly reciting the common law
prohibitions of conspiracy and restraint of trade. The law should go
on to forbid, under severe penalties, “all attempts or solicitations,
combinations, subscriptions, and solicitations to combinations”
to threaten masters, to persuade blacklegs, or even simply to ask
workmen to join the Union.[250] Picketing, however peaceful, was to be
comprehensively forbidden and ruthlessly punished. Employers or their
assistants were to be authorised themselves to arrest men without
summons or warrant, and hale them before any justice of the peace. The
encouragement of combinations by masters was to be punished by heavy
pecuniary penalties, to be recovered by any common informer. “This,”
say the commissioners, “is as much as we should recommend in the first
instance. But if it should be proved that the evil of the combination
system cannot be subdued at a less price, ... _we must recommend the
experiment of confiscation_,”--confiscation, that is, of the “funds
subscribed for purposes of combination and deposited in Savings Banks
or otherwise.”[251]

The Whig Government dared not submit either the report or the
proposals to a House of Commons pledged to the doctrines of Philosophic
Radicalism. “We considered much ourselves,” writes Lord Melbourne,[252]
“and we consulted much with others as to whether the arrangements of
these unions, their meetings, their communications, or their pecuniary
funds could be reached or in any way prevented by any new legal
provisions; but it appeared upon the whole impossible to do anything
effectual unless we proposed such measures as would have been a serious
infringement upon the constitutional liberties of the country, and to
which it would have been impossible to have obtained the consent of
Parliament.”

The King, however, had been greatly alarmed at the meeting of the
“Builders’ Parliament,” and pressed the Cabinet to take strong
measures.[253] Rotch, the member for Knaresborough, gave notice in
April 1834 of his intention to bring in a Bill designed to make
combinations of trades impossible--a measure which would have obtained
a large amount of support from the manufacturers.[254] The coal-owners
and ship-owners, the ironmasters, had all been pressing the Home
Secretary for legislation of this kind.

But although Lord Melbourne’s prudent caution saved the Unions from
drastic prohibitory laws, the Government lost no opportunity of showing
its hostility to the workmen’s combinations. When in August 1833 the
Yorkshire manufacturers presented a memorial on the subject of “the
Trades Union,” Lord Melbourne directed the answer to be returned that
“he considers it unnecessary to repeat the strong opinion entertained
by His Majesty’s Ministers of the criminal character and the evil
effects of the unions described in the Memorial,” adding that “no
doubt can be entertained that combinations for the purposes enumerated
are illegal conspiracies, and liable to be prosecuted as such at
common law.”[255] The employers scarcely needed this hint. Although
combination for the sole purpose of fixing hours or wages had ceased
to be illegal, it was possible to prosecute the workmen upon various
other pretexts. Sometimes, as in the case of some Lancashire miners in
1832, the Trade Unionists were indicted for illegal combination for
merely writing to their employers that a strike would take place.[256]
Sometimes the “molestation or obstruction” prohibited in the Act of
1825 was made to include the mere intimation of the men’s intention
to strike against the employment of non-unionists. In a remarkable
case at Wolverhampton in August 1835, four potters were imprisoned
for intimidation, solely upon evidence by the employers that they
had “advanced their prices in consequence of the interference of the
defendants, who acted as plenipotentiaries for the men,” without, as
was admitted, the use of even the mildest threat.[257] Picketing, even
of the most peaceful kind, was frequently severely punished under this
head, as four Southwark shoemakers found in 1832 to their cost.[258]
More generally the men on strike were proceeded against under the laws
relating to masters and servants, as in the case of seventeen tanners
at Bermondsey in February 1834, who were sentenced to imprisonment for
the offence of leaving their work unfinished.[259]

With the authorities in this temper, their alarm at the growth of the
Grand National Consolidated Trades Union may be imagined. A new legal
weapon was soon discovered. At the time of the mutiny at the Nore in
1797 an Act had been passed (37 Geo. III. c. 123) severely penalising
the administering of an oath by an unlawful society. In 1819, when
political sedition was rife, a measure prohibiting unlawful oaths had
formed one of the notorious “Six Acts.” In neither case were trade
combinations aimed at, though Lord Ellenborough, in an isolated
prosecution in 1802,[260] had held that an oath administered by a
committee of journeymen shearmen in Wiltshire came within the terms
of the earlier statute. It does not seem to have occurred to any one
to put the law in force against Trade Unions until the oath-bound
confederacy of the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union began to
make headway even in the rural villages of the South of England.

The story of the trial and transportation of the Dorchester labourers
is the best-known episode of early Trade Union history.[261] The
agricultural labourers of the southern counties, oppressed by the
tacit combinations of the farmers and by the operation of the Corn
Laws, as well as exceptionally demoralised by the Old Poor Law, had
long been in a state of sullen despair. The specially hard times of
1829 had resulted in outbursts of machine-breaking, rick-burning, and
hunger riots, which had been put down in 1830 by the movement of troops
through the disturbed districts, and the appointment of a Special
Commission of Assize to try over 1000 prisoners, several of whom were
hung and hundreds transported. The whole wage-earning population of
these rural districts was effectually cowed.[262] With the improvement
of trade a general movement for higher wages seems to have been set
on foot. In 1832 we find the Duke of Wellington, as Lord-Lieutenant
of Hampshire, reporting to Lord Melbourne that more than half the
labourers in his county were contributing a penny per week to a network
of local societies affiliated, as he thought, to some National Union.
“The labourers said that they had received directions from the Union
not to take less than ten shillings, and that the Union would stand by
them.”[263] These societies, whatever may have been their constitution,
had apparently the effect of raising wages not only in Hampshire, but
also in the neighbouring counties. In the village of Tolpuddle, in
Dorsetshire, as George Loveless tells us, an agreement was made between
the farmers and the men, in the presence of the village parson, that
the wages should be those paid in other districts. This involved a rise
to ten shillings a week. In the following year the farmers repented of
their decision, and successively reduced wages shilling by shilling
until they were paying only seven shillings a week. In this strait
the men made inquiries about “the Trades Union,” and two delegates
from the Grand National visited the village. Upon their information
the Lovelesses established “the Friendly Society of Agricultural
Labourers,” having its “Grand Lodge” at Tolpuddle. For this village
club the elaborate ritual and code of rules of one of the national
orders of the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union were adopted. No
secrecy seems to have been observed, for John Loveless openly ordered
of the village painter a figure of “Death painted six feet high for a
society of his own,”[264] with which to perform the initiation rites.
The farmers took alarm, and induced the local magistrates, on February
21, 1834, to issue placards warning the labourers that any one joining
the Union would be sentenced to seven years’ transportation. This was
no idle threat. Within three days of the publication of the notice the
Lovelesses and four other members were arrested and lodged in gaol.

The trial of these unfortunate labourers was a scandalous perversion
of the law. The Lovelesses and their friends seem to have been
simple-minded Methodists, two of them being itinerant preachers.
No accusation was made, and no evidence preferred against them, of
anything worse than the playing with oaths, which, as we have seen,
formed a part of the initiation ceremony of the Grand National and
other Unions of the time, with evidently no consciousness of their
statutory illegality. Not only were they guiltless of any intimidation
or outrage, but they had not even struck or presented any application
for higher wages. Yet the judge (John Williams), who had only recently
been raised to the bench, charged the grand jury on the case at
portentous length, as if the prisoners had committed murder or treason,
and inflicted on them, after the briefest of trials, the monstrous
sentence of seven years’ transportation.

The action of the Government shows how eagerly the Home Secretary
accepted the blunder of an inexperienced judge as part of his policy of
repression. Lord Melbourne expressed his opinion that “the law has in
this case been most properly applied”;[265] and the sentence, far from
exciting criticism in the Whig Cabinet, was carried out with special
celerity. The case was tried on March 18, 1834; before the 30th the
prisoners were in the hulks; and by the 15th of the next month Lord
Howick was able to say in the House of Commons that their ship had
already sailed for Botany Bay.[266]

The Grand National Consolidated Trades Union proved to have a wider
influence than the Government expected. The whole machinery of the
organisation was turned to the preparation of petitions and the
holding of public meetings, and a wave of sympathy rallied, for a
few weeks, the drooping energies of the members. Cordial relations
were established with the five great Unions which remained outside
the ranks, for the northern counties were mainly organised by the
Builders’ Union, the Leeds, Huddersfield and Bradford District Union,
the Clothiers’ Union, the Cotton-spinners’ Union, and the Potters’
Union, which on this occasion sent delegates to London to assist the
executive of the Grand National. The agitation culminated in a monster
procession of Trade Unionists to the Home Office to present a petition
to Lord Melbourne--the first of the great “demonstrations” which have
since become a regular part of the machinery of London politics. The
proposal to hold this procession had excited the utmost alarm, both
in friends and to foes. The _Times_, with the Parisian events of 1830
still in its memory, wrote leader after leader condemning the project,
and Lord Melbourne let it be known that he would refuse to receive
any deputation or petition from a procession. Special constables were
sworn in, and troops brought into London to prevent a rising. At
length the great day arrived (April 21, 1834). Owen and his friends
managed the occasion with much skill. In order to avoid interference
by the new police, the vacant ground at Copenhagen Fields, on which
the processionists assembled, was formally hired from the owner. The
trades were regularly marshalled behind thirty-three banners, each man
decorated by a red ribbon. At the head of the procession rode, in full
canonicals and the scarlet hood of a Doctor of Divinity, the corpulent
“chaplain to the Metropolitan Trades Unions,” Dr. Arthur S. Wade.[267]
The demonstration, in point of numbers, was undoubtedly a success. We
learn, for instance, that the tailors alone paraded from 5000 to 7000
strong, and the master builders subsequently complained that their
works had been entirely suspended through their men’s participation.
Over a quarter of a million signatures had been obtained to the
petition, and, even on the admission of the _Times_, 30,000 persons
took part in the procession, representing a proportion of the London of
that time equivalent to 100,000 to-day.[268]

Meanwhile Radicals of all shades hastened to the rescue. A public
meeting was held at the Crown and Anchor Tavern at which Roebuck,
Colonel Perronet Thompson, and, Daniel O’Connell spoke; and a debate
took place in the House of Commons in which the ferocious sentence
was strongly attacked by Joseph Hume.[269] But the Government, far
from remitting the punishment, refused even to recognise that it was
excessive; and the unfortunate labourers were allowed to proceed to
their penal exile.[270]

The Dorchester conviction had the effect of causing the oath to
be ostensibly dropped out of Trade Union ceremonies, although in
particular trades and districts it lingered a few years longer.[271]
At their “parliament” in April 1834 the Builders’ Union formally
abolished the oath. The Grand National quickly adopted the same
course; and the Leeds and other Unions followed suit. But the judge’s
sentence was of no avail to check the aggressive policy of the Unions.
Immediately after the excitement of the procession had subsided, one
of the most important branches of the Grand National precipitated a
serious conflict with its employers. The London tailors, hitherto
divided among themselves, formed in December 1833 the “First Grand
Lodge of Operative Tailors,” and resolved to demand a shortening of the
hours of labour. The state of mind of the men is significantly shown
by the language of their peremptory notice to the masters. “In order,”
they write, “to stay the ruinous effects which a destructive commercial
competition has so long been inflicting on the trade, they have
resolved to introduce certain new regulations of labour into the trade,
which regulations they intend shall come into force on Monday next.” A
general strike ensued, in which 20,000 persons are said to have been
thrown out of work, the whole burden of their maintenance being cast on
the Grand National funds. A levy of eighteenpence per member throughout
the country was made in May 1834, which caused some dissatisfaction;
and the proceeds were insufficient to prevent the tailors’ strike
pay falling to four shillings a week. The result was that the men
gradually returned to work on the employers’ terms.[272]

These disasters, together with innumerable smaller strikes in various
parts, all of which were unsuccessful, shook the credit of the Grand
National. The executive attempted in vain to stem the torrent of
strikes by publishing a “Declaration of the Views and Objects of Trades
Unions,” in which they deprecated disputes and advocated what would now
be called Co-operative Production by Associations of Producers.[273]
They gave effect to this declaration by refusing to sanction the London
shoemakers’ demand for increased wages, on the ground that a conflict
so soon after the tailors’ defeat was inopportune. The result was
merely that a general meeting of the London shoemakers voted, by 782
to 506, for secession from the federation, and struck on their own
account.[274]

An even more serious blow was the lock-out of the London building
trades in July 1834. These trades in London had joined the Grand
Consolidated rather than the Builders’ Union; and in the summer of
1834 an act of petty tyranny on the part of a single firm brought
about a general conflict. The workmen employed by Messrs. Cubitt
had resolved not to drink any beer supplied by Combe, Delafield &
Co., in retaliation for the refusal of that firm to employ Trade
Unionists. Messrs. Cubitt thereupon refused to allow any other beer
to be drunk on their premises, and locked out their workmen. The
employers throughout London, angered by the Union’s resistance to
sub-contract and piecework, embraced this opportunity to insist that
all their employees should sign the hated “document.” The heads of the
Government departments in which building operatives were employed
placed themselves in line with private employers by making the same
demands.[275] The struggle dragged on until November 1834, when the
document seems to have been tacitly withdrawn, and the men returned to
work, accepting the employers’ terms on the other points at issue.[276]
We learn from the correspondence of the Stonemasons’ Society that this
defeat--for such it virtually was--completely broke up the organisation
in the London building trade. What was happening to the Builders’ Union
during these months is not clear. The federal organisation apparently
broke up at about this time; and the several trades fell back upon
their local clubs and national societies.

Whilst the London builders were thus engaged, similar struggles were
going on in the other leading industries. At Leeds, for instance, in
May 1834 the masters were again presenting the “document”; and the men,
after much resistance and angry denunciation, were compelled to abandon
the Clothiers’ Union. The Cotton-spinners, whom we left preparing to
carry out Fielden’s idea of a general strike for an eight hours day
with undiminished wages for all cotton operatives, resolved to demand
the reduction of hours from the 1st of March 1834, the day appointed
for the operation of the new Factory Act of 1833 limiting the hours
of children to eight per day. The operatives in many mills sent in
notices, which were simply ignored by the employers. In this they seem
to have estimated the weakness of the men correctly; for the expected
general strike was deferred by a delegate meeting until the 2nd of
June. That date found the men still unprepared for action, and the
strike was further postponed until the 1st of September. After that we
hear no more of it.

The Oldham operatives did indeed in April 1834 make an unpremeditated
attempt to secure eight hours. It happened that the local constables
broke up a Trade Union meeting. A rescue took place, followed by an
attack on an obnoxious mill, and the shooting of one of the rioters
by a “Knobstick.” The affray provoked the Oldham working class into
a spasm of insurrection. The workers in all trades, both male and
female, ceased work, and held huge meetings on the Moor, where they
were addressed by Doherty and others from Manchester, and demanded the
eight hours day. Within a week the excitement subsided, and work was
resumed.[277]

By the end of the summer it was obvious that the ambitious projects
of the Grand National Consolidated and other “Trades Unions” had
ended in invariable and complete failure. In spite of the rising
prosperity of trade, the strikes for better conditions of labour had
been uniformly unsuccessful. In July 1834 the federal organisations
all over the country were breaking up. The great association of half a
million members had been completely routed by the employers’ vigorous
presentation of the “document.” Of the actual dissolution of the
organisation we have no contemporary record, but the impression which
it made on the more sober Trade Unionists may be gathered from the
following description, which appeared in a working-class journal seven
years afterwards. “We were present,” says the editor of the _Trades
Journal_, “at many of the meetings of the Grand National Consolidated
Trades Union, and have a distinct recollection of the excitement that
prevailed in them--of the apparent determination to carry out its
principles in opposition to every obstacle--of the enthusiasm exhibited
by some of the speakers--of the noisy approbation of the meeting--the
loud cries of ‘hear hear,’ ‘bravo,’ ‘hurra,’ ‘union for ever,’ etc. It
was the opinion of many at that time that little real benefit would be
effected by this union, as their proceedings were indicative, not of a
calm and dispassionate investigation of the causes of existing evils,
but of an over-excited state of mind which would speedily evaporate,
and leave them in the same condition as before. The event proved that
this opinion was not ill-founded. A little mole-hill obstructed their
onward progress; and rather than commence the labour of removing so
puny an obstacle, they chose to turn back, each taking his own path,
regardless of the safety or the interests of his neighbour. It was
painful to see the deep mortification of the generals and leaders of
this quickly inflated army, when left deserted and alone upon the
field.”[278]

A period of general apathy in the Trade Union world ensued. The
“London Dorchester Committee” continued with indomitable perseverance
to collect subscriptions and present petitions for the return of the
six exiled labourers; but “the Trades Union,” together with the ideal
from which it sprang, vanished in discredit. The hundreds of thousands
of recruits from the new industries or unskilled occupations rapidly
reverted to a state of disorganisation. The national “orders” of
Tailors and Shoemakers, the extended organisations of Cotton-spinners
and Woollen-workers, split up into fragmentary societies. Throughout
the country the organised constituents of the Grand National fell back
upon their local trade clubs.

The records of the rise and fall of the “New Unionism” of 1830-4
leave us conscious of a vast enlargement in the ideas of the workers,
without any corresponding alteration in their tactics in the field. In
council they are idealists, dreaming of a new heaven and a new earth;
humanitarians, educationalists, socialists, moralists: in battle they
are still the struggling, half-emancipated serfs of 1825, armed only
with the rude weapons of the strike and boycott; sometimes feared and
hated by the propertied classes; sometimes merely despised; always
oppressed, and miserably poor. We find, too, that they are actually
less successful with the old weapons now that they wield them with new
and wider ideas. They get beaten in a rising market instead of, as
hitherto, only in a falling one. And we shall soon see that they did
not recover their lost advantage until they again concentrated their
efforts on narrower and more manageable aims. But we have first to
inquire how they came by the new ideas.

In the bad times which followed the peace of 1815 the writings of
Cobbett had attained an extraordinary influence and authority over the
whole of that generation of working men. His trenchant denunciation of
the governing classes, and his incessant appeals to the wage-earners
to assert their right to the whole administration of affairs, were
inspired by the political tyranny of the anti-Jacobin reaction, the
high prices and heavy taxes, and the apparent creation by “the Funding
System” of an upstart class of non-producers living on the interest
of the huge debt contracted by the nation during the war--evils the
least of which was enough to stimulate an eager politician like Cobbett
to the utmost exercise of his unrivalled power of invective. But the
working classes were suffering, in addition, from a calamity which
no mere politician of that time grasped, in the effects of the new
machine and factory industry, which was blindly crushing out the old
methods by the mere brute force of competition instead of replacing
it with due order and adjustment to the human interests involved.
This phenomenon was beyond the comprehension of its victims. Each of
them knew what was happening to himself as an individual; but only
one man--a manufacturer--seems to have understood what was happening
to the entire industry of the country. This man was Robert Owen. To
him, therefore, political Democracy, which was all-in-all to Cobbett
and his readers, appeared quite secondary to industrial Democracy,
or the co-operative ownership and control of industry answerable to
the economic co-operation in all industrial processes which had
been brought about by machinery and factory organisation, and which
had removed manufacture irrevocably from the separate firesides of
independent individual producers. With Cobbett and his followers the
first thing to be done was to pass a great Reform Bill, behind which,
in their minds, lay only a vague conception of social change. Owen and
his more enthusiastic disciples, on the other hand, were persuaded that
a universal voluntary association of workers for productive purposes on
his principles would render the political organisation of society of
comparatively trivial account.

The disillusionment of the newly emancipated Trade Clubs in the
collapse of 1825 left the working-class organisations prepared for
these wider gospels. Social reform was in the air. “Concerning the
misery and degradation of the bulk of the people of England,” writes
a contemporary observer, “men of every order, as well as every party,
unite and speak continually; farmers, parish officers, clergymen,
magistrates, judges on the bench, members on either side of both Houses
of Parliament, the King in his addresses to the nation, moralists,
statesmen, philosophers; and finally the poor creatures themselves,
whose complaints are loud and incessant.”[279] Cobbett and the
Reformers had the first turn. The chief political organisation of the
working classes during the Reform Bill agitation began as a trade
club. In 1831 a few carpenters met at their house of call in Argyle
Street, Oxford Street, to form a “Metropolitan Trades Union,” which
was to include all trades, and to undertake, besides its Trade Union
functions, a vague scheme of co-operative production and a political
agitation for the franchise.[280] But under the influence of William
Lovett the last object soon thrust aside all the rest. The purely
Trade Union aims were dropped; the Owenite aspirations sank into the
background; and under the title of the “National Union of the Working
Classes” the humble carpenters’ society expanded into a national
organisation for obtaining Manhood Suffrage. As such it occupies,
during the political turmoil of 1831-2, by far the largest place in the
history of working-class organisation, and was largely implicated in
the agitation and disturbances connected with the Reform Bill.[281]

The Reform Bill came and passed, but no Manhood Suffrage. The effect
of this disappointment at the hands of the most advanced political
party in the country is thus described by Francis Place, now become an
outside observer of the Trade Union Movement. “The year (1833) ended
leaving the (National) Union (of the Working Classes) in a state of
much depression. The nonsensical doctrines preached by Robert Owen
and others respecting communities and goods in common; abundance of
everything man ought to desire, and all for four hours’ labour out of
every twenty-four; the right of every man to his share of the earth in
common, and his right to whatever his hands had been employed upon; the
power of masters under the present system to give just what wages they
pleased; the right of the labourer to such wages as would maintain him
and his in comfort for eight or ten hours’ labour; the right of every
man who was unemployed to employment and to such an amount of wages as
have been indicated--and other matters of a similar kind which were
continually inculcated by the working men’s political unions, by many
small knots of persons, printed in small pamphlets and handbills which
were sold twelve for a penny and distributed to a great extent--had
pushed politics aside ... among the working people. These pamphlets
were written almost wholly by men of talent and of some standing in
the world, professional men, gentlemen, manufacturers, tradesmen, and
men called literary. The consequence was that a very large proportion
of the working people in England and Scotland became persuaded that
they had only to combine, as it was concluded they might easily do,
to compel not only a considerable advance in wages all round, but
employment for every one, man and woman, who needed it, at short hours.
This notion induced them to form themselves into Trades Unions in a
manner and to an extent never before known.”[282]

This jumble of ordinary Trade Union aims and communist aspirations,
described from the hostile point of view of a fanatical Malthusian and
staunch believer in the “Wage Fund,” probably fairly represents the
character of the Owenite propaganda. It made an ineradicable impression
on the working-class leaders of that generation, and inspired the great
surge of solidarity which rendered possible the gigantic enlistments of
the Grand National, with its unprecedented regiments of agricultural
labourers and women. Its enlargement of consciousness of the working
class was no doubt a good in itself which no mistakes in practical
policy could wholly cancel.[283] But Owen did mischief as well as
good; and as both the evil and the good live after him--for nothing
that Owen did can yet be said to be interred with his bones--it is
necessary to examine his Trade Union doctrine in some detail. He was
at his best when, as the experienced captain of industry, he denounced
with fervent emphasis that lowering of the Standard of Life which was
the result of the creed of universal competition. It was to combat
this that he advocated Factory Legislation, and promoted combinations
“to fix a maximum time and a minimum wages”; and it was by thus
attempting to secure the workers’ Standard of Life by legislation and
Trade Union action that he gained the influential support, not only
of philanthropists, but also of certain high-minded manufacturers,
with whose aid he formed in December 1833 the “Society for National
Regeneration,”[284] to which we have already referred. The most
definite proposal of this society, the shortening of the hours of
labour to eight per day, was what led to that suggestion of Fielden’s
on which the Lancashire cotton operatives acted in their abortive
general strike for an eight hours day. It also produced the long series
of “Short Time Committees” in the textile towns whose persistent
agitation eventually secured the passing of the Ten Hours Bill, itself
only an instalment of our great Factory Code. History has emphatically
justified Owen on this side of his labour policy.

But there was a Utopian side to it which acted more questionably.
The working-class world became, under his influence, inflated with a
premature conception and committed to an impracticable working scheme
of social organisation. He proved himself an able thinker and seer
when he pointed out that the horrible poverty of the time was a new
economic phenomenon, the inevitable result of unfettered competition
and irresponsible individual ownership of the means of production
now that those means had become enormously expensive and yet compact
enough to employ hundreds of men under the orders of a few, besides
being so prodigiously efficient as to drive the older methods quite
out of the market. But from the point of view of the practical
statesman, it must be confessed that he also showed himself something
of a simpleton in supposing, or at least assuming, that competition
could be abolished and ownership socialised by organising voluntary
associations to supersede both the millowners and the State. He had
tried the experiment in America with the famous community of New
Harmony, and its failure had for the time thoroughly disgusted him
with communities. But his disgust was not disillusion, for its only
practical effect was to set him to repeat the experiment with the Trade
Unions. Under his teaching the Trade Unionists came to believe that it
was possible, by a universal non-political compact of the wage-earners,
apparently through a universal expropriatory strike, to raise wages and
shorten the hours of labour “to an extent,” as Place puts it, “which,
at no very distant time, would give them the whole proceeds of their
labour.” The function of the brain-worker as the director of industry
was disregarded, possibly because in the cotton industry (in which Owen
had made a fortune) it plays but an insignificant part in the actual
productive processes, and is mainly concerned with that pursuit of
cheap markets to buy in and dear markets to sell in which formed no
part of the Utopian commonwealth at which “the Trades Union” aimed. The
existing capitalists and managers were therefore considered as usurpers
to be as soon as possible superseded by the elected representatives
of voluntary and sectional associations of producers, in which it
seems to have been assumed all the brain-working technicians would be
included. The modern Socialist proposal to substitute the officials
of the Municipality or State was unthinkable at a period when all
local governing bodies were notoriously inefficient and corrupt and
Parliament practically an oligarchy. Under the system proposed by Owen
the instruments of production were to become the property, not of the
whole community, but of the particular set of workers who used them.
“There is no other alternative,” he said, “than National Companies for
each trade.... Thus all those trades which relate to clothing shall
form a company--such as tailors, shoemakers, hatters, milliners, and
mantua-makers; and all the different manufacturers [_i.e._ operatives]
shall be arranged in a similar way; communications shall pass from the
various departments to the Grand National establishment in London.” In
fact, the Trade Unions were to be transformed into “national companies”
to carry on all the manufactures.[285] The Agricultural Union was
to take possession of the land, the Miners’ Union of the mines, the
Textile Unions of the factories. Each trade was to be carried on by its
particular Trade Union, centralised in one “Grand Lodge.”

Of all Owen’s attempts to reduce his Socialism to practice this was
certainly the very worst. For his short-lived communities there was at
least this excuse: that within their own area they were to be perfectly
homogeneous little Communist States. There were to be no conflicting
sections; and profit-making and competition were to be effectually
eliminated. But in “the Trades Union,” as he conceived it, the mere
combination of all the workmen in a trade as co-operative producers no
more abolished commercial competition than a combination of all the
employers in it as a Joint Stock Company. In effect his Grand Lodges
would have been simply the head offices of huge Joint Stock Companies
owning the entire means of production in their industry, and subject
to no control by the community as a whole. They would therefore have
been in a position at any moment to close their ranks and admit fresh
generations of workers only as employees at competitive wages instead
of as shareholders, thus creating at one stroke a new capitalist class
and a new proletariat. Further, the improvident shareholders would soon
have begun to sell their shares in order to spend their capital, and
thus to drop with their children into the new proletariat; whilst the
enterprising and capable shareholders would equally have sold their
shares to buy into other and momentarily more profitable trades. Thus
there would have been not only a capitalist class and proletariat, but
a speculative stock market. Finally there would have come a competitive
struggle between the Joint Stock Unions to supplant one another in
the various departments of industry. Thus the shipwrights, making
wooden ships, would have found the boilermakers competing for their
business by making iron ships, and would have had either to succumb
or to transform their wooden ship capital into iron ship capital and
enter into competition with the boilermakers as commercial rivals in
the same trade. This difficulty was staring Owen in the face when he
entered the Trade Union Movement; for the trades, then as now, were
in continual perplexity as to the exact boundaries between them; for
example, the minute-books of the newly formed Joiners’ Society in
Glasgow (whose secretary was a leading Owenite) show that its great
difficulty was the demarcation of its trade against the cabinetmaker
and the engineer-patternmaker, each of whom claimed certain technical
operations as proper to himself alone. In short, the Socialism of Owen
led him to propose a practical scheme which was not even socialistic,
and which, if it could possibly have been carried out, would have
simply arbitrarily redistributed the capital of the country without
altering or superseding the capitalist system in the least.

All this will be so obvious to those who comprehend our capitalist
system that they will have some difficulty in believing that it could
have escaped so clever a man and so experienced and successful a
capitalist as Owen. How far he made it a rule to deliberately shut
his eyes to the difficulties that met him, from a burning conviction
that any change was better than leaving matters entirely alone, cannot
even be guessed; but it is quite certain that he acted in perfect
good faith, simply not knowing thoroughly what he was about. He had
a boundless belief in the power of education to form character; and
if any scheme promised just sufficient respite from poverty and
degradation to enable him and his disciples to educate one generation
of the country’s children, he was ready to leave all economic
consequences to be dealt with by “the New Moral World” which that
generation’s Owenite schooling would have created. Doubtless he thought
that “the Trades Union” promised him this much; and besides, he did not
foresee its economic consequences. He was disabled by that confident
sciolism and prejudice which has led generations of Socialists to
borrow from Adam Smith and the “classic” economists the erroneous
theory that labour is by itself the creator of value, without going
on to master that impregnable and more difficult law of economic rent
which is the very corner-stone of collectivist economy. He took his
economics from his friend William Thompson,[286] who, like Hodgskin and
Hodgskin’s illustrious disciple, Karl Marx, ignored the law of rent in
his calculations, and taught that all exchange values could be measured
in terms of “labour time” alone. Part of the Owenite activity of the
time actually resulted in the opening of labour bazaars, in which
the prices were fixed in minutes. The fact that it is the consumer’s
demand which gives to the product of labour any exchange-value at
all, and that the extent and elasticity of this demand determines
how much has to be produced; and the other governing consideration,
namely, that the expenditure of labour required to bring articles of
the same desirability to market varies enormously according to natural
differences in fertility of soil, distance to be traversed, proximity
to good highways, waterways, or ports, accessibility of water-power or
steam fuel, and a hundred other circumstances, including the organising
ability and executive dexterity of the producer, found themselves left
entirely out of account. Owen assumed that the labour of the miner
and that of the agricultural labourer, whatever the amount and nature
of the product of each of them, would spontaneously and continuously
exchange with each other equitably at par of hours and minutes when the
miners had received a monopoly of the bowels of the country, and the
agricultural labourers of its skin. He did not even foresee that the
Miners’ Union might be inclined to close its ranks against newcomers
from the farm labourers, or that the Agricultural Union might refuse
to cede sites for the Builders’ Union to work upon. In short, the
difficult economic problem of the equitable sharing of the advantages
of superior sites and opportunities never so much as occurred to the
enthusiastic Owenite economists of this period.

One question, and that the most immediately important of all, was
never seriously faced: How was the transfer of the industries from the
capitalists to the Unions to be effected in the teeth of a hostile and
well-armed Government? The answer must have been that the overwhelming
numbers of “the Trades Union” would render conflict impossible. His
enthusiastic disciple, William Benbow, successively a shoemaker,
bookseller, and coffee-house keeper, invented the instrument of the
General Strike--a sacred “holiday month” prepared for and participated
in by the entire wage-earning class, the mere “passive resistance” of
which would, without violence or conflict, bring down all existing
institutions. Whether this was in Owen’s mind in 1834, as it was, in
1839, avowedly in those of the Chartists, is uncertain.[287] At all
events, Owen, like the early Christians, habitually spoke as if the Day
of Judgment of the existing order of society was at hand. The next six
months, in his view, were always going to see the “New Moral World”
really established. The change from the capitalist system to a complete
organisation of industry under voluntary associations of producers was
to “come suddenly upon society like a thief in the night.” “One year,”
comments his disciple, “may disorganise the whole fabric of the old
world, and transfer, by a sudden spring, the whole political government
of the country from the master to the servant.”[288] It is impossible
not to regret that the first introduction of the English Trade Unionist
to Socialism should have been effected by a foredoomed scheme which
violated every economic principle of Collectivism, and left the
indispensable political preliminaries to pure chance.

It was under the influence of these large plans and confident hopes
that the Trade Unions were emboldened to adopt the haughty attitude and
contemptuous language towards the masters which provoked Manchester and
Liverpool employers to meet the challenge of the Builders’ Union by
“the Document.” The “intolerable tyranny” of the Unions, so much harped
on by contemporary writers, represents, to a large extent, nothing more
than the rather bumptious expression of the Trade Unionists’ feeling
that they were the rightful directors of industry, entitled to choose
the processes, and select their fellow-workers, and even their managers
and foremen. And it must be remembered that this occurred at a period
when class prejudice was so strong that any attempt at a parley made
by the workers, however respectfully, was regarded as presumptuous
and unbecoming. Hence the working class had always too much reason to
believe that civility on their part would be thrown away. It is certain
that during the Owenite intoxication the impracticable expectations
of national dominion on the part of the wage-earners were met with an
equally unreasonable determination by the governing classes to keep
the working men in a state not merely of subjection, but of abject
submission. The continued exclusion of the workmen from the franchise
made constitutional action on their side impossible. The employers,
on the other hand, used their political and magisterial power against
the men without scruple, inciting a willing Government to attack the
workmen’s combinations by every possible perversion of the law, and
partiality in its administration. Regarding absolute control over
the conduct of their workpeople as a _sine qua non_ of industrial
organisation, even the genuine philanthropists among them insisted
on despotic authority in the factory or workshop. Against the abuse
of this authority there was practically no guarantee. On the other
side it can be shown that large sections of the wage-earners were not
only moderate in their demands, but submissive in their behaviour. As
a rule, wherever we find exceptional aggression and violence on the
part of the operatives, we discover exceptional tyranny on the side
of the employers. To give an example or two, the continual outrages
which disgrace the annals of Glasgow Trade Unionism for the first
forty years of this century are accounted for by the reports of the
various Parliamentary Inquiries which mark out the Glasgow millowners
as extraordinarily autocratic in their views and tyrannous in their
conduct. Again, the aggressive conduct of certain sections of the
building trades is frequently complained of in the capitalist press
between 1830-40. But the agreements which the large contractors of
that time required “all those to sign who enter into their employ,”
printed copies of which are still extant, show that the demands of
the employers were intolerably arbitrary.[289] Then there is the
case of the miners of Great Britain, who were in very ill repute for
riotous proceedings from 1837-44. The provocation they received may
be judged from a manifesto issued by Lord Londonderry in his dual
capacity as mine-owner and Lord-Lieutenant of Durham County during
the great strike of the miners in 1844 for fairer terms of hiring.
He not only superintends, as Lord-Lieutenant, the wholesale eviction
of the strikers from their homes, and their supersession by Irishmen
specially imported from his Irish estates, but he peremptorily orders
the resident traders in “his town of Seaham,” on pain of forfeiting his
custom and protection, to refuse to supply provisions to the workmen
engaged in what he deems “an unjust and senseless warfare _against
their proprietors and masters_.”[290] The same intolerance marks
the magazines and journals of the dominant classes of the period. It
seems to have been habitually taken for granted that the workman had
not merely to fulfil his contract of service, but to yield implicit
obedience in the details of his working life to the will of his
master. Combinations and strikes on the part of the “lower orders”
were regarded as futile and disorderly attempts to escape from their
natural position of social subservience. In short, the majority of
employers, even in this time of negro emancipation, seem to have been
unconsciously acting upon the dictum subsequently attributed to J. C.
Calhoun, the defender of American slavery, that “the true solution of
the contest of all time between labour and capital is that capital
should own the labourer whether white or black.”

The closing scene of Owen’s first and last attempt at “the Trades
Union” shows how ephemeral had been his participation in the real life
of the Trade Union Movement. In August 1834 he called together one of
his usual miscellaneous congresses, consisting of delegates from all
kinds of Owenite societies, with a few from the Grand National and
other Trade Unions. At this congress the “Grand National Consolidated
Trades Union,” which was to have brought to its feet Government,
landlords, and employers, was formally converted into the “British and
Foreign Consolidated Association of Industry, Humanity, and Knowledge,”
having for its aim the establishment of a “New Moral World” by the
reconciliation of all classes. Beyond one or two small and futile
experiments in co-operative production, it had attempted nothing to
realise Owen’s Utopia. Its whole powers had been spent, seemingly
with his own consent, in a series of aggressive strikes. For all
that, Owen’s meteoric appearance in the Trade Union World left a deep
impression on the movement. The minute-books and other contemporary
records of the Trade Unions of the next decade abound in Owenite
phraseology, such as the classification of Society into the “idle” and
the “industrious” classes, the latter apparently meaning--and being
certainly understood to mean--only the manual workers. More important
is the persistence of the idea that the Trade Unions, as Associations
of Producers, should recover control of the instruments of production.
From this time forth innumerable attempts were made, by one Trade Union
or another, to employ its own members in Productive Co-operation. A
long series of industrial disasters, culminating in the great losses of
1874, has, even now, scarcely eradicated the last remnant of this Joint
Stock Individualism from the idealists of the Trade Union Movement; or
taught them to distinguish accurately between it and the demonstrably
successful Co-operative Production of the Associations of Consumers
which constitute the Co-operative Movement of to-day. Outside the
organised ranks his effect upon general working-class opinion was,
as Place remarks, enormous, as we could abundantly show were we here
concerned with the “Union Shops,” “Equitable Labour Exchanges,” and
industrial communities which may be considered the most direct result
of the Owenite propaganda, or with the fortunes of the innumerable
co-operative associations of producers, whose delegates formed the
backbone of the Owenite congresses of these years.[291]

The Trade Union Movement was not absolutely left for dead when
Owen quitted the field. The skilled mechanics of the printing and
engineering trades had, as we shall presently see, held aloof from
the general movement, and their trade clubs were unaffected either by
the Owenite boom or its subsequent collapse. In some other trades the
inflation of 1830-4 spread itself over a few more years. The Potters’
Union went on increasing in strength, and in 1835 gained a notable
victory over the employers, when a “Green Book of Prices” was agreed
to, which long remained famous in the trade. Renewed demands led to
the formation by the employers of a Chamber of Commerce to resist the
men’s aggression. The “yearly bond” was rigidly insisted upon, and a
great strike ensued, which ended in 1837 in the complete collapse of
the Union.[292] In 1836 the Scottish compositors formed the General
Typographical Association of Scotland, which for a few years exercised
an effective control over the trade. The same year saw a notable
strike by the Preston Cotton-spinners, from which is dated the general
adoption of the self-acting mule.[293] But the most permanent effect
is seen in the building trades. The national Unions of Plumbers and
Carpenters have preserved an unbroken existence down to the present
day,[294] whilst the Friendly Society of Operative Stonemasons
remained for nearly another half century one of the most powerful of
English Unions. The fortnightly circulars of the English Stonemasons
reveal, for a few years, not only a vigorous life and quick growth,
but also many successful short strikes to secure Working Rules and to
maintain Time Wages. The Scottish Stonemasons are referred to as being
even more active and influential in trade regulation, and as having
included practically all the Scottish masons. There is evidence, too,
of informal federal action between the National Unions of Stonemasons,
Carpenters, and Bricklayers. Unfortunately the absence of such modern
machinery of organisation as Trades Councils, Trade Union Congresses,
and standing joint committees prevented the scattered sectional
organisations from forming any general movement. This state of things
was broken into during the year 1837 by the sensational strikes in
Glasgow, the prolonged legal prosecution and severe punishment of their
leaders, and the appointment of a Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry
into the results of the repeal of the Combination Laws.

We do not propose to enter here into the details of the famous
trial of the five Glasgow cotton-spinners for conspiracy, violent
intimidation, and for the murder of fellow-workers. But it is one of
the “leading cases” of Trade Union history, and the manifestations
of feeling which it provoked show to the depths the state of mind of
the working classes.[295] The evidence given in court, and repeated
before the Select Committee of 1838, leaves no reasonable doubt that
the Cotton-Spinners’ Union in its corporate capacity had initiated
a reign of terror extending over twenty years, and that some of the
incriminated members had been personally guilty not of instigation
alone, but of actual violence, if not of murder. In spite of this,
the whole body of working-class opinion was on their side, and the
sentence of seven years’ transportation was received with as much
indignation as that upon the Dorchester labourers four years before.
This was one of the natural effects of the class despotism and scarcely
veiled rebellion which we have already described. The use of violence
by working men, either against obnoxious employers or against traitors
in their own ranks, was regarded in much the same way as the political
offences of a subject race under foreign dominion. Such deeds did
not, in fact, necessarily indicate any moral turpitude on the part of
the perpetrators. No one accused the five Glasgow cotton-spinners of
bad private character or conduct, and at least four out of the five
were men of acknowledged integrity and devotedness.[296] Their unjust
treatment whilst awaiting trial, and still more their sentence to
transportation, enlisted the sympathy of the Parliamentary Radicals,
and Wakley, the member for Finsbury, did not hesitate to bring their
case before the House of Commons as one of legal persecution and
injustice.

At this time the trade societies of Dublin and Cork had caused serious
complaint by attempting to establish, and not without violence, an
effective monopoly in certain skilled industries. Their action had been
reproved by Daniel O’Connell, whom they, in their turn, had repudiated
and denounced. O’Connell defeated Wakley’s friendly motion for an
inquiry into the cotton-spinners’ case by a serious indictment of Trade
Unionism. By a clever analysis of the rules of the Irish societies,
which he made out to be purely obstructive and selfish, he condemned,
in a speech of great power, all attempts on the part of trade
combinations to regulate the conditions of labour. The well-established
methods of modern Trade Unionism, such as the maintenance of a minimum
rate, received from him the same condemnation as the unsocial and
oppressive monopolies for which the Irish trades had long been
notorious. The Government met this speech by granting a Select
Committee under Sir Henry Parnell to inquire into the whole question;
and Trade Unionism accordingly found itself once more on its defence
as a permanent element in social organisation. The case of the Glasgow
cotton-spinners and the appointment of this Parliamentary Committee
for the moment revived the sentiment of solidarity in the Trade Union
world. A joint committee of the Glasgow trades was formed to collect
subscriptions for the defence of the prisoners; and communications for
this purpose were made to all the known Trade Unions. Considerable
funds were subscribed, as the trial was repeatedly postponed at great
expense to the prisoners; and when at last, in January, 1838, they were
convicted and sentenced, a combined agitation for some mitigation of
their punishment was begun. By this time it had become known that some
kind of inquiry into Trade Unionism was in contemplation. The Unions
at once set their house in order. The Stonemasons, who had already
given up the administration of oaths, resolved, for greater security
against illegal practices, “that all forms of regalia, initiation, and
passwords be dispensed with and entirely abolished.”[297] The Dublin
Plasterers formally suspended their exclusive rules, and deferred
the issue of a new edition until after the inquiry.[298] In Glasgow,
the chief seat of the disorder, many societies--among others, the
local Carpenters--deliberately burned their minute-books and archives
for the past year. The London societies appointed a committee, “The
London Trades Combination Committee,” to conduct the Unionist case
in the Parliamentary inquiry. Lovett, then well known as a Radical
politician, became secretary, and issued a stirring address to the
Trade Unions throughout the country, asking for subscriptions and
evidence.[299] But the Parliamentary Committee proved both perfunctory
and inconclusive. The Government, which had conceded it merely to rid
itself of the importunity of Wakley on the one hand and O’Connell on
the other, had evidently no intention of taking any action on the
subject; and the Committee, always thinly attended, made no attempt
at a general inquiry, and confined itself practically to Dublin and
Glasgow. O’Connell got the opportunity he desired of demonstrating,
through selected witnesses, the violent and exclusive spirit which
animated the Irish Unions. With regard to Glasgow, the chief witness
was Sheriff, afterwards Sir Archibald, Alison, whose vigorous action
had quelled the cotton-spinners in that city. It was scarcely necessary
to call witnesses on behalf of the Unions; but John Doherty, then
become a master-printer and bookseller, was allowed to describe the
Manchester spinners’ organisation and the ill-fated associations of
1829-31. The inquiry resulted in nothing but the presentation to the
House of two volumes of evidence, without even so much as a report. It
seems to have been expected that the Committee would be reappointed
to complete its task; but when the next session came the matter was
quietly dropped.[300]

The temporary fillip given by the cotton-spinners’ trial and the
Parliamentary Committee did not stop the steady decline of Trade
Unionism throughout the country. Trade, which had been on the wane
since 1836, grew suddenly worse. The decade closed with three of the
leanest years ever known; and widespread distress prevailed. The
membership of the surviving Trade Unions rapidly decreased. The English
Stonemasons, perhaps the strongest of the contemporary societies,
reduced themselves, in 1841, temporarily, to absolute bankruptcy by
their disastrous strike against an obnoxious foreman on the rebuilding
of the Houses of Parliament. The Scottish Stonemasons’ Society, of
equal or greater strength, collapsed at about the same time, from
causes not known to us. The Glasgow trades had been completely
disorganised by the disasters of 1837. The Lancashire textile
operatives showed no sign of life; whilst such growing societies as
the Ironfounders, the Journeymen Steam-Engine Makers and Millwrights,
and the Boilermakers were crippled by the heavy drafts made upon their
funds by unemployed members. The state of mind of the working classes
was no more propitious than the state of trade. Fierce discontent
and sullen anger are the characteristics of this period. Hatred of
the New Poor Law, of the iniquitous taxes on food, of the general
oppression by the dominant classes, blazes out in the Trade Union
records of the time. The agitation for the “Six Points,” set on foot
by Lovett and others in the Working Men’s Association of 1836, became
the centre of working-class aspiration. The _Northern Star_, started
at the end of 1837, rapidly distanced all other provincial journals in
circulation. The lecturers of the Anti-Corn Law League increased the
popular discontent, even when their own particular panacea failed to
find acceptance. A general despair of constitutional reform led to the
growing supremacy of the “Physical Force” section of the Chartists, and
to the insurrectionism of 1839-42.

The political developments of these years are outside the scope of
this work. The Chartist Movement plays the most important part in
working-class annals from 1837 to 1842, and does not quit the stage
until 1848. Made respectable by sincerity, devotion, and even heroism
in the rank and file, it was disgraced by the fustian of many of its
orators and the political and economic quackery of its pretentious and
incompetent leaders whose jealousies and intrigues, by successively
excluding all the nobler elements, finally brought it to nought.
An adequate history of it would be of extreme value to our young
Democracy.[301] Here it is only necessary to say that whilst the
Chartist Movement commanded the support of the vast majority of the
manual-working wage-earners, outside the ranks of those who were
deeply religious, there is no reason to believe that the Trade Unions
at any time became part and parcel of the Movement, as they had,
during 1833-4, of the Owenite agitation, though some of their members
furnished the most ardent supporters of the Charter. Individual trades,
such as the shoemakers, seem to have been thoroughly permeated with
Chartism, and were always attempting to rally other trade societies to
the cause. The angry strikes of 1842 in Lancashire and the Midlands,
fostered, as some said, by the Anti-Corn Law League, were “captured”
by the Chartists, and almost converted into political rebellions. The
delegate meeting of the Lancashire and Yorkshire trade clubs, which
was conducting the “general strike” then in progress “for the wages
of 1840,” resolved in August 1842 to recommend all wage-earners “to
cease work until the Charter becomes the law of the land.”[302] For a
few weeks, indeed, it looked as if the Trade Union Movement, such as
it was, would become merged in the political current. But the manifest
absurdity of persuading starving men to remain on strike until the
whole political machinery of the country had been altered, must have
quickly become apparent to the shrewder Trade Unionists. When Chartist
meetings at Sheffield were calling for a “general strike” to obtain the
Charter, the secretaries of seven local Unions wrote to the newspapers
explaining that their trades had nothing to do with the meetings
or the resolutions.[303] It must be remembered in this connection
that the number of Trade Unionists was, in these years, relatively
small--probably not so great as a hundred thousand in the whole
kingdom--so that they could not have formed any appreciable proportion
of the two, three or four million adherents that the Chartist leaders
were in the habit of claiming. And it may be doubted whether in
any case a Trade Union itself, as distinguished from particular
members who happened to be delegates, made any formal profession of
adherence to Chartism. In the contemporary Trade Union records that
are still extant, such as those of the Bookbinders, Compositors,
Ironfounders, Cotton-spinners, Steam-engine makers, and Stonemasons,
there are no traces of Chartist resolutions; although denunciations
of the “Notorious New Poor Law oppression” abound in the _Fortnightly
Circular_ of the Stonemasons;[304] whilst the Ironfounders,
Compositors, and Cotton-spinners pass resolutions in favour of Free
Trade. A partial explanation of this reticence on the more exciting
topic of the Charter is doubtless to be found in the frequently adopted
rule excluding politics and religion from Trade Union discussions--a
rule which was, in 1842, protested against by an enthusiastic Chartist
delegate from the Bookbinders at the Manchester Conference.[305] There
must, however, have been something more than mere obedience to the rule
in the unwillingness of the trade societies to be mixed up with the
Chartist agitation. The rule had not prevented the organised trades of
1831-2 from taking a prominent part in the Reform Bill Movement. The
banners of the Edinburgh trade clubs were conspicuous in the public
demonstration on the rejection of the Bill of 1831. When the House
of Lords gave way, the Birmingham Trade Unions themselves organised
a triumphal procession, which was discountenanced by the middle
class.[306] The records of the London Brushmakers show that they
even subscribed from the Union funds to Reform associations. But we
never find the trade societies of 1839-42 contributing to Chartist
funds, or even collecting money for Chartist victims. The cases of
Frost, Williams, and Jones, the Newport rebels of 1839, were least
as deserving of the working-class sympathy as those of the Glasgow
cotton-spinners. But the Trade Unions showed no inclination to
subscribe money or get up petitions in aid of them. “Never,” writes
Fergus O’Connor, in 1846, “was there more criminal apathy than that
manifested by the trades of Great Britain to the sufferings of those
men;” and he adds, “that if one half that was done for the Dorchester
labourers or the Glasgow cotton-spinners had been done for Frost,
Williams, and Jones, they would long since have been restored.”[307]

Insurrectionism, whether Owenite or Chartist, was, in fact, losing its
attraction for the working-class mind. Robert Owen’s economic axioms of
the extinction of profit and the elimination of the profit-maker were,
during these very years, passing into the new Co-operative Movement,
inaugurated in 1844 by the Rochdale Pioneers. The believers in a
“new system of society,” to be brought about by universal agreement,
were henceforth to be found in the ranks of the commercial-minded
Co-operators rather than in those of the militant Trade Unionists.
Chartism, meanwhile, had degenerated from Lovett’s high ideal of a
complete political democracy to an ignoble scramble for the ownership
of small plots of land. The example of the French Revolution of 1848
fanned the dying embers for a few weeks into a new flame; and many of
the London trades swung into the somewhat theatrical fête of April 10,
1848, swelling the procession against which the Duke of Wellington
had marshalled the London middle class. But the danger of revolution
had passed away. A new generation of workmen was growing up, to whom
the worst of the old oppression was unknown, and who had imbibed the
economic and political philosophy of the middle-class reformers.
Bentham, Ricardo, and Grote were read only by a few; but the activity
of such popular educationalists as Lord Brougham and Charles Knight
propagated “useful knowledge” to all the members of the Mechanics’
Institutes and the readers of the _Penny Magazine_. The middle-class
ideas of “free enterprise” and “unrestricted competition” which
were thus diffused received a great impetus from the extraordinary
propaganda of the Anti-Corn Law League, and the general progress of
Free Trade. Fergus O’Connor and Bronterre O’Brien struggled in vain
against the growing dominance of Cobden and Bright as leaders of
working-class opinion. And so we find in the Trade Union records of
1847-8, that vigorous resistance begins to be made to any movement in
support of the old ideals. The Steam-Engine Makers’ Society suspended
some of their branches for depositing the branch funds in Fergus
O’Connor’s Land Bank. When two branches of the Stonemasons’ Society
propose the same investment, the others indignantly protest against
it as an absurd political speculation. And it is significant that
these protests came, not from the cautious elders whose enthusiasm had
outlived many failures, but from those who had never shared the old
faith. When in 1848 the Yorkshire Woolstaplers proposed to take a farm
upon which to set to work their unemployed men, it was the younger
members, as we are expressly told, who strenuously but vainly resisted
this action, which resulted ruinously for the society.

All this makes the close of the “revolutionary” period of the Trade
Union Movement. For the next quarter of a century we shall watch the
development of the new ideas and the gradual building up of the great
“amalgamated” societies of skilled artisans, with their centralised
administration, friendly society benefits, and the substitution,
wherever possible, of Industrial Diplomacy for the ruder methods of the
Class War.


FOOTNOTES:

[207] In a manuscript essay on the different forms of association,
entitled “Trades Unions condemned, Trade Clubs justified,” Place gives
us the distinction between the two. “A trade society,” he says, “that
is, a club consisting of the journeymen in any one trade which does
not form part of a union of several trades, which does not appoint
delegates to meet other delegates, is a very different thing from a
Trades Union, even though it may call itself a union. Trades Unions
are those in which several trades, or portions of several trades, in
the same line of business or in different callings, are confederated
by means of delegates.” Place often refers to this distinction between
the Trade Clubs, which were, according to his view, “very valuable
institutions,” and the “Trades Unions,” or “associations of several or
many trades in one combination,” which he regarded as “very mischievous
associations.” William Lovett, too, watching the same transformation,
makes, in a letter published in the _Poor Man’s Guardian_ of August 30,
1834, exactly the same distinction.

[208] See the reports to the Home Secretary (Home Office Papers,
42--179, 180, 181, 182); _The Town Labourer_ (by J. L. and B. Hammond,
1917), pp. 306-11.

[209] See the “Articles of the Philanthropic Hercules, for the Mutual
Support of the Labouring Mechanics,” dated December 24, 1818, which
Gast contributed to the _Gorgon_. Gast’s preliminary address appears in
the issue for December 5, 1818, and in that of January 29, 1819, the
society is described as established (Place MSS. 27899--143).

[210] _The Herald of the Rights of Industry_ (Manchester, April 5,
1834).

[211] _Labour Rewarded: The Claims of Labour and Capital: How to secure
to Labour the Whole Product of its Exertions_, by One of the Idle
Classes [William Thompson], 1827; see _The Irish Labour Movement_, by
W. P. Ryan, 1919.

[212] _A Report of the Proceedings of the Meeting of Cotton-spinners
at Ramsay_, etc. (Manchester, 1829, 56 pages); _Copy of Resolutions of
the Delegates from the Operative Cotton-spinners who met at the Isle of
Man_ (Manchester, 1830), in Home Office Papers, 40--27.

[213] John Doherty, described by Place as a somewhat hot-headed Roman
Catholic--really one of the acutest thinkers and stoutest leaders
among the workmen of his time--was born in Ireland in 1799, and went
to work in a cotton-mill at Larne, Co. Antrim, at the age of ten. In
1816 he migrated to Manchester, where he quickly became one of the
leading Trade Unionists, and secretary to the local Cotton-spinners’
Society. We find him, for instance, taking a prominent part in the
agitation against the proposed re-enactment of the Combination Laws
in 1825. Whether he was concerned in the Philanthropic Society or
General Union of 1818 or 1826 we do not know. In 1829 he organised the
great strike of the Hyde spinners against a reduction of rates, and
became, as described in the text, successively General Secretary to
the Federation of Spinners’ Societies, and to the National Association
for the Protection of Labour, in which office he is reported, probably
inaccurately, to have received the then enormous salary of £600 a year.
We naturally find him the object of great suspicion by the Government,
but no charge seems ever to have been brought against him (Home Office
Papers, 40--26, 27). The articles in the _Voice of the People_ and
the _Poor Man’s Advocate_, which are evidently from his pen, show him
to have been a man of wide information, great natural shrewdness,
and far-reaching aims. His idea was that all the local and district
Unions were to be federated in a national organisation for the sole
purpose of dealing with trade matters, and that they should also be
federated in a National Association for obtaining political reforms.
In 1832, during the Reform crisis, Place describes him as advising
the working classes to use the occasion for a social revolution. He
subsequently acted as secretary to an association of operatives and
masters established to enforce the Factory Acts, and was one of Lord
Shaftesbury’s most strenuous supporters. In 1838, when he had become
a printer and bookseller in Manchester, he gave evidence before the
Select Committee on Combinations of Workmen, in which he described the
spinners’ organisations and strikes. There is a pamphlet by him in the
Goldsmiths’ Library at the University of London, entitled _A Letter to
the Members of the National Association for the Protection of Labour_
(Manchester, 1831).

[214] Home Office Papers, 40--27.

[215] _Ibid._, December 3, 1830, 40--26.

[216] Foster died in 1831, and McGowan settled at Glasgow. “Almost
every spinning district,” writes the _Poor Man’s Advocate_ of June
23, 1832, “of any consequence, was enrolled in the Union. The power
of the Union, of course, increased with its members, and a number of
the worst-paying employers were compelled to advance the wages of the
spinners to something like the standard rate.... The Union, however,
which Mr. McGowan had mainly contributed to mature, has since, from
distrust or weariness, sunk into comparative insignificance.”

[217] The letter is preserved in the MS. “Contribution Book” of the
Liverpool Sailmakers’ Friendly Association, established 1817.

[218] _Address of the National Association for the Protection of Labour
to the Workmen of the United Kingdom_ (4 pp. 1830), in Home Office
Papers, 40--27.

[219] Given as Appendix to the pamphlet _On Combination of Trades_
(1830). Compare Wade’s _History of the Middle and Working Classes_
(1834), p. 277.

[220] Thirty-one numbers, extending from March 6 to October 2, 1830,
are in the Manchester Public Library (620 B).

[221] The numbers from January to September 1831 are in the British
Museum. See Place’s letter in _Westminster Review_ (1831), p. 243.

[222] Home Office Papers, 40--26, 27.

[223] Home Office Papers, April 8, 1831, 44--25.

[224] _Union Pilot and Co-operative Intelligencer_, March 24, 1832
(Manchester Public Library, 640 E).

[225] Meanwhile the coalminers of Northumberland and Durham, under the
leadership of “Tommy Hepburn,” an organiser of remarkable ability, had
formed their first strong Union in 1830, which for two years kept the
two counties in a state of excitement. Strikes and riotings in 1831
and 1832 caused the troops to be called out: marines were sent from
Portsmouth, and squadrons of cavalry scoured the country. After six
months’ struggle in 1832 the Union collapsed, and the men submitted.
See Home Office Papers for these years, 40--31, 32, &c. Sykes’ _Local
Records of Northumberland_, &c., vol. ii. pp. 293, 353; Fynes’ _Miners
of Northumberland and Durham_ (Blyth, 1873), chaps, iv. v. vi.; _An
Earnest Address and Urgent Appeal to the People of England in behalf of
the Oppressed and Suffering Pitmen of the Counties of Northumberland
and Durham_ (by W. Scott, Newcastle, 1831); _History and Description of
Fossil Fuel_, etc. (by John Holland, 1835), pp. 298-304.

[226] It is not clear whether this scheme was initiated by carpenters
or masons. The carpenters and joiners are distinguished among the
building trades for the antiquity of their local trade clubs, which
are known to have existed in London as far back as 1799. A national
organisation was established in London in July 1827, called the
Friendly Society of Operative Carpenters and Joiners, which still
survives under the title of the “General Union.” MS. records in
the office of the latter show that this federation had 938 members
in 1832, rising to 3691 in 1833, and to 6774 in 1834, a total not
paralleled until 1865. This rapid increase marks the general upheaval
of these years. But this Society did not throw in its lot with the
Builders’ Union until 1833. On the other hand, the existing Operative
Stonemasons’ Friendly Society, which dates its separate existence from
1834, but which certainly existed in some form from 1832, has among
its archives what appear to be the original MS. rules and initiation
rites of its predecessor, the Builders’ Union; and in these documents
the masons figure as the foremost members. Moreover, these rules and
rites closely resemble those of contemporary unions among the Yorkshire
woollen-workers; and an independent tradition fixes the parent lodge
of the Masons’ Society at the great woollen centre of Huddersfield,
whereas the Friendly Society of Carpenters and Joiners, founded in
London, had its headquarters at Leicester. But however this may be,
the constitution and ceremonies described in these documents owe their
significance to the fact that they are nearly identical with those
adopted by many of the national Unions of the period, and were largely
adopted by the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union of 1834.

[227] A similar ritual is printed in _Character, Objects, and
Effects of Trades Unions_ (1834), as used by the Woolcombers’ Union.
Probably the Builders’ Union copied their ritual from some union of
woollen-workers. The Stonemasons’ MS. contains, like the copy printed
in this pamphlet, a solemn reference to “King Edward the Third,” who
was regarded as the great benefactor of the English wool trade, but
whose connection with the building trade is not obvious. In a later
printed edition of _The Initiating Parts of the Friendly Society of
Operative Masons_, dated Birmingham, 1834, his name is omitted, and
that of Solomon substituted, apparently in memory of the Freemasons’
assumed origin at the building of the Temple at Jerusalem.

The actual origin of this initiation ceremony is not certainly known
John Tester, who had been a leader of the Bradford Woolcombers in 1825,
afterwards turned against the Unions, and published, in the _Leeds
Mercury_ of June and July 1834, a series of letters denouncing the
Leeds Clothiers’ Union. In these he states that “the mode of initiation
was the same as practised for years before by the flannel-weavers
of Rochdale, with a party of whom the thing, in the shape it then
wore, had at first originated.... A great part of the ceremony, ...
particularly the death scene, was taken from the ceremonial of one
division of the Oddfellows, ... who were flannel-weavers at Rochdale,
in Lancashire; and all that could be well turned from the rules and
lectures of one society into the regulations of the others was so
turned, with some trifling verbal alterations.” In another letter he
says that the writer of the “lecture book” was one Mark Warde. Tester
is not implicitly to be believed, but it seems probable that the
regalia, doggerel rhymes, and mystic rites of the unions of this time
were copied from those of an Oddfellows’ Lodge, with some recollections
of Freemasonry. In his _Mutual Thrift_ (1891), the Rev. J. Frome
Wilkinson describes (p. 14) the initiation ceremony of the “Patriotic
Oddfellows,” a society which merged in the present “Grand United
Order of Oddfellows” before the close of the century. The ceremony so
described corresponds in many characteristic details with that of the
Trades Unions. All the older friendly society “Orders” imposed an oath,
and were consequently unlawful.

[228] Home Office Papers, December 29, 1832, 40--31.

[229] At Birmingham, when the builders’ strike presently extended to
that town, the following was the manifesto drawn up for adoption by the
Builders’ Union, for presentation to the leading building contractor
who had just undertaken to erect the new grammar-school. (No record of
its adoption and presentation has been found.) “We, the delegates of
the several Lodges of the Building Trades, elected for the purpose of
correcting the abuses which have crept into the modes of undertaking
and transacting business, do hereby give you notice that you will
receive no assistance from the working-men in any of our bodies to
enable you to fulfil an engagement which we understand you have entered
into with the Governors of the Free Grammar School to erect a new
school in New Street, unless you comply with the following conditions:

“Aware that it is our labour alone that can carry into effect what
you have undertaken, we cannot but view ourselves as parties to your
engagement, if that engagement is ever fulfilled; and as you had
no authority from us to make such an engagement, nor had you any
legitimate right to barter our labour at prices fixed by yourself, we
call upon you to exhibit to our several bodies your detailed estimates
of quantities and prices at which you have taken the work; and we call
upon you to arrange with us a fixed percentage of profit for your own
services in conducting the building, and in finding the material on
which our labour is to be applied.

“Should we find upon examination that you have fixed equitable prices
which will not only remunerate you for your superintendence but us for
our toil, we have no objections upon a clear understanding to become
partners to the contract, and will see you through it, after your
having entered yourself a member of our body, and after your having
been duly elected to occupy the office you have assumed” (_Robert Owen:
A Biography_, by Frank Podmore, 1906, vol. ii. p. 442-4).

[230] _An Impartial Statement of the Proceedings of the Members of the
Trades Union Societies, and of the Steps taken in consequence by the
Master Traders of Liverpool_ (Liverpool, 1833); _Remarks on the Nature
and Probable Termination of the Struggle now existing between the
Master and Journeyman Builders_ (Manchester, 1833); _Times_, June 27,
1833.

[231] _Pioneer_, December 7, 1833; _History of Birmingham_, by W.
Hutton (Birmingham, 1835), p. 87.

[232] It was edited by James Morrison, an enthusiastic Owenite, who
died, worn out, in 1835 (_Beer’s History of British Socialism_, 1919,
p. 328).

[233] It was eventually finished by the landlord, and still exists as a
metal warehouse in Shadwell Street.

[234] In May 1834 an informer offered to supply the Home Secretary
With full particulars of its organisation, leading members and their
activities, for two sums of £50 each (Home Office Papers, 40--32).

[235] Letters to Cobbett’s _Weekly Register_, reprinted in the
_Pioneer_, December 21, 1833. See also Home Office Papers, 40--32; and
the _Crisis_ for November and December 1833. _The Voice of the West
Riding_, an unstamped weekly, June and July 1833, was devoted to this
agitation in the Yorkshire textile industry (see Home Office Papers,
40--31).

[236] For an unfavourable account of this Union, see the extremely
biassed statement given in the pamphlet _Character, Objects, and
Effects of Trades Unions_ (1834). The employers seem to have regarded
all the demands of the men as equally unreasonable, even the request
for a list of piecework prices. See _Times_, October 2, 1833. A printed
address _To the Flax and Hemp Trade of Great Britain_, issued by the
flaxworkers of Leeds, November 30, 1832, refers with admiration to
the effectiveness of this Union (Home Office Papers, 40--31; see also
41--11).

[237] _Times_, October 28, 1833.

[238] _Crisis_, October 19, 1833.

[239] _Crisis_, October 12, 1833. The history of the General Trades
Unions from 1832 to 1834 is mainly to be gathered from the files of
the Owenite press, the _Crisis_, the _Pioneer_, and the _Herald of the
Rights of Industry_, with frequent ambiguous references in the Home
Office Papers for these years. The _Poor Man’s Guardian_ and the _Man_
also contain occasional references. The _Official Gazette_, issued by
the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union itself in June 1834, has
unfortunately not been preserved. We have also been unable to discover
any copy of the Glasgow Owenite journals, the _Tradesman_, _Trades
Advocate_, _Liberator_, etc., mostly edited or written by Owen’s
disciple, Alexander Campbell, the secretary of the local joiners’ Trade
Union.

[240] It is interesting to notice how closely this organisation
resembles, in its Trade Union features, the well-known “Knights of
Labour” of the United States, established in 1869, and for some years
one of the most powerful labour organisations in the world (“Historical
Sketch of the Knights of Labour,” by Carroll D. Wright, _Quarterly
Journal of Economics_, January, 1887). Its place was taken by the
American Federation of Labour, with exclusively Trade Union objects.

[241] _Glasgow Argus_, quoted in _People’s Conservative_, December 28,
1833.

[242] May 5, 1834.

[243] _Times_, January 23 and 30, 1834.

[244] _Kerr’s Exposition of Legislative Tyranny and Defence of the
Trades Union_ (Belfast, 1834), vol. 1611 of the Halliday Tracts in the
Royal Irish Academy, Dublin; see _The Irish Labour Movement_, by W. P.
Ryan, 1919.

[245] _Poor Man’s Guardian_, July 26, 1834.

[246] _Times_, April 19, 1834.

[247] The only record of this organisation known to us is a copy of
the Rules in the Goldsmiths’ Library at the University of London,
which we print in the Appendix. A “Memorial from the Grand National
Consolidated Trades Union of Great Britain and Ireland to the Producers
and Non-Producers of Wealth and Knowledge” is printed in the _Crisis_,
May 17, 1834; another, “to the Shopmen, Clerks, Porters and other
industrious non-producers,” in the issue for April 26, 1834.

[248] See the London newspapers for March 1834; a good summary is given
in the _Companion to the Newspaper_ for that month (p. 71).

[249] September 26, 1831: _Lord Melbourne’s Papers_ (1889), ch. v. p.
130. The note he left on leaving the Home Office was as follows: “I
take the liberty of recommending the whole of this correspondence _re_
the Union to the immediate and serious consideration of my successor
at the Home Department” (Home Office Papers, 40--27). See also the
statements in the House of Lords debate, _Times_, April 29, 1834; and
the comments in _Labour Legislation, Labour Movements, and Labour
Leaders_, by George Howell, 1902, p. 23.

[250] “We recommend that the soliciting of any person to join in
combinations, or to subscribe to the like purposes, should be
punishable on summary conviction by imprisonment for a shorter period,
say not exceeding two months.”

[251] The report was never published, and lies in MS. in the Home
Office library. Ten years later, when Nassau Senior was acting as
Commissioner to report on the condition of the handloom weavers,
he revived a good deal of his 1830 Report, but not the astonishing
proposals quoted in the text. The portion thus revived appears in
his _Historical and Philosophical Essays_ (1865), vol. ii. We had
placed in our hands, through the kindness of Mrs. Simpson, daughter
of Nassau Senior, the original answers and letters upon which his
report was based. This correspondence shows that the leading Manchester
manufacturers were not agreed upon the desirability of re-enacting the
Combination Laws, though they, with one accord, advocated stringent
repression of picketing. Nor were they clear that combinations had, on
the whole, hindered the introduction of new machinery, one employer
even maintaining that the Unions indirectly promoted its adoption.
But the most interesting feature of the correspondence is the extent
to which the employers complained of the manner in which their rivals
incited, and even subsidised, strikes against attempted reductions of
rates. The millowner, whose improved processes gave him an advantage
in the market, found any corresponding reduction of piecework rates
resisted, not only by his own operatives, but by all the other
manufacturers in the district, who sometimes went so far as to publish
a joint declaration that any such reduction was ‘highly inexpedient.’
The evidence, in fact, from Nassau Senior’s point of view, justified
his somewhat remarkable proposal to punish employers for conniving at
combinations.

[252] Lord Melbourne to Sir Herbert Taylor, September 26, 1831
(_Papers_, chap. v. p. 131). The workmen’s combinations began at
this time to attract more serious attention from capable students
than they had hitherto received. Two able pamphlets, published
anonymously--there is reason to believe at the instance and at the
cost of the Whig Government--_On Combinations of Trades_ (1830), and
_Character, Objects, and Effects of Trades Unions_ (1834), set forth
the constitution and proceedings of the new unions, and criticise
their pretensions in a manner which has not since been surpassed. The
second of these was by Edward Carlton Tufnell, one of the factory
commissioners, and remains perhaps the best statement of the case
against Trades Unionism. Tufnell also wrote a pamphlet, entitled
_Trades Unionism and Strikes_ (1834; 12mo); and Harriet Martineau one
_On the Tendency of Strikes and Sticks to produce Low Wages_ (Durham,
1834; 12mo), neither of which we have seen. A well-informed but hostile
article, founded on these materials, appeared in the _Edinburgh Review_
for July 1834. Charles Knight published in the same year a sixpenny
pamphlet, _Trades Unions and Strikes_ (1834, 99 pp.), which took the
form of a bitter denunciation of the whole movement.

[253] See his letter of March 30, 1834, in _Lord Melbourne’s Papers_,
chap. v.

[254] _Leeds Mercury_, April 26, 1834. Joseph Hume said he had had the
“greatest difficulty in prevailing upon the Ministers not to bring in a
bill for putting down the Trades Unions” (_Poor Man’s Guardian_, March
29, 1834).

[255] Letter dated September 3, 1833, in _Times_, September 9, 1833.

[256] R. _v._ Bykerdike, 1 Moo. and Rob. 179, Lancaster Assizes, 1832.
A letter was written to certain coal-owners, “by order of the Board of
Directors for the body of coal-miners,” stating that unless certain
men were discharged the miners would strike. Held to be an illegal
combination. See _Leeds Mercury_, May 24, 1834.

[257] _Times_, August 22, 1835.

[258] _Poor Man’s Guardian_, September 29, 1832.

[259] _Times_, February 27, 1834.

[260] R. _v._ Marks and others, 3 East Rep. 157.

[261] Lengthy accounts appeared in the newspapers for March and April
1834. The indictment is given in full in the House of Commons Return,
No. 250, of 1835 (June 1st). The legal report is in 6 C. and P. 596
(R. _v._ Loveless and others). The _Times_ reported the judge’s
charge at some length, March 18, 1834, and the case itself March 20,
1834, giving the rules of the projected union. An able article in the
_Law Magazine_, vol xi. pp. 460-72, discusses the law of the case.
The defendants subsequently published two statements for popular
circulation, viz. _Victims of Whiggery, a statement of the persecution
experienced by the Dorchester Labourers_, by George Loveless (1837),
and _A narrative of the sufferings of James Loveless, etc._ (1838),
which are in the British Museum. See also _Labour Legislation, Labour
Movements, and Labour Leaders_, by G. Howell, 1902, pp. 62-75; Spencer
Walpole’s _History of England_, vol. iii. chap. xiii. pp. 229-31; and
_Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates_, vols. xxii. and xxiii.

[262] The student is referred to the admirable account of these
proceedings in _The Village Labourer_, by J. L. and B. Hammond, 1912.
See, for a contemporary account, _Swing Unmasked, or the Cause of Rural
Incendiarism_, by G. C. Wakefield, M.P., 1831.

[263] _Lord Melbourne’s Papers_, pp. 147-150, letters dated November
3 and 7, 1832. Lord Melbourne seems to have thought, probably quite
incorrectly, that these rural organisations were in connection with
the political organisation called the National Union of the Working
Classes, founded by William Lovett in 1831, to support the Reform Bill.

[264] _Times_, March 20, 1834.

[265] _Lord Melbourne’s Papers_, p. 158.

[266] _Times_, March 18, 20, 31; April 1, 16, 19, 1834; _Leeds
Mercury_, April 26, 1834.

[267] A prominent Owenite agitator of the time, incumbent of St.
Nicholas, Warwick, who is said to have been inhibited from preaching by
his bishop.

[268] _Times_, April 22; _Companion to the Newspaper_, May and June
1834. Trade Union accounts declare that 100,000 to 200,000 persons were
present. A detailed description of the day is given in Somerville’s
_Autobiography of a Working Man_ (1848), not usually a trustworthy work.

[269] _Times_, April 19, 1834.

[270] The agitation for their release was kept up, both in and out
of Parliament, by the “London Dorchester Committee”; and in 1836 the
remainder of the sentence was remitted. Through official blundering it
was two years later (April 1838) before five out of the six prisoners
returned home. The sixth, as we learn from a circular of the Committee,
dated August 20, 1838, had even then not arrived. “Great and lasting
honour,” writes a well-informed contemporary, “is due to this body of
workmen (the London Dorchester Committee), about sixteen in number, by
whose indefatigable exertions, extending over a period of five years,
and the valuable assistance of Thomas Wakley, M.P. for Finsbury, the
same Government who banished the men were compelled to pardon them
and bring them home free of expense. From the subscriptions raised
by the working classes during this period, amounting to about £1300,
the Committee, on the return of the men, were enabled to place five
of them, with their families, in small farms in Essex, the sixth
preferring (with his share of the fund) to return to his native place.”
(Article in the _British Statesman_, April 9, 1842, preserved in Place
MSS. 27820--320.) See also House of Commons Return, No. 191 of 1837
(April 12); and _Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates_, vol. xxxii. p. 253.

[271] The series of “Initiation Parts,” or forms to be observed on
admission of new members, which are preserved in the archives of the
Stonemasons’ Society, reveal the steady tendency to simplification of
ritual. We have first the old MS. doggerel already described, dating
probably from 1832. The first print of 1834, whilst retaining a good
deal of the ceremonial, turns the liturgy into prose and the oath into
an almost identical “declaration,” invoking the “dire displeasure” of
the Society in case of treachery. The second print, which bears no
date, is much shorter; and the declaration becomes a mere affirmation
of adhesion. The Society’s circulars of 1838 record the abolition,
by vote of the members, of all initiation ceremonies, in view of the
Parliamentary Inquiry about to be held into Trade Unionism. But even
the simplified form of 1838 retains, in its reference to the workmen
as “the real producers of _all_ wealth,” an unmistakable trace of the
Owenite spirit of the Builders’ Union of 1832.

[272] _Times_, April 30 to June 10; House of Lords debate, April 28;
_Globe_, May 21, 1834; Home Office Papers, May 10, 1834, 40--32; _The
Tailoring Trade_, by F. W. Galton, 1896.

[273] _Leeds Mercury_, May 3, 1834.

[274] See the address of the “Grand Master” to the “Operative
Cordwainers of the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union,” _Crisis_,
June 28, 1834; also _Times_, May 2, 1834; Home Office Papers, 40--32.

[275] _Times_, August 21, 1834.

[276] _Statement of the Master Builders of the Metropolis in
explanation of the differences between them and the workmen respecting
the Trades Unions_, 1834. See also _Times_, July 27 to November 29,
1834.

[277] The _Times_ honoured these events by long descriptive reports
from its “own correspondent,” then an unusual practice; see the issues
from April 17 to 25, 1834. A good account is also to be found in the
_Leeds Mercury_, April 19 and 26, 1834; see also the _History of the
Marcroft Family_ (1889), pp. 1036.

[278] _Trades Journal_, March 1, 1841; probably written by Alexander
Hutchinson, general secretary of the Friendly United Smiths of Great
Britain and Ireland.

[279] _England and America: a Comparison of the Social and Political
State of both Nations_, 1833, 2 vols.

[280] _Poor Man’s Guardian_, March 12, 1831; Place MSS. 27791--246,
272. “There were seven Co-operative Congresses in the years 1830-5 in
which the Trade Union and Labour Exchange elements were prominent”
(Prof. Foxwell’s Introduction to _The Right to the Full Produce of
Labour_, by Anton Menger, 1899).

[281] See the volumes of the _Poor Man’s Guardian_, preserved in the
British Museum.

[282] Place MSS. 27797--290; see a similar account in the _Life of
William Lovett_, by himself, p. 86. James Mill writes to Lord Brougham
on September 3, 1832, as follows: “Nothing can be conceived more
mischievous than the doctrines which have been preached to the common
people.... The nonsense to which your lordship alludes about the right
of the labourer to the whole produce of the country, wages, profits,
and rent all included, is the mad nonsense of our friend Hodgskin,
which he has published as a system, and propagates with the zeal of
perfect fanaticism.... The illicit cheap publications, in which the
doctrine of the right of the labouring people, who they say are the
only producers, to all that is produced, is very generally preached,
... are superseding the Sunday newspapers and every other channel
through which the people might get better information” (Bain’s _James
Mill_, p. 363, 1882). The series of Socialist authors of these years,
usually ignored, have been well described by Prof. Foxwell in his
Introduction to the English translation of Menger’s _Right to the Whole
Produce of Labour_, 1899; and more fully and philosophically in M.
Beer’s _History of British Socialism_, 1919, vol. i.

[283] “Owen’s chief merit was that he filled the working classes with
renewed hope at a time when the pessimism, both of orthodox economists
and of their unorthodox opponents, had condemned labour to be an
appendage of machinery, a mere commodity whose value, like that of
all commodities, was determined by the bare cost of keeping up the
necessary supply. Owen laid stress upon the human side of economics.
The object of industry was to produce happier and more contented men
and women” (_The Chartist Movement_, by Mark Hovell, 1918, p. 45).

[284] The prospectus of this Society is in the British Library of
Political Science at the London School of Economics. A copy is given
in the _Morning Chronicle_, December 7, 1833. Its Manchester meetings
are reported in the _Crisis_ for November and December 1833. It seems
to have had for its organ a penny weekly called _The Herald of the
Rights of Industry_, some numbers of which are in the British Museum.
Professor Foxwell has kindly drawn our attention to a further reference
to it in the _Life of James Deacon Hume_, p. 55. It excited the
curiosity of the Home Secretary. See Home Office Papers, 40--31.

[285] See Owen’s elaborate speech, reported in the _Crisis_, October
12, 1833; _Robert Owen: a Biography_, by Frank Podmore, 1906; and
_Trade Unionism_, by C. M. Lloyd, 1915.

[286] _Inquiry into the Principles of the Distribution of Wealth most
conducive to Human Happiness_, by William Thompson, 1824; also his
_Labour Rewarded, the Claims of Labour and Capital_; _How to secure to
Labour the whole Product of its Exertions_, by One of the Idle Classes,
1827; see Professor Foxwell’s Introduction to _The Right to the
whole Produce of Labour_, by Anton Menger, 1899; _History of British
Socialism_, by M. Beer, 1919, vol. i.; and _The Irish Labour Movement_,
by W. P. Ryan, 1919, ch. iii.

[287] The pamphlet, entitled _The Grand National Holiday and Congress
of the Productive Classes_, by William Benbow, 1831, had an extensive
circulation. Mark Hovell (_The Chartist Movement_, 1918, p. 91) thinks
he was the same William Benbow whom Bamford mentions as a delegate
from Manchester in 1817 (_Life of a Radical_, p. 8), and whom Henry
Hunt describes as of the Manchester Hampden Club, and as having been
reported by a Government spy to be manufacturing pikes in 1816 (_The
Green Bag Plot_, 1918).

[288] Leading article in the _Crisis_, October 12, 1833.

[289] A specimen dated 1837 is preserved by the Stonemasons’ Society,
according to which a Liverpool contractor bound all his employees to
serve him at a fixed wage for a long term of years, any time lost by
sickness or otherwise not to be paid for and to be added to the term;
all “lawful commands” to be obeyed; and no present or future club or
other society to be joined without the employer’s consent.

[290] See his manifestoes reprinted in _Northern Star_, July 6 and
July 27, 1844. “Lord Londonderry again warns all the shopkeepers and
tradesmen in his town of Seaham that if they still give credit to
pitmen who hold off work, and continue in the Union, such men will be
marked by his agents and overmen, and will never be employed in his
collieries again, and the shopkeepers may be assured that they will
never have any custom or dealings with them from Lord Londonderry’s
large concerns that he can in any manner prevent.

“Lord Londonderry further informs the traders and shopkeepers, that
having by his measures increased very largely the last year’s trade
to Seaham, and if credit is so improperly and so fatally given to his
unreasonable pitmen, thereby prolonging the injurious strike, it is his
firm determination to carry back all the outlay of his concerns even to
Newcastle.

“Because it is neither fair, just, or equitable that the resident
traders in his own town should combine and assist the infatuated
workmen and pitmen in prolonging their own miseries by continuing
an insane strike, and an unjust and senseless warfare against their
proprietors and masters.”

[291] Some account of these developments will be found in _The
Co-operative Movement in Great Britain_, by Beatrice Potter (Mrs.
Sidney Webb).

[292] The collapse was duly reported to the Home Secretary (Home Office
Papers, 40--33, 34, 35).

[293] See Ashworth’s paper before British Association, 1837; _Remarks
upon the Importance of an Inquiry into the Amount and Appropriation
of Wages by the Working Classes_, by W. Felkin, 1837; _Appeal to the
Public from the United Trades of Preston_, February 14, 1837 (in Home
Office Papers, 40--35).

[294] The United Society of Operative Plumbers (reorganised 1848)
still dominates its branch of the trade, and retains traces of the
federal constitution of the Builders’ Union. The sister organisation
of carpenters (now styled the General Union of Carpenters and Joiners)
has been overtaken and overshadowed by the newer Amalgamated Society of
Carpenters and Joiners; whilst the Operative Bricklayers’ Society has
absorbed practically all the older societies in its own branch of the
trade.

[295] Glasgow was still the principal centre of the cotton industry,
especially in weaving. In 1838 there were in the Glasgow area about
36,000 handlooms devoted mainly to cotton, with two persons to a
loom, whilst in all Lancashire there were only 25,000 (Parliamentary
Papers, xlii. of 1849 and xxiv. of 1840; _The Chartist Movement_, by
Mark Hovell, 1918, p. 14). Combination among the cotton operatives of
Glasgow was of old standing. After the strike of 1812, already referred
to, trouble broke out again in 1820 and 1822, when outrages were
committed (_Arts and Artisans_, by J. G. Symons, 1839, p. 137).

Besides securing full reports in the newspapers, the Trade Union
committee conducting the case published at a low price an account of
the trial in parts, which has not been preserved. Two other exhaustive
reports were issued, and may still be consulted, viz. _Report of
the trial of Thomas Hunter and other operative cotton-spinners in
Glasgow in 1838_, by Archibald Swinton (Edinburgh, 1838), and _The
trial of Thomas Hunter, etc., the Glasgow Cotton-spinners_, by James
Marshall (Glasgow, 1838). See also the _Autobiography of Sir Archibald
Alison_, 1883; the _Northern Star_ for 1837-8; the _Annual Register_
for 1838, pp. 206-7; and the evidence before the Select Committee
on Combinations, 1838. A summary will be found in Howell’s _Labour
Legislation, Labour Movements and Labour Leaders_, 1902, pp. 83-4.

[296] The five prisoners were pardoned in 1840, in consequence of their
exemplary conduct. There is a joint letter by them in the _Trades
Journal_ for August, 1840, relating to the subscriptions raised for
them by a London committee.

[297] _Stonemasons’ Fortnightly Circular_, January 19, 1838.

[298] Evidence of W. Darcy, the secretary, second report of 1838
Committee, p. 130.

[299] Circular dated March 1, 1838, in Stonemasons’ archives; and
_An Address from the London Trades Committee appointed to watch the
Parliamentary Inquiry into Combinations_, 1838.

[300] George Howell suggests, we are not sure with what authority, that
Nassau Senior, whose report on Trade Unionism to the Home Secretary
in 1830 we have already described, tendered this to Sir Henry Parnell
as the basis of a report by the Committee of 1838, but the proposal
was not accepted (_Labour Legislation, Labour Movements and Labour
Leaders_, 1902, pp. 83-4). See also _The Irish Labour Movement_, by W.
P. Ryan, 1919.

[301] A series of subsequent publications has now gone far to fill this
gap. _The Chartist Movement_, by R. G. Gammage (republished 1894),
may now be supplemented by _The Life of Francis Place_, by Professor
Graham Wallas (revised edition, 1918); _Le Chartisme_, 1830-48, by
E. Dolléans, 2 vols. (Paris, 1912-13); _The Chartist Movement_, by
Mark Hovell, 1918; _The Social and Economic Aspects of the Chartist
Movement_, by F. F. Rosenblatt (New York, 1916); _The Decline of the
Chartist Movement_, by P. W. Slosson (New York, 1916); _Chartism and
the Churches_, by H. V. Faulkner (New York, 1916); _Die Entstehung und
die ökonomischen Grundsätze der Chartistenbewegung_, by John Tildsley
(Jena, 1898); and especially by the two separate volumes on the
_History of British Socialism_, by M. Beer, 1919 and 1920.

[302] _Northern Star_, August 20, 1842.

[303] _Sheffield Iris_, August 1842.

[304] See, for instance, that for October 1839.

[305] _Northern Star_, August 20, 1842. “It is clear that the trade
societies as a whole stood outside the Chartist Movement, though many
Trade Unionists were no doubt Chartists too. The societies could not
be induced to imperil their funds and existence at the orders of the
Chartist Convention” (_The Chartist Movement_, by Mark Hovell, 1918, p.
169).

[306] _History of Birmingham_, by W. Hutton (Birmingham, edition of
1835), p. 149.

[307] _Northern Star_, August 24, 1846.




CHAPTER IV

THE NEW SPIRIT AND THE NEW MODEL

[1843-1860]


We have seen the magnificent hopes of 1829-42 ending in bitter
disillusionment: we shall now see the Trade Unionists of the next
generation largely successful in reaching their more limited aims.
Laying aside all projects of Social Revolution, they set themselves
resolutely to resist the worst of the legal and industrial oppressions
from which they suffered, and slowly built up for this purpose
organisations which have become integral parts of the structure of a
modern industrial state. This success we attribute mainly to the spread
of education among the rank and file, and the more practical counsels
which began, after 1842, to influence the Trade Union world. But we
must not overlook the effect of economic changes. The period between
1825 and 1848 was remarkable for the frequency and acuteness of its
commercial depressions. From 1850 industrial expansion was for many
years both greater and steadier than in any previous period.[308] It is
no mere coincidence that these years of prosperity saw the adoption
by the Trade Union world of a “New Model” of organisation, under which
Trade Unionism obtained a financial strength, a trained staff of
salaried officers, and a permanence of membership hitherto unknown.

The predominance of Chartism over Trade Unionism was confined to the
bad times of 1837-42. Under the influence of the rapid improvement
and comparative prosperity which followed, the Chartist agitation
dwindled away; and a marked revival in Trade Unionism took effect in
the re-establishment, about 1843, of the Potters’ Union, and of an
active Cotton-spinners’ Association, and, in 1845, by the amalgamation
of the metropolitan and provincial societies of compositors into
the National Typographical Society.[309] The powerful United Flint
Glass Makers’ Society (reorganised in 1849 as the Flint Glass Makers’
Friendly Society of Great Britain and Ireland) dates from the same
year. Delegate meetings of other trades were held; and national
societies of tailors and shoemakers were set on foot. A national
conference of curriers in 1845 established a federal union of all the
local clubs in the trade. But the most important of the new bodies
was the Miners’ Association of Great Britain and Ireland, formed at
Wakefield in 1841.[310] Up to this period the miners, held in virtual
serfage by the truck system and the custom of yearly hirings, had not
got beyond ephemeral strike organisations. Strong county Unions now
grew up in Northumberland and Durham on the one hand, and Lancashire
and Yorkshire on the other; and the new body was a federation of these.
Under the leadership of Martin Jude, it developed an extraordinary
propagandist activity, at one time paying no fewer than fifty-three
missionary organisers, who visited every coalpit in the kingdom. The
delegate meetings at Manchester and Glasgow in the year 1844 soon came
to represent practically the whole of the mining districts of Great
Britain; and the membership rose, it is said, to at least 100,000.[311]

A leading feature of this Trade Unionist revival was a dogged
resistance to legal oppression. Although the more sensational
prosecutions of Trade Union leaders had ceased with the abandonment of
unlawful oaths, there was still going on, up and down the kingdom, an
almost continuous persecution of the rank and file, by the magistrates’
interpretation of the law relating to masters and servants. The miners,
in particular, were hampered by lengthy hirings, during which they were
compelled to serve if required, but were not guaranteed employment.
Unskilled in legal subtleties, and not yet served by an experienced
class of Trade Union secretaries, they were made the victims of a
thousand and one quibbles and technicalities. The Northumberland and
Durham Miners’ Union grappled with the difficulty in a thoroughly
practical spirit. They engaged W. P. Roberts,[312] an able and
energetic solicitor, with strong labour sympathies, to light every
case in the local courts. In 1844 the Miners’ Association of Great
Britain and Ireland followed this excellent example by appointing
Roberts their standing legal adviser at a salary of £1000 a year. When
the Durham miners had to relinquish his services at the end of 1844,
he was taken over by the newly formed Lancashire Miners’ Union. The
“miners’ attorney-general,” as he was called, showed an indefatigable
activity in the defence of his clients, and was soon retained in
all Trade Union cases. The magistrates throughout the country found
themselves for the first time confronted by a pertinacious legal
expert, who, far more ingenious than the employers, was not less
unscrupulous in taking advantage of every technicality of the law.

In a letter written to the Flint Glass Makers’ Friendly Society in
1851, Roberts himself gives a vivid picture of the difficulties
against which the Unions had to contend. After explaining the law,
as he understood it, he proceeds as follows: “But it is exceedingly
difficult to induce those of the class opposed to you to take this
view of things. I do not say this sarcastically, but as a fact learnt
by long and observant experience. There are indeed men on the bench
who are honest enough, and desirous of doing their duty. But all their
tendencies and circumstances are against you. They listen to your
opponents, not only often, but cheerfully--so they know more fully the
case against you than in your favour. To you they listen too--but in a
sort of temper of ‘Prisoner at the Bar, you are entitled to make any
statement you think fit, and the Court is bound to hear you; but mind,
whatever you say,’ etc. In the one case you observe the hearty smile
of goodwill; in the other the derisive sneer, though sometimes with a
ghastly sort of kindliness in it. Then there is the knowledge of your
overwhelming power when acting unitedly, and this begets naturally
a corresponding desire to resist you at all hazards. And there are
hundreds of other considerations all acting the same way--meetings,
political councils, intermarriages, hopes from wills, etc. I do not say
that all occupants of the bench are thus influenced, nor to the same
extent; but it certainly is at the best an uphill game to contend in
favour of a working man in a question which admits of any doubt against
him. It never happened to me to meet a magistrate who considered that
an agreement among masters not to employ any particular ‘troublesome
fellow’ was an unlawful act; reverse the case, however, and it
immediately becomes a formidable conspiracy, which must be put down by
the strong arm of the law, etc.... When I was acting for the Colliers’
Union in the North we resisted every individual act of oppression, even
in cases where we were sure of losing; and the result was that in a
short time there was no oppression to resist. For it is to be observed
that oppression like that we are speaking of--which after all is merely
a more genteel and cowardly mode of thieving--shrinks at once from a
determined and decided opposition. In the North we should have tried
this case, first in the County Court, then at the Assizes, and then
perhaps in the Queen’s Bench.”[313]

One result of Roberts’ successful advocacy is perhaps to be seen in
the introduction, during the Parliamentary session of 1844, of a Bill
“for enlarging the powers of justices in determining complaints between
masters, servants, and artificers,” which the Government got referred
to a committee, by which various extraordinary interpolations were made
in what was at first a harmless measure.[314] Not only was any J.P. to
be authorised to issue a warrant for the summary arrest of any workman
complained of by his employer, but “any misbehaviour concerning such
service or employment” was to be punished by two months’ imprisonment,
at the discretion of a single justice. It is easy to see what a wide
interpretation would have been given by many a justice of the peace to
this vague phrase; and Roberts was not slow to point out the danger to
his clients. Upon his incitement the delegate meeting of coal-miners
at Sheffield set on foot a vigorous agitation against the Bill, which
had already slipped through second reading and committee without a
division. The Potters’ Union took the matter up with special vigour,
and circulated draft petitions throughout the Midlands.[315] A friendly
member, Thomas Slingsby Duncombe, obstructed its further progress, and
got it postponed until after the Easter recess. Meanwhile petitions
poured in upon the astonished House, amounting, it was said, to a
total of two hundred, and representing two millions of workmen. When
the Bill came on again all the Radicals and the “Young England” Tories
were marshalled against it. Sir James Graham in vain protested that the
Government meant nothing more than a consolidation of the existing law,
and led into the lobby all his colleagues who were present, including
Mr. Gladstone. But the combination on the other side of Duncombe,
Wakley, Hume, and Ferrand, with Tories like Lord John Manners, and a
few enlightened Whigs such as C. P. Villiers, settled the fate of this
attempt on the part of the employers to sharpen the blunted weapon of
the law against the hated Trade Unions.[316]

The miners were less successful in their strikes than in their legal
and political business. In 1844 their National Conference at Glasgow,
representing 70,000 men, voted, by 28,042 to 23,357, in favour of
striking against their grievances, and the Durham men, numbering some
30,000, engaged in that prolonged struggle with Lord Londonderry
and their other employers for more equitable terms of hiring and
payment, to which we have already alluded.[317] After many months’
embittered strife the strike failed disastrously; and the great
Miners’ Association, whose proceedings form so important a feature of
the _Northern Star_ for 1844 and 1845, gradually disappears from its
pages, and in the general collapse of the coal trade in 1847-8 it came
completely to an end.

But the culminating point in this revival of Trade Union activity was
the formation, at Easter, 1845, of the National Association of United
Trades for the Protection of Labour, an organisation which resuscitated
and combined some of the ideas both of Owen and of Doherty. This
Association was explicitly based, as its rules inform us, “upon two
great facts: first, that the industrious classes do not receive a
fair day’s wage for a fair day’s labour; and, secondly, that for some
years past their endeavours to obtain this have, with few exceptions,
been unsuccessful. The main causes of this state of things are to
be found in the isolation of the different sections of working men,
and the absence of a generally recognised and admitted authority
from the trades themselves.” But, unlike the Owenite movement of
1833-4, the National Association of United Trades was from the first
distinguished by the moderation of its aims and the prudence of its
administration--qualities to which we may attribute its comparatively
lengthy survival for fifteen years. No attempt was made to supersede
existing organisations of particular trades by a “General Trades
Union.” “The peculiar local internal and technical circumstances of
each trade,” say the rules, “render it necessary that for all purposes
of efficient internal government its affairs should be administered by
persons possessing a practical knowledge of them. For this reason it
is not intended to interfere with the organisation of existing Trade
Unions.” Moreover, the promoters evidently intended the Association
to become more of a Parliamentary Committee than a federation for
trade purposes. Its purpose and duty was declared to be “to protect
the interests and promote the well-being of the associated trades” by
mediation, arbitration, and legal proceedings, and by promoting “all
measures, political and social and educational, which are intended to
improve the condition of the labouring classes.”[318]

This new attempt to form a National Federation originated in a
suggestion from the “United Trades” of Sheffield, embodied in an
able letter written to Duncombe[319] by their secretary, John Drury.
Duncombe had become widely known to the Trade Unionists, not only
through his friendship with Fergus O’Connor, and his outspoken support
of Chartism in the House of Commons, but also by his successful
obstruction and defeat of the Masters and Servants Bill of the previous
Session. He appears to have laid Drury’s proposals before the leading
men in the London Unions, who agreed to form a committee to report on
the scheme, and to summon a conference of Trade Union delegates from
all parts of the country. At Easter, 1845, 110 delegates, representing
not only the London trades, but also the Lancashire miners and textile
operatives, the hosiery and woollen-workers of Yorkshire and the
Midlands, and the “United Trades” of Manchester, Sheffield, Norwich,
Hull, Bristol, Rochdale, and Yarmouth, met together in London.

The preliminary report made to the Conference by the London
Committee of Trade Delegates is practically the first manifestation
of that spirit of cautious if somewhat limited statesmanship which
characterised the Trade Union leaders of the next thirty years.[320]
The Committee, whilst recommending the immediate formation of a
national organisation, “to vindicate the rights of labour,” and “to
oppose the tyranny of any legislative enactments to coerce trade
societies, or of a similar character to the Masters and Servants Bill
of last session, were deeply impressed with the importance of, and
beneficial tendency arising from, a good understanding between the
employer and the employed; seeing that their interests are mutual,
and that neither can injure the other without the wrong perpetrated
recoiling upon the party who inflicts it. They would therefore suggest
it to be one of the principal objects of this Conference to cultivate
a good understanding with the employer, and thereby remove those
prejudices which exist against trade combinations, by showing upon
all occasions that they only seek by combination to place themselves
upon equal terms as disposers of their labour with those who purchase
it; to secure themselves from injury, but by no means to inflict it
upon others. Although the Committee are anxious that this desirable
and important organisation should be carried out to the fullest
possible extent, they feel that great caution must be observed in
the formation of its laws and regulations, in order that the evils
which existed and eventually destroyed the Consolidated Union of 1833
shall be carefully avoided. The Committee conceive it necessary to
call the attention of those trades who are comparatively disunited,
and whose men are consequently working for different rates of wages,
to the great necessity that exists, that those who are receiving the
highest wages should use every effort within their power to secure to
their fellow-workmen a fair remuneration for their labour; and that
every inducement should be held out by the several trade societies
to their separated brethren to join them, in order that they may be
the better enabled to make common cause in cases of aggression, which
would be the certain result if each trade were to form itself into one
well-regulated society for their mutual interests.... And, finally, the
Committee would earnestly recommend to this Conference, in order that
these important points may be considered and dispassionately argued,
that no proposition of a political nature, beyond what has been already
alluded to, should be introduced, or occupy its attention; convinced
as they are that the only way to carry out these desirable objects
satisfactorily, and with a due consideration to the best interests of
all those who are concerned, is to consider and dispose of but one
question at a time: and, moreover, to keep trade matters and politics
as separate and distinct as circumstances will justify.”[321]

The proceedings of this Conference show that the change of front on
the part of the Trade Union leaders was reflected in the attitude of
the rank and file. The surviving influence of Owenism is to be traced
in the frequent recurrence of the idea of co-operative production, the
desire to establish agricultural communities, and the proposal for a
legislative shortening of the hours of labour. But of the aggressive
policy and ambitious aims of 1830-34 scarcely a vestige remains.
Strikes were deprecated, and the idea of a general cessation of work
was entirely abandoned. The projects of co-operative production were
on an altogether different plane from Owen’s grand schemes. The Trade
Unionists of the National Conference of 1845 had apparently no vision
of a general transfer of the instruments of production from the
capitalists to the Trade Unions; co-operative production was regarded
simply as an auxiliary to Trade Union action, the union workshop
furnishing a cheap alternative to unproductive strike pay. Besides thus
formally abandoning the methods and pretensions of 1834, the Conference
declared its allegiance to a new method of Trade Union activity--the
policy of conciliation and arbitration. In the demand for “local Boards
of Trade,” a phrase borrowed apparently from the silk-weavers, we
see the beginning of that system of authoritative mutual negotiation
between the representatives of capital and labour which became a very
distinctive feature of British Trade Unionism in the last half of the
nineteenth century.

But the shadow of the failure of 1834 still hung over projects of
universal Trade Unions. Although nearly all trades had been represented
at the first conference, most of the larger organisations decided, on
consideration, to hold aloof from the new body. We find, for instance,
the Manchester Lodge of the Stonemasons’ Society promptly protesting
against the adherence of the society’s delegate, and expressing their
emphatic opinion “that past experience has taught us that we have had
general union enough.” This view was endorsed by the Central Committee,
which, in submitting the matter to the votes of the members, observes
that “there are several trade societies in England as perfectly
organised as ourselves, although their machinery may be somewhat
various; but we can hear of none of these societies being desirous to
join this national movement.... It may be very well for trades who
are divided into sections and have no national organisation amongst
themselves to join such an association--they have nothing to lose; but
it is a question for serious reflection whether a general union of each
trade separately would not be far more effective than the heterogeneous
association in question.”[322] A similar view seems to have been taken
by the Coal-miners, whose national federation was still in existence. A
delegate meeting of the newly formed National Typographical Association
decided by a large majority to remain outside. The Lancashire
Cotton-spinners sent a delegate to the adjourned conference, and even
proposed to have perambulating lecturers to explain the advantages of
the new organisation, but never actually decided to join.[323]

The adjourned conference on July 28, 1845, was therefore composed, in
the main, of the delegates of the smaller or less organised trades.
About fifty delegates took part in the proceedings, which extended
over six days. It was eventually decided to separate the Trade Union
from the co-operative aims, and to form two distinct but mutually
helpful associations. The “National Association of United Trades for
the Protection of Labour” undertook to deal with disputes between
masters and men, and look after the interests of labour in the House
of Commons. The “National United Trades Association for the Employment
of Labour” proposed to raise capital with which to employ men who
were on strike under circumstances approved by its twin brother. At
the second conference, held at Manchester in June 1846, when 126
delegates, representing, it was said, 40,000 members, were present,
the contribution to the Trade Association was fixed at twopence in
the pound of weekly earnings; and it was decided that the strike
allowance should vary from nine shillings up to fourteen shillings per
week, the latter sum being the wages agreed on for men employed in
the association’s own workshops. Up to this date no strike had been
supported, as it was desired to avoid the premature action which had,
it was held, destroyed the Grand National Consolidated Union. A number
of paid organisers were engaged. The Association, which hitherto had
consisted of woollen and hosiery-workers and of the Midland hardware
trades, spread in various new directions. The executive of the Friendly
Society of Operative Carpenters and Joiners--the association that had
played so important a part in the movement of 1830--issued a manifesto
to its members in favour of joining, and the general secretary became
an active member of the Executive of the National Association. The
Manchester Section of the National Cordwainers’ Society urged all
its members and all societies of boot and shoemakers to join. The
Potters of Staffordshire, the Miners of Scotland, the new-born
National Association of Tailors, as well as the Metropolitan branches
of the Boilermakers’ and Masons’ Societies came in. The Association,
in fact, became reputed a power in the land, and drew down upon
itself the abusive censure of the _Times_.[324] But in spite of the
wise intentions of its founders, it soon began to suffer from the
characteristic complaints of general unions. The depression of trade
which began in 1845 brought about during the next two years reductions
of wages, followed by strikes and turn-outs in almost every branch of
industry. The local committees of the National Association, frequently
composed of the officials of the trades concerned, promised their
members the support of the national funds, and took umbrage when the
Executive sitting in London reversed their decisions. Each constituent
trade felt that its interests were misunderstood, or its grievances
neglected. A prolonged strike of the Manchester building trades in
1846, begun without sanction, failed miserably, the local committee of
the National Association declaring that the collapse was due to lack of
the financial support which had been promised on behalf of the central
body. The coal and iron miners at Holytown in Lanarkshire engaged
in a struggle against their employers which excited the sympathy of
the Trade Union world, but which ended in failure. An equally severe
conflict by the calico-printers at Crayford in Kent met with no better
success. The Scottish miners complained that they had been inadequately
supported by the association; and the Lancashire miners made this the
pretext for continued abstention.

Though Duncombe’s association had discouraged strikes, and acted
principally as a mediating body, the employers throughout the country
showed themselves uniformly hostile. The “document” which had figured
so prominently in 1833-4 reappeared in a slightly altered form. The
employers signified their toleration if not their approval of local
trade clubs, but condemned with equal acrimony national unions of
particular trades, or general unions of all trades. Affecting a sudden
concern for the independence of character of their workmen, they
insisted that the existence of any kind of central committee, however
representative it might be, prevented the men from being free agents,
and exposed them to the arbitrary commands of an irresponsible body.
In face of this attitude, the efforts of the National Association to
bring about peaceful settlements met with only qualified success. The
London Executive, unable to cope with the applications for assistance
that poured in daily from all parts of the country, issued strong
admonitions against unauthorised strikes, but had eventually to
give or withhold support without sufficient knowledge of the local
circumstances. Duncombe was principally occupied in drawing up and
presenting petitions in favour of the legislative shortening of the
hours of labour, and in this direction he rendered valuable assistance
to the Lancashire cotton-spinners’ “Short Time Committee,” which
secured the Ten Hours Act of 1847. The Central Executive was, indeed,
during these years, more a Parliamentary Committee for the whole
movement than a federation of Trade Unions. The plan of co-operative
workshops, from which so much had been expected, proved entirely
futile in the prolonged contests of the staple trades. One flourishing
boot workshop was started; and the 1847 conference found, in all, one
hundred and twenty-three men at work, the enterprises being confined to
those trades carried on by hand labour in a small way. In 1848 it was
decided to merge the two associations in one, and to set about raising
£50,000 in order to start on a larger scale. But before this could
be attempted the association suffered a double reverse from which it
never recovered. Duncombe was compelled, by failing health, to withdraw
during 1848 from active participation in its work. And at the end of
the following year a strike of the Wolverhampton tinplate-workers
involved the National Association in a struggle with employers and with
the law which drained its funds and destroyed its credit.[325]

The later history of the association is obscure.[326] It lingered on
for many years in a small way, its paid officers serving as advisers
and representatives to a number of minor Trade Unions. Its principal
work in later years was the promotion and support of bills for the
establishment of councils of conciliation, and its persistent efforts
certainly paved the way for the Joint Boards subsequently set on
foot. But it ceases after 1851 to exercise any influence or play any
important part in the Trade Union Movement.

The National Association of United Trades stands, in constitution and
objects, half-way between the revolutionary voluntaryism of 1830-4
and the Parliamentary action of 1863-75. It may, in fact, be regarded
either as a belated “General Trades Union” of an improved type, or as
a premature and imperfect Parliamentary Committee of the Trade Union
world. And although the great national Unions of the time took no
part in its proceedings, its moderate and unaggressive policy was
only one manifestation of the new spirit which now prevailed in Trade
Union councils. We see rising up in the Unions of the better-paid
artisans a keen desire to get at the facts of their industrial and
social condition. This new feeling for exact knowledge may to some
extent be attributed to the increasing share which the printing trades
were now beginning to take in the Trade Union Movement. The student
of the reports of the larger compositors’ societies, from the very
beginning of the century, will be struck, not only by the moderation,
but also by the elaborate Parliamentary formality--one might almost
say the stateliness of their proceedings. Instead of rhetorical abuse
of all employers as “the unproductive classes,” and total abstinence
from investigation of the details of disputes, we find the compositors
dealing only with concrete instances of hardship, and referring every
important question to a “Select Committee” for inquiry and report.
In 1848 the London Consolidated Society of Bookbinders, established
in 1786, used part of its funds to form a library for the benefit
of its members. By 1851 a reading-room furnished with daily and
weekly newspapers had been opened. Four years later a similar library
was established by the London Society of Compositors. In 1842, the
Journeymen Steam-Engine and Machine Makers’ Friendly Society started
a Mutual Improvement Class at Manchester. Even the Stonemasons, at
that time a rough and somewhat turbulent body, were reached by the new
desire for self-improvement. The Glasgow branch of the Scottish United
Operative Masons report with pride, in 1845, that they have “formed a
class for mutual instruction ... an association for moral, physical,
and intellectual improvement” which was setting itself to investigate
the question--“Is the present improved condition of machinery
beneficial to the working classes, or is it hurtful?”[327] But the
most effective outcome of this desire for information was the starting
by the Unions of special trade journals. The United Branches of the
Operative Potters set on foot in 1843 the _Potters’ Examiner_, a weekly
newspaper which dealt with the trade interests and technical processes
of their industry.[328] The Journeymen Steam-Engine and Machine Makers’
Friendly Society issued the _Mechanics’ Magazine_ between 1841 and
1847. In November 1850 Dunning persuaded the London Consolidated
Society of Bookbinders to publish the _Bookbinders’ Trade Circular_,
in the pages of which he promulgated a theory of Trade Unionism, from
which McCulloch himself would scarcely have dissented,[329] and made
that humble organ of his society into a monthly magazine of useful
information on all matters connected with books and their manufacture.
But the best of these trade publications, and the only one which
has enjoyed a continuous existence down to the present day, was the
_Flint Glass Makers’ Magazine_, an octavo monthly of ninety-six pages,
established at Birmingham in 1850 by the Flint Glass Makers’ Friendly
Society,[330] which advocated “the education of every man in our trade,
beginning at the oldest and coming down to the youngest.... If you do
not wish to stand as you are and suffer more oppression,” it enjoined
its readers, “we say to you get knowledge, and in getting knowledge you
get power.... Let us earnestly advise you to educate; get intelligence
instead of alcohol--it is sweeter and more lasting.”[331]

With increased acquaintance with industrial conditions came a reaction
against the policy of reckless aggression which marked the Owenite
inflation. Here again we find the printing trades taking the lead.
Already in 1835, when the London Compositors were reorganising their
society, the committee went out of their way to denounce the great
general Unions. “Unfortunately almost all Trades Unions hitherto
formed,” they report to their members, “have relied for success upon
extorted oaths and physical force.... The fault and the destruction
of all Trades Unions has hitherto been that they have copied the
vices which they professed to condemn. While disunited and powerless
they have stigmatised their employers as grasping taskmasters; but as
soon as they (the workmen) were united and powerful, then they became
tyrants in their turn, and unreasonably endeavoured to exact more
than the nature of their employment demanded, or than their employers
could afford to give. Hence their failure was inevitable.... Let the
Compositors of London show the Artisans of England a brighter and
better example; and casting away the aid to be derived from cunning
and brute strength, let us, when we contend with our opponents, employ
only the irresistible weapons of truth and reason.”[332] The disasters
of 1837-42 caused this spirit to spread to other trades. From this
time forth the minutes and circulars of the larger Unions abound in
impressive warnings against aggressive action. “Strikes are prolific,”
say the delegates of the Ironmoulders in council assembled; “in certain
cases they beget others.... How often have disputes been averted by
a few timely words with employers! It is surely no dishonour to
explain to your employer the nature and extent of your grievance.”[333]
The Stonemasons’ Central Committee repeatedly caution their members
“against the dangerous practice of striking.... Keep from it,” they
urge, “as you would from a ferocious animal that you know would destroy
you.... Remember what it was that made us so insignificant in 1842....
We implore you, brethren, as you value your own existence, to avoid, in
every way possible, those useless strikes. Let us have another year of
earnest and attentive organisation; and, if that does not perfect us,
we must have another; for it is a knowledge of the disorganised state
of working men generally that stimulates the tyrant and the taskmaster
to oppress them.”[334] A few years later the Liverpool lodge invites
the support of all the members for the proposition “that our society
no longer recognise strikes, either as a means to be adopted for
improving our condition, or as a scheme to be resorted to in resisting
infringements,”[335] and suggests, as an alternative, the formation
of an Emigration Fund. The Portsmouth lodge caps this proposal by
insisting not only that strikes should cease, but also that the word
“strike” be abolished! The _Flint Glass Makers’ Magazine_, between
1850 and 1855, is full of similar denunciations. “We believe,” writes
the editor, “that strikes have been the bane of Trades Unions.”[336]
In 1854 the Flint Glass Makers, on the proposition of the Central
Committee, abolished the allowance of “strike-money” by a vote of the
whole of the members. As an alternative it was often suggested that a
bad employer should be defeated by quietly withdrawing the men one by
one, as situations could be found for them elsewhere. “As man after
man leaves, and no one [comes] to supply their place, then it is that
the proud and haughty spirit of the oppressor is brought down, and he
feels the power he cannot see.”[337]

It was part of the same policy of restricting the use of the weapon
of the strike that the power of declaring war on the employers was,
during these years, taken away from the local branches. In the two
great societies of which we have complete records--the Ironmoulders
and the Stonemasons--we see a gradual tightening up of the control
of the central executive. The Delegate Meeting of the Ironmoulders
in 1846 vested the entire authority in the Executive Committee. “The
system,” they report, “of allowing disputes to be sanctioned by
meetings of our members, generally labouring under some excitement or
other, or misled by a plausible letter from the scene of the dispute,
is decidedly bad. Our members do not feel that responsibility on these
occasions which they ought. They are liable to be misled. A clever
speech, party feeling, a misrepresentation, or a specious letter--all
or any of these may involve a shop, or a whole branch, in a dispute,
unjustly and possibly without the least chance of obtaining their
object.... Impressed with the truth of these opinions, we have handed
over for the future the power of sanctioning disputes to the Executive
Committee alone.”[338] The Stonemasons’ Central Committee, after 1843,
peremptorily forbid lodges to strike shops, even if they do not mean
to charge the society’s funds with strike-pay. And though in this
Union, unlike the Ironmoulders, the decision to strike or not to strike
was not vested in the Executive, any lodge had to submit its demand,
through the _Fortnightly Circular_, to the vote of the whole body of
members throughout the kingdom--a procedure which involved delay and
gave the Central Committee an opportunity of using its influence in
favour of peace.

The fact that most of the Executive Committees were, from 1845 onward,
setting their face against strikes, did not imply the abandonment of
an energetic trade policy. The leaders of the better educated trades
had accepted the economic axiom that wages must inevitably depend
upon the relation of Supply and Demand in each particular class of
labour. It seemed an obvious inference that the only means in their
power to maintain or improve their condition was to diminish the
supply. “All men of experience agree,” affirms the Delegate Meeting
of the Ironmoulders in 1847, “that wages are to be best raised by
the demand for labour.” Hence we find the denunciations of strikes
accompanied by an insistence on the limitation of apprentices, the
abolition of overtime, and the provision of an Emigration Fund. The
Flint Glass Makers declare that “the scarcity of labour was one of
the fundamental principles laid down at our first conference held in
Manchester in 1849.” “It is simply a question of supply and demand, and
we all know that if we supply a greater quantity of an article than
what is actually demanded that the cheapening of that article, whether
it be labour or any other commodity, is a natural result.”[339] In
this application of the doctrine of Supply and Demand the Flint Glass
Makers were joined by the Compositors, Bookbinders, Ironmoulders,
Potters, and, as we shall presently see, the Engineers.[340] For the
next ten years an Emigration Fund becomes a constant feature of many
of the large societies, to be abandoned only when it was discovered
that the few thousands of pounds which could be afforded for this
purpose produced no visible effect in diminishing the surplus labour.
Moreover, it was the vigorous and energetic member who applied for
his passage-money, whilst the chronically unemployed, if he could be
persuaded to go at all, frequently reappeared at the clubhouse after a
brief trip at the society’s expense.[341]

The harmless but ineffective expedient of emigration was accompanied
by the more equivocal plan of closing the trade to new-comers. The
Flint Glass Makers, like the other sections of the glass trade, have
always been notorious for their strict limitation of the number of
apprentices. The constant refrain of their trade organ is “Look to the
rule and keep boys back; for this is the foundation of the evil, the
secret of our progress, the dial on which our society works, and the
hope of future generations.”[342] The printing trades were equally
active. Select Committees of the London Society of Compositors were
constantly inquiring into the most effective way of checking boy-labour
and regulating “turnover” apprentices. And the engineering trades,
at this time entering the Trade Union world, were basing their whole
policy on the assumption that the duly apprenticed mechanic, like the
doctor or the solicitor, had a right to exclude “illegal men” from his
occupation.

Such was the “New Spirit” which, by 1850, was dominating the Trade
Union world. Meanwhile the steady growth of national Unions, each with
three to five thousand members, ever-increasing friendly benefits, and
a weekly contribution per member which sometimes exceeded a shilling,
involved a considerable development of Trade Union structure. The
little clubs and local societies had been managed, in the main, by men
working at their trades, and attending to their secretarial duties
in the evening. With the growth of such national organisations as
the Stonemasons, the Ironmoulders, and the Steam-Engine Makers, the
mere volume of business necessitated the appointment of one of the
members to devote his whole time to the correspondence and accounts.
But the new official, however industrious and well-meaning, found upon
his hands a task for which neither his education nor his temperament
had fitted him. The archives of these societies reveal the pathetic
struggles of inexperienced workmen to cope with the difficulties
presented by the combination of branch management and centralised
finance. The disbursement of friendly benefits by branch meetings, the
custody and remittance of the funds, the charges for local expenses
(including “committee liquor”),[343] the mysteries of bookkeeping, and
the intricacies of audit all demanded a new body of officers specially
selected for and exclusively engaged in this work. During these years
we watch a shifting of leadership in the Trade Union world from the
casual enthusiast and irresponsible agitator to a class of permanent
salaried officers expressly chosen from out of the rank and file of
Trade Unionists for their superior business capacity. But besides
the daily work of administration, the expansion of local societies
into organisations of national extent, and the transformation of
loose federations into consolidated unions, involved the difficult
process of constitution-making. The records of the Ironmoulders and
the Stonemasons show with what anxious solicitude successive Delegate
Meetings were groping after a set of rules that would work smoothly
and efficiently. One Union, however, the Journeymen Steam-Engine
and Machine Makers and Millwrights’ Friendly Society, tackled the
problems of internal organisation with peculiar ability, and eventually
produced, in the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, a “New Model” of the
utmost importance to Trade Union history.

To understand the rise of this remarkable society, we must revert
to the earlier history of combinations which have hitherto scarcely
claimed attention in our account of the general movement. The origin
of Trade Unionism in the engineering trades is obscure. We learn
that at the close of the last century the then dominant class of
millwrights possessed strong, exclusive, and even tyrannical trade
societies, the chief of them being the “London Fellowship,” meeting at
the Bell Inn, Old Bailey.[344] The millwrights, who were originally
constructors of mill-work of every kind, both wood and iron, were,
on the introduction of the steam-engine, gradually superseded by
specialised workers in particular sections of their trade. The
introduction of what was termed “the engineer’s economy,” that is to
say, the parcelling out of the trade of the millwright among distinct
classes of workmen, and the substitution of “payment according to
merit” for the millwrights’ Standard Rate, completely disorganised
the skilled mechanics of the engineering trade. This condition was
not materially improved by the establishment, from 1822 onward, of
numerous competing Trade Friendly Societies. The Ironmoulders alone
concentrated their efforts upon maintaining one national society.
The millwrights, smiths, pattern-makers, and other skilled mechanics
engaged in engine and machine making had societies in London,
Manchester, Newcastle, Bradford, Derby, and other engineering centres.
Of these the Steam-Engine Makers (established 1824); the Journeymen
Steam-Engine and Machine Makers and Millwrights (established 1826); the
Associated Fraternity of Iron Forgers, usually called the “Old Smiths”
(established 1830); and the Boilermakers (established 1832) are known
to have been organisations of national extent, with branches in all
parts of the country, competing, not only with each other, but with
the Metropolitan and other local societies of Millwrights, Smiths,
Patternmakers, and General Engineers. This anarchic rivalry prevented
any effectual trade action, and tempted employers to give the work to
the lowest bidder, and to introduce the worst features of competitive
piecework and sub-contract.

We are, therefore, not surprised to find that the engineers’ societies
took little part in the great upheaval of 1830-4. But the wave of
solidarity which then swept over the labour world seems to have had
considerable, though tardy, effect even in this trade. The chief
districts affected were London and Lancashire. In 1836 a London
joint committee of several of the sectional societies successfully
conducted an eight months’ strike for a shortening of the hours of
labour to sixty per week, and for extra payment for overtime. Again,
in 1844 a joint committee obtained from the London employers a further
reduction of hours. Encouraged by these successes, the members of the
Metropolitan societies and branches began to discuss the possibility
of a national amalgamation. The most prominent personality in this
movement was that of William Newton,[345] a leading member of the
Journeymen Steam-Engine and Machine Makers and Millwrights’ Friendly
Society, the association which afterwards became, as we shall see, the
parent of the amalgamation.

William Newton had exactly the qualities needed for his task. Gifted
with remarkable eloquence, astute and conciliatory in his methods,
he was equally successful in inspiring masses of men with a large
idea, and in persuading the representatives and officials of rival
societies to agree with the details of his scheme. His influence
was augmented by his tried devotion to the cause of Trade Unionism.
In 1848 he was dismissed from a first-rate position as foreman in a
large establishment owing to his activity in trade matters, and in the
following years his business as a publican was seriously damaged by his
constant absence on society business. But though from the first he had
been an active member of his Union, and was for many years a Branch
Secretary, he was, so far as we know, at no time its full-time salaried
official. He stands, therefore, midway between the casual and amateur
leaders of the old Trade Unionism and the new class of permanent
officials, sticking closely to office work, and acquiring a detailed
experience in Trade Union organisation.

Whilst Newton was bringing the London societies into line, the
Lancashire engineers were moving in the same direction. Already in
1839 a “committee of the engineering trades” at Bolton urged upon
their comrades the establishment of “one concentrated union”; and in
the following year, through the energy of Alexander Hutchinson, the
secretary of the Friendly United Smiths of Great Britain and Ireland,
a United Trades Association was set on foot in Lancashire, to comprise
the “Five Trades of Mechanism, viz. Mechanics, Smiths, Moulders,
Engineers, and Millwrights.” The objects of this association were
ably represented and promoted by its organ, the _Trades Journal_,
established to extend and “improve Trades Unions generally in Great
Britain and Ireland,”[346] The attempt proved, however, premature,
and it was not until the year 1844 that the Bolton men, under the
leadership of John Rowlinson, succeeded in establishing a permanent
“Protection Society,” composed of delegates from the Societies of
Smiths, Millwrights, Ironmoulders, Engineers, and Boilermakers.
Inspirited by the success of the Bolton society, which successfully
maintained a nine months’ strike (costing it £9,000) against the
“Quittance Paper” (character note, or leaving certificate) which the
employers eventually agreed to abandon, joint committees of engineering
operatives were formed between 1844 and 1850 in all the principal
Lancashire centres. These were repeatedly addressed by Rowlinson and
Hutchinson, and the ground was prepared for a systematic attempt at
national amalgamation.

The leading part in the amalgamation was taken by the society to which
Newton belonged. The Journeymen Steam-Engine and Machine Makers and
Millwrights’ Friendly Society, with its headquarters at Manchester,
at this time far exceeded any other trade society in membership and
wealth. Established in 1826 as the Friendly Union of Mechanics, it
had absorbed in 1837 a strong Yorkshire society dating from 1822 (the
Mechanics’ Friendly Union Institution), and by 1848 it numbered seven
thousand members organised in branches all over the kingdom, and
possessed an accumulated reserve fund of £25,000. The silent growth
of this Union, the slow perfecting of its constitution by repeated
delegate meetings held at intervals during the preceding twenty years,
stand in marked contrast with the dramatic advent of the ephemeral
organisations of 1830-34. But this task of internal organisation, with
its gradual working out of the elaborate financial and administrative
system which afterwards became celebrated in the constitution of the
Amalgamated Engineers, seems to have absorbed, during the first fifteen
years of its existence, all the energy of its members. In none of the
working-class movements of this period did the society play any part,
nor do we find that it, as a whole, engaged in any important conflicts
with its members’ employers. At last, in 1843, a delegate meeting urged
the members to oppose systematic overtime, and in 1844 the society,
as we have seen, took part in the London movement for the shortening
of the hours of labour. By 1845 it seems to have felt itself strong
enough to undertake aggressive trade action by itself, and a delegate
meeting in that year attacked the employment of labourers on machines,
“the piece master system,” and systematic overtime, by stringent
resolutions upon which the Executive Committee sitting at Manchester
were directed to take early action.[347] During the following year
accordingly a simultaneous attempt appears to have been made by many
of the branches to enforce these rules. This action led, at Belfast,
Rochdale, and Newton-le-Willows, to legal proceedings by the employers,
and the officers of the society, together with over a score of its
members, found themselves in the dock indicted for conspiracy and
illegal combination.[348] The trial of the twenty-six engineers of
Newton-le-Willows, and the conviction of nine of them, including
Selsby, the General Secretary of the great mechanics’ Union, caused a
sensation in the Trade Union world, and tended to draw closer together
the rival societies in the engineering trade.

The progressive trade policy of the Journeymen Steam-Engine and
Machine Makers’ Society greatly increased the ascendency which its
superiority in wealth and numbers gave it over the numerous other
trade friendly societies in the engineering trades. William Allan,
a young Scotchman, succeeded Selsby in the salaried post of general
secretary when the latter obtained a commercial post in 1848. A close
friend and ardent disciple of William Newton, he quickly manifested,
in the administration of his own society, the capacity and energy
which enabled him in future years to play so important a part in the
general history of the Labour Movement. The cause of amalgamation was
well served by the indefatigable missionary efforts of these two men.
The anniversary dinners and friendly social meetings of the joint
committees of the societies in the Lancashire iron trades were, as
we know from contemporary records, made the occasion of propagandist
speeches, and were doubtless used also by these astute organisers
to talk over the leading men to agreement with their proposals. The
natural jealousy felt by the great provincial centre of Trade Unionism
of the interference of the Metropolis in its concerns was allayed
by Allan’s suggestion that the Lancashire societies should call a
conference of delegates at Warrington in March 1850, for the purpose
of consultation and discussion only. At this meeting, which was
attended only by the representatives of three of the larger societies
(including the Steam-Engine Makers established at Liverpool in 1824,
and the Smiths’ Benevolent, Friendly, Sick and Burial Society,
established in 1830), Newton and Allan succeeded in getting through
the outlines of their scheme of amalgamation. During the next six
months these proposals were the subject of exhaustive discussion at
every joint committee and branch meeting. Meanwhile the leaders had
established in Manchester a weekly journal for the express purpose of
promoting amalgamation, engaging as editor, under a written contract,
Dr. John Watts, afterwards well known as one of the ablest advocates
of co-operation. This journal, the _Trades Advocate and Herald of
Progress_, stated to be “established by the Iron Trades,” discussed
the advantages of union, and incidentally taught the doctrines of Free
Trade and Co-operative Production.[349]

Lancashire converted and conciliated, London could now go ahead.
Under Newton’s influence the London joint committee summoned a second
delegate meeting at Birmingham in September 1850, which was attended
by representatives of seven engineering societies. At this conference
the scheme of amalgamation was definitely adopted; and the Metropolitan
“Central Committee” was charged, as a “Provisional Committee,” to
complete the details of the transfer of the old organisation to the new
body. The tact and skill with which Allan and Newton carried out their
project are conspicuously shown by the way in which the act of union
was regarded by all concerned. There is no trace of suspicion on the
part of the minor societies that they were taking part in anything but
an amalgamation on equal terms. The whole Trade Union world, including
the Amalgamated Society of Engineers itself, has retained the tradition
that this great organisation was the outcome of a genuine amalgamation
of societies of fairly equivalent standing. What happened, as a
matter of fact, was that the society led by Allan and Newton absorbed
its rivals.[350] The new body took over, in its entirety, the
elaborate constitution, the scheme of benefits (with the addition
of Sick Benefit and the adoption of the innovation of an Emigration
Benefit of £6), the trade policy, and even the official staff of the
Journeymen Steam-Engine and Machine Makers and Millwrights’ Society,
which contributed more than three-fourths of the membership with which
the amalgamation started, and found itself continued, down to the
minutest details, in the rules and regulations of the new association.
An important addition was, however, the adoption of a definite
trade policy of restricting overtime and preventing piecework; the
institution of District Committees charged to carry out that policy;
and the establishment of a new Strike Pay of 15s. per week.

The conclusions of the Birmingham delegates were not accepted without
demur. Many of the branches in Lancashire and elsewhere objected to
the position obtained by the London Committee, and stood aloof from
the amalgamation. The Manchester Committee showed signs of jealousy at
the transfer of the seat of government to the Metropolis. But the most
important defection was that of the rank and file of the members of the
Steam-Engine Makers’ Society, an association which stood in membership
and funds second only to the Journeymen Steam-Engine Makers and Machine
Makers’ Society. Newton and Allan had succeeded in persuading the whole
of the Executive to throw in their lot with the amalgamation, but the
bulk of the members revolted, and the society maintained a separate
existence down to the end of 1919, when it joined the other societies
in the creation of the Amalgamated Engineering Union. Even in Newton’s
own society, in which the main principles of the amalgamation had been
carried by large majorities, a considerable number of the provincial
branches remained hostile. On January 6, 1851, when the Provisional
Committee formally assumed office as the Executive Committee of the
“Amalgamated Society of Engineers, Machinists, Smiths, Millwrights and
Patternmakers,” scarcely 5000 members out of the 10,500 represented at
the Birmingham Conference were paying to the amalgamated funds.[351]
For some months, indeed, the success of Newton’s ambitious scheme
looked doubtful. Though London had rallied to his help, only one small
society standing aloof, the provincial branches came in very slowly.
It took three months’ persuasion to raise the membership of the
amalgamation up to the level of the parent society. Delegate meetings
of the Steam-Engine Makers and the Smiths’ Societies decided against
amalgamation, though many of their branches broke away and joined the
new society. But towards the end of May the tide turned. The remaining
branches of the Journeymen Steam-Engine and Machine Makers and
Millwrights’ Society held a delegate meeting, at which it was decided
no longer to oppose the amalgamation; the Smiths’ Society of London and
several other small societies came in; and by October Newton and Allan
were at the head of a united society of 11,000 members paying 1s. per
week each, the largest and most powerful Union that had ever existed in
the engineering trades, and far exceeding in membership, and still more
in annual income, any other trade society of the time.[352]

The successful accomplishment of the amalgamation was followed by a
conflict with the employers, which riveted the attention of the whole
Trade Union world upon the new body. The aggressive trade policy
initiated by Selsby and Allan in Lancashire and Newton in London
had been repeatedly confirmed by the delegate meetings of their
society, and was formally incorporated in the basis of the larger
organisation.[353] The more energetic branches were not slow in acting
upon it. In 1851 the men at Messrs. Hibbert & Platt’s extensive works
at Oldham made a series of demands, not only for the abolition of
overtime, but also for the exclusion of “labourers and other ‘illegal’
men” from the machines. With these demands Messrs. Hibbert & Platt
and other employers had to comply. The private minutes of the London
Executive prove conclusively that the strike to oust labourers from
machines was not authorised by the central body;[354] but as William
Newton, now a member of the Executive, acted as the representative
of the Oldham men in submitting these demands to Messrs. Hibbert &
Platt, the employers, naturally inferring that his action was the
direct outcome of the amalgamation, formed in December 1851 the Central
Association of Employers of Operative Engineers to resist the men’s
Union.

Meanwhile the London Executive had been consulting the whole of
the members on the proposal to abolish systematic overtime and
piecework, and had obtained an almost unanimous vote in favour of
immediate action. A manifesto was issued to the employers, in which
the Executive announced the intention of the society to put an end
to piecework and systematic overtime after December 31, 1851. The
employers replied by an imperious declaration in the _Times_ that a
strike at any one establishment would be met seven days later by a
general lock-out of the whole engineering trade. The men thereupon
offered to submit the question to arbitration, a proposal which the
employers ignored. On January 1, 1852, the members of the Amalgamated
Society refused to work overtime, and on the 10th the masters closed,
as they had threatened, every important engineering establishment in
Lancashire and the Metropolis.

The three months’ struggle that followed interested the general public
more than any previous conflict. The details were described, and the
action of the employers and the policy of the Union was discussed in
every newspaper. The men found unexpected friends in the little group
of “Christian Socialists,” who threw themselves heartily into the fray,
and rendered excellent service, not only by liberal subscriptions,[355]
but also by letters to the newspapers, public lectures, and other
explanations of the men’s position. The masters remained obdurate,
insisting not only upon the unconditional withdrawal of the men’s
demands, but also upon their signing the well-known “document”
forswearing Trade Union membership. The capitalists, in fact, took
up the old line of absolute supremacy in their establishments, and
expressly denied the men’s right to take any collective action
whatsoever.

Notwithstanding the subscription of £4000 by the public and £5000 by
other trade societies, the funds at the disposal of the Union soon
began to run short. The Executive had undertaken to support not only
the 3500 of its own members and the 1500 mechanics who were out, but
also the 10,000 labourers who had been made idle. Altogether over
£43,000 was dispensed during the six months in out-of-work pay. Early
in February the masters opened their workshops. By the middle of March
the issue of the struggle was plain, and during April the men resumed
work on the employers’ terms. Almost all the masters insisted on the
actual signature of the “document” by their men, and most of these,
under pressure of imminent destitution, reluctantly submitted, without,
however, carrying out their promise by abandoning the Union. Judge
Hughes, writing in 1860, describes this act of bad faith by the men as
“inexcusable,” but there is much to be said for the view taken by the
Amalgamation Executive, who declared that they held themselves “and
every man who unwillingly puts his hand to that detestable document
which is forced upon us to be as much destitute of that power of choice
which should precede a contract as if a pistol were at his head and he
had to choose between death and degradation.”[356] A promise extorted
under “duress” carries with it little legal and still less moral
obligation, and whatever discredit attaches to the transaction must be
ascribed at least as much to the masters who made the demand as to the
unfortunate victims of the labour war who unwillingly complied with
it.[357]

It was the dramatic events of 1852 which made the establishment of the
Amalgamated Society of Engineers a turning-point in the history of the
Trade Union Movement. The complete victory gained by the employers did
not, as they had hoped, destroy the Engineers’ Union. The membership
of the society was, in fact, never seriously shaken.[358] On the other
hand, the publicity which it gained in the conflict gave it a position
of unrivalled prominence in the Trade Union world. From 1852 to 1889
the elaborate constitution of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers
served as the model for all new national trade societies, whilst old
organisations found themselves gradually incorporating its leading
features. The place occupied in 1830-34 by the cotton-spinners and the
builders was, in fact, now taken by the iron trades.

The “New Model” thus introduced differed, both for good and evil, from
the typical Trade Unionism of the preceding generation. The engineering
societies had to some extent inherited the exclusive policy of the
organisations of the skilled handicraftsmen of the beginning of the
century. Unlike the General Trades Unions of 1830-34 they restricted
their membership to legally apprenticed workmen. Their records bear
traces of the old idea of the legal incorporation of separate trades,
rather than of any general union of “the productive classes.” The
generous but impracticable “universalism” of the Owenite and Chartist
organisations was replaced by the principle of the protection of the
vested interests of the craftsman in his occupation. The preface to the
rules of the parent society expresses this dominant idea by a forcible
analogy:

“The youth who has the good fortune and inclination for preparing
himself as a useful member of society by the study of physic, and who
studies that profession with success so as to obtain his diploma from
the Surgeons’ Hall or College of Surgeons, naturally expects, in some
measure, that he is entitled to privileges to which the pretending
quack can lay no claim; and if in the practice of that useful
profession he finds himself injured by such a pretender, he has the
power of instituting a course of law against him. Such are the benefits
connected with the learned professions. But the mechanic, though he may
expend nearly an equal fortune and sacrifice an equal proportion of
his life in becoming acquainted with the different branches of useful
mechanism, has no law to protect his privileges.”[359] He is therefore
urged to join the society, which aims at securing the same protection
of his trade against interlopers as is enjoyed by the learned
professions.

This spirit of exclusiveness has had, as we shall hereafter discern,
an equivocal effect, not only on the history of the society itself,
but on that of the Trade Union Movement. But the contemporary trade
movements either did not observe or failed to realise the tendency
of this attempt to retain or reconstruct an aristocracy of skilled
workmen. What impressed the working men was not the trade policy which
had brought about the defeat of 1852, but the admirably thought-out
financial and administrative system, which enabled the Union to combine
the functions of a trade protection society with those of a permanent
insurance company, and thus attain a financial stability hitherto
undreamt of. Time proved that this constitution had its peculiar
defects. But for over twenty years no Trade Unionist questioned its
excellence, and the minute criticism and heated abuse which it evoked
from employers and their advocates seemed only another testimony to
its effectiveness. We think it worth while, therefore, at the risk of
introducing tedious detail, to describe the main features of this “New
Model.”

In striking contrast with the Cotton-spinners’ and Builders’ Unions
of 1830-34, with their exclusively trade purposes, the societies
in the engineering trades had, like the trade organisations of the
handicraftsmen of the last century, originated as local benefit clubs.
The Journeymen Steam-Engine Makers’ Society, for instance, had from
the first provided its members with out-of-work pay, a travelling
allowance, a funeral benefit, and a lump sum in case of accidental
disablement. In 1846 it added to these benefits a small sick allowance,
and shortly afterwards an old age pension to superannuated members.
The administration of these friendly benefits was from the outset the
primary object of the organisation. As the local benefit club expanded
into a national society by the migration of its members from town to
town, the extreme difficulty of combining local autonomy with a just
and economical administration of extensive benefits became apparent.
For the society, it must be remembered, was not a federation of
independent bodies, each having its own exchequer and contributing to
the central fund its determinate quota of the expenses of the central
office: it was from the first a single association with a common
purse, into which all contributions were paid, and out of which all
expenditure, down to the stationery and ink used by a branch secretary,
was defrayed. This concentration of funds carried with it the practical
advantage of forming a considerable reserve at the disposal of the
Executive. But so long as it was combined with local autonomy, it was
open to the obvious objection that a branch might dispense benefits to
its own members with undue liberality, and thus absorb an unfair amount
of the moneys of the whole society. And hence we find that in 1838 an
attempt was made to centralise the administration, by transforming the
local officials from the servants of the branches into agents of the
central authority. The inherent love of self-government of the British
artisan defeated this proposal, which would inevitably have led to
local apathy and suspicion, if not to grosser evils. Some other method
of harmonising local autonomy with centralised finance had therefore to
be invented.

Under the constitution which the Amalgamated Society took over from the
Journeymen Steam-Engine and Machine Makers and Millwrights, we find
this problem solved with considerable astuteness. The branch elects and
controls its own local officers, but acts in all cases within rules
which provide explicitly for every detail. Each branch retains its own
funds and administers the friendly benefits payable to its own members,
including the allowance to men out of work. The financial autonomy
of the branch is, however, more apparent than real. No penny must be
expended except in accordance with precise rules. The branch retains
its own funds, but these are the property of the whole society, and
at the end of each year the balances are “equalised” by a complicated
system of remittances from branch to branch, ordered by the Central
Executive in such a way that each branch starts the year with the same
amount of capital per member. The cumbrous plan of annual equalisation
is a device adopted in order to maintain the feeling of local
self-government under a strictly centralised financial system.[360]
From the decision of the branch any member may appeal to the Central
Executive Council. The decisions of this Council on all questions of
friendly benefits are, however, strictly limited to the interpretation
of the existing laws of the society. These rules, which include in
equal detail both the constitutional and the financial code, cannot be
altered or modified except by a specially convened meeting of delegates
from every district. Careful provision is, moreover, made against the
danger of hasty or ill-considered legislation even by this supreme
authority. No amendment may be so much as considered without having
been circulated to all the branches six weeks prior to the delegate
meeting, and having thereupon been discussed and re-discussed by the
members at two successive general meetings convened for the purpose.
Thus every delegate comes to his legislative duties charged with a
direct and even detailed mandate from his constituents. Moreover, it is
expressly provided that no friendly benefit shall be abrogated unless
the decision of the delegate meeting to that effect is ratified by a
majority of two-thirds on a vote of the members of the whole society.
As a friendly society, therefore, the Association consists of a number
of self-governing branches acting according to the provisions of a
detailed code, and amenable, in respect of its interpretation, to a
Central Executive.

As a Trade Union, on the contrary, the Association has been from the
first a highly centralised body. The great object of the amalgamation
was to secure uniformity in trade policy, and to promote the
equalisation of what the economists call “real wages”[361] throughout
the whole country. With this view the Central Executive has always
retained the absolute power of granting or withholding strike pay.
No individual can receive strike allowance from his branch except
upon an express order of the Executive. Local knowledge, however, is
clearly needed for the decision in matters of trade policy, and on the
amalgamation “district” committees were established, consisting of the
representatives of neighbouring branches. These committees have no
concern with the administration of friendly benefits, which, as we have
seen, is the business of each branch. Their function is to guard the
local interests of the trade, to watch for encroachments, and to advise
the Executive Council in the administration of strike pay. Unlike the
branches, they possess no independent authority, and are required to
act strictly under the orders of headquarters, to which the minutes of
their proceedings are regularly sent for confirmation.

Not less impressive than this elaborate constitution, with its system
of checks and counter-checks, was the magnitude of the financial
transactions of the new society. The high contribution of a shilling a
week, paid with unexampled regularity by a constantly increasing body
of members, provided an income which surpassed the wildest dreams of
previous Trade Union organisations, and enabled the society to meet any
local emergency without serious effort. A large portion of this income
was absorbed by the expensive friendly benefits, which were on a scale
at that time unfamiliar to the societies in other trades. And when it
was found that the contribution of a shilling a week not only met all
these requirements, but also provided an accumulating balance, which
could be drawn upon for strike pay, the indignation of the employers
knew no bounds. For many years the union of friendly benefits with
trade protection funds, now considered as the guarantee of a peaceful
Trade Union policy, was denounced as a dishonest attempt to subsidise
strikes at the expense of the innocent subscriber to a friendly society
insurance against sickness, accident, and old age.[362]

In scarcely less marked contrast with the current tradition of Trade
Unionism was the publicity which the Amalgamated Engineers from the
first courted. Powerful societies, such as the existing Union of
Stonemasons, had between 1834 and 1850 elaborated a constitution which
proved as durable as that of the Amalgamated Engineers, though of a
slightly different type. But the old feeling of secretiveness still
dominated both the leaders and the rank and file. The _Stonemasons’
Fortnightly Circular_, which, regularly appearing as it has done since
1834, constitutes perhaps the most valuable single record of the Trade
Union Movement, was never seen outside the branch meeting-place.[363]
At the Royal Commission of 1867-8 the employers’ witnesses bitterly
complained of their inability to get copies of this publication and of
a similar periodical circular of the Bricklayers’ Society.[364] As late
as 1871 we find the liability to publicity adduced by some Unions as an
argument against seeking recognition by the law.

The leaders of the Engineers believed, on the contrary, in the power of
advertisement. We have already noticed the two short-lived newspapers
which Newton and Allan published in 1850 and 1851-2, for the express
purpose of making known the society and its objects. For many years
after the amalgamation it was a regular practice to forward to the
press, for publication or review, all the monthly, quarterly, and
annual reports, as well as the more important of the circulars issued
to the members. Representatives were sent to the Conference on Capital
and Labour held by the Society of Arts in 1854, and to the congresses
of the Social Science Association from 1859 onward. Newton and Allan
appear, indeed, to have eagerly seized every opportunity of writing
letters to the newspapers, reading papers, and delivering lectures
about the organisation which they had established.

It is easy to understand the great influence which, during the next
twenty years, this “New Model” exercised upon the Trade Union world.
Its most important imitator was the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters,
which, as we shall see, arose out of the great London strike of
1859-60. The tailors in 1866 drew together into an amalgamated society,
which adopted, almost without alteration, the whole code of the
engineers, and in 1869 the London Society of Compositors appointed a
special committee to report upon “the constitution and working of the
Amalgamated Trades,” with a view to their imitation in the printing
industry--an intention which, in spite of the favourable character of
the report, was not carried out.[365] Scarcely a trade exists which
did not, between 1852 and 1875, either attempt to imitate the whole
constitution of the Amalgamated Engineers, or incorporate one or other
of its characteristic features.

The five or six years following the collapse of the great lock-out of
1852, though constituting a period of quiet progress in particular
societies, are for the historian of the general Trade Union Movement,
almost a blank. The severe commercial depression of 1846-49 was
succeeded by seven years of steadily expanding trade, which furnished
no occasion for general reduction of wages. The reaction against the
ambitious projects of the Trade Union of 1834 continued to discourage
even federal action;[366] whilst the complete failure of the struggle
of the engineers, followed as it was in 1853 by the disastrous strike
of the Preston cotton-spinners for a ten per cent advance, by an
equally unsuccessful struggle of the Kidderminster carpet-weavers,
and by a fierce and futile conflict by the Dowlais ironworkers,[367]
increased the disinclination of the Unions to aggressive trade action
on a large scale. The disrepute into which strikes had fallen was
intensified by the spread among the more thoughtful working men of
the principles of Industrial Co-operation. This new development of
Owen’s teaching took two forms, both, it need hardly be said, differing
fundamentally from the Owenism of 1834. In Lancashire the success of
the “Rochdale Pioneers,” established in 1844, had led to the rapid
extension of the Co-operative Store, the association of consumers for
the supply of their own wants. To some extent the stalwart leaders
of the Lancashire and Yorkshire working men were diverted from the
organisation of trade combinations to the establishment of co-operative
shops and corn-mills. Meanwhile the “Christian Socialists” of London
had caught up the idea of Buchez and the Parisian projects of 1848,
and were advocating with an almost apostolic fervour the formation
of associations of producers, in which groups of working men were to
become their own employers.[368]

The generous enthusiasm with which the “Christian Socialists”
had thrown themselves into the Engineers’ struggle, and their
obvious devotion to the interests of Labour, gave their schemes
of “Self-governing Workshops” a great vogue. Numberless small
undertakings were started by operative engineers, cabinetmakers,
tailors, bootmakers, and hatters in the Metropolis and in other large
industrial centres, and for a few years the Executives and Committees
of the various Unions vied with each other in recommending co-operative
production to their members. But it soon became apparent that this new
form of co-operation was intended, not as an adjunct or a development
of the Trade Union, but as an alternative form of industrial
organisation. For, unlike the Owenites of 1834, the Christian
Socialists had no conception of the substitution of profit-making
enterprise by the whole body of wage-earners, organised either in a
self-contained community or in a complete Trades Union. They sought
only to replace the individual capitalist by self-governing bodies of
profit-making workmen. A certain number of the ardent spirits among the
London and north country workmen became the managers and secretaries
of these undertakings, and ceased to be energetic members of their
respective Unions. “We have found,” say the Engineers’ Executive in
their annual report of 1855, “that when a few of our own members have
commenced business hitherto they have abandoned the society, and
conducted the workshops even worse than other employers.” Fortunately
for the Trade Union Movement the uniform commercial failure of these
experiments, so long, at any rate, as they retained their original
form of the self-governing workshop, soon became obvious to those
concerned. The idea of “Co-operative Production” constantly reappears
in contemporary Trade Union records, but after the failure of the
co-operative establishments of 1848-52 it ceases, for nearly twenty
years, to be a question of “practical politics” in the Trade Union
world.

In spite of this intellectual diversion the work of Trade Union
consolidation was being steadily carried on. The Amalgamated Engineers
doubled their numbers in the ten years that followed their strike,
and by 1861 their Union had accumulated the unprecedented balance
of £73,398. The National Societies of Ironfounders and Stonemasons
grew in a similar proportion. A revival of Trade Unionism took place
among the textile operatives. The present association of Lancashire
cotton-spinners began its career in 1853, whilst the cotton-weavers
secured in the same year what has been fitly termed their Magna Charta,
the “Blackburn List” of piecework rates. But with the exception of
the building trades, Trade Unionism assumed, during these years,
a peaceful attitude. The leaders no longer declaimed against “the
idle classes,” but sought to justify the Trade Union position with
arguments based on middle-class economics. The contributions of the
Amalgamated Engineers are described “as a general voluntary rate in
aid of the Poor’s Rate.”[369] The Executive Council cannot doubt
that employers will not “regard a society like ours with disfavour.
They will begin to understand that it is not intended, nor adapted,
to damage their interests, but rather to advance them, by elevating
the character of their workmen, and proportionately lessening their
own responsibilities.” The project of substituting “Councils of
Conciliation” for strikes and lock-outs grew in favour with Trade
Union leaders. Hundreds of petitions in favour of their establishment
were got up by the National Association of United Trades, then on its
last legs. The House of Commons Committees in 1856 and 1860 found the
operatives in all trades disposed to support the principle of voluntary
submission to arbitration. For a brief period it seemed as if peace was
henceforth to prevail over the industrial world.

The era of strikes which set in with the contraction of trade in 1857
proved how fallacious had been these hopes. The building trades, in
particular, had remained less affected than the Engineers or the
Cotton Operatives by the change of tone. The local branches of the
Stonemasons, Bricklayers, and other building trade operatives, often
against the wish of their Central Committees, were engaged between
1853 and 1859 in an almost constant succession of little strikes
against separate firms, in which the men were generally successful in
gaining advances of wages.[370] These years were, moreover, notable
for the recognition in the provincial building trades of “working
rules,” or signed agreements between employers and workmen (usually
between the local Masters’ Associations and the Trade Unions),
specifying in minute detail the conditions of the collective bargain.
Without doubt the adoption of these rules was a step forward in the
direction of industrial peace; but, like international treaties, they
were frequently preceded by desperate conflicts in which both sides
exhausted their resources, and learnt to respect the strength of the
other party. With the depression of trade more important disputes
occurred. During 1858 fierce conflicts arose between masters and men
in the flint glass industry and in the West Yorkshire coalfield.
The introduction of the sewing-machine into the boot and shoemaking
villages of Northamptonshire led to a series of angry struggles. But
of the great disputes of 1858 to 1861, the builders’ strike in the
Metropolis in 1859-60 was by far the most important in its effect upon
the Trade Union Movement.

The dispute of 1859 originated in the growing movement for a shortening
of the hours of labour.[371] The demand for a Nine Hours Day in the
Building Trades was first made by the Liverpool Stonemasons in 1846,
and renewed by the London Stonemasons in 1853. In neither case,
however, was the claim persisted in. Four years later the movement was
revived by the London Carpenters, whose memorial to their employers was
met, after a joint conference, by a decisive refusal. Meanwhile the
Stonemasons were seeking to obtain the Saturday half-holiday, which
the employers equally refused. This led, in the autumn of 1858, to the
formation of a Joint Committee of Carpenters, Masons, and Bricklayers,
which, on November 18, 1858, addressed a dignified memorial to the
master builders, urging that the hours of labour should be shortened
by one per day, and that future building contracts should be accepted
on this basis. At first ignored by the employers, this request was
eventually refused as decidedly as it had been in 1853 and 1857. The
Joint Committee thereupon made a renewed attempt by petitioning four
firms selected by ballot. Among these was that of Messrs. Trollope,
who promptly dismissed one of the men who had presented the memorial.
This action led to an immediate strike against Messrs. Trollope.
Within a fortnight every master builder in London employing over fifty
men had closed his establishment, and twenty-four thousand men were
peremptorily deprived of their employment. The controversy which raged
in the columns of contemporary newspapers during this pitched battle
between Capital and Labour brought out in strong relief the state of
mind of the Metropolitan employers. Uninfluenced by the progress of
public opinion, or by the new tone of respect and moderation adopted by
Trade Union leaders, the London employers took up the position of their
predecessors of 1834. They absolutely refused to recognise the claim of
the representatives of the men even to discuss with them the conditions
of employment. This attitude was combined with a determined attempt to
destroy all combination, the instrument adopted being the well-worn
Document. The Central Association of Master Builders resolved, in terms
almost identical with its predecessor of 1834, that “no member of this
Association shall engage or continue in his employment any contributor
to the funds of any Trades Union or Trades Society which practises
interference with the regulation of any establishment, the hours or
terms of labour, the contracts or agreements of employers or employed,
or the qualification or terms of service.”

This declaration of war on Trade Unionism gained for the men on strike
the support of the whole Trade Union world. The Central Committee
of the great society of Stonemasons, which had hitherto discouraged
the Metropolitan Nine Hours Movement as premature, took up the
struggle against the Document as one of vital importance. Meetings of
delegates from the organised Metropolitan trades were held in order
to rally the forces of Trade Unionism to the cause of the builders.
The subscriptions which poured in from all parts of the kingdom
demonstrated the possession, in the hands of trade societies, of heavy
and hitherto unsuspected reserves of financial strength. The London
Pianoforte Makers contributed £300. The Flint Glass Makers, who had
just emerged from a prolonged struggle on their own account, sent a
similar sum. “Trades Committees” were formed in all the industrial
centres, and remitted large amounts. Glasgow and Manchester sent over
£800 each, and Liverpool over £500. The newly formed Yorkshire Miners’
Association forwarded £230. The Boilermakers, Coopers, and Coachmakers’
Societies were especially liberal in their gifts. But the sensation of
the subscription list was the grant by the Amalgamated Engineers of
three successive weekly donations of £1000 each--an event long recalled
with emotion by the survivors of the struggle. Altogether some £23,000
were subscribed (exclusive of the payments by the societies directly
concerned), an amount far in excess of any previous strike subsidy.

Such abundant support enabled the men to defeat the employers’ aims,
though not to secure their own demands. The Central Association of
Master Builders clung desperately to the Document, but failed to
obtain an adequate number of men willing to subscribe to its terms.
In December 1859 a suggestion was made by Lord St. Leonards that
the Document be withdrawn, a lengthy statement of the law relating
to trade combinations being hung up in all the establishments as a
substitute. The employers’ obstinacy held out for two months longer,
but finally succumbed in February 1860, when the Platonic suggestion of
Lord St. Leonards was adopted, and the embittered dispute was brought
to an end.

This drawn battle between the forces of Capital and Labour ranks as a
leading event in Trade Union history, not only because it revived the
feeling of solidarity between different trades, but also on account
of the importance of two consolidating organisations to which it gave
birth. Out of the Building Trades Strike of 1859-60 arose the London
Trades Council (to be described in the following chapter) and the
Amalgamated Society of Carpenters, the most notable adoption by another
trade of the “New Model” introduced by Newton and Allan.

The strike had revealed to the London carpenters the complete state of
disorganisation into which their industry had fallen. It was they, it
is true, who had initiated the Nine Hours Movement in the Metropolis,
but the committee which memorialised the employers had represented no
body of organised workmen. George Potter, who was the leader of this
movement, could draw around him only a group of delegates elected
by the men in each shop. There were, indeed, not more than about a
thousand carpenters in London who were members of any trade society
whatsoever, and these were scattered among numerous tiny benefit clubs.
The Friendly Society of Operative Carpenters, which, as we have seen,
was a militant branch of the Builders’ Union of 1830-34, had, like the
Stonemasons’ Society, maintained a continuous existence. Unlike that
society, however, it had kept the old character of a loose federation
for trade purposes only, depending for its finances upon occasional
levies. Perhaps for this reason it had lost its exclusive hold upon
the provinces, and had gained no footing in London. As a competent
observer remarks: “At the time of the 1859-60 strikes the masons alone
of the building trades were organised into a single society extending
throughout England, and providing not only for trade purposes, but for
the ordinary benefits.... The London masons locked out were supported
regularly and punctually by their society, and could have continued the
struggle for an indefinite time; but the other trades, split up into
numerous local societies, were soon reduced to extremities.”[372] The
Carpenters’ Committee saw with envy the capacity of the Stonemasons’
Society to provide long-continued strike pay for its members, and
were profoundly impressed by the successive donations of £1000 each
made by the Amalgamated Engineers. Directly the strike was over, the
leading members of the little benefit clubs met together to discuss
the formation of a national organisation on the Engineers’ model.
William Allan lent them every assistance in adapting the rules of his
own society to the carpenters’ trade, and watched over the preliminary
proceedings. The new society started on June 4, 1860, with a few
hundred members. For the first two years its progress was slow; but in
October 1862 it had the good fortune to elect as its general secretary
a man whose ability and cautious sagacity promptly raised it to a
position of influence in the Trade Union world. Robert Applegarth,
secretary of a local Carpenters’ Union at Sheffield, had been quick to
perceive the advantages of amalgamation, and had brought his society
over with him. Under his administration the new Union advanced by leaps
and bounds, and in a few years it stood, in magnitude of financial
transactions and accumulated funds, second only to the Amalgamated
Society of Engineers itself. Moreover, Applegarth’s capacity brought
him at once into that little circle of Trade Union leaders whose
activity forms during the next ten years the central point of Trade
Union history.


FOOTNOTES:

[308] Between 1850 and 1874 there was (except, perhaps, during the
American Civil War) no falling off in the value of our export trade
comparable to the serious declines of 1826, 1829, 1837, 1842, and
1848. We do not pretend to account for this difference, but may remind
the reader of the coincident increase in the production of gold, the
influence of Free Trade and railways, and, as the bimetallists would
tell us, the currency arrangements which were brought to an end in 1873.

[309] This was an elaborate national organisation with 60 branches,
grouped under five District Boards. But it enrolled only 4320 members,
and broke up in 1847, after numerous local strikes. In June 1849 most
of the provincial branches joined in the Typographical Association,
from which for some time the strong Manchester and Birmingham societies
stood aloof; whilst the London men formed the London Society of
Compositors.

[310] _The Colliers’ Guide, showing the Necessity of the Colliers
Uniting to Protect their Labour from the Iron Hand of Oppression_,
etc., by J. B. Thompson (Bishop Wearmouth, 1843); and see many
reports in the _Northern Star_, from 1843 to 1848; _The Miners of
Northumberland and Durham_, by Richard Fynes, 1873; _A Great Labour
Leader_ [Thomas Burt], by Aaron Watson, 1908, pp. 19-23.

[311] _Northern Star_ for 1843-4; Fynes’ _Miners of Northumberland and
Durham_, 1873, chap. viii.; _Condition of the Working Class in England
in 1844_, by Friedrich Engels, 1892, pp. 253-9.

[312] William Prowting Roberts, the youngest son of the Rev. Thomas
Roberts, of Chelmsford, was born in 1806, and became a solicitor at
Manchester. He was an enthusiastic Chartist, and friend of Fergus
O’Connor, to whose Land Bank he acted as legal adviser. From 1843
onwards his name appears in nearly all the legal business of the
Trade Unions. The collapse of 1848 somewhat damaged his reputation,
but he continued to be frequently retained for many years. In 1867
he organised the defence of Allen, Larking, and O’Brien, the Irish
“Manchester Martyrs,” who were hanged for the rescue of Fenian
prisoners and the murder of a policeman. In later years Roberts retired
to a country house in the neighbourhood of “O’Connorville,” near
Rickmansworth, the scene of one of O’Connor’s colonies, where he died
on September 7, 1871. A pamphlet on the Trade Union Bill of 1871 is the
only publication of his that we have discovered, but he appears also to
have edited a report of the engineers’ trial in 1847, and reports of
some other legal proceedings.

[313] _Flint Glass Makers’ Magazine_, October 1851. The years 1847-8
had witnessed many strikingly vindictive prosecutions of Trade
Unionists. Besides the case of the engineers, to which we shall refer
hereafter, twenty-one stonemasons of London were indicted in 1848 for
conspiracy, but, after repeated postponements, the prosecuting employer
failed to proceed with the case. The Sheffield razor-grinders stood
in greater jeopardy. John Drury, and three other members of their
society, were tried and sentenced to ten years’ transportation at the
instance of the Sheffield Manufacturers’ Protection Association on the
random accusations of two dissolute convicts that they had incited them
to destroy machinery. This monstrous perversion of justice aroused
the greatest indignation. Public meetings were held by the National
Association of United Trades. The indictment was quashed on a technical
point, but a new one was immediately preferred against the defendants.
The local feeling was, however, so great that they were finally, after
a year’s suspense, released on their own recognisances (July 12, 1849).
A Sheffield Trade Unionist declared that “the tyranny of the employers
had been so great,” in perverting the local administration of the
law, “that the men laid their grievances before the Government. Sir
George Grey ordered an inquiry.... Twenty cases of parties who had been
convicted by the magistrates were brought before a Board of Inquiry,
seventeen of which were quashed” (_Stonemasons’ Fortnightly Circular_,
November 23, 1848).

[314] Bill No. 58 of 1844, introduced by William Miles, M.P. (Hansard,
vols. 73 and 74.)

[315] _Potters’ Examiner_, April 13, 1844.

[316] Hansard, vols. 73 and 74. The Bill was lost by 54 to 97 (May 1,
1844); see _Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844_, by
Friedrich Engels, 1892, pp. 283-4.

[317] _The Miners of Northumberland and Durham_, by Richard Fynes,
1873, chap. ix.; _The British Coal Trade_, by H. Stanley Jevons, 1915,
pp. 448-51.

[318] _Rules and Regulations of the Association of United Trades for
the Protection of Industry_ (London, August 2, 1845). There is, as
far as we know, only one copy of these rules in existence, but full
particulars of its establishment and working are to be found in the
_Northern Star_, which it used for a time as its official organ.

[319] Thomas Slingsby Duncombe was the aristocratic demagogue of the
period. An accomplished man of the world, with the habits of a dandy,
he nevertheless devoted himself with remarkable assiduity not only to
the Parliamentary business of the Chartists and Trade Unionists, but
also to the dry details of the committee work of the association of
which he became president. The _Life and Correspondence_ of Duncombe,
which his son published in 1868, describes him almost exclusively as
a fashionable man of the world and House of Commons politician, and
entirely ignores his more solid work for Trade Unionism during the
years 1845-8.

[320] In this document we may perhaps trace the hand of T. J. Dunning,
one of the ablest Trade Unionists of his time. Born in 1799, he became
Secretary of the Consolidated Society of Bookbinders in 1843. In 1845
he joined the National Association of United Trades, but left that
body after a few years. The _Bookbinders’ Circular_, which he started
in 1850, was, during the rest of his life, largely written by himself,
and contains many well-reasoned articles on Trade Union matters. In
1858 Dunning joined the celebrated Committee of Inquiry into Trade
Societies which was appointed by the Social Science Association. He
contributed a history of his own society to the Report, and frequently
took part in the subsequent annual congresses. His chief literary
production is the essay entitled, _Trades Unions and Strikes; their
philosophy and intention_ (1860, 50 pp.), which he wrote for the prize
instituted by his own Union for the best defence of the workmen’s
organisation. This essay, which no publisher would accept, and which
was printed by his society, remains, perhaps--apart from George
Howell’s historical researches in _Conflicts of Capital and Labour_,
and _Labour Legislation, Labour Movements and Labour Leaders_--the
best presentation of the Trade Union case which any manual worker has
produced. He died in harness on the 23rd of December 1873.

[321] Report of London Committee of Trades Delegates to the National
Conference of Trades Delegates, Easter, 1845; preserved in the archives
of the Friendly Society of Operative Stonemasons.

[322] _Stonemasons’ Fortnightly Circular_, May 14, 1846.

[323] Minutes of delegate meetings of the “Operative Cotton-spinners,
Self-acting Minders, Twiners, and Rovers,” held every other Sunday. See
July 20, August 3, and December 14, 1845.

[324] _Times_, November 16, 1846.

[325] The tinplate-workers of Wolverhampton had been endeavouring,
ever since they joined the Association in 1845, to obtain a uniform
list of piecework rates. By the influence of the National Association,
such a list was agreed to during 1849 by all the employers except
two. One of these treated the men with exceptional duplicity. Having,
as he thought, adequately prepared himself; he threw off the mask
in July 1850, and flatly refused to continue the negotiations. The
fierce industrial and legal conflict which ensued attracted general
attention. Many of the strikers were imprisoned for breach of contract;
and the struggle culminated in the prosecution of three members of
the committee of the National Association, together with several of
the local Unionists, for conspiracy to molest and intimidate the
employer by inducing men to leave his employment. Owing to legal
quibbles, raised first on behalf of the Crown, and then on behalf of
the defendants, the case was tried no fewer than three times, the
final judgment not being delivered until November 1851, when five of
the prisoners were sentenced to three months’, and one to one month’s
imprisonment. See R. _v._ Rowlands, 5 Cox C. C. p, 436; also Appendix A
to _The Law relating to Trade Unions_, by Sir William Erie, 1869.

[326] Duncombe formally resigned the presidency in 1852. In 1856 its
secretary, Thomas Winters, gave evidence in favour of conciliation
before the Select Committee on Masters and Operatives (Equitable
Councils, etc.). He stated that the membership then numbered between
5,000 and 6,000, and that the central committee consisted of three
salaried members, who gave up their whole time to the work. A
subsequent secretary (E. Humphries) appeared before a similar committee
four years later, his evidence showing that the association, though
it was still in existence, had taken no part in any of the important
labour struggles of the past seven or eight years. Mr. George Howell
incidentally puts the date of its dissolution at 1860 or 1861 (see
his article “Trades Union Congresses and Social legislation” in
_Contemporary Review_ for September 1889).

[327] _English Stonemasons’ Fortnightly Circular_, December 25, 1845.

[328] The _Potters’ Examiner_, started December 1843, was converted,
in July 1848, into the _Potters’ Examiner and Emigrants’ Advocate_,
published at Liverpool and concerned chiefly with emigration. It ceased
to appear soon after 1851.

[329] See especially the articles on “Wages of Labour and Trade
Societies” in the second, third, and fourth numbers (December 1850 to
February 1851), in which he assumes that the general level of wages is
irresistibly determined by Supply and Demand, but that Trade Unionism,
in providing out-of-work pay, enables the individual workman to resist
exceptional tyranny or exaction.

[330] This journal contains a mass of useful information relating
to the trade, special reports of the Trades Union Congresses, and
well-written articles on industrial and economic problems. It is
marked throughout by moderation of tone and fairness of argument.
Unfortunately, so far as we know, it is not preserved in any public
library, and we were indebted to Mr. Haddleton, Secretary to the
Birmingham Trades Council, who, in 1893, possessed a complete set, for
our acquaintance with its contents.

[331] Opening Address to the Glass Makers of England, Ireland, and
Scotland, No. 1.

[332] Report of London Compositors’ Committee on Amalgamation, 1834;
Annual Report, February 2, 1835.

[333] _Address of Delegate Meeting to the Members of the Friendly
Society of Ironmoulders of England, Ireland, and Wales_, September 26,
1846.

[334] _Fortnightly Circular_, December 25, 1845.

[335] _Ibid._, June 1849.

[336] January 1855.

[337] Letter on “The Evil Consequences of Strikes,” in _Flint Glass
Makers’ Magazine_, July 1850. The suggested alternative--the Strike in
Detail--is discussed in our _Industrial Democracy_.

[338] _Address of the Delegate Meeting to the Members of the Friendly
Society of Ironmoulders_, 1846.

[339] “Emigration as a Means to an End,” _Flint Glass Makers’
Magazine_, August 1854; address of Executive, September 1857.

[340] “Thus if in a depression you have fifty men out of work they will
receive £1,015 in a year, and at the same time be used as a whip by
the employers to bring your wages down; by sending them to Australia
at £20 per head you save £15, and send them to plenty instead of
starvation at home; you keep your own wages good by the simple act of
clearing the surplus labour out of the market” (Farewell Address of the
Secretary, _Flint Glass Makers’ Magazine_, August, 1854). “Remove the
surplus labour and oppression itself will soon be a thing of the past”
(_Ibid._).

[341] Emigration Funds begin to appear in Trade Union Reports about
1843 (see the _Potters’ Examiner_). For thirty years the accounts of
the larger societies include, off and on, considerable appropriations
for the emigration of members. The tabular statement of expenditure
published in the Ironmoulders’ Annual Report shows, for instance, that
£4,712 was spent in this way between 1855 and 1874. In the Amalgamated
Carpenters an Emigration Benefit lingered until 1886, when it was
finally abolished by the General Council; the members resident in the
United States and Colonies strongly objecting to this use of the funds.
But it was between 1850 and 1860 that emigration found most favour as
an integral part of Trade Union policy. The Trade Unions of the United
States and the Australian Colonies addressed vigorous protests to the
officials of the English societies (see, for example, the _Stonemasons’
Fortnightly Circular_, June 1856), a fact which co-operated with the
dying away of the “gold rush,” and the change of Trade Union opinion,
to cause the abandonment of the policy, until it was revived in 1872
for a decade or so, by the Agricultural Labourers’ Unions.

[342] _Flint Glass Makers’ Magazine_, September 1857.

[343] During these years the Executive Committees of the larger
societies were waging war on the “liquor allowance.” In the reports and
financial statements of the Unions for the first half of the century,
drink was one of the largest items of expenditure, express provision
being made by the rules for the refreshment of the officers and members
at all meetings. The rules of the London Society of Woolstaplers (1813)
state that “the President shall be accommodated with his own choice
of liquors, wine only excepted.” The Friendly Society of Ironmoulders
(1809) ordains that the Marshal shall distribute the beer round the
meeting impartially, members being forbidden to drink out of turn
“except the officers at the table or a member on his first coming to
the town.” Even as late as 1837 the rules of the Steam-Engine Makers’
Society direct one-third of the weekly contribution to be spent in
the refreshment of the members, a provision which drops out in the
revision of 1846. In that year the Delegate Meeting of the Ironmoulders
prohibited drinking and smoking at its own sittings, and followed up
this self-denying ordinance by altering the rules of the society so as
to change the allowance of beer at branch meetings to its equivalent in
money. “We believe,” they remark in their address to the members, “the
business of the society would be much better done were there no liquor
allowance. Interruption, confusion, and scenes of violence and disorder
are often the characteristic of meetings where order, calmness, and
impartiality should prevail.” By 1860 most of the larger societies
had abolished all allowance for liquor, and some had even prohibited
its consumption during business meetings. It is to be remembered that
the Unions had, at first, no other meeting place than the club-room
freely placed at their disposal by the publican, and that their
payment for drink was of the nature of rent. Meanwhile the Compositors
and Bookbinders were removing their headquarters from public-houses
to offices of their own, and the Steam-Engine Makers were allowing
branches to hire rooms for meetings so as to avoid temptation. In 1850
the Ironmoulders report that some publicans were refusing to lend rooms
for meetings, owing to the growth of Temperance.

[344] It was the strength of their organisation in London in 1799,
as we have seen, that led to the employers’ petition to the House of
Commons, out of which sprang the Combination Acts of 1799 and 1800. See
also the evidence given by Galloway and other employers before the 1824
Select Committee on Artisans and Machinery; also incidental references
in the _Life of Sir William Fairbairn_, 1877, and other works. We
have been unable to discover any documents of engineering societies
prior to 1822. Sir William Fairbairn, in the preface to his _Mills and
Mill-work_, 1861, attributes the supersession of the millwright to the
changes consequent on the introduction of the steam-engine.

[345] William Newton was born at Congleton in 1822, his father, who had
once occupied a superior position, being then a journeyman machinist.
The boy went to work in engine shops at the age of fourteen, joined the
Hanley Branch of the Journeymen Steam-Engine Makers’ Society in 1842,
soon afterwards moving to London (where he worked in the same shop
as Henry James, afterwards Lord James of Hereford, then an engineer
pupil, and later noted for his knowledge of Trade Unionism), and rose
to be foreman. After his dismissal in 1848 for his Trade Union activity
he took a public-house at Ratcliffe, and devoted himself largely to
the promotion of the amalgamation of the engineering societies. In
1852 he became, for a short period, secretary to a small insurance
company. At the General Election of 1852 he became a candidate for the
Tower Hamlets. He was opposed by both the great political parties,
but the show of hands at the hustings was in his favour. At the poll
he was unsuccessful, receiving, however, 1,095 votes. In 1860 he was
presented with a testimonial (including a sum of £300) from his A.S.E.
fellow-members. In later years he became the proprietor of a prosperous
local newspaper and was elected by the Stepney Vestry as its chairman
and also as its representative on the Metropolitan Board of Works. He
became one of the leading members of that body, on which he served
from 1862 to 1876, filling the important office of deputy chairman to
the Parliamentary, Fire Brigade, and other influential committees. In
1868 he again contested the Tower Hamlets against both Liberals and
Conservatives, receiving 2,890 votes; and in 1875 he unsuccessfully
fought a bye-election at Ipswich. He died March 9, 1876, when his
funeral, in which the Metropolitan Board of Works took part, assumed a
public character.

[346] This journal is preserved in the Manchester Public Library (341,
P. 37). It was a well-written 16 pp. 8vo, issued, at first fortnightly
and afterwards monthly, at 2d. No. 1 is dated July 4, 1840.

[347] Minutes of delegate meeting at Manchester, May 12, 1845. An
admirable account of this society, founded on documents no longer
extant, is given in an article by Professor Brentano in the _North
British Review_, October 1870, entitled “The Growth of a Trades Union,”
For some other particulars see the _Jubilee Souvenir History of the
Amalgamated Society of Engineers_, 1901.

[348] Executive Circular, 1846, cited in proceedings in _R._ v.
_Selsby_. Two full accounts of the trial were published, viz. a
_Verbatim Report of the Trial for Conspiracy in R._ v. _Selsby and
others_ (Liverpool, 1847, 66 pp.), published under the “authority of
the Executive of the Steam-Engine Makers’ Society,” and a _Narrative,
etc., of the Trial, R._ v. _Selsby_ (London, 1847, 68 pp.). Both
are preserved in the Manchester Public Library, P. 2198. The legal
report is in Cox’s _Crown Cases_, vol. v. p. 496, etc. Contemporary
Trade Union reports contain many references to the proceedings. It
was noticed as an instance of the animus of the prosecution that the
indictment contained 4914 counts, and measured fifty-seven yards in
length. W. P. Roberts organised the defence, which cost the Union
£1800. The firm in whose works the dispute arose became bankrupt within
a few years. See the _Jubilee Souvenir History of the Amalgamated
Society of Engineers_, 1901.

[349] _The Trades Advocate and Herald of Progress_ was an 8 pp. quarto
weekly, price 1d., No. 1 being dated June 1850. The volume from June
to December 1850 is preserved in the Manchester Public Library (401
E, 18). An able article by John Burnett in the _Newcastle Weekly
Chronicle_, July 3, 1875, gives a vivid picture of the struggle for
amalgamation.

[350] This was pointed out in Professor Brentano’s article in the
_North British Review_, already quoted.

[351] The organ of the Executive Council was the _Operative_, a
well-written weekly journal, which was set on foot by Newton in January
1851. The price was at first 1½d., and afterwards 1d. per number. The
issues from the beginning down to July 1852, probably all that were
published, are preserved in the British Museum (P. P. 1424, a.m.).
Newton acted as editor, and contributed nearly all the articles
relating to the engineers and Trade Unions generally.

[352] The largest and most powerful of the other Unions in 1851 were
those of the Ironfounders and the Stonemasons, which numbered between
four and five thousand members each. It must be remembered that the
previous ephemeral associations of the cotton-spinners and miners,
which often for a time counted their tens of thousands of members, were
exclusively strike organisations, with contributions of 1d. or 2d. per
week only. The huge associations of 1830-34 had usually no regular
subscription at all, and depended on irregularly paid levies. A trade
society which, like the Amalgamated Engineers, could count on a regular
income of £500 a week was without precedent.

[353] See the resolutions of the Birmingham Delegate Meeting of the
Iron Trades, September 28, 1850, in the _Trades Union Advocate_,
November 1850.

[354] It was resolved: “That we are prepared to assist the workmen at
Messrs. Platt to the utmost of our power, but cannot consent to the men
leaving their situations, because they may not at present be able to
obtain the working of the machines.” The best account of the struggle
is to be found in the _Jubilee Souvenir History of the A.S.E._ (1901),
pp. 34-41.

[355] Lord Goderich, afterwards the Marquis of Ripon, gave the
Executive a cheque for £500 to enable the strike pay to be kept up on
a temporary emergency; one of many generous efforts, during a long
lifetime, to assist the wage-earning class.

[356] Executive Circular of April 26, 1852, in _Operative_, May 1,
1852. A number of the men refused to sign, and many emigrated. E.
Vansittart Neale advanced £1030 to members for this purpose, the whole
of which was repaid by the borrowers.

[357] Among the abundant literature on this great struggle may be
mentioned the _Account_, by Thomas (afterwards Judge) Hughes, in the
_Report on Trade Societies_, by the Social Science Association, 1860;
J. M. Ludlow’s lectures, entitled _The Master Engineers and their
Workmen_, 1852; a pamphlet, _May I not do what I will with my own?_ by
E. Vansittart Neale; _Jubilee Souvenir History of the A.S.E._, 1901;
and the evidence given by William Newton (for the men) and Sidney
Smith (for the employers) before the Select Committee on Masters
and Operatives (Equitable Councils, etc.) in 1856. The employers’
manifestoes will be found in the _Times_ from December 1851 to April
1852; the men’s documents and reports of their meetings in the
_Operative_ (edited by Newton), and in the _Northern Star_, then at its
last gasp.

[358] It ended the struggle with £700 in hand. Its membership at the
end of 1852 had fallen from 11,829 to 9737, but even then it had a
balance in hand of £5382, and within three years the members had
increased to 12,553, and the accumulated funds to the unprecedented
total of £35,695. And unlike all previous trade societies, its record
from 1852 down to the present time has been one of continued growth
and prosperity, the membership at the end of 1919 being 320,000, with
accumulated funds not far short of three million pounds, being greater
in aggregate amount than the possessions of any other Trade Union
organisation of this or any other country.

[359] Preface to Rules of the Journeymen Steam-Engine, Machine Makers,
and Millwrights’ Friendly Society, edition of 1845.

[360] This plan of “equalisation” is, so far as we know, peculiar to
Trade Unions, though we understand from Dr. Baernreither’s _English
Associations of Working Men_, pp. 283-84, that a few branches of some
of the Friendly Societies adopted a somewhat similar system. Its origin
is unknown to us, but the device is traditionally ascribed to the
Journeymen Steam-Engine and Machine Makers and Millwrights’ Society,
established in 1826. It was also in early use by the Steam-Engine
Makers’ Society, established in 1824. Until the Trade Union Act of 1871
it had a positive use. Depending, as Trade Unions were obliged to do,
upon the integrity of their officers, there were great advantages in
the wide distribution of the funds and the local responsibility of each
branch for the safe keeping of its share.

[361] That is to say, local differences in the cost of living have
always been taken into account.

[362] Such protests were frequent in the evidence before the Royal
Commission of 1867-68, and form the staple of the innumerable
criticisms on Trade Unionism between 1852 and 1879. A good vindication
of the Trade Union position is contained in Professor Beesly’s article
in the _Fortnightly Review_, 1867, which was republished as a pamphlet,
_The Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners_, 1867, 20 pp.

[363] The unique collection of these circulars, containing not only
statistical and other information of the society, but also frequent
references to the building trades and the general movement, was
generously placed at our disposal for the purpose of this work, and we
have found it of the utmost value.

[364] See, for instance, the evidence of Mault, Questions 3980 in
Second Report and 4086 in Third Report.

[365] Report of Special Committee, 1869.

[366] The National Association of United Trades continued, as we have
already seen, in nominal existence until 1860 or 1861, but after 1852
it sank to a membership of a few thousands, and played practically no
part in the Trade Union world.

[367] _Times_, June to December 1853.

[368] A more detailed account of these developments will be found
in _The Co-operative Movement in Great Britain_ (1891; second
edition, 1893), by Beatrice Potter (Mrs. Sidney Webb); _Co-operative
Production_, by Benjamin Jones, 1894; and in the Report of the Fabian
Research Department on Co-operative Production, published as a
supplement to _The New Statesman_, February 14, 1914.

[369] _Address of the Executive Council of the Amalgamated Society of
Engineers to their Fellow-Workmen_, 1855.

[370] See _The Strikes, their Extent, Evils, and Remedy, being a
Description of the General Movement of the Mass of the Building
Operatives throughout the United Kingdom_, by Vindex (1853), 56 pp. One
consequence of this renewed outburst of strikes was the appointment
in 1858 by the newly formed National Association for the Promotion
of Social Science of a Committee to inquire into trade societies and
disputes. This inquiry, conducted by able and zealous investigators,
resulted in 1860 in the publication of a volume which contains the
best collection of Trade Union material and the most impartial account
of Trade Union action that has ever been issued. As a source of
history and economic illustration this _Report on Trade Societies and
Strikes_ (1860, 651 pp.) is far superior to the Parliamentary Blue
Books of 1824, 1825, 1838, and 1867-68. Among the contributors were
Godfrey Lushington (afterwards Under-Secretary of State for the Home
Department), J. M. Ludlow (afterwards Registrar of Friendly Societies),
Thomas (afterwards Judge) Hughes, Q.C., Mr. G. Shaw-Lefevre (afterwards
Lord Eversley), F. D. Longe, and Frank Hill. The Committee was presided
over by the late Sir James Kay-Shuttleworth, and amongst its other
members may be mentioned W. E. Forster, Henry Fawcett, R. H. Hutton,
Rev. F. D. Maurice, Dr. William Farr, and one Trade Union secretary, T.
J. Dunning, of the London Bookbinders.

[371] See the account of it in _Labour Legislation, Labour Movements,
and Labour Leaders_, by G. Howell, 1902.

[372] Prof. E. S. Beesly, _Fortnightly Review_, 1867.




CHAPTER V

THE JUNTA AND THEIR ALLIES


Many influences had during the preceding years been co-operating to
form what may almost be described as a cabinet of the Trade Union
Movement. The establishment of such great trade friendly societies as
the Amalgamated Engineers had created, in some sense, a new school
of Trade Union officials, face to face with intricate problems of
administration and finance. The presence in London of the headquarters
of these societies brought their salaried officers into close personal
intimacy with each other. And it so happened that during these years
the little circle of secretaries included men of marked character and
ability, who were, both by experience and by temperament, admirably
fitted to guide the movement through the acute crisis which we shall
presently describe.

Foremost in this little group--which we shall hereafter call the
Junta--were the general secretaries of the two amalgamated societies
of Engineers and Carpenters, William Allan and Robert Applegarth,
whose success in building up these powerful organisations had given
them great influence in Trade Union councils. Bound to these in close
personal friendship were Daniel Guile, the general secretary of the old
and important national society of Ironfounders, Edwin Coulson, general
secretary of the “London Order” of Bricklayers, and George Odger, a
prominent member of a small union of highly skilled makers of ladies’
shoes, and an influential leader of London working-class Radicalism.

William Allan was the originator of the “New Unionism” of his
time.[373] We have already described how, with the aid of William
Newton, he had gathered up the scattered fragments of organisation in
the engineering trade, and had adapted the elaborate constitution and
financial system of an old-established society to the needs of a great
national amalgamation. In long hours of patient labour in the office
he had built up an extremely methodical, if somewhat cumbrous, system
of financial checks and trade reports, by which the exact position of
each of his tens of thousands of members was at all times recorded in
his official pigeonholes. The permanence of his system is the best
testimony to its worth. Even to-day the Engineers’ head office retains
throughout the impress of Allan’s tireless and methodical industry.
Excessive caution, red-tape precision, an almost miserly solicitude
for the increase of the society’s funds, were among Allan’s defects.
But at a time when working men “agitators” were universally credited
with looseness in money matters and incapacity for strenuous and
regular mental effort, these defects, however equivocal may have been
their ultimate effect on the policy and development of the Amalgamated
Society of Engineers, produced a favourable impression on the public.
Allan, moreover, though not a brilliant speaker, or a man of wide
general interests, was a keen working-class politician, whose temper
and judgement could always be depended on. And he has left behind him
the tradition, not only of absolute integrity and abnormal industry,
but also of a singular freedom from personal vanity or ambition.

Whilst Allan aimed at transforming the “paid agitator” into the
trusted officer of a great financial corporation, Robert Applegarth
sought to win for the Trade Union organisation a recognised social
and political status. Astute and lawyer-like in temperament, he
instinctively made use of those arguments which were best fitted to
overcome the prejudices and disarm the criticisms of middle-class
opponents. Nor did he limit himself to justifying the ways of Trade
Unionists to the world at large. He made persistent attempts to enlarge
the mental horizon of the rank and file of his own movement, opening
out to those whose vision had hitherto been limited to the strike
and the tap-room, whole vistas of social and political problems in
which they as working men were primarily concerned. Hence we find
him, during his career as general secretary, a leading member of the
famous “International,”[374] and an energetic promoter of the Labour
Representation League, the National Education League, and various
philanthropic and political associations. Political reformers became
eager to secure his adhesion to their projects: he was, for instance,
specially invited to attend the important conferences of the National
Education League at Birmingham as the special representative of the
working classes; and it was owing to his reputation as a social
reformer that he was in 1870 selected to sit on the Royal Commission
upon the Contagious Diseases Acts, thus becoming the first working
man to be styled by his Sovereign “Our Trusty and Well-beloved.”
Open-minded, alert, and conciliatory, he formed an ideal representative
of the English Labour Movement in the political world.[375]

The permanent officials of the Ironfounders and the London Bricklayers
were men of less originality than Allan or Applegarth. Guile was a man
of attractive personality and winning manner, gifted with a certain
rugged eloquence. Coulson is described by an opponent as being “stolid
and obstinate,” and again as “bricky and stodgy”; but the expansion,
under his influence, of the little London Society of Bricklayers into
a powerful Union of national scope, proves him to have possessed
administrative ability of no mean order. The special distinction of
all four alike was their business capacity, shown by the persistency
and success with which they pursued, each in his own trade, the policy
originated by Newton and Allan, of basing Trade Union organisation
upon an insurance company of national extent. George Odger brought to
the Junta quite other qualities than the cautious industry of Allan
or the lawyer-like capacity of Applegarth. Of the five men we have
mentioned he was the only one who continued to work at his trade, and
who retained to the last the full flavour of a working-class leader. An
orator of remarkable power, he swayed popular meetings at his will, and
was the idol of Metropolitan Radicalism. But he was no mere demagogue.
Beneath his brilliant rhetoric and emotional fervour there lay a large
measure of political shrewdness, and he shared with his colleagues the
capacity for deliberately concerted action and personal subordination.
His dilatory and unbusinesslike habits made him incapable of building
up a great organisation. Had he stood alone, he would have added little
to the strength of Trade Unionism; as the loyal adherent of the great
officials and their popular mouth-piece to the working-class world,
Unionist and non-Unionist alike, he gave the movement a wider basis,
and attracted into its ranks every ardent reformer belonging to the
artisan class.[376]

It is difficult to-day to convey any adequate idea of the extraordinary
personal influence exercised by these five men, not only on their
immediate associates, but also as interpreters of the Trade Union
Movement, upon the public and the governing classes. For the first time
in the century the working-class movement came under the direction,
not of middle and upper class sympathisers like Place, Owen, Roberts,
O’Connor, or Duncombe, but of genuine workmen specially trained for the
position. For the first time, moreover, the leaders of working-class
politics stood together in a compact group, united by a close personal
friendship, and absolutely free from any trace of that suspiciousness
or disloyalty which have so often marred popular movements. They
brought to their task, it is true, no consistent economic theory or
political philosophy. They subscribed with equal satisfaction to the
crude Collectivism of the “International,” and the dogmatic industrial
Individualism of the English Radicals. This absence of a definite basis
to their political activity accounts, we think, for the drying up of
Trade Union politics after their withdrawal. We shall have occasion
hereafter to notice other “defects of their qualities,” and the way in
which these subsequently stunted the further development of their own
movement. But it was largely their very limitations which made them,
at this particular crisis, such valuable representatives of the Trade
Union Movement. They accepted, with perfect good faith, the economic
Individualism of their middle-class opponents, and claimed only that
freedom to combine which the more enlightened members of that class
were willing to concede to them. Their genuine if somewhat restrained
enthusiasm for political and industrial freedom gave them a persistency
and determination which no check could discourage. Their understanding
of the middle-class point of view, and their appreciation of the
practical difficulties of the situation, saved them from being mere
demagogues. For the next ten years, when it was all-important to obtain
a legal status for trade societies and to obliterate the unfortunate
impression created by the Sheffield outrages, their qualities exactly
suited the emergency. The possession of good manners, though it
may seem a trivial detail, was not the least of their advantages.
To perfect self-respect and integrity they added correctness of
expression, habits of personal propriety, and a remarkable freedom
from all that savoured of the tap-room. In Allan and Applegarth, Guile,
Coulson, and Odger, the traducers of Trade Unionism found themselves
confronted with a combination of high personal character, exceptional
business capacity, and a large share of that official decorum which the
English middle class find so impressive.

Round these central personalities grouped themselves in London a number
of men of like temperament and aims. We have already had occasion to
mention T. J. Dunning, of the Bookbinders, grown old in the service of
Trade Unionism. The building trades contributed a younger generation,
John Prior, George Howell, Henry Broadhurst, and George Shipton. The
whole group were in touch with certain provincial leaders, who adhered
to the new views, and acted in close concert with the Junta. Of these,
the most noteworthy were Alexander Macdonald, then busily organising
the Miners’ National Union, John Kane,[377] of the North of England
Ironworkers, William Dronfield, the Sheffield compositor, and Alexander
Campbell, the leading spirit of the Glasgow Trades Council.

The distinctive policy of the Junta was the combination of extreme
caution in trade matters and energetic agitation for political
reforms. It is indeed somewhat doubtful how far Allan and Applegarth,
Coulson and Guile shared the popular belief that trade combinations
could effect a general rise of wages or resist a general reduction
in a falling market. They had more faith in the moral force of great
reserve funds, by the aid of which, dispensed in liberal out-of-work
donations, one capitalist, or even a whole group of capitalists, might
be effectually prevented from obtaining labour at anything but the
standard conditions. Their trade policy was, in fact, restricted to
securing for every workman those terms which the best employers were
willing voluntarily to grant. For this reason they were constantly
accused of apathy by those hotter spirits whose idea of successful
Trade Unionism was a series of general strikes for advances or against
reductions. The Junta were really looking in another direction for the
emancipation of the worker. They believed that a levelling down of all
political privileges, and the opening out of educational and social
opportunities to all classes of the community, would bring in its train
a large measure of economic equality. Under the influence of these
leaders the London Unions, and eventually those of the provinces, were
drawn into a whole series of political agitations, for the Franchise,
for amendment of the Master and Servant law, for new Mines Regulation
Acts, for National Education, and finally for the full legalisation of
Trade Unions themselves.

Practical difficulties hampered the complete execution of the Junta’s
policy. The use of the Trade Union organisation for Parliamentary
agitation, on which Macdonald, Applegarth, and Odger based all their
expectations of progress, came as a new idea to the Trade Union
world. The rank and file of Trade Unionists, still excluded from the
franchise, took practically no interest in any social or political
reform, and regarded their trade combinations exclusively as means of
extorting a rise of wages or of compelling their fellow-workmen to
join their clubs. This was especially the case with the provincial
organisations, where the officials usually shared the obscurantism
of their members. The “Manchester Order” of Bricklayers and the
General Union of Carpenters (headquarters, Manchester) were, like the
Midland Brickmakers and the Sheffield Cutlers, still wedded to the
old ideas of secrecy and coercion, whilst the powerful society of
Masons, then centred at Leeds, held aloof from the general movement.
But this resistance was not confined to the older societies, nor to
those of any particular locality. All the Unions of that time, even
those of the Metropolis, retained a strong traditional repugnance to
political action. In many cases the rules expressly forbade all mention
of politics in their meetings. And although the societies could be
occasionally induced to take joint action of a political character
in defence of Trade Unionism itself, not even the great influence of
the Junta upon their own Unions sufficed to persuade the members to
turn their organisations to account for legislative reform. The Junta
turned, therefore, to the newly established Trades Councils and made
these the political organs of the Trade Union world.

The formation between 1858 and 1867 of permanent Trades Councils in the
leading industrial centres was an important step in the consolidation
of the Trade Union Movement. Local delegate meetings, summoned to
deal with particular emergencies, had been a feature of Trade Union
organisation, at any rate since the beginning of the nineteenth
century. In early times every important strike had its committee of
sympathisers from other trade societies, who collected subscriptions
and rendered what personal aid they could. But the most notable of
these committees were those which started up in all the centres of
Trade Unionism when the movement was threatened by some particular
legal or Parliamentary danger. Such joint committees had in 1825
contributed powerfully to defeat the re-enactment of the Combination
Laws, in 1834 to arouse public feeling in the case of the Dorchester
labourers, and in 1838 to conduct the Trade Union case before the
Parliamentary Committee of that year. But these earlier committees were
formed only for particular emergencies, and had, so far as we know, no
continuous existence. By 1860 permanent councils were in existence in
Glasgow, Sheffield, Liverpool, and Edinburgh, and their example was, in
1861, followed by the London trades.[378]

Like many provincial organisations, the London Trades Council
originated in a “Strike Committee.” During the winter of 1859-60
weekly meetings of delegates from the Metropolitan trades had been
held to support the Building Operatives in their resistance to the
“document.” “At the termination of that memorable struggle,” states the
Second Annual Report of the London Trades Council, “it was felt that
something should be done to establish a general trades committee so
as to be able on emergency to call the trades together with despatch
for the purpose of rendering each other advice or assistance as the
circumstances required.”[379] In March 1860 the provisional committee
formed with this object issued an “Address” to the trades, which
resulted, on July 10, 1860, in the first meeting of the present London
Trades Council.

It is interesting to notice that the Council, at the outset, was
composed mainly of the representatives of the smaller societies. The
Executive Committee elected at its first meeting included no delegates
from the engineers, compositors, masons, bricklayers, or ironfounders,
who were then the most influential of the London Trade Societies. The
first action of the young Council affords a significant indication
of the feeling of isolation which led to its formation. In order to
facilitate communications with other trade societies throughout the
kingdom it resolved to compile a _General Trades Union Directory_,
containing the names and addresses of all Trade Union secretaries.
This praiseworthy enterprise took up all the attention of the new
body for the first year, and the printing of two thousand copies of
the result of its work crippled its finances for long afterwards. For,
unfortunately, the _General Trades Union Directory_, published at one
shilling per copy, did not sell and was, we fear, soon consigned to
the pulping mill, as we have, after exhaustive search, been able to
discover only two copies in existence.[380]

But the direction of the Council was falling into abler hands. In 1861
George Howell became secretary, to be succeeded in the following year
by George Odger, who for the next ten years remained its most prominent
member. The Amalgamated Society of Engineers joined in 1861, and the
veteran Dunning brought over the old-established Union of Bookbinders.
By 1864, at any rate, the new organisation was entirely dominated by
the Junta. The two “amalgamated” societies of Engineers and Carpenters
supplied, in some years, half its income. The great trade friendly
society of Ironfounders and the growing “London Order” of Bricklayers
sent their general secretaries to its meetings. The Council became,
in effect, a joint committee of the officers of the large national
societies. In the meetings at the old Bell Inn, under the shadow of
Newgate, we have the beginnings of an informal cabinet of the Trade
Union world.

Meanwhile war had again broken out between the master builders and
their operatives, caused partly by a renewed agitation for the Nine
Hours Day, and partly by the employers’ desire to substitute payment
by the hour for the previous custom of payment by the day.[381] For
the historian of the general movement the dispute is chiefly important
as furnishing the occasion of the first intervention of the talented
group of young barristers and literary men who, from this time forth,
became the trusted legal experts and political advisers of the leaders
of the Trade Union Movement. The workmen had totally failed to make
clear their objection to the Hour System, or even to obtain a hearing
of their case. Their position was, for the first time, intelligibly
explained in two brilliant letters addressed to the newspapers by eight
Positivists and Christian Socialists, which did much to bring about the
tacit compromise in which the struggle ended.[382]

Of more immediate interest to us is the action taken by the newly
formed London Trades Council. Among the building operations suspended
by the dispute was the construction, by a large contractor, of the
new Chelsea barracks. The War Department saw no harm in permitting him
to engage the sappers of the Royal Engineers to take the place of the
men on strike. A similar course had been taken by the Government in
strikes of 1825 and 1834. But the Trade Unions were now too powerful
to allow of any such interference in their battles. A delegate meeting
of the London trades, comprising representatives of fifty industries
and fifty thousand operatives, sent a deputation to the War Office.
Sir George Cornwall Lewis returned at first an equivocal answer, but
the new Trades Council proved the efficacy of Parliamentary agitation
by getting questions put to the Minister in the House of Commons, and
stirring up enough feeling to compel him to withdraw the troops.

The minute-books of the London Trades Council from 1860 to 1867 present
a mirror of the Trade Union history of this period. Odger had the fare
gift of making his minutes interesting, and he describes, in his terse
but graphic English, all the varied events of the Labour Movement as
they were brought before the Council. In 1861-62, for instance, we see
the Council trying vainly to settle the difficult problem of “overlap”
between the trades of the shipwrights and the iron-shipbuilders; we
notice the shadow cast by the Lancashire cotton famine, and we read
indignant resolutions condemning the Sheffield outrages of those years.
But the special interest of these minutes lies in their unconscious
revelation of the way in which the Council became the instrument of
the new policy of participation in general politics. Under Odger’s
influence the Council took a prominent part in organising the popular
welcome to Garibaldi, and in 1862 it held a great meeting in St.
James’s Hall in support of the struggle of the Northern States against
negro slavery, at which John Bright was the principal speaker. In
1864 the Junta placed itself definitely in opposition to the “Old
Unionists,” who objected to all connection between the Government and
the concerns of working men. W. E. Gladstone, who was then Chancellor
of the Exchequer, had introduced a Bill enabling the Post Office to
sell Government Annuities for small amounts. Against this harmless
project George Potter, the leading opponent of the Junta, summoned
great public meetings of the London trades, enlisted on his side
the Operative Stonemasons and other provincial organisations, and
vehemently denounced the Bill as an insidious attempt to divert the
savings of working men from their Trade Unions and benefit societies
into an exchequer controlled by the governing classes. The London
Trades Council sent an influential deputation to Gladstone publicly
to disavow the action of Potter, and to welcome the proposal of the
Government to utilise the administrative organisation for the advantage
of the working class. Of more significance was the alteration of the
Council’s policy with regard to political reform. The early members
had set themselves against the introduction of politics in any guise
whatsoever, and during the years 1861-62 Howell and Odger strove in
vain to enlist the Council in the agitation for a new Reform Bill.
But in 1866, under the influence of Odger and Applegarth, Allan
and Coulson, the Council enthusiastically threw itself into the
demonstration in favour of the Reform Bill brought in by the Liberal
Government, and took a leading part in the agitation which resulted
in the enfranchisement of the town artisan.[383] In the same year the
Council agreed to co-operate with the “International” in demanding
Democratic Reform from all European Governments.

The widely advertised public action of the London Trades Council
excited considerable interest in provincial centres of Trade Unionism.
We see the Council in frequent correspondence with similar bodies at
Glasgow, Nottingham, Sheffield, and other provincial towns, and often
exercising a kind of informal leadership in general movements. But it
would be unfair to ascribe the whole initiative in legislative reform
to the London officials. Under the brilliant leadership of Alexander
Macdonald, whose work we shall hereafter describe, the force of the
coal-miners was being marshalled for Parliamentary agitation; and
Macdonald’s friend, Alexander Campbell, was bringing the Glasgow Trades
Council round to the new policy. And it was Campbell and Macdonald,
working through these organisations, who carried through the most
important Trade Union achievement of the next few years, the amendment
of the law relating to master and servant.

It is difficult in these days, when equality of treatment before the
law has become an axiom, to understand how the flagrant injustice
of the old Master and Servant Acts seemed justifiable even to a
middle-class Parliament. If an employer broke a contract of service,
even wilfully and without excuse, he was liable only to be sued for
damages, or, in the case of wages under £10, to be summoned before a
court of summary jurisdiction, which could order payment of the amount
due. The workman, on the other hand, who wilfully broke his contract
of service, either by absenting himself from his employment, or by
leaving his work, was liable to be proceeded against for a criminal
offence, and punished by three months’ imprisonment. This inequality
of treatment was, moreover, aggravated by various other anomalies. It
followed by the general law of evidence that, whilst a master sued by
a servant could be witness in his own favour, the servant prosecuted
by his employer could not give evidence on his own behalf; and it
frequently happened that no other evidence than the employer’s could
be produced. It was in the power of a single justice of the peace, on
an information on oath, to issue a warrant for the summary arrest of
the workman, who thus found himself, when a dispute occurred, suddenly
seized, even in his bed,[384] and haled to prison at the discretion of
a magistrate, who was in many cases himself an employer of labour. The
case was heard before a single justice of the peace, and the hearing
might take place at his private house. The only punishment that could
be inflicted was imprisonment, the law not allowing the alternative of
a fine or the payment of damages. From the decision of the justice,
however arbitrary, there was no appeal. Finally, it must be added, the
sentence of imprisonment was no discharge for a debt, so that a workman
was liable to be imprisoned over and over again for the same breach of
contract.[385]

Early in 1863 Alexander Campbell[386] brought the Master and Servant
Law under the notice of the Glasgow Trades Council. A Parliamentary
Return was obtained showing that the enormous number of 10,339 cases
of breach of contract of service came before the courts in a single
year. A committee was formed to agitate for the amendment of the law,
and communication was opened up, not only with the London leaders, but
also with sympathisers in other provincial towns. The Trades Councils
of London, Bristol, Sheffield, Nottingham, Newcastle, and Edinburgh
were formally invited to unite in a combined movement. In Leeds and
elsewhere local Trades Councils were established for the express
purpose of forwarding the agitation; and 15,000 copies of a “Memorial
of Information intended for the use of such workmen as fall under
the provisions of the Statute 4 Geo. IV. c. 34”[387] were circulated
to all the leading workmen throughout the country. At the instance
of Campbell and Macdonald, the Glasgow Trades Council convened a
conference of Trade Union representatives to consider how the object of
the agitation could best be secured. This Conference, which was held
in London during four days of May 1864, marks an epoch in Trade Union
history. For the first time a national meeting of Trade Union delegates
was spontaneously convened by a Trade Union organisation to discuss
a purely workman’s question, in the presence of working men alone.
The number of delegates did not exceed twenty, but these included the
leading officials of all the great national and amalgamated Unions.[388]

The transactions of the Conference were thoroughly businesslike.
Three members of the Government were asked to receive deputations; a
large number of members of Parliament were “lobbied” on the subject
of an immediate amending Bill; and finally a successful meeting of
legislators was held in the “tea-room” of the House of Commons itself,
at which the delegates impressed their desires upon all the friendly
members. The terms of the draft Bill were settled; Cobbett agreed to
introduce it in the House of Commons, and the Glasgow Trades’ Committee
was authorised to support it by an agitation on behalf of all the Trade
Unions of the kingdom.

The Bill introduced by Cobbett never became law; but a vigorous
agitation kept the matter under the notice of Parliament, and in 1866
a Select Committee was appointed to inquire into the subject. Upon
its report Lord Elcho[389] succeeded, in 1867, in carrying through
Parliament a Bill which remedied the grossest injustice of the law.
The Master and Servant Act of 1867 (30 & 31 Vic. c. 141), the first
positive success of the Trade Unions in the legislative field, did much
to increase their confidence in Parliamentary agitation.

But whilst the Junta and their allies were, by the capture of the
Trades Councils, using the Trade Union organisation for an active
political campaign, their steady discouragement of aggressive strikes
was bringing down upon them the wrath of the “Old Unionists” of the
time. It was one of the principal functions of the London Trades
Council to grant “credentials” to trade societies having disputes on
hand, recommending them for the support of workmen in other trades.
As these credentials were not confined to London disputes, the custom
placed the Council under the invidious necessity of either giving
its sanction to, or withholding approval from, practically every
important strike in the kingdom--an arrangement which quickly brought
the Council into conflict with the more aggressive societies. In two
cases especially the divergence of policy raised serious and heated
discussions. A building trades strike had broken out in the Midlands
at the beginning of 1864, initiated by the old Friendly Society (now
styled the General Union) of Operative Carpenters. The men’s action was
strongly disapproved by Applegarth and the Executive of the Amalgamated
Society of Carpenters. The London Trades Council unhesitatingly took
Applegarth’s view, thereby alienating whole sections of the building
trades, whose local trade clubs and provincial societies had retained
much of the spirit of the Builders’ Union of 1834. But the internal
dissension arising from the carpenters’ dispute fell far short of
that brought about by the strike of the Staffordshire puddlers. It is
unnecessary to go into the details of this angry struggle against a 10
per cent reduction. The conduct of the men in refusing the arbitration
offered by the Earl of Lichfield met with the disapproval of the
London Trades Council. The hotter spirits were greatly incensed at
the Council’s moderation. George Potter, in particular, distinguished
himself by addressing excited meetings of the men on strike, advising
them to stand firm.

Potter, who figures largely in the newspapers of this time, was in
fact endeavouring to work up a formidable opposition to the policy of
the Junta. After the building trades disputes of 1859-60, in which
he had taken a leading part, he had started the _Beehive_, a weekly
organ of the Trade Union world. Himself a member of a tiny trade club
of London carpenters, he was bitterly opposed to Applegarth and the
Amalgamated Society, and from 1864 onward we find him at the head of
every outbreak of disaffection. An expert in the arts of agitation
and of advertisement, Potter occasionally cut a remarkable figure, so
that the unwary reader, not of the _Beehive_ only, but also of the
_Times_, might easily believe him to have been the most influential
leader of the working-class movement. As a matter of fact, he at no
time represented any genuine trade organisation, the “Working Men’s
Association,” of which he was president, being an unimportant society
of nondescript persons. However, from 1864 to 1867 we find him calling
frequent meetings of delegates of the London trades to denounce the
Junta, and their instrument, the London Trades Council. The minutes of
the latter body contain abundant evidence of the bitter feelings caused
by these attacks, and make clear the essential difference between
the two policies. At a special meeting called to condemn Potter’s
action, Howell, Allan, Coulson, and Applegarth enlarged upon the evil
consequences of irresponsible agitation in trade disputes; and Danter,
the outspoken president of the Amalgamated Engineers, emphatically
declared that Potter “had become the aider and abettor of strikes. He
thought of nothing else; he followed no other business; strikes were
his bread-and-cheese; in short, he was a strike-jobber, and he made
the _Beehive_ newspaper his instrument for pushing his nose into every
unfortunate dispute that sprang up.”[390]

Responsible and cautious leadership of the Trade Union Movement was
becoming increasingly necessary. The growth of the great national
Unions, alike in wealth and in membership, and the manner in which
they subscribed in aid of each other’s battles, had aroused the active
enmity of the employers. To counteract the men’s renewed strength, the
employers once more banded themselves into powerful associations, and
made use of a new weapon. The old expedient of the “document” had,
since its failure to break down the Amalgamated Engineers in 1852,
and to subdue the building operatives in 1859, fallen somewhat into
discredit. It was now reinforced by the general “lock-out” of all the
men in a particular industry, even those who accepted the employer’s
terms, in order to reduce to subjection the recalcitrant employees of
one or two firms only.[391] The South Yorkshire coal-owners especially
distinguished themselves during those years by their frequent use of
the “lock-out.” One Yorkshire miner complained in 1866 that he had been
“locked out about twenty-four months in six years.”[392] During the
year 1865 it seemed as if the lock-outs were about to become a feature
of every large industry, the most notable instances being those of
the Staffordshire ironworkers, to which we have already alluded, and
the shipbuilding operatives on the Clyde. In both these cases large
sections of the men were willing to work at the employers’ terms, but
were either known to belong to a Union or suspected of contributing to
the men on strike. But though this practice of “locking out” created
great excitement among working men, it did not achieve the employers’
aim of breaking up the Unions. Nothing but absolute suppression by law
appeared open to those who regarded trade combinations as “a poisonous
plant” and an “anomalous anachronism,” and who were vainly looking
to “the happy period,” both for masters and men, when the questions,
“What is the price of a quarter of wheat?” and “What is the price of a
workman’s day wage?” shall be settled on the same principles.[393]

Nor were the employers the only people who began to talk once more of
putting down Trade Unions by law. The industrial dislocation which the
lock-outs, far more than the strikes, produced occasioned widespread
loss and public inconvenience. The quarrels of employer and employed
came to be vaguely regarded as matters of more than private concern.
Unfortunately a handle was given to the enemies of Trade Unionism by
the continuance of outrages, committed in the interest of Trade Unions,
which began to be widely advertised by the press. Isolated cases of
violence and intimidation, restricted, as we shall hereafter see, to
certain trades and localities, were magnified by press rumours into a
systematic attempt on the part of the Trade Unions generally to obtain
their ends by deliberate physical violence. In the general fear and
disapproval the public failed to discriminate between the petty trade
clubs of Sheffield and such great associations as the Amalgamated
Engineers and Carpenters. The commercial objection to industrial
disputes became confused with the feeling of abhorrence created by
the idea of vast combinations of men sticking at neither violence
nor murder to achieve their ends. The “terrorism of Trade Unions”
became a nightmare. “On one side,” says a writer who represents the
public feeling of the time, “is arrayed the great mass of the talent,
knowledge, virtue, and wealth of the country, and, on the other, a
number of unscrupulous men, leading a half-idle life, and feeding on
the contributions of their dupes, and on a tax levied on such of the
intelligent artisans as are forced into their ranks, but who would be
only too happy to throw off their thraldom and join the supporters of
law and justice, did these but offer them adequate protection.”[394]

The Trade Unions world seems to have been quite unconscious of the
gathering storm. In June 1866 138 delegates, representing all the great
Unions, and a total membership of about 200,000, met at Sheffield to
devise some defence against the constant use of the lock-out. The
student of the proceedings of this conference will contrast with wonder
the actual conduct of the Trade Union leaders with the denunciations
to which these “few unscrupulous men” were at this time exposed.
Nothing could be more worthy, even from the middle-class point of
view, than the discussions of these representative workmen, who
denounced with equal energy the readiness with which their impetuous
followers came out on strike and the arbitrary lock-out of the masters,
and whose resolutions express their desire for the establishment
of Councils of Conciliation and the general resort to arbitration
in industrial disputes.[395] Meanwhile, in order to meet the great
federations of employers, they formed “The United Kingdom Alliance
of Organised Trades,” to support the members of any trade who should
find themselves “locked out” by their employers.[396] Unfortunately
the conference utterly failed to decide what constituted a “lock-out,”
as distinguished from a strike; and the “Judicial Council” of the
Alliance, consisting of one delegate from each of the nine districts
into which the kingdom was divided, found itself continually at
issue with its constituents as to the disputes to be supported. This
friction co-operated with the increasing depression of trade in causing
the calls for funds to be very unwillingly responded to; and the
Executive Committee, sitting at Sheffield, had seldom any cash at its
command. The Alliance lingered on until about the end of 1870, when
the defection of its last important Unions brought it absolutely to
an end.[397] In 1866, however, the Alliance was young and hopeful.
It received its first blow in October of this year, when it and the
Trade Union Conference were forgotten in the sensation produced by the
explosion of a can of gunpowder in a workman’s house in New Hereford
Street, Sheffield.

This outrage was only one of a class of crimes for which Sheffield was
already notorious. But in the state of public irritation against Trade
Unionism, which had been growing during the past few years of lock-outs
and strikes, the news served to precipitate events. On all sides
there arose a cry for a searching investigation into Trade Unionism.
The Trade Unions themselves joined in the demand. As no clue to the
perpetrators of the last crime could be discovered by the local police,
the leaders of the Sheffield trade clubs united with the Town Council
and the local Employers’ Association in pressing for a Government
inquiry. The London Trades Council and the Executive of the Amalgamated
Engineers sent a joint deputation to Sheffield to investigate the case.
The deputation discovered no more than the local police had done about
the perpetrators of the crime, and therefore innocently reported that
there was no evidence of Trade Union complicity; but they accompanied
this report by a strong condemnation of “the abominable practice of
rattening, which is calculated to demoralise those who are concerned
in it, and to bring disgrace on all trade combinations.”[398] Public
meetings of Trade Unionists were held throughout the country, at
which the leaders expressed their indignation both at the outrage
itself and at the common assumption that it was a usual and necessary
incident of Trade Unionism. These meetings invariably concluded with a
demand on behalf of the Trade Unionists to be allowed an opportunity
of refuting the accusations of the enemies of the movement. Robert
Applegarth saw the Home Secretary on the subject, and suggested a
Commission of Inquiry. The appointment of a Royal Commission of Inquiry
was officially announced in the Queen’s Speech of February 1867. That
the Government meant business was proved by the prompt introduction
of a Bill empowering the Commission to pursue its investigations by
exceptional means. The inquiry was to extend to all outrages during
the past ten years, whether in Sheffield or elsewhere. Not only were
accomplices in criminal acts promised an indemnity, provided that
they gave evidence, but the same privilege was extended to the
actual perpetrators of the crimes. The investigation, moreover, was
not restricted to the supposed criminal practices of particular trade
clubs, but was to embrace the whole subject of Trade Unionism and its
effects.

The Trade Union movement thus found itself for the third time at the
bar of a Parliamentary inquiry at a moment when public opinion, as
well as the enmity of employers, had been strongly excited against it.
At the very height of this crisis, which had been brought about by
the violence of some of the old-fashioned Unions, the new Amalgamated
Societies themselves received a serious check from a decision of the
Court of Queen’s Bench.

The formation of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, with its large
accumulated funds, had renewed the anxiety of the Trade Union officials
as to the extent to which a trade society enjoyed the protection of the
law. Although the Act of 1825 had made trade societies, as such, no
longer unlawful, nothing had been done to give them any legal status,
or to enable them to take proceedings as corporate entities. But in
1855 a “Metropolitan Trades Committee” succeeded in getting a clause
intended to relate to Trade Unions inserted in the Friendly Societies
Act of that year. By the 44th section of this Act it was provided
that a society established for any purpose not illegal might, by
depositing its rules with the Registrar of Friendly Societies, enjoy
the privilege of having disputes among its own members summarily dealt
with by the magistrates. Under this provision several of the larger
societies had deposited their rules, believing, with the concurrence
of the Registrar, that this secured to them the power to proceed
summarily against any member who should, in his capacity of secretary
or treasurer, detain or make away with the society’s funds.[399] So
thoroughly has the legality of their position been accepted by all
concerned, that on the establishment by Gladstone of the Post Office
Savings Banks in 1861, he had, at the request of the Trade Union
leaders, expressly conceded to the Unions, equally with the Friendly
Societies, the privilege of making use of the new banks.

This feeling of security was, in 1867, completely shattered. The
Boilermakers’ Society had occasion to proceed against the treasurer
of their Bradford branch for wrongfully withholding the sum of £24;
but the magistrates, to the general surprise of all concerned, held
that the society could not proceed under the Friendly Societies Act,
being, as a Trade Union, outside the scope of that measure. The case
was thereupon carried to the Court of Queen’s Bench, where four judges,
headed by the Lord Chief Justice, confirmed the decision, giving the
additional reason that the objects of the Union, if not, since 1825,
actually criminal, were yet so far in restraint of trade as to render
the society an illegal association. Thus the officers of the great
national Trade Unions found their societies deprived of the legal
status which they imagined they had acquired, and saw themselves once
more destitute of any legal protection for their accumulated funds.

The grounds of the decision went a great deal further than the decision
itself. As was pointed out to the workmen by Frederic Harrison, “the
judgement lays down not merely that certain societies have failed
to bring themselves within the letter of a certain Act, but that
Trade Unions, of whatever sort, are in their nature contrary to
public policy, and that their object in itself will vitiate every
association and every transaction into which it enters.... In a word,
Unionism becomes (if not according to the suggestion of the learned
judge--criminal) at any rate something like betting and gambling,
public nuisances and immoral considerations--things condemned and
suppressed by the law.”[400]

Trade Unionism was now at bay, assailed on both sides. It was easy to
foresee that the employers and their allies would make a determined
attempt to use the Royal Commission and the Sheffield outrages to
suppress Trade Unionism by the criminal law. On the other hand, the
hard-earned accumulations of the larger societies, by this time
amounting to an aggregate of over a quarter of a million sterling, were
at the mercy of their whole army of branch secretaries and treasurers,
any one of whom might embezzle the funds with impunity.

The crisis was too serious to be dealt with by the excited delegate
meetings of the London Trades Council. For over four years we hear of
only occasional and purely formal meetings of this body. Immediately
on the publication of the decision of the judges in January 1867
Applegarth convened what was called a “Conference of Amalgamated
Trades,” but what consisted in reality of weekly private meetings
of the five leaders and a few other friends. From 1867 to 1871 this
“conference” acted as the effective cabinet of the Trade Union
Movement. Its private minute-book, kept by Applegarth, reveals to the
student the whole political life of the Trade Union world.

The first action of the Junta was to call to their councils those
middle-class allies upon whose assistance and advice they had learned
to rely. We have already noticed the adhesion of the “Christian
Socialists” to the Amalgamated Engineers in 1852, and the intervention
of the Positivists in the Building Trades disputes of 1859-61. Frederic
Harrison and E. S. Beesly were now rendering specially valuable
services as the apologists for Trade Unionism in the public press.
“Tom Hughes” was in Parliament, almost the only spokesman of the men’s
whole claim. Henry Crompton was bringing his acute judgement and his
detailed experience of the actual working of the law to bear upon the
dangers which beset the Unions in the Courts of Justice. Applegarth’s
minutes show how frequently all four were ready to spend hours in
private conference at the Engineers’ office in Stamford Street, and how
unreservedly they, in this crisis, placed their professional skill
at the disposal of the Trade Union leaders. It would be difficult to
exaggerate the zeal and patient devotion of these friends of Trade
Unionism, or the service which they rendered to the cause in its hour
of trial.[401]

It is obvious from the private transactions of the conference that the
main object of the Junta was to gain for Trade Unionism that legal
status which was necessary alike to the security of the funds and
to the recognition of the Trade Union organisation as a constituent
part of the State. But the first thing to be done was to defeat
the employers in their endeavour to use the Royal Commission as an
instrument for suppressing Trade Unionism by direct penal enactment.
The Junta had therefore not only to dissociate themselves from the
ignorant turbulence of the old-fashioned Unions, but also to prove that
the bulk of their own members were enlightened and respectable. It was,
moreover, of the utmost importance to persuade the public that the
Junta and their friends, not the strike-jobbers or the outrage-mongers,
were the authorised and typical representatives of the Trade Union
Movement. All this it was necessary to bring out in the inquiry by the
Royal Commission before which Trade Unionism was presently to stand on
its defence. The composition of the Commission was accordingly a matter
of the greatest concern for the Junta. The Government had resolved
to select, as Commissioners, not representatives of each view, but
persons presumably impartial, with Sir William Erle, who had lately
retired from the Lord Chief Justiceship of the Common Pleas, as their
chairman. In this arrangement representatives of the employers were to
be excluded; and the appointment of working men was not dreamed of. The
Commission was to be made up chiefly from the ranks of high officials,
with four members from the two Houses of Parliament, and the chairman
of a great industrial undertaking. The active part which Thomas Hughes
had taken in the debates secured him a seat on the Commission, though
he felt that single-handed he could do little for his friends. All
possible pressure was accordingly brought to bear on the Government
with a view to the appointment of a Trade Unionist member; but the idea
of a working-man Royal Commissioner was inconsistent with official
traditions. The utmost that could be obtained was that the workmen and
the employers should each suggest a special representative to be added.
For the workmen a wise and extremely fortunate choice was made in the
person of Frederic Harrison, the Junta obtaining also permission for
representative Trade Unionists to be present during the examination of
the witnesses.[402]

The actual conduct of the Trade Unionist case was undertaken by
Harrison and Hughes, in consultation with Applegarth, whom the Junta
deputed to attend the sittings on their behalf. The ground of defence
was chosen with considerable shrewdness. The policy of the Junta and
their allies was to focus the attention of the Commissioners upon the
great trade friendly societies in contradistinction to the innumerable
little local trade clubs of the old type. The evidence of Applegarth,
who was the first witness examined, did much to dispel the grosser
prejudices against the Unions. The General Secretary of the Amalgamated
Society of Carpenters was able to show that his society, then standing
third in financial magnitude in the Trade Union world, far from
fomenting strikes, was mainly occupied in the work of an insurance
company. He was in a position to lay effective stress on the total
absence of secrecy or coercion in its proceedings. He disclaimed, on
behalf of its members, all objection to machinery, foreign imports,
piecework, overtime, or the free employment of apprentices. The
fundamental position upon which he entrenched his Trade Unionism was
the maintenance, at all hazards, of the Standard Rate of Wages and the
Standard Hours of Labour, to be secured by the accumulation of such a
fund as would enable every member of the Union effectually to set a
reserve-price on his labour. William Allan, who came up on the third
day, followed Applegarth’s lead, though with some reservations; and the
evidence of these two officers of what were primarily national friendly
societies made a marked impression on the Commission.

The employers were not as well served as the men. It is true that
they succeeded, in spite of Applegarth’s disclaimers, in persuading
the Commission that some of the most powerful Unions strenuously
objected to piecework and sub-contract in any form whatsoever, and
in some instances even to machinery. In other cases it was proved
that attempts were made to enforce a rigid limitation of apprentices.
Owing to the energy of the Central Association of Master Builders,
the restrictive policy of the older Unions in the building trades was
brought well to the front; and this fact accounts, even to-day, for
most of the current impression of Trade Unionism among the middle
and upper classes. But the employers did not discriminate in their
attack. Almost with one accord they objected to the whole principle
of Trade Unionism. They reiterated with a curious impenetrability the
old argument of the “individual bargain,” and protested against any
kind of industrial organisation on the part of their employees. All
attempts by the men to claim collectively any share in regulating the
conditions of labour were denounced as “unwarrantable encroachments on
their rights as employers.” The number of apprentices, like indeed
the whole administration of industry, was claimed as of private
concern, the settlement of which “exclusively belongs to the employer
himself; a matter in which no other party, much less the operatives,
have got anything to do.” And they objected even more to the centrally
administered national society with extensive reserve funds than to the
isolated local clubs whose spasmodic outbursts they could afford to
disregard. But the confusion between the small local bodies with their
narrow policy of outrage and violence, and the amalgamated societies
with their far-reaching power and accumulated wealth, effective as it
had been in alarming the public, proved disastrous to the employers
when their case was subjected to the acute cross-examination of
Frederic Harrison. The masters, by directing their attack mainly on the
great Amalgamated Societies and the newly-formed local Trades Councils,
played, in fact, directly into the hands of the Junta. It was easy for
Allan and Applegarth to show that the influence of central Executive
Councils and the formation of a public opinion among trade societies
tended to restrain the more aggressive action of men embittered by a
local quarrel. The combination of friendly benefits with trade objects
was destined to be hotly attacked twenty years later by the more ardent
spirits in the Trade Union world, as leading to inertia and supineness
in respect of wages, hours, and conditions of labour. The evidence
adduced in 1867-8, read in the light of later events, reveals that this
tendency had already begun; and it was impossible for the Commissioners
to resist the conclusion that they had, in the Amalgamated Engineers
and Carpenters, types of a far less aggressive Trade Unionism than
such survivals as the purely trade societies of the brickmakers or the
Sheffield industries.

Foiled in this attempt the employers fell back upon an indictment of
the Amalgamated Unions considered as friendly societies. The leading
actuaries were called to prove that neither the Amalgamated Engineers
nor the Amalgamated Carpenters could possibly meet their accumulating
liabilities, and that these must, in a few years, inevitably bring
both societies to bankruptcy. The whole of this evidence is a striking
instance of the untrustworthiness of expert witnesses off their own
ground. Neither Finlaison nor Tucker, who were called as actuaries
on behalf of the employers, ever realised that a Trade Union, unlike
a Friendly Society, possesses and constantly exercises an unlimited
power to raise funds by special levies, or by increased contributions,
whenever it may seem good to the majority of the members. But even had
the actuarial indictment been completely warranted, it was a mistake
in tactics on the part of the employers. The Commissioners found
themselves shunted into an inquiry, not into the results of Trade
Unionism upon the common weal, but into the arithmetical soundness of
the financial arrangements which particular groups of workmen chose to
make among themselves.

Meanwhile the primary business of the Commission, the investigation
into the Sheffield outrages, had been remitted to special “examiners,”
whose local inquiry attracted far less attention than the proceedings
of the main body. At first the investigation elicited little that was
new; but in June 1867 the country was startled by dramatic confessions
on the part of Broadhead and other members of the grinders’ trade
clubs, unravelling a series of savage crimes instigated by them, and
paid for out of Club funds. For a short time it looked as if all the
vague accusations hurled at Trade Unionism at large were about to be
justified; but the examiners reported that four-fifths of the societies
even of the Sheffield trades were free from outrages, and that these
had been most prevalent from 1839 to 1861, and had since declined. The
only other place in which the Commissioners thought it necessary to
make inquiry into outrages was Manchester, where the Brickmakers’ Union
had committed many crimes, but where no complicity on the part of other
trades was shown. It was made evident to all candid students that
these criminal acts were not chargeable to Trade Unionism as a whole.
They represented, in fact, the survival among such rough and isolated
trades as the brickmakers and grinders of the barbarous usages of a
time when working men felt themselves outside the law, and oppressed by
tyranny.[403]

The success with which the case of the Trade Unionists had been
presented to the Commission was reflected in a changed attitude on
the part of the governing class, a change expressly attributed to
the “greater knowledge and wider experience” of Trade Unions which
had been gained through the Royal Commission. “True statesmanship,”
declared the _Times_, “will seek neither to augment nor to reduce
their influence, but, accepting it as a fact, will give it free scope
for legitimate development.”[404] Thus the official report of the
Commission, from which the enemies of Trade Unionism had hoped so much,
contained no recommendation which would have made the position of any
single Union worse than it was before. An inconclusive and somewhat
inconsistent document, it argued that trade combination could be of no
real economic advantage to the workman, but nevertheless recommended
the legalisation of the Unions under certain conditions. Whereas the
Act of 1825 had excepted from the common illegality only combinations
in respect of wages or hours of labour, the Commissioners recommended
that no combination should henceforth be liable to prosecution for
restraint of trade, except those formed “to do acts which involved
breach of contract,” and to refuse to work with any particular person.
But the privilege of registration, carrying with it the power to obtain
legal protection for the society’s funds, was to be conferred only on
Unions whose rules were free from certain restrictive clauses, such
as the limitation of apprentices or of the use of machinery, and the
prohibition of piecework and sub-contract. The employers’ influence on
the Commission was further shown in a special refusal of the privilege
of registration to societies whose rules authorised the support of the
disputes of other trades.

So far the result of the Commission was purely negative. No hostile
legislation was even suggested. On the other hand, it was obvious that
no Trade Union would accept “legalisation” on the proposed conditions.
But Harrison and Hughes had not restricted themselves to casting out
all dangerous proposals from the majority report. Their minority
report, which was signed also by the Earl of Lichfield, exposed in
terse paragraphs the futility of the suggestions made by the majority,
and laid down in general terms the principles upon which all future
legislation should proceed. It advocated the removal of all special
legislation relating to labour contracts, on the principle, first,
that no act should be illegal if committed by a workman unless it was
equally illegal if committed by any other person; and secondly, that
no act by a combination of men should be regarded as criminal if it
would not have been criminal in a single person. To this was appended
a detailed statement, drafted by Frederic Harrison, in which the
character and objects of Trade Unionism, as revealed in the voluminous
evidence taken by the Commission, were explained and defended with
consummate skill. What was perhaps of even greater service to the
Trade Union world was a precise and detailed exposition of the various
amendments required to bring the law into accordance with the general
principles referred to. We have here a striking instance of the
advantage to a Labour Movement of expert professional advice. The Junta
had been demanding the complete legalisation of their Unions in the
same manner as ordinary Friendly Societies. They had failed to realise
that such a legalisation would have exposed the Amalgamated Society of
Engineers to be sued by one of its members who might be excluded for
“blacklegging,” or otherwise working contrary to the interests of the
trade. The whole efficacy, from a Trade Union point of view, of the
amalgamation of trade and friendly benefits would have been destroyed.
The bare legalisation would have brought the Trades Unions under the
general law, and subjected them to constant and harassing interference
by Courts of Justice. They had grown up in despite of the law and the
lawyers; which as regards the spirit of the one and the prejudices of
the other were, and still are, alien and hostile to the purposes and
collective action of the Trades Societies. The danger of any member
having power to take legal proceedings, to worry them by litigation and
cripple them by legal expenses, or to bring a society within the scope
of the insolvency and bankruptcy law, became very apparent. The Junta
easily realised, when their advisers explained the position, that mere
legalisation would place the most formidable weapon in the hands of
unscrupulous employers. To avoid this difficulty Harrison proposed the
ingenious plan of bringing the Trade Union under the Friendly Societies
Acts, so far as regards the protection of its funds against theft or
fraud, whilst retaining to the full the exceptional legal privilege
of being incapable of being sued or otherwise proceeded against as
a corporate entity. Had a Trade Union official been selected as the
sole representative of the Unions on the Commission, such detailed and
ingenious amendments of the law would not have been devised and made
part of an authoritative official report. The complete charter of Trade
Union liberty, which Harrison and his friends had elaborated, became
for seven years the political programme of the Trade Unionists. And it
is a part of the curious irony of English party politics that whilst
the formation of this programme, and the agitation by which it was
pressed on successive Parliaments, were both of them exclusively the
work of a group of Radicals it was, as we shall see, a Conservative
Cabinet which eventually passed it into law.[405]

The effective though informal leadership of the movement which the
Junta had assumed during the sittings of the Royal Commission had
not gone entirely unquestioned. Those who are interested in the
cross-currents of personal intrigues and jealousies which detract from
the force of popular movements can read in the pages of the _Beehive_
full accounts of the machinations of George Potter. The _Beehive_
summoned a Trade Union Conference at St. Martin’s Hall in March 1867,
which was attended by over one hundred delegates from provincial
societies, Trades Councils, and the minor London clubs.[406] The Junta,
perhaps rather unwisely, refused to have anything to do with a meeting
held under Potter’s auspices. But many of their provincial allies came
up without any suspicion of the sectional character of the conference,
and found themselves in the anomalous position of countenancing
what was really an attempt to seduce the London Trades from their
allegiance to the Junta and the London Trades Council. The Conference
sat for four days, and made, owing to Potter’s energy, no little stir.
A committee was appointed to conduct the Trade Union case before the
Commission, and Conolly, the President of the Operative Stonemasons,
was deputed to attend the sittings. But although special prominence
was given by the _Beehive_ to all the proceedings of this committee,
we have failed to discover with what it actually concerned itself. An
indiscreet speech by Conolly quickly led to his exclusion from the
sittings of the Commission; and the management of the Trade Union case
remained in the hands of Applegarth and the Junta.

Apart, however, from jealousy and personal intrigue, there was some
genuine opposition to the policy of the Junta. The great mass of
Trade Unionists were not yet converted to the necessity of obtaining
for their societies a recognised legal status. There were even many
experienced officials, especially in the provincial organisations
of the older type, who deprecated the action that was being taken
by the London leaders, on the express ground that they objected to
legalisation. “The less working men have to do with the law in any
shape the better,” was the constant note of the old Unionists. This
view found abundant expression at the Congresses convened in 1868 by
the Manchester Trades Council, and in 1869 by that of Birmingham. But
in spite of the absence of the Junta from the Manchester Congress,
their friend, John Kane, of the North of England Ironworkers’
Association, succeeded in inducing the delegates to pass a resolution
expressing full confidence in the policy and action of the Conference
of Amalgamated Trades.[407] And at the Congress of 1869, Odger and
Howell, as representatives of the Junta, managed to get adopted a
series of resolutions embodying Frederic Harrison’s proposals.[408]

Meanwhile a change had come over the political situation. At the
outset of the crisis Frederic Harrison had urged upon the Trade Union
world the necessity of turning to the polling booth for redress.
“Nothing,” he writes in January, 1867, “will force the governing
classes to recognise [the workmen’s] claims and judge them fairly,
until they find them wresting into their own hands real political
power. Unionists who, till now, have been content with their Unions,
and have shrunk from political action, may see the pass to which this
abstinence from political movements has brought them.”[409] Within a
few months of this advice the Reform Bill of 1867 had enfranchised the
working man in the boroughs. The Trade Union leaders were not slow to
use the advantage thus given to them. The Junta, under the convenient
cloak of the Conference of Amalgamated Trades, issued, in July, 1868,
a circular urging upon Trade Unionists the importance of registering
their names as electors, and of pressing on every candidate the
question in which they were primarily interested. The Trades Councils
throughout the country followed suit; and we find the Junta’s electoral
tactics adopted even by societies which were traditionally opposed to
all political action. The Central Committee of the Stonemasons, for
instance, strongly urged their members to vote at the ensuing election
only for candidates who would support Trade Union demands.[410]

By the beginning of 1869 Frederic Harrison had drafted a comprehensive
Bill, embodying all the legislative proposals of his minority report.
This was introduced by Mundella and Hughes, and although its provisions
were received with denunciations by the employers,[411] it gained some
support among the newly elected members, and was strongly backed up
outside the House. The Liberal Government of that day, and nearly all
the members of the House of Commons, were still covertly hostile to
the very principles of Trade Unionism, and every attempt was made to
burke the measure.[412] But the Junta were determined to make felt
their new political power. From every part of the country pressure
was put upon members of Parliament. A great demonstration of workmen
was held at Exeter Hall, at which Mundella and Hughes declared their
intention of forcing the House and the Ministry to vote upon the hated
measure. Finding evasion no longer possible, the Government abandoned
its attitude of hostility and agreed to a formal second reading, upon
the understanding that the Cabinet would next year bring in a Bill of
its own. A provisional measure giving temporary protection to Trade
Union funds was accordingly hurried through Parliament at the end of
the session pending the introduction of a complete Bill.[413] The Junta
had gained the first victory of their political campaign.

The next session found the Government reluctant to fulfil its promise
in the matter. But the Trade Unionists were not disposed to let the
question sleep, and after much pressure Henry Bruce (afterwards Lord
Aberdare), who was then Home Secretary, produced, in 1871, a Bill which
was eagerly scanned by the Trade Union world. The Government proposed
to concede all the points on which it had been specially pressed by the
Junta. No Trade Union, however wide its objects, was henceforth to be
illegal merely because it was “in restraint of trade.” Every Union was
to be entitled to be registered, if its rules were not expressly in
contravention of the criminal law. And, finally, the registration which
gave the Unions complete protection for their funds was so devised as
to leave untouched their internal organisation and arrangements, and to
prevent their being sued or proceeded against in a court of law.

The employers vehemently attacked the Government for conceding, as
they said, practically all the Trade Union demands.[414] But from the
men’s point of view this “complete charter legalising Unions” had a
serious drawback. The Bill, as was complained, “while repealing the
Combination Laws, substituted another penal law against workmen” as
such. A lengthy clause provided that any violent threat or molestation
for the purpose of coercing either employers or employed should be
severely punished. All the terms of the old Combination Laws, “molest,”
“obstruct,” “threaten,” “intimidate,” and so forth, were used without
any definition or limitation, and picketing, moreover, was expressly
included in molestation or obstruction by a comprehensive prohibition
of “persistently following” any person, or “watching or besetting” the
premises in which he was, or the approach to such premises. The Act
of 1859, which had expressly legalised peaceful persuasion to join
legal combinations, was repealed.[415] It seemed only too probable
that the Government measure would make it a criminal offence for two
Trade Unionists to stand quietly in the street opposite the works of
an employer against whom they had struck, in order to communicate
peacefully the fact of the strike to any workmen who might be ignorant
of it.

It does not appear that Bruce’s fiercely resented “Third Clause”
was intended to effect any alteration in the law. Its comprehensive
prohibition of violence, threats, intimidation, molestation, and
obstruction did no more than sum up and codify the various judicial
decisions of past years under which the Trade Unionists had suffered.
But the law had hitherto been obscure and conflicting; both the
statutes and the judicial decisions had proceeded largely from a
presumption against the very existence of Trade Unionism which was
now passing away; and the workmen and their advisers not unreasonably
feared the consequences of an explicit re-enactment of provisions which
practically made criminal all the usual methods of trade combination. A
recent decision had brought the danger home to the minds of the Trade
Union leaders and their legal friends. In July 1867 a great strike had
broken out among the London tailors, in which the masters’ shops had
been carefully “picketed.”[416] Druitt, Shorrocks, and other officers
of the Union were thereupon indicted, not for personal violence or
actual molestation, but for the vague crime of conspiracy. The Judge
(Baron, afterwards Lord, Bramwell) held that pickets, if acting in
combination, were guilty of “molestation” if they gave annoyance only
by black looks, or even by their presence in large numbers, without any
acts or gestures of violence, and that if two or more persons combined
to do anything unpleasant and annoying to another person they were
guilty of a common law offence. The Tailors’ officers and committeemen
were found guilty merely of organising peaceful picketing, and it
became evident that, if the elastic law of conspiracy could thus be
brought to bear on Trade Union disputes, practically every incident
of strike management might become a crime.[417] Nor did Druitt’s case
stand alone. Within the memory of the Junta men had been sent to prison
for the simple act of striking, or even for a simple agreement to
strike.[418] Indeed, merely giving notice of a projected strike, even
in the most courteous and peaceful manner, had frequently been held
to be an act of intimidation punishable as a crime.[419] In 1851 the
posting up of placards announcing a strike was held to be intimidation
of the employers.[420] The Government Bill, far from accepting Frederic
Harrison’s proposed repeal of all criminal legislation specially
applying to workmen, left these judicial decisions untouched, and,
by re-enacting them in a codified form, proposed even to make their
operation more uniform and effectual.

There was, accordingly, some ground for the assertion of the Trade
Unionists that the Government was withdrawing with one hand what it was
giving with the other. It seemed of little use to declare the existence
of trade societies to be legal if the criminal law was so stretched
as to include the ordinary peaceful methods by which these societies
attained their ends. Above all, the Trade Unionists angrily resented
the idea that any act should be made criminal if done by them, or in
furtherance of their Unions, that was not equally a crime if committed
by any other person, or in pursuance of the objects of any other kind
of association.

A storm of indignation arose in the Trade Union world. The Junta sat
in anxious consultation with their legal advisers, who all counselled
the utmost resistance to this most dangerous re-enactment of the law. A
delegate meeting of the London trades was summoned to protest against
the criminal clauses of Bruce’s Bill. But it was necessary to attack
the House of Commons from a wider area than the Metropolis. With this
view the Junta determined to follow the example set by the Manchester
and Birmingham Trades Councils in 1868 and 1869 by calling together a
national Trade Union Congress.[421]

The meeting of the Congress was fixed for March 1871, by which time
it was rightly calculated that the obnoxious Bill would be actually
under discussion in the House of Commons. The delegates spent most of
their time in denouncing the criminal clauses of the Bill, and came
very near to opposing the whole measure. But it was ultimately agreed
to accept the legalising part of the Bill, whilst using every effort
to throw out the Third Section. A deputation was sent to the Home
Secretary. Protest after protest was despatched to the legislators, and
the Congress adjourned at half-past four each day, in order, as it was
expressly declared, that delegates might “devote the evening to waiting
upon Members of Parliament.” But neither the Government nor the House
of Commons was disposed to show any favour to Trade Union action in
restraint of that “free competition” and individual bargaining which
had so long been the creed of the employers. The utmost concession that
could be obtained was that the Bill should be divided into two, so
that the law legalising the existence of trade societies might stand
by itself, whilst the criminal clauses restraining their action were
embodied in a separate “Criminal Law Amendment Bill.” This illusory
concession sufficed to detach from the opposition many of those who had
at the General Election professed friendship to the Unions. In the main
debate Thomas Hughes and A. J. Mundella stood almost alone in pressing
the Trade Unionists’ full demands; and though a few other members were
inclined to help to some extent, the second reading was agreed to
without a division. The other stages were rapidly run through without
serious opposition. In the House of Lords the provisions against
picketing were made even more stringent, “watching and besetting” by a
single individual being made as criminal as “watching and besetting”
by a multitude. In this unsatisfactory shape the two Bills passed
into law.[422] Trade Societies became, for the first time, legally
recognised and fully protected associations; whilst, on the other
hand, the legislative prohibition of Trade Union action was expressly
reaffirmed, and even increased in stringency.

In the eyes of the Trade Unions this result amounted to a defeat; and
the conduct of the Government caused the bitterest resentment.[423]
The Secretaries of the Amalgamated Societies, especially Allan and
Applegarth, had, indeed, attained the object which they personally had
most at heart. The great organisations for mutual succour, which had
been built up by their patient sagacity, were now, for the first time,
assured of complete legal protection. A number of the larger societies
promptly availed themselves of the Trade Union Act, by registering
their rules in accordance with its provisions;[424] and in September
1871 the Conference of Amalgamated Trades “having,” as its final
minutes declared, “discharged the duties for which it was organised,”
formally dissolved itself.

The wider issue which remained to be fought required a more
representative organisation. In struggling for legal recognition
the Junta had, as we have seen, represented the more enlightened
of the Trade Unionists rather than the whole movement. But, by the
Criminal Law Amendment Act, the Government had deliberately struck
a blow against the methods of all trade societies at all periods.
The growing strength of the organisations of the coalminers and
cotton-spinners, and the rapid expansion of Trade Unionism which marked
this period of commercial prosperity, had for some time been tending
towards the development of the informal meetings of the Junta into a
more representative executive. The dissolution of the Conference of
Amalgamated Trades left the field open; and the leadership of the Trade
Union Movement was assumed by the Parliamentary Committee which had
been appointed at the Trades Union Congress in the previous March, and
which included all the principal leaders of the chief metropolitan and
provincial societies of the time.

The agitation which was immediately begun to secure the repeal of
the Criminal Law Amendment Act became during the next four years the
most significant feature of the Trade Union world. Throughout all
the various struggles of these years the Trade Union leaders kept
steadily in view the definite aim of getting rid of a law which they
regarded, not only as hampering their efforts for better conditions
of employment, but also as an indignity and an insult to the hundreds
of thousands of intelligent artisans whom they represented. The
whole history of this agitation proves how completely the governing
classes were out of touch with the recently enfranchised artisans. The
legislation of 1871 was regarded by the Government and the House of
Commons as the full and final solution of a long-standing problem. “The
judges, however, declared,” as Henry Crompton points out, “that the
only effect of the legislation of 1871 was to make the trade object
of the strike not illegal. A strike was perfectly legal; but if the
means employed were calculated to coerce the employer they were illegal
means, and a combination to do a legal act by illegal means was a
criminal conspiracy. In other words, a strike was lawful, but anything
done in pursuance of a strike was criminal. Thus the judges tore up the
remedial statute, and each fresh decision went further and developed
new dangers.”[425] But Gladstone’s Cabinet steadfastly refused, right
down to its fall in 1874, even to consider the possibility of altering
the Criminal Law Amendment Act. It was in vain that deputation after
deputation pointed out that men were being sent to prison under this
law for such acts as peacefully accosting a workman in the street.
In 1871 seven women were imprisoned in South Wales merely for saying
“Bah” to one blackleg. Innumerable convictions took place for the
use of bad language. Almost any action taken by Trade Unionists to
induce a man not to accept employment at a struck shop resulted,
under the new Act, in imprisonment with hard labour. The intolerable
injustice of this state of things was made more glaring by the freedom
allowed to the employers to make all possible use of “black-lists” and
“character notes,” by which obnoxious men were prevented from getting
work. No prosecution ever took place for this form of molestation or
obstruction. No employer was ever placed in the dock under the law
which professedly applied to both parties. In short, boycotting by the
employers was freely permitted; boycotting by the men was put down by
the police.

The irritation caused by these petty prosecutions was, in December
1872, deepened into anger by the sentence of twelve months’
imprisonment passed upon the London gas-stokers. These men were found
guilty of “conspiracy” to coerce or molest their employers by merely
preparing for a simultaneous withdrawal of their labour. The vindictive
sentence inflicted by Lord Justice Brett was justified by the governing
classes on the ground of the danger to the community which a strike of
gas-stokers might involve; and the Home Secretary refused to listen
to any appeal on behalf of the men.[426] The Trade Union leaders did
not fail to perceive that no legal distinction could, under the law as
it then stood, be drawn between a gas-stoker and any other workmen.
If preparing for a strike was punishable, under “the elastic and
inexplicable law of conspiracy,” by twelve months’ imprisonment, it was
obvious that the whole fabric of Trade Unionism might be overthrown by
any band of employers who chose to put the law in force. The London
Trades Council accordingly summoned a delegate meeting “to consider
the critical legal position of all trade societies and their officers
consequent upon the recent conviction of the London gas-stokers.”
Representation after representation was made to the Government and to
members of Parliament; and the movement for the repeal of the Criminal
Law Amendment Act of 1871 was widened into a determined attempt to get
rid of all penal legislation bearing on trade disputes.[427]

Rarely has political agitation been begun in such apparently
unpromising circumstances, and carried so rapidly to a triumphant
issue. The Liberal administration of these years, like the majority
of both parties in the House of Commons, was entirely dominated by
the antagonism felt by the manufacturers to any effective collective
bargaining on the part of the men. The representations of the
Parliamentary Committee found no sympathy either with Henry Bruce or
with Robert Lowe, who succeeded him as Home Secretary. Gladstone, as
Prime Minister, refused in 1872 to admit that there was any necessity
for further legislation, and utterly declined to take the matter
up;[428] and during that session the Parliamentary Committee were
unable to find any member willing to introduce a Bill for the repeal of
the Criminal Law Amendment Act.

The Trade Union leaders, however, did not relax their efforts.
Allan, Guile, Odger, and Howell were strongly reinforced by the
representatives of the miners, cotton-spinners, and ironworkers.
Alexander Macdonald and John Kane, themselves men of remarkable
ability, had behind them thousands of sturdy politicians in all the
industrial centres. The agitation was fanned by the publication of
details of the prosecutions under the new Act. Effective _Tracts for
Trade Unionists_ were written by Henry Crompton and Frederic Harrison.
Congresses at Nottingham in 1872, at Leeds in 1873, at Sheffield
in 1874 kept up the fire, and passed judgment on those members of
Parliament who treated the Parliamentary Committee with contumely. As
the time of the General Election drew near, the pressure on the two
great political parties was increased. Lists of questions to candidates
were prepared embodying the legislative claims of labour; and it was
made clear that no candidate would receive Trade Union support unless
his answers were satisfactory.

It will be a question for the historian of English politics whether
the unexpected rout of the Liberal party at the election of 1874 was
not due more to the active hostility of the Trade Unionists than to
the sullen abstention of the Nonconformists. The time happened to be a
high-water mark of Trade Unionism. In these years of good trade every
society had been rapidly increasing its membership. The miners, the
agricultural labourers, and the textile operatives in particular had
swarmed into organisation in a manner which recalls the rush of 1834.
The Trades Union Congress at Sheffield, held just before the General
Election of 1874, claimed to represent over 1,100,000 organised
workmen, including a quarter of a million of coal-miners, as many
cotton operatives, and a hundred thousand agricultural labourers.
The proceedings of this Congress reveal the feeling of bitter anger
which had been created by the obtuseness to the claims of labour of
the Liberal leaders of that day. Not content with turning a deaf ear
to all the representatives of the workmen, they had, with blundering
ignorance, retained as Secretary of the Liberal Association of the City
of London the Sidney Smith who had, since 1851, been the principal
officer of the various associations of employers in the engineering and
iron trades.[429] As such he had proved himself a bitter and implacable
enemy of Trade Unionism. We may imagine what would be the result to-day
if either political party were to face a General Election with Mr.
Laws, the organiser of the Shipping Federation, as its chief of the
staff. And whilst the Liberal party was treating the new electorate
with contumely, the Conservative candidates were listening blandly to
the workmen’s claims, and pledging themselves to repeal the obnoxious
law.

Under these circumstances it is not surprising that the old idea of
Trade Union abstention from politics gave way to a determined attempt
at organised political action. Nor were the Trade Unionists content
with merely pressing the organised political parties in the House of
Commons. The running of independent Labour candidates against both
parties alike was a most significant symptom of the new feeling in
Labour politics. The Labour Representation League, composed mainly
of prominent Trade Unionists, had for some years been endeavouring
to secure the election of working men to the House of Commons; and
the independent candidatures of George Odger during 1869 and 1870 had
provoked considerable feeling.[430] At a bye-election at Greenwich
in 1873, a third candidate was run with working-class support against
both the great parties, with the result that Boord, the Conservative,
gained the seat. In what spirit this was regarded by the organised
workmen and their trusted advisers may be judged from the following
leading article which Professor E. S. Beesly wrote for the _Beehive_,
then at the height of its influence: “The result of the Greenwich
election is highly satisfactory.... The workman has at length come to
the conclusion that the difference between Liberal and Tory is pretty
much that between upper and nether millstone. The quality of the two is
essentially the same. They are sections of the wealth-possessing class,
and on all Parliamentary questions affecting the interests of labour
they play into one another’s hands so systematically and imperturbably
that one would suppose they thought workmen never read a newspaper or
hear a speech.... The last hours of the Session were marked by the
failure of two Bills about which workmen cared infinitely more than
about all the measures put together for which Mr. Gladstone takes
credit since his accession to office--I mean Mr. Harcourt’s Conspiracy
Bill and Mr. Mundella’s Nine Hours Bill. As for Mr. Mundella’s Bill
for repealing the Criminal Law Amendment Act, it has never had a
chance. For the failure of all these Bills the Ministry must be held
responsible....

“This being the case, it is simply silly for Liberal newspapers to
mourn over the Greenwich Election as an unfortunate mistake.... There
was no mistake at all at Greenwich. There was a ‘third party’ in the
field knowing perfectly well what it wanted, and regarding Mr. Boord
and Mr. Angerstein with impartial hostility. I trust that such a third
party will appear in every large town in England at the next General
Election, even though the result should be a Parliament of six hundred
and fifty Boords. Everything must have a beginning, and workmen have
waited so long for justice that seven years of Tory government will
seem a trifling addition to the sum total of their endurance if it is a
necessary preliminary to an enforcement of their claims.”[431]

The movement for direct electoral action remained without official
support from Trade Unions as such until at the 1874 Congress Broadhurst
was able to report that the miners, ironworkers, and some other
societies had actually voted money for Parliamentary candidatures.
At the General Election which ensued no fewer than thirteen “Labour
candidates” went to the poll. In most cases both Liberal and
Conservative candidates were run against them, with the result that
the Conservatives gained the seats.[432] But at Stafford and Morpeth
the official Liberals accepted what they were powerless to prevent;
and Alexander Macdonald and Thomas Burt, the two leading officials of
the National Union of Miners, became the first “Labour members” of the
House of Commons.

It is significant of the electioneering attitude of the Conservative
leaders that, with the advent of the new Conservative Government,
the Trade Unionists appear to have assumed that the Criminal Law
Amendment Act would be instantly repealed. Great was the disappointment
when it was announced that a Royal Commission was to be appointed
to inquire into the operation of the whole of the so-called “Labour
Laws.” This was regarded as nothing more than a device for shelving
the question, and the Trade Union leaders refused either to become
members of the Commission or to give evidence before it. Thomas Burt
absolutely refused a seat on the Commission. It needed the most
specific assurances by the Home Secretary that the Government really
intended the earliest possible legislation to induce any working man
to have anything to do with the Commission. Ultimately Alexander
Macdonald, M.P., allowed himself to be persuaded to serve, together
with Tom Hughes; and George Shipton, the Secretary of the London Trades
Council, Andrew Boa, the Secretary of the Glasgow Trades Council, and
a prominent Birmingham Trade Unionist gave evidence. The investigation
of the Commission was perfunctory, and the report inconclusive. But
the Government were too fully alive to the new-found political power
of the Unions to attempt to play with the question. At the beginning
of 1875 the imprisonment of five cabinetmakers employed at Messrs.
Jackson & Graham, a well-known London firm, roused considerable
public feeling, and led to many questions in Parliament.[433] In
June the Home Secretary, in an appreciative and conciliatory speech,
introduced two Bills for altering respectively the civil and criminal
law. As amended in Committee by the efforts of Mundella and others,
these measures resulted in Acts which completely satisfied the Trade
Union demands. The Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1871 was formally
and unconditionally repealed. By the Conspiracy and Protection of
Property Act (38 and 39 Vic. c. 86), definite and reasonable limits
were set to the application of the law of conspiracy to trade disputes.
The Master and Servant Act of 1867 was replaced by an Employers and
Workmen Act (38 and 39 Vic. c. 90), a change of nomenclature which
expressed a fundamental revolution in the law. Henceforth master and
servant became, as employer and employee, two equal parties to a civil
contract. Imprisonment for breach of engagement was abolished. The
legalisation of Trade Unions was completed by the legal recognition
of their methods. Peaceful picketing was expressly permitted. The old
words “coerce” and “molest,” which had, in the hands of prejudiced
magistrates, proved such instruments of oppression, were omitted from
the new law, and violence and intimidation were dealt with as part of
the general criminal code. No act committed by a group of workmen was
henceforth to be punishable unless the same act by an individual was
itself a criminal offence. Collective bargaining, in short, with all
its necessary accompaniments, was, after fifty years of legislative
struggle, finally recognised by the law of the land.[434]

The paramount importance of the legal and Parliamentary struggle
from 1867 to 1875 has compelled us to relegate to the next chapter
all mention of striking contemporary events in Trade Union history.
The sustained efforts of this decade, too often ignored by a younger
generation of Trade Unionists, are even now referred to by the
survivors as constituting the finest period of Trade Union activity.
For over eight years the Unions had been subjected to the strain of a
prolonged and acute crisis, during which their very existence was at
stake. Out of this crisis they emerged, as we have seen, triumphantly
successful, “liberated,” to use George Howell’s words, “from the last
vestige of the criminal laws specially appertaining to labour.”[435]

This tangible victory was not the only result of the struggle. In order
to gain their immediate end the Trade Union leaders had adopted the
arguments of their opponents, and had been led to take up a position
which, whilst it departed from the Trade Union traditions of the past,
proved in the future a serious impediment to their further theoretic
progress. To understand the intellectual attitude of the Junta and
their friends, we must consider in some detail the position which they
had to attack. From the very beginning of the century the employers
had persistently asserted their right to make any kind of bargain with
the individual workman, irrespective of its effect on the Standard of
Life. They had, accordingly, adopted the principle, as against both
the Trade Unionists and the Factory Act philanthropists, of perfect
freedom of contract and complete competition between both workers and
employers. In order to secure absolute freedom of competition between
individuals it was necessary to penalise any attempt on the part of the
workmen to regulate, by combination, the conditions of the bargain.
But this involved, in reality, a departure from the principle of legal
freedom of contract. One form of contract, that of the collective
bargain, was, in effect, made a criminal offence, on the plea that,
however beneficial it might seem to the workmen, it cut at the root of
national prosperity. It will be obvious that in urging this contention
the employers were taking up an inconsistent position. Their pecuniary
interest in complete competition outweighed, in fact, their faith in
freedom of contract.

Meanwhile the astute workmen who led the movement were gradually
concentrating their forces upon the only position from which they
could hope to be victorious. They had, it must be remembered, no means
of imposing their own view upon the community. Even after 1867 their
followers formed but a small minority of the electorate, whilst the
whole machinery of politics was in the hands of the middle class.
Powerless to coerce or even to intimidate the governing classes, they
could win only by persuasion. It was, however, hopeless to dream
of converting the middle class to the essential principle of Trade
Unionism, the compulsory maintenance of the Standard of Life. In the
then state of Political Economy the Trade Unionists saw against them,
on this point, the whole mass of educated opinion in the country.
John Bright, for instance, did but express the common view of the
progressive party of that time when he solemnly assured the working man
that “combinations, in the long run, must be as injurious to himself as
to the employer against whom he is contending.”[436] Lord Shaftesbury,
the lifelong advocate of factory legislation, was praying that “the
working people may be emancipated from the tightest thraldom they have
ever yet endured. All the single despots, and all the aristocracies
that ever were or ever will be, are as puffs of wind compared with
these tornadoes, the Trade Unions.”[437] The Sheffield and other
outrages, the rumours of constant persecution of non-Unionists, the
hand-workers’ perpetual objection to machinery, the restrictions on
piecework and apprenticeship--all these real and fancied crimes had
created a mass of prejudice against which it was hopeless for the Trade
Unionists to struggle.

The Union leaders, therefore, wisely left this part of their case
in the background. They avoided arguing whether Trade Unionism was,
in principle, useful or detrimental, right or wrong. They insisted
only on the right of every Englishman to bargain for the sale of his
labour in the manner he thought most conducive to his own interests.
What they demanded was perfect freedom for a workman to substitute
collective for individual bargaining, if he imagined such a course to
be for his own advantage. Freedom of association in matters of contract
became, therefore, their rejoinder to the employers’ cry of freedom of
competition.

It is clear that the Trade Unionists had the best of the argument.
It was manifestly unreasonable for the employers to insist on the
principle of non-interference of the State in industry whenever they
were pushed by the advocates of factory legislation, and at the same
time to clamour for the assistance of the police to put down peaceful
and voluntary combinations of their workmen. The capitalists were, in
short, committed to the principle of _laissez-faire_ in every phase
of industrial life, from “Free Trade in Corn” to the unlimited use of
labour of either sex at any age and under any conditions; and what the
workmen demanded was only the application of this principle to the wage
contract. “The Trade Union question,” writes, in 1869, their chosen
representative and most powerful advocate, “is another and the latest
example of the truth, that the sphere of legislation is strictly and
curiously limited. After legislating about labour for centuries, each
change producing its own evils, we have slowly come to see the truth,
that we must cease to legislate for it at all. The public mind has been
of late conscious of serious embarrassment, and eagerly expecting some
legislative solution, some heaven-born discoverer to arise, with a new
Parliamentary nostrum. As usual in such cases, it now turns out that
there is no legislative solution at all; and that the true solution
requires, as its condition, the removal of the mischievous meddling
of the past.”[438] This doctrine “that all men may lawfully agree to
work or not to work, to employ or not to employ, on any terms that
they think fit,” forms the whole burden of the speeches and petitions
of the Trade Union leaders throughout this controversy. “We do not,”
say the official representatives of Trade Unionism in their memorial
to the Home Secretary in April 1875, “seek to interfere with the free
competition of the individual in the exercise of his craft in his own
way; but we reserve to ourselves the right either to work for, or to
refuse to work for, an employer according to the circumstances of the
case, just as the master has the right to discharge a workman, or
workmen; and we deny that the individual right is in any way interfered
with when it is done in concert.”

The working men had, in fact, picked up the weapon of their opponents
and left these without defence. But in so doing the leading Trade
Unionists of the time drifted into a position no less inconsistent than
that of the employers. When they contended that the Union should be as
free to bargain as the individual, they had not the slightest intention
of permitting the individual to bargain freely if they could prevent
him. Though Allan and Applegarth were able conscientiously to inform
the Royal Commission that the members of their societies did not refuse
to work with non-society men, they must have been perfectly aware
that this convenient fact was only true in those places and at those
periods in which society men were not in a sufficiently large majority
to do otherwise. The trades to which Henry Broadhurst and George
Howell belonged were notorious for the success with which the Unions
had maintained their practice of excluding non-society men from their
jobs. The coal-miners of Northumberland and Durham habitually refused
to descend the shaft in company with a non-Unionist.[439]

We have shown, in our _Industrial Democracy_, that this universal
aspiration of Trade Unionism--the enforcement of membership--stands,
in our opinion, on the same footing as the enforcement of citizenship.
But, however this may be, it is evident that the refusal of the
Northumberland miners to “ride” with non-society men is, in effect,
as coercive on the dissentient minority as the Mines Regulation Act
or an Eight Hours Bill. The insistence upon the Englishman’s right
to freedom of contract was, in fact, in the mouths of staunch Trade
Unionists, perilously near cant; and we find Frederic Harrison himself,
when dealing with other legislation, warning them that it would be
suicidal for working men to adopt as their own the capitalist cry of
“non-interference.”[440] The force of this caution must have been
evident to the Junta, who had had too much experience of the workings
of modern industry not to realise the need for a compulsory maintenance
of the Standard of Life. No Trade Unionist can deny that, without some
method of enforcing the decision of the majority, effective trade
combination is impossible.

It must not be inferred from the above criticism of the theoretic
position taken by the men who steered the Trade Union Movement through
its great crisis that they were conscious of their inconsistency with
regard to State intervention, or that they deliberately set to work to
win their case upon false premises. No one can study the history of
their leadership without being impressed by their devotion, sagacity,
and high personal worth. We must regard their inconsistency as a
striking instance of the danger which besets a party formed without any
clear idea of the social state at which it is aiming. In the struggle
of these years we watch the English Trade Unionists driven from their
Utopian aspirations into an inconsistent opportunism, from which they
drifted during the next generation into the crude “self-help” of
an “aristocracy of labour.” During the whole of this process there
was no moment at which the incompatibility of their Individualist
and Collectivist views was perceived. Applegarth and Odger, for
instance, saw no inconsistency in becoming leading officials of the
“International” on a programme drafted by Karl Marx, and at the same
time supporting the current Radical demand for a widespread peasant
proprietorship. But it was inevitable that the exclusive insistence
upon the Individualist arguments, through which alone the victory of
1875 could be won, should impress the Individualist ideal upon the
minds of those who stood round the leaders. Other influences, moreover,
promoted the acceptance by the Trade Unionists of the economic
shibboleths of the middle class. The failure of the crude experiments
of Owen and O’Connor, the striking success of the policy of Free Trade,
the growing participation of working men in the Liberal politics of the
time, and, above all, the close intimacy which many of them enjoyed
with able and fertile thinkers of the middle class, all tended to
create a new school of Trade Unionists. In a subsequent chapter we
shall describe the results of this intellectual conversion upon the
Trade Union Movement. First, however, we must turn to the internal
development of these years, which our description of the Parliamentary
struggles of 1867-75 has forced us temporarily to ignore.[441]


FOOTNOTES:

[373] William Allan was born of Scotch parents at Carrickfergus,
Ulster, in 1813. His father, who was manager of a cotton-spinning mill,
removed to a mill near Glasgow, and William became in 1825 a piecer in
a cotton factory at Gateside. Three years later he left the mill to be
bound apprentice to Messrs. Holdsworth, a large engineering firm at
Anderston, Glasgow. At the age of nineteen, before his apprenticeship
was completed, he married the niece of one of the partners. In 1835 he
went to work as a journeyman engineer at Liverpool, moving thence, with
the railway works, to their new centre at Crewe, where he joined his
Union. On the imprisonment of Selsby, in 1847, he became its general
secretary, retaining this office when, in 1851, the society became
merged in the Amalgamated Society of Engineers. For over twenty years
he was annually re-elected secretary of this vast organisation, dying
at last in office in 1874.

[374] The celebrated “International Association of Working Men,” which
loomed so large in the eyes of Governments and the governing classes
about 1869-70, had arisen out of the visit of two French delegates to
London in 1863, to concert joint action on behalf of Poland. It was
formally established at a meeting in London on September 28, 1864, at
which an address prepared by Karl Marx was read. Its fundamental aim
was the union of working men of all countries for the emancipation of
labour; and its principles went on to declare that “the subjection
of the man of labour to the man of capital lies at the bottom of all
servitude, all social misery, and all political dependence.” Between
1864 and 1870, branches were established in nearly all European
countries, as well as in the United States, the majority of trade
societies in some European countries joining in a body. The central
administration was entrusted to a General Council of fifty-five
members sitting in London, which was composed of London residents of
various nationalities, elected by the branches in the countries to
which they belonged. The General Council had, however, no legislative
or other control over the branches, and in practice served as little
more than a means of communication between them, each country managing
its own affairs in its own way. The principles and programme of the
Association underwent a steady development in the succession of annual
international congresses attended by delegates from the various
branches. The extent to which English working men really participated
in its fundamental objects is not clear. In 1870 Odger was president
and Applegarth chairman of the General Council, which included Benjamin
Lucraft, afterwards a member of the London School Board, and other
well-known working-men politicians. But few English Trade Unions (among
them being the Bootmakers and Curriers) joined in their corporate
capacity; and when, in October 1866, the General Council invited the
London Trades Council to join, or, that failing, to give permission
for a representative of the International to attend its meetings, with
a view of promptly reporting all Continental strikes, the Council’s
minutes show that both requests were refused. The London Trades Council
declined indeed to recognise the International even as the authorised
medium of communication with trade societies abroad, and decided to
communicate with these directly. Applegarth attended several of the
Continental congresses as a delegate from England, and elaborately
explained the aims and principles of the Association in an interview
published in the _New York World_ of May 21 1870. After the suppression
of the Commune the branches in France were crushed out of existence;
and the membership in England and other countries fell away. The annual
Congress held in 1872 at The Hague decided to transfer the General
Council to New York, and the “International” ceased to play any part
in the English Labour Movement. An interesting account of its Trade
Unionist action appeared in the _Fortnightly Review_ for November 1870,
by Professor E. S. Beesly.

[375] Robert Applegarth, the son of a quartermaster in the Royal Navy,
was born at Hull on January 23, 1833. At the age of eleven he went to
work as errand boy, eventually drifting into the shop of a joiner and
cabinetmaker, where, unapprenticed, he picked up the trade as best he
could. In 1852 he moved to Sheffield; but in 1855, on the death of his
parents, he emigrated to the United States, returning to Sheffield
in the following year, as the health of his wife did not allow her
to follow him to the land of promise. Joining the local Carpenters’
Union, he quickly became its most prominent member, and brought it
over in a body when the formation in 1861 of the Amalgamated Society
of Carpenters and Joiners offered a prospect of more efficient trade
action. Elected general secretary in 1862, he retained the office
until 1871, when, in consequence of various personal disputes in the
society, he voluntarily resigned. In 1870, on the formation of the
London School Board, he stood as a candidate for the Lambeth division,
but was unsuccessful, though he received 7600 votes. In the same year
he was invited to become a candidate for Parliament for the borough of
Maidstone, but he retired in favour of Sir John Lubbock. In 1871 he was
appointed a member of the Royal Commission on the Contagious Diseases
Act. On resigning his secretaryship he turned for a time to journalism,
and acted as war correspondent in France for an American newspaper.
Shortly afterwards he became foreman to a firm of manufacturers of
engineering and diving apparatus, eventually becoming the proprietor
of this flourishing business and retiring with a small competence.
Mr. Applegarth, who is (1920) the sole survivor of the “Junta” of
1867-71, still retains his membership of the Amalgamated Society of
Carpenters and his interest in Trade Unionism, about which he has
given us valuable documents and reminiscences. See _The Life of Robert
Applegarth_, by A. W. Humphrey, 1915.

[376] Daniel Guile was born at Liverpool, October 21, 1814, the son of
a shoemaker. Bound apprentice to an ironfounder in 1827, he joined the
Union in June 1834. In 1863 he became its corresponding secretary, a
position he retained until his retirement at the end of 1881. He was
a member of the Parliamentary Committee, 1871-5, and died December 7,
1883.

George Odger, the son of a Cornish miner, was born in 1820, at
Rouborough, near Tavistock, South Devon, and became a shoemaker at
an early age. Tramping about the country, as was then customary, he
eventually settled in London, becoming a prominent member of the
Ladies’ Shoemakers’ Society. His first important public action was
in connection with the meetings of delegates of London trades on the
building trades lock-out in 1859. On the formation of the London
Trades Council in 1860 he became one of its leading members, and from
1862 until the reconstruction of the Council in 1872 he acted as its
secretary. As one of the leaders of London working-class Radicalism he
made five attempts to get into Parliament, but was each time baulked by
the opposition of the official Liberal party. At Chelsea in 1868, at
Stratford in 1869, and at Bristol in 1870 he retired rather than split
the vote, but at Southwark in 1870 he went to the poll, and failed of
success only by 304 votes, the official Liberal, Sir Sidney Waterlow,
being at the bottom with 2966 votes as against 4382 given for Odger. At
the General Election of 1874 he again stood, to be once more opposed
by both Liberals and Conservatives with the same result as before. He
died in 1877, his funeral, which was attended by Professor E. Beesly,
Professor Fawcett, and Sir Charles Dilke, being made the occasion of a
remarkable demonstration by the London working men. An eulogy of him
by Professor Beesly appeared in the _Weekly Despatch_, March 11, 1877.
A brief biographical sketch was published under the title of _The Life
and Labour of George Odger_, 1877.

[377] John Kane was born at Alnwick, Northumberland, in 1819. Sent
to work at seven, he served in various capacities until the age of
fifteen, when he moved to Newcastle-on-Tyne, and entered the ironworks
of Messrs. Hawke at Gateshead. Here he took part in the Chartist and
other progressive movements, making a vain attempt in 1842 to form a
Union in his trade. Not until 1863 was a durable society established,
and when in 1868 the Amalgamated Ironworkers’ Association was formed
on a national basis, John Kane became general secretary, a position he
retained until his death in March 1876.

[378] The first permanent committee of the nature of a Trades Council
appears to have been, according to our information, the Liverpool
“Trades Guardian Association,” which was established in 1848 with the
object of protecting Trade Unions from suppression by the employers’
use of the criminal law. From its printed report and balance sheet
for 1848, and the references in the _Fortnightly Circular_ of the
Stonemasons’ Society for November 23, 1848, we gather that it took
vigorous action to protect the Sheffield razor-grinders from malicious
prosecution, and to help the Liverpool masons who had been indicted
for conspiracy. Of its activity from 1850 to 1857 we possess no
records, but in August 1857 it subscribed £400 in aid of the Liverpool
cabinetmakers, and in 1861 it was assisting the London bricklayers’
strike. In July of that year it was merged in a “United Trades
Protection Association,” formed upon the model of the newly established
London Trades Council. In Glasgow there appears to have been, since
1825, an almost continuous series of joint committees of delegates for
particular purposes. An attempt was made in 1851 to place these on a
permanent footing, but the trades soon ceased to send delegates. A
renewed attempt in 1858, made at the instance of Alexander Campbell,
met with greater success; and the Council then established, composed
principally of the building trades, was in 1860 enjoying a vigorous
life. Sheffield, too, had long had ephemeral federations of the local
trades, which came near having a continuous existence. One of these,
the “Association of Organised Trades,” established in 1857 with the
special object of assisting the Sheffield Typographical Society in
defending a libel action, became the permanent Trades Council. Other
towns, such as Dublin and Bristol, had almost constantly some kind of
Council of the local trades. An appeal of the Trade Defence Association
of Manchester, signed by representatives of nine thousand operatives on
behalf of the dyers’ strike, occurs in the _Stonemasons’ Fortnightly
Circular_ for 1854. In London, as may be gathered from George Odger’s
evidence before the Master and Servant Law Committee in 1867, the
meetings of “Metropolitan Trades Delegates” had been particularly
frequent since 1848. In 1852, for instance, as we discover from the
_Bookbinders’ Trade Circular_ (November 1853), a committee of the
London trades took the case of the Wolverhampton tinplate workers out
of the hands of the somewhat decrepit National Association of United
Trades, and bore the whole cost of these expensive legal proceedings.
No sooner had the task of this committee been completed, when another
committed was formed to assist the strike of the Preston cotton
operatives. It was to this committee, sitting at the Bell Inn, Old
Bailey, the historic meeting-place of London Trade Unionism, that Lloyd
Jones, in March 1855, communicated his fears that a certain Friendly
Societies’ Bill, then before the House of Commons, would make the legal
position of trade societies even more equivocal than it then was. A
“Metropolitan Trades Committee on the Friendly Societies’ Bill” was
accordingly formed, the printed report of which is reviewed by Dunning
in his _Circular_ for December 1855. From this we learn that it was
presided over by William Allan, and that it included his old friend
William Newton, as well as the general secretaries of the Stonemasons’
and Bricklayers’ Societies, and representatives of the Compositors and
Bookbinders. It was supported by eighty-seven different Trade Unions
with forty-eight thousand members, who contributed a halfpenny per
member to cover the expenses. Its Parliamentary action seems, to have
been vigorous and effective. The objectionable clauses were, by skilful
Parliamentary lobbying, dropped out of the Bill, and what seemed at the
time to be an important step towards the legislation of trade societies
was, through the help of Thomas Hughes and Lord Goderich, secured.
Between 1858 and 1867 Trades Councils were established in about a
dozen of the largest towns. The Trade Union expansion of 1870-73 saw
their number doubled. But their great increase was one of the effects
of the great wave of Trade Union organisation which swept over the
country in 1889-91, when over sixty new councils were established, and
those already in existence were reorganised and greatly increased in
membership.

[379] Second Annual Report of London Trades Council, March 31, 1862.

[380] No copy is preserved in the British Museum nor among the archives
of the Trades Council itself. Mr. Robert Applegarth kindly presented us
with a copy, which is now in the British Library of Political Science
at the London School of Economics. The only other one known to us is in
the Goldsmiths’ Library at the University of London.

[381] On receipt of a memorial from the operatives asking for the
introduction of the Nine Hours Day, three of the principal London
builders gave notice that henceforth they would engage their workmen,
not by the day, but by the hour. “This arrangement,” they added, “of
payment by the hour will enable any workman employed by us to work any
number of hours he may think proper.” This specious proposal involved
a total abandonment of the principle of Collective Bargaining. What
the master builders proposed was, in effect, to do away with the
very conception of a normal day, and to revert, as far as the hours
were concerned, to separate contracts with each individual workman.
The workmen realised, what they failed clearly to explain, that
the proffered freedom was illusory. In the modern organisation of
industry on a large scale there can be no freedom for the individual
workman to drop his tools at whatever moment he chooses. Without a
concerted normal day, each workman must inevitably find his task
continue as long as the engines are going or the works are open. The
real question at issue was how the common hours of labour should be
fixed. The master builders of 1861 rightly calculated that if each
man was really free to earn as many hours’ wages in the day as they
chose to offer him, the hours during which the whole body would work
would, in effect, be governed, not by the general convenience, but
by the desire and capacity of those willing to work the longest day.
On this, the essential issue, the men maintained their position. The
normal day in the London building trades was tacitly fixed according
to the prevailing custom, and has since been repeatedly regulated and
reduced by formal collective agreement until the average working week
throughout the year consists of less than 48 hours. The minor point of
the unit of remuneration was gradually conceded by the men, and the
Hour System, guarded by strict limitation of the working day, has come
to be preferred by both parties.

[382] The letters were drawn up by Frederic Harrison and Godfrey
Lushington, after personal investigation and inquiry, and were signed
also by T. Hughes, J. M. Ludlow, E. S. Beesly, R. H. Hutton, R. B
Litchfield, and T. R. Bennett. They appeared in July 1861.

[383] Many of the local Birmingham Trade Unions became directly
affiliated to the National Reform League. But with the exception of two
small clubs at Wolverhampton, and the West End Cabinetmakers (London),
no other Trade Union appears to have joined the League in a corporate
capacity, though its Council included Allan, Applegarth, Coulson,
Cremer, Odger, Potter, and Conolly.

[384] The obligation to proceed by warrant was at first universal, as
the Act of 1824, 4 Geo. IV. c. 34, gave the magistrate no discretion.
By that act the master was to be served with a summons at the instance
of the workman, whilst the workman was to be arrested on a warrant on
the complaint upon oath of the master. But, in 1848, Jervis’s Act, 11 &
12 Vic. c. 43, gave justices power in all cases to issue a summons in
the first instance. The practice was accordingly gradually introduced
in England of summoning the workman; and the issue of a warrant was in
general confined to cases in which the workman had gone away, or had
failed to appear to a summons. Jervis’s Act, however, did not apply
to Scotland, so that summary arrests of workmen on warrants continued
until 1867; and this was one of the principal grievances adduced by the
Glasgow representatives. Even in England warrants were occasionally
granted by vindictive magistrates. In 1863 a dispute took place at a
Durham colliery, and the employer proceeded against the miners under
the Master and Servant Law. “In the middle of the next night twelve of
them were taken out of their beds by the police and lodged in Durham
lock-up, on the charge of deserting their work without notice” (Letter
by Professor E. S. Beesly in _Spectator_, December 12, 1863).

[385] See Question 864, Master and Servant Law Select Committee, 1866;
Unwin _v._ Clarke, 1 Law Reports, Queen’s Bench, p. 417; and Second
Report of Labour Laws Commission, c. 1157 (1875), p. 7.

The enactments rendering the workman liable to imprisonment for simple
breach of a contract of service are historically to be traced to the
period when the law denied to the labourer the right to withhold his
service or to bargain as to his wages. Any neglect or abandonment
of his work was, therefore, like a simple refusal to work at all, a
breach, not so much of contract, as of a duty arising out of status
and enforced by statute. The law on the subject dates, indeed, back to
the celebrated Statute of Labourers of 1349 (23 Ed. III.), the primary
object of which was to enforce service at the rates of hiring that
existed prior to the Black Death. The second section of this law enacts
that if a workman or servant depart from service before the time agreed
upon he shall be imprisoned. The same principle was asserted in the
Statute of Apprentices in 1563 (5 Eliz. c. 4), which consolidated the
law relating to all artificers and labourers, and expressly applied it
to workers by the piece, who were rendered liable to imprisonment if
they left before completing their job. During the eighteenth century,
which abounded, as we have seen, in enactments dealing with particular
trades, a long series of statutes made the provisions of law more
definite and stringent in the industries in question. The principal
English Acts were 7 Geo. I. st. 1, c. 13 (tailors); 9 Geo. I. c. 27
(shoemakers); 13 Geo. II. c. 8 (all leather trades); 20 Geo. II. c. 19;
27 Geo. II. c. 6; 31 Geo. II. c. 11 (various trades); 6 Geo. III. c. 25
(agreements for a term); 17 Geo. III. c. 56 (textiles, etc.); 39 & 40
Geo. III. c. 77 (coal and iron); 4 Geo. IV. c. 34 (all trades); 10 Geo.
IV. c. 52 (general); 6 & 7 Vic. c. 40 (textiles).

The intolerable oppression which these laws enabled unscrupulous
employers to commit was, at the beginning of the century, scarcely
inferior to that brought about by the Combination Laws. This was
strongly urged by the authors of _A few Remarks on the State of the
Laws at present in existence for regulating Masters and Workpeople_
(preserved among the Place MSS. 27804), which George White, the
prompter of Peter Moore, M.P., published in 1823. The pieceworker
clause of the Statute of Apprentices was particularly oppressive. “This
clause,” says White, “has been much abused, as in many businesses
they never finish their work, as the nature of the employment is such
that they are compelled to begin one before they finish another, as
wheelwrights, japanners, and an infinite number of trades; therefore
if any dispute ariseth respecting the amount of wages, and a strike
or turn-out commences, or men leave their work, having words, the
master prosecutes them for leaving their work unfinished. Very few
prosecutions have been made to effect under the Combination Acts, but
hundreds have been made under this law, and the labourer or workman
can never be free, unless this law is modified. The Combination Act
is nothing: it is the law which regards the finishing of work which
masters employ to harass and keep down the wages of their workpeople;
unless this is modified nothing is done, and by repealing the
Combination Acts you leave the workman in ninety-nine cases out of a
hundred in the same state you found him--at the mercy of his master”
(p. 51). But, in spite of this somewhat exaggerated protest, neither
Place nor Hume took up the amendment of the law relating to contracts
of service. Their paramount concern was to secure for the workman
freedom to enter into a contract, and oppressive punishment for its
breach attracted, for the moment, little attention.

Besides White’s Manual, the following may be referred to for the
history of the law, and of its amendment: _Report of Conference on the
Law of Master and Workman under the Contract of Service_ (Glasgow,
1864); the Reports of the Select Committee on the Law of Master and
Servant, 1866, and of the Royal Commission on the Labour Laws, 1875;
_The Labour Laws_, by James Edward Davis (1875); and Stephen’s _History
of the Criminal Law_, vol. iii.

[386] Alexander Campbell, who had been a prominent disciple of Robert
Owen, and whom we have already seen as secretary to the little
Glasgow Carpenters’ Union of 1834, was, in 1863, editing the _Glasgow
Sentinel_, which became the chief organ of Macdonald and his National
Association of Miners. Campbell is described as having been, in 1858,
the virtual founder of the Glasgow Trades Council.

[387] The Memorial, which contains an exact statement of the law and
suggestions for its amendment, is preserved in the _Flint Glass Makers’
Magazine_, December 1863.

[388] Among those present were Robert Applegarth, George Odger, Daniel
Guile, T. J. Dunning, Alexander Macdonald, William Dronfield, Alexander
Campbell, Edwin Coulson, and George Potter. The societies represented
included the London Trades Council, Glasgow Trades Committee,
Sheffield Association of Organised Trades, Liverpool United Trades
Protection Society, Nottingham Association of Organised Trades, and the
Northumberland and Durham United Trades and Labourers; the Amalgamated
Societies of Engineers and Carpenters, the National Societies of
Bricklayers, Masons, Ironfounders, Miners, and Bookbinders, the London
Society of Compositors, the Scottish Bakers, Sheffield Sawmakers, etc.

[389] Afterwards Earl of Wemyss.

[390] Minutes of meeting of London Trades Council, March 1864.

[391] It must not be supposed that the lock-out was a new invention.
Place describes its use by the master breeches-makers at the end of
the last century: _Life of Francis Place_, by Professor Graham Wallas
(1918).

[392] _Report of Conference of Trade Delegates at Sheffield_ (June
1866), p. 22.

[393] “An Ironmaster’s View of Strikes,” by W. R. Hopper, _Fortnightly
Review_ (August 1, 1865).

[394] “Measures for Putting an End to the Abuses of Trades Unions,” by
Frederic Hill, Barrister-at-Law: Paper in Sessional Proceedings of the
National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, 1867-68, p.
24. The popular middle-class sentiment is reflected in Charles Reade’s
novel, _Put Yourself in his Place_ (1871).

[395] See, for instance, the speech of George Newton, the secretary
of the Glasgow Trades Committee: “A great many strikes, and perhaps
lock-outs, too, have arisen from a stubborn refusal on the part of
both sides to look the question honestly and fairly in the face....
Let us examine ourselves and see if there be any wicked way in us that
contributes to this unsatisfactory state of things, and if we discover
that we are not blameless, then we ought, first of all, to set our own
house in order.... Then let us examine the opposite side of the camp
and see how they stand, and if we find that they have not done all that
they ought to have done with a view to prevent these serious evils,
let us undisguisedly and in plain language point out where we consider
they have erred, and by increasing public opinion in a healthy way
against tyranny--some people call it, but perhaps a milder word would
be better--against the unwise policy used, it will do much to repress
it in future” (_Conference Report_, Sheffield, 1866).

[396] Rules adopted at Manchester Conference, 1867 (Sheffield, 1867, 12
pp.).

[397] The Alliance was always administered by an executive elected
by the Sheffield trades, the leading men amongst which had been
active in its formation. The veteran secretary of the Typographical
Society, William Dronfield, was the first general secretary. Among the
trades represented were the South Yorkshire and Nottingham Miners,
the Amalgamated Tailors, Boilermakers, Cotton-spinners, Scottish
Associated Carpenters, Yorkshire Glass-bottle Makers, North of England
Ironworkers, and the trades of Wolverhampton. The minute books from
1867 to 1870, and its printed _Monthly Statement_, show that the
Alliance at first supported the men in numerous lock-outs, especially
among the tailors, miners, and ironworkers, but that there were
constant complaints of unpaid levies. Dronfield informed us that the
Judicial Committee and the Executive experienced great difficulties
from the absence of any control over the constituent Unions, and the
impossibility of accurately defining a lock-out. The first conference
of the Alliance was held at Manchester from the 1st to the 4th of
January 1867, when fifty-three trades had been enrolled, numbering
59,750 members. The “Rules” adopted at this conference contain an
interesting address by Dronfield upon the principles and objects of
the federation. The next conference was at Preston in September 1867,
when the membership had fallen to 23,580, in forty-seven trades,
the Boilermakers, among others, formally withdrawing (_Minutes of
Conference at Preston_, Sheffield, 1867, 16 pp.).

[398] The town of Sheffield had long been noted for the custom of
“rattening,” that is, the temporary abstraction of the wheelbands or
tools of a workman whose subscription to his club was in arrear. This
had become the recognised method of enforcing, not merely the payment
of contributions, but also compliance with the trade regulations
of the club. The lawless summary jurisdiction thus usurped by the
Sheffield clubs easily passed into more serious acts of lynch law
if mere rattening proved ineffectual. Recalcitrant workmen were
terrorised by explosions of cans of gunpowder in the troughs of their
grinding wheels, or thrown down their chimneys; and in some cases
these explosions caused serious injury. The various Grinders’ Unions
(saw, file, sickle, fork, and fender) enjoyed an unhappy notoriety
for outrages of this nature, which had, from time to time, aroused
the spasmodic indignation of the local press, notably in 1843-4.
An attempt, in 1861, to blow up a small warehouse in Acorn Street
provoked a special outburst of public disapproval; and the minutes of
the London Trades Council record that already on this occasion the
Council publicly expressed its abhorrence of such criminal violence.
After this date there was for three or four years a diminution in the
number of serious acts of violence committed; but the years 1865-6 saw
a renewal of the evil practices, especially in connection with the
Saw-Grinders’ Union. The explosion in New Hereford Street in October
1866 was afterwards proved to have been instigated by this Union in
order to terrorise a certain Thomas Fernehough, who had twice deserted
the society, and was at the time working for a firm against whom the
saw-handle makers, as well as the saw-grinders, had struck.

[399] Among other societies, the Amalgamated Engineers and Carpenters
and the national Unions of Boilermakers and Ironfounders appear to have
deposited their rules.

[400] _Beehive_, January 26, 1867.

[401] Along with these, in helping and advising the Trade Unions at
this time, were Vernon Lushington, Godfrey Lushington (afterwards
Permanent Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department), J. M.
Ludlow (afterwards Registrar of Friendly Societies), Neate (formerly
Professor of Political Economy and then M.P. for Oxford), Sir T. Fowell
Buxton, M.P., and A. J. Mundella.

[402] The Junta did not, however, confine its efforts to action before
the Commission. One of the taunts constantly thrown by the press at
the Trade Union leaders was that they did not themselves know what
they wanted. Partly as a reply to this, but also as a manifesto to
consolidate the Unionist forces, in the autumn of 1867 a Bill was
prepared by Henry Crompton and laid before the Junta, and after
considerable discussion adopted by them and by a delegate meeting
of Trades held at the Bell Inn. It was introduced into the House of
Commons early in the following session, and served as basis of the
Trade Union demand at some of the elections in 1868, notably that of
Sheffield when A. J. Mundella first was candidate.

[403] The Broadhead disclosures created a great stir, and Professor
Beesly, who had ventured to point out “that a trades union murder was
neither better nor worse than any other murder,” was denounced as an
apologist for crime, and nearly lost his professorship at University
College, London, for his sturdy defence of the principle of Trade
Unionism. See his pamphlet, _The Sheffield Outrages and the Meeting
at Exeter Hall_, 1867, 16 pp.; and that by Richard Congreve, _Mr.
Broadhead and the Anonymous Press_, 1867, 16 pp.

[404] _Times_ leader, July 8, 1869. The occasion was the epoch-marking
speech of Mr. (afterwards Lord) Brassey, in which, speaking as the son
of a great contractor, he declared himself on the side of the Trade
Unions, and asserted that, by exercising a beneficial influence on the
character of the workmen, they tended to lower rather than to raise the
cost of labour (Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates, July 7, 1869). The
speech was afterwards republished, with some additions, under the title
of _Trade Unions and the Cost of Labour_, by T. Brassey, 1870, 64 pp.

[405] The Sheffield Outrages and the Royal Commission produced a large
crop of literature, most of which is of little value. The Commission
itself presented no fewer than eleven reports, with voluminous evidence
and appendices. The Examiners appointed to investigate the outrages at
Sheffield and Manchester presented separate reports, which were laid
before Parliament. The mass of detailed information about strikes and
other proceedings of Trade Societies contained in these reports has
been the main source of all subsequent writings on the subject. _The
Trade Unions of England_, by the Comte de Paris, 1869, 246 pp., and
_The Trade Unions_, by Robert Somers (Edinburgh, 1876, 232 pp.), are,
for instance, little better than summaries, the former friendly, the
latter unfriendly, of the evidence before the Commission. The chapters
relating to Trade Unionism in W. T. Thornton’s work _On Labour_, 1870,
which made so permanent an impression on the economic world, are
entirely based upon the same testimony. Among other publications may
be mentioned _Trades Unions Defended_, by W. R. Callender (Manchester,
1870, 16 pp.); and _Measures for Putting an End to the Abuses of Trades
Unions_, by Frederic Hill, 1868, 16 pp.

[406] _Report of the Trades Conference_, 1867, 32 pp.

[407] _Beehive_, June 13, 1868.

[408] _Ibid._, August 28, 1869.

[409] _Beehive_, January 26, 1867.

[410] _Fortnightly Circular_, June 1868.

[411] See, for instance, _Some opinions on Trade Unions and the Bill
of 1869_, by Edmund Potter, M.P., 1869, 45 pp.; also the _Observations
upon the Law of Combinations and Trades Unions, and upon the Trades
Unions Bill_, by a Barrister, 1869, 64 pp.

[412] In his _Letters to the Working Classes_, 1870, Professor Beesly
gives a graphic account of the shuffling of the Government, and advises
political action. The annual report of the General Union of House
Painters (the “Manchester Alliance”) for 1871 shows how eagerly the
advice was received: “Away with the cry of no politics in our Unions;
this foolish neutrality has left us without power or influence.” See
also, for the whole episode, _Robert Applegarth_, by A. W. Humphrey,
1912, pp. 138-170; _Labour Legislation, Labour Movements and Labour
Leaders_, by G. Howell, 1902, pp. 156-172.

[413] 32 and 33 Vic. c. 61 (1869). This provisional measure was
bitterly opposed in the House of Lords by Earl Cairns, who argued that
its universal protection of the funds of all Unions alike, without
requiring the abandonment of their objectionable rules, was in direct
opposition to the majority report of the Royal Commission. No such
surrender to the Trade Unions was, in his opinion, necessary, as
their funds had, in the previous year, been incidentally protected
by an “Act to amend the law relating to larceny and embezzlement”
(31 and 32 Vic. c. 116), passed at the instance of Russell Gurney,
the Recorder of London. This act had no reference to Trade Unions
as such, but it enabled members of a co-partnership to be convicted
for stealing or embezzling the funds of their co-partnership. Its
possible application to defaulting Trade Union officials was perceived
by Messrs. Shaen, Roscoe & Co., who have for three generations acted
as solicitors of the leading Unions. At their instance a case was
submitted to the Attorney-General of the time (Sir John Karslake),
who advised that a Trade Union could now prosecute in its character
of a partnership. Criminal proceedings were accordingly taken by the
Operative Bricklayers’ Society against a defaulting officer who had set
the Executive at defiance, with the result that the prisoner was, in
December 1868, sentenced to six months’ hard labour. This successful
prosecution was widely advertised throughout the Trade Union world,
and was frequently quoted as showing that no further legislation was
needed. But, as was forcibly pointed out by Frederic Harrison and
other advisers of the Junta, Russell Gurney’s Act, though it enabled
Trade Unions to put defaulting officials in prison, gave them no power
to recover the sums due, or to take any civil proceedings whatever,
and did not remove the illegality of any combinations of workmen “in
restraint of trade.” See Harrison’s article, “The Trades Union Bill,”
in _Fortnightly Review_, July 1, 1869, and the leaflet published by the
Amalgamated Society of Engineers, on Russell Gurney’s Act, December,
1868.

[414] See, for instance, the report of the Leeds meeting of the Master
Builders’ Association to object to the Bill, _Beehive_, March 11, 1871.

[415] A short Act had been passed in 1859 (22 Vic. c. 34) which
excluded from the definition of “molestation” or “obstruction” the
mere agreement to obtain an alteration of wages or hours, and also
the peaceful persuasion of others without threat or intimidation to
cease or abstain from work in order to obtain the wages or hours aimed
at. The Act was passed without discussion or comment, probably with
reference to some recent judicial decisions, but its actual origin
is not clear. The Stonemasons’ Society refused to have anything to
do with it, and referred sneeringly to its promoters as busybodies.
Alexander Macdonald alluded to it in his speech on the Employers and
Workmen Bill on June 28, 1875 (Hansard, vol. 225, pp. 66-7), as having
been enacted at the instance of himself and others in order to permit
men to persuade others to join combinations, and that it had had a
most beneficial effect. An obscure pamphlet, entitled _Letters to
the Trades Unionists and the Working Classes_, by Charles Sturgeon,
1868, 8 pp., gives the only account of its origin that we have seen.
“Some of the judges had decided that the liberty to combine was only
during the period he was not in the employ of any master (_i.e._ while
on tramp). So obvious a misreading, under which the working men were
getting imprisoned, while their masters combined at their pleasure,
created numerous petitions for relief, which lay as usual on the table;
however, the Executive of the National Association of United Trades
assembled in my rooms in Abingdon Street, and we drew a little Bill of
nine lines in length to explain to the judges how they had failed to
explain the views of the legislator.... I introduced our friends to the
late Henry Drummond, Thomas Duncombe, and Joseph Hume, two Radicals and
an honest Tory, and, strange to say, they worked well together when in
pursuit of justice. After fighting hard against the great Liberal Party
for four or five years, we passed our little Bill (22 Vic. c. 34), to
the great joy of the working classes and chagrin of the Manchester
Radicals.” But the decision of the R. _v._ Druitt and R. _v._ Bailey in
1867 showed that it did not serve to protect pickets from prosecution.

[416] Henry Crompton gives the following account of the practice of
picketing:--“Picketing is generally much misunderstood. It occurs in
a strike when war has begun. The struggle, of course, consists in the
employer trying to get fresh men, and the men on strike trying to
prevent this. They naturally do their best to induce all others to
join them. Very often the country is scoured by the employers, and men
brought long distances who never would have come if they had known
there was a strike. Men do not wish to undersell their fellows. A man
is posted as a picket, to give information of the grievances complained
of, and to urge the fresh comers not to defeat the strike that is going
on.

“Not only is this justifiable, but it is far better that this should be
legal and practised in full publicity than that it should be illegal
and done secretly, for, if done secretly, then bad practices are sure
to arise. No doubt it is done with a view to coerce the employers, just
as the lock-out is with a view to coerce the employed.

“Picketing has other uses and effects. It enables those on strike to
know whether the employers are getting men, and what probability there
is of the strike being successful, to check any fraudulent claims for
strike pay. Besides this, the publicity which the system of picketing
gives does, doubtless, exercise a considerable influence upon men’s
conduct. Those on strike naturally regard any one acting contrary
to the general interests of the trade with disfavour, just as an
unpatriotic man is condemned by those imbued with a higher sense of
national duty. Picketing is justified on these grounds by the workmen,
but all physical molestation or intimidation is condemned. The workmen
have never urged that such proceedings should not be repressed by penal
law.” (See _The Labour Law Commission_, by Henry Crompton, adopted and
published by the Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress.)

[417] Baron Bramwell’s view of the law excited much animadversion even
among lawyers. See Stephen’s _History of the Criminal Law_, vol. iii.
pp. 221-2. R. _v._ Druitt is reported in 10 Cox, 600.

[418] R. _v._ Hewitt, 5 Cox, 162 (1851). Compare also the observations
of Mr. Justice Hannam as to the mere act of striking being in itself
sometimes criminal, in Farrer _v._ Close, 4 L.R.Q.B. 612 (1869).

[419] R. _v._ Hewitt, 5 Cox, C.C. 163 (1851).

[420] See Walsby _v._ Anley, 30 L.J.M.C. 121 (1861); Skinner _v._
Kitch, 10 Cox, 493 (1867); O’Neil _v._ Kruger, 4 Best and Smith,
389 (1863); Wood _v._ Bowron, 2 Law Report, Q.B. 21 (1866); R. _v._
Rowlands, 5 Cox, C.C. 493 (1851).

Compare on the whole subject the Appendix to our _Industrial
Democracy_, 1897; _The Law of Criminal Conspiracies and Agreements_,
by R. S. (afterwards Mr. Justice) Wright (1873); Sir William Erle’s
_Law Relating to Trade Unions_ (1873); and Stephen’s _History of the
Criminal Law_, vol. iii. chap. xxx.

[421] Whilst the constant meetings of the Junta, the informal cabinet
of the movement, grew out of the great Amalgamated Societies, the
Trades Union Congress, or “Parliament of Labour,” took its rise in
the Trades Councils. We have already described the special Conference
held in London in 1864, on the Master and Servant Law, which was
convened by the Glasgow Trades Council, and its successor, summoned by
the Sheffield Trades Council in 1867 to concert measures of defence
against lock-outs. But the credit of initiating the idea of an Annual
Conference to deal with all subjects of interest to the Trade Union
world belongs to the Manchester and Salford Trades Council, who issued
in April 1868 a circular (fortunately preserved in the _Ironworkers’
Journal_ for May 1868, and printed at the end of this volume)
convening a Congress to be held in Manchester during Whit-week, 1868.
This Congress was attended by thirty-four delegates, who claimed to
represent about 118,000 Trade Unionists. The place of meeting of the
next Congress was fixed at Birmingham, and the delegates were in due
course convened by the Birmingham Trades Council. This second Congress,
which met in August 1869, included forty-eight delegates from forty
separate societies, having, it was said, 250,000 members. But although
these general congresses were attended by some of the most prominent
of the provincial Trade Unionists, they were rather frowned on by the
London Junta. The thirty-four delegates at the Manchester Congress
included indeed hardly any Metropolitan delegates other than George
Potter. Half a dozen representatives from London societies went to
the Birmingham Congress, including Odger and George Howell, but when
a Parliamentary Committee was appointed Odger refused to serve upon
it, regarding it apparently as an unnecessary rival of the Conference
of Amalgamated Trades. The next Congress was appointed for London in
1870, but the London leaders took no steps to convene it, until it
became necessary, as we have seen, to call up all forces to oppose
the projected legislation of 1871. The London Congress of March 1871
was, in fact, the first in which the real leaders of the movement took
part, and the Parliamentary Committee which it appointed, acting at
first in conjunction with Applegarth’s Conference, naturally took the
place of this on its dissolution. The 1872 Congress at Nottingham was
attended by seventy-seven delegates, representing 375,000 members.
Reports of the earliest four congresses must be sought in the _Beehive_
and (as regards those of Manchester, Birmingham, and Nottingham) in
the contemporary local newspapers. From 1873 onward the Congress has
issued an authorised report of its proceedings. A useful chronological
record has now been published by W. J. Davis, entitled _A History of
the British Trades Union Congress_, vol. i. 1910; vol. ii. 1916.

[422] 34 and 35 Vic. c. 31 (Trade Union Act), and 34 and 35 Vic. c. 32
(Criminal Law Amendment Act).

[423] See, for instance, the article by Henry Crompton in the
_Beehive_, September 2, 1871.

[424] The Operative Bricklayers’ Society (London), of which Coulson was
general secretary, stands No. 1 on the Register.

[425] _Digest of the Labour Laws_, signed by F. Harrison and H.
Crompton, and issued by the Trades Union Congress Parliamentary
Committees, September 1875.

[426] They were, however, eventually released after a few months’
imprisonment; see _Henry Broadhurst, the Story of His Life_, by
himself, 1901, pp. 59-64; _Labour Legislation, Labour Movements and
Labour Leaders_, by G. Howell, 1902, pp. 237-53.

[427] See letter to _Beehive_, January 11, 1873.

[428] Hansard, vol. 212, p. 1132, July 15, 1872.

[429] This formed the subject of bitter comment in the _Beehive_,
January 1874, just before the General Election.

[430] The following letter, addressed to Odger by John Stuart Mill,
will be of interest in connection with the perennial question of the
expediency of “independent” candidatures. It will be found in the
_Beehive_ for February 13, 1875:--

“Avignon, _February 19, 1871_.

“Dear Mr. Odger,--Although you have not been successful, I congratulate
you on the result of the polling in Southwark, as it proves that you
have the majority of the Liberal party with you, and that you have
called out an increased amount of political feeling in the borough. It
is plain that the Whigs intend to monopolise political power as long
as they can without coalescing in any degree with the Radicals. The
working men are quite right in allowing Tories to get into the House
to defeat this exclusive feeling of the Whigs, and may do it without
sacrificing any principle. The working men’s policy is to insist upon
their own representation, and in default of success to permit Tories to
be sent into the House until the Whig majority is seriously threatened,
when, of course, the Whigs will be happy to compromise, and allow a few
working men representatives in the House.

John Stuart Mill.”

[431] _Beehive_, August 9, 1873; see also that of August 30.

[432] Halliday, the Secretary of the Amalgamated Association of Miners,
offered himself as Labour candidate for Merthyr Tydvil. A fortnight
before the polling day he was indicted at Burnley for conspiracy in
connection with a local miners’ strike, but nevertheless went to the
poll, receiving the large total of 4912 votes (_Beehive_, January 31,
1874). Among the other “third candidates” were Broadhurst (Wycombe),
Howell (Aylesbury), Cremer (Warwick), Lucraft (Finsbury), Potter
(Peterborough), Bradlaugh (Northampton), Kane (Middlesborough), Odger
(Southwark), Mottershead (Preston), and Walton (Stoke). See _History of
Labour Representation_, by A. W. Humphrey, 1912.

[433] See House of Commons Returns, No. 237 of the 2nd, and No. 273 of
the 23rd of June 1875.

[434] It is not surprising that this sweeping Parliamentary triumph
evoked great enthusiasm in the Trade Union ranks. At the Trade Union
Congress in October 1875, such ardent Radicals as Odger, Guile, and
George Howell joined in the warmest eulogies of J. K. (afterwards
Viscount) Cross, whose sympathetic attitude had surpassed their utmost
hopes. “The best friends they had in Parliament,” said Howell, “with
one or two exceptions, never declared for the repeal of the Criminal
Law Amendment Act. He, with some friends, was under the gallery of the
House of Commons when the measure was under discussion, and they could
scarcely believe their ears when they heard Mr. Cross declare for the
total repeal of the Act.” And Odger paid testimony to the “immense
singleness of purpose” with which the Home Secretary “had attended
to every proposition that had been placed before him,” and accorded
them “the greatest boon ever given to the sons of toil.” An amendment
deprecating such “fulsome recognition of the action of the Conservative
party” received only four votes (Report of Glasgow Congress, 1875).
Some minor amendments of the law relating to the registration and
friendly benefits of Trade Unions were embodied in the Trade Union Act
Amendment Act of 1876 (39 and 40 Vic. c. 22). See the _Handybook of
the Labour Laws_, by George Howell, 1876, and his _Labour Legislation,
Labour Movements and Labour Leaders_, 1902, pp. 156-72.

[435] Speech at Trades Union Congress, Glasgow, October 1875.

[436] In his letter to a Blackburn millowner, November 3, 1860. _Public
Letters of John Bright_, collected and edited by H. J. Leech, 1885, p.
80.

[437] Letter to Colonel Maude, quoted by Professor Beesly in his
address to the London Trades Council, 1869, reported in _Bricklayers’
Circular_, March 1870.

[438] _Fortnightly Review_, July 1, 1869. “The Trades Union Bill,” by
Frederic Harrison.

[439] William Crawford, the trusted leader of the Durham miners,
and a steadfast opponent of the Eight Hours Bill, in a well-known
letter of later date (of which we have had a copy), emphatically
urges the complete ostracism of non-society men. “You should at least
be consistent. In numberless cases you refuse to descend and ascend
with non-Unionists. The right or wrong of such action I will not now
discuss; but what is the actual state of things found in many parts of
the country? While you refuse to descend and ascend with these men, you
walk to and from the pit, walk in and out bye with them--nay, sometimes
work with them. You mingle with them at home over your glass of beer,
in your chapels, and side by side you pray with them in your prayer
meeting. The time has come when there must be plain speaking on this
matter. It is no use playing at shuttlecock in this important portion
of our social life. Either mingle with these men in the shaft, as you
do in every other place, or let them be ostracised at all times and
in every place. Regard them as unfit companions for yourselves and
your sons, and unfit husbands for your daughters. Let them be branded,
as it were, with the curse of Cain, as unfit to mingle in ordinary,
honest, and respectable society. Until you make up your minds to thus
completely and absolutely ostracise these goats of mankind, cease to
complain as to any results that may arise from their action.” Compare
_A Great Labour Leader_ [Thomas Burt], by Aaron Watson, 1908.

[440] See his letter on the Government Annuities Bill, 1864: “Lastly,
we are told of Government dictation and interference. I cannot believe
men of sense will say this twice seriously.... Leave it to the
political economists to complain.... Let working men remember that
whenever a measure in their interest is proposed to Parliament, or
suggested in the country--whether it be to limit excessive hours of
labour, to protect women and children, to regulate unhealthy labour,
to provide them with the means of health, cleanliness, or recreation,
to save them from the exactions of unscrupulous employers--it is
universally met with opposition from one quarter, that of unrestricted
competition; and opposed on one ground, that of absolute freedom of
private enterprise. We all know--at least, we all explain--how selfish
and shallow this cry is in the mouth of unscrupulous capitalists who
resist the Truck System Bill or the Ten Hours Bill. Is it not suicidal
in working men to raise a cry which has ever been, and still will
be, the great resource of those who strive to set obstacles to their
welfare? The next time working men promote a Short Time Bill of any
kind they will be told to stick to their principle of non-interference
with private capital” (_Beehive_, March 19, 1864).

[441] From 1861 to 1877 the principal working-class organ was the
_Beehive_, established by a group of Trade Unionists who formed a
company in which over a hundred Unions are said to have taken shares.
The editor and virtual proprietor during its whole life appears to
have been George Potter, who was assisted by a Consulting Committee,
on which appeared, at some time or another, the names of all the
leading London Trade Unionists. Potter, as we have already mentioned,
was a man of equivocal character and conduct, who at no time held any
important position in the Trade Union world, though his London Working
Men’s Association made a useful start of the movement for Trade Union
representation in the House of Commons. Under his editorship the
_Beehive_ became the best Labour newspaper which has yet appeared. This
was due to the persistent support of Frederic Harrison, Henry Crompton,
E. S. Beesly, Lloyd Jones, and other friends of Trade Unionism who,
for fifteen years, contributed innumerable articles, whilst such Trade
Union leaders as Applegarth, Howell, and Shipton frequently appeared in
its columns. These contributions make it of the greatest possible value
to the student of Trade Union history. Unfortunately, the most complete
file in any public library--that in the British Museum--begins only in
1869. Mr. John Burns possesses a unique set beginning in 1863, which
he kindly placed at our disposal. In 1877 it was converted into the
_Industrial Review_, which came to an end in 1879.

The place of the _Beehive_ was, in 1881, to some extent taken by the
_Labour Standard_, a penny weekly established by George Shipton, the
Secretary of the London Trades Council. It ran from May 7, 1881, to
April 29, 1882, and contained articles by Henry Crompton and Professor
E. S. Beesly, together with much Trade Union information.




CHAPTER VI

SECTIONAL DEVELOPMENTS

[1863-1885]


From 1851 to 1863 all the effective forces in the Trade Union Movement
were centred in London. Between 1863 and 1867, as we described in the
course of the last chapter, provincial organisations, such as the
Glasgow and Sheffield Trades Councils, and provincial leaders such as
Alexander Macdonald and John Kane, began to play an important part in
the general movement. The dramatic crisis of 1867, and the subsequent
political struggle, compelled us to break off our description of the
growth of the movement in order to follow the Parliamentary action of
the London leaders. But whilst the Junta and their allies were winning
their great victories at Westminster, the centre of gravity of the
Trade Union world was being insensibly shifted from London to the
industrial districts north of the Humber. This was primarily due to the
rapid growth of two great provincial organisations, the federations of
Coal-miners and Cotton Operatives.

The Miners, now one of the most powerful contingents of the Trade Union
forces, were, until 1863, without any effective organisation. The
Miners’ Association of Great Britain, which, as we have seen, sprang
in 1841-43 into a vigorous existence, collapsed in 1848. An energetic
attempt made by Martin Jude to re-establish a National Association
in 1850, when a conference was held at Newcastle, was, in consequence
of the continued depression in the coal trade, entirely unsuccessful.
For the next few years “the fragments of union that existed got less
by degrees and more minute till, at the close of 1855, it might be
said that union among the miners in the whole country had almost died
out.”[442] The revival which took place between 1858 and 1863 was due,
in the main, to the persistent work of the able man who became for
fifteen years their trusted leader.

Alexander Macdonald, to whose lifelong devotion the miners owe their
present position in the Trade Union world, stands, like William Newton,
midway between the casual and amateur leaders of the old Trade Unionism
and the paid officials of the new type. Himself originally a miner and
the son of a miner, the education and independent means which he had
acquired enabled him, from 1857 onwards, to apply himself continuously
to the miners’ cause. A florid style, and somewhat flashy personality,
did him no harm with the rough and uneducated workmen whom he had to
marshal. The main source of his effectiveness lay, however, neither
in his oratory nor in his powers of organisation, but in his exact
appreciation of the particular changes that would remedy the miners’
grievances, and in the tactical skill with which he embodied these
changes in legislative form. Like his friends, Allan and Applegarth,
he relied almost exclusively on Parliamentary agitation as a means for
securing his ends. But whilst the Junta were contenting themselves
with securing political freedom for Trade Unionists, Macdonald from
the first persistently pressed for the legislative regulation of the
conditions of labour. And though, like his London allies, he consorted
largely with the middle-class friends of Trade Unionism, and freely
utilised their help in the House of Commons, he proved his superior
originality and tenacity of mind by never in the slightest degree
abandoning the fundamental principle of Trade Unionism--the compulsory
maintenance of the workman’s Standard of Life.

“It was in 1856,” said Macdonald on a later occasion, “that I crossed
the Border first to advocate a better Mines Act, true weighing, the
education of the young, the restriction of the age till twelve years,
the reduction of the working hours to eight in every twenty-four, the
training of managers, the payment of wages weekly in the current coin
of the realm, no truck, and many other useful things too numerous to
mention here. Shortly after that, bone began to come to bone, and by
1858 we were in full action for better laws.”[443] The pit clubs and
informal committees that pressed these demands upon the legislature
became centres of local organisation, with which Macdonald kept up an
incessant correspondence. An arbitrary lock-out of several thousand
men by the South Yorkshire coal-owners in 1858 welded the miners
of that coalfield into a compact district association, and enabled
Macdonald, in the same year, to get together a national conference at
Ashton-under-Lyne, at which, however, the delegates could claim to
represent only four thousand men in union. In 1860, when the Mines
Regulation Act was being passed into law, Macdonald was able to score
a success in the “checkweigher” clause, to which we shall again refer.
Not until the end of 1863, however, can the Miners’ National Union
be said to have been effectively established; and the proceedings of
the Leeds Conference of that year strike the note of the policy which
Macdonald, to the day of his death, never ceased to press upon the
miners, and to which the great majority of them have now, after a
temporary digression, once more returned.

The Miners’ Conference at Leeds was in many respects a notable
gathering. Instead of the formless interchange of talk which had marked
the previous conference, Macdonald induced the fifty-one delegates
who sat from the 9th to the 14th of November 1863 at the People’s
Co-operative Hall to organise their meeting on the model of the
National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, and divide
themselves into three sections, on Law, on Grievances, and on Social
Organisation, each of which reported to the whole conference.[444] The
proceedings of the day were opened with prayer by the “Chaplain to
the Conference,” the Rev. Joseph Rayner Stephens, celebrated as the
opponent of the New Poor Law and the advocate of factory legislation
and Chartism.[445] In the reports of the sections and the numerous
resolutions of the conference we find all the points of Macdonald’s
programme. The paramount importance of securing the Standard of Life by
means of legislative regulation of the conditions of work is embodied
in a lengthy series of proposals which have nearly all since been
inserted in the detailed code of mining law. In contradistinction to
the view which would make wages depend upon prices, the principle
of controlling industry in such a way as to prevent encroachments
on the workman’s standard maintenance is clearly foreshadowed.
“Overtoil,” says the report, “produces over-supply; low prices and low
wages follow; bad habits and bad health follow, of course; and then
diminished production and profits are inevitable. Reduction of toil,
and consequent improved bodily health, increases production in the
sense of profit; and limits it so as to avoid overstocking; better
wages induce better habits, and economy of working follows.... The
evil of overtoil and over-supply upon wages, and upon the labourer, is
therefore a fair subject of complaint; and, we submit, as far as these
are human by conventional arrangements, are a fair and proper subject
of regulation. Regulations must, of course, be twofold. Part can be
legislated for by compulsory laws; but the principle (_sic_) must be
the subject of voluntary agreement.”[446] The restriction of labour in
mines to a maximum of eight hours per day was strongly urged; but at
Macdonald’s instance it was astutely resolved not to ask for a legal
regulation of the hours of adult men, but to confine the Parliamentary
proposal to a Bill for boys. And it is interesting to observe already
at this time the beginning of the deep cleavage between the miners of
Northumberland and Durham and their fellow-workers elsewhere. The close
connection between the legal regulation of the hours of boys and the
fixing of the men’s day is brought out by William Crawford; the future
leader of the Durham men. The general feeling of the conference was
in favour of a drastic legal prohibition of boys being kept in the
mine for more than eight hours, but Crawford declared that “an eight
hours bill could not be carried out in his district. He wanted the boys
to work ten hours a day, and the men six hours.”[447] He therefore
proposed a legal Ten Hours Day for the boys. The conference, however,
declined to depart from the principle of Eight Hours; and the Bill
drafted in this sense was eventually adopted without dissent.

Another reform advocated by Macdonald has had far-reaching though
unforeseen effect upon the miners’ organisation. The arbitrary
confiscation of the miners’ pay for any tubs or hutches which were
declared to be improperly filled had long been a source of extreme
irritation. It had become a regular practice of unscrupulous
coal-owners to condemn a considerable percentage of the men’s
hutches, and thus escape payment for part of the coal hewn. The
grievance was aggravated by the absolute dependence of the miner,
working underground, upon the honesty and accuracy of the agent of
the employer on the surface, who recorded the amount of his work. A
demand was accordingly made by the men for permission to have their own
representative at the pit-bank, who should check the weight to be paid
for. During the year 1859 great contests took place in South Yorkshire,
in which, after embittered resistance, the employers in several
collieries conceded this boon. A determined attempt was then made by
the South Yorkshire Miners’ Union, aided by Macdonald, to insert a
clause in the Mines Regulation Bill, making it compulsory to weigh the
coal, and to allow a representative of the men to check the weight.
A great Parliamentary fight took place on the men’s amendment, with
the result that the Act of 1860 empowered the miners of each pit to
appoint a checkweigher, but confined their choice to persons actually
in employment at the particular mine.[448] This important victory was
long rendered nugatory by the evasions of the coal-owners. At Barnsley,
for instance, Normansell, appointed checkweigher, was promptly
dismissed from employment and refused access to the pit’s mouth. When
the employer was fined for this breach of the law he appealed to the
Queen’s Bench; and it cost the Union two years of costly litigation
to enforce the reinstatement of the men’s agent.[449] The next twenty
years are full of attempts by coal-owners to avoid compliance with
this law. Where the men could not be persuaded or terrified into
forgoing their right to appoint a checkweigher, every device was used
to hamper his work. Sometimes he was excluded from close access to the
weighing-machine. In other pits the weights were fenced up so that
he could not clearly see them. His calculations were hotly disputed,
and his interference bitterly resented. The Miners’ Unions, however,
steadily fought their way to perfect independence for the checkweigher.
The Mines Regulation Act of 1872 slightly strengthened his position.
Finally the Act of 1887, confirmed by that of 1911, made clear the
right of the men, by a decision of the majority of those employed in
any pit, to have, at the expense of the whole pit, a checkweigher with
full power to keep an accurate and independent record of each man’s
work.

It would be interesting to trace to what extent the special
characteristics of the miners’ organisations are due to the influence
of this one legislative reform. Its recognition and promotion
of collective action by the men has been a direct incitement to
combination. The compulsory levy, upon the whole pit, of the cost of
maintaining the agent whom a bare majority could decide to appoint
has practically found, for each colliery, a branch secretary free
of expense to the Union. But the result upon the character of the
officials has been even more important. The checkweigher has to be
a man of character insensible to the bullying or blandishments of
manager or employers. He must be of strictly regular habits, accurate
and business-like in mind, and quick at figures. The ranks of the
checkweighers serve thus as an admirable recruiting ground from which a
practically inexhaustible supply of efficient Trade Union secretaries
or labour representatives can be drawn.

The Leeds Conference of 1863 was the first of a series of yearly
or half-yearly gatherings of miners’ delegates which did much to
consolidate their organisation. The powerful aid brought by Macdonald
to the movement for the Master and Servant Act of 1867 has already
been described. But between 1864 and 1869 the almost uninterrupted
succession of strikes and lock-outs, in one county or another,
prevented the National Association from taking a firm hold on the men
in the less organised districts. In 1869 a rival federation, called
the Amalgamated Association of Miners, was formed by the men of some
Lancashire pits, to secure more systematic support of local strikes.
This split only increased the number of miners in union, which in a few
years reached the unprecedented total of two hundred thousand.

It is easy to understand how much this army of miners, marshalled by
an expert Parliamentary tactician, added to the political weight of
the Trade Union leaders. Though only partially enfranchised, their
influence at the General Election of 1868 was marked; and when, in
1871, the Trades Union Congress appointed a Parliamentary Committee
Macdonald became its chairman. Next year he succeeded in getting
embodied in the new Mines Regulation Act many of the minor amendments
of the law for which he had been pressing; and in 1874 he and his
colleague, Thomas Burt, became, as we have seen, the first working-men
members of the House of Commons.

Not less important than the somewhat scattered hosts of the Coal-miners
was the compact body of the Lancashire Cotton Operatives, who,
from 1869 onward, began to be reckoned as an integral part of the
Trade Union world. The Lancashire textile workers, who had, in the
early part of the century, played such a prominent part in the
Trade Union Movement, and whose energetic “Short Time Committees”
had, in 1847, obtained the Ten Hours Act, appear to have fallen,
during the subsequent years, into a state of disorganisation and
disunion. In 1853, it is true, the present Amalgamated Association
of Cotton-spinners was established; but this federal Union was
weakened, until 1869, by the abstention or lukewarmness of the local
organisations of such important districts as Oldham and Bolton. The
cotton-weavers were in a somewhat similar condition. The Blackburn
Association, established in 1853, was gradually overshadowed by the
North-East Lancashire Association, a federation of the local weavers’
societies in the smaller towns, established in 1858. This association,
growing out of a secession from the Blackburn organisation, had for its
special object the combined support of a skilled calculator of prices,
able to defend the operatives’ interests in the constant discussions
which arose upon the complicated lists of piecework rates which
characterise the English cotton industry.[450]

It is difficult to convey to the general reader any adequate idea of
the important effect which these elaborate “Lists” have had upon the
Trade Union Movement in Lancashire. The universal satisfaction with,
and even preference for, the piecework system among the Lancashire
cotton operatives is entirely due to the existence of these definitely
fixed and published statements. An even more important result has been
the creation of a peculiar type of Trade Union official. For although
the lists are elaborately worked out in detail--the Bolton Spinning
List, for instance, comprising eighty-five pages closely filled with
figures[451]--the intricacy of the calculations is such as to be beyond
the comprehension not only of the ordinary operative or manufacturer,
but even of the investigating mathematician without a very minute
knowledge of the technical detail. Yet the week’s earnings of every one
of the tens of thousands of operatives are computed by an exact and
often a separate calculation under these lists. And when an alteration
of the list is in question, the standard wage of a whole district may
depend upon the quickness and accuracy with which the operatives’
negotiator apprehends the precise effect of each projected change in
any of the numerous factors in the calculation. It will be obvious that
for work of this nature the successful organiser or “born orator”
was frequently quite unfit. There grew up, therefore, both among the
weavers and the spinners, a system of selection of new secretaries by
competitive examination, which has gradually been perfected as the
examiners--that is, the existing officials--have themselves become
more skilled. The first secretary to undergo this ordeal was Thomas
Birtwistle,[452] who in 1861 began his thirty years’ honourable and
successful service of the Lancashire Weavers. Within a few years he was
reinforced by other officials selected for the same characteristics.
From 1871 onwards the counsels of the Trade Union Movement were
strengthened by the introduction of “the cotton men,” a body of keen,
astute, and alert-minded officials--a combination, in the Trade Union
world, of the accountant and the lawyer.

Under such guidance the Lancashire cotton operatives achieved
extraordinary success. Their first task was in all districts to
obtain and perfect the lists. The rate and method of remuneration
being in this way secured, their energy was devoted to improving the
other conditions of their labour by means of appropriate legislation.
Ever since 1830 the Lancashire operatives, especially the spinners,
have strongly supported the legislative regulation of the hours and
other conditions of their industry. In 1867 a delegate meeting of the
Lancashire textile operatives, under the presidency of the Rev. J. R.
Stephens, had resolved “to agitate for such a measure of legislative
restriction as shall secure a uniform Eight Hours Bill in factories,
exclusive of meal-times, for adults, females, and young persons, and
that such Eight Hours Bill have for its foundation a restriction
on the moving power.”[453] On the improvement of trade and the
revival of Trade Union strength in 1871-72 this policy was again
resorted to. The Oldham spinners tried, indeed, in 1871, to secure a
“Twelve-o’clock Saturday” by means of a strike. But on the failure of
this attempt the delegates of the various local societies, both of
spinners and weavers--usually the officials of the trade--met together
and established, on the 7th of January 1872, the Factory Acts Reform
Association, for the purpose of obtaining such an amendment of the law
as would reduce the hours of labour from sixty to fifty-four per week.

The Parliamentary policy of these shrewd tacticians is only another
instance of the practical opportunism of the English Trade Unionist.
The cotton officials demurred in 1872 to an overt alliance with the
Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress, just then engaged
in its heated agitation for a repeal of the Criminal Law Amendment
Act. “Some members of the Short Time Committee,” states, without
resentment, the Congress report, “thought that even co-operation
with the Congress Committee would be disastrous rather than useful,
... as Lord Shaftesbury and others declared they would not undertake
a measure proposed in the interest of the Trades Unions.”[454] So
far as the public and the House of Commons were concerned, the Bill
was accordingly, as we are told, “based upon quite other grounds.”
Its provisions were ostensibly restricted, like those of the Ten
Hours Act, to women and children; and to the support of Trade Union
champions such as Thomas Hughes and A. J. Mundella was added that
of such philanthropists as Lord Shaftesbury and Samuel Morley. But
it is scarcely necessary to say that it was not entirely, or even
exclusively, for the sake of the women and children that the skilled
leaders of the Lancashire cotton operatives had diverted their “Short
Time Movement” from aggressive strikes to Parliamentary agitation.
The private minutes of the Factory Acts Reform Association contain
no mention of the woes of the women and the children, but reflect
throughout the demand of the adult male spinners for a shorter day.
And in the circular “to the factory operatives,” calling the original
meeting of the association, we find the spinners’ secretary combating
the fallacy that “any legislative interference with male adult
labour is an economic error,” and demanding “a legislative enactment
largely curtailing the hours of factory labour,” in order that his
constituents, who were exclusively adult males, might enjoy “the nine
hours per day, or fifty-four hours per week, so liberally conceded to
other branches of workmen.”[455] It was, however, neither necessary nor
expedient to take this line in public. The experience of a generation
had taught the Lancashire operatives that any effective limitation of
the factory day for women and children could not fail to bring with it
an equivalent shortening of the hours of the men who worked with them.
And in the state of mind, in 1872, of the House of Commons, and even of
the workmen in other trades, it would have proved as impossible as it
did in 1847 to secure an avowed restriction of the hours of male adults.

The Short Time Bill was therefore so drafted as to apply in express
terms only to women and children, whose sufferings under a ten hours
day were made much of on the platform and in the press. The battle, in
fact, was, as one of the leading combatants has declared,[456] “fought
from behind the women’s petticoats.” But it was a part of the irony of
the situation that, as Broadhurst subsequently pointed out,[457] the
Bill “encountered great opposition from the female organisations”;
and it was, in fact, expressly in the interests of working women that
Professor Fawcett, in the session of 1873, moved the rejection of
the measure.[458] Even as limited to women and children the proposal
encountered a fierce resistance from the factory owners and the
capitalists of all industries. The opinion of the House of Commons
was averse from any further restriction upon the employers’ freedom.
The Ministry of the day lent it no assistance. The Bill, introduced
in 1872, and again in 1873, made no progress. At length, in 1873, the
Government shelved the question by appointing a Royal Commission to
inquire into the working of the Factory Acts. But a General Election
was now drawing near; and “a Factory Nine Hours Bill for Women and
Children” was incorporated in the Parliamentary programme pressed upon
candidates by the whole Trade Union world.[459]

We have already pointed out what an attentive ear the Conservative
party was at this time giving to the Trade Union demands. It is
therefore not surprising that when Mundella, in the new Parliament,
once more introduced his Bill, the Home Secretary, Mr. (afterwards
Viscount) Cross, announced that the Government would bring forward
a measure of their own. The fact that the Government draft was
euphemistically entitled the “Factories (Health of Women, etc.) Bill”
did not conciliate the opponents of the shorter factory day which
it ensured; but, to the great satisfaction of the spinners, this
opposition was unsuccessful; and, if not a nine hours day, at any rate
a 56½ hours week became law. This short and successful Parliamentary
campaign brought the cotton operatives into closer contact with
the London leaders; and from 1875 the Lancashire representatives
exercised an important influence in the Trades Union Congress and its
Parliamentary Committee. Henceforth detailed amendments of the Factory
Acts, and increased efficiency in their administration, become almost
standing items in the official Trade Union programme.

An interesting parallelism might be traced between the cotton
operatives on the one hand and the coal-miners on the other. To
outward seeming no two occupations could be more unlike. Yet without
community of interest, without official intercourse, and without any
traceable imitation, the organisations of the two trades show striking
resemblances to each other in history, in structural development,
and in characteristics of policy, method, and aims. Many of these
similarities may arise from the remarkable local aggregation in
particular districts, which is common to both industries. From this
local aggregation spring, perhaps, the possibilities of a strong
federation existing without centralised funds, and of a permanent trade
society enduring without friendly benefits. A further similarity may be
seen in the creation, in each case, of a special class of Trade Union
officials, far more numerous in proportion to membership than is usual
in the engineering or building trades. But the most noticeable, and
perhaps the most important, of these resemblances is the constancy with
which both the miners and the cotton operatives have adhered to the
legislative protection of the Standard of Life as a leading principle
of their Trade Unionism.

Whilst these important divisions of the Trade Union army were aiming
at legislative protection, victories in another field were bringing
whole sections of Trade Unionists to a different conclusion. The
successful Nine Hours Movement of 1871-72--the reduction, by collective
bargaining, of the hours of labour in the engineering and building
trades--rivalled the legislative triumphs of the miners and the cotton
operatives.

Since the great strikes in the London building trades in 1859-61, the
movement in favour of a reduction of the hours of labour had been
dragging on in various parts of the country. The masons, carpenters,
and other building operatives had in many towns, and after more or
less conflict, secured what was termed the Nine Hours Day. In 1866
an agitation arose among the engineers of Tyneside for a similar
concession; but the sudden depression of trade put an end to the
project. In 1870, when the subject was discussed at the Newcastle
“Central District Committee” of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers,
the spirit of caution prevailed, and no action was taken. Suddenly, at
the beginning of 1871, the Sunderland men took the matter up, and came
out on strike on the 1st of April. After four weeks’ struggle, almost
before the engineers elsewhere had realised that there was any chance
of success, the local employers gave way, and the Nine Hours Day was
won.

It was evident that the Sunderland movement was destined to spread to
the other engineering centres in the neighbourhood; and the master
engineers of the entire North-Eastern District promptly assembled
at Newcastle on April 8 to concert a united resistance to the men’s
demands. The operatives had first to form their organisation. Though
Newcastle has since become one of the best centres of Trade Unionism,
the Amalgamated Society of Engineers could, in 1871, count only five
or six hundred members in the town; the Boilermakers, Steam-Engine
Makers, and Ironfounders were also weak, and probably two out of three
of the men in the engineering trade belonged to no Union whatsoever. A
“Nine Hours League,” embracing Unionists and non-Unionists alike, was
accordingly formed for the special purpose of the agitation; and this
body was fortunate enough to elect as its President John Burnett,[460]
a leading member of the local branch of the Amalgamated Society,
afterwards to become widely known as the General Secretary of that
great organisation. The “Nine Hours League” became, in fact though
not in name, a temporary Trade Union, its committee conducting all
the negotiations on the men’s behalf, appealing to the Trade Union
world for funds for their support, and managing all the details of the
conflict that ensued.[461]

The five months’ strike which led up to a signal victory for the men
was, in more than one respect, a notable event in Trade Union annals.
The success with which several thousands of unorganised workmen,
unprovided with any accumulated funds, were marshalled and disciplined,
and the ability displayed in the whole management of the dispute, made
the name of their leader celebrated throughout the world of labour.
The tactical skill and literary force with which the men’s case was
presented achieved the unprecedented result of securing for their
demands the support of the _Times_[462] and the _Spectator_. Money was
subscribed slowly at first, but after three months poured in from all
sides. Joseph Cowen, of the _Newcastle Daily Chronicle_, was from the
first an ardent supporter of the men, and assisted them in many ways.
The employers in all parts of the kingdom took alarm; and a kind of
levy of a shilling for each man employed was made upon the engineering
firms in aid of the heavy expenses of the Newcastle masters. In spite
of the active exertions of the “International,” several hundred foreign
workmen were imported; but many of these were subsequently induced to
desert.[463] Finally the employers conceded the principal of the men’s
demands; and fifty-four hours became the locally recognised week’s time
in all the engineering trades.

This widely advertised success, coming at a time of expanding trade,
greatly promoted the movement for the Nine Hours Day. From one end of
the kingdom to the other, every little Trade Union branch discussed
the expediency of sending in notices to the employers. The engineering
trades in London, Manchester, and other great centres induced their
employers to grant their demands without a strike. The great army of
workmen engaged in the shipbuilding yards on the Clyde even bettered
this example, securing a fifty-one hours week. The building operatives
quickly followed suit. Demands for a diminution of the working day,
with an increased rate of pay per hour, were handed in by local
officials of the Carpenters, Masons, Bricklayers, Plumbers, and other
organisations. In many cases non-society men took the lead in the
movement; but it was soon found that the immediate success of the
applications depended on the estimate formed by the employers of the
men’s financial resources, and their capacity to withhold their labour
for a time sufficient to cause embarrassment to business. Wherever the
employers were assured of this fact, they usually gave way without
a conflict. The successes accordingly did much to create, in the
industries in question, a preference for combination and collective
bargaining as a means of improving the conditions of labour. The
prevalence of systematic overtime, which has since proved so formidable
a deduction from the advantages gained by the Nine Hours Movement,
was either overlooked by sanguine officials, or covertly welcomed by
individual workmen as affording opportunities for working at a higher
rate of remuneration.[464] On the other hand, it was a patent fact that
the mechanic employed in attending to the machinery of a textile mill
was the only member of his trade who was excluded from participation in
the shortening of hours enjoyed by his fellow-tradesmen; and that his
failure to secure a shorter day was an incidental consequence of the
existence of legislative restrictions. Thus, at the very time that the
textile operatives and coal-miners were, as we have seen, exhibiting
a marked tendency to look more and more to Parliamentary action for
the protection of the Standard of Life, the facts, as they presented
themselves to the Amalgamated Engineer or Carpenter, were leading the
members of these trades to a diametrically opposite conclusion.

But though faith in trade combinations and collective bargaining was
strengthened by the success of the Nine Hours Movement, the victories
of the men did not increase the prestige of the two great Amalgamated
Societies. The growing adhesion of the Junta to the economic views
of their middle-class friends was marked by the silent abandonment
by Allan, Applegarth, and Guile of all leadership in trade matters.
Already in 1865 we find the Executive Council of the Amalgamated
Engineers explaining that, although they sympathised with advance
movements, they felt unable to either support them by grants or to
advise their members to vote a special levy.[465] The “backwardness
of the Council of the Engineers” constantly provoked angry criticism.
The chief obstacles to advancement were declared to be Danter, the
President of the Council, and the General Secretary, whose minds had
been narrowed “by the routine of years of service within certain
limits.... Never, since it effected amalgamation, has the Society
solved one social problem; nor has it now an idea of future progress.
Its money is unprofitably and injudiciously invested--even with a
miser’s care--while its councils are marked with all the chilly apathy
of a worn-out mission.”[466] What proved to be the greatest trade
movement since 1852 was undertaken in spite of the official disapproval
of the governing body, and was carried to a successful issue without
the provision from headquarters of any leadership or control. Though
the Nine Hours Strike actually began in Sunderland on April 1, 1871,
the London Executive remained silent on the subject until July.
Towards the end of that month, when the Newcastle men had been out for
seven weeks, a circular was issued inviting the branches to collect
voluntary subscriptions for their struggling brethren. Ultimately, in
September, the “Contingent Fund,” out of which strike pay is given,
was re-established by vote of the branches; and the strike allowance
of 5s. per week, over and above the ordinary out-of-work pay, was
issued, after fourteen weeks’ struggle, to the small minority of the
men on strike who were members of the Society. An emissary was sent
to the Continent, at the Society’s expense, to defeat the employers’
attempt to bring over foreign engineers; but with this exception all
the expenses of the struggle were defrayed from the subscriptions
collected by the Nine Hours League.[467] And if we turn for a moment
from the Amalgamated Society of Engineers to the other great trade and
friendly societies of the time, it is easy, in the minutes of their
Executive Councils and the proceedings of their branches, to watch the
same tendency at work. Whether it is the Masons or the Tailors, the
Ironfounders or the Carpenters, we see the same abandonment by the
Central Executive of any dominant principle of trade policy, the same
absence of initiative in trade movements, and the same more or less
persistent struggle to check the trade activity of its branches. In the
Amalgamated Society of Carpenters, for example, we find, during these
years, no attempt by headquarters to “level up” the wages of low-paid
districts, or to grapple with the problems of overtime or piecework. We
watch, on the contrary, the branches defending themselves before the
Executive for their little spurts of local activity, and pleading, in
order to wring from a reluctant treasury the concession of strike pay,
that they have been dragged into the “Advance Movement” by the more
aggressive policy of the “General Union” (the rival trade society of
the old type), or by irresponsible “strike-committees” of non-society
men.

Time and growth were, in fact, revealing the drawbacks of the
constitution with which Newton and Allan had endowed their cherished
amalgamation, and which had been so extensively copied by other
trades. The difficulties arising from the attempt to unite, in one
organisation, men working in the numerous distinct branches of the
engineering trade, demanded constant thought and attention. The rapid
changes in the industry, especially in connection with the growing use
of new machinery, needed to be met by a well-considered flexibility,
dictated by full knowledge of the facts, and some largeness of view. To
maintain a harmonious yet progressive trade policy in all the hundreds
of branches would, of itself, have taxed the skill of a body of experts
free from other preoccupations. All these duties were, however, cast
upon a single salaried officer,[468] working under a committee of
artisans who met in the evening after an exhausting day of physical
toil.

The result might have been foreseen. The rapid growth of the society
brought with it a huge volume of detailed business. Every grant of
accident benefit or superannuation allowance was made by the Executive
Council. Every week this body had to decide on scores of separate
applications for gifts from the Benevolent Fund. Every time any of the
tens of thousands of members failed to get what he wanted from his
branch, he appealed to the Executive Council. Every month an extensive
trade report had to be issued. Every quarter the branch accounts had
to be examined, dissected, and embodied in an elaborate summary,
itself absorbing no small amount of labour and thought. The hundreds
of branch secretaries and treasurers had to be constantly supervised,
checked by special audits, and perpetually admonished for negligent or
accidental breaches of the complicated code by which the Society was
governed. The Executive Council became, in fact, absorbed in purely
“treasury” work, and spent a large part of its time in protecting the
funds of the Society from extravagance, laxity of administration, or
misappropriation. The quantity of routine soon became enormous; and the
whole attention of the General Secretary was given to coping with the
mass of details which poured in upon him by every post.

This huge friendly society business brought with it, too, its special
bias. Allan grew more and more devoted to the accumulating fund,
which was alike the guarantee and the symbol of the success of his
organisation. Nothing was important enough to warrant any inroad
on this sacred balance. The Engineers’ Central Executive, indeed,
practically laid aside the weapon of the strike. “We believe,” said
Allan before the Royal Commission in 1867, “that all strikes are a
complete waste of money, not only in relation to the workmen, but
also to the employers.”[469] The “Contingent Fund,” out of which
alone strike pay could be given, was between 1860 and 1872 repeatedly
abolished by vote of the members, re-established for a short time,
and again abolished. Trade Unionists who remembered the old conflicts
viewed with surprise and alarm the spirit which had come over the once
active organisation. Even the experienced Dunning, whose moderation
had, as we have suggested, dictated the first manifesto in which the
new spirit can be traced, was moved to denunciation of Allan’s apathy.
“As a Trade Union,” he writes in 1866, “the once powerful Amalgamated
Society of Engineers is now as incapable to engage in a strike as
the Hearts of Oak, the Foresters, or any other extensive benefit
society.... It formerly combined both functions, but now it possesses
only one, that of a benefit society, with relief for members when out
of work or travelling for employment superadded.... The Amalgamated
Engineers, as a trade society, has ceased to exist.”[470]

It would be a mistake to assume that the inertia and supineness of the
“Amalgamated” Societies was a necessary result of their accumulated
funds or their friendly benefits. The remarkable energy and success of
the United Society of Boilermakers and Iron-shipbuilders, established
in 1832, and between 1865 and 1875 rapidly increasing in membership and
funds, shows that elaborate friendly benefits are not inconsistent with
a strong and consistent trade policy. This quite exceptional success
is, we believe, due to the fact that the Boilermakers provided an
adequate salaried staff to attend to their trade affairs. The “district
delegates” who were, between 1873 and 1889, appointed for every
important district, are absolutely unconcerned with the administration
of friendly benefits, and devote themselves exclusively to the work of
Collective Bargaining. Unlike the General Secretaries of the Engineers,
Carpenters, Stonemasons, or Ironfounders, who had but one salaried
assistant, Robert Knight, the able secretary of the Boilermakers had
under his orders an expert professional staff, and was accordingly
able, not only to keep both employers and unruly members in check, but
also successfully to adapt the Union policy to the changing conditions
of the industry. In short, it was not the presence of friendly
benefits, but the absence of any such class of professional organisers
as exists in the organisations of the Coal-miners, Cotton Operatives,
and Boilermakers, that created the deadlock in the administration of
the great trade friendly societies.[471]

The direct result of this abnegation of trade leadership was a complete
arrest of the tendency to amalgamation, and, in some cases, even a
breaking away of sections already within the organisation. The various
independent societies, such as the Boilermakers, Steam-Engine Makers,
and the Co-operative Smiths, gave up all idea of joining their larger
rival. In 1872 the Patternmakers, who had long been discontented at
the neglect of their special trade interests, formed an organisation
of their own, which has since competed with the Amalgamated for the
allegiance of this exceptionally skilled class of engineers. Nor was
Allan at all eager to make his organisation co-extensive with the
whole engineering industry. The dominant idea of the early years
of the amalgamation--the protection of those who had, by regular
apprenticeship, acquired “a right to the trade”--excluded many men
actually working at one branch or another, whilst the friendly society
bias against unprofitable recruits co-operated to restrict the
membership to such sections of the engineering industry, and such
members of each section, as could earn a minimum time wage fixed for
each locality by the District Committee.

This exclusiveness necessarily led to the development of other
societies, which accepted those workmen who were not eligible for
the larger organisation. The little local clubs of Machine-workers
and Metal-planers expanded between 1867 and 1872 into national
organisations, and began to claim consideration at the hands of
the better paid engineers, on whose heels they were treading. New
societies, such as those of the National Society of Amalgamated
Brass-workers, the Independent Order of Engineers and Machinists, and
the Amalgamated Society of Kitchen Range, Stove Grate, Gas Stoves,
Hot Water, Art Metal, and other Smiths and Fitters, sprang into
existence during 1872, in avowed protest against the “aristocratic”
rule of excluding all workmen who were not receiving a high standard
rate. The Associated Blacksmiths of Scotland, which had been formed
in 1857 out of a class of smiths which was, at the time, unrecognised
in the rules of the Amalgamated, now began steadily to increase in
membership. Finally, during the decade various local societies were
refused the privilege of amalgamation on the ground that either they
included sections of the trade not recognised by the rules, or that the
average age of their constituents was such as to make them unprofitable
members of a society giving heavy superannuation benefit. To the
tendency to create an “aristocracy of labour” was added, therefore, the
fastidiousness of an insurance company.

Many causes were thus co-operating to shift the centre of Trade Union
influence from London to the provinces. The great trade friendly
societies of Engineers, Carpenters, and Ironfounders were losing
that lead in Trade Union matters which the political activity of
the Junta had acquired for them. The Junta itself was breaking up.
Applegarth, in many respects the leader of the group, resigned his
secretaryship in 1871, and left the Trade Union Movement. Odger, who
lived until 1877, was from 1870 onwards devoting himself more and
more to general politics. Allan, long suffering from an incurable
disease, died in 1874. Meanwhile provincial Trade Unionism was growing
apace. The Amalgamated Society of Engineers, so long pre-eminent in
numbers, began to be overshadowed by the federations of Coal-miners
and Cotton Operatives. Even in the iron trades it found rivals in the
rapidly growing organisations of Boilermakers (Iron-shipbuilders),
whose headquarters were at Newcastle, and the Ironworkers centred at
Darlington, whilst minor engineering societies were cropping up in all
directions in the northern counties. The tendency to abandon London was
further shown by the decision of the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters
in 1871 to remove their head office to Manchester, a change which had
the incidental effect of depriving the London leaders of the counsels
of Applegarth’s successor, J. D. Prior, one of the ablest disciples of
the Junta.

But although London was losing its hold on the Trade Union Movement, no
other town inherited the leadership. Manchester, it is true, attracted
to itself the headquarters of many national societies, and contained in
these years perhaps the strongest group of Trade Union officials.[472]
But there was no such concentration of all the effective forces as had
formerly resulted in the Junta. Though Manchester might have furnished
the nucleus of a Trade Union Cabinet, Alexander Macdonald was to be
found either in Glasgow or London, Robert Knight at Liverpool and
afterwards in Newcastle, John Kane at Darlington, the miners’ agents
all over the country, whilst Henry Broadhurst (who in 1875 succeeded
George Howell as the Secretary of the Parliamentary Committee),
John Burnett, the General Secretary of the Amalgamated Society of
Engineers, and George Shipton, the Secretary of the London Trades
Council, naturally remained in the Metropolis. The result of the
shifting from London was, accordingly, not the establishment elsewhere
of any new executive centre of the Trade Union Movement, but the rise
of a sectional spirit, the promotion of sectional interests, and the
elaboration of sectional policies on the part of the different trades.

We have attempted in some detail to describe the internal growth of
the Trade Union Movement between 1867 and 1875, in order to enable
the reader to understand the disheartening collapse which ensued in
1878-79, and the subsequent splitting up of the Trade Union world into
the hostile camps once more designated the Old Unionists and the New.
But all the unsatisfactory features of 1871-75 were, during these
years, submerged by a wave of extraordinary commercial prosperity and
Trade Union expansion. The series of Parliamentary successes of 1871-75
produced, as we have seen, a feeling of triumphant elation among
the Trade Union leaders. To the little knot of working men who had
conducted the struggle for emancipation and recognition, the progress
of these years seemed almost beyond belief. In 1867 the officials of
the Unions were regarded as pothouse agitators, “unscrupulous men,
leading a half idle life, fattening on the contributions of their
dupes,” and maintaining, by violence and murder, a system of terrorism
which was destructive, not only of the industry of the nation, but also
of the prosperity and independence of character of the unfortunate
working men who were their victims. The Unionist workman, tramping with
his card in search of employment, was regarded by the constable and the
magistrate as something between a criminal vagrant and a revolutionist.
In 1875 the officials of the great societies found themselves elected
to the local School Boards, and even to the House of Commons,
pressed by the Government to accept seats on Royal Commissions, and
respectfully listened to in the lobby. And these political results were
but the signs of an extraordinary expansion of the Trade Union Movement
itself. “The year just closed,” says the report of the Parliamentary
Committee in January 1874, “has been unparalleled for the rapid growth
and development of Trade Unionism. In almost every trade this appears
to have been the same; but it is especially remarkable in those
branches of industry which have hitherto been but badly organised.”
Exact numerical details cannot now be ascertained; but the Trades Union
Congress of 1872 claimed to represent only 375,000 organised workmen,
whilst that of 1874 included delegates from nearly three times as many
societies, representing a nominal total of 1,191,922 members.[473] It
is possible that between 1871 and 1875 the number of Trade Unionists
was more than doubled.

We see this progress reflected in the minds of the employers. At
the end of 1873 we find the newly established National Federation
of Associated Employers of Labour declaring that “the voluntary and
intermittent efforts of individual employers,” or even employers’
associations confined to a single trade or locality, are helpless
against “the extraordinary development--far-reaching, but openly-avowed
designs--and elaborate organisation of the Trade Unions.” “Few are
aware,” continues this manifesto, “of the extent, compactness of
organisation, large resources, and great influence of the Trade
Unions.... They have the control of enormous funds, which they expend
freely in furtherance of their objects; and the proportion of their
earnings which the operatives devote to the service of their leaders
is startling.... They have a well-paid and ample staff of leaders,
most of them experienced in the conduct of strikes, many of them
skilful as organisers, all forming a class apart, a profession, with
interests distinct from, though not necessarily antagonistic to, those
of the workpeople they lead, but from their very _raison d’être_
hostile to those of the employers and the rest of the community....
They have, through their command of money, the imposing aspect of
their organisation, and partly, also, from the mistaken humanitarian
aspirations of a certain number of literary men of good standing, a
large army of literary talent which is _prompt_ in their service on
all occasions of controversy. They have their own press as a field for
these exertions. Their writers have free access to some of the leading
London journals. They organise frequent public meetings, at which paid
speakers inoculate the working classes with their ideas, and urge them
to dictate terms to candidates for Parliament. Thus they exercise a
pressure upon members of Parliament, and those aspirant to that honour,
out of all proportion to their real power, and beyond belief except to
those who have had the opportunity of witnessing its effects. They have
a standing Parliamentary Committee, and a programme; and active members
of Parliament are energetic in their service. They have the attentive
ear of the Ministry of the day; and their communications are received
with instant and respectful attention. They have a large representation
of their own body in London whenever Parliament is likely to be
engaged in the discussion of the proposals they have caused to be
brought before it. Thus, untrammelled by pecuniary considerations,
and specially set apart for this peculiar work, without other
clashing occupations, they resemble the staff of a well-organised,
well-provisioned army, for which everything that foresight and
preoccupation in a given purpose could provide, is at command.”[474] It
is not surprising that the Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union
Congress, composed, as it was, of the “staff of leaders” referred to,
should have had this involuntary tribute to their efficiency reprinted
and widely circulated among their constituents.

The student will form a more qualified estimate of the position
in 1873-75 than either the elated Trade Unionists or the alarmed
employers. In the first place, great as was the numerical expansion of
these years, the reader of the preceding chapters will know that it was
not without parallel. The outburst of Trade Unionism between 1830 and
1834 was, so far as we can estimate, even greater than that between
1871 and 1875, whilst it was far more rapid in its development. There
were, during the nineteenth century, three high tides in the Trade
Union history of our country, 1833-34, 1872-74, and 1889-90. In the
absence of complete and trustworthy statistics it is difficult to say
at which of these dates the sweeping in of members was greatest. But it
is easy to discern that the expansion of 1873-74 was marked by features
which were both like and unlike those of its predecessor.

Like the outburst of 1833-34, the marked extension of Trade Unionism
in 1872 reached even the agricultural labourers. For more than thirty
years since the transportation of the Dorchester labourers good
times and bad had passed over their heads without resulting in any
combined effort to improve their condition. There seems to have been a
short-lived combination in Scotland in 1865. We hear of an impulsive
strike of some Buckinghamshire labourers in 1867, which spread into
Hertfordshire. A more effective Union was formed in Herefordshire in
1871, which pursued a quiet policy of emigration, and enrolled 30,000
subscribers in half a dozen counties. But a more energetic movement
now arose. On February 7, 1872, the labourers of certain parishes of
Warwickshire met at Wellesbourne to discuss their grievances. At a
second meeting, a little later, Joseph Arch, a labourer of Barford, who
owned a freehold cottage, and had become known as a Primitive Methodist
preacher, made a speech which bore fruit. On the 11th of March two
hundred men resolved to strike for higher wages, namely, 16s. per
week for a working day from 6 A.M. to 5 P.M. Unlike most strikes this
one attracted from the first the favourable notice of the press.[475]
Publicity brought immediate funds and sympathisers. On the 29th of
March the inaugural meeting of the Warwickshire Agricultural Labourers’
Union was held at Leamington, under the presidency of the Hon. Auberon
Herbert, M.P., a donation of one hundred pounds being handed in by a
rich friend. Through the eloquence, the revivalist fervour, and the
untiring energy of Joseph Arch, the movement spread like wildfire among
the rural labourers of the central and eastern counties. The mania
for combination which came over the country population during the next
few months recalls, indeed, the mushroom growth of the Grand National
Consolidated Trades Union of forty years before. Within two months
delegates from twenty-six counties met to transform the local society
into a National Agricultural Labourers’ Union, organised in district
Unions all over the country, with a central committee at Leamington,
which, by the end of the year, boasted of a membership of nearly a
hundred thousand.[476]

The organised Trade Unions rallied promptly to the support of the
labourers, and contributed largely to their funds. The farmers met the
men’s demand by a widespread lock-out of Unionist labourers, which
called forth the support of Trades Councils and individual societies
all over the country.[477] George Howell, then Secretary of the
Parliamentary Committee, George Shipton, the Secretary of the newly
revived London Trades Council, and many other leaders, gave up their
nights and days to perfecting the labourers’ organisations. The skilled
trades, indeed, furnished many of the officials of the new Union.
Joseph Arch found for his headquarters an able general secretary in
Henry Taylor, a carpenter, whilst the Kentish labourers, organised
in the separate Kent Union, enjoyed the services of a compositor.
This help, together with the funds and countenance of influential
philanthropists, made the outburst less transient than that of 1833-34.
In many villages the mere formation of a branch led to an instantaneous
rise of wages. But, as in 1833-34, the audacity of the field labourer
in imitating the combinations of the town artisan provoked an almost
indescribable bitterness of feeling on the part of the squirearchy
and their connections. The farmers, wherever they dared, ruthlessly
“victimised” any man who joined the Union. It is needless to say that
they received the cordial support of the rural magistracy. In aid of
a lock-out near Chipping Norton, two justices, who happened both to
be clergymen, sent sixteen labourers’ wives, some with infants at
the breast, to prison with hard labour, for “intimidating” certain
non-Union men. An attempt to punish the leaders of a meeting at
Farringdon, on the ground of “obstruction of the highway,” was only
defeated by bringing down an eminent Queen’s Counsel from London to
overawe the local bench. The “dukes”--notably those of Marlborough
and Rutland--denounced the “agitators and declaimers” who had “too
easily succeeded in disturbing the friendly feeling which used to unite
the labourer and his employer in mutual feelings of generosity and
confidence.” Innumerable acts of petty tyranny and oppression proved
how far the landed interest had lagged behind the capitalist employers
in the matter of Freedom of Combination. Nor was the Established Church
more sympathetic. At the great meeting held at Exeter Hall on behalf
of the labourers, when the chair was taken by Samuel Morley, M.P.,
the only ecclesiastic who appeared on the platform was Archbishop
(afterwards Cardinal) Manning. In fact, the spirit in which the
rural clergy viewed this social upheaval is not unfairly typified
by the public utterance of a learned bishop. On September 2, 1872,
Dr. Ellicott, the Bishop of Gloucester, speaking at a meeting of the
Gloucester Agricultural Society, significantly suggested the village
horsepond as a fit destination for the “agitators,” or delegates sent
by the Union to open new branches. And the farmers, the squires, and
the Church were supported by the army. When the labourers in August
1872 struck for an increase of wages, the officers, in Oxfordshire and
Berkshire, placed the soldiers at the disposal of the farmers for the
purpose of getting in the harvest and so defeating the Union.

This insurrection of the village and the autocratic spirit which it
aroused in the owners of land and tithe had, we believe, a far-reaching
political effect. With its results upon the agitation for Church
disestablishment and the growing Radicalism of the counties we are not
here concerned. We trace, however, from these months, the appearance
in the Trade Union programme of the proposals relating to the Land Law
Reform and the Summary Jurisdiction of the Magistrates, which seem,
at first sight, unconnected with the grievances of the town artisan.
But though the agricultural labourer had his effect upon the Trade
Union Movement, Trade Unionism was not, at this time, able to do much
for him. Funds and personal help were freely placed at his service
by his brother Unionists. The minute-books and balance-sheets of the
great Unions and the Trade Councils show how warm and generous was the
response made to his appeal by the engineers, carpenters, miners, and
other trades. The London Trades Council successfully exerted itself
to stop the lending of troops to the farmers, and procured a fresh
regulation explicitly prohibiting for the future such assistance “in
cases where strikes or disputes between farmers and their labourers
exist.”[478] The public disapproval of the sentence in the Chipping
Norton case was used by the Trade Union leaders as a powerful argument
for the repeal of the Criminal Law Amendment Act.

But all this availed the agricultural labourer little. The feverish
faith in combination as a panacea for all social ills gradually
subsided. The farmers, after their first surprise, during which the
labourers, in many counties, secured advances of from eighteenpence
to as much as four shillings per week, met the Union demands and
successes by a stolid resistance, and took every opportunity to regain
their ground. In 1874 the Agricultural Unions sustained their first
severe defeat. Some of those in Suffolk asked for an advance of wages
from 13s. to 14s. for a 54-hours week. The farmers’ answer was an
immediate lock-out, which was rapidly taken up throughout the Eastern
and Midland counties, no fewer than 10,000 members of the Union being
thus “victimised.” The struggle had to be closed in July 1874, after an
expenditure by the National Union of £21,365 in strike pay. After this
the membership rapidly declined. Every winter saw the lock-out used
as a means for smashing particular branches of the Union. And in this
work of destruction the farmers were aided by their personal intimacy
with the labourer. It was easy to drop into the suspicious mind of the
uneducated villager a fatal doubt as to the real destination of the
pennies which he was sending away to the far-off central treasury. Nor
was the Union organisation perfect. Difficulties and delays occurred in
rendering aid to threatened branches or victimised men. The clergyman,
the doctor, and the village publican were always at hand to encourage
distrust of the “paid agitator.” Within a very few years most of the
independent Unions had ceased to exist, whilst Arch’s great national
society had dwindled away to a steadily diminishing membership,
scattered up and down the midland counties, in what were virtually
village sick and funeral clubs. With the decline of prosperity of
British farming, which set in about 1876-77, men were everywhere
dismissed, grass replaced grain over hundreds of thousands of acres,
and the demand for agricultural labour fell off; and even Joseph Arch
had repeatedly to advise the local branches to acquiesce in lower
wages. By 1881 the National Union could claim only 15,000 members, and
in 1889 only 4254.[479]

We have, therefore, in the sudden growth and quick collapse of this
revolt “of the field” a marked likeness to the meteoric career of
the general Trades Unions of 1833-34. But the expansion of the
Trade Union Movement in 1871-75 had another point of resemblance to
previous periods of inflation. In 1871-75, as in 1833-34 and in 1852,
the project of recovering possession of the instruments of production
seizes hold of the imagination of great bodies of Trade Unionists.
Again we see attempts by trade organisations to establish workshops
of their own. The schemes of Co-operative Production of 1871-75 bore
more resemblance to those of 1852 than to Owen’s crude communism. In
the Trade Unionism of 1833-34 the fundamental Trade Union principle of
the maintenance of the Standard of Life was overshadowed and absorbed
by the Owenite idea of carrying on the whole industry of the country
by national associations of producers, in which all the workmen would
be included. But in the more practical times of 1852 and 1871-75 the
project of “self-employment” remained strictly subordinate to the main
functions of the organisation.[480] Whatever visions may have been
indulged in by individual philanthropists, the Trade Union committees
of both these periods treated the co-operative workshop either as
merely a convenient adjunct to the Union, or as a means of affording to
a certain number of its members a chance of escape from the conditions
of wage-labour.[481] The failure of all these attempts belongs,
therefore, rather to the history of Co-operation than to that of Trade
Unionism. For our present purpose it suffices to note that the loss
in these experiments of tens of thousands of pounds finally convinced
the officials of the old-established Unions of the impracticability of
using Trade Union organisations and Trade Union funds for Co-operative
Production. The management of industry by associations of producers
still remains the ideal of one school of co-operators, and still
periodically captures the imagination of individual Trade Unionists.
But other ideals of collective ownership of the means of production
have displaced the Owenism of 1833-34 and the “Christian Socialism”
of 1852. Of co-operative experiments by Trade Societies, in their
corporate capacity, we hear practically no more.[482]

On the whole the contrast between the Trade Union expansion of
1873-74 and that of 1833-34 is more significant than any likeness
that may be traced between the two periods. The Trade Unionists of
1833-34 aimed at nothing less than the supersession of the capitalist
employer; and they were met by his absolute refusal to tolerate,
or even to recognise, their organisation. The new feature of the
expansion of 1873-74 was the moderation with which the workmen claimed
merely to receive some share of the enormous profits of these good
times. The employers, on the other hand, for the most part abandoned
their objection to recognise the Unions, and even conceded, after
repeated refusals, the principle of the regulation of industry by
Joint Boards of Conciliation or impartial umpires chosen from outside
the trade. From 1867 to 1875 innumerable Boards of Conciliation and
Arbitration were established, at which representatives of the masters
met representatives of the Trade Unions on equal terms. In fact, it
must have been difficult for the workmen at this period to realise
with what stubborn obstinacy the employers, between 1850 and 1870, had
resisted any kind of intervention in what they had then regarded as
essentially a matter of private concern. When the Amalgamated Society
of Engineers offered, in 1851, to refer the then pending dispute to
arbitration, the master engineers simply ignored the proposal. The
Select Committees of the House of Commons in 1856 and 1860 found
the workmen’s witnesses strongly in favour of arbitration, but the
employers sceptical as to its possibility. Nor did the establishment
of A. J. Mundella’s Hosiery Board at Nottingham in 1860, and Sir
Rupert Kettle’s Joint Committees in the Wolverhampton building trades
in 1864, succeed in converting the employers elsewhere. But between
1869 and 1875 opinion among the captains of industry, to the great
satisfaction of the Trade Union leaders, gradually veered round.
“Twenty-five years ago,” said Alexander Macdonald in 1875, “when we
proposed the adoption of the principle of arbitration, we were then
laughed to scorn by the employing interests. But no movement has ever
spread so rapidly or taken a deeper root than that which we then set
on foot. Look at the glorious state of things in England and Wales. In
Northumberland the men now meet with their employers around the common
board.... In Durhamshire a Board of Arbitration and Conciliation has
also been formed; and 75,000 men repose with perfect confidence on the
decisions of the Board. There are 40,000 men in Yorkshire in the same
position.”[483]

But though the establishment, from 1869 onwards, of Joint Boards and
Joint Committees represented a notable advance for the Trade Unions,
and marked their complete recognition by the great employers, yet this
victory brought results which largely neutralised its advantages.[484]
As in the case of the political triumphs, the men gained their point
at the cost of adopting the intellectual position of their opponents.
When the representatives of the employers and the delegates of the
men began to meet to discuss the future scale of wages, we see the
sturdy leaders of many Trade Union battles gradually and insensibly
accepting the capitalists’ axiom that wages must necessarily fluctuate
according to the capitalists’ profits, and even with every variation
of market-prices.[485] At Darlington, for instance, we watch the
shrewd leader of the employers, David Dale, succeeding in completely
impressing John Kane and a whole subsequent generation of ironworkers
with a firm belief in the principle of regulating wages according to
the market price of the product. The high prices of 1870-73 removed
the last scruples of the workmen as to the new doctrine. In 1874 a
delegate meeting of the Northumberland Miners decided to use the
formal expression of the Executive Committee,[486] “that prices should
rule wages”--a decision expressly repeated by delegate meetings in
1877 and 1878. In 1879, when prices had come tumbling down, we find
the Executive still maintaining that “as an Association we have
always contended that wages should be based on the selling price of
coal.”[487] In an interesting letter dated February 1, 1878, Burt,
Nixon, and Young (then the salaried officers of the Northumberland
Miners), in describing the negotiations for a Sliding Scale, take
occasion to mention that they had agreed with the employers that there
should be no Minimum Wage.[488] And though the practical difficulties
involved in the establishment of automatic wage-adjustments hindered
the spread of Sliding Scales to other industries, the principle
became tacitly accepted among whole sections of Trade Unionists.
The compulsory maintenance, in good times and bad, of the workman’s
Standard of Life was thus gradually replaced by faith in a scale of
wages sliding up and down according to the commercial speculations of
the controllers of the market.

The new doctrine was not accepted without vigorous protests from the
more thoughtful working-men leaders. Lloyd Jones, writing in 1874,
warns “working men of the danger there is in a principle that wages
should be regulated by market prices, accepted and acted on, and
therefore presumably approved of by Trades Unions. These bodies, it is
to be regretted, permit it in arbitration, accept it in negotiations
with their employers, and thus give the highest sanction they can to
a mode of action most detrimental to the cause of labour.... The first
thing, therefore, those who manage trade societies should settle is a
minimum, which they should regard as a point below which they should
never go.... Such a one as will secure sufficiency of food and some
degree of personal and home comfort to the worker; not a miserable
allowance to starve on, but living wages.... The present agreements
they are going into on fluctuating market prices is a practical placing
of their fate in the hands of others. It is throwing the bread of their
children into a scramble of competition where everything is decided by
the blind and selfish struggles of their employers.”[489] “I entirely
agree,” writes Professor Beesly, “with an admirable article by Mr.
Lloyd Jones[490] in a recent number of the _Beehive_, in which he
maintained that colliers should aim at establishing a minimum price for
their labour, and compelling their employers to take that into account
as the one constant and stable element in all their speculations. All
workmen should keep their eyes fixed on this ultimate ideal.”[491]

Nor was this view confined to friendly allies of the Trade Union
Movement. We shall have occasion to notice how forcibly both the Cotton
Operatives and the Boilermakers protested against the dependence of
wages on the fluctuations of the market. Alexander Macdonald himself,
though he approved of Joint Committees, instinctively maintained
an attitude of hostility to the innovating principle of a sliding
scale.[492] And, as we shall hereafter see, the conflict between
Macdonald’s teaching with regard to both wages and the hours of labour,
and the economic views of the Northumberland and Durham leaders,
presently divided the organised miners into two hostile camps.

The Trade Union world of 1871-75 was therefore more complicated, and
presented many more difficult internal problems than was imagined,
either by the alarmed employers or the triumphant Trade Unionists. It
needed only the stress of hard times to reveal to the Trade Unionists
themselves that they were not the compact and well-organised army
described by the National Federation of Associated Employers, but
a congeries of distinct sections, pursuing separate and sometimes
antagonistic policies.

The expansion of trade, under the influence of which Trade Unionism,
as we have seen, reached in 1873-74 one of its high-water marks,
came suddenly to an end. The contraction became visible first in the
coal and iron industries, those in which the inflation had perhaps
been greatest.[493] The first break occurred in February 1874, when
the coal-miners of the East of Scotland submitted to a reduction of
a shilling a day. During the rest of the year prices and wages came
tumbling down in both these staple trades. In January 1875 a furious
conflict broke out in South Wales, where many thousand miners and
ironworkers refused to submit to a third reduction of ten per cent.
The struggle dragged on until the end of May, when work was resumed
at a reduction, not of ten, but of twelve and a half per cent, with
an understanding that “any change in the wage rates ... shall depend
on a sliding scale of wages to be regulated by the selling price of
coal.”[494] In the following year the depression spread to the textile
industries, and gradually affected all trades throughout the country.
The building trades were, however, still prosperous; and the Manchester
Carpenters chose this moment for an aggressive advance movement. The
disastrous strike that followed early in 1877, and lasted throughout
the year, resulted in the virtual collapse of the General Union of
Carpenters and Joiners, at that time the third in magnitude among the
societies in the building trades, and left the Manchester building
operatives in a state of disorganisation from which they never fully
recovered. In April 1877 the Clyde shipwrights demanded an increase
of wages, to which the employers replied by a general lock-out of all
the operatives engaged in the shipbuilding yards, in the expectation
that this would cause pressure on the shipwrights to withdraw their
claim. For more than three months the main industry of the Clyde was at
a standstill, the dispute being eventually ended, in September 1877,
by submission to the arbitration of Lord Moncrieff, in which the men
were completely worsted. In July 1877 a conflict broke out between the
stonemasons and their employers, in which Bull & Co., the contractors
for the new law courts in London, caused the bitterest resentment
by importing German workmen as blacklegs. The demand had originally
been for an increase of wages and reduction of hours for the London
men; but as the obstinate struggle progressed it became, in effect, a
battle between the Stonemasons’ Union and the federated master builders
throughout the country. Large levies were raised, and over £2000
collected from other trade societies; but in March 1878, after eight
months’ conflict, the remnant of the strikers returned to work on the
employers’ terms. The cotton trade, too, was made the scene of one
of the greatest industrial struggles on record. After several minor
reductions of wages during 1877, which resulted in local strikes, in
March 1878, as the _Times_ reports, “all the way through a centre of 70
miles, where 250,000 cotton operatives are employed, notices have been
posted giving a month’s notice of ten per cent reduction in wages.”
A colossal strike ensued, which brought into prominence the rival
theories of the cotton operatives and their employers. It was conceded
by the men that the millowners were losing money, and that some change
had to be made. But as the employers admitted that their losses
arose from the glutted state of the market, the operatives contended
that the proper remedy was the cessation of the over-production;
and they therefore offered to accept the 10 per cent reduction on
condition that the mills should only work four days a week. A heated
controversy ensued, but the millowners persisted in their demand for
the unconditional surrender of the men, and refused all proposals for
arbitration. The cause of the men was unfortunately prejudiced by
serious riots at Blackburn, at which the house of Colonel Raynsford
Jackson, the leader of the associated employers, was looted and burnt.
After ten weeks’ struggle the men went in on the employers’ terms.[495]

The great struggles of 1875-78 were only the precursors of a general
rout of the Trade Union forces. The increasing depression of trade
culminated during 1878-79 in a stagnation which must rank as one
of the most serious which has ever overtaken British industry. The
paralysis of business was intensified, especially in Scotland, by the
widespread ruin caused by the failure of the City of Glasgow Bank.
From one end of the kingdom to the other great firms became bankrupt,
mines and ironworks were stopped, ships lay idle in the ports, and a
universal feeling of despondency and distrust spread like a blight
into every corner of the industrial world. Every industry had its
crowds of unemployed workmen, the proportion of men on the books of
the Trade Unions rising, in some cases, to as much as 25 per cent. The
capitalists, as might have been expected, chose the moment of trial for
attempting to take back the rest of the concessions extorted from them
in the previous years. “It has appeared to employers of labour,” stated
the private circular issued by the Iron Trade Employers’ Association
in December 1878, “that the time has arrived when the superfluous
wages which have been dissipated in unproductive consumption must be
retrenched, and when the idle hours which have been unprofitably thrown
away must be reclaimed to industry and profit by being redirected
to reproductive work.” The result is reflected in the Trade Union
reports. “All over the United Kingdom,” states the Monthly Report of
the Amalgamated Carpenters for January 1879, “notices of reductions in
wages and extended hours of labour come pouring in from employers with
an eagerness and audacity which contrast strangely with the lessons of
forbearance and moderation so incessantly dinned into the ears of the
British workman in happier times.” “At no time in our history,” reports
the Executive Council of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, “have we
had such a number of industrial disturbances throughout the country.
Bad trade has prevailed; and our employers, now better organised than
ever before, seem to have made it their aim to raise as many points of
contention with us as ever possible. In one place sweeping reductions
of wages would be carried out or attempted; and in others the rates
paid for overtime were sought to be reduced, while in many cases
the hours of labour have been attacked, and in the Clyde district
successfully, three hours being, as a result, added to the week’s work
all over Scotland.... Another notable feature of the depression has
been the continued oppression by the employers of the men in the most
submissive districts, where conciliatory measures were adopted, and
where little objection was made to any innovation. The Clyde district
has been a notable example of this fact, passing in the first instance
through two considerable reductions of wages almost passively, only
to be almost immediately after the victims of desultory attacks upon
the hours question. Irregular attack appears almost to have been the
system adopted by the employers in preference to the development of
any general movement by their Associations.”[496] The years 1878-1880
witnessed, accordingly, a great increase in the number of strikes in
nearly all trades,[497] most of which terminated disastrously for the
workmen. Sweeping reductions of wages occurred in all industries. The
Northumberland miners, whose normal day’s earnings had been 9s. 1½d.
in March 1873, found themselves reduced, in November 1878, to 4s. 9d.
per day, and in January 1880 to 4s. 4d. Scotch mechanics suffered an
even more sudden reduction. The Glasgow stonemasons, for instance, who
had been earning 9d. and 10d. per hour during 1877, dropped by the end
of 1878 to 6d. per hour, and found it difficult to find employment
even at that figure. A still more dangerous encroachment was made in
connection with the hours of labour. Employers on all sides sought to
lengthen the working day. The mechanics on the Clyde lost the fifty-one
hours week which they had won. The Iron Trades Employers’ Association,
whose circular we have quoted, resolved upon a general attack on the
Nine Hours Day. “It has been resolved,” writes the secretary, “by a
large majority of the Iron Trades Employers’ Association, supported
by a general agreement among other employers, to give notice in their
workshops that the hours of labour shall be increased to the number
prevailing before the adoption of the nine hours limit.”[498] The
concerted action of the associated employers was, however, baulked by
the energy of John Burnett, then General Secretary of the Amalgamated
Society of Engineers. Placed in possession of the Circular for a couple
of hours, he promptly reproduced it in an ably reasoned appeal to his
own members, which was sent broadcast to the press. Publicity proved
fatal to the employers’ plans, and no uniform or systematic action was
taken. Isolated attempts were, however, made in all directions by the
master engineers to revert to fifty-seven or fifty-nine hours per week;
and only by the most strenuous action was the normal fifty-four-hours
week retained in “society shops.”

Other trades were not equally successful in maintaining even their
nominal day. In many towns the carpenters had two or three hours per
week added to their working time.[499] More serious was the fact
that in numerous minor trades the very conception of a definitely
fixed normal day was practically lost. Even among such well-organised
trades as the Engineers, Carpenters, and Stonemasons the practice of
systematic overtime, coupled with the prevalence of piecework, reduced
the normal day to a nullity.[500] In the abundant Trade Union records
of these years we watch the progress and results of these economic
disasters. The number of men drawing the out-of-work benefit steadily
rises, until the societies of Ironfounders and Boilermakers, which
in 1872-73 had scarcely 1 per cent unemployed, had in 1879 over 20
per cent on their funds. The Amalgamated Society of Engineers paid
away, under this one head, during the three years 1878-80, a sum of
no less than £287,596. The Operative Plumbers had to exclude, in the
two years 1880-82, nearly a third of their members for non-payment of
contributions. The Ironfounders, who in 1876 had accumulated a fund of
over £5 per member, paid away every penny of it by the end of 1879,
and were only saved from actual stoppage by the numerous loans made to
the society by its more prosperous members. The Stonemasons’ Society
drained itself equally dry, and resorted to the same expedient to avoid
default. The Scottish societies had to meet the crisis in an even more
aggravated form. The total collapse which followed the City of Glasgow
Bank failure absolutely ruined all but half a dozen of the Scotch Trade
Unions, a blow from which Trade Unionism in Scotland did not recover
for the rest of the century.

The year 1879, indeed, was as distinctly a low-water mark of the Trade
Union Movement as 1873-74 registered a full tide of prosperity. The
economic trials through which Trade Unionism passed in 1879 are only
to be paralleled by those through which it had gone in 1839-42. But
the solid growth which we have described prevented any such total
collapse as marked the previous periods. The depression of 1879
swept, it is true, many hundreds of trade societies into oblivion.
The Unions of agricultural labourers, which had sprung up with such
mushroom rapidity, either collapsed altogether or dwindled into
insignificant benefit clubs. Up and down the country the hundreds of
little societies in miscellaneous trades which had flourished during
the good years, went down before the tide of adversity. Widespread
national organisations shrank up practically into societies of local
influence, concentrated upon the strongholds of their industries.
The great National Union of Miners, established, as we have seen, in
1862-63, survived, after 1879, only in Northumberland, Durham, and
Yorkshire. Its younger rival, the Amalgamated Association of Miners,
which had, up to 1875, dominated South Wales and the Midlands, broke up
and disappeared. The National Amalgamated Association of Ironworkers,
also established in 1862, which in 1873 numbered 35,000 members in all
parts of the country, was reduced in 1879 to 1400 members, confined
to a few centres in the North of England.[501] In some districts, such
as South Wales, Trade Unionism practically ceased to exist.[502] The
total membership of the Trade Union Movement returned, it is probable,
to the level of 1871. But despite all these contractions the backbone
of the movement remained intact. In the engineering and building trades
the great national societies, though they were denuded of their reserve
funds, retained their membership. Nor was it only the trade friendly
societies that weathered the storm. The essentially trade organisations
of the cotton operatives, and of the Northumberland and Durham miners,
maintained their position with only a temporary contraction of
membership. The political organisation of the movement was, moreover,
unaffected. The local Trades Councils went on undisturbed. The annual
Trades Union Congress continued to meet, and to appoint its standing
Parliamentary Committee. In short, though many individual Unions
disappeared, and many others saw their balances absorbed and their
membership reduced, the trials of 1879 proved that the Trade Union
Movement was at last beyond all danger of destruction or collapse, and
that the Trade Union organisation had become a permanent element in our
social structure.

We see, therefore, that the work which Allan and Applegarth had done
towards consolidating the Trade Union Movement had not been fruitless.
But along with increasing consolidation and definiteness of purpose
had come an increasing differentiation of policy and interest. Each
trade was working out its own industrial problems in its way. Whilst
the miners and the cotton operatives, for instance, were elaborating
their own codes of legislative regulation of the conditions of labour,
the engineering and building trades were becoming pledged to the
legislative _laissez-faire_ of their leaders. Under the influence
of the able spokesmen of the northern counties the coal-miners and
ironworkers were accepting the principle that wages must follow prices;
whilst the cotton operatives, and to some extent the boilermakers,[503]
were making a notable stand for the contrary view that the Standard
Rate of Wages should be a first charge on industry. And while the
miners and cotton operatives regarded their organisations primarily
as societies for trade protection, there was growing up among the
successors of the Junta in the iron and building trades a fixed belief
that the really “Scientific Trade Unionism” consisted in elaborate
friendly benefits and judiciously invested superannuation funds. So
long as trade was expanding, and each policy was pursued with success,
no antagonism arose between the different sections. The cotton
operatives cordially approved the Nine Hours Movement of the engineers,
whilst these, in their turn, supported the Factory Bill desired by the
Lancashire spinners. The miners applauded the gallant stand made by the
cotton operatives against the reductions of 1877-79, whilst the cotton
operatives saw no objection to the acquiescence of the miners in the
dependence of wages on prices. And though all Trade Unions regarded
with respect the high contributions and accumulated funds of the
Amalgamated Engineers, they were equally respectful of the success with
which the Northumberland coal-miners, through bad times and good, had
for half a generation maintained a strong Union with exclusively trade
objects. Thus the divergences of policy, which were destined from 1885
onward to form the battle-ground between what has been once more termed
the “Old” Unionism and the “New,” did not at first prevent cordial
co-operation in the common purposes of the Trade Union Movement. It was
in the dark days after 1878-79, when every Union suffered reverses,
that internal discontent as to Trade Union policy became acute, and
a new spirit of criticism arose. Not until the purely trade society,
on the one hand, had been found lacking in stability, and the trade
friendly society, on the other, had been convicted of apathy in trade
matters; not until the Lancashire and Yorkshire coalminers had been
driven to protest against the constant reductions brought about by
the sliding scales, and some of the leaders of the Lancashire cotton
operatives hesitated in their advocacy of the legal day; finally, not
until a powerful section of the miners opposed any further extension of
the Mines Regulation Acts, and a section of the engineers and building
operatives began to advocate the legal fixing of their own labour
day--do we find it declared that “the two systems cannot co-exist; they
are contradictory and opposed.”[504]

In more than one direction, therefore, the depression of trade was
bringing into prominence wide divergences of opinion upon Trade
Union policy. But the adverse industrial circumstances of the time
were revealing, in certain industries, a more invidious cleavage.
As manufacturing processes develop and change with the progress of
invention and the substitution of one material for another--iron
for wood in shipbuilding, for instance--the skilled members of one
trade find themselves superseded for certain work by the members of
another. A modern Atlantic liner, practically a luxuriously-fitted,
electric-lighted floating hotel, built of rolled steel plates,
would obviously not fall within the work of a shipwright like Peter
the Great. But the old-fashioned shipwright naturally refused to
relinquish without a struggle the right to build ships of every
kind. The depression of 1879 was severely felt in the shipbuilding
and engineering trades, every one of which had a large percentage of
its members unemployed. The societies found, as we have seen, the
out-of-work donation a serious drain on their funds, and were inclined
to look more narrowly into cases of “encroachment” upon the work which
each regarded as the legitimate sphere of its own members. Disputes
between Union and Union as to overlap and apportionment of work become,
in these years, of frequent occurrence; and to the standing conflict
with the employers was added embittered internecine warfare between
the men of one branch of trade and those of another. The Engineers
complained of the monopoly which the Boilermakers maintained of all
work connected with angle-iron. The Patternmakers protested vigorously
against the Carpenters presuming to make any engineering patterns.
At Glasgow the Brassfounders objected to the Ironmoulders continuing
to make the large brass castings which the workers in brass had at
first been unable to undertake. The line of demarcation in iron
shipbuilding between the work of a shipwright and that of a boilermaker
was a constant source of friction. The disregard of the ordinary
classification of trades by the authorities of the Royal Dockyards
created great discontent among the Engineers, who saw shipwrights
put to do fitters’ work, and Broadhurst brought the matter in 1882
before the House of Commons.[505] Nor were the disputes confined to
the puzzling question of the lines of demarcation between particular
trades. In 1877 the recently formed Union of “Platers’ Helpers”
complained bitterly to the Trades Union Congress that the whole
force of the Boilermakers’ Society had been used to destroy their
organisation. The Platers’ Helpers, it may be explained, constitute
a large class of labourers in shipbuilding yards, who are usually
employed and paid, not by the owners of the yards, but by members of
the Boilermakers’ Society. In the building trades numerous cases of
friction were occurring between bricklayers and masons on the one
hand, and the builders’ labourers on the other. The introduction of
terra cotta led to a whole series of disputes between the bricklayers
and the plasterers as to the trade to which the new work properly
belonged. Disputes of this kind were, of course, no new thing. What
gave the matter its new importance was the dominance of the great trade
friendly societies in the skilled occupations. The loss of employment
by individual members became in bad times a serious financial drain on
Unions giving out-of-work pay. In place of the bickerings of individual
workmen we have the conflicts of powerful societies, each supporting
the claim of its own members to do the work in dispute. “When men are
not organised in a Trade Union,” says the general secretary of a large
society, “these little things are not taken much notice of, but the
moment the two trades become well organised, each trade is looking
after its own particular members’ interests....”[506]

We have in our _Industrial Democracy_ analysed the history, character,
and extent of this rivalry among competing branches of the same
trade. Here we need do no more than record its result in weakening
the bond of union between powerful sections of the Trade Union world.
The local Trades Councils, which might have attained a position
of political influence, were always being disintegrated by the
disputes of competing trades. The powerful Shipping Trades Council
of Liverpool, for instance, which played an important part in Samuel
Plimsoll’s agitation for a new Merchant Shipping Act, was broken up in
1880 by the quarrel between the separate societies of Shipwrights,
Ship-joiners, and House Carpenters over ship work. The minutes of
every Trades Council, especially those in seaports, relate innumerable
well-intentioned attempts to settle similar disputes, almost invariably
ending in the secession of one or other of the contending Unions.
These quarrels prevented, moreover, the formation of any effective
general federation. An attempt was made in 1875 by the officers of the
Amalgamated Engineers’, Boilermakers’, Ironfounders’, and Steam-Engine
Makers’ Societies to establish a federation for mutual defence against
attacks upon the Nine Hours System. After a few months, the disputes
between the Engineers and Boilermakers on the one hand, and between the
members of the Amalgamated Society and the Steam-Engine Makers’ Society
on the other, led to the abandonment of the attempt.[507] A similar
movement initiated by the Boilermakers in 1881 equally failed to get
established.[508]

Wider federations met with no better success than those confined to
the engineering and shipbuilding trades. The Trades Union Congress
repeatedly declared itself in favour of universal brotherhood among
Trade Unionists, and the formation of a federal bond between the
different societies. But the inherent differences between trade and
trade, the numerous distinct types into which societies were divided,
the wide divergences as to Trade Union policy which we have been
describing, and, above all, the rivalry for members and employment
between competing societies in the same industry, rendered any
universal federation impossible. After the Sheffield Congress in
1874, representatives of the leading Unions in the iron and building
trades set on foot a “Federation of Organised Trade Societies,”
which all Unions were invited to join for mutual defence. But the
Cotton-spinners, with their preference for legislative regulation,
refused to have anything to do with a federation which contemplated
nothing but strike benefits. The whole scheme was, indeed, more a
project of certain Trade Union officials than a manifestation of any
general feeling in favour of common action. Each trade was, as we have
said, working out its own policy, and attending almost exclusively to
its own interests. Under such circumstances any attempt at effective
federation must necessarily have been still-born. Nevertheless the
Edinburgh Congress of 1879 called for a renewed attempt; and the
Parliamentary Committee circulated to every Trade Union in the
kingdom their proposed rules for another “Federation of Organised
Trade Societies,” To this invitation not half a dozen replies were
received.[509] At the Congress of 1882, when the resolution in favour
of a universal federation was again proposed, it found little support.
The representatives of the local Trades Councils urged that these
bodies furnished all that was practicable in the way of federation.
Thomas Ashton, the outspoken representative of the cotton-spinners,
was more emphatic. “For years,” he said, “the Parliamentary Committee
and others had been trying to bring about such an organisation as
that mentioned in the resolution, but it had been found utterly
impossible.... It was all nonsense to pass such a resolution. It was
impossible for the trades of the country to amalgamate, their interests
were so varied and they were so jealous with regard to each other’s
disputes.”[510]

The foregoing examination of the internal relations of the Trade Union
world between 1875 and 1879, though incomplete, demonstrates the extent
to which the movement during these years was dominated by a somewhat
narrow “particularism.” From 1880 to 1885 the various societies were
absorbed in building up again their membership and balances, which
had so seriously suffered during the continued depression. The annual
Trades Union Congress, the Parliamentary Committee, and the political
proceedings of these years constitute practically the only common bond
between the isolated and often hostile sections. In all industrial
matters the Trade Union world was broken up into struggling groups,
destitute of any common purpose, each, indeed, mainly preoccupied with
its separate concerns, and frequently running counter to the policy or
aims of the rest. The cleavages of interest and opinion among working
men proved to be deeper and more numerous than any one suspected. In
the following chapter we shall see how an imperfect appreciation of
each other’s position led to that conflict between the “Old Unionists”
and the “New” which for some years bade fair to disintegrate the whole
Labour Movement.


FOOTNOTES:

[442] Address of Alexander Macdonald to the Leeds Conference, 1873.
Alexander Macdonald, the son of a sailor, who became a miner in
Lanarkshire, was born at Airdrie in 1821, and went to work in the pit
at the age of eight. Having an ardent desire for education he prepared
himself as best he could for Glasgow University, which he entered in
1846, supporting himself from his savings, and from his work as a
miner in the summer. Whilst still at the University he became known
as a leader of the miners all over Scotland. In 1850 he became a mine
manager, and in 1851 he opened a school at Airdrie, an occupation which
he abandoned in 1855 to devote his whole time to agitation on behalf
of the miners. On the formation, in 1863, of the National Union of
Miners, he was elected president, a position which he retained until
his death. Meanwhile he was, by a series of successful commercial
speculations, acquiring a modest fortune, which enabled him to devote
his whole energies to the promotion of the Parliamentary programme
which he had impressed upon the miners. He gave important evidence
before the Select Committee of 1865 on the Master and Servant Law. In
1868 he offered himself as a candidate for the Kilmarnock Burghs, but
retired to avoid a split. At the General Election of 1874 he was more
successful, being returned for Stafford, and thus becoming (with Thomas
Burt) the first “Labour Member.” He was shortly afterwards appointed
a member of the Royal Commission on the Labour Laws, and eventually
presented a minority report of his own on the subject. He died in 1881.
A history of the coal-miners which he projected was apparently never
written, and, with the exception of numerous presidential addresses and
other speeches, and a pamphlet entitled _Notes and Annotations on the
Coal Mines Regulation Act, 1872_ (Glasgow, 1872, 50 pp.), we have found
nothing from his pen. A eulogistic notice of his life by Lloyd Jones
appeared in the _Newcastle Chronicle_, November 17, 1883, most of which
is reprinted in Dr. Baernreither’s _English Associations of Working
Men_, p. 408.

[443] Address to the Miners’ National Conference at Leeds, 1873.

[444] The Conference appointed a sub-committee to compile and publish
its proceedings, “a thing,” as the preface explains, “altogether
unparalleled in the records of labour.” And indeed the elaborate
volume, regularly published by the eminent firm of Longmans in 1864,
entitled _Transactions and Results of the National Association of Coal,
Lime, and Ironstone Miners of Great Britain, held at Leeds, November
9, 10, 11, 12, 13, and 14, 1863_, with its 174 pages, its frontispiece
representing the pit-brow women, and its motto on the title-page
extracted from the writings of W. E. Gladstone, formed a creditable and
impressive appeal to the reading public.

[445] For this militant Chartist (1805-79), see _Life of Joseph Rayner
Stephens_, by G. J. Holyoake, 1881.

[446] _Transactions and Results of the National Association of Coal,
Lime, and Ironstone Miners of Great Britain, held at Leeds, November 9,
10, 11, 12, 13, and 14, 1863_, p. 14.

[447] _Transactions and Results of the National Association of Coal,
Lime, and Ironstone Miners of Great Britain, held at Leeds, November 9,
10, 11, 12, 13, and 14, 1863_, p. 17. In Northumberland and Durham the
hewers very largely work in two shifts, whilst there used to be only
one shift of boys.

[448] Section 29 of Mines Regulation Act of 1860.

[449] Normansell _v._ Platt. John Normansell, the agent of the South
Yorkshire Miners’ Association, stands second only to Macdonald as a
leader of the miners between 1863 and 1875. The son of a banksman,
he was born at Torkington, Cheshire, in 1830, and left an orphan at
an early age. At seven he entered the pit, and when, at the age of
nineteen, he married, he was unable to write his own name. Migrating
to South Yorkshire, he became a leader in the agitation to secure a
checkweigher, which the local coal-owners conceded in 1859. Normansell
was elected to the post for his own pit, and rapidly became the leading
spirit in the district. After the lock-out of 1864 he was elected
secretary to the Union, then counting only two thousand members. Within
eight years he had raised its membership to twenty thousand, and built
up an elaborate system of friendly benefits. Normansell was the first
working-man Town Councillor, having been triumphantly elected at
Barnsley, his Union subscribing £1000 to lodge in the bank in his name,
in order to enable him to declare himself possessed of the pecuniary
qualification at that time required. On his death the amount was voted
to his widow. Normansell gave evidence in 1867 before the Select
Committee on Coal-mining, and before that on the Master and Servant
Law, in 1868 before the Royal Commission on Trade Unions, and in 1873
before that on the Coal Supply.

[450] The best and indeed the only exact account of these cotton lists
is that prepared for the Economic Section of the British Association by
a committee consisting of Professor Sidgwick, Professor Foxwell, A. H.
D. (now Sir Arthur) Acland, Dr. W. Cunningham, and Professor J. E. C.
Munro, the report being drawn up by the latter. (_On the Regulation of
Wages by means of Lists in the Cotton Industry_, Manchester, 1887; in
two parts--Spinning and Weaving.) See _History of Wages in the Cotton
Trade during the Past Hundred Years_, by G. H. Wood, 1910; _A Century
of Fine Cotton Spinning_, by McConnel & Co., 1906; and _Standard Piece
Lists and Sliding Scales_, by the Labour Department of the Board of
Trade, Cd. 144, 1900.

The principles upon which the lists are framed are so complicated that
we confess, after prolonged study, to be still perplexed on certain
points; and though Professor Munro clears up many difficulties, we are
disposed to believe that even he, in some particulars, has not in all
cases correctly stated the matter. We have discussed the whole subject
in our _Industrial Democracy_.

[451] _Bolton and District Net List of Prices for Spinning Twist,
Reeled Yarn or Bastard Twist, and Weft, on Self-actor Mules_ (Bolton,
1887; 85 pp.).

[452] Birtwistle was, in 1892, at an advanced age, appointed by the
Home Secretary an Inspector in the Factory Department, under the
“particulars clause” (sec. 24 of the Factory and Workshops Act, 1891),
as the only person who could be found competent to understand and
interpret the intricacies of the method of remuneration in the weaving
trade.

[453] _Beehive_, February 23, 1867. The circular announcing the
resolution is signed by the leading officers of the Cotton-spinners’
and Cotton-weavers’ Unions of the time.

[454] Report of the Parliamentary Committee to the Trades Union
Congress, January 1873.

[455] Circular of December 11, 1871, signed on behalf of the
preliminary meeting by Thomas Mawdsley--not to be mistaken for James
Mawdsley, J.P., a subsequent secretary.

[456] Thomas Ashton, J.P. (died 1919), then secretary of the Oldham
Spinners, often made this statement. On the 26th of May 1893 the
_Cotton Factory Times_, the men’s accredited organ, declared, with
reference to the Eight Hours Movement, that “now the veil must be
lifted, and the agitation carried on under its true colours. Women and
children must no longer be made the pretext for securing a reduction of
working hours for men.”

[457] Speech at Trades Union Congress, Bristol, 1878.

[458] “From what I have heard,” writes Professor Beesly in the
_Beehive_, May 16, 1874, “I am inclined to think that no single fact
had more to do with the defeat of the Liberal Party in Lancashire at
the last election than Mr. Fawcett’s speech on the Nine Hours Bill in
the late Parliament.”

[459] Report of Trades Union Congress, Sheffield, January 1874.

[460] John Burnett, who was born at Alnwick, Northumberland, in 1842,
became, after the Nine Hours Strike, a lecturer for the National
Education League, and joined the staff of the _Newcastle Chronicle_.
In 1875, on Allan’s death, he was elected to the General Secretaryship
of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers. He was a member of the
Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress from 1876 to
1885. In 1886 he was appointed to the newly-created post of Labour
Correspondent of the Board of Trade, in which capacity he prepared
and issued a series of reports on Trade Unions and Strikes. On the
establishment of the Labour Department in 1893 he became Chief Labour
Correspondent under the Commissioner for Labour, and was selected to
visit the United States to prepare a report on the effects of Jewish
immigration. He retired in 1907 and died 1914.

[461] A full account of this conflict is given by John Burnett in
his _History of the Engineers’ Strike in Newcastle and Gateshead_
(Newcastle, 1872; 77 pp.). A description by the Executive of the
Amalgamated Society of Engineers is given in their “Abstract Report”
up to December 31, 1872. The _Newcastle Daily Chronicle_, from April
to October 1871, furnishes a detailed contemporary record. The leading
articles and correspondence in the _Times_ of September 1871 are
important.

[462] See the _Times_ leader of September 11, 1871. This leader, which
pronounced “the conduct of the employers throughout this dispute as
imprudent and impolitic,” called forth the bewildered remonstrance of
Sir William (afterwards Lord) Armstrong, writing on behalf of “the
Associated Employers.” “We were amazed,” writes the great captain of
industry, “to see ourselves described in your article as being in a
condition of hopeless difficulty; and we really felt that, if the
League themselves had possessed the power of inspiring that article,
they could scarcely have used words more calculated to serve their
purposes than those in which it is expressed. The concurrent appearance
in the _Spectator_ of an article exhibiting the same bias adds to our
surprise. We had imagined that a determined effort to wrest concessions
from employers by sheer force of combination was not a thing which
found favour with the more educated and intelligent classes, whose
opinions generally find expression in the columns of the _Times_”
(_Times_ September 14, 1871).

[463] Here the “International” was of use. At Burnett’s instigation,
Cohn, the Danish secretary in London, proceeded to the Continent to
check this immigration, his expenses being paid by the Amalgamated
Society of Engineers.

[464] With regard to overtime, Burnett informed us that “it was found
impossible to carry a Nine Hours Day pure and simple at the time of the
strike of 1871, and that overtime should still be worked as required
was insisted upon as a first condition of settlement by the employers.”

[465] Meeting of London pattern-makers to seek advance of wages,
_Beehive_, October 21, 1865.

[466] Letter from “Amalgamator,” _Beehive_, January 19, 1867.

[467] The rank and file were more sympathetic than the Executive.
The machinery for making the collections was mostly furnished by the
branches and committees of the Society.

[468] An “Assistant Secretary” was subsequently added, and eventually
another. But these assistants were, like the General Secretary himself,
recruited from the ranks of the workmen, and however experienced they
may have been in trade matters, were necessarily less adapted to the
clerical labour demanded of them. The great Trade Friendly Societies of
the Stonemasons, Bricklayers, and Ironfounders long continued to have
only one assistant secretary, and no clerical staff whatever.

[469] Question 827 in Report of Trade Union Commission (March 26, 1867).

[470] _Bookbinders’ Trade Circular_, January 1866.

[471] In 1892 the Amalgamated Engineers provided themselves, not only
with district delegates, like those of the Boilermakers, but also with
a salaried Executive Council. The Amalgamated Society of Carpenters
has since started district delegates, and the other national societies
gradually followed suit.

[472] Mention should here be made of the Manchester and District
Association of Trade Union Officials, an organisation which grew out
of a joint committee formed to assist the South Wales miners in their
strike of 1875. The frequent meetings, half serious, half social,
of this grandly named association, known to the initiated as “the
Peculiar People,” served for many years as opportunities for important
consultations on Trade Union policy between the leaders of the numerous
societies having offices in Manchester. It also had as an object the
protection of Trade Union officials against unjust treatment by their
own societies (see _History of the British Trades Union Congress_, by
W. J. Davis, vol. i., 1910, p. 89)

[473] Report of the Trades Union Congress, Sheffield, 1874. A table
printed in the Appendix to the present volume gives such comparative
statistics of Trade Union membership as we have been able to compile.

[474] “Statement as to Formation and Objects of the National Federation
of Associated Employers of Labour,” December 11, 1873, reprinted by the
Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress. This Federation
comprised in its ranks a large proportion of the great “captains of
industry” of the time, including such shipbuilders as Laird and Harland
& Wolff; such textile manufacturers as Crossley, Brinton, Marshall,
Titus Salt, Akroyd, and Brocklehurst; such engineers as Mawdsley, Son &
Field, Combe, Barbour & Combe, and Beyer & Peacock; such ironmasters as
David Dale and John Menelaus; such builders as Trollope of London and
Neill of Manchester, and such representatives of the great industrial
peers as Sir James Ramsden, who spoke for the Duke of Devonshire, and
Fisher Smith, the agent of the Earl of Dudley.

[475] The immediate publicity given to the agitation was due, in the
first place, to the sympathy of J. E. Matthew Vincent, the editor of
the _Leamington Chronicle_, and secondly, to the instinct of the _Daily
News_, which promptly sent Archibald Forbes, its war correspondent,
to Warwickshire, and “boomed” the movement in a series of special
articles. A contemporary account of the previous career of Joseph
Arch is given by the Rev. F. S. Attenborough in his _Life of Joseph
Arch_ (Leamington, 1872; 37 pp.). See also _The Revolt of the Field_,
by A. W. Clayden (1874), 234 pp.; and “Zur Geschichte der englischen
Arbeiterbewegung im Jahre 1872-1873,” by Dr. Friedrich Kleinwächter in
_Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik_, 1875, and Supplement
I. of 1878; “Die jüngste Landarbeiterbewegung in England,” by Lloyd
Jones, in Nathusius-Thiel’s _Landwirthschaftliche Jahrbücher_, 1875;
_The Romance of Peasant Life_, 1872, and _The English Peasantry_, 1872,
by F. G. Heath; _The Agricultural Labourer_, by F. E. Kettel, 1887;
_Joseph Arch, the Story of his Life, told by Himself_, 1898; _A History
of the English Agricultural Labourer_, by Dr. W. Hasbach, 1908; “The
Labourers in Council,” a valuable article in _The Congregationalist_,
1872; “The Agricultural Labourers’ Union,” in _Quarterly Review_,
1873; “The Agricultural Labourers’ Union,” by Canon Girdlestone, in
_Macmillan’s Magazine_, vol. xxviii.; “The Agricultural Labourer,”
by F. Verinder, in _The Church Reformer_, 1892; and others in this
magazine during 1891-93; _Conflicts of Capital and Labour_, by G.
Howell, 1878 and 1890 editions; _Labour Legislation, Labour Movements
and Labour Leaders_, by the same, 1902; and _Village Trade Unions in
Two Centuries_, by Ernest Selley, 1919.

[476] Other Labourers’ Unions sprang up which refused to be absorbed
in the National; and the London Trades Council summoned a conference
in March 1873 to promote unity of action. Considerable jealousy was
shown of any centralising policy, and eventually a Federal Union of
Agricultural and General Labourers was formed by half a dozen of the
smaller societies, with an aggregate membership of 50,000.

[477] The Birmingham Trades Council, for instance, issued the following
poster:

“Great Lock-out of Agricultural Labourers!

“An Appeal. Is the Labourer worthy of his Hire?

“This question is to all lovers of freedom and peaceful progress,
and it is left for them to say whether that spark of life and hope
which has been kindled in the breasts of our toiling brothers in the
agricultural districts shall be extinguished by the pressure of the
present lock-out. The answer is No! and the echo resounds from ten
thousand lips. But let us be practical; a little help is of more
value than much sympathy; we must not stand to pity, but strive to
send relief. The cause of the agricultural labourer is our own;
the interests of labour in all its forms are very closely bound up
together, and the simple question for each one is, How much can I help,
and how soon can I do it? If we stay thinking too long, action may
come too late; these men, our brethren, now deeply in adversity, may
have fallen victims when our active efforts might have saved them. The
strain upon the funds of their Union must be considerable with such
a number thrown into unwilling idleness, and that for simply asking
that their wages, in these times of dear food, might be increased from
13s. to 14s. per week. Money is no doubt wanted, and it is by that
alone the victory can be won. Let us therefore hope that Birmingham
will once again come to the rescue, determined to assist these men to
a successful resistance of the oppression that is attempted in this
lock-out.

“The great high priest and deliverer of this people now seeks our
aid. We must not let him appeal to us in vain; his efforts have been
too noble in the past, the cause for which he pleads is too full of
righteousness, and the issues too great to be passed by in heedless
silence. Let us all to work at once. We can all give a little, and each
one may encourage his neighbour to follow his example. The conflict
may be a severe one. It is for freedom and liberty to unite as we have
done. We have reaped some of the advantages of our Unions; we must
assist them to establish theirs, and not allow the ray of hope that now
shines across the path of our patient but determined fellow-toilers
to be darkened by the blind folly of their employers, who, being in a
measure slaves to the powers above them, would, if they could, even
at their own loss, consign all below them to perpetual bondage. This
must not be. We must not allow these men to be robbed of their right to
unite, or their future may be less hopeful than their past. Let some
one in every manufactory and workshop collect from those disposed to
give, and so help to furnish the means to assist these men to withstand
the powers brought against them, showing to their would-be oppressors
that we have almost learned the need and duty of standing side by side
until all our righteous efforts shall be crowned by victory.


“All members of the Birmingham Trades Council are authorised to collect
and receive contributions to the fund, and will be pleased to receive
assistance from others.

                            “By order of the Birmingham Trades Council,
                                              “W. Gilliver, Secretary.”


[478] _Queen’s Regulations for the Army for 1873_, Article 180; the
whole correspondence is given in the Report of the London Trades
Council, June 1873.

[479] The rival Kent Union, which had become the Kent and Sussex
Agricultural and General Labourers’ Union, enrolling all sorts of
labourers, claimed in 1889 still to have 10,000 members, with an annual
income of £10,000 a year, mostly disbursed in sick and funeral benefits.

[480] See _Die Strikes, die Co-operation, die Industrial Partnerships_,
by Dr. Robert Jannasch (Berlin, 1868; 66 pp.).

[481] Amid the great outburst of feeling in favour of Co-operative
Production it is difficult to distinguish in every case between the
investments of the funds of the Trade Unions in their corporate
capacity, and the subscriptions of individual members under the
auspices, and sometimes through the agency, of their trade society. The
South Yorkshire Miners’ Association used £30,000 of its funds in the
purchase of the Shirland Colliery in 1875, and worked it on account of
the Association. In a very short time, however, the constant loss on
the working led to the colliery being disposed of, with the total loss
of the investment. The Northumberland and Durham Miners in 1873 formed
a “Co-operative Mining Company” to buy a colliery, a venture in which
the Unions took shares, but which quickly ended in the loss of all the
capital. Some of the Newcastle engineers on strike for Nine Hours in
1871 were assisted by sympathisers to start the Ouseburn Engine Works,
which came to a disastrous end in 1876. In 1875 the Leicester Hosiery
Operatives’ Union, having 2000 members, began manufacturing on its own
account, and bought up a small business. In the following year a vote
of the members decided against such an investment of the funds, and
the Union sold out to a group of individuals under the style of the
Leicester Hosiery Society. It became fairly successful, but scarcely
a tenth of the shareholders were workers in the concern, and it was
eventually merged in the Co-operative Wholesale Society. Innumerable
smaller experiments were set on foot during these years by groups of
Trade Unionists with more or less assistance from their societies,
but the great majority were quickly abandoned as unsuccessful. In a
few cases the business established still exists, but in every one of
these any connection with Trade Unionism has long since ceased. In
later years renewed attempts have been made by a few Unions. Several
local branches of the National Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives, for
instance, have taken shares in the Leicester Co-operative Boot and
Shoe Manufacturing Society. The London Bassdressers, the Staffordshire
Potters, the Birmingham Tinplate Workers, and a few other societies
have also taken shares in co-operative concerns started in their
respective trades. Full particulars will be found in the exhaustive
work of Benjamin Jones on _Co-operative Production_, 1894.

[482] In one other respect the Trade Union expansion of 1872-74
resembled that of 1833-34. Both periods were marked by an attempt
to enrol the women wage-earners in the Trade Union ranks. Ephemeral
Unions of women workers had been established from time to time, only to
collapse after a brief existence. The year 1872 saw the establishment
of the oldest durable Union for women only--the Edinburgh Upholsterers’
Sewers’ Society. Two years later Mrs. Paterson, the real pioneer of
modern women’s Trade Unions, began her work in this field, and in 1875
several small Unions among London Women Bookbinders, Upholsteresses,
Shirt and Collar Makers, and Dressmakers were established, to
be followed, in subsequent years, by others among Tailoresses,
Laundresses, etc. Mrs. Emma Ann Paterson (_née_ Smith), who was born
in 1848, the daughter of a London schoolmaster, served from 1867 to
1873 successively as an Assistant Secretary of the Working Men’s Club
and Institute Union and the Women’s Suffrage Association, and married,
in 1873, Thomas Paterson, a cabinetmaker. On a visit to the United
States she became acquainted with the “Female Umbrella Makers’ Union
of New York,” and strove, on her return in 1874, to promulgate the
idea of Trade Unionism among women workers in the South of England.
After some newspaper articles, she set on foot the Women’s Protective
and Provident League (now the Women’s Trade Union League), for the
express purpose of promoting Trade Unionism, and established in the
same year the National Union of Working Women at Bristol. From 1875 to
1886 she was a constant attendant at the Trades Union Congress, and
was several times nominated for a seat on the Parliamentary Committee,
at the Hull Congress heading the list of unsuccessful candidates. An
appreciative notice of her life and work appeared in the _Women’s
Union Journal_ on her death in December 1886; see also _Dictionary of
National Biography_, and _Women in the Printing Trades_, edited by J.
R. MacDonald (1904), pp. 36, 37.

[483] Speech quoted in _Capital and Labour_; June 16, 1875.

[484] It must be remembered that the words “arbitration” and
“conciliation” were at this time very loosely used, often meaning no
more than a meeting of employers and Trade Union representatives for
argument and discussion. The classic work upon the whole subject is
Henry Crompton’s _Industrial Conciliation_, 1876. It receives detailed
examination in the various contributions of Mr. L. L. Price, notably
his _Industrial Peace_ (1887) and the supplementary papers entitled
“The Relations between Industrial Conciliation and Social Reform,” and
“The Position and Prospects of Industrial Conciliation,” published
in the _Statistical Society’s Journal_ for June and September 1890
(vol. liii. pp. 290 and 420). For an American summary may be consulted
Joseph D. Weeks’ _Report on the Practical Working of Arbitration and
Conciliation in the Settlement of Differences between Employers and
Employees in England_ (Harrisburg, 1879), and his paper on _Labour
Differences_ (New York, 1886). The working of arbitration is well set
forth in _Strikes and Arbitration_, by Sir Rupert Kettle, 1866; in A.
J. Mundella’s evidence before the Trade Union Commission, 1868; in his
address, _Arbitration as a Means of Preventing Strikes_ (Bradford,
1868; 24 pp.); and in the lecture by Dr. R. Spence Watson entitled
“Boards of Arbitration and Conciliation and Sliding Scales,” reported
in the _Barnsley Chronicle_, March 20, 1886. An early account of
the Nottingham experience is contained in the paper by E. Renals,
“On Arbitration in the Hosiery Trades of the Midland Counties”
(_Statistical Society’s Journal_, December 1867, vol. xxx. p. 548).
See also the volume edited by Dr. Brentano, _Arbeitseinstellungen und
Fortbildung des Arbeitvertrags_ (Leipzig, 1890), and _Zum socialen
Frieden_, by Dr. von Schulze Gaevernitz (Leipzig, 2 vols., 1892). The
whole subject of the relation between Trade Unions and employers is
fully dealt with in our _Industrial Democracy_. For the latest British
Official reports on the subject see Cd. 6603, 6952, and 9099.

[485] The course of prices after 1870 demonstrates how disastrously
this principle would have operated for the wage-earners had it been
universally adopted. Between 1870 and 1894 the Index Number compiled by
the _Economist_, representing the average level of market prices, fell
steadily from 2996 to 2082, irrespective of the goodness of trade or
the amount of the employers’ profits. Any exact correspondence between
wages and the price of the product would exclude the wage-earners, as
such, from all share in the advantages of improvements in production,
cheapening of carriage, and the fall in the rate of interest, which
might otherwise be turned to account in an advance in the workman’s
Standard of Life. On the other hand, in an era of rising prices,
when these influences are being more than counteracted by currency
inflation, increasing difficulty of production, or a world-shortage of
supply, an automatic correspondence between money wages and the cost
of living would be useful, if it did not lead to the implication that
the only ground for an advance in wages was an increase in the cost of
living. The workmen have still to contend for a progressive improvement
of their Standard of Life whatever happens to profits.

[486] Executive Circular, October 12, 1874.

[487] _Ibid._, October 21, 1879; as to the Sliding Scales actually
adopted, see Appendix II.

[488] _Miners’ Watchman and Labour Sentinel_, February 9, 1878--a
quasi-official organ of the Northern Miners, which was published in
London from January to May 1878.

[489] “Should Wages be Regulated by Market Prices?” by Lloyd Jones,
_Beehive_, July 18, 1874; see also his article in the issue for March
14, 1874.

[490] Lloyd Jones, one of the ablest and most loyal friends of Trade
Unionism, was born at Bandon, in Ireland, in 1811, the son of a small
working master in the trade of fustian-cutting. Himself originally a
working fustian-cutter, Lloyd Jones became, like his father, a small
master, but eventually abandoned that occupation for journalism.
He became an enthusiastic advocate of Co-operation, and in 1850 he
joined Thomas Hughes and E. Vansittart Neale in a memorable lecturing
tour through Lancashire. A few years later we find him in London, in
close touch with the Trade Union leaders, with whom he was on terms
of intimate friendship. From the establishment of the _Beehive_ in
1861 he was for eighteen years a frequent contributor, his articles
being uniformly distinguished by literary ability, exact knowledge of
industrial facts, and shrewd foresight. From 1870 until his death in
1886 he was frequently selected by the various Unions to present their
case in Arbitration proceedings. At the General Election of 1885 he
stood as candidate for the Chester-le-Street Division of Durham, where
he was opposed by both the official Liberals and the Conservatives,
and was unsuccessful. In conjunction with J. M. Ludlow, he wrote _The
Progress of the Working Classes_, 1867, and afterwards published _The
Life, Times, and Labours of Robert Owen_, to which a memoir by his son,
Mr. W. C. Jones, has since been prefixed.

[491] _Beehive_, May 16, 1874.

[492] This information we owe to personal friends and colleagues of
Macdonald, Thomas Burt, M.P., and Ralph Young, who, as we have seen,
differed from him on this point, and also on the allied question
of regulation of output according to demand, to be preached by the
coal-miners as well as by the colliery companies, which Macdonald,
throughout his whole career, persistently advocated. See, for instance,
his speech at the local conference on the Depression of Trade, _Bristol
Mercury_, February 13, 1878.

[493] A useful summary of these events is given in Dr. Kleinwächter’s
pamphlet, _Zur Geschichte der englischen Arbeiterbewegung in den Jahren
1871 und 1874_ (Jena, 1878; 150 pp.).

[494] _Beehive_, June 5, 1875.

[495] The operatives’ case is well put in the Weavers’ Manifesto of
June 1878:

“Fellow-workers--We are and have been engaged during the past nine
weeks in the most memorable struggle between Capital and Labour in the
history of the world. One hundred thousand factory workers are waging
war with their employers as to the best possible way to remove the
glut from an overstocked cloth market, and at the same time reduce
the difficulties arising from an insufficient supply of raw cotton.
To remedy this state of things the employers propose a reduction of
wages to the extent of ten per cent below the rate of wages agreed
upon twenty-five years ago. On the other hand, we have contended that
a reduction in the rate of wages cannot either remove the glut in the
cloth market or assist to tide us over the difficulty arising from the
limited supply of raw material. However, this has been the employers’
theory, and at various periods throughout the struggle we have made the
following propositions as a basis of settlement of this most calamitous
struggle:

“1. A reduction of ten per cent, with four days’ working, or five per
cent with five days’ working, until the glut in the cloth market and
the difficulties arising from the dearth of cotton had been removed.

“2. To submit the whole question of short time or reduction, or both,
to the arbitrement of any one or more impartial gentlemen.

“3. To submit the entire question to two Manchester merchants or
agents, two shippers conversant with the Manchester trade, and two
bankers, one of each to be selected by the employers and the other
by the operatives, with two employers and two operatives, with Lord
Derby, the Bishop of Manchester, or any other impartial gentleman, as
chairman, or, if necessary, referee.

“4. To split the difference between us, and go to work unconditionally
at a reduction of five per cent.

“5. Through the Mayor of Burnley, to go to work three months at a
reduction of five per cent, and if trade had not sufficiently improved
at that time, to submit to a further reduction.

“6. And lastly, to an unconditional reduction of seven and a half per
cent.”

[496] Amalgamated Society of Engineers, etc., Abstract Report of the
Council’s Proceedings, 1878-79, p. 18.

[497] See _The Strikes of the Past Ten Years_, by G. Phillips Bevan
(March 1880, _Stat. Soc. Journal_, vol. xliii. pp. 35-54). We have
ascertained that the strikes mentioned in the _Times_ between 1876 and
1889 show the following variations:

1876 17 1877 23 1878 38 1879 72 1880 46 1881 20 1882 14 1883 26 1884 31
1885 20 1886 24 1887 27 1888 37 1889 111


[498] Secret circular from the London Secretary (Sidney Smith) of the
Iron Trades Employers’ Association, December 1878; republished in
Circular of Amalgamated Society of Engineers, January 3, 1879, and in
Report of Executive Council for 1878-79, p. 31.

[499] At Manchester, Bolton, Ramsbottom, Wrexham, Falmouth, Aldershot,
etc., the hours were thus lengthened.

[500] To the ordinary reader it may be desirable to explain that the
Unions have, in most trades, succeeded in establishing the principle
of the payment of higher rates for overtime. But in most cases this is
limited to workers paid by time, no extra allowance being given to the
man working by the piece.

It will be obvious that if a workman, ostensibly enjoying a Nine Hours
Day, is habitually required to work overtime, and is paid only at the
normal piecework rate for his work, he obtains no advantage whatever
from the nominal fixing of his hours of labour. To many thousands of
men in the engineering and building trades the nominal maintenance
of the Nine Hours Day meant, in 1878 and succeeding years, no more
than this. See for the whole subject of “the Normal Day,” _Industrial
Democracy_, by S. and B. Webb.

[501] The lowest point reached in the statistics of the annual Trades
Union Congresses was in 1881, when the delegates claimed to represent
little more than a third of the numbers of 1874. These statistics of
membership are, however, in many respects misleading. The Congress
of 1879 was attended by a much smaller number of delegates than any
Congress since 1872, and the number of Unions represented was also the
smallest since that date.

[502] “Four years ago,” writes the President of the Bristol Coopers’
Society in 1878, “upwards of 40,000 workmen were in combination in
these valleys [South Wales], and to-day not a single Union is in
existence throughout the entire district.” (Paper at Local Conference
on the Depression of Trade, _Bristol Mercury_, February 13, 1878).

[503] See the injunctions of the General Secretary, Monthly Report,
March 1862; Annual Reports, 1882 and 1888. Robert Knight consistently
opposed “violent fluctuations of wages, at one time a starvation
pittance, at another exorbitantly high.”

[504] _Trade Unionism, New and Old_, by George Howell, M.P. (1891), p.
235.

[505] House of Commons Journals, Motion of March 14, 1882: “That in the
opinion of this House it is detrimental to the public service, fatal
to the efficiency of our war ships, and unjust to the fitters in Her
Majesty’s Dockyards, that superintending leading men should be placed
in authority over workmen with whose trades they have no practical
acquaintance, or that men should be put to execute work for which they
are unsuited either by training or experience.” See _Henry Broadhurst,
the Story of his Life from a Stonemason’s Bench to the Treasury Bench_,
by himself, 1901.

[506] Evidence of Mr. Chandler, then general secretary of Amalgamated
Society of Carpenters and Joiners (Labour Commission, 1892, vol. iii.
Q. 22,014).

[507] Abstract Report of Amalgamated Engineers, June 30, 1876.

[508] In 1890, however, Robert Knight, who had been throughout the
foremost worker for federation, succeeded in establishing a Federation
of the Engineering and Shipbuilding Trades of the United Kingdom,
described in our _Industrial Democracy_, from which the Amalgamated
Society of Engineers has held aloof. A large part of the work of the
Federal Executive consisted, for many years, of adjusting disputes
between Union and Union with regard to overlap and apportionment of
work. For the whole subject, see our _Industrial Democracy_, 1897.

[509] When, in 1890, the project of universal federation was revived,
the draft rules of 1879 were simply reprinted.

[510] Report of Manchester Congress, 1882; see also _History of the
British Trades Union Congress_, by W. J. Davis, vol. i., 1910.




CHAPTER VII

THE OLD UNIONISM AND THE NEW

[1875-1890]


Since 1875 the Trades Union Congress has loomed before the general
public with ever-increasing impressiveness as the representative
Parliament of the Trade Union world. To the historical student, on
the other hand, it has, during the last fifty years, been wanting
in significance as an index to the real factors of the Trade Union
Movement. Between 1871 and 1875, the period of the struggle for
complete legalisation, the Congress concentrated the efforts of the
different sections upon the common object they had all at heart. On
the accomplishment of that object it became for ten years little more
than an annual gathering of Trade Union officials, in which they
delivered, with placid unanimity, their views on labour legislation and
labour politics.[511] From 1885 to 1890 we shall watch the Congress
losing its decorous calm, and gradually becoming the battle-field of
contending principles and rival leaders. But throughout its whole
career it has, to speak strictly, been representative less of the
development of Trade Unionism as such, than of the social and political
aspirations of its leading members.

The reader of the Congress proceedings between 1875 and 1885 would,
for instance, fail to recognise our description of the characteristics
of the movement in these years. The predominant feature of the Trade
Union world between 1875 and 1885 was, as we have seen, an extreme
and complicated sectionalism. It might therefore have been expected
that the annual meeting of delegates from different trades would
have been made the debating ground for all the moot points and vexed
questions of Trade Unionism, not to say the battle-field of opposing
interests. But though the Trades Union Congress, like all popular
assemblies, had its stormy scenes and hot discussions, from 1875 to
1885 these episodes arose only on personal questions, such as the
conduct of individual members of the committee or the _bona fides_ of
particular delegates. On all questions of policy or principle before
the Congress the delegates were generally unanimous. This was brought
about by the deliberate exclusion of all Trade Union problems from the
agenda. The relative merits of collective bargaining and legislative
regulation were, during these years, never so much as discussed. The
alternative types of benefit club and trade society were not compared.
The difficulties of overlap and apportionment of work were not even
referred to. No mention was made of Sliding Scales, Wage-Boards,
Piecework Lists, or other expedients for avoiding disputes. Piecework
itself, when introduced by a delegate in 1876, was dropped as a
dangerous topic. The disputes between Union and Union were regarded by
the Committee as outside the proper scope of Congress.[512] In short,
the knotty problems of Trade Union organisation, the divergent views
as to Trade Union policy, the effect on Trade Unionism of different
methods of remuneration--all the critical issues of industrial strife
were expressly excluded from the agenda of the Congress.

For the narrow limits thus set to the functions of the Congress there
was an historical reason. Arising as it did between 1868 and 1871, when
the one absorbing topic was the relation of Trade Unionism to the law,
it had retained the character then impressed upon it of an exclusively
political body. For many years its chief use was to give weight to the
Parliamentary action of the standing committee, whose influence in
the lobby of the House of Commons was directly proportionate to the
numbers they were believed to represent. Publicity and advertisement,
the first requisites of a successful Congress, were worse than useless
without unanimity of opinion. The deliberate refusal of the Trade Union
leaders to discuss internal problems in public Congress under such
circumstances was not surprising. Most men in their position would
have hesitated to let the world know that the apparent solidarity of
Trade Unionism covered jealous disputes on technical questions, and
fundamental differences as to policy. They easily persuaded themselves
that a yearly meeting of shifting delegates was fitted neither to
debate technical questions nor to serve as a tribunal of appeal. But
these difficulties could have been overcome. The quinquennial delegate
meeting of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers secures absolute
frankness of discussion by the exclusion of reporters; and the frequent
national conferences of miners achieve the same end by supplying
the press with their own abstract of the proceedings. The Miners’
Conference of 1863, which we have already described, had shown, too,
how successfully a large conference of workmen could resolve itself,
for special questions, into private committees, the reports being
laid before the whole conference at its public sittings--a device
not yet adopted by the Trades Union Congress. And the London Society
of Compositors, which is governed practically by mass meetings, had,
for over half a century, known how to combine detailed investigation
of complicated questions with Democratic decisions on principles
of policy, by appointing special committees to report to the next
subsequent members’ meeting. The fact that no such expedients were
suggested shows that in these years the jealousy of most workmen of
outside interference and their apathy about questions unconnected with
their immediate trade interests, made their leaders unwilling to trust
them with real opportunities for full Democratic discussion.

We shall therefore not attempt to reconstruct the Trade Union
Movement from the proceedings of its annual congresses. The following
brief analysis of their programmes and the achievements of the
Parliamentary Committee is meant to show, not the facts as to Trade
Union organisation throughout the country, with which we have already
dealt, but the political and social ideals that filled the minds of
the more thoughtful and better educated working men, and the rapid
transformation of these ideals in the course of the last decade.[513]

The mantle of the Junta of 1867-71 had, by 1875, fallen upon a group
of able organisers who, for many years, occupied the foremost place in
the Trade Union world. Between 1872 and 1875 Allan and Applegarth were
replaced by Henry Broadhurst, John Burnett, J. D. Prior, and George
Shipton.[514] These leaders had moulded their methods and policy upon
those of the able men who preceded them. It was they, indeed, aided by
Alexander Macdonald and Thomas Burt, who had actually carried through
the final achievement of 1875. Like Allan, Applegarth, and Guile, they
belonged either to the iron or the building trades, and were permanent
officials of Trade Union organisations. A comparison of the private
minutes of the Parliamentary Committee between 1875 and 1885 with those
of the Conference of Amalgamated Trades of 1867-71 reveals how exactly
the new “Front Bench” carried on the traditions of the Junta. We see
the same shrewd caution and practical opportunism. We notice the same
assiduous lobbying in the House of Commons, and the same recurring
deputations to evasive Ministers. For the first few years, at least,
we watch the Committee in frequent consultation with the same devoted
legal experts and Parliamentary friends.[515] Through the skilful
guidance and indefatigable activity of Henry Broadhurst the political
machinery of the Trade Union Movement was maintained and even increased
in efficiency. If during these years the occupants of the “Front
Bench” failed to give so decisive a lead to the Labour Movement as
their predecessors had done, the fault lay, not in the men or in the
machinery, but rather in the programme which they set themselves to
carry out.

This programme, laid before all candidates for the House of Commons at
the General Election of 1874, was based, as John Prior subsequently
declared, on the principle “that all exceptional legislation affecting
working men should be swept away, and that they should be placed on
precisely the same footing as other classes of the community.”[516]
Its main items were the repeal of the hated Criminal Law Amendment Act
of 1871, and the further legalisation of Trade Unionism. The sweeping
triumphs of 1875, and the acceptance by the Conservative Government of
the proposals of the Junta, denuded the programme for subsequent years
of its most striking proposals. There remained over in this department
certain minor amendments of law and procedure which occupied the
attention of the Committee for the next few years, and were gradually,
by their exertions, carried into effect.[517]

But one great disability still lay upon working men as such. By the
common law of England a person is liable for the results, not only
of his own negligence, but also for that of his servant, if acting
within the scope of his employment. The one exception is that, whereas
to a stranger the master is liable for the negligence of any person
whom he employs, to his servant he is not liable for the negligence
of a fellow-servant in common employment. By this legal refinement,
which dates only from 1837, and which successive judicial decisions
have engrafted upon the common law, a workman who suffered injury
through the negligence of some other person in the same employment
was precluded from recovering that compensation from the common
employer which a stranger, to whom the same accident had happened,
could claim and enforce.[518] If by the error of a signalman a railway
train met with an accident, all the injured passengers could obtain
compensation from the railway company; but the engine-driver and guard
were expressly excluded from any remedy. What the workman demanded was
the abolition of the doctrine of “common employment,” and the placing
of the employee upon exactly the same footing for compensation as any
member of the public.

By the influence of the Miners’ National Union and the Amalgamated
Society of the Railway Servants (established in 1872) the removal of
this disability was, from the first, placed in the foreground of the
Trade Union programme. Year after year Employers’ Liability Bills
were brought in by the Trade Union representatives in the House of
Commons, only to be met by stubborn resistance from the capitalists of
both parties. Through the pertinacity of Henry Broadhurst a partial
reform[519] was obtained from Gladstone’s Government in 1880, in spite
of the furious opposition of the great employers of labour sitting
on both sides of the House. The responsibility of the employer for
insuring his workmen against the risks of their calling was, for
the first time, clearly recognised by Parliament. The report of the
Parliamentary Committee for 1880 claimed that the main battle on the
subject had been fought, and that “time and opportunity only were now
wanting for the completion of this work.” Since then the promotion
of claims for compensation for accidents has been one of the most
important functions of Trade Unions; and many of the societies, such as
the Bricklayers and Boilermakers, have recovered thousands of pounds
for injured members or their relatives.[520] But the doctrine of
“common employment,” modified by this Act, was by no means abolished.
Employers, moreover, were allowed to induce their work-people to
“contract out” of the provisions of the Act.[521] An Employers’
Liability Bill, the last remnant of the demands of the Junta, remained,
therefore, from 1872 onward a permanent item in the Trade Union
programme down to 1896.

With the exception of this one proposal the Parliamentary programme
of the Trade Union world was framed, in effect, by the New Front
Bench. Curiously devoid of interest or reality, it is important to
the political student as showing to what extent the thoughtful and
superior workman had, at this time, imbibed the characteristic ideas of
middle-class reformers.

The programme of the Parliamentary Committee between 1875 and 1885
falls mainly under three heads. We have first a group of measures the
aim of which was the democratisation of the electoral, administrative,
and judicial machinery of the State. Another set of reforms had for
their end the enabling of the exceptionally thrifty or exceptionally
industrious man to rise out of the wage-earning class. A third group of
proposals aimed at the legal regulation of the conditions of particular
industries.

Complete political Democracy had been for over a century the creed
of the superior workmen. It was therefore not unnatural that it
should come to the front in the Trades Union Congress. What appears
peculiar is the form which this old-standing faith took in the hands
of the Front Bench. The Trade Union leaders of 1837-42 had adopted
enthusiastically the “Six Points” of the Charter. Even the sober
Junta of 1867-71 had sat with Karl Marx on the committee of the
“International,” in the programme of which Universal Suffrage was
but a preliminary bagatelle. To the Front Bench of 1875-85 Democracy
appeared chiefly in the guise of the Codification of the Criminal
Law, the Reform of the Jury System, the creation of a Court of
Criminal Appeal, and the Regulation of the Summary Jurisdiction of the
Magistracy--a curious group of law reforms which it is easy to trace
to the little knot of barristers who had stood by the Unions in their
hour of trial.[522] We do not wish to deprecate the value of these
proposals, framed in the interests of all classes of the community; but
they were not, and probably were never intended to be, in any sense a
democratisation of our judicial system.[523] When the Congress dealt
with electoral reform it got no further than the assimilation of the
county and borough franchise--already a commonplace of middle-class
Liberalism. The student of Continental labour movements will find
it difficult to believe that in the representative Congress of the
English artisans, amendments in favour of Manhood Suffrage were even
as late as 1882 and 1883 rejected by large majorities.[524] Nor did
the Parliamentary Committee put even the County Franchise into their
own programme until it had become the battle-cry of the Liberal party
at the General Election of 1880. The Extension of the Hours of Polling
becomes a subject of discussion from 1878 onward, but the Payment of
Election Expenses does not come up until 1883, and Payment of Members
not until 1884.

Scarcely less significant in character were the measures of social
reform advocated during these years. The prominent Trade Unionists had
been converted, as we have already had occasion to point out, to the
economic Individualism which at this time dominated the Liberal party.
A significant proof of this unconscious conversion is to be found in
the unanimity with which a Trades Union Congress could repeatedly
press for such “reforms” as Peasant Proprietorship, the purchase by
the artisan of his own cottage, the establishment of “self-governing
workshops,” the multiplication of patents in the hands of individual
workmen, and other changes which would cut at the root of Trade
Unionism or any collective control of the means of production. For
whatever advantages there might be in turning the agricultural labourer
into a tiny freeholder, it is obvious that under such a system no
Agricultural Labourers’ Union could exist. However useful it may be
to make the town artisan independent of a landlord, it has been proved
beyond controversy that wage-earning owners of houses lose that perfect
mobility which enables them, through their Trade Union, to boycott the
bad employer or desert the low-paying district. And we can imagine the
dismay with which the leaders of the Nine Hours Movement would have
discovered that any considerable proportion of the engineering work of
Newcastle was being done in workshops owned by artisans whose interests
as capitalists or patentees conflicted with the common interests of all
the workers.

In no respect, however, does the conversion of the Trade Union leaders
to middle-class views stand out more clearly than in their attitude
to the clamour from the workers in certain industries for the legal
protection of their Standard of Life. From time immemorial one of
the leading tenets of Trade Unionism has been the desirability of
maintaining by law the minimum Standard of Life of the workers, and
it was still steadfastly held by two important sections of the Trade
Union world, the Cotton Operatives and the Coal-miners. But to the
Parliamentary Committee of 1875-85, as to the Liberal legislators,
every demand for securing the conditions of labour by legislation
appeared as an invidious exception, only to be justified by the special
helplessness or incompetency of the applicants. Nevertheless, many of
the trades succeeded in persuading Congress to back up the particular
sectional legislation they desired. The Tailors asked, on the one hand,
for the extension of the Factory Acts to home workers, and, on the
other, for compensation out of public funds when interfered with by the
sanitary inspector. The Bakers complained with equal pertinacity of the
lack of public inspection of bakehouses, and of the hardships of their
regulation by the Smoke Prevention Acts. The London Cabmen sought the
aid of Congress, not against their employers, the cab proprietors, but
against the public. The men in charge of engines and boilers demanded
that no one should be allowed to work at their trade without obtaining
from the Government a certificate of competency. In the absence of any
fixed or consistent idea of the collective interest of the wage-earning
class, or of Trade Unionists as such, every proposal that any section
demanded for itself was accepted with equanimity by the Congress,
and passed on to the Parliamentary Committee to carry out, however
inconsistent it might be with the general principles that swayed their
minds.[525]

It is not difficult to understand why, with such a programme, the
Trade Union world failed, between 1876 and 1885, to exercise any
effective influence upon the House of Commons. A few concessions to
the wage-earners were, indeed, obtained from the Government. The
Employers’ Liability Act of 1880, to which we have already referred,
represented, in spite of all its deficiencies, a new departure of
considerable importance. Useful little clauses protecting the interests
of the wage-earners were, through Broadhurst’s pertinacity, inserted
in Chamberlain’s Bankruptcy Act and in his Joint Stock Companies
Act.[526] But it was left to Charles Bradlaugh, who had never been a
Trade Unionist, to initiate the useful law prohibiting the payment of
wages in public-houses, though when it was introduced the Parliamentary
Committee (observing that it was unnecessary in respect of organised
trades) gave it a mild support. Bradlaugh it was, too, who in 1887 got
passed the amendment of the law against Truck--a subject which the
Parliamentary Committee had, in 1877, dismissed from their programme
on the ground that they were unable, in the trades of which they had
knowledge, to find sufficient evidence of its necessity.[527] But the
failure of the Parliamentary Committee to induce the Government of the
day to legislate for wage-earners as such was naturally most patent
in that group of reforms which dealt with the legal regulation of the
conditions of labour. To the great consolidating Factory Bill of 1878
they found only four small amendments to propose; and of these only one
was carried.[528] The “Sweating System” of home work against which the
Tailors and Bootmakers were suggesting stringent but, as we venture to
think, ill-considered legislation was permitted to expand free from all
regulation. The bakehouses, too, were allowed to slip virtually out of
inspection. Deputation after deputation waited on the Home Secretary
to press for an increase in the number of factory inspectors, only to
be met with the apparently unanswerable argument that it would cost
money which the poor taxpayers could ill spare, until the astute and
practical leaders of the Lancashire Cotton Operatives grew tired of the
monotonous regularity with which their resolutions in favour of further
factory inspection and more stringent regulations of the conditions of
their trade were passed by Congress, and the little assistance which
this endorsement procured for them. A “Northern Counties Factory Act
Reform Association” was established in 1886, to do the work which the
Trades Union Congress and its Parliamentary Committee had failed to
accomplish. We have, in fact, only one important achievement of the
Parliamentary Committee to record in this department of social reform.
For years Congress had passed emphatic resolutions in favour of the
selection of practical working men as Factory Inspectors. Great was
the jubilation at the appointment, in 1882, of J. D. Prior, General
Secretary of the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters, and a member of the
Parliamentary Committee, to the post of Inspector.[529]

In matters of more general interest the Trade Union leaders were
not more successful, though the attempt to reform the law and its
administration resulted in some minor improvements. The first outcome
of the projects for law reform so dear to the Congresses of 1876-80 was
the Justices’ Clerks Act of 1877, which enabled magistrates to remit
costs. The passing of the Summary Jurisdiction Act of 1879, which gave
defendants the right to claim trial before a jury whenever the penalty
exceeded three months’ imprisonment, was, Howell observes, “materially
aided by the action of Congress.” But it is needless to inform the
reader that the Criminal Law never got itself codified. To this day
juries continue to be drawn exclusively from the upper and middle
classes. The long agitation for the abolition of the unpaid magistracy
ended in an anti-climax. The Liberal Government of 1884 left the system
unaltered, but, on the nomination of Henry Broadhurst,[530] placed four
Trade Union leaders upon the magisterial bench in certain Lancashire
boroughs, a precedent since followed by successive Lord Chancellors.

In one direction the Parliamentary Committee saw their hopes fully
accomplished. Their adoption of the particular projects of electoral
reform advocated by the Liberal party enabled them to render effective
help in the passing of the Acts of 1885, which assimilated the County
and the Borough Franchise, effected a redistribution of seats, and made
the extended hours of polling universal. But the desire of successive
Congresses for effective labour representation continued to be baulked
by the extortion from candidates of heavy election expenses, and by
the refusal to provide payment for service in Parliament and other
public bodies. On the burning question of the land the Parliamentary
Committee supported with conscientious fervour Gladstone’s Irish
policy of creating small freeholds, and enthusiastically endorsed the
proposals of Chamberlain for the extension of similar legislation to
Great Britain. The same spirit no doubt entered into their support of
the provisions of Chamberlain’s Patent Act, designed to facilitate the
taking out of patents by poor inventors. To sum up the situation, we
may say that the resolutions of the Trades Union Congress on questions
of general politics between 1880 and 1884 were successfully pressed
on the Legislature only in so far as they happened to coincide with
the proposals of the Liberal party. With the one great exception of
the Employers’ Liability Act, nothing seems really to have called
out the full energies of the leaders. The manifestoes and published
memoranda of the Parliamentary Committee during these years do not
differ either in tone or in substance from the speeches and articles
in which Chamberlain and other Radical capitalists were propounding
a programme of individualist Radicalism. In fact, the draft “Address
to the Workmen of the United Kingdom,” which the Parliamentary
Committee, in anticipation of the General Election, submitted to
the Congress of 1885, fell far short of Chamberlain’s “Unauthorised
Programme.” It occurred neither to the Parliamentary Committee nor to
the Congress to suggest the obvious answer to Sir William Harcourt’s
financial objection to increased factory inspection. No trace is to be
discovered of any consciousness on the part of the Trade Union leaders
of the existence of a very substantial tribute annually levied upon
the industrial world under the names of rent and interest. And even
Chamberlain’s modest and tentative proposals of these years, relating
to the payment, by the recipients of that tribute, of some contribution
by way of “ransom,” found no echo in the official programme of the
Trade Union world. Finally, though the Congress had adopted Payment
of Election Expenses in 1883, and Payment of Members in 1884, the
Parliamentary Committee omitted both these propositions from its
draft, and, like Gladstone, could not even bring itself to ask for
Free Education. The three latter points were added to the draft by the
Congress.

The assimilation of the political creed of the Trade Union leaders
with that of the official Liberal party was perfectly sincere. We have
already described, in the preceding chapter, how the Junta had begun
to be unconsciously converted from the traditional position of Trade
Unionism to the principle of Administrative Nihilism, then dominant
in the middle class. It is unnecessary for us to argue whether this
conception of the functions of law and government is or is not an
adequate view of social development. The able and conscientious men
who formed the Front Bench of the Trades Union Congress of 1876-85 had
grown up without any alternative political theory, and had accordingly
erected the objection to legislative interference or Governmental
administration into an absolute dogma.[531]

_Laisser-faire_, then, was the political and social creed of the
Trade Union leaders of this time. Up to 1885 they undoubtedly
represented the views current among the rank and file. At that date
all observers were agreed that the Trade Unions of Great Britain
would furnish an impenetrable barrier against Socialistic projects.
Within a decade we find the whole Trade Union world permeated with
Collectivist ideas, and, as the _Times_ recorded as early as 1893,
the Socialist party supreme in the Trades Union Congress.[532] This
revolution in opinion is the chief event of Trade Union history at the
close of the nineteenth century; and we propose to analyse in some
detail the various influences which in our opinion co-operated to
bring it about. We shall trace the beginnings of a new intellectual
ferment in the Trade Union world. We shall watch this working on
minds awakened by an industrial contraction of exceptional character.
We shall see it resulting in the revelation of hideous details of
poverty and degradation, for which deepening social compunction
imperatively demanded a remedy. We shall describe the recrudescence of
a revolutionary Utopianism like the Owenism of 1833-34. We shall trace
the gradual schooling of the impracticable elements into a sobered and
somewhat bureaucratic Collectivism; and finally, we shall watch the
rapid diffusion of this new faith throughout the whole Trade Union
world.[533]

If we had to assign to any one event the starting of the new current
of thought, we should name the wide circulation in Great Britain
of Henry George’s _Progress and Poverty_ during the years 1880-82.
The optimistic and aggressive tone of the book, in marked contrast with
the complacent quietism into which the English working-class movement
had sunk, and the force of the popularisation of the economic Theory
of Rent, sounded the dominant note alike of the “New Unionism” and
of the British Socialist Movement. Henry George made, it is true, no
contribution to the problems of industrial organisation; nor had he,
outside of the “Single Tax” on land values, any intention of promoting
a general Collectivist movement. But he succeeded, where previous
writers had failed, in widely diffusing among all classes a vivid
appreciation of the nature and results of the landlord’s appropriation
of economic rent. It is, in our judgement, the spread among the town
artisans of this conception of rent which has so largely transformed
the economic views of the Trade Union world, and which has gone far to
shift the lines of politics. The land question in particular has been
completely revolutionised. Instead of the Chartist cry of “Back to the
Land,” still adhered to by rural labourers and belated politicians,
the town artisan is thinking of his claim to the unearned increment of
urban land values, which he now watches falling into the coffers of the
great landlords.

But if Henry George gave the starting push, it was the propaganda of
the Socialists that got the new movement under way. The Socialist
party, which became reorganised in London between 1881 and 1883, after
practically a generation of quiescence, merged the project of Land
Nationalisation in the wider conception of an organised Democratic
community in which the collective power and the collective income
should be consciously directed to the common benefit of all.[534]
Whilst Henry George was, almost in his own despite, driving Peasant
Proprietorship and Leasehold Enfranchisement out of the political
field, the impressive description which Karl Marx had given of the
effects of the Industrial Revolution was interpreting to the thoughtful
workman the every-day incidents of industrial life. It needed no
Socialist to convince the artisan in any of the great industries
that his chance of rising to be a successful employer was becoming
daily more remote. It required no agitator to point out that amid
an enormous increase in wealth production the wages of the average
mechanic remained scarcely sufficient to bring up his family in decency
and comfort, whilst whole sections of his unskilled fellow-workers
received less than the barest family maintenance. Even the skilled
mechanic saw himself exposed to panics, commercial crises, and violent
industrial dislocations, over which neither he nor his Trade Union had
any control, and by which he and his children were often reduced to
destitution. But it was the Socialists who supplied the workman with a
plausible explanation of these untoward facts. Through the incessant
lecturing of H. M. Hyndman, William Morris, and other disciples of
Karl Marx, working men were taught that the impossibility of any large
section of the working class becoming their own employers was due, not
to lack of self-control, capacity, or thrift, but to the Industrial
Revolution, with its improvement of mechanical processes, its massing
of capital, and the consequent extinction of the small _entrepreneur_
by great industrial establishments. In this light the divorce of the
manual workers from the ownership of the means of production was
seen to be no passing phase, but an economic development which must,
under any system of private control of industry, become steadily
more complete. And it was argued that the terrible alterations of
over-production and commercial stagnation, the anomaly that a glut of
commodities should be a cause of destitution, were the direct result of
the management of industry with a view to personal profit, instead of
to the satisfaction of public wants.

The economic circumstances of the time supplied the Socialist
lecturers with dramatic illustrations of their theory. The acute
depression of 1878-79 had been succeeded by only a brief and partial
expansion during 1881-83. A period of prolonged though not exceptional
contraction followed, during which certain staple trades experienced
the most sudden and excessive fluctuations. In the great industry of
shipbuilding, for instance, the bad times of 1879 were succeeded by a
period during which trade expanded by leaps and bounds, more than twice
the tonnage being built in 1883 than in 1879. In the very next year
this enormous production came suddenly to an end, many shipbuilding
yards being closed and whole towns on the north-east coast finding
their occupation for the moment destroyed. The total tonnage built
fell from 1,250,000 in 1883 to 750,000 in 1884, 540,000 in 1885, and
to the still lower total of 473,000 in 1886. Thousands of the most
highly skilled and best organised mechanics, who had been brought to
Jarrow or Sunderland the year before, found themselves reduced to
absolute destitution, not from any failure of their industry, but
merely because the exigencies of competitive profit-making had led to
the concentration in one year of the normal production of two. “In
every shipbuilding port,” says Robert Knight in the Boilermakers’
Annual Report for 1886, “there are to be seen thousands of idle men
vainly seeking for an honest day’s work. The privation that has been
endured by them, their wives and children, is terrible to contemplate.
Sickness has been very prevalent, whilst the hundreds of pinched and
hungry faces have told a tale of suffering and privation which no
optimism could minimise or conceal. Hide it--cover it up as we may,
there is a depth of grief and trouble the full revelations of which, we
believe, cannot be indefinitely postponed. The workman may be ignorant
of science and the arts, and the sum of his exact knowledge may be
only that which he has gained in his closely circumscribed daily toil;
but he is not blind, and his thoughts do not take the shape of daily
and hourly thanksgiving that his condition is not worse than it is;
he does not imitate the example of the pious shepherd of Salisbury
Plain, who derived supreme contentment from the fact that a kind
Providence had vouchsafed him salt to eat with his potatoes. He sees
the lavish display of wealth in which he has no part. He sees a large
and growing class enjoying inherited abundance. He sees miles of costly
residences, each occupied by fewer people than are crowded into single
rooms of the tenement in which he lives. He cannot fail to reason that
there must be something wrong in a system which effects such unequal
distribution of the wealth created by labour.”

Other skilled trades had, between 1883 and 1887, a similar though
less dramatic experience. At the International Trades Union Congress
of 1886, James Mawdsley, the cautious leader of the Lancashire
cotton-spinners, speaking as a member of the Parliamentary Committee
on behalf of the British section, described the state of affairs
in England in the following terms: “Wages had fallen, and there
was a great number of unemployed.... Flax mills were being closed
every day.... All the building trades were in a bad position; ...
ironfoundries were in difficulties, and one-third of the shipwrights
were without work.... Steam-engine makers were also slack, except those
manufacturers who exported to France, Germany, and Austria. With a few
rare exceptions, the depression affecting the great leading trades was
felt in a thousand-and-one occupations. Seeing that there was a much
larger number of unemployed, the question naturally presented itself
as to whether there was any chance of improvement. He considered there
was no chance of improvement so long as the present state of society
continued to exist.... He did not understand their Socialism; he had
not studied it as perhaps he ought to have done. The workmen of England
were not so advanced as the workmen of the Continent. Nevertheless
they, at least, possessed one clear conception: they realised that
the actual producers did not obtain their share of the wealth they
created.”[535] We see the same spirit spreading even to the most
conservative and exclusive trades. “To our minds,” writes the Central
Secretary of the powerful Union of Flint Glass Makers, “it is very
hard for employers to attempt to force men into systems by which they
cannot earn an honourable living. These unjust attempts to grind down
the working men will not be tolerated much longer, for revolutionary
changes are beginning to show themselves, and important matters
affecting the industrial classes will speedily come to the front. Why,
for example, should Lord Dudley inherit coal-mines and land producing
£1000 a day while his colliers have to slave all the week and cannot
get a living?”[536]

The discontent was fanned by well-intentioned if somewhat sentimental
philanthropists, who were publishing their experiences in the sweated
industries and the slums of the great cities. The _Bitter Cry of
Outcast London_ and other gruesome stories were revealing, not only
to the middle class, but also to the “aristocracy of labour,” whole
areas of industrial life which neither Trade Unionism nor Co-operation
could hope to reach. With the middle class the compunction thus excited
resulted in elaborate investigations issuing in inconclusive reports.
A Royal Commission on the Housing of the Poor produced nothing more
effectual than a slight addition to the existing powers of vestries
and Town Councils. Another on the Depression of Trade was absolutely
barren. A Select Committee of the House of Lords on the Poor Law failed
even to discover the problems to be solved. Another on the Sweating
System ended, after years of delay, in an accurate diagnosis of the
evil, coupled with a confession of inability to cope with it. In 1885
an Edinburgh philanthropist provided a thousand pounds for a public
conference to inquire whether some more equitable system of industrial
remuneration could not be suggested: a conference which served only
to cast doubt on such philanthropic schemes as profit-sharing and
the “self-governing workshop,” whilst bringing into prominence the
Socialist proposals.[537] And, more important than all these, Charles
Booth, a great merchant and shipowner, began in 1886, at his own
expense, a systematic statistical inquiry into the actual social
condition of the whole population of London, the impressive results
of which eventually reverberated from one end of the kingdom to the
other.[538]

The outcome of the investigations thus set on foot was an incalculable
impetus to social reform. They had, for the most part, been undertaken
in the expectation that a sober and scientific inquiry would prove
the exceptional character of the harrowing incidents laid bare by
the philanthropists, and unsparingly quoted by the new agitators.
But to the genuine surprise alike of the economists and the Trade
Union leaders, the lurid statements of the sensationalists and the
Socialists were, on the whole, borne out by the statistics. The stories
of unmerited misery were shown to be, not accidental exceptions to a
general condition of moderate well-being, but typical instances of the
average existence of great masses of the population. The “sweater”
turned out to be, not an exceptionally cruel capitalist, but himself
the helpless product of a widespread degeneration which extended
over whole industries. In the wealthiest and most productive city in
the world, Charles Booth, after an exhaustive census, was driven to
the conclusion that a million and a quarter persons fell habitually
below his “Poverty Line.” Thirty-two per cent of the whole population
of London (in some large districts over 60 per cent) were found to
be living in a state of chronic poverty, which precluded not only
the elementary conditions of civilisation and citizenship, but was
incompatible with physical health or industrial efficiency. Moreover,
Charles Booth’s figures and the report of the House of Lords Committee
on Sweating disproved, once for all, the comfortable assumption that
all destitution originated in drink or vice. It was impossible, to use
the well-known phrase of Burke, to draw an indictment against a third
of the people of London, or against two-thirds of the East End.

The daily experience of whole sections of the wage-earners during
these years of depression, and the statistical inquiries of the middle
class, appeared, therefore, to justify the Socialist indictment of
the capitalist system. What was perhaps of more effect was the fact
that the Socialists alone seemed inspired by faith in a radical
transformation of society, and that they alone offered a solution which
had not yet been tried and found wanting. Prior to 1867 it had been
possible to ascribe the evil state of the wage-earners to the malignant
influence of class government and political exclusion. Cobden and
Bright had eloquently described the millennium to be reached through
untaxed products. For a whole generation the leaders of a consolidated
Trade Unionism had demonstrated the advantageous terms that the artisan
might, through collective bargaining and a reserve fund, wring from
his employers. But in face of a protracted lack of employment, the
extended suffrage, Free Trade, and well-administered Trade Unions
proved alike helpless. Twenty years of the franchise had left the town
artisan still at the mercy of commercial gamblers and exposed to the
extortions of the slum landlord. A Liberal Government was actually in
power, wielding an enormous majority, but manifesting no keen desire to
remedy the results of economic inequality. No attempt was being made to
redress even the admitted wrongs of the necessitous taxpayer. The Tea
Duty remained untouched; the Land Tax was left unreformed; whilst the
larger question of using some of the nation’s wealth to provide decent
conditions of existence for the great bulk of the people was not even
mooted. A further Extension of the Franchise, Free Trade, and Popular
Education were still the only social and economic panaceas that the
Liberal party had to offer. But cheapness of commodities was of no use
to the workman who was thrown out of employment; and the spread of
education served but to increase his discontent with existing social
conditions and his ability to understand the theoretic explanations and
practical proposals of the new school of reformers.

The working man found no more comfort in Trade Unionism than in party
politics. The mason, carpenter, or ironfounder saw, for instance,
his old and powerful Trade Society reduced to little more than a
sick and burial club, refusing all support to strikes even against
reductions of wages and increase of hours, and only maintaining
its out-of-work benefit by running heavily into debt to its more
prosperous members.[539] As the lean years followed one on another,
he saw the benefits reduced, the contributions raised, and numbers
of staunch Unionists left high and dry as members “out of benefit.”
The trade friendly society--the “scientific Trade Unionism” of the
Front Bench--was in fact becoming rapidly discredited. John Burns and
Tom Mann, young and energetic members of the Amalgamated Society of
Engineers, were, between 1884 and 1889, vigorously denouncing, up and
down the country, the supineness of their great amalgamated Union. “How
long, how long,” appeals Tom Mann to the Trade Unionists in 1886,[540]
“will you be content with the present half-hearted policy of your
Unions? I readily grant that good work has been done in the past by
the Unions; but, in Heaven’s name, what good purpose are they serving
now? All of them have large numbers out of employment even when their
particular trade is busy. None of the important societies have any
policy other than that of endeavouring to keep wages from falling. The
true Unionist policy of _aggression_ seems entirely lost sight of:
in fact, the average Unionist of to-day is a man with a fossilised
intellect, either hopelessly apathetic, or supporting a policy that
plays directly into the hands of the capitalist exploiter.... I take my
share of the work of the Trade Union to which I belong; but I candidly
confess that unless it shows more vigour at the present time (June
1886) I shall be compelled to take the view--against my will--that
to continue to spend time over the ordinary squabble-investigating,
do-nothing policy will be an unjustifiable waste of one’s energies. I
am sure there are thousands of others in my state of mind.”[541]

“Constituted as it is,” writes John Burns in September 1887,[542]
“Unionism carries within itself the source of its own dissolution....
Their reckless assumption of the duties and responsibilities that
only the State or whole community can discharge, in the nature of
sick and superannuation benefits, at the instance of the middle
class, is crushing out the larger Unions by taxing their members to
an unbearable extent. This so cripples them that the fear of being
unable to discharge their friendly society liabilities often makes them
submit to encroachments by the masters without protest. The result of
this is that all of them have ceased to be Unions for maintaining the
rights of labour, and have degenerated into mere middle and upper class
rate-reducing institutions.”[543]

Here we see the beginning of that agitation against the combination of
friendly benefits with trade protection aims which subsequently became,
for a short time, one of the characteristics of the “New Unionism.” But
if the trade friendly society withered up during these years into a
mere benefit club, the purely trade society showed no greater vitality.
The great depression of 1878-79 had swept out of existence hundreds of
little local Unions which lacked the cohesion given by the friendly
society side. The Lancashire and Midland Miners’ organisations, which
gave no benefits, had either collapsed altogether, or had dissolved
into isolated pit clubs, incapable of combined action. The Lancashire
cotton operatives, the Northumberland and Durham miners, and a few
other essentially trade societies, held together only by surrendering
to the employers one concession after another. With capitalists ready
at any moment to suspend a profitless business, collective bargaining
proved as powerless to avert reductions as the individual contract.
In face of a long-continued depression of trade, marked by frequent
oscillations in particular industries, both types of Trade Unionism, it
seemed, had been tried and found wanting.

These were the circumstances under which the disillusioned
working-class politician or Trade Unionist was reached by the
lectures and writings of the Socialists, who offered him not only a
sympathetic explanation of the ills from which he suffered, but also a
comprehensive scheme of social reform, extending from an Eight Hours
Bill to the Nationalisation of the Means of Production. In a purely
historical essay it is unnecessary for us to discuss the validity of
the optimistic confidence with which the Socialists of these years
declared that under a system of collective ownership the workers would
not only be ensured at all times a competent livelihood, but would
themselves control the administration of the surplus wealth of the
nation. But in tracing the causes of the New Unionism of 1889-90, and
the transformation of the Trade Union Movement from an Individualist to
a Collectivist influence in the political world, we venture to ascribe
a large share to the superior attractiveness of this buoyant faith over
anything offered by the almost cynical fatalism of the old school.

The Socialist agitation benefited between 1886 and 1889 by a series of
undesigned advertisements. Meetings of “the unemployed” in February
1886 led to unexpected riots, which threw all London into a panic,
and were followed by a Government prosecution for sedition. Hyndman,
Burns, Champion, and Williams, as the leaders of the Social Democratic
Federation, were indicted at the Old Bailey, and their trial, ending
in an acquittal, attracted the attention of the whole country to their
doctrines. The “Unemployed” gatherings went on with ever-increasing
noise until November 1887, when the Chief Commissioner of Police issued
a proclamation prohibiting meetings in Trafalgar Square, which had for
a whole generation served as the forum of the London agitator. This
“attack on free speech” by a Conservative Government, coming after
several minor attempts to suppress open-air meetings by its Liberal
predecessor, rallied the forces of London artisan Radicalism to those
of the Socialists. A gigantic demonstration on Sunday, November 13,
1887, was held in defiance of the police, only to be repulsed from
Trafalgar Square by a free use of the police bludgeon and the calling
out of both cavalry and infantry. John Burns and Cunninghame Graham,
M.P., were imprisoned for their share in this transaction. A similar
agitation on a smaller scale was going on in the provinces. On Tyneside
and in the Midlands numerous emissaries of the Social Democratic
Federation and the Socialist League were spreading the revolt against
the helpless apathy into which the Trade Unions had sunk. In every
large industrial centre the indefatigable lecturing of branches of
Socialist organisations was stirring up a vague but effective unrest in
all except the official circle of the Trade Union world.

To the great army of unskilled, or only partially skilled, workmen
concentrated in London and other large cities the new crusade came
as a gospel of deliverance. The unskilled labourer was getting tired
of being referred, as the sole means of bettering his condition, to
the “scientific Trade Unionism” alone recognised by the Front Bench.
Trade Societies which admitted only workmen earning a high standard
rate, which exacted a weekly contribution of not less than a shilling,
and which frequently excluded all but regularly apprenticed men, were
regarded by the builders’ labourer, the gas stoker, or the docker, as
aristocratic corporations with which he had as little in common as
with the House of Lords. “The great bulk of our labourers,” writes
John Burns, “are ignored by the skilled workers. It is this selfish,
snobbish desertion by the higher grades of the lower that makes success
in many disputes impossible. Ostracised by their fellows, a spirit
of revenge alone often prompts men to oppose or remain indifferent
to Unionism, when if the Unions were wiser and more conciliatory,
support would have been forthcoming where now jealousy and discontent
prevails.”[544] Even among the skilled workers, the younger artisans,
if they had joined their Unions at all, were discontented with the
exclusive and apathetic policy of the older members. Thus we find
rising up, in such “aristocratic” Unions as the Amalgamated Society
of Engineers and the London Society of Compositors, a “New Unionist”
party of young men, who vigorously objected to the degradation of a
Trade Union into a mutual insurance company, who protested against
the exclusion of the lowly paid sections from the organisation of the
trade, and who advocated the use of the political influence of the
Society in the interests of Social-Democracy. By 1888 the Socialists
had not only secured the allegiance of large sections of the unskilled
labourers in London and some other towns, but had obtained an important
body of recruits in the great “Amalgamated” societies.

At this pass nothing short of strangulation could have kept the new
spirit out of the Trade Union Congress. It is interesting to notice
that the first sign among the delegates is to be ascribed to the
direct influence of Karl Marx. At the 1878 Congress at Bristol we find
Adam Weiler, an old member of the “International,” and a personal
friend of the great Socialist, reading a paper in which he advocated
legislation to limit the hours of labour.[545] At the next Congress
Weiler took exception to the resolution in favour of establishing a
Peasant Proprietorship moved on behalf of the Parliamentary Committee.
But in that year his amendment in favour of Land Nationalisation
did not even find a seconder. Three years later the effect of Henry
George’s propaganda becomes visible. In 1882, when the land question
was again raised, the two ideals were sharply contrasted, and in
spite of protests against “communistic principles,” a rider declaring
for nationalisation was adopted by 71 votes to 31. The Parliamentary
Committee made no change in their attitude on the question, contending
that the vote had been taken in the absence of many delegates, and
that it did not represent the opinion of the Congress as a whole. This
contention was to some extent borne out by the votes of the next five
Congresses, at all of which amendments in favour of the principle of
nationalisation were rejected, though by decreasing majorities. At
length, in 1887, at the Swansea Congress, the tide turned, and a vague
addendum in favour of Land Nationalisation was accepted.[546] At the
Bradford Congress in 1888 the very idea of Peasant Proprietorship had
disappeared. The representatives of the agricultural labourers now
asked only for individual occupation of publicly owned allotments.
Ultimately the Congress adopted by 66 votes to 5 a distinct declaration
in favour of Land Nationalisation, coupled with an instruction to the
Parliamentary Committee to bring the proposal before the House of
Commons.

Meanwhile Weiler had made another and more successful attempt to
enlist the aid of the Congress in the legal regulation of the hours of
labour. At the 1883 Congress he moved a resolution which instructed
the Parliamentary Committee to obtain the legal limitation to eight
hours of the maximum day of all workers in the employment of public
authorities, or companies exercising Parliamentary powers. This was
seconded by Edward Harford, the General Secretary of the Amalgamated
Society of Railway Servants, and carried, in a thin meeting, by only
33 to 8. In 1885 the movement had so far gained weight that the
Parliamentary Committee thought it expedient to temporise by promoting
an investigation into the amount of overtime worked in Government
departments, with the result of demonstrating how completely the
practice of systematic overtime had neutralised the Nine Hours
victory.[547] At the 1887 Congress at Swansea the Parliamentary
Committee were instructed to take a vote of the Trade Union world
upon the whole question, a vote which revealed the unexpected fact
that Applegarth’s own Union, the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters
and Joiners, had been converted to an Eight Hours Bill.[548] A second
plebiscite, taken at the instance of the following year’s Congress,
showed that such old Unions as the Compositors, the Ironfounders, and
the Railway Servants were swinging round.[549]

In the meantime the growing divergence of policy among the coal-miners,
which we foreshadowed in the last chapter, had brought a powerful
contingent of organised workmen to the support of the new party.
We have already described the conversion of the leaders of the
Northumberland and Durham miners to the principle of the Sliding Scale,
involving, as it did, the dependence of the worker’s standard of
comfort upon the market price of his product. On another point, too,
the two northern counties had broken away from the traditional policy
of the Miners’ organisation. Already in 1863 we noted that Crawford,
one of the ablest of their leaders, was vigorously objecting, at the
Leeds Conference, to an Eight Hours Bill for boys, on the ground that
in Northumberland and Durham, where the hewers often worked in two
shifts, such a restriction would interfere with the men’s convenience.
This resistance to a particular interference with the exceptional
circumstances of the local industry gradually developed into a general
objection to legal regulation of the hours of adult men. We find,
therefore, the Northumberland and Durham miners from 1875 onwards
ranging themselves more and more with the leaders of the iron and
building trades, who, as we have seen, had become largely converted to
the economic conceptions then current among the middle class. The fact
that the Northumberland and Durham Associations, almost alone among
Miners’ Unions, had successfully weathered the bad times of 1877-79,
and the constant presence of one or other of their leaders on the
Parliamentary Committee, caused these opinions to be accepted as those
of the whole industry.

But the miners elsewhere did not long rest content with the new policy
of Durham and Northumberland. In December 1881 the amalgamated South
and West Yorkshire Miners’ Associations formally terminated the then
existing Sliding Scale, and passed a resolution in favour of the policy
of restricting the output. During the following years the Yorkshire
employers several times proposed the re-establishment of a scale, but
the men insisted on its being accompanied by an agreement for a minimum
below which wages should in no event fall--a condition to which the
coal-owners uniformly refused their assent. The lead given by the
Yorkshire miners was quickly followed by other districts, notably
by Lancashire. In this county Trade Unionism among the miners had,
as we have seen, gone to pieces in the bad years. Reorganisation in
local Unions, came in 1881; and a Lancashire Miners’ Federation was
successfully established in the following year. At their Conference of
1883 the delegates of the Lancashire miners resolved, “That the time
has come when the working miners shall regulate the production of coal;
that no collier or other underground worker shall work more than five
days or shifts per week; and that the hours from bank to bank be eight
per shift.” Finding it impossible to secure their object by strikes,
the Lancashire men turned to that policy of legislative regulation
which had marked the proceedings of the Conference of 1863.

With the improvement in trade which began in 1885, the membership
and influence of the Lancashire and Yorkshire organisations
rapidly increased, and new federations were started throughout the
Midlands. The Scotch miners, too, had in 1886-87 a short outburst of
organisation, when a national federation was formed with a membership
of 23,000. All these Associations adopted the policy of regulating the
output, and the Scotch miners, in particular, conducted, in 1887, a
vigorous agitation in support of the clause limiting the day’s work to
eight hours, which two Scottish members endeavoured to insert in the
Mines Regulation Act of 1887.[550] But the Executive of the National
Union had, since Macdonald’s death in 1881, fallen entirely into the
hands of the Northumberland and Durham leaders. Under their influence
it maintained its adherence to the principle of the Sliding Scale
and its hostility to the Eight Hours Bill, thereby alienating, not
only the new federations, but also the old-established and powerful
Yorkshire Miners’ Association. From 1885 to 1888 the battle between the
contending doctrines ranged at every miners’ conference.[551] During
the latter year the combatants withdrew to separate camps. In September
1888 a conference of the representatives of non-sliding scale districts
was called together in Manchester, when arrangements were made for the
establishment of a new federation, into which no district governed by
a sliding scale was to be allowed to enter. From this time forth the
old National Union on the one hand, and the new Miners’ Federation on
the other, became rivals for the allegiance of the various district
associations, and somewhat unsympathetic critics of each other’s
policy and actions. The issue was not long doubtful. The National
Union gradually shrank up to Northumberland and Durham, whilst the
Miners’ Federation, with its aggressive policy and its semi-Socialistic
principles of a minimum wage and a legal day, grew apace. From 36,000
members in 1888, it rose to 96,000 in 1889, 147,000 in 1891, and over
200,000 in 1893, overshadowing in its growth all existing Trade Union
organisations. The Socialist advocates of the legal limitation of the
hours of labour accordingly enjoyed from 1888 onward, both in the Trade
Union Congress and at the polling-booths, the support of a rapidly
growing contingent of organised miners, whose solid adhesion has done
more than anything else to promote the general movement in favour of an
Eight Hours Bill.

It is easy at this distance to recognise, in the altered tone of the
rank and file of Congress delegates, a reflection of the wider change
of opinion outside. But to the Trade Union Front Bench, as, in fact,
to most of the politicians of the time, it was incredible that the new
ideas should gain any real footing among the skilled artisans. The
Parliamentary Committee regarded the innovations with much the same
feeling as that with which they had met the proposals of a little gang
which had, in 1882, vainly attempted to foist the principles of fiscal
protection upon the Congress.[552] When Congress insisted on passing
a resolution with which the Parliamentary Committee found themselves
in disagreement, this expression of opinion was sometimes ignored as
being nothing more than the fad of particular delegates. It was in vain
that the Congress of 1888, after ten years’ deliberation, definitely
decided in favour of the principles of Land Nationalisation instead of
Peasant Proprietorship. The Parliamentary Committee contented itself
with promising that “a well-considered measure” would be put forward
by the Committee. The Eight Hours question could not be treated so
cavalierly. Direct resolutions in favour of legislative action were
therefore staved off by proposals for inquiry. When a vote of the
Trade Union world was decided upon, the Parliamentary Committee, in
conjunction with many of the General Secretaries, were able practically
to baulk the investigation. The voting paper was loaded with warnings
and arguments against legislative action. No attempt was made to ensure
a genuine vote of the rank and file. In some cases the Executive
Committees were allowed to take upon themselves the responsibility of
declaring the opinions held by the members of their societies, the
total membership of which was then reckoned in the voting. In other
instances the Executives were permitted without remonstrance simply
to burke the question. The inquiry failed to elicit any trustworthy
census of the opinion of the Trade Union world.

An equal lack of sympathy was shown in connection with the growing
feeling of the Congress in favour of the participation of British
Trade Unionists in International Congresses. At the express
command of Congress, the Parliamentary Committee sent delegates to
the International gatherings of 1883 and 1886. But though these
instructions were complied with, the Parliamentary Committee made it
clear, in their annual reports, that far from favouring International
action, “the position they assumed was that they were so well
organised, so far ahead of foreign workmen, that little could be
done until these were more on a level” with the skilled workers
of England.[553] The Congress of 1886 nevertheless instructed the
Parliamentary Committee to summon an International Conference in London
in the following year. Instead of complying with this instruction, the
Committee published, in May 1887, a lengthy pamphlet explaining that,
owing to the indisposition of foreign workmen to make any pecuniary
sacrifices for their Trade Unions, and the consequent lack of any
stable working-class organisations, they had decided to refer the
whole question again to the forthcoming Trade Union Congress. When
the Congress met at Swansea in September 1887, it soon became evident
that the Parliamentary Committee, on this question as on others, was
quite out of touch with its constituents. In spite of the influence of
the Front Bench, a resolution in favour of an International Congress
was adopted; and the Committee succeeded only in inducing Congress to
impose restrictions which were intended to exclude the delegates of the
German Social-Democratic party. The International Congress was held in
London in November 1888. Notwithstanding every precaution, a majority
of the representatives proved to be of Socialist views, Mrs. Besant,
John Burns, Tom Mann, and Keir Hardie appearing among the British
delegates. The stiff and unsympathetic attitude of the Parliamentary
Committee led to heated and, at times, unseemly controversies; and
the resolutions passed were treated by the Committee as of no account
whatsoever.

The net result of these proceedings was the loss by the Parliamentary
Committee of all intellectual leadership of the Trade Union world. They
failed either to resist the new ideas or to guide them into practicable
channels. The official Trade Union programme from 1885 to 1889 became
steadily more colourless, in striking contrast with the rapid march
of politics in the country, which was sweeping the Liberal party
forward year by year until in 1891 it adopted the so-called “Newcastle
Programme.” This programme formulated, though very inadequately, the
national side of that semi-collectivist policy which under the name of
Progressivism had superseded Liberalism in the London County Council.
All that the Parliamentary Committee did was to abandon, one by one,
the proposals for the democratisation of the civil and judicial
administration which the Front Bench had so much at heart, without
replacing them by the more robust resolutions which the Congress
in these years was passing. The Land Question, on which a vigorous
advocacy of the creation of small freeholders had been formerly
maintained, dwindled to a meaningless demand for undefined reform of
the land laws, and finally disappeared altogether on the adoption by
the Congress of the principle of nationalisation. The maintenance of
the Nine Hours Day, and the further reduction of the hours of labour by
means of voluntary combination (a frequent item in the official agenda
from 1875 to 1879) gradually dropped out altogether as the new demand
for legal regulation gathered strength. In short, the Parliamentary
Committee had perforce to give up those items in their programme which
were contrary to the new ideas of Congress, whilst they silently
abstained from incorporating the new resolutions with which they were
personally not in agreement.

It would, however, be unfair to assume that the stock of official
Trade Unionism was, during these years, absolutely barren of new
developments. To Mr. C. J. Drummond,[554] then Secretary to the
London Society of Compositors, and a friend of the Parliamentary
Committee, belongs the credit of having taken the first step towards
the enforcement, through the Government, of a standard minimum wage. On
the revision of the Government printing contract in 1884, Mr. Drummond
secured the support of the Parliamentary Committee in an attempt to
induce the Stationery Office to adopt, as the basis for the contract,
the Trade Union rates of the London compositors. This attempt was,
in the main, successful; but the new contract was nevertheless given
to a “closed” house, in which no member of the Union could work.
The compositors did not let the matter rest. When the President of
the Local Government Board (Joseph Chamberlain) issued a circular
in January 1886, as to the effects of the depression in trade, Mr.
Drummond replied by explicitly demanding the Government’s recognition
of the Standard Wage in all their dealings. The idea spread with
great rapidity. A general demand was started that public authorities
should present a good example as employers of labour by themselves
paying Trade Union rates, and insisting on their contractors doing the
same. Candidates for Parliament at the General Election of 1886 found
themselves, at the instance of the London Society of Compositors,[555]
for the first time “heckled” as to their willingness to insist on “Fair
Wages”; and it began slowly to dawn upon election agents that it might
be prejudicial for their election literature to bear the imprint of
“rat houses.” In October 1886 the action of the London School Board in
giving its printing contract to an “unfair” house was bitterly resented
by the London compositors, who induced the London Trades Council
to go on a vain deputation of protest. When, in November 1888, the
London School Board election came round, A. G. Cook, a member of the
London Society of Compositors, secured election for Finsbury, avowedly
as a champion of Trade Union wages; and two members of the Fabian
Society, Mrs. Annie Besant and the Rev. Stewart Headlam, won seats as
Socialists. By their eloquence and tactical skill these members induced
the Board, early in 1889, to declare that it would henceforth insist
on the payment of “Fair Wages” by all its contractors, a policy in
which the Board was promptly followed by the newly established London
County Council.[556] This new departure by the leading public bodies in
the Metropolis did much to bring about a common understanding between
the official Trade Unionists and the new movement. It is needless to
describe in this place how, since that date, the principle of “Fair
Wages” has developed. By 1894 a hundred and fifty local authorities
had adopted some kind of “Fair Wages” resolution. In 1890, and more
explicitly still in 1893, successive Governments found it necessary
to repudiate the old principle of buying in the cheapest market,
in favour of the now widespread feeling that public authorities as
large employers of labour, instead of ignoring the condition of their
employees, should use their influence to maintain the Standard Rate of
Wages and Standard Hours of Labour recognised and in practice obtained
by the Trade Unions concerned.

Though the Front Bench as a whole maintained during these years its
policy of contemptuous inactivity, there were, as we have seen,
some signs of the permeation of the new ideas. It was under these
circumstances a grave misfortune that the inevitable criticism on
the Parliamentary Committee began by a scurrilous attack upon the
personal character and conduct of its leaders.[557] During the years
1887-89 the conscientious adhesion to the Liberal party of most of
the Parliamentary Committee was made the occasion for gross charges
of personal corruption. The General Secretaries of the great Unions,
men who had for a lifetime diligently served their constituents, found
their influence undermined, their character attacked, and themselves
denounced, by the circulation all over the country of insidious
accusations of treachery to the working classes. These charges found
a too ready acceptance among, and were repeated by, those young
and impatient recruits of the new movement who knew nothing of the
history and services of the men they were attacking. In the year 1889
the friction reached its climax. During the summer the attacks upon
the personal character of the Front Bench were redoubled. As the
date of the Trade Union Congress approached, it became known that a
determined attempt would be made by the Socialist delegates to oust the
Parliamentary Committee from office. The Congress met at Dundee, and
plunged straight into an angry conflict in which the Socialists were
completely routed. The regular attenders of the Congress had, as we
have seen, been gradually absorbing many of the new ideas, and were not
altogether satisfied with the way their resolutions had been ignored
by the Parliamentary Committee. But all discontent or criticism was
swept away by the anger which the character of the attack had excited.
A great majority of the delegates came expressly pledged to support
Broadhurst and his colleagues, and when the division was taken only 11
out of a meeting of 188 delegates were found to vote against him. The
Cotton Operatives who had at all times supported factory legislation,
the Miners who were demanding an Eight Hours Bill, the Londoners
who came from the centre of the Socialist agitation--all rallied to
defend the Parliamentary Committee. The little knot of assailants
were thoroughly discredited; and the triumph of the “old gang” was
complete.[558]

The victory of the Parliamentary Committee was hailed with satisfaction
by all who were alarmed at the progress of the new ideas. For a moment
it looked as if the organised Trade Unions of skilled workers had
definitely separated themselves from the new labour movement growing
up around them. Such a separation would, in our opinion, have been an
almost irreparable disaster. The Trade Union Congress could claim to
represent less than 10 per cent of the wage-earners of the country.
Many of the old societies were already shrinking up into insignificant
minorities of superior workmen, intent mainly on securing their sick
and superannuation benefits. Any definite exclusion of wider ideals
might easily have reduced the whole Trade Union organisation to nothing
more than a somewhat stagnant department of the Friendly Society
movement. This danger was averted by a series of dramatic events which
brought the new movement once more inside the Trade Union ranks. At the
moment that Henry Broadhurst was triumphing over his enemies at Dundee,
the London dock-labourers were marching to that brilliant victory over
their employers which changed the whole face of the Trade Union world.

The great dock strike of 1889 was the culmination of an attempt to
organise the unskilled workers which had begun in London two or three
years before. The privations suffered by the unemployed labourers
during the years of depression of trade, and the new spirit of
hopefulness due to the Socialist propaganda, had led to efforts being
made to bring the vast hordes of unskilled workmen in the Metropolis
into some kind of organisation. At first this movement made very little
progress. In July 1888, however, the harsh treatment suffered by the
women employed in making lucifer matches roused the burning indignation
of Mrs. Besant, then editing _The Link_, a little weekly newspaper
which had arisen out of the struggle for Trafalgar Square. A fiery
leading article had the unexpected result of causing the match-girls
to revolt; and 672 of them came out on strike. Without funds, without
organisation, the struggle seemed hopeless. But by the indefatigable
energy of Mrs. Besant and Herbert Burrows public opinion was aroused
in a manner never before witnessed; £400 was subscribed by hundreds
of sympathisers in all classes; and after a fortnight’s obstinacy the
employers were compelled, by sheer pressure of public feeling, to make
some concessions to their workers.

The match-girls’ victory turned a new leaf in Trade Union annals.
Hitherto success had been in almost exact proportion to the workers’
strength. It was a new experience for the weak to succeed because of
their very weakness, by means of the intervention of the public. The
lesson was not lost on other classes of workers. The London gas-stokers
were being organised by Burns, Mann, and Tillett, aided by William
Thorne, himself a gas-worker and a man of sterling integrity and
capacity. The Gas-workers and General Labourers’ Union, established
in May 1889, quickly enrolled many thousands of members, who in the
first days of August simultaneously demanded a reduction of their
hours of labour from twelve to eight per day. After an interval of
acute suspense, during which the directors of the three great London
gas companies measured their forces, peaceful counsels prevailed, and
the Eight Hours Day, to the general surprise of the men no less than
that of the public, was conceded without a struggle, and was even
accompanied by a slight increase of the week’s wages.[559]

The success of such unorganised and unskilled workers as the
Match-makers and the Gas-stokers led to renewed efforts to bring the
great army of Dock-labourers into the ranks of Trade Unionism. For two
years past the prominent London Socialists had journeyed to the dock
gates in the early hours of the morning to preach organised revolt
to the crowds of casuals struggling for work. Meanwhile Benjamin
Tillett, then working as a labourer in the tea warehouses, was
spending his strength in the apparently hopeless task of constituting
the Tea-workers and General Labourers’ Union. The membership of this
society fluctuated between 300 and 2500 members; it had practically
no funds; and its very existence seemed precarious. Suddenly the
organisation received a new impulse. An insignificant dispute on the
12th of August 1889 as to the amount of “plus” (or bonus earned over
and above the five-pence per hour) on a certain cargo, brought on an
impulsive strike of the labourers at the South-West India Dock. The men
demanded sixpence an hour, the abolition of sub-contract and piecework,
extra pay for overtime, and a minimum engagement of four hours. Tillett
called to his aid his friends Tom Mann and John Burns, and appealed
to the whole body of dock labourers to take up the fight. The strike
spread rapidly to all the docks north of the Thames. Within three
days ten thousand labourers had, with one accord, left the precarious
and ill-paid work to get which they had, morning after morning,
fought at the dock gates. The two powerful Unions of Stevedores (the
better-paid, trained workmen who load ships for export) cast in their
lot with the dockers, and in the course of the next week practically
all the river-side labour had joined the strike. Under the magnetic
influence of John Burns, who suddenly became famous as a labour leader
on both sides of the globe, the traffic of the world’s greatest port
was, for over four weeks, completely paralysed. An electric spark of
sympathy with the poor dockers fired the enthusiasm of all classes of
the community. Public disapproval hindered the dock companies from
obtaining, even for their unskilled labour, sufficient blacklegs to
take the strikers’ place. A public subscription of £48,736 allowed
Burns to organise an elaborate system of strike-pay, which not only
maintained the honest docker, but also bribed every East End loafer
to withhold his labour; and finally the concentrated pressure of
editors, clergymen, shareholders, ship-owners, and merchants enabled
Cardinal Manning and Sydney (afterwards Lord) Buxton, as self-appointed
mediators, to compel the Dock Directors to concede practically the
whole of the men’s demands, a delay of six weeks being granted to allow
the new arrangements to be made. As in the case of the match-girls
in the previous year, the most remarkable feature of the dockers’
strike was the almost universal sympathy with the workers’ demands. A
practical manifestation of that sympathy was given by the workmen of
Australia. The Australian newspapers published telegraphic accounts of
the conflict, with descriptions of the dockers’ wrongs, which produced
an unparalleled and unexpected result. Public subscriptions in aid
of the London dockers were opened in all the principal towns on the
Australian continent; and money poured in from all sides. Over £30,000
was remitted to London by telegraph--an absolutely unique contribution
towards the strike subsidy which went far to win the victory ultimately
achieved.[560]

The immediate result of the dockers’ success was the formation of a
large number of Trade Unions among the unskilled labourers. Branches
of the Dock, Wharf, and Riverside Labourers’ Union (into which
Tillett’s little society was now transformed) were established at
all the principal ports. A rival society of dockers, established at
Liverpool, enrolled thousands of members at Glasgow and Belfast. The
unskilled labourers in Newcastle joined the Tyneside and National
Labour Union, which soon extended to all the neighbouring towns. The
Gas-workers’ Union enrolled tens of thousands of labourers of all
kinds in the provincial cities. Organisation began again among the
farm labourers. The National Union of Agricultural Labourers, which
had sunk to a few thousand scattered members, suddenly rose in 1890
to over 14,000. New societies arose, which took in general as well
as farm labourers; such as the Eastern Counties Labour Federation,
which, by 1892, had 17,000 members; and the smaller societies centring
respectively on Norwich, Devizes, Reading, Hitchin, Ipswich, and
Kingsland in Herefordshire.[561] The General Railway Workers’ Union,
originally established in 1889 as a rival to the Amalgamated Society
of Railway Servants, took in great numbers of general labourers. The
National Amalgamated Sailors and Firemen’s Union,[562] established in
1887, expanded during 1889 to a membership of 65,000. Within a year
after the dockers’ victory probably over 200,000 workers had been added
to the Trade Union ranks, recruited from sections of the labour world
formerly abandoned as incapable of organisation. All these societies
were marked by low contributions and comprehensive membership. They
were, at the outset, essentially, if not exclusively, devoted to
trade protection, and were largely political in their aims. Their
characteristic spirit is aptly expressed by the resolution of the
Congress of the General Railway Workers’ Union on the 19th of November
1890: “That the Union shall remain a fighting one, and shall not be
encumbered with any sick or accident fund.” “We have at present,”
reports the General Secretary of the National Union of Gas-workers and
General Labourers in November 1889, “one of the strongest labour Unions
in England. It is true we have only one benefit attached, and that is
strike pay. I do not believe in having sick pay, out-of-work pay, and a
number of other pays.... The whole aim and intention of this Union is
to reduce the hours of labour and reduce Sunday work.”[563]

A wave of Trade Unionism, comparable in extent with those of 1833-34
and 1873-74, was now spreading into every corner of British industry.
Already in 1888 the revival of trade has led to a marked increase in
Trade Union membership. This normal growth now received a great impulse
from the sensational events of the Dock strike. Even the oldest and
most aristocratic Unions were affected by the revivalist fervour of the
new leaders. The eleven principal societies in the shipbuilding and
metal trades, which had been, since 1885, on the decline, increased
from 115,000 at the end of 1888 to 130,000 in 1889, 145,000 in 1890,
and 155,000 in 1891. The ten largest Unions in the building trades,
which between 1885 and 1888 had, in the aggregate, likewise declined
in numbers, rose from 57,000 in 1888 to 63,000 in 1889, 80,000 in
1890, and 94,000 in 1891. In certain individual societies the increase
in membership during these years was unparalleled in their history.
We have already referred to the rapid rise between 1888 and 1891 of
that modern Colossus of Unions, the Miners’ Federation. The Operative
Society of Bricklayers, established in 1848, grew from a fairly
stationary 7000 in 1888, to over 17,000 in 1891. The National Society
of Boot and Shoe Operatives, established in 1874, went from 11,000 in
1888 to 30,000 in 1891. And, to turn to quite a different industry,
the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, a trade friendly society
of the old type, established in 1872, rose from 12,000 in 1888 to
30,000 in 1891. Nor was the expansion confined to a mere increase in
membership. New Trades Councils sprang up in all directions, whilst
those already existing were rejoined by the trades which had left
them. Federations of the Unions in kindred trades were set on foot,
and competing societies in the same trade sank their rivalry in the
formation of local joint committees.

The victory of the London Dockers and the impetus it gave to Trade
Unionism throughout the country at last opened the eyes of the
Trade Union world to the significance of the new movement. It was
no longer possible for the Parliamentary Committee to denounce the
Socialists as a set of outside intriguers, when Burns and Mann,
now become the representative working-men Socialists, stood at the
head of a body of 200,000 hitherto unorganised workmen. The general
secretaries of the older Unions, forming a compact official party
behind the Front Bench, were veering around towards the advanced
party. Their constituencies were becoming permeated with Socialism.
In many instances the older members now supported the new faith. In
other cases they found themselves submerged by the large accessions
to their membership which, as we have already seen, resulted from the
general expansion. The process of conversion was facilitated by the
genuine admiration felt by the whole Trade Union world for the great
organising power and generalship shown by the leaders of the new
movement, and by the cessation of the personal abuse and recrimination
which had hitherto marred the controversy. At the Dundee Congress of
1889, as we have seen, Henry Broadhurst, and his colleagues on the
Parliamentary Committee, had triumphed all along the line. Within a
year the situation had entirely changed. The Stonemasons, Broadhurst’s
own society, had decided, by a vote of the members, to support an Eight
Hours Bill, and Broadhurst, under these circumstances, had perforce
to refuse to act as their representative. The Executive Council of
the Amalgamated Society of Engineers chose Burns and Mann as two out
of their five delegates, impressing upon them all a recommendation
to vote for the legal limitation of the hours of labour. Both the
old-established societies of Carpenters gave a similar mandate. The
Miners’ Federation this time led the attack on the old Front Bench,
and the resolution in favour of a general Eight Hours Bill was
carried, after a heated debate, by 193 to 155. Broadhurst resigned his
position as Secretary of the Parliamentary Committee on the ground
of ill-health. George Shipton, the secretary of the London Trades
Council, publicly declared his conversion to the legal regulation of
the hours of labour. The Liverpool Congress was as decisive a victory
for the Socialists as that of Dundee had been for the Parliamentary
Committee. The delegates passed in all sixty resolutions. “Out of these
sixty resolutions,” said John Burns, “forty-five were nothing more
or less than direct appeals to the State and Municipalities of this
country to do for the workman what Trade Unionism, ‘Old’ and ‘New,’
has proved itself incapable of doing. Forty-five out of the sixty
resolutions were asking for State or Municipal interference on behalf
of the weak against the strong. ‘Old’ Trade Unionists, from Lancashire,
Northumberland, and Birmingham, asked for as many of these resolutions
as the delegates from London; but it is a remarkable and significant
fact that 19 out of 20 delegates were in favour of the ‘New’ Trades
Union ideas of State interferences in all things except reduction of
hours, and even on this we secured a majority that certainly entitles
us Socialists to be jubilant at our success.”[564]

But whilst the new faith was being adopted by the rank and file of
Trade Unionists the character of the Socialist propaganda had been
undergoing an equal transformation. The foremost representative
of the Collectivist views had hitherto been the Social-Democratic
Federation, of which Burns and Mann were active members. Under the
dominant influence of Mr. H. M. Hyndman, this association adopted the
economic basis and political organisation of State Socialism. Yet
we find, along with these modern views, a distinct recrudescence of
the characteristic projects of the revolutionary Owenism of 1833-34.
The student of the volumes of _Justice_ between 1884 and 1889 will
be struck by the unconscious resemblance of many of the ideas and
much of the phraseology of its contributors, to those of the _Poor
Man’s Guardian_ and the _Pioneer_ of 1834. We do not here allude to
the revival, in 1885, of the old demand for an Eight Hours Bill, a
measure regarded on both occasions as a “mere palliative.” Nor need we
refer to the constant assumption, made alike by Robert Owen and the
Social-Democratic lecturers, that the acceptance of the Labour-value
theory would enable the difficulty of the “unemployed” to be solved
by organising the mutual exchange of their unmarketable products.
But both in _Justice_ and the _Pioneer_ we see the same disbelief
in separate action by particular Trade Unions, in contrast to an
organisation including “every trade, skilled and unskilled, of every
nationality under the sun.”[565] “The real emancipation of labour,”
says the official manifesto of the Social-Democratic Federation to
the Trade Unions of Great Britain in September 1884, “can only be
effected by the solemn banding together of millions of human beings
in a federation as wide as the civilised world.”[566] “The day has
gone by,” we read in 1887, “for the efforts of isolated trades....
Nothing is to be gained for the workers as a class without the complete
organisation of labourers of all grades, skilled and unskilled....
We appeal therefore earnestly to the skilled artisans of all trades,
Unionists and non-Unionists alike, to make common cause with their
unskilled brethren, and with us Social-Democrats, so that the workers
may themselves take hold of the means of production, and organise a
Co-operative Commonwealth for themselves and their children.”[567]
And if the “scientific Socialists” of 1885 were logically pledged to
the administration of industry by the officials of the community at
large, none the less do we see constantly cropping up, especially among
the working-class members, Owen’s diametrically opposite proposal
that the workers must “own their own factories and decide by vote
who their managers and foremen shall be.”[568] Above all we see the
same faith in the near and inevitable advent of a sudden revolution,
when “it will only need a compact minority to take advantage of some
opportune accident that will surely come, to overthrow the present
system, and once and for all lift the toilers from the present social
degradation.”[569] “Noble Robert Owen,” says Mr. Hyndman in 1885,
“seventy years ago perceived ‘the utter impossibility of succeeding
in permanently improving the condition of our population by any
half-measures.’ We see the same truth if possible yet more clearly
now. But the revolution which in his day was unprepared is now ripe
and ready.... Nothing short of a revolution which shall place the
producers of wealth in control of their own country can possibly change
matters for the better.... Will it be peaceful? We hope it may. That
does not depend upon us. But, peaceful or violent, the great social
revolution of the nineteenth century is at hand, and if fighting should
be necessary the workers may at least remember the profound historical
truth that ‘Force is the midwife of progress delivering the old society
pregnant with the new,’ and reflect that they are striving for the
final overthrow of a tyranny more degrading than the worst chattel
slavery of ancient times.”[570] “Let our mission be,” he writes in
1887, “to help to band together the workers of the world for the great
class struggle against their exploiters. No better date could be chosen
for the establishment of such international action on a sound basis
than the year 1889, which the classes look forward to with trembling
and the masses with hope. I advocate no hasty outbreak, no premature
and violent attempt on the part of the people to realise the full
Social-Democratic programme. But I do say that from this time onwards
we, as the Social-Democratic Labour Party of Great Britain, should make
every effort to bear our part in the celebration by the international
proletariat of the First Centenary of the great French Revolution, and
thus to prepare for a complete International Social Revolution before
the end of the century.”[571]

The year 1889, instead of ushering in a “complete International Social
Revolution” by a universal compact of the workers, turned the current
of Socialist propaganda from revolutionary to constitutional channels.
The advent of political Democracy had put out of date the project
of “a combined assault by workers of every trade and grade against
the murderous monopoly of the minority.”[572] For a moment, at the
very crisis of the dockers’ struggle, the idea of a “General Strike”
flickers up, only to be quickly abandoned as impracticable. When the
problems of administration had actually to be faced by the new leaders
the specially Owenite characteristics of the Socialist propaganda
were quietly dropped. In January 1889 John Burns was elected a member
of the London County Council, and quickly found himself organising
the beginnings of a bureaucratic municipal Collectivism, as far
removed from Owen’s “national companies” as from the conceptions of
the Manchester School. Tom Mann, as president of the Dockers’ Union,
could not help discovering how impracticable it was to set to work
his unemployed members, accustomed only to general labour, in the
production for mutual exchange of the bread and clothing of which
they were in need. And whether working in municipal committees, or at
the head office of a great Union, both Burns and Mann had perforce to
realise the impossibility of bringing about any sudden or simultaneous
change in the social or industrial organisation of the whole community,
or even of one town or trade.

Under these circumstances it is perhaps not surprising that Burns
and Mann left the Social Democratic Federation, and found themselves
hotly denounced by their old comrades.[573] With the defection of the
New Unionists, revolutionary Socialism ceased to grow; and the rival
propaganda of constitutional action became the characteristic feature
of the British Socialist Movement. Far from abusing or deprecating
Trade Unionism or Co-operation, the constitutional Collectivists urged
it as a primary duty upon every working-class Socialist to become
a member of his Trade Union, to belong to the local Co-operative
Society, and generally to take as active a part as possible in all
organisations. Instead of denouncing partial reforms as mischievous
attempts to defeat “the Social Revolution,” the New Unionist leaders
appealed to their followers to put their own representatives on Town
Councils, and generally to use their electoral influence to bring
about, in a regular and constitutional manner, the particular changes
they had at heart. Instead of circulating calumnies against the
personal character of Trade Union leaders, they flooded the Trade Union
world with Socialist literature, dealing not so much in rhetorical
appeals or Utopian aspirations as in economic expositions of the actual
grievances of industrial life. The vague resolutions of the Trades
Union Congresses were worked out in practical detail, or even embodied
in draft bills which the local member of Parliament might be invited to
introduce, or driven to support.

The new policy, adopted as it was by such prominent Socialists as
Burns, Mann, and Tillett, and Mrs. Besant, appeared, from 1889 onward,
increasingly justified by its success. The Collectivist victories
on the London School Board and County Council, the steady growth
of municipal activity, and the increasing influence exercised by
working-men members of representative bodies, went far to persuade
both Socialists and Trade Unionists that the only practicable means
of securing for the community the ownership and control of the means
of production lay in a wide extension of that national and municipal
organisation of public services towards which Parliament and the Town
Councils had already taken the first steps. In those industries in
which neither national nor municipal administration was yet possible,
the Socialists demanded such a regulation of the conditions of
employment as would ensure to every worker a minimum Standard of Life.
The extension of the Factory Acts and the more thorough administration
of the Sanitary Law accordingly received a new impulse. In another
direction the drastic taxation of Rent and Interest, pressed for by
Land Nationalisers and Socialists alike, was justified as leading
eventually to the collective absorption of all unearned incomes. In
short, from 1889 onward, the chief efforts of the British Socialist
Movement have been directed, not to bringing about any sudden,
complete, or simultaneous revolution, but to impregnating all the
existing forces of society with Collectivist ideals and Collectivist
principles.[574]

With the advent of the “New Unionism” of 1889-90 we close this chapter.
We shall see, in subsequent chapters to what extent, and in what way,
the Trade Union Movement was permanently affected by the new movement.
But we append at this point a brief account of what seem to us, first,
the ephemeral features and, secondly, the more durable results of an
impulse which did not wholly spend its force for a whole decade.

If we were to believe some of the more enthusiastic apostles of the
“New Unionism,” we should imagine that the aggressive trade society
of unskilled labourers, unencumbered with friendly benefits, was
an unprecedented departure in the history of labour organisation.
Those who have followed our history thus far will know better than
to entertain such an illusion, itself an old characteristic of Trade
Unionist revivals. The purely trade society is as old as Trade Unionism
itself. Throughout the whole history of the movement we find two
types of societies co-existing. At special crises in the annals of
Trade Unionism we see one or other of these types taking the lead,
and becoming the “New Unionism” of that particular period. Both trade
society and friendly society with trade objects were common in the
eighteenth century. Legal persecution of trade combination brought to
the front the Union cloaked in the guise of a benefit club; and it
was mainly for organisations of this type that Place and Hume won the
emancipation of 1824-1825. In 1833-34 we find Place deploring as a
mischievous innovation the growth of the new “Trades Unions” without
friendly benefits. Twenty years later we see the leadership reverting
to the “new model” of an elaborate trade friendly society which, for
a whole generation, was vehemently denounced by employers as a fraud
on the provident workman. The “New Unionism” of 1852, described by so
friendly a critic as Professor Beesly as a novel departure, became,
in its turn, the “Old Unionism” of 1889, when the more progressive
spirits again plumed themselves on eliminating from their brand-new
organisations the enervating influences of friendly benefits.

A closer examination of the facts shows that this almost rhythmical
alternation of type has been only apparent. The impartial student will
notice that whilst the purely trade society has been persistently
adhered to by certain important industries, such as the Coal-miners
and the Cotton-spinners, other trades, like the Engineers and the
Ironfounders, have remained equally constant to the trade friendly
society; whilst others, again, such as the Compositors and the
Carpenters, have passed backwards and forwards from one model to the
other. But besides this adaptation of type to the circumstances of
particular industries, we see also a preference for the purely trade
society on no higher ground than its cheapness. The high contributions
and levies paid by the Cotton-spinners to their essentially trade
society are as far beyond the means of the Agricultural Labourer or
the Docker as the weekly premiums for superannuation, sick, and other
benefits charged to the Amalgamated Engineer. When, as in 1833-34,
1872, and 1889, a wave of enthusiasm sweeps the unskilled labourers
into the Trade Union ranks, it is obviously necessary to form, at
any rate in the first instance, organisations which make no greater
tax upon their miserable earnings than a penny or twopence per
week. The apparent rhythm of alternations between the two types of
organisation is due, therefore, not to any general abandonment of one
for the other, but to the accidental prominence, in certain crises of
Trade Union history, of the Unions belonging to particular trades or
classes of wage-earners. When, for instance, the cotton-spinners, the
builders, and the unskilled labourers of 1834 loomed large to Francis
Place as a revolutionary force, the purely trade society appeared to
him to be the source of all that was evil in Trade Unionism. When,
in 1848-52, the iron trades were conspiring against piecework and
overtime, it was especially the illicit combination of trade and
friendly society which attracted the attention of the public, and
called forth the denunciations of the capitalist class. And when in
1889 the dockers were stopping the trade of London, and the coal-miners
and cotton-spinners were pressing upon both political parties their
demands for legislative interference, we see George Howell voicing
the opposition to exclusively trade societies as dangerously militant
bodies.[575]

If the purely trade society is no new thing, still less is the
extension of Trade Unionism to the unskilled labourer an unprecedented
innovation. The enthusiasm which, in 1872, enrolled a hundred thousand
agricultural labourers in a few months, produced also numerous small
societies of town labourers, some of which survived for years before
absorption into larger organisations. The London and Counties Labour
League, established as the Kent and Sussex Agricultural and General
Labourers’ Union in 1872, has maintained its existence down to the
present day. The expansion of 1852 led to the formation in Glasgow of
a Labourers’ Society, which is reputed to have enrolled thousands of
members. But it is with the enthusiasm of 1833-34 that the movement
of 1889-90 has in this respect the greatest analogy. The almost
instantaneous conversion to Trade Unionism after the dock strike of
tens of thousands of the unskilled labourers of the towns recalls,
indeed, nothing so much as the rapid enrolment of recruits among
the poorest wage-earners by the emissaries of the Grand National
Consolidated Trades Union.

But however strongly the outward features of the wave of 1889-90 may
remind the student of those of 1833-34, the characteristics peculiar
to the new movement significantly measure the extent of the advance,
both in social theory and social methods, made by the wage-earners in
the two intervening generations. Time and experience alone will show
how far the empirical Socialism of the Trade Unionist of 1889, with
its eclectic opportunism, its preference for municipal collectivism,
its cautious adaptation of existing social structure, and its modest
aspirations to a gradually increasing participation of the workmen in
control, may safely be pronounced superior in practicability to the
revolutionary and universal Communism of Robert Owen. In truth, the
radical distinction between 1833-34 and 1889-90 is not a matter of
the particular social theories which inspired the outbursts. To the
great majority of the Trade Unionists the theories of the leaders at
either date did but embody a vague aspiration after a more equitable
social order. The practical difference--the difference reflected in
the character and temper of the men attracted to the two movements,
and of the attitude of the public towards them--is the difference of
method and immediate action. Robert Owen, as we have seen, despised
and rejected political action, and strove to form a new voluntary
organisation which should supersede, almost instantaneously and in
some unexplained way, the whole industrial, political, and social
administration of the country. In this disdain of all existing
organisations, and the suddenness of the complete “social revolution”
which it contemplated, the Owenism of 1833-34 found, as we have seen,
an echo in much of the Socialist propaganda of 1884-89. The leaders
of the New Unionists, on the contrary, sought to bring into the
ranks of existing organisations--the Trade Union, the Municipality,
or the State--great masses of unorganised workers who had hitherto
been either absolutely outside the pale, or inert elements within it.
They aimed, not at superseding existing social structures, but at
capturing them all in the interests of the wage-earners. Above all,
they sought to teach the great masses of undisciplined workers how
to apply their newly acquired political power so as to obtain, in a
perfectly constitutional manner, whatever changes in legislation or
administration they desired.

The difference in method between the “New Unionism” of 1833-34
and that of 1889-90 may, we think, be ascribed in the main to the
difference between the circumstances under which the movements arose.
To Robert Owen, whose path was blocked on the political line by the
disfranchisement of five out of six of the adult male population,
open voting under intimidation, corrupt close corporations in the
towns and a Whig oligarchy at the centre, the idea of relying on the
constitutional instrument of the polling-booth must have appeared
no less chimerical than his own programme appears to-day. The New
Unionists of 1889-90, on the other hand, found ready for their use
an extensive and all-embracing Democratic social structure, which it
was impossible to destroy, and would have been foolish to attempt
to ignore. The efforts of two generations of Radical Individualists
and “Old Trade Unionists” had placed the legislative power and civil
administration of the country in the hands of a hierarchy of popularly
elected representative bodies. The great engine of taxation was, for
instance, now under the control of the wage-earning voters instead
of that of the land-owning class. The Home Secretary and the factory
inspector, the relieving-officer and the borough surveyor, could be
employed to carry out the behests of the workers instead of those of
the capitalists. And thus it came about that the methods advocated
by the New Unionists of 1889-94 resemble, not those of the Owenites
of 1833-34, but much more the practical arts of political warfare so
successfully pursued by the Junta of 1867-75.

We shall see the change which had come over the English working-class
movement in the course of sixty years if we compare the leaders of the
two movements which we have been contrasting. To Owen himself we may
allow the privilege of his genius, which did not prevent him from being
an extravagantly bad captain for a working-class movement. But in his
leading disciples ignorance of industrial conditions, contemptuous
indifference to facts and figures, and incapacity to measure, even in
the smallest actions, the relation between the means and the end, stand
in as marked contrast to the sober judgment of men like John Burns as
they did to the cautious shrewdness of Allan and Applegarth. It would
indeed be easy to find many traits of personal likeness between Burns
and Mann on the one hand, and Allan and Applegarth on the other. High
personal character, scrupulous integrity, dignity or charm of manner,
marked all four alike, and the resemblance of character is heightened
by a noticeable resemblance in the nature of their activity. The day’s
work of Tom Mann at the head office of the Dockers’ Union from 1889 to
1892, and that of John Burns in the London County Council and the lobby
of the House of Commons from 1892 to 1906, were close reproductions
of Allan’s activity at the general office of his Engineers, and
Applegarth’s assiduous attendance to Parliamentary Committees and
Royal Commissions. In short, the ways and means of the leaders of
the “New Unionism” remind the student, not of the mystic rites and
skeleton mummery of the Owenite movement, but rather of the restless
energy and political ingenuity of the Junta or the Trades Union
Congress Parliamentary Committee in those early days when the old Trade
Unionists were fighting for legislative reforms with a faith which was
as wise as it was fervent and sincere.

Some of the secondary characteristics of the New Unionism of 1889
promptly faded away. The revulsion of feeling against the combination
of friendly benefits with Trade Union purposes quickly disappeared,
though the difficulty of levying high contributions upon ill-paid
workers prevented the complete adoption of the contrary policy.[576]
The expansion of trade which began in 1889 proved to be but of brief
duration, and with the returning contraction of 1892 many of the
advantages gained by the wage-earners were lost. Under the influence
of this check the unskilled labourers once more largely fell away
from the Trade Union ranks. But just as 1873-74 left behind it a far
more permanent structure than 1833-34, so 1889-90 added even more
than 1873-74. The older Unions retained a large part, at any rate, of
the two hundred thousand members added to their ranks between 1887
and 1891. But this numerical accession was of less importance than
what may, without exaggeration, be termed the spiritual rebirth of
organisations which were showing signs of decrepitude. The selfish
spirit of exclusiveness which often marked the relatively well-paid
engineer, carpenter, or boilermaker of 1880-85, gave place to a more
generous recognition of the essential solidarity of the wage-earning
class. For example, the whole constitution of the Amalgamated Society
of Engineers was, in 1892, revised for the express purpose of opening
the ranks of this most aristocratic of Unions to practically all
the mechanics in the innumerable branches of the engineering trade.
Special facilities, moreover, were offered by this and the other
great societies to old men and artisans earning wages insufficient
to pay for costly friendly benefits. Nor was this all. The plumber
vied with the engineer, the carpenter with the shipwright, in helping
to form Unions among the labourers who work with or under them. And
the struggling Unions of women workers, which had originally some
difficulty in gaining admittance to Trades Councils and the Trade Union
Congress, gratefully acknowledged a complete change in the attitude
of their male fellow-workers. Not only was every assistance now given
to the formation of special Unions among women workers, but women
were, in some cases, even welcomed as members by Unions of skilled
artisans. A similar widening of sympathies and strengthening of bonds
of fellowship was shown in the very general establishment of local
joint committees of rival societies in the same trade, as well as of
larger federations. Robert Knight’s failures to form a federal council
representing the different Unions concerned in shipbuilding were
retrieved in 1891 by his successful establishment of the Federation of
the Engineering and Shipbuilding Trades, which maintained a permanent
existence. The increased sense of solidarity among all sections of
wage-earners, moreover, led to a greatly increased cordiality in
international relations. The Coal-miners, the Glass Bottle Makers, and
the Textile Operatives established more or less formal federations
with their fellow-workers on the Continent of Europe. At the frequent
international Congresses of these trades, as well as at the Socialist
Congress of the workers of all countries, the representatives of the
British Trade Unions largely laid aside that insular conceit which
led the Parliamentary Committee of 1884 to declare that, owing to
his superiority, the British Trade Unionist derived no benefit from
international relations. All this indicates a widening of the mental
horizon, a genuine elevation of the Trade Union Movement.


FOOTNOTES:

[511] See the _History of the British Trades Union Congress_, by W.
J. Davis, of which two volumes have been issued by the Parliamentary
Committee (1910 and 1916). William John Davis, one of the most
successful Trade Union administrators, was born in 1848, at Birmingham.
In 1872, when the National Society of Amalgamated Brassworkers was
established in a trade hitherto entirely unorganised, he became General
Secretary, a post which, except for one short interval, he has ever
since retained. Within six months he obtained from the employers the 15
per cent increase which they had refused to the unorganised men, and
established branches throughout the kingdom; and presently he completed
the difficult and laborious task of constructing a list of prices for
all brasswork, for which he obtained the employers’ recognition. He
was elected to the Birmingham School Board in 1876, and to the Town
Council in 1880. In 1883 he accepted appointment as Factory Inspector,
but six years later returned to his former post at the urgent request
of the workmen, whose Union had in his absence sunk almost to nothing,
a condition from which he was able quickly to restore it to far more
than its highest previous strength; and to take on, in addition,
the secretaryship of the Amalgamated Metal Wire and Tube Makers’
Society. He was made a J.P. in 1906. Since 1881 he has been elected
twenty-six times to the Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union
Congress. He is the author, in addition to the _History of the British
Trades Union Congress_, of _The Token Coinage of Warwickshire_ and
_Nineteenth-Century Token Coinage_ (_The Life Story of W. J. Davis_, by
W. B. Dalley, 1914).

[512] In 1878, for instance, the Parliamentary Committee resolved that
Congress ought not to interfere either between the English and Scottish
Tailors’ Societies or between the Boilermakers and the Platers’ Helpers.

[513] The Congress, from 1871, annually elected a Parliamentary
Committee of ten members and a secretary. The members of the Committee
were always chosen from the officials of the more important Unions,
with a strong tendency to re-elect the same men year after year.
Between 1875 and 1889 the composition of the Committee was, in fact,
scarcely changed, except through death or the promotion of members to
Government appointments. George Potter was secretary from 1869-71;
George Odger in that year; and George Howell, afterwards M.P., from
1872-75. Henry Broadhurst was for fourteen years annually re-elected
secretary without a contest, temporarily ceding the post, whilst Under
Secretary of State for the Home Department in 1886, to George Shipton.
He was succeeded by Charles Fenwick, M.P., from 1890-93; then followed
S. Woods, M.P., from 1894-1904; W. C. Steadman, M.P., from 1905-10; and
the Right Honourable C. W. Bowerman, M.P., from 1911 onwards.

[514] Odger died in 1877, Guile in 1883, and Coulson (who had retired
many years before) in 1893.

[515] To the counsels of Frederic Harrison, E. S. Beesly, H. Crompton,
and A. J. Mundella was, from 1873, frequently added that of Mr.
(afterwards Justice) R. S. Wright, who rendered invaluable service as a
draughtsman. Henry Crompton supplied us with the following account of
the subsequent separation between the Positivists and the Trade Union
leaders:

“In the year 1881 the connection of the Parliamentary Committee with
the Positivists was modified. There was not the same occasion for their
services as there had been. After 1883, in which year Mr. F. Harrison
and Mr. H. Crompton attended the Congress by invitation, the connection
ceased altogether, though there was no breach of friendly relations.
Till 1881 there had been entire agreement between them both as to
policy and means of action. The policy of the Positivists had been to
secure complete legal independence for workmen and their legitimate
combinations; to make them more respected and more conscious of their
own work; to lift them to a higher moral level; that they should become
citizens ready and desirous to perform all the duties of citizenship.
The means employed was to consolidate and organise the power of the
Trades Societies, through the institutions of the annual Congress and
its Parliamentary Committee; to use this power, as occasion served, for
the general welfare as well as for trade interests. That the measures
adopted or proposed by the Congress should be thoroughly discussed in
the branches, and delegates well posted in the principal questions. To
express it shortly--organisation of collective labour and political
education of individual workmen.

“The condition of this effective force was that, while it was being
used in furtherance of political action, it should be kept quite clear
and independent of political parties. The divergence came with the
advent of the Gladstonians to office. The Liberal Government began
a policy of coercion in Ireland. Combination was to be put down by
the very same mechanism which had been invented to repress labour
combinations--by the law of conspiracy. The very ruling of Baron
Bramwell as to the Tailors’ strike was employed to concoct a law to
convict Mr. Parnell and his coadjutors. As a result law was laid down
by the Irish judges as to political combinations, which is binding in
England, and has still to be resisted or abolished. The Positivists
endeavoured to the utmost of their ability to rouse the working
classes to a sense of the danger of these proceedings, and to offer
an uncompromising resistance to the suspension of the Habeas Corpus
Act. The Parliamentary Committee would have none of it. They no doubt
believed that the interests of their clients would be best served
by a narrower policy, by seeking the help and favour of the eminent
statesmen in office. Instead of a compact, powerful force, holding the
balance between the parties and the key of the situation, dictating its
terms, they preferred to be the tag end of a party. In the end they did
not get much, but the Congress was successfully captured and muzzled by
the Gladstonian Government.”

[516] Report of Trades Union Congress, Dublin, 1880, p. 15.

[517] The working of the Trade Union Act of 1871 revealed some
technical defects in the law, which were remedied by an amending Act in
1876 (39 and 40 Vic. c. 22). Rules for the execution of the Employers
and Workmen Act were framed by the Lord Chancellor in the same year.

[518] This defence of “common employment,” which practically deprived
the workman in large undertakings of any remedy in case of accidents
arising through negligence in the works, was first recognised in the
case of Priestly _v._ Fowler in 1837 (3 Meeson and Welby). Not until
1868 did the House of Lords, as the final Court of Appeal, extend it
to Scotland. The growth of colossal industrial undertakings, in which
thousands of workmen were, technically, “in common employment,” made
the occasional harshness of the law still more invidious.

[519] Act 43 and 44 Vic. c. 52 (1880).

[520] The annual Parliamentary returns for the next fifteen years
showed that between three and four hundred cases came into court every
year, the amount of compensation actually awarded reaching between
£7000 and £8000. But a large number of cases were compromised, or
settled without litigation. Meanwhile the relative number of accidents
diminished. Whereas in 1877 one railway employee in 95 was more or less
injured, in 1889 the proportion was only one in 195. Whereas between
1873 and 1880 one coal-miner in 446 met his death annually, between
1881 and 1890 the proportion was only one in 519; although there was
apparently less improvement, if any, as regards non-fatal accidents in
the mine.

[521] By “contracting out” was meant an arrangement between employer
and employed by which the latter relinquish the rights conferred upon
them by the Act, and often also their rights under the Common Law.
The Act was silent on the subject; but the judges decided, to the
great surprise and dismay of the Trade Union leaders, that contracting
out was permissible (see Griffiths _v._ Earl of Dudley, 9, Queen’s
Bench Division, 35). The usual form of “contracting out” was the
establishment of a workman’s insurance fund to which the workmen were
compelled to subscribe, and to which the employer also contributed.
Among the coal-miners, those of Lancashire, Somerset, and some
collieries in Wales generally contracted out. The employees of the
London and North-Western, and London and Brighton Railway Companies
also contracted out. In one or two large undertakings in other
industries a similar course was followed. But in the vast majority
of cases employers did not resort to this expedient. Particulars are
given in the _Report and Evidence of the Select Committee on Employers’
Liability_, 1866; the publications of the Royal Commission on Labour,
1891-94; and _Miners’ Thrift and Employers’ Liability_, by G. L.
Campbell (Wigan, 1891); and our _Industrial Democracy_.

In 1893-94 a further amending Bill passed the House of Commons which
swept away the doctrine of common employment, and placed the workman
with regard to compensation on the same footing as any other person.
A clause making void any agreement by which the workman forewent his
right of action, or “contracted out,” was rejected by the House of
Lords, and the Bill was thereupon abandoned. The question was settled
in 1896 by the passage, under the Unionist Government, of the Workmen’s
Compensation Act, giving compensation in all cases, irrespective of the
employers’ default.

[522] The legal advisers of the Junta realised that the triumph of
1875, though it resulted in a distinct strengthening of the Trade Union
position, was mainly a moral victory. Though Trade Unions were made
legal, the law of conspiracy was only partially reformed, whilst that
relating to political combinations, unlawful assemblies, sedition,
etc., remained, as it still remains, untouched. Expert lawyers knew
in how many ways prejudiced tribunals might at any time make the law
oppressive. The legal friends of Trade Unionism desired, therefore,
to utilise the period of political quiet in simplifying the criminal
law, and in removing as much of the obsolete matter as was possible.
And though State Trials recommenced in Ireland in 1881, and criminal
prosecutions of Trade Unionists continued in England down to 1891, the
interval had been well spent in clearing away some of the grosser evils.

[523] In the proposed reform of the Jury laws, for instance, the
Parliamentary Committee for several years did not venture to ask
explicitly for that payment of jurymen which alone would enable working
men to serve, and contented themselves with suggesting a lowering of
the qualification for juryman. In 1876, indeed, John Burnett, then a
prominent member of the Committee, strongly opposed the Payment of
Jurymen on the ground that it might create a class of professional
jurors (Trades Union Congress Report, 1876, p. 14).

[524] See, for instance, the report of the 1876 Congress, p. 30; that
of the 1882 Congress, p. 37; that of the 1883 Congress, p. 41; and
_History of the British Trades Union Congress_, by W. J. Davis, vol.
i., 1910.

[525] In this connection may be mentioned the extensive agitation
promoted by Samuel Plimsoll for further legislation to prevent the loss
of life at sea. At the 1873 Trades Union Congress Plimsoll distributed
copies of his book, _Our Merchant Seamen_, and enlisted, during the
next three years, practically the whole political force of the Trade
Union Movement in support of his Merchant Shipping Acts Amendment
Bill. The “Plimsoll and Seamen’s Fund Committee,” of which George
Howell became secretary, received large financial help from the Unions,
the South Yorkshire Miners’ Association voting, in 1873, a levy of a
shilling per member, and contributing over £1000. The Parliamentary
Committee gave Plimsoll’s Bill a place in their programme for the
General Election of 1874, and this Trade Union support contributed
largely to Plimsoll’s success in passing a temporary Act in 1875, and
permanent legislation in 1876, against the combined efforts of a strong
Conservative Government and the shipowners on both sides of the House.
(See _Labour Legislation, Labour Movements, and Labour Leaders_, by G.
Howell, 1902.)

[526] Congress Reports, 1882 and 1883.

[527] Parliamentary Committee’s Report, September 17, 1877.

[528] That extending to factory scales and measures the provisions of
the Weights and Measures Act relating to inspection, etc.

[529] The appointment was first offered to Broadhurst, who elected to
continue his work as Secretary of the Parliamentary Committee, and who
suggested Prior (_Henry Broadhurst, the Story of his Life_, by himself,
1901).

[530] _Ibid._ p. 136.

[531] It may be mentioned that the Trades Union Congress, which at
first had welcomed addresses from the middle and upper class friends
of Trade Unionism, was, between 1881 and 1883, gradually restricted to
Trade Unionists. At the Nottingham Congress in 1883, where Frederic
Harrison read a paper on the “History of Trade Unionism,” and Henry
Crompton one on the “Codification of the Law,” when Frederic Harrison
proposed to take part in the discussion on the Land Question, he was
not permitted to do so; and this rule has since been rigidly adhered
to. At the Aberdeen Congress of 1884 Lord Rosebery was allowed to
deliver an address on the “Federalism of the Trades Union Congress,”
but this was the last time that any one has been invited to read a
paper.

[532] _Times_ leader on the Congress of Belfast, September 11, 1893,
which deplores the remarkable “subservience to Mr. John Burns and
his friends” manifested by the Congress--a subservience marked by
the election of Mr. Burns for the Parliamentary Committee at the
head of the poll, and by the adoption of a programme which included
the nationalisation of the land and other means of production and
distribution.

[533] The following description of the rise of the “New Unionism” of
1889 is based on minutes and reports of Trade Union organisations, the
files of _Justice_, the _Labour Elector_, the _Trade Unionist_, the
_Cotton Factory Times_, the _Workman’s Times_, and other working-class
journals. The documentary evidence has been elucidated and supplemented
by the reminiscences of most of the principal actors in the movement,
and by the personal recollections of the authors themselves, one of
whom, as a member of the Fabian Society, observed the transformation
from the Socialist side, whilst the other, as a disciple of Herbert
Spencer and a colleague of Charles Booth, was investigating the
contemporary changes from an Individualist standpoint.

[534] See Mr. H. M. Hyndman’s _England for All_, 1881.

[535] _Report of the International Trades Union Congress at Paris,
1886_, by Adolphe Smith, 1886.

[536] _Flint Glass Makers’ Magazine_, November 1884.

[537] _Report of the Industrial Remuneration Conference_, 1885.

[538] The results of twenty years of patient labour by Charles Booth
and his assistants are embodied in the magnificent work, _Labour
and Life of the People_ (London, 1st edition, 2 vols., 1889-91; 2nd
edition, 4 vols., 1893), reissued in greatly enlarged form as _Life and
Labour in London_, 18 vols.; _Pauperism and the Endowment of Old Age_
(London, 1893); _The Aged Poor_ (1894); _Old Age and the Aged Poor_
(1899); _Industrial Unrest and Trades Union Policy_ (1913). In _Charles
Booth: a Memoir_ (1918) Mrs. Booth has given a personal biography
(1840-1914) of a tireless investigator who, merely by the instrument of
social diagnosis, got accomplished reforms of a magnitude that seemed
at first wholly impracticable.

[539] The funds of the Stonemasons had been completely exhausted by
the great strike of 1878. In January 1879 the Society determined,
on a proposition submitted by the Central Executive, to close all
pending disputes (including a general strike at Sheffield against a
heavy reduction without due notice); and between that date and March
1885, though many of the branches struggled manfully, and in some
cases successfully, against repeated reductions of wages, increases
of hours, or infringements of the local bye-laws, no strike whatever
was supported from the Society’s funds. The case of the Stonemasons is
typical of the other great trade friendly societies.

[540] _What a Compulsory Eight Hours Working Day means to the Workers_,
by Tom Mann (1886), 16 pp.

[541] Mr. Tom Mann, one of the outstanding figures in the New
Unionist Movement, was born at Foleshill, Warwickshire, in 1856, and
apprenticed in an engineering shop at Birmingham, whence he came to
London in 1878, and joined the Amalgamated Society of Engineers.
Eagerly pursuing his self-education, he became acquainted first
with the Co-operative Movement, and then with the writings of Henry
George. In 1884 he visited the United States, where he worked for six
months. On his return he joined the Battersea Branch of the Social
Democratic Federation, and quickly became one of its leading speakers.
His experience of the evils of overtime made the Eight Hours Day a
prominent feature in his lectures, and in 1886 he published his views
in the pamphlet, _What a Compulsory Eight Hours Working Day means
to the Workers_ (1886, 16 pp.), of which several editions have been
printed. In the same year he left his trade in order to devote himself
to the provincial propaganda of the Social Democratic Federation,
spending over two years incessantly lecturing, first about Tyneside,
and then in Lancashire. Returning to London early in 1889, he assisted
in establishing the Gas-workers’ Union and in organising the great
dock strike, on the termination of which he was elected President of
the Dockers’ Union. For three years he applied himself to building
up this organisation, deciding to resign in 1892, when he became a
candidate for the General Secretaryship of the Amalgamated Society
of Engineers. After an exciting contest, during which he addressed
meetings of the members in all the great engineering centres, he failed
of success only by 951 votes on a poll of 35,992. In the meantime
he had been appointed, in 1891, a member of the Royal Commission on
Labour, to which he submitted a striking scheme for consolidating the
whole dock business of the port of London, by cutting a new channel for
the Thames across the Isle of Dogs. On the establishment in 1893 of
the London Reform Union he was appointed its secretary, a post which
he relinquished in 1894 on being elected secretary of the Independent
Labour Party. This he presently relinquished to emigrate to New
Zealand; and there and in Australia he threw himself energetically
into Trade Union agitation. Returning to England in 1911, he became
a fervent advocate of Syndicalism; and then became an organiser for
various General Labour Unions. In 1919 he was elected General Secretary
of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, after an exhaustive ballot of
its great membership.

[542] Article in _Justice_, September 3, 1887.

[543] Mr. John Burns, in many respects the most striking personality in
the Labour Movement, was born at Battersea in 1859, and was apprenticed
to a local engineering firm. Already during his apprenticeship he
made his voice heard in public, in 1877 being actually arrested for
persistently speaking on Clapham Common, and in 1878 braving the
“Jingo” mob at a Hyde Park demonstration. As soon as he was out of
his time (1879) he joined the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, and
became an advocate of shorter hours of labour. An engagement as
engineer on the Niger, West Africa, during 1880-81, gave him leisure
to read, which he utilised by mastering Adam Smith and J. S. Mill.
Returning to London, he worked side by side with Victor Delahaye, an
ex-Communard, who was afterwards one of the French representatives at
the Berlin Labour Conference, 1891, and with whom he had many talks
on the advancement of labour. In 1883 he joined the Social Democratic
Federation, and at once became its leading working-class member,
championing its cause, for instance, in an impressive speech at the
Industrial Remuneration Conference in 1885. In the same year he was
elected by his district of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers as its
representative at the quinquennial delegate meeting of the Society,
where he found himself the youngest member. At the General Election of
1885 he stood as Socialist candidate for West Nottingham, receiving
598 votes. For the next two years he became known as the leader of
the London “unemployed” agitation. His prosecution for sedition in
1886 (with three other prominent members of the Social Democratic
Federation) aroused considerable interest, and on his acquittal his
speech for the defence, _The Man with the Red Flag_, had a large sale
in pamphlet form (1886; 16 pp.). At the prohibited demonstration at
Trafalgar Square on “Bloody Sunday” (November 13, 1887), in conjunction
with Mr. Cunninghame Graham, M.P., he broke through the police line,
for which they were both sentenced to six weeks’ imprisonment. In
January 1889 he was elected for Battersea to the new London County
Council, on which he became one of the most useful and influential
members. His magnificent work in the dock strike and in organising the
unskilled labourers is described in the text. At the General Election
of 1892 he was chosen, by a large majority, M.P. for Battersea, and at
the Trades Union Congress in 1893 he received the largest number of
votes for the Parliamentary Committee, of which he accordingly became
Chairman. In 1906 he was appointed President of the Local Government
Board in Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman’s Government, with a seat in the
Cabinet--thus becoming the first working-man Cabinet Minister--a post
which he held until August 1914, when he resigned on the outbreak of
war. He retained his seat in Parliament until 1918, when he retired.

[544] Address to Trade Unionists in _Justice_, January 24, 1885.

[545] Weiler was the delegate of the Alliance Cabinetmakers’ Society,
and came from London. The Congress Report gives the following account
of his paper: “After reviewing the position of the working classes
under the present system, and comparing it with the state of things
eighty years ago, he contended that the best means of bettering their
position was to reduce the hours of toil. The result of this would
be, first, to give every worker a better chance of employment, and
thus lessen that sort of competition which was caused by hunger and
want; secondly, it would give them time and opportunity for rest and
amusement, and that cultivation of their minds which would enable
them to prepare themselves for the time when the present system of
production would collapse, and the time of this collapse was not so
distant as some supposed.” The paper was received with much applause,
and Weiler received the thanks of Congress. No resolution was passed.

[546] _History of the British Trades Union Congress_, by W. J. Davis,
vol. i. p. 133.

[547] The Return moved for by George Howell regarding the Woolwich and
Enfield engineering works showed that, during 1884 and 1885, more than
half the artisans worked overtime, the average per week for each man
varying from 9.4 hours in some shops to 17.8 in others.

[548] 11,966 of its members voted for an Eight Hours Day, and of these
9209 declared in favour of the enforcement of the eight hours limit by
law. The total votes given for an Eight Hours Law was 17,267; against
it, 3819.

[549] The votes in favour of an Eight Hours Day were 39,656; against
it, 67,390, of which 56,541 were cast on behalf of the Cotton-spinners
and Weavers. In favour of an Eight Hours Law, 28,511; against it,
12,283. The votes of the different trades, and a summary of the
Congress proceedings on this subject, are given in _The Eight Hours
Day_, by Sidney Webb and Harold Cox, 1891; see also _History of the
British Trades Union Congress_, by W. J. Davis, vol. ii. pp. 7-8.

[550] The clause was moved by S. Williamson, Liberal Member for
Kilmarnock, and seconded by J. H. C. Hozier, Conservative Member for
South Lanarkshire. It received no support from the “Labour Members,”
and was rejected by 159 to 104. See the _Eight Hours Day_, by Webb and
Cox, 1891, p. 23.

[551] The “National Conferences” of the miners are a feature peculiar
to the industry. Besides the periodical gatherings of the separate
federations, the miners, since 1863, have had frequent conferences
of delegates from all the organised districts in the kingdom. These
conferences were, until 1889, held under the auspices of the National
Union; subsequently they were summoned by the Miners’ Federation. The
meetings, from which reporters are now excluded, are consultative
only, and their decisions are not authoritative until adopted by the
separate organisations. See _Die Ordnung des Arbeitsverhältnisses in
den Kohlengruben von Northumberland und Durham_, by Dr. Emil Auerbach
(Leipzig, 1890, 268 pp.).

[552] The “Fair Trade” attack had arisen in the following manner. At
the Bristol Congress in 1878, certain delegates, who were strongly
suspected of being the paid agents of the organisation then agitating
for the abolition of the foreign bounties on sugar, attempted to force
this question upon the Congress, and made a serious disturbance.
These delegates afterwards became the paid representatives of the
“Fair Trade League,” an association avowedly composed of landlords
and capitalists with the object of securing a reimposition of import
duties. The Front Bench steadfastly refused to allow the Congress to be
used for promotion of this object, and were exposed in return to what
the Congress in 1882 declared to be “a cowardly, false, and slanderous
attack, ... an attempt at moral assassination.” Instead of fighting
the question of Free Trade _versus_ Protection, the emissaries of the
Fair Trade League developed an elaborate system of personal defamation,
directed against Broadhurst, Howell, Shipton, and other leaders. For
instance, Broadhurst’s administration of the Gas Stokers’ Relief Fund
in 1872 was made the pretext for vague insinuations of malversation
which were scattered broadcast through the Trade Union world. At the
Congress of 1881 the “Fair Trade” delegates were expelled, on it
being proved that their expenses were not paid by the Trade Union
organisations which they nominally represented. A renewed attack on the
Congress of 1882 ended in the triumphant victory of the Parliamentary
Committee, the complete exoneration of Broadhurst and his colleagues,
and the final discomfiture of the “Fair Trade” delegates. See _Henry
Broadhurst: the Story of his Life_, by himself, 1901; _History of the
British Trades Union Congress_, by W. J. Davis, vol. i., 1910.

[553] Report to Congress of 1884. This is another instance of the
abandonment of the more generous views of Applegarth and Odger.

[554] Mr. Drummond, who resigned his secretaryship in 1892, was in the
following year appointed to the staff of the Labour Department of the
Board of Trade, from which he retired in 1918.

[555] See its Circular of June 1886.

[556] Some isolated protests against the employment of non-Unionists
are of earlier date. Thus, the minutes of the Birmingham Trades Council
show that, on July 3, 1880, at the instance of a painters’ delegate,
it passed a resolution protesting against the employment of “non-Union
and incompetent men” by the local hospital. And in the same month the
Wolverhampton Trades Council had successfully protested against the
employment of non-Unionist printers upon a new Liberal newspaper about
to be established.

[557] The chief medium for the attack was the _Labour Elector_, a penny
weekly journal published, from September 1888 to April 1890, by Mr.
H. H. Champion, an ex-officer of the Royal Artillery, who (prosecuted
in 1886, as we have seen, with H. M. Hyndman, J. Burns, and Williams,
for sedition) had at one time been a leading member of the Social
Democratic Federation, from which he was excluded on a difference of
policy. He afterwards emigrated to Melbourne, where he still (1920)
resides.

[558] _Henry Broadhurst: the Story of his Life_, by himself, 1901, pp.
218-24; _History of the British Trades Union Congress_, by W. J. Davis,
vol. i., 1910.

[559] The men employed by two of the gas companies in London, and most
of those engaged by provincial municipalities, have retained this boon.
But in December 1889 the South Metropolitan Gas Company insisted,
after a serious strike, on a return to the twelve hours’ shift. A
scheme of profit-sharing was used to break up their men’s Union
and induce them to accept individual engagements inconsistent with
Collective Bargaining. This example (which is not unique) confirmed
the Trade Unions in their objection to schemes of “Profit-sharing” or
“Co-partnership.”

[560] This strike had the good fortune to find contemporary historians
who were themselves concerned in all the phases of the struggle. _The
Story of the Dockers’ Strike_, by Mr. (afterwards Sir) Hubert Llewellyn
Smith and Vaughan Nash (1890, 190 pp.), gives not only a detailed
chronicle of the highly dramatic proceedings, but also a useful
description of the organisation of the London Docks.

[561] This movement was much assisted by the “Red Van” campaigns of
the English Land Restoration League, 1891-94, which coupled Land
Nationalisation propaganda with the formation of local unions of the
labourers in the Southern and Midland Counties of England. In the
agricultural depression of 1894-95, when staffs were further reduced
and wages again lowered, nearly all these new Unions sank to next to
nothing, or entirely dissolved. Most information as to them is to be
gained from _The Church Reformer_ for 1891-95; _History of the English
Agricultural Labourer_, by W. Hasbach, 1907; and Ernest Selley’s
_Village Trade Unions of Two Centuries_, 1919.

[562] Short-lived and turbulent combinations among seamen have existed
at various periods for the past hundred years, notably between 1810 and
1825, on the north-east coast, where many sailors’ benefit clubs were
also established. In 1851, again, a widespread national organisation
of seamen is said to have existed, having twenty-five branches between
Peterhead and London, and numbering 30,000 members. This appears to
have been a loose federation of practically autonomous port Unions,
which for some years kept up a vigorous agitation against obnoxious
clauses in the Merchant Shipping Acts of 1851-54, and fought the
sailors’ grievances in the law courts. In 1879 the existing North
of England Sailors and Sea-going Firemen’s Friendly Association was
established, but failed to maintain itself outside Sunderland. In
1887 its most vigorous member, J. Havelock Wilson, convinced that
nothing but a national organisation would be effective, started
the National Amalgamated Sailors and Firemen’s Union, which his
able and pertinacious “lobbying” made, for some years, an effective
Parliamentary force.

[563] Address to members in First Half-Yearly Report (London, 1889).
The spirit of the uprising is well given in _The New Trade Unionism_,
by Tom Mann and Ben Tillett, 1890; on which George Shipton was moved to
write _A Reply to Messrs. Tom Mann and Ben Tillett’s Pamphlet entitled
“The New Trade Unionism,”_ 1890.

[564] _Speech delivered by John Burns on the Liverpool Congress,
September 21, 1890_ (1890, 32 pp.).

[565] _Justice_, November 7, 1885.

[566] Printed in _Justice_, September 6, 1884.

[567] “The Decay of Trade Unions,” by H. M. Hyndman, _Justice_, June
18, 1887.

[568] “The Trade Union Congress,” by John Burns, _Justice_, September
12, 1885.

[569] _Justice_, July 11, 1885.

[570] _Justice_, July 18, 1885. The identity of purpose and methods
between the two movements is indeed elsewhere directly asserted; see
“Socialism in ’34,” _ibid._, April 19, 1884, and the extracts from the
Owenite journals in the issue for July 25, 1885.

[571] _Ibid._, August 6, 1887.

[572] _Justice_, July 25, 1885.

[573] From 1889 onwards the columns of _Justice_ abound in abuse and
denunciation of the leaders of the New Unionism. We may cite, not so
much because it summarises this denunciation and abuse, but because of
the details of the movement that it incidentally gives, _The Rise and
Progress of a Right Honourable_, by Joseph Burgess (1911).

[574] In this development some share is to be attributed to the work
of the Fabian Society, which, established in 1883, began in 1887 to
exercise a growing influence on working-class opinion. The publication,
in 1889, of _Fabian Essays in Socialism_, the circulation between
1887 and 1893 of three-quarters of a million copies of its series
of “Fabian tracts,” and the delivery of several thousand lectures a
year in London and other industrial centres, contributed largely to
substitute a practical and constitutional policy of Collectivist reform
for the earlier revolutionary propaganda. Tom Mann, Ben Tillett, and
other Trade Union leaders were, from 1889 onwards, among the members
of the parent Fabian Society, whilst the ninety independent local
Fabian Societies in the provincial centres usually included many of the
delegates to the local Trades Councils. Some account of the Society and
its work will be found in _Zum socialen Frieden_, by Dr. von Schulze
Gaevernitz (Leipzig, 1891, 2 vols.); in _Englische Socialreformer_, by
Dr. M. Grunwald (Leipzig, 1897); in _La Société Fabienne_, by Edouard
Pfeiffer (Paris, 1911); in _Geschichte des Socialismus in England_,
by M. Beer (Stuttgart, 1913), republished in different English form
as _History of British Socialism_ (vol. i., 1918; vol. ii., 1920);
in _Socialism, a Critical Analysis_, by O. D. Skelton, 1911; and in
_Political Thought in England from Herbert Spencer to the Present
Day_, by Ernest Barker, 1915. A superficial survey of the development
of opinion is given in _Socialism in England_, by Sidney Webb (1st
edition, 1889; 2nd edition, 1893). See _History of the Fabian Society_,
by Edward R. Pease (1915).

[575] _Trade Unionism Old and New_, 1891, _passim_.

[576] Thus the Dock, Wharf, and Riverside Labourers’ Union soon gave
Funeral Benefit--usually the first to be added; whilst many of the
branches started their own sick funds. Some of the branches of the
National Union of Gas-workers and General Labourers promptly added
local benefit funds, and the addition of Accident Benefit by the whole
society was presently adopted.




CHAPTER VIII

THE TRADE UNION WORLD

[1890-1894]


When we were engaged, between 1890 and 1894, in investigating the
history and organisation of all the several Unions, no complete
statistics as to the extent of the membership were in existence. We
accordingly sought to obtain, not only an analysis of the Trade Union
world as it then was, but also a complete census of Trade Unionism
from one end of the kingdom to the other. We retain this analysis
practically as it stood in the first edition of the book in 1894, as a
record of the position as it then was--in subsequent chapters tracing
the principal changes and developments of the last thirty years.

To deal first with the aggregate membership, we were convinced in
1894 that, although a certain number of small local societies might
have escaped our notice, we had included every Union then existing
which had as many as 1000 members, as well as many falling below that
figure. From these researches we estimated that the total Trade Union
membership in the United Kingdom at the end of 1892 certainly exceeded
1,500,000 and probably did not reach 1,600,000. Our estimate was
presently confirmed. Working upon the data thus supplied, the Labour
Department of the Board of Trade extended its investigations, and now
records a Trade Union membership for 1892 of 1,502,358.[577] The Trade
Unionists of 1892 numbered, therefore, about 4 per cent of the Census
population.

But to gauge the strength of the Trade Union world of 1892 we had to
compare the number of Trade Unionists, not with the total population,
but with that portion of it which might conceivably be included within
its boundaries. Thus at the outset we had to ignore the propertied
classes, the professions, the employers and the brain-workers of every
kind, and confine our attention exclusively to the wage-earners engaged
in manual work. Even of the working-class so defined we could exclude
the children and the youths under twenty-one, who are not usually
eligible for Trade Union membership. The women present a greater
difficulty to the statistician. The adult female wage-earners engaged
in manual labour in 1891 were estimated to number between two and three
millions, of which only about 100,000 were even nominally within the
Trade Union ranks. To what extent the men’s Trade Unionism was weakened
by its failure to enrol the women workers was a matter of dispute. From
the industrial point of view the answer depends on complicated economic
considerations, such as the extent to which women compete with men
in particular industries, or women’s trades with those in which men
are employed. Owing to the exclusion of women from the Parliamentary
franchise until 1918 their absence from the Trade Union world detracted
little from its political force. We have dealt elsewhere[578] with the
relation of women workers to the Trade Union organisation. Meanwhile we
omit the women as well as the young persons under twenty-one from our
estimate of the place occupied by Trade Unionism in working-class life.

We know of no exact statistics as to the total numbers of the
manual-working class. The figures collected by Leone Levi, and
those of Sir Robert Giffen, together with the inferences to be
drawn from the census and from Charles Booth’s works, led us to the
conclusion--at best only hypothetical--that of the nine millions
of men over twenty-one years of age in 1891, about seven millions
belonged to the manual-working class. Out of every hundred of the
population of all ages we could roughly estimate that about eighteen
are in this sense working men adults. Accepting for the moment this
hypothetical estimate, we arrived at the conclusion that the Trade
Unionists numbered at this date about 20 per cent of the adult male
manual-working class, or, roughly, one man in five.

But this revised percentage is itself misleading. If the million and a
half Trade Unionists were evenly distributed among all occupations and
through all districts, a movement which comprised only 20 per cent of
working men would be of slight economic or industrial importance, and
of no great weight in the political world. What gave the Trade Union
Movement its significance even thirty years ago and transformed these
million and a half units into an organised world of their own, was the
massing of Trade Unionists in certain industries and districts in such
a way as to form a powerful majority of the working-class world. The
Trade Unionists were aggregated in the thriving industrial districts of
the North of England. The seven counties of England north of the Humber
and the Dee contained at least 726,000 members of trade societies, or
almost half of the total for the United Kingdom. At a considerable
distance from these followed the industrial Midlands, where the seven
counties of Leicester, Derby, Notts, Warwick, Gloucester, Northampton,
and Stafford included a total Trade Union membership of at least
210,000, whilst South Wales, including Monmouthshire, counted another
89,000 members of trade societies. The vast agglomeration of the London
district, in which we must reckon Middlesex, the subsidiary boroughs of
West Ham, Croydon, Richmond, and Kingston, as well as Bromley in Kent,
yielded not more than 194,000 Trade Unionists.

These four districts, comprising nearly 21,000,000 inhabitants, or
rather more than two-thirds of the population of England and Wales,
possessed in 1892 twelve-thirteenths of its Trade Unionists. The total
Trade Union membership in the remainder of the country, with its
8,000,000 of population, did not exceed 105,000, largely labourers.
The only county in England in which in 1892 we found no trace of
Trade Union organisation was Rutland, which did not, at this date,
contain a single branch of any Union whatsoever. But Huntingdonshire,
Herefordshire, and Dorsetshire, containing together over 350,000
inhabitants, included, according to our estimate, only about 710 Trade
Unionists between them. Scotland, with four millions of population,
had 147,000 Trade Unionists, nearly all aggregated in the narrow
industrial belt between the Clyde and the Forth, two-thirds of the
total, indeed, belonging to Glasgow and the neighbouring industrial
centres. Ireland, with three-quarters of a million more population,
counted but 40,000, nine-tenths of whom belonged to Dublin, Belfast,
Cork, and Limerick.

Of particular counties, Northumberland and Durham at that date took
the lead, closely followed by Lancashire. The table on following
page supplies particulars of this date for the strongest Trade Union
counties in England and Wales.

This superficial investigation shows us at once that Trade Unionism
coincided in 1892, as it does in 1920, in the main with density of
population. The thinly peopled plains of Dorsetshire, the Highlands of
Scotland, the West of Ireland, the Cumberland and Westmorland Hills,
were practically devoid of Trade Unionism; the valleys of the Tyne and
Tees, Lancashire and London, and the busy industrial villages of the
Midlands showed a comparatively high percentage. But the correspondence
of Trade Unionism with density of population is by no means exact.
Oldham, for instance, with a population of 201,153, had 25,000 male
Unionists,[579] or 12.43 per cent, whereas Birmingham (including the
suburbs of Aston, Handsworth, and Solihull), with 621,253, had only
26,000, or 4.19 per cent. Newcastle (including Gateshead), with 328,066
inhabitants, had 26,500 Trade Unionists, or 8.08 per cent, whilst Leeds
(including Wortley, Hunslet, and Burley) had but 16,000 to a population
of 415,243, or 3.85 per cent. And, most striking exception of all,
the crowded five and a half millions of the Metropolitan area had but
194,000 Trade Unionists, or only 3.52 per cent of its population,
whilst Lancashire, even including its northern moorlands and its wide
agricultural districts, had 332,000 for less than four millions of
people, or 8.63 per cent of its population. Reckoning that 18 out of
every 100 of the population are adult male workmen, Trade Unionism thus
counted among its adherents in some counties over 50 per cent of the
total number of working men.

 _Table showing, for certain counties in England, and for
   South Wales, the total population in 1891, the ascertained
   number of Trade Unionists in 1892, and the percentage to
   population in each case. (In the first edition of this
   book the student will find a coloured map of England and
   Wales, showing, in five tints, the percentage of Trade Union
   membership to Census population in 1891 in the several
   counties, as estimated in this table.)_

 ------------------------------+------------+--------------+------------
                               |   Total    |  Ascertained | Percentage
                               | Population |   Number of  | of Trade
          County.              |  in 1891.  |  Members of  | Unionists
                               |            |     Trade    | to
                               |            |   Societies  | Population.
                               |            |    in 1892.  |
 ------------------------------+------------+--------------+------------
 Northumberland                |    506,030 |      56,815  |  11.23
 Durham                        |  1,024,369 |     114,810  |  11.21
 Lancashire                    |  3,957,906 |[580]331,535  |   8.63
 Yorkshire, E. Riding          |    318,570 |      23,630  |   7.42
 Leicestershire                |    379,286 |      27,845  |   7.34
 Derbyshire                    |    432,414 |      29,510  |   6.82
 South Wales and Monmouthshire |  1,325,315 |      88,810  |   6.70
 Nottinghamshire               |    505,311 |      31,050  |   6.14
 Yorkshire, W. Riding          |  2,464,415 |     141,140  |   5.73
 Gloucestershire               |    548,886 |      26,030  |   4.74
 Cheshire                      |    707,978 |      32,000  |   4.52
 Staffordshire                 |  1,103,452 |      49,545  |   4.49
 Suffolk                       |    353,758 |      14,885  |   4.21
 Warwickshire                  |    801,738 |      33,600  |   4.19
 Northampton                   |    308,072 |      12,210  |   3.96
 Cumberland                    |    266,549 |      10,280  |   3.86
 London District (including    |            |              |
   Middlesex, Croydon, West    |            |              |
   Ham, Richmond, Kingston,    |            |              |
   and Bromley)                |  5,517,583 |     194,083  |   3.52
 Yorkshire, N. Riding with     |            |              |
   York City                   |    435,897 |      15,215  |   3.49
                               | ---------- |  ----------  |   ----
       Totals                  | 20,957,529 |   1,232,993  |   5.89
 ------------------------------+------------+--------------+------------

 No other county had 15,000 Trade Unionists, nor as much as 3 per cent
 of its population in trade societies.

But this percentage itself fails to give an adequate idea of the extent
to which Trade Unionism, even in 1892, dominated the industrial centres
in which it was strongest. Within the concentration by localities,
there was a further concentration by trades--a fact which to a large
extent explains the geographical distribution. The following table
shows in what proportion the leading industries contributed to the
total Trade Union forces:

 _Table showing the approximate number of members of trade societies
   in 1892 according to industries, in the different parts of the United
   Kingdom._

 ---------------------+-------------+-----------+----------+------------
           Trade.     | England and | Scotland. | Ireland. |    Total.
                      | Wales.[581] |           |          |
 ---------------------+-------------+-----------+----------+------------
 Engineering and      |             |           |          |
   Metal Trades       |    233,450  |   45,300  |   8,250  |    287,000
 Building Trades      |    114,500  |   24,950  |   8,550  |    148,000
 Mining               |    325,750  |   21,250  |    ...   |    347,000
 Textile Manufactures |    184,270  |   12,330  |   3,400  |    200,000
 Clothing and         |             |           |          |
   Leather Trades     |     78,650  |    8,400  |   2,950  |     90,000
 Printing Trades      |     37,950  |    5,650  |   2,400  |     46,000
 Miscellaneous Crafts |     46,550  |    7,450  |   4,000  |     58,000
 Labourers and        |             |           |          |
   Transport Workers  |    302,880  |   21,670  |  10,450  |    335,900
                      | ----------  | --------  |  ------  | ----------
       Totals         |  1,324,000  |  147,000  |  40,000  |  1,511,000
                      |             |           |          |      [582]
 ---------------------+-------------+-----------+----------+-----------

For the general reader, this table, together with the foregoing one
showing the geographical distribution of Trade Unionism, completes our
statistical survey of the Trade Union world of 1892. To the student of
Trade Union statistics a more particular enumeration may be useful.
Before we attempt to picture Trade Union life, we shall therefore
devote a dozen pages (which the general reader may with a clear
conscience skip) to the dry facts of organisation in each of the eight
great divisions into which we distributed the Trade Union membership of
1892.

The first division, comprising all the numerous ramifications of
the engineering, metal-working, and shipbuilding trades, was then
characterised by old-established and highly developed national Unions,
with large membership, centralised administration, and extensive
friendly benefits. The 287,000 Trade Unionists in this division
were enrolled in over 260 separate societies, but almost one-half
belonged to one or other of four great national organisations, the
Amalgamated Society of Engineers (established 1851), the United
Society of Boilermakers and Iron Shipbuilders (established 1832),[583]
the Friendly Society of Ironfounders of England, Ireland, and Wales
(established 1809), and the Associated Society of Shipwrights, a
belated amalgamation formed in 1882 by the many ancient local
Unions of wooden shipbuilders. Of these great Unions, that of the
Boilermakers, with 39,000 members, was incomparably the strongest,
having no rival for the allegiance of its trade and including
practically the whole body of skilled workmen engaged in iron
shipbuilding and boilermaking from one end of the United Kingdom to
the other. The great Unions of Ironfounders and Shipwrights, with
respectively 15,000 and 14,000 members, were not quite so universal as
the Boilermakers. The Associated Society of Ironmoulders (Ironfounders)
of Scotland (established 1831), with 6000 members and a few minor
Unions of less skilled ironfounders, maintained separate organisations;
whilst the Shipwrights’ Provident Union of the Port of London
(established 1824, 1400 members), the Liverpool Trade and Friendly
Association of Shipwrights (established 1800, 1400 members), and a few
other old-fashioned port Unions still held aloof from the Shipwrights’
amalgamation.[584] The Amalgamated Society of Engineers, the largest
centralised Trade Union in the kingdom, with 66,000 members at home
and 5000 abroad, towered over all its rivals, but had to compete
with compact sectional or local Unions, admitting one or more of the
numerous classes of workmen in the engineering and machine-making
trade.[585] Among the actual producers of iron and steel, the British
Steel Smelters’ Association (established 1886), with 2400 members,
originally a Scotch Union, was extending all over the kingdom; whilst
the Associated Society of Iron and Steel Workers (established 1862),
with 1250 members.

7800 members, occupied a unique position in the Trade Union world
from its long and constant devotion to the sliding scale. The tin and
hollow-ware workers,[586] the chippers and drillers, the Sheffield
cutlers, and the craftsmen in precious metals were split up into
innumerable local societies, with little federal union.

It is interesting to notice the large proportion which this division of
Trade Unionists in Scotland bore to the total for that country. Whilst
in England and Wales it formed only one-sixth of the aggregate number,
in Scotland it measured nearly one-third, almost entirely centred about
Glasgow.


_Table showing the approximate number of Trade Unionists in each group
of the Engineering and Shipbuilding Trades._

 -----------------------------+-----------+-----------+----------+---------
           Trade.             |  England  | Scotland. | Ireland. |  Total.
                              | and Wales.|           |          |
 -----------------------------+-----------+-----------+----------+---------
 Engineers and Machine Makers |   74,000  |   8,250   |  2,750   |   85,000
 Smiths and Farriers          |    7,350  |   2,250   |    300   |    9,900
 Brass and Copper Workers     |   13,350  |   2,000   |    150   |   15,500
 Sheet Metal Workers          |   16,000  |   1,300   |    200   |   17,500
 Ironfounders and Core-makers |   15,500  |   7,250   |    500   |   23,250
 Shipbuilding and             |           |           |          |
   Boiler making              |   45,500  |  13,250   |  3,600   |   62,350
 Iron and Steel Smelters.     |   23,500  |   1,500   |   ...    |   25,000
 Workers in Precious Metals   |    3,500  |    ...    |   ...    |    3,500
 Sundry Metal Workers         |   34,750  |   9,500   |    750   |   45,000
                              | --------  |  ------   | ------   | --------
       Totals                 |  233,450  |  45,300   |  8,250   |  287,000
 -----------------------------+-----------+-----------+----------+---------

The organisation of Builders and Furniture Makers resembled in many
respects that of the Engineers and Shipbuilders. The 148,000 Trade
Unionists in this division were sorted into 120 separate Unions; but
again we find one-half of them belonging to one or other of three
centralised Trade Friendly Societies of national scope. Of these
the Friendly Society of Operative Stonemasons (established 1832,
16,000 members) was the most powerful, having practically no rival
throughout England or Ireland, and maintaining friendly relations with
the corresponding United Operative Masons’ Association of Scotland
(established 1831, 5000 members). But the largest and richest Union in
this division was the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners
(established 1860, 34,000 members at home and 4000 abroad). Although
this Society could count but a small proportion of the total number
of carpenters in the kingdom, it included three-fourths of those who
were Trade Unionists, the remaining fourth being divided between the
Associated Carpenters and Joiners of Scotland (established 1861, 6000
members), the old General Union of Carpenters and Joiners of England
(established 1827, 4000 members), and a few tiny trade clubs in the
Metropolis which had refused to merge themselves in either of the
national organisations. The Bricklayers were in much the same position
as the Carpenters. The Operative Bricklayers’ Society (established
1848, 22,000 members) included three-fourths of the Trade Unionists,
the remainder being found either in the United Operative Bricklayers’
Trade, Accident, and Burial Society (established 1832, 2500 members),
or in a few isolated local trade clubs in Scotland and Ireland. Of the
other Unions in the Building Trades, the United Operative Plumbers’
Association of Great Britain and Ireland (established 1832, reorganised
1865, 6500 members) was by far the most effective and compact, and
was specially interesting as retaining practically the federal
constitution of the Builders’ Union of 1830-34. With the exception of
the United Operative Plumbers’ Association of Scotland (established
1872, 700 members), a small society resulting from a secession, no
rival organisation existed. On the other hand, the Painters, Slaters,
Packing-case Makers, Upholsterers, and French Polishers were split up
into numberless small Unions, whilst the Cabinetmakers and Plasterers
had each one considerable organisation[587] and several smaller
societies, which, however, included but a small proportion of the trade.

_Table showing the approximate number of Trade Unionists in the various
branches of the Building and Furniture Trades._

 -----------------------+----------+-----------+----------+---------
           Trade.       | England. | Scotland. | Ireland. |  Total.
                        |and Wales.|           |          |
 -----------------------+----------+-----------+----------+---------
 Stonemasons            |   16,750 |   8,250   |     250  |   25,250
 Bricklayers            |   24,000 |     700   |   2,300  |   27,000
 Carpenters             |   33,000 |   7,850   |   3,250  |   44,100
 Cabinetmakers          |    7,200 |   2,000   |     300  |    9,500
 Sawyers and other      |          |           |          |
   Wood-workers         |    4,250 |     350   |     150  |    4,750
 Plasterers             |    7,500 |   1,000   |     500  |    9,000
 Painters               |   12,400 |   2,150   |   1,000  |   15,550
 Plumbers               |    5,400 |   1,200   |     400  |    7,000
 Upholsterers and       |          |           |          |
   French Polishers     |    2,500 |     450   |     300  |    3,250
 Sundry Building Trades |    1,500 |   1,000   |     100  |    2,600
                        | -------- |  ------   |  ------  | --------
       Totals           |  114,500 |  24,950   |   8,550  |  148,000
 -----------------------+----------+-----------+----------+---------

The Miners and Quarrymen, comprising about sixty-five societies,
were in 1892 the best organised of the eight great divisions into
which we classified the Trade Union forces. Among the coalminers
the “county,” or district Union, without friendly benefits, was the
predominating type. Nearly two-thirds of the whole 347,000 Trade
Unionists in this division were gathered into the Miners’ Federation
of Great Britain (established 1888), a federal Union comprising about
twenty independent organisations, some of which, like the Yorkshire
Miners’ Association (established 1858, 55,000 members), were highly
centralised, whilst others, like the Lancashire Miners’ Federation
(established 1881, 43,000 members), were themselves federal bodies. The
Miners’ Federation, whilst not interfering with the financial autonomy
or internal administration of its constituent bodies, effectively
centralised the industrial and Parliamentary policy of the whole army
of its members from Fife to Somerset. Outside the Federation at this
date stood the powerful and compact Northumberland Miners’ Mutual
Confident Association (established 1863, 17,000 members), and Durham
Miners’ Association (established 1869, 50,000 members), together with
the solid little Mid and West Lothian Miners’ Association (established
1885, 3600 members), and the loose organisations of Sliding Scale
contributors which then figured as Trade Unions in South Wales.[588]
The coal and iron miners of the West of Scotland had scarcely got
beyond the ephemeral pit club and occasional Strike Union. Among
the tin, lead, and copper miners Trade Unionism, as far as we can
ascertain, was absolutely unknown.

_Table showing the approximate number of Trade Unionists among the
persons engaged in or about Mines and Quarries._

 ---------------------------+-----------+-----------+----------+----------
           Trade.           |  England. | Scotland. | Ireland. |   Total.
                            | and Wales.|           |          |
 ---------------------------+-----------+-----------+----------+----------
 Coal and Iron Miners       |  301,000  |  17,500   |    ...   |  318,500
 Colliery Enginemen         |    5,000  |   1,500   |    ...   |    6,500
 Cokemen, Overmen, Colliery |           |           |          |
   Mechanics, &c.           |    9,250  |     500   |    ...   |    9,750
 Quarrymen                  |   10,500  |    ...    |    ...   |   10,500
 Shale Oil Workers          |     ...   |   1,750   |    ...   |    1,750
                            | --------  |  ------   |  ------  | --------
       Totals               |  325,750  |  21,250   |    ...   |  347,000
 ---------------------------+-----------+-----------+----------+----------

The salient fact of Trade Unionism among the textile operatives in 1892
was that effective organisation was nearly confined to the workers
in cotton, who contributed at least two-thirds of the 200,000 Trade
Unionists in this division. Like the Miners the Cotton Operatives
have always shown a strong preference for federal Associations with
exclusively trade objects. The powerful Amalgamated Association of
Operative Cotton-spinners (established 1853), a federal Union of
19,500 members comprising forty separate district associations,
joined with its sister federations, the Northern Counties Amalgamated
Association of Weavers (established 1884, 71,000 members) and the
Amalgamated Association of Card and Blowing Room Operatives (31,000
members, established 1886), in the United Textile Factory Workers’
Association (established 1886). This Association formed exclusively
for Parliamentary purposes, focussed the very considerable political
influence of 125,000 organised cotton operatives in Lancashire,
Cheshire, and Yorkshire, and was, next to the Miners’ Federation, by
far the most powerful Trade Union organisation in the country.[589]

The highly developed organisation of the Cotton Operatives contrasted
with the feebleness of the Woollen-workers. In the other branches of
textile manufacture the extreme localisation of the separate industries
had given rise to isolated county or district organisations of lace,
hosiery, silk, flax, or carpet-workers usually confined to small areas,
and exercising comparatively little influence in the Trade Union world.
Incomparably the strongest among them was the Amalgamated Society of
Operative Lacemakers (3500 members), which comprised practically all
the adult male workers in the Nottingham machine-lace trade. If we
exclude the constituent organisations of the United Textile Factory
Workers’ Association, the separate Unions in the various branches of
the textile industry numbered 115.

_Table showing the approximate number of Trade Unionists in the various
branches of the Textile Manufacture._

 ----------------------------+-----------+-----------+----------+---------
           Trade.            |  England. | Scotland. | Ireland. |   Total.
                             | and Wales.|           |          |
 ----------------------------+-----------+-----------+----------+---------
 Cotton-spinners             |   19,500  |     ...   |    ...   |   19,500
 Cotton-weavers              |   82,500  |      500  |    ...   |   83,000
 Cotton Card-room Operatives |   31,000  |     ...   |    ...   |   31,000
 Woollen-workers             |    6,000  |    9,500  |    ...   |   15,500
 Woolsorters, Combers, &c.   |    2,500  |     ...   |    ...   |    2,500
 Silkworkers                 |    2,500  |     ...   |      60  |    2,560
 Flax and Linen-workers      |      150  |      300  |   2,940  |    3,390
 Carpet-weavers              |    2,600  |      400  |    ...   |    3,000
 Hosiery-workers             |    6,350  |      100  |      50  |    6,500
 Lacemakers                  |    4,500  |     ...   |    ...   |    4,500
 Elastic Webworkers          |      700  |     ...   |    ...   |      700
 Dyers, Bleachers, and       |           |           |          |
   Finishers                 |   11,820  |      180  |     100  |   12,100
 Overlookers                 |    4,850  |      200  |     200  |    5,250
 Calico-printers and         |           |           |          |
   Engravers                 |    1,950  |      500  |      50  |    2,500
 Miscellaneous Textiles      |    7,350  |      650  |    ...   |    8,000
                             | --------  |   ------  |   ------ | --------
       Totals                |  184,270  |   12,330  |   3,400  |  200,000
 ----------------------------+-----------+-----------+----------+---------

The large section of workers engaged in the manufacture of clothing
and leather goods was, perhaps, the least organised of the skilled
trades. One society, indeed, the National Union of Boot and Shoe
Operatives (established 1874), counted almost 43,000 members, and
exercised a very real control over the machine boot trade. And
although the hand industry was in this case rapidly declining, the
Amalgamated Association of Boot and Shoemakers (established 1862)
maintained and even increased the earnings of this body of 4700 skilled
handicraftsmen. The Tailors, on the other hand, had succeeded neither
in controlling the new machine industry, nor in upholding the standard
earnings of the hand-workers. The Amalgamated Society of Tailors
(established 1866, 17,000 members), together with the Scottish National
Operative Tailors’ Society (established 1866, 4500 members), had
absorbed all the local Unions, but included only a small proportion
of those at work in the trade. The Felt Hatters and Trimmers’ Union
(established 1872) had 4300 members, together with a women’s branch
(established 1886) numbering nearly as many. In other branches of this
division some strong organisations existed in the smaller industries,
but the workers for the most part formed only feeble local clubs
or else were totally unorganised. There were altogether over sixty
separate Unions in this division.

_Table showing the approximate number of Trade Unionists in the
Clothing and Leather Trades._

 -------------------------+----------+----------+----------+--------
           Trade.         |  England.|Scotland. | Ireland. |  Total.
                          |and Wales.|          |          |
 -------------------------+----------+----------+----------+--------
 Boot and Shoemakers      |  46,250  |  2,250   |    500   |  49,000
 Other Leather Workers    |   5,900  |    550   |    100   |   6,550
 Tailors and other        |          |          |          |
   Clothing Makers        |  16,100  |  5,500   |  2,300   |  23,900
 Hatmakers, Glovers, &c.  |  10,400  |    100   |     50   |  10,550
                          |  ------  | ------   | ------   |  ------
       Totals             |  78,650  |  8,400   |  2,950   |  90,000
 -------------------------+----------+----------+----------+--------

The 46,000 Trade Unionists in the paper and printing trades were
divided between four considerable Unions with 27,000 members, and
forty-five little societies numbering not more than 19,000 altogether.
The compositors lead off with three extensive organisations, the London
Society of Compositors, confined to the Metropolis (established 1848,
9800 members), the Typographical Association (established 1849, 11,500
members), which had absorbed all but four of the Irish and four of
the English local societies outside the Metropolis, and the Scottish
Typographical Association (established 1852, 3000 members). The
Bookbinders and Machine Rulers’ Consolidated Union (established 1835,
3000 members), mainly composed of provincial workers, far exceeded the
London Consolidated Bookbinders’ Society, the largest of half-a-dozen
Metropolitan Unions in this trade.

_Table showing the approximate number of Trade Unionists in the various
branches of the Paper and Printing Trades._

 --------------------------+----------+-----------+----------+--------
           Trade.          | England. | Scotland. | Ireland. | Total.
                           |and Wales.|           |          |
 --------------------------+----------+-----------+----------+--------
 Compositors and Press and |          |           |          |
   Machine Men             | 27,250   |   4,000   |   2,000  | 33,250
 Bookbinders               |  5,150   |     700   |     300  |  6,150
 Papermakers               |  3,150   |     500   |    ...   |  3,650
 Miscellaneous Printing    |          |           |          |
   Trades                  |  2,400   |     450   |     100  |  2,950
                           | ------   |  ------   |  ------  | ------
       Totals              | 37,950   |   5,650   |   2,400  | 46,000
 --------------------------+----------+-----------+----------+--------

There remained a number of trades which it was difficult to classify.
These miscellaneous crafts furnished over 130 societies and 58,000
Trade Unionists. Some, like the Coopers, Cigarmakers, Brushmakers,
Basketmakers, and Glassworkers, were usually well organised; others,
like the Coachbuilders, Potters, Bakers, and Ropeworkers, included but
a small percentage of their trades.[590]

_Table showing the approximate number of Trade Unionists in the
Miscellaneous Trades._

 --------------------------+----------+-----------+----------+---------
           Trade.          | England. | Scotland. | Ireland. |  Total.
                           |and Wales.|           |          |
 --------------------------+----------+-----------+----------+---------
 Basket and Brushmakers    |  2,800   |     350   |     100  |   3,250
 Coach and Waggon Builders |  6,000   |     400   |     600  |   7,000
 Coopers                   |  4,400   |   1,300   |     300  |   6,000
 Glassworkers              |  7,350   |     500   |     150  |   8,000
 Millers and Bakers        |  7,000   |   2,500   |   2,500  |  12,000
 Potters                   |  6,250   |   1,650   |    ...   |   7,900
 Sundry Trades             | 12,750   |     750   |     350  |  13,850
                           | ------   |  ------   |  ------  |  ------
       Totals              | 46,550   |   7,450   |   4,000  |  58,000
 --------------------------+----------+-----------+----------+---------

The great army of labourers, seamen, and transport workers of every
kind we enclosed in a single division. Out of the 120 organisations
belonging to this group the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants
(established 1872), with its permanent membership of 31,000, its high
contributions, extensive friendly benefits, and large accumulated
funds, resembled in character the large national societies of the
engineering and building trades. Alongside this stood the Associated
Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen (established 1880,
7000 members). Some other Unions in this group, such as the London
and Counties Labour League (established 1872, 13,000 members),
and the National Agricultural Labourers’ Union (established 1872,
15,000 members), had become essentially friendly societies. But the
predominating type in this division was, as might have been expected,
the new Union, with low contributions, fluctuating membership,
and militant trade policy. Of these the strongest and apparently
the most stable was the National Union of Gas-workers and General
Labourers (established 1889), with 36,000 members on the books. Next
in membership came the Dock, Wharf, and Riverside Labourers’ Union
(established 1889), the Tyneside and National Labour Union (established
1889), and the National Amalgamated Sailors and Firemen’s Union
(established 1887), each with a membership fluctuating between 20,000
and 40,000. Other prominent Unions in this division were the General
Railway Workers’ Union (established 1889), the National Union of Dock
Labourers (established 1889), the National Amalgamated Coalporters’
Union (established 1890), and the Navvies, Bricklayers’ Labourers, and
General Labourers’ Union (established 1890). The builders’ labourers
and the carmen were organised in numerous local Unions, which, in some
cases, such as the Mersey Quay and Railway Carters’ Union (established
1887), and the Leeds Amalgamated Association of Builders’ Labourers
(established 1889), were effective trade societies. The chief exponent
of New Unionism among the agricultural labourers was then the Eastern
Counties Labour Federation (established 1890), which had enrolled
17,000 members in Suffolk and the neighbouring counties. But any
statistical estimate of the ill-defined and constantly fluctuating
membership of the Unions in this division must necessarily be of less
value than in the more definitely organised trades.[591]

_Table showing the approximate number of Trade Unionists among the
Labourers and Transport Workers of every kind._

 ---------------------------+-----------+-----------+----------+----------
           Trade.           |  England. | Scotland. | Ireland. |   Total.
                            | and Wales.|           |          |
 ---------------------------+-----------+-----------+----------+----------
 Seamen, Fishermen,         |           |           |          \
   Watermen, &c.            |   33,850  |    3,900  |   1,500  |   39,250
 Railway Traffic Workers    |   43,500  |    1,500  |   3,000  |   48,000
 Enginemen, &c. (other than |           |           |          |
   Colliery or Railway)     |    6,300  |      370  |     100  |    6,770
 Carmen, &c.                |   19,000  |    3,500  |   1,000  |   23,500
 Miscellaneous Labourers    |  200,230  |   12,400  |   4,850  |  217,480
                            | --------  |   ------  |  ------  | --------
       Totals               |  302,880  |   21,670  |  10,450  |  335,000
 ---------------------------+-----------+-----------+----------+----------

It would have been an interesting addition to our statistics if we
could have added to these tables a column showing the proportion which
the Unionists in each trade bore to the total number of workers in it.
Unfortunately the classification of the census[592] is not sufficiently
precise to enable this to be done. We were therefore thrown back upon
such information on the point as we can obtain from other sources. We
knew, for instance, that in Lancashire the Amalgamated Association of
Cotton-spinners included practically every competent workman engaged
in the trade. The same might be said of the Boilermakers’ Society in
all the iron shipbuilding ports, though not in some of the Midland
districts. And to turn to an even larger industry, 80 per cent of the
coalminers were in union, some districts, such as Northumberland and
parts of the West Riding of Yorkshire, having practically every hewer
in the society. And in other industries and localities the Union was
sometimes equally inclusive. Among the Dublin Coopers or the Midland
Flint Glass Makers, the Nottingham Lacemakers or the Yorkshire Glass
Bottle Makers, non-Unionism was practically unknown. We see, therefore,
that instead of numbering only 4 per cent of the total population, the
Trade Union world was in certain districts and in certain industries,
already in 1892 practically co-extensive with the manual labour class.
On the other hand, there were many occupations in which Trade Unionism
was non-existent. Whole classes of manual workers were practically
excluded from the Trade Union ranks by the fact that they were not
hired workers at wages. In the nooks and crannies of our industrial
system were to be found countless manual workers who obtained a
precarious livelihood by direct service of the consumer. Every town
and village had its quota of hawkers, costermongers, tallymen, and
other petty dealers; of cobblers, tinkers, knifegrinders, glaziers,
chairmenders, plumbers, and other jobbing craftsmen; of cab-runners,
“corner boys,” men who “hang about the bridges,” and all the
innumerable parasites of the life of a great city. When we passed from
these “independent producers” to the trades in which the small master
survived, or in which home work prevailed, we saw another region almost
barren of Trade Unionism. The tailors and cabinetmakers, for instance,
though often highly-skilled craftsmen, had only a small minority of
their trades in Union, whilst the chain and nailmakers were almost
unorganised. The effect upon Trade Unionism of a backward type of
industrial organisation was well seen in the manufacture of boots and
shoes. In Leicestershire and Stafford, where the work was done in large
factories, practically every workman was in the Union. In the Midland
villages, where this was carried on as a domestic industry, and in
East London, where it was only passing out of that phase, the National
Society of Boot and Shoe Operatives counted but a small proportion of
members. And in those districts in which the small master system still
held its own it cast a blight even on other trades. Thus the Birmingham
district and East London were bad Trade Union centres, not only for the
sweated trades, but also for those carried on in large establishments.
But the great bulk of non-Unionism was to be found in another field.
The great army of labourers, as distinguished from mechanics, miners,
or factory operatives, were in normal times as unorganised as the women
workers. Except in certain counties, such as Kent, Suffolk, Norfolk,
Oxfordshire, Wiltshire, and the Fen districts, Trade Unionism among the
farm labourers could scarcely be said to exist. Of the three-quarters
of a million of agricultural labourers in the United Kingdom, not more
than 40,000 were then in union. Nor were the other classes of labour
in much better plight. The two hundred thousand workers in the traffic
department of the railways contributed only 48,000 Trade Unionists,
mostly from such grades as guards and engine-drivers. The large class
of tramway and omnibus workers had, after a brief rally, reverted to
a state of disorganisation. The great army of warehousemen, porters,
and other kinds of city labourers counted only a few hundred Trade
Unionists in all the kingdom.

The Trade Union world was, therefore, in 1892, in the main composed
of skilled craftsmen working in densely populated districts, where
industry was conducted on a large scale. About one-half of the members
belonged to the three staple trades of coalmining, cotton manufacture,
and engineering, whilst the labourers and the women workers were, at
this date, on the whole, non-Unionists.

But the influence of Trade Unionism on working-class life cannot be
measured by the numbers actually contributing to the Union funds at
any one time. Among the non-Unionists in the skilled trades a large
proportion have at one time or another belonged to their societies.
Though they have let their membership lapse for one reason or another,
they follow the lead of the Union, and are mostly ready, on the
slightest encouragement from its members, or improvement in their own
position, to rejoin an organisation to which in spirit they still
belong. In the Labour Unions the instability of employment and the
constant shifting of residence caused the organisation, in 1892, to
resemble a sieve, through which a perpetual stream of members was
flowing, a small proportion only remaining attached for any length of
time. These lapsed members constitute in some sense a volunteer force
of Trade Unionism ready to fight side by side with their old comrades,
provided that means can be found for their support. Moreover, the Trade
Unionists not only belong to the most highly-skilled and best-paid
industries, but they include, as a general rule, the picked men in each
trade. The moral and intellectual influence which they exercise on
the rest of their class is, therefore, out of all proportion to their
numbers. In their ranks are found, in almost every industrial centre,
all the prominent leaders of working-class opinion. They supply the
directors of the co-operative stores, the administrators of clubs and
friendly societies, and the working-class representatives on Parish,
District, and Town Councils. Finally we may observe that the small
but rapidly increasing class of working-men politicians invariably
consists of men who are members of a trade society. We may safely
assert that, even in 1892, no one but a staunch Trade Unionist would
have had any chance of being returned as a working-class member to the
House of Commons, or elected to a local governing body as a Labour
representative.

It is therefore impossible by a statistical survey to give any adequate
idea of the Trade Union world of 1892. We may note the fact that the
thousand separate unions or branches between Blyth and Middlesborough
numbered some 200,000 members. We may ascertain that within fifteen
miles of the Manchester Exchange at least as many Trade Unionists lived
and worked. But no figures can convey any real impression of the place
which the Trade Union, even then, filled in the every-day life of the
skilled artisans of the United Kingdom. We are therefore fortunate in
being able to supplement our statistics by a graphic description of
Trade Union life supplied to us in 1893 by a skilled craftsman, who
joined his Union on the expiration of his apprenticeship, and served
for some time in various official capacities.

 To an apprentice, Trade Unionism is little more than a name.
 He may occasionally overhear the men in his shop discussing
 their Union and its work; and he knows that after “club
 night” a number of stories of the incidents of the meeting
 will be related; whilst, if he works in a strong Society
 shop, he may even hear heated discussions on resolutions
 submitted to the meeting. But the chief topic will always
 be the personal one--who was at the meeting, and what old
 chums were met; for the “club” is generally the recognised
 meeting-place for “old cronies” in the trade. If he works
 in a shop where any of the Trade Union officials are also
 employed he may sometimes receive a word of advice and
 exhortation “to be sure to join the Society when he is a
 man.” On the whole, however, his knowledge of, and interest
 in, the Society will be very slight. But should a strike
 occur at his shop whilst he is yet a lad, the presence and
 power of the Trade Union will be brought very vividly home
 to him; and as he works by himself or with the other lads
 in an otherwise deserted shop he will form some opinions of
 his own. He will naturally feel a violent antipathy to the
 “Blacks” brought into his shop, for the sense of comradeship
 is strong among boys; and he will notice with considerable
 pleasure that they are usually inferior workmen. But in
 spite of this, if the employer is “a good sort,” who treats
 him well and kindly, he will probably still think that the
 men are wrong to strike. For the boy regards the employer as
 the one “who finds work for the men to do,” and hence looks
 upon a strike as an act of ingratitude; and further, he has
 also a vague idea that the men are in the position of being
 many to one, and hence he promptly sides with the weaker
 party.

 As the youth draws near the end of his apprenticeship he
 finds that he is frequently spoken to by Union men and urged
 to join the Society. He notices, too, that more attention
 is paid to him, and that his opinions are frequently asked
 upon trade matters. Finally he is invited round to the
 little public in which the club meetings are held, and
 introduced to the Lodge officials, and to a number of his
 fellow-tradesmen. The advantages offered by the Society
 are freely dilated upon, great stress being laid upon the
 friendly benefits--the sick, superannuation, funeral, and,
 above all, the out-of-work pay. For the Trade Society is
 the only institution which provides an out-of-work benefit.
 Against sickness and death he may already be insured in
 one or other of the numerous Friendly Societies; but the
 out-of-work pay is never provided except by a Trade Society,
 since only there is it possible to know whether a claimant
 is out of work by reason of bad trade, or bad character,
 or inefficiency, or even if he is really out of work at
 all. And as the advantages of this provision are pointed
 out to him he recollects the time when his father, a staid,
 steady-going mechanic, was thrown out of work by slack
 times; and the memory of that bitter experience clings very
 closely to him. Perhaps he is also in love. The thought of
 seeing “her” miserable and their children hungry whilst
 he himself is helpless to assist, must always be one of
 the most harrowing things to a careful young artisan, with
 visions of a happy little home in the near future. There
 is, however, another view of the club which appeals with
 almost equal force to our young artisan just out of his
 apprenticeship and finding himself in possession of an
 income nearly double that to which he has been accustomed.
 The Trade Union Meeting House is the recognised club for the
 men in the craft, and thus presents many social attractions.
 Friendships are made--numerous “sing-songs” and smoking
 concerts arranged; and the joke and friendly glass, the good
 cheer and the conviviality, all present great attractions to
 the young workman.

 The club is also a centre for obtaining the latest trade
 news. Here come the unemployed from other towns; here are
 to be heard reports of reductions or advance of wages,
 increased or diminished working hours, stories of tyranny,
 or the first rumours of that bug-bear to the men--the
 invention of new machines, with its probable displacement of
 their labour; or even worse, the introduction of women and
 boys at reduced prices. There is also an occasional visit
 from an important official of the central office to look
 forward to, and his words to digest afterwards. All these
 attractions incline the young artisan to enrol himself in
 the Lodge, but it is mainly personal considerations which
 in the end decide him to take the step. Are the good men in
 his trade--those whom he likes; who have treated him well,
 helped him out of his difficulties and given him coppers
 when a lad; the powerful men, the foremen, and those whose
 words carry most weight with their fellows--are these men
 members of the Union? If they are, and if, as is most
 probable in a Society shop, he has formed friendships with
 other young fellows who are already members, it is not long
 before he consents, and allows himself to be duly proposed
 as a candidate for membership.

 The next club night sees him at the door of the club-room
 waiting anxiously, and perhaps timorously, whilst the
 formalities go on inside. Usually the ordinary business of
 the evening is all disposed of before the election of new
 members takes place. At the first mention by the President
 of the fact that a candidate is waiting to be elected, the
 doorkeeper (hitherto posted inside the door to see that no
 one comes in or goes out surreptitiously, and that none of
 the “worthy brothers” are in an unfit state to enter the
 room) slips rapidly outside, and holding the door firmly,
 refuses admission to any one while the ceremony lasts. The
 President then rising, calls for order, and having read out
 the name of the candidate and those of his proposer and
 seconder, asks those members to tell the Lodge what they
 know about him. Then the proposer rises, and addressing “Mr.
 President and worthy brothers,” states what he knows--that
 the candidate is a young man, apprenticed in his shop and
 duly served his time--a good workman and a steady young
 fellow--anxious to join the Society and sure to be a credit
 to the Lodge. He resumes his seat amid applause; and the
 seconder rises and repeats the same eulogy. Then the
 candidate is called into the room, the doorkeeper admitting
 him with some ceremony. He enters in fear and trembling;
 for the formality of admission, though shorn of its former
 mysterious rites, is still conducted with sufficient
 solemnity to make it loom as something rather terrible. At
 once he finds himself the object of the friendly curiosity
 of the members, and the cause of applause, all of which adds
 considerably to his nervousness and trepidation. But he is
 agreeably surprised to find the ceremony a very meagre one.
 The President, rising, calls upon all the members to do
 likewise, and then, all standing, he reads out an initiatory
 address, and a portion of the Rules of the Society. Then in
 a simple affirmation the candidate pledges himself to abide
 by the Rules, to study the interests of the Society, and
 neither to do, nor, if he can prevent it, allow to be done,
 anything in opposition thereto. He has then to formally
 sign this pledge. That being done, his name is entered as a
 member, and upon paying his entrance fee, he is presented
 with a card of membership and a book of Rules of the Society.

 He is now an ordinary member of the Lodge, and this newly
 acquired dignity is fully brought home to him in the course
 of a week or so, when he receives his first summons to
 attend a Lodge meeting. He wends his way to the little
 public-house in the dirty back street where the Lodge is
 held, and arriving shortly before eight o’clock, the time
 fixed for the opening of business, finds a number of his
 fellow-workmen congregated round the bar discussing the
 evening’s programme and trade matters generally. The men
 come in by twos and threes, and he notices that, with few
 exceptions, all are neat and clean, having been home and
 had their tea and a wash in the interval between then and
 working hours.[593] The officers of the Lodge arriving, are
 greeted with a general recognition as they pass upstairs
 to prepare the club-room for the business of the evening.
 Shortly after the hour fixed for commencing, the President
 takes the chair, and, as the men slowly straggle up into the
 room, rises and declares the meeting open for business. The
 club-room is a long, low-ceilinged room which constitutes
 the first floor of the public-house. Down the centre of
 the room runs a trestle table with forms along the sides,
 on which the members are seating themselves. At the top
 a shorter table is placed crosswise, forming a letter
 T, and here sits the group of officers. The room is
 decorated with the framed “emblems” of various trade
 societies, interspersed with gilt mirrors and advertising
 almanacs. At one end is a throne and canopy, showing that it
 is used also as a club-room by one or other of the friendly
 societies which still maintain the curious old rites of
 their orders. In a corner stands a cottage pianoforte,
 indicating that the room is also used for concerts,
 sing-songs, and convivial gatherings.

 The first business of the evening is the payment of
 contributions. The Secretary, aided by the “Check
 Secretary,” the Money Steward, and Treasurer, receives
 the subscriptions from the men as they come, one by one,
 up the room, enters the payment in the books, and signs
 the members’ cards. In many cases women and children come
 to pay the subscriptions of their husbands or fathers; and
 he will feel a sense of shame at the idea of these having
 to come through the public bar to perform their errand.
 When the subscriptions are all received, the unemployed
 members, and the wives or other relatives of those who are
 sick, present themselves to draw their respective benefits.
 General inquiries are made after the health and hopes are
 expressed for the speedy recovery of the sick ones; and the
 sums due are paid out by the officials with considerable
 formality. During these proceedings there has been a
 constant hum of conversation in the room, and a continual
 running in and out of members to the bar, and back again.
 But all this now comes to an end. The President rises and
 calls for order. Strangers and non-members are cleared out
 of the room. The doorkeeper takes up his position inside
 the door to watch the comers-in and goers-out; and the
 drink-stewards make ready to attend to the members’ wants,
 and act as waiters, in order to dispense with strangers
 in the room, and to prevent any unnecessary bustle and
 confusion.[594] The business of the evening opens with
 the reading of the minutes of the last meeting. Questions
 concerning the enforcement of some resolution, or the result
 of some instructions given to the officers, are asked
 and answered, and the minutes are confirmed by a show of
 hands and signed by the President. Then letters received,
 and copies of those despatched by the Secretary since the
 last meeting are read. These include letters from the
 General Office interpreting some rule as to the payment of
 benefits, from the District Committee giving notice of a
 trade regulation, and from other branch secretaries asking
 for particulars as to the character and ability of some
 candidate for admission. Then follows the excitement of the
 evening--the report of delegates appointed to interview
 an employer on some grievance. They will explain how they
 waited on Mr. So-and-so, who at first refused to see them,
 and ordered them off his premises; how presently he came
 round and listened to their complaints; how he denied the
 existence of the alleged evil, and demanded the names of
 the men who complained, which the delegates of course
 refused to give; and how at last, after much dispute, he
 temporised, and gave them to understand that the grievance
 would be remedied. Then the members present from the shop
 in question are called upon to explain what improvements, if
 any, have been made in the matters of which they complained.
 If their report is satisfactory, the subject is allowed to
 drop. If not, there is a heated discussion. Our friend,
 seated with the young fellows at the back of the room, finds
 himself clamouring for a strike. The officers do their best
 to hold the meeting back. They suggest that the District
 Committee[595] ought first to be communicated with; or if
 the grievance is one against which the General Rules or
 District Bye-laws permit the men to strike without superior
 sanction, they urge further negotiations with the employer.
 The discussion is eventually closed by an order to the
 Secretary to write to the District Committee for advice, or
 by an instruction to the delegates to again interview the
 offending employer, and if he “bamboozles” them a second
 time, to strike the shop.

 This excitement over, the interest of the meeting flags,
 and members drop out one by one. Perhaps there is an appeal
 by a member to whom the Committee has refused some benefit
 to which he thinks himself entitled. Against this decision
 he appeals to his fellow-members in Lodge assembled, urging
 his long membership, his wife and family, and his work
 for the Union as reasons why he should be leniently dealt
 with. Eloquent speeches are made on his behalf by personal
 friends. But the Committee and the officers declare that
 they have acted according to the Rules, and remind the
 Lodge that if they are ordered to pay an illegal benefit,
 the Central Office will disallow the amount, and order
 the members to repay it to the Union funds. With a strong
 Committee the vote will be against the man; with a weak one,
 and especially if the man is a jovial and “free-and-easy”
 comrade, his friends will turn up in sufficient numbers
 to carry the appeal. It being now ten o’clock, all other
 business--such as resolutions proposed by individual
 members--gets adjourned to the next club night, and the
 President declares the Lodge duly closed. The Secretary
 hastens home, to sit up burning midnight oil in balancing
 the books, entering the minutes, making reports to the
 Central Executive or District Committee, and writing the
 letters ordered by the meeting.

 The Lodge meeting soon plays an important part in the life
 of our active-minded artisan. He feels that he is taking
 part in the actual government of a national institution.
 Special meetings are held to discuss and vote on questions
 submitted by the Executive to the whole body of the members,
 such as the alteration of a rule, the election of some
 central official, or a grant in aid of another trade. But
 primarily the Lodge is his Court of Appeal against all
 industrial tyranny, a court in which he is certain of a
 ready and sympathetic hearing. There he takes complaints of
 fines and deductions, of arbitrary foremen, of low piecework
 prices--of anything, in short, which affects his interest or
 comfort as a wage-earner.

 The tendency of this ever-present power and actuality of
 the Lodge and its officials is to overshadow in the mind
 of the member the larger functions and responsibilities
 of the Central Executive. To him they are something far
 away in the vast outside world, and their powers are very
 vague and shadowy. They are, however, brought home to him
 in some of the incidents of his Trade Union and working
 life. There is, for instance, the “emblem” of his Society,
 a large and generally highly-coloured representation of the
 various processes of the trade in which he is engaged, often
 excellently designed and executed. This, purchased for a
 few shillings soon after his admission to the Society, or
 more probably at the time of his marriage, is hung, gaily
 framed, in his front parlour. On it is recorded his name,
 age, and date of admission to the Society, and it bears
 the signatures, and perhaps the portraits, of the general
 officers. To him it is some slight connecting link with the
 other men in his trade and Society. To his wife it is the
 charter of their rights in case of sickness, want of work,
 or death. As such it is an object of pride in the household,
 pointed out with due impressiveness to friends and casual
 visitors.

 But more important is the Monthly Circular, now a recognised
 feature in most of the large Unions. Here the member feels
 himself brought into direct contact with the outside world
 of his trade. Has he been ill or out of work and drawn
 relief, his name and the amount of money drawn are duly
 recorded. If he has not himself been so unfortunate, he
 here learns the names of those who have, and perhaps hears
 from this source for the first time of such a calamity
 having befallen some friend in another and distant town.
 Here also are reports of the state of trade and the number
 of unemployed in every place where a branch of the Society
 exists; of alterations in hours and rates of wages effected
 during the month, by friendly negotiations or by a lock-out
 or a strike. Finally, there are letters from lodges or
 from individual members on all sorts of topics, including
 spicy abuse of the Central Executive, and tart rejoinders
 from the General Secretary. As his interest in the Society
 increases, our artisan himself writes letters to the
 Circular, explaining some grievance, suggesting a remedy for
 some grievance already explained, or answering criticisms
 upon the conduct and policy of his District Committee or his
 Lodge.

 In addition to the Monthly Circular there is the Annual
 Report. This is a large volume of some hundreds of pages,
 containing, in a summarised form, the progress and doings of
 the Society for the whole year, with the total income and
 expenditure and the balance in hand, the proportionate cost
 of all the various benefits, a statement of the accounts
 of each branch, and many other figures of interest and
 importance. He feels a glow of pride as the growth of his
 Society in funds and members is recorded, and perhaps also a
 longing to see his own name printed as one of the officers
 of one of the Lodges, and thus be even distantly associated
 with the success of the Society.

 But after a year or two of the comparative freedom of
 the journeyman’s life he begins to feel strongly the
 desire for change and adventure. The five or seven years’
 apprenticeship through which he has just passed has kept
 him chained in one place, and a period of unrest now
 begins. Moreover, he has heard as a commonplace among his
 fellow-workmen, that no man knows his own ability or what
 he is worth until he has worked in more towns or shops than
 one. They have also expatiated to him upon the delights of
 “the road”; and finally he determines to take advantage of
 his membership of the Society to go on tramp on the first
 opportunity. He is therefore not altogether displeased when
 some temporary contraction in his trade causes his employer
 to turn him adrift, and thus gives him a right to draw his
 travelling card.[596]

 At the close of his first day’s tramp, footsore and weary,
 he seeks the public-house at which the local Lodge is
 held, and having refreshed himself, starts off to find the
 Secretary. To him he presents his tramp card. When, on
 examination, the dates upon it are found to be correct,
 and the distance traversed is sufficient to entitle the
 traveller to the full benefit of sixpence and a bed, the
 Secretary writes an order to the publican to provide this
 relief. The date and place are then clearly marked on the
 travelling card, and the Secretary retains the corresponding
 half of the receipt form to serve as his own voucher for the
 expenditure. Should he know of any suitable situation vacant
 in the town, he will tell the tramp to repair there in the
 morning. But if no such post offers itself, the wayfarer
 must start off again in the morning, in time to arrive
 before night at the next Lodge town, at which alone he can
 receive any further relief.

 If our friend takes to the road during the summer months
 and finds a situation within a few weeks, he will have had
 nothing worse than a pleasant holiday excursion. But if his
 tramp falls during the winter, or if he has to remain for
 months on the move, he will be in a pitiable plight. Whilst
 he is in the thickly-populated industrial districts, where
 “relief towns” in his trade are frequently to be met with,
 he finds his supper and bed at the end of every fifteen or
 twenty miles. But as he one by one exhausts these towns,
 he will, by the rule forbidding relief from the same Lodge
 at less than three months’ interval, be compelled to go
 further afield. He presently finds the Lodges so far apart
 that it is impossible for a man to walk from one to another
 in a day. The relief afforded becomes inadequate for his
 maintenance, and many are the shifts to which he has to
 resort for food and shelter. Finally, after a specified
 period, usually three months, his card “runs out”; he has
 become “box-fast,” and can draw no more from the Society
 until he has found a job, and resumed payment of his
 contributions.

 But our artisan, being an able-bodied young craftsman, has
 found a job. Settled in a new town, his tramping for the
 present at an end, and himself recovered from the evils,
 moral and physical, which that brief period has wrought upon
 him, his interest in his Society revives. He attends his new
 Lodge regularly, at first because it is the only place in
 the town where he meets friends. Presently his old desire
 to figure as an official of the Society returns to him. He
 cultivates the acquaintance of the officers of the Lodge,
 mixes freely with the members, and takes every occasion to
 speak on exciting questions. At the next election he is
 appointed to some minor post, such as auditor or steward. He
 makes himself useful and popular, and in the course of the
 year finds himself a member of the Lodge Committee.

 From membership of the Branch Committee he succeeds to
 the position of Branch Secretary, the highest to which his
 fellow-tradesmen in his own town can elect him. On the night
 of the election he is somewhat surprised to find that there
 is no keen competition for the post. The pay of a Branch
 Secretary is meagre enough--from ten to fifty shillings per
 quarter. Most of his evenings and part of his Sundays are
 taken up with responsible clerical work. Besides attending
 the fortnightly or weekly committee meeting, lasting from
 eight to eleven or twelve at night, he has to prepare the
 agenda for the special and general meetings of the members,
 conduct the whole correspondence of the Lodge, draw up
 reports for the District Committee and Central Executive,
 keep the accounts, and prepare elaborate balance-sheets
 for the head office. Even his working day is not free from
 official duties. At any moment he may be called out of his
 shop to sign the card of a tramp, or he may have to hurry
 away in the dinner-hour to prevent members striking a shop
 without the sanction of the Lodge. When a deputation is
 appointed to wait on an employer, he must ask for a day
 off, and act as leading spokesman for the men. All this
 involves constant danger of dismissal from his work, or
 even boycott by the employers, as an “agitator.” Nor will
 he always be thanked for his pains. Before he was elected
 to the Secretaryship, he was probably “hail, fellow, well
 met” with all the other members. Now he has constantly to
 thwart the wishes and interests of individual members. He
 must be always advising the Committee to refuse benefits to
 members whose cases fall outside the Rules of the Society,
 and counselling Lodge meetings to refuse to sanction
 strikes. Hence he soon finds little cliques formed among
 the malcontents, who bitterly oppose him. He is charged
 with injustice, pusillanimity, treachery, and finally with
 being a “master’s man.” But after a while, if he holds
 steadfastly on his course, and abides strictly to the Rules
 of the Society, he finds himself backed up by the Executive
 Committee, and gaining the confidence of the shrewd and
 sensible workmen who constitute the bulk of the members, and
 who can always be called up to support the officers in Lodge
 meetings.

 One of the duties or privileges thrust on our Secretary is
 that of representing his trade on the local Trades Council.
 He is not altogether gratified to find that the Branch has
 elected, as his co-delegates, some of the more talkative
 and less level-headed of its members. Some older and more
 experienced men decline to serve, on the ground that they
 have no time, and “have seen enough of that sort of thing.”
 Nevertheless our Secretary at the outset takes his position
 very seriously. To the young Trade Unionist the Trades
 Council represents the larger world of labour politics, and
 he has visions of working for the election of labour men on
 the local governing bodies, and of being himself run by the
 Trades Council for the School Board, or the Town Council, or
 perhaps even for Parliament itself. When the monthly meeting
 of the Council comes round, he therefore makes a point of
 arriving punctually at eight o’clock at the Council Chamber.
 He finds himself in the large and gaudily decorated assembly
 room, over the bar of one of the principal public-houses of
 the town. A low platform is erected at one end, with chairs
 and a small table for the Chairman and Secretary. Below
 the platform is placed a long table at which are seated
 the reporters of the local newspapers, and the rest of the
 room is filled with chairs and improvised benches for the
 delegates. Here he meets the thirty or sixty delegates of
 the other Unions. He notices with regret that the salaried
 officials of the Societies which have their headquarters in
 the town, and the District Delegates of the great national
 Unions who are located in the neighbourhood--the very men
 he hoped to meet in this local “Parliament of Labour”--are
 conspicuous by their absence. The bulk of the delegates are
 either branch officials like himself, or representatives of
 the rank and file of Trade Unionism like his colleagues.
 The meeting opens quietly with much reading of minutes
 and correspondence by the Secretary. Then come the trade
 reports, delegate after delegate rising to protest against
 some encroachment by an employer, or to report the result
 of some negotiations for the removal of a grievance. A few
 questions may perhaps be asked by the other delegates,
 but there is usually no attempt to go into the merits of
 the case, the Council contenting itself with giving a
 sympathetic hearing, and applauding any general denunciation
 of industrial tyranny. If a strike is in progress, the
 delegates of the trade concerned ask for “credentials”
 (a letter by the Secretary of the Council commending the
 strikers to the assistance of other trades), and even appeal
 for financial assistance from the Council itself. This
 brings about difference of opinion. The whole Council has
 applauded the strike, but when it comes to the question of
 a levy, the representatives of such old-established Unions
 as the Compositors, Engineers, Masons, and Bricklayers get
 up and explain that the Rules of their Societies do not
 allow them to pledge themselves. On the other hand, the
 enthusiastic delegates from a newly-formed Labour Union
 promptly promise the assistance of their Society, and
 vehemently accuse the Council of apathy. Then follows a
 still more serious business--a complaint by one of the
 several Unions in the engineering or building trades that
 the members of a rival Union have lately “black-legged”
 their dispute. The delegates from the aggrieved Society
 excitedly explain how their men had been withdrawn from a
 certain firm which refused to pay the Standard Rate, and
 how, almost immediately afterwards, the members of the
 other Society had accepted the employer’s terms and got
 the work. Then the delegates from the accused Society with
 equal warmth assert that the work in question belonged
 properly to their branch of the trade; that the members of
 the other Society had no business to be doing it at all;
 and that as the employers offered the rates specified in
 their working rules, they were justified in accepting the
 job. At once an angry debate ensues, in which personal
 charges and technical details are bandied from side to side,
 to the utter bewilderment of the rest of the members. In
 vain the Chairman intervenes, and appeals for order. At
 last the Council, tired of the wrangle, rids itself of the
 question by referring it to a Committee, and an old member
 of the Council whispers to our friend a fervent hope that
 the Committee will shirk its job, and never meet, since its
 report would please neither party, and probably lead to the
 retirement of one if not both trades from the Council.

 The next business brings the Council back to harmony. The
 delegates appointed at the last meeting to urge on the
 Town Council or the School Board the adoption of a “fair
 wage clause” now give in their report. They describe how
 Mr. Alderman Jones, a local politician of the old school,
 talked about wanton extravagance and the woes of the poor
 ratepayer; and the Council will be moved to laughter at
 their rejoinder, “How about the recent increase in the
 salary of your friend, the Town Clerk?” They repeat, with
 pleasure, the arguments they used on the deputation, and
 their final shot, a bold statement as to the number of
 Trade Unionists on the electoral register, is received with
 general applause. But in spite of all this they report that
 Alderman Jones has prevailed, and the Town Council has
 rejected the clause. Our new member notes with satisfaction
 that the Council is not so ineffective a body as he has been
 fearing. After a good deal of excited talk the Secretary is
 instructed to write to the local newspapers explaining the
 position, and calling attention to the example set by other
 leading municipalities. The members, new and old alike,
 undertake to heckle the retiring Town Councillors who voted
 against the interests of labour; and the best men of the
 Council, to whichever political party they belong, join in
 voting for a Committee to run Trade Union candidates against
 their most obdurate opponents.

 Passing, rejecting, or adjourning resolutions, of which
 notice has been given at a previous meeting, takes up the
 remainder of the evening. First come propositions submitted
 on behalf of the Executive Committee, composed of five or
 seven of the leading men in the Council. The Secretary
 explains that an influential member of the Trade Union
 Congress Parliamentary Committee has intimated that if they
 want a certain measure passed into law, they had better
 carry a particular resolution, which is thereupon read to
 the meeting. It is briefly discussed, carried unanimously,
 and handed to the reporters, the Secretary being ordered
 to send copies to the local M.P.’s and possibly to the
 Cabinet Minister concerned. Resolutions by other members are
 not so easily disposed of. The delegate from the Tailors,
 a fanatical adherent of the Peace Society, proposes a
 strong condemnation of increased armaments, ending up with
 a plea for international arbitration. But the engineer
 and the shipwright vehemently object to the resolution as
 impracticable, and one of them moves an amendment calling
 on the Government to find employment for hardworking
 mechanics in times of industrial depression by building
 additional ironclads. The Socialist Secretary of a Labour
 Union submits a resolution calling on the Town Council to
 open municipal workshops for the unemployed--a project
 which is ridiculed by the Conservative compositor (who is
 acting also as one of the reporters). During the debate the
 Chairman, Secretary, and Executive Committeemen lie low and
 say nothing, allowing the discussion to wander away from
 the point. The debate drops, and if a vote on a popular
 but impracticable resolution becomes imminent, some “old
 Parliamentary hand” suggests its adjournment to a fuller
 meeting. For the next few evenings our friend finds all this
 instructive and interesting enough. Before the year is up
 he has realised that, except on such simple issues as the
 Fair Wages Clause, and the payment of Trade Union wages by
 the local authorities, the crowded meeting of tired workmen,
 unused to official business, with knowledge and interest
 strictly limited to a single industry, is useless as a
 Court of Appeal, and ineffective even as a joint committee
 of the local trades. At the best the Council becomes the
 instrument, or, so to speak, the sounding-board, of the
 experienced members, who are in touch with the Trade Union
 Parliamentary leaders, and who (at a pay of only a few
 shillings a quarter) conduct all the correspondence and
 undertake all the business which the Trade Unions of the
 town have really in common.

 But our friend receives a sudden check in his career. One
 pay-day he is told by his employer that he will not be
 wanted after next week. It may be that he has had some
 words with the foreman over a spoilt job, or that he has
 been making himself too prominent in Trade Union work, or
 simply that his employer’s business is slack. But whatever
 the cause he is discharged, and must seek employment
 elsewhere. At once he declares himself on the funds of the
 Society, sending notice to the President and Treasurer of
 his position and signing the out-of-work book at the club
 daily, like any other unemployed member. For the next two
 or three weeks he tramps from shop to shop in his district
 seeking work, and eagerly scans the daily papers in hopes
 of finding an advertisement of some vacant situation. Then
 comes the news from a friend of a vacancy in a distant town.
 He resigns his position as Secretary of the Lodge, draws
 the balance of out-of-work pay due to him, and departs
 regretfully from the town where he has made so many friends
 to start upon a new situation.

 On arriving at his new place he is surprised to find that
 there is no branch of his Society in the town. There are a
 few odd members, but not enough to support a branch--hence
 they send their contributions to the nearest Lodge town.
 As soon as he has settled down he takes steps to alter
 this. In his own workshop he argues and cajoles the men
 into a belief in Trade Unionism. At night he frequents
 their favourite haunts, and by dint of argument, promises
 and appeals, finally gets enough of them to agree to join
 a Lodge to make it worth while opening one in the town. He
 forthwith communicates with the Central Executive Committee,
 and they, knowing his previous work, appoint him Secretary
 _pro tem._ A meeting of all the trade is then called by
 handbills sent round to the shops, and posted in the men’s
 favourite public-houses. On the eventful night the General
 Secretary and perhaps another Central officer, come down
 to the town. They bring a Branch box containing sets of
 Rules and cards of membership, a full set of cash and other
 books, a number of business papers, and even a bottle of
 ink--in fact all that is needful to carry on the business
 of a Lodge. The room will be crammed full of the men in the
 trade interested in hearing what the Society is and what it
 wants to do. Speeches are made, the advances of wages and
 reduction of hours gained by the Society are enumerated, the
 friendly benefits are explained, and instances are given
 of men disabled from working at their trade, receiving £100
 accident benefit from the Society, and setting up in a small
 business of their own. Then the General Secretary opens the
 Lodge, and entrance fees and contributions are paid by a
 large number of those present, and the meeting changed from
 a public to a private one. Officers are elected, our friend
 again finds himself chosen as Secretary, a friendly foreman
 accepts the post of Treasurer, while the other old members
 present at the meeting are elected to the remaining offices.
 Addresses from the Central officials start the Lodge on its
 way, and the meeting breaks up at a late hour with cheers
 for the Society and the General Secretary.

 Within the next three months the Branch Secretary finds that
 all that glitters is not gold. At least half of those who
 joined at the beginning have lapsed, and at times the branch
 looks like collapsing altogether. But by dint of much hard
 work, persuasion, and perhaps the formation of friendships,
 it is kept together until a time of prosperity for the
 trade arrives. This is the Secretary’s opportunity to make
 or break his Lodge, and being a wise man he takes it. He
 puts a resolution on the agenda paper for the next Lodge
 meeting in favour of an advance of wages, or a reduction of
 hours, or both. The next meeting carries it unanimously,
 and it at once becomes the talk of the whole trade in the
 town. Men flock down and join the club in order to assist
 and participate in the proposed improvements. Then the
 Secretary appeals to the General Executive for permission
 to ask for the advance. They consider the matter seriously,
 and want to know what proportion of the men in the town are
 members, and how long they have been so; what is the feeling
 of the non-Unionists towards the proposed movement, and
 whether there is any local fund to support non-Unionists
 who come out, or buy off tramps and strangers who come to
 the town during the probable strike. All these questions
 being more or less satisfactorily answered, permission to
 seek the improvement is at length given, and now comes the
 Secretary’s first taste of “powder” in an official capacity.

 During this agitation the number of members in the Lodge
 has been steadily increasing, until it comes to include a
 good proportion of the trade in the town. The non-Unionists
 have also been approached as to their willingness to assist
 the movement, and the bulk of them readily agree to come
 out with the Society men if these undertake to maintain
 them. A special Committee is formed to conduct the “Advance
 Movement,” including delegates from the non-Society shops
 prepared to strike. A local levy is put on the members of
 the Lodge, in order to form a fund from which to pay such
 strike expenses as may not be charged to the Union. At
 length all is ready, and our Secretary is instructed to
 serve notices upon all the employers in the town, asking for
 the advance in wages or the reduction of hours claimed by
 the men.

 Meanwhile the employers have not been idle. They have
 heard rumours of the coming storm and have met together
 and consulted as to what should be done, and have formed
 a more or less temporary association to meet the attack.
 Upon receiving the notices from the men’s Secretary they
 invite a deputation of the men to wait upon them and discuss
 the matter. To this the men of course agree, and on the
 appointed night the Secretary and the “Advance Committee”
 appear at the joint meeting. The leading employer having
 been elected to the chair, asks the men to open their case
 for an advance of wages and reduction of hours. This they
 do, emphasising the facts that wages are lower and hours
 longer here than in the same trade in neighbouring towns;
 that the cost of living is increasing; and that some men
 are always unemployed who would be absorbed by the proposed
 change. The employers retort by urging the smallness of
 their profits and the difficulty of securing orders in
 competition with other towns where wages are even less than
 they are here; and also by urging that the cost of living
 is decreasing and not increasing--an assertion which they
 support by statements of the price of various articles
 at different times compared with the present. The men’s
 Secretary has as much as he can do to keep his men in order.
 The new members--the “raw heads” of the Committee--are
 almost hoping that the employers will not agree, for to them
 a strike means merely a few weeks’ “play,” at the expense
 of the Union. And the ordinary workman is so little used
 to discussing with his adversaries that any statement of
 the other side of the case is apt to arouse temper. The
 employers, too, unaccustomed to treating with their men,
 and still feeling it somewhat derogatory to do so, are not
 inclined to mince matters, or smooth over difficulties.
 Hence the meeting becomes noisy; discussion turns into
 recrimination; and the conference breaks up in confusion.

 Meanwhile the Central Executive has watched with anxiety
 the approach of a dispute which will involve the Union in
 expense, and end possibly in defeat. The General Secretary,
 accompanied by one of the Executive Council, appears on the
 scene, and endeavours to mediate. But as the town has been
 a non-Union one, the employers refuse to see any but their
 own workmen, and thus lose the chance of the very moderate
 compromise which the General Secretary is almost sure to
 offer. This slight to their Official naturally incenses the
 local Unionists, and on the following Saturday, when their
 notices have expired, they “pick up” their tools as they
 leave the works and the strike is begun.

 Then follows a period of intense excitement and hard
 work for the men’s officials. The employers advertise in
 all directions for men at “good wages” to take “steady
 employment,” and counter advertisements are inserted
 giving notice of the strike. All the streets are closely
 picketed by men, who take it in turns to do duty in twos
 and threes outside a factory or workshop for so many hours
 each day; pickets are sent to meet all trains, and by dint
 of promises, bribes, and appeals to their “manliness and
 brotherhood,” workmen who have been attracted to the town by
 the employers’ advertisements are induced to depart. Perhaps
 a few “blacks” may escape their vigilance and get into some
 shop. Every time they come out they are followed and urged
 to abandon their dirty calling and join their fellows in the
 good work. Some give way, and their fares are at once paid
 to the place whence they came. Subscription boxes and sheets
 are sent out to raise the funds necessary for the extra
 expenses, which must not be taken from the Society’s funds.
 If the strike drags on for many weeks delegates go from
 town to town addressing meetings of Trade Unions and Trades
 Councils soliciting aid, and usually succeed in getting a
 good deal more than their own expenses, the surplus being
 remitted to the Lodge. There are the non-Unionists who have
 come out on strike to be supported; “blacks” to bribe and
 send away; printing and delivering of bills and placards to
 be paid for, and numerous other subsidiary expenses to be
 met, all of which must be defrayed from the local fund.

 But even the most protracted strike comes to an end. If
 trade is good and the men are well organised, the employers
 will not have succeeded in getting any good workmen, and not
 even sufficient bad ones, to continue their works, and their
 plant and reputation are alike suffering from unskilled
 workmanship. So one by one they give in, and accept the
 men’s terms, until at length the men are again at work. On
 the other hand, if business be slack the strike may end in
 another way. One by one the employers obtain enough men
 of one sort or another to carry out what orders they have
 in hand. As week succeeds week the strikers lose heart,
 until at last the weak ones suddenly return to work at the
 old terms. The officers and committeemen and a few dogged
 fighters may remain out, hoping against hope that something
 will turn up to make the employers give in. But the Central
 Executive will probably object to the continued drain of
 strike-pay, and may presently declare the strike closed.
 This will cause some little resentment among the local
 stalwarts, but the strike-pay being now at an end, those
 who are still unemployed must tramp off to another town in
 search of work.

 If the strike results thus in failure the newly formed
 Lodge will soon disappear and the men in the trade remain
 unorganised until the advent of another leader of energy and
 ability. But if it has resulted in victory the prosperity of
 the Lodge is assured. The workmen in the trade flock to the
 support of an institution which has shown such practically
 beneficial results. Meanwhile the Secretary, to whom most of
 the credit is due, begins to be known throughout the trade,
 and spoken of as the man who changed such and such a place
 from a non-Union to a Union town. Short eulogistic notices
 of his career appear in the Monthly Circular, and thus the
 way is paved for his future advancement.

 Having thus succeeded in organising his own trade, he finds
 an outlet for his energies in doing the same for others
 in his town. Perhaps there are other branches of his own
 industry without organisations, and if so he begins among
 them exactly the same work as he pursued among his own
 members. When the time is ripe a meeting is called and a
 branch of the society, which embraces the particular body of
 men, opened, and he accepts the post of President to help it
 along until its members have gained some experience. Then he
 will begin again with other trades and go through the same
 process, and thus in the course of time succeed in turning
 a very bad Trade Union town into a very good one. When that
 is accomplished he determines to start a Trades Council.
 He attends meetings of all the Unions and branches in the
 town and explains the objects and urges the importance of
 such a body. He writes letters to the local Press, and
 agitates among his own personal following until his object
 is well advertised. Finally a joint meeting of delegates
 from the majority of the local societies and branches is
 got together. The Rules of a neighbouring Trades Council
 are discussed and adopted, and at length a Trades Council
 is definitely established, if only by the two or three
 branches which he has himself organised. He is of course
 appointed its Secretary, and gradually by hard work, and
 perhaps by successfully agitating for some concession to
 labour by the Town Council or local School Board, he wins
 the approval of all the societies, and the Council then
 becomes a thoroughly representative body. As Secretary of
 a newly established Trades Council he becomes rapidly well
 known. He is in constant request as a speaker in both his
 own and neighbouring towns; and he is sent to the Trade
 Union Congress and instructed to move some resolution of
 his own drafting. But as the work gradually increases, our
 friend, who has all the time to be earning a livelihood at
 his trade, finds that he must choose between the Trades
 Council and his own Lodge. Through the Trades Council he
 can become an influential local politician, and may one
 day find himself the successful “Labour Candidate” for
 the School Board or the Town Council. But this activity
 on behalf of labour generally draws him ever further away
 from the routine duties of Branch Secretary of a National
 Society, and he will hardly fail to displease some of the
 members of his own trade. He may therefore prefer to resign
 his Secretaryship of the Trades Council, take a back seat in
 politics, and spend all his leisure in the work of his own
 Society, with the honourable ambition of eventually becoming
 one of its salaried officers. In this case he not only
 conducts the business of his Lodge with regularity, but also
 serves on the District Committee. Presently, as the most
 methodical of its members, he will be chosen to act as its
 Secretary, and thus be brought into close communication with
 the Central Executive, and with other branches and districts.

 All this constitutes what we may call the non-commissioned
 officer’s service in the Trade Union world, carried out
 in the leisure, and paid for by the hour, snatched from a
 week’s work at the bench or the forge. But now the fame
 of our Secretary and his steady work for the Society have
 spread throughout the district, and when it is decided to
 appoint a District Delegate with a salary of £2 or £2: 10s.
 per week, many branches request him to run for the post.
 His personal friends and supporters among them raise an
 election fund for him, and for a few weeks he dashes about
 his district and attends all the branch meetings to urge his
 candidature upon the members. Finally the votes are taken
 in the Lodges by ballot and sent to the general office to
 be counted, and he finds himself duly elected to the post.
 Again he moves his home, this time to some central town,
 so that he can visit any part of his district with ease
 and rapidity. His district stretches over three or four
 counties, and includes many large industrial centres, and he
 finds himself fully occupied. Let us see how he spends his
 days, and what is the work he will do for his Society.

 Every morning he receives a whole batch of letters on
 Society business. The General Secretary orders him
 immediately to visit one of the branches in his district and
 inspect the books, a report having reached the office of
 some irregularity. A Branch Secretary telegraphs for him to
 come over at once and settle a dispute which has broken out
 with an important firm. Another writes asking him to summon
 a mass meeting of the trade in the district to take a vote
 for or against a general strike against some real or fancied
 grievance. The Secretary of the Employers’ Association
 in another town fixes an appointment with him to discuss
 the piecework prices for a new sort of work. Finally the
 Secretary of his District Committee instructs him to attend
 a joint meeting which they have arranged with the District
 Committee of another Union to settle a difficult question of
 overlap or apportionment of work between the members of the
 two societies.

 Our friend spends the first half an hour at his
 correspondence, fixes a day for a special audit of the
 accounts of the suspected branch, drops a hasty line to the
 General Secretary informing him of his whereabouts for the
 next few days, and writes to the Branch Secretary strongly
 objecting to the proposed mass meeting to vote on a strike
 on the ground that “an aggregate meeting is an aggravated
 meeting,” and appointing, instead, a day for a small
 conference of representatives from the different branches.
 Then he is off to the railway station so as to arrive
 promptly on the scene of the dispute just reported to him.
 Here he finds that a number of his members have peremptorily
 struck work and are hanging about the gates of the works.
 He will half persuade, half order them to instantly resume
 work, whilst he goes into the office to seek the employer.
 If it is a “Society shop” in a good Trade Union district
 he is heartily welcomed, and the matter is settled in a
 few minutes. The next train takes him to the neighbouring
 town, where he spends two or three hours with the Employers’
 Secretary, using all his wits to manipulate the new prices
 in such a way as at least to maintain, if not to increase,
 the weekly earnings of his members. In the evening he has
 to be back at the centre of his district, thrashing out, in
 the long and heated debate of a joint meeting, the difficult
 question of whose job the work in dispute between the two
 Unions properly is, and what constitutes a practical line
 of demarcation between the two trades. Thus he rushes about
 from day to day, finishing up at night with writing reports
 on the state of trade, organisation, and other matters to
 the Executive Committee sitting at the headquarters of his
 Union.

 He has now been for many years the devoted servant of his
 fellow-workmen, re-elected at the end of each term to his
 post of District Delegate. Upon the removal by resignation
 or death of the General Secretary he is pressed on all
 sides to put up for the post. The members of the District
 Committee, and all the secretaries of the local branches,
 urge on him his fitness, and the advantages the district
 will derive from his election as General Secretary. Again
 a committee of his friends and supporters raises a fund
 to enable him to travel over the whole country and visit
 and address all the branches of the Society. Meanwhile the
 Executive Committee prepares for the election of the new
 General Secretary. At the removal of the late head officer
 they at once meet to appoint one of their number to carry
 on the duties _pro tem._, and to issue notices asking for
 nominations for the post (generally confined to members who
 have been in the Society a certain number of years and are
 not in arrears with their subscriptions). Printed lists of
 candidates are forthwith sent to the branches in sufficient
 numbers to be distributed to all the members. A ballot-box
 is placed in the club-room, the election standing over at
 least two meeting nights in order to allow every member full
 opportunity to record his vote. The boxes are then sent from
 the branches to the central office, where the members of the
 Executive Committee count the papers and declare the result.

 Our District Delegate having been declared duly elected
 to the post of General Secretary is again compelled to
 remove. This time it is to one of the great cities--London,
 Manchester, or Newcastle--the headquarters of his Society.
 He is now entitled to a salary ranging from £200 to £300 per
 annum, and has attained the highest office to which it is in
 the power of his fellow-tradesmen to appoint him. We will
 there leave him to enjoy the dignity and influence of the
 position, to struggle through the laborious routine work of
 a central office, and to discover the new difficulties and
 temptations which beset the life of the general officer of a
 great Trade Union.

The foregoing narrative gives us, in minute detail, the inner life of
Trade Union organisation of thirty years ago. But this picture, on
the face of it, represents the career of an officer, not a private
soldier, in the Trade Union army. Nor must it be supposed that the
great majority of the million and a half Trade Unionists rendered, even
as privates, any active service in the Trade Union forces. Only in the
crisis of some great dispute do we find the branch meetings crowded,
or the votes at all commensurate with the total number of members.
At other times the Trade Union appears to the bulk of its members
either as a political organisation whose dictates they are ready to
obey at Parliamentary and other elections, or as a mere benefit club
in the management of which they do not desire to take part. In the
long intervals of peace during which the constitution of the Society
is being slowly elaborated, the financial basis strengthened, the
political and trade policy determined, less than a half or perhaps even
a tenth of the members will actively participate in the administrative
and legislative work. Practically the whole of this minority will,
at one time or another, serve on branch committees or in such minor
offices as steward, trustee, auditor or sick-visitor. These are the
members who form the solid nucleus of the branch, always to be relied
on to maintain the authority of the committee. From their ranks come
the two principal branch officers, the President and the Secretary,
upon whom the main burden of administration falls. Though never elected
for more than one year, these officers frequently remain at their posts
for many terms in succession; and their offices are in any case filled
from a narrow circle of the ablest or most experienced members.

Besides the active soldiers in the Trade Union ranks, to be counted by
hundreds of thousands, we had therefore, in 1892, a smaller class of
non-commissioned officers made up of the Secretaries and Presidents of
local Unions, branches and district committees of national societies,
and of Trades Councils. Of these we estimate that there were, in
1892, over 20,000 holding office at any one time. These men form the
backbone of the Trade Union world, and constitute the vital element
in working-class politics. Dependent for their livelihood on manual
labour, they retain to the full the workman’s sense of insecurity,
privation, and thwarted aspirations. Their own singleness of purpose,
the devotion with which they serve their fellows in laborious
offices with only nominal remuneration, and their ingenuous faith in
the indefinite improvement of human nature by education and better
conditions of life, all combine to maintain their enthusiasm for every
kind of social reform. Thus they are always open to new ideas, provided
these are put forward in a practical shape, by men whose character and
intelligence they respect. This class of non-commissioned officers it
is which has, in the main, proved the progressive element in the Trade
Union world, and which actually determines the trend of working-class
thought. Nevertheless these men are not the real administrators
of Trade Union affairs except in the little local Unions, run by
men working at their trade, which are fast disappearing. In the
great national and county Unions the branch or lodge officials are
strictly bound down by detailed rules, and are allowed practically no
opportunity of acting on their own initiative. The actual government of
the Trade Union world rests exclusively in the hands of a class apart,
the salaried officers of the great societies.

This Civil Service of the Trade Union world, non-existent in 1850,
numbered, in 1892, between six and seven hundred.[597] Alike in the
modern organisation of industry, and in the machinery of Democratic
politics, it was, even in 1892, taking every day a position of greater
influence and importance. Yet if we may judge from the fact that we
have not met with a single description of this new governing class,
the character of its influence, and even its existence, had hitherto
remained almost unobserved. To understand the part played by this Civil
Service, both in the Trade Union Movement and in the modern industrial
State, the reader must realise the qualities which the position
demands, the temptations to which its holders are exposed, and the
duties which they are called upon to perform.

The salaried official of a great Trade Union occupies a unique
position. He belongs neither to the middle nor to the working class.
The interests which he represents are exclusively those of the manual
working class from which he has sprung, and his duties bring him into
constant antagonism with the brain-working, property-owning class. On
the other hand, his daily occupation is that of a brain-worker, and
he is accordingly sharply marked off from the typical proletarian,
dependent for his livelihood on physical toil.

The promotion of a working man to the position of a salaried
brain-worker effects a complete and sudden change in his manner of
life. Instead of working every day at a given task, he suddenly finds
himself master of his own time, with duties which, though laborious
enough, are indefinite, irregular, and easily neglected. The first
requisite for his new post is therefore personal self-control. No
greater misfortune can befall an energetic and public-spirited Trade
Unionist, who on occasions takes a glass too much, than to become
the salaried officer of his Union. So long as he is compelled, at
least nine days out of every fourteen, to put in a hard day’s manual
work at regular hours, his propensity to drink may not prevent him
from being an expert craftsman and an efficient citizen. Such a man,
elected General Secretary or District Delegate, is doomed, almost
inevitably, to become an habitual drunkard. Instead of being confined
to the factory or the mine, he is now free to come and go at his own
will, and drink is therefore accessible to him at all hours. His
work involves constant travelling, and frequent waiting about in
strange towns, with little choice of resort beyond the public-house.
The regular periods of monotonous physical exertion are replaced by
unaccustomed intellectual strain, irregular hours, and times of anxiety
and excitement, during which he will be worried and enticed to drink
by nearly every one he meets. And in addition to this the habitual
drunkenness of a Trade Union official, though it involves discredit,
seldom brings dismissal from his post. No discovery is more astounding
to the middle-class investigator than the good-natured tolerance with
which a Trade Union will, year after year, re-elect officers who are
well known to be hopeless drunkards. The rooted dislike which working
men have to “do a man out of his job” is strengthened, in the case
of a Trade Union official, by a generous recognition of the fact
that his service of his fellows has unfitted him to return to manual
labour. Moreover, the ordinary member of a Trade Union overlooks the
vital importance of skilled and efficient administration. He imagines
that the drunkenness and the consequent incompetency of his General
Secretary means only some delay in the routine work of the office, or,
at the worst, some small malversation of the Society’s funds. So long
as the cash keeps right, and the reports appear at regular intervals,
it seems never to occur to him that it is for lack of headship that his
Society is losing ground in all directions, and forgoing, in one week,
more than a dishonest Secretary could steal in a year.

Fortunately the almost invariable practice of electing the salaried
officials from the ranks of the non-commissioned officers tends to
exclude the workman deficient in personal self-control. The evenings
and holidays spent in clerical duties for the branch do not attract
the free liver, whilst the long apprenticeship in inferior offices
gives his fellow-workmen ample opportunity of knowing his habits. Thus
we find that the salaried officials of the old-established Unions
are usually decorous and even dignified in their personal habits. An
increasing number of them are rigid teetotalers, whilst many others
resolutely refuse, at the risk of personal unpopularity, all convivial
drinking with their members.

But another danger--one which would not immediately have occurred
to the middle-class investigator--besets the workman who becomes a
salaried official of his Union. The following extract, taken from the
graphic narrative we have already quoted, explains how it appears to a
thoughtful artisan:

 And now begins a change which may possibly wreck his whole
 Trade Union career. As Branch Secretary, working at his
 trade, our friend, though superior in energy and ability to
 the rank and file of his members, remained in close touch
 with their feelings and desires. His promotion to a salaried
 office brings him wider knowledge and larger ideas. To the
 ordinary Trade Unionist the claim of the workman is that
 of Justice. He believes, almost as a matter of principle,
 that in any dispute the capitalist is in the wrong and the
 workman in the right. But when, as a District Delegate,
 it becomes his business to be perpetually investigating
 the exact circumstances of the men’s quarrels, negotiating
 with employers, and arranging compromises, he begins more
 and more to recognise that there is something to be urged
 on the other side. There is also an unconscious bias at
 work. Whilst the points at issue no longer affect his own
 earnings or conditions of employment, any disputes between
 his members and their employers increase his work and add
 to his worry. The former vivid sense of the privations and
 subjection of the artisan’s life gradually fades from his
 mind; and he begins more and more to regard all complaints
 as perverse and unreasonable.

 With this intellectual change may come a more invidious
 transformation. Nowadays the salaried officer of a great
 Union is courted and flattered by the middle class.
 He is asked to dine with them, and will admire their
 well-appointed houses, their fine carpets, the ease and
 luxury of their lives. Possibly, too, his wife begins to be
 dissatisfied. She will point out how So-and-so, who served
 his apprenticeship in the same shop, is now well-off, and
 steadily making a fortune; and she reminds her husband
 that, had he worked half as hard for himself as he has for
 others, he also might now be rich, and living in comfort
 without fear of the morrow. He himself sees the truth of
 this. He knows many men who, with less ability and energy
 than himself, have, by steady pursuit of their own ends,
 become foremen, managers, or even small employers, whilst
 he is receiving only £2 or £4 a week without any chance of
 increase. And so the remarks of his wife and her relations,
 the workings of his own mind, the increase of years, a
 growing desire to be settled in life and to see the future
 clear before him and his children, and perhaps also a little
 envy of his middle-class friends, all begin insidiously,
 silently, unknown even to himself, to work a change in his
 views of life. He goes to live in a little villa in a lower
 middle-class suburb. The move leads to his dropping his
 workmen friends; and his wife changes her acquaintances.
 With the habits of his new neighbours he insensibly adopts
 more and more of their ideas. Gradually he finds himself at
 issue with his members, who no longer agree to his proposals
 with the old alacrity. All this comes about by degrees,
 neither party understanding the cause. He attributes the
 breach to the influences of a clique of malcontents, or
 perhaps to the wild views held by the younger generation.
 They think him proud and “stuck-up”, over-cautious and even
 apathetic in trade affairs. His manner to his members,
 and particularly to the unemployed who call for donation,
 undergoes a change. He begins to look down upon them all
 as “common workmen”; but the unemployed he scorns as men
 who have made a failure of their lives; and his scorn is
 probably undisguised. This arouses hatred. As he walks to
 the office in his tall hat and good overcoat, with a smart
 umbrella, curses not loud but deep are muttered against him
 by members loitering in search of work, and as these get
 jobs in other towns they spread stories of his arrogance
 and haughtiness. So gradually he loses the sympathy and
 support of those upon whom his position depends. At last
 the climax comes. A great strike threatens to involve the
 Society in desperate war. Unconsciously biased by distaste
 for the hard and unthankful work which a strike entails, he
 finds himself in small sympathy with the men’s demands, and
 eventually arranges a compromise on terms distasteful to
 a large section of his members. The gathering storm-cloud
 now breaks. At his next appearance before a general meeting
 cries of “treachery” and “bribery” are raised. Alas! it
 is not bribery. Not his morality but his intellect is
 corrupted. Secure in the consciousness of freedom from
 outward taint, he faces the meeting boldly, throws the
 accusation back in their faces, and for the moment carries
 his point. But his position now becomes rapidly unbearable.
 On all sides he finds suspicion deepening into hatred. The
 members, it is true, re-elect him to his post; but they
 elect at the same time an Executive Committee pledged to
 oppose him in every way.[598] All this time he still fails
 to understand what has gone wrong, and probably attributes
 it to the intrigues of jealous opponents eager for his
 place. Harassed on all sides, distrusted and thwarted by his
 Executive Committee, at length he loses heart. He looks out
 for some opening of escape, and finally accepting a small
 appointment, lays down his Secretaryship with heartfelt
 relief and disappears for ever from the Trade Union world.

The Trade Union official who became too genteel for his post was,
like the habitual drunkard, an exception. The average Secretary or
District Delegate was too shrewd to get permanently out of touch with
his constituents. Nevertheless the working man who became a salaried
officer had to pick his way with considerable care between the dangers
attendant on the _rôle_ of boon companion and those inseparable from
the more reputable but more hated character of the superior person.
To personal self-control he had to add strength and independence of
character, a real devotion to the class from which he had sprung, and
a sturdy contempt for the luxury and “gentility” of those with whom he
was brought in contact. All this remains as true to-day as it was in
1892, but the general advance in education and sobriety, and the steady
tendency towards an assimilation of manners among all classes, render
the contrasts of the social nineteenth century daily less marked.
The Trade Union official of 1920 finds it much easier to maintain a
position of self-respecting courtesy both among his own members and
among the employers, officials, and middle-class politicians with whom
he is brought in contact.

We break off now to describe, in the following chapters, the
development of the Trade Union Movement from 1890 to 1920, and to
discuss some of its outstanding features.


FOOTNOTES:

[577] During the whole course of the nineteenth century the Government
failed to ascertain, with any approach to accuracy, how numerous the
Trade Unionists were. Until the appointment of Mr. John Burnett as
Labour Correspondent of the Board of Trade in 1886, no attempt was
made to collect, officially, any information about Trade Unionism. The
five annual volumes published by Mr. Burnett between 1886 and 1891
contained a fund of information on Trade Union statistics, and the
returns became year by year more complete. The report for 1891 gave
particulars of 431 Unions with 1,109,014 members, whilst that for 1892
covered a slightly larger total. But, restricted as he was to societies
making returns in the precise form required, Mr. Burnett was unable to
get at many existing Unions, whilst a considerable deduction had to be
made from his total for members counted both in district organisations
and in federations. The Chief Registrar of Friendly Societies gave
particulars, in his Report for 1892 (House of Commons Paper, 146--II.
of March 28, 1893), of 1,063,000 members in 442 registered Trade Unions
alone, after deducting organisations which are not Trade Unions, and
many duplicate entries. A large number of societies, such as the
Northern Counties Amalgamated Weavers’ Association, many of the Miners’
Unions, the English and Scottish Typographical Associations, the United
Kingdom Society of Coachmakers, the Flint Glass Makers, the Yorkshire
Glass Bottle Makers, and others were then (as most of them still are)
unregistered. Thus our own statistics revealed a 50 per cent greater
Trade Union membership than the Government figures. It is difficult to
state with exactness the number of separate organisations included, as
this must depend upon the manner in which federal bodies are regarded.
These exhibit almost infinite variations in character, from the mere
“centre of communication” maintained by the thirty-two completely
independent local societies of Coopers, to the rigid unity of the forty
district organisations which make up the Amalgamated Association of
Operative Cotton-spinners. The number of independent societies may be
reckoned at either 930 or at anything up to 1750, according to the view
taken of federal Unions and federations. We put it approximately at
1100.

[578] See our _Industrial Democracy_ and _Problems of Modern Industry_:
also _Men’s and Women’s Wages, should they be Equal?_ by Mrs. Sidney
Webb, 1919.

[579] There were, at this date, altogether about 45,000 Unionists in
Oldham, but of these some 20,000 were women.

[580] Of these, some 80,000 were women. Fully four-fifths of all the
organised women workers were, at this date, included in the Lancashire
textile Trade Unions.

[581] Including the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man, which
contained together about 1285 Trade Unionists.

[582] Included in the above total were 99,650 women in 52 Unions,
distributed among the groups as follows:

Engineering and Metal Trades 2,850 Building and Furniture Trades 300
Mining ... Textile Manufactures 80,900 Clothing and Leather Trades
8,650 Printing Trades 400 Miscellaneous Crafts 3,450 Labourers and
Transport Workers 3,100 ------ 99,650

We may add that the subsequently published Board of Trade statistics
for 1892, arranged on a slightly different classification, gave the
following totals by industrial groups:

 Metal, Engineering and Shipbuilding   279,534
 Building                              157,971
 Mining and Quarrying                  315,272
 Textile                               204,022
 Clothing                               83,299
 Transport                             154,947
 Other Trades                          307,313
                                    ----------
                                     1,502,358

See Report on Trade Unions for 1901 (Cd. 773).

[583] The Boilermakers claim only to have been established since 1834,
but there is evidence of the existence of the Society in 1832. In
a few other cases, notably those of the Stonemasons, Plumbers, and
Bricklayers, we have been able to carry the history of the organisation
further back than has hitherto been suspected.

[584] The equally archaic port Unions of the Sailmakers, dating, like
those of the Shipwrights, from the last century, were united in the
Federation of Sailmakers of Great Britain and Ireland (established
1890), with 1250 members.

[585] Of these the most important were the Steam-Engine Makers’ Society
(established 1824, 6000 members), the Associated Blacksmiths’ Society
(a Scottish organisation, established 1857, 2300 members), the United
Kingdom Pattern Makers’ Association (established 1872, 2500 members),
the National Society of Amalgamated Brassworkers (established 1872,
6500 members), the United Journeymen Brassfounders’ Association of
Great Britain and Ireland (established 1866, 2500 members), and the
United Machine Workers’ Association (established 1844, 2500 members).

[586] The makers of tin plates had a Union in South Wales (established
1871, and reorganised 1887) which claimed a membership of 10,000. The
National Amalgamated Tinplate Workers’ Association of Great Britain
(established 1876) had 3000 members, and the General Union of Sheet
Metal Workers (established 1861) had 1250 members.

[587] The Alliance Cabinetmakers’ Association (established 1865,
5500 members) and the National Association of Operative Plasterers
(established 1862, 7000 members).

[588] The South Wales miners were, at this date, in a transition
state. The Miners’ Federation had gained a considerable following in
Monmouthshire and Glamorgan, but the bulk of the men still adhered
to the Sliding Scale machinery, claiming 36,000 members, for the
maintenance of which a fortnightly contribution was usually deducted
by the employers from the miners’ earnings. The Forest of Dean Miners’
Association (4000 members) seceded from the Federation in 1893. A small
Miners’ Union (2250 members) at West Bromwich also held aloof.

[589] The Cotton-spinners’ Union was then composed exclusively of adult
males, the boy “piecers” being brigaded in subordinate organisations.
In the Cotton-weavers and Card-room Operatives’ Unions women formed a
large majority of the members.

[590] The United Kingdom Society of Coachmakers (established 1834) had
5500 members. The Mutual Association of Coopers (established 1878) was
then a loose federation of old-fashioned local Unions, with about 6000
members.

[591] We did not include in the above statistics the Unions in classes
not included among the manual workers. The National Union of Teachers,
established 1870, was, already in 1892, a powerful organisation with
23,000 members. The Telegraph Clerks, Life Assurance Agents, and Shop
Assistants also had Unions varying from 1000 to 5000 members, and there
were two organisations of postal employees. The National Unions of
Clerks and Domestic Servants were less definitely established. There
were also small societies among the London Dock Foremen and Clerks and
the Poplar Ships’ Clerks.

Nor did we include such essentially benefit societies as the Marine
Engineers’ Union (9500 members) and the United Kingdom Pilots’
Association, which were composed largely of workmen belonging for trade
purposes to particular Trade Unions.

[592] The census figures for 1891 merge, for each trade, “workmen,
assistants, apprentices, and labourers.” They do not, for instance,
distinguish between Bricklayers and Bricklayers’ Labourers, who belong
to very different Trade Unions. Under Hosiers or Hatters are included
shop-keepers and their assistants, as well as the manufacturing
operatives.

[593] Old members often recall the days when the men used to come to
the club straight from work, and “in their dirt.” They frequently
ascribe the orderly behaviour at club meetings at the present time,
as compared with the rowdiness of the past, largely to this change of
habit, itself a direct result of the reduction of the hours of labour.

[594] Many Unions forbid all drinking during the branch meeting.

[595] In the great Amalgamated Societies District Committees, composed
of representatives of local branches, are formed in the great
industrial Centres, and decide on the trade policy to be adopted by
their constituent branches. These decisions must be confirmed by the
Central Executive.

[596] The travelling card, formerly called a “blank,” is now, in most
cases, a small book of receipt forms. On it is recorded the particulars
of his membership, and the date to which he has paid his contributions.
Along with it he receives a complete list of the public-houses which
serve as the Society’s Lodge-houses, and also a list of the names and
addresses of the Lodge secretaries.

[597] We did not include in this figure a large class of men who are
indirectly paid officials of Trade Unions, such as the checkweighers
among the coal-miners, and the “collectors” among the cotton-weavers,
cardroom-workers, etc. The checkweigher, as we have stated (p. 305), is
elected and paid weekly wages, not by the members of the Trade Union,
but by all the miners in a particular coal-pit. But as Trade Unionism
and the election of a checkweigher are practically coincident, he
frequently serves as lodge secretary, etc. The collectors employed by
certain Trade Unions to go from house to house and collect the members’
contributions are remunerated by a percentage on their collections.
Though not strictly salaried officials, they serve as Trade Union
recruiting agents, as well as intermediaries between members and
the central office, for complaints, appeals, and the circulation of
information.

[598] We have here another instance of the deeply rooted objection on
the part of workmen to “sack” their officials. A Society will make the
life of an unpopular official unbearable, and will thwart him in every
direction; but so long as he hangs on he has a safe berth.




CHAPTER IX

THIRTY YEARS’ GROWTH

[1890-1920]


In 1892, after more than two centuries of development, Trade Unionism
in the United Kingdom numbered, as we have seen, little more than
a million and a half of members, in a community approaching forty
millions; or about 4 per cent of the census population and including
possibly 20 per cent of the adult male manual-working wage-earners. At
the beginning of 1920, as we estimate, the number of Trade Unionists
is well over six millions, in a community that does not quite reach
forty-eight millions; being over 12 per cent of the census population
and including probably as many as 60 per cent[599] of all the adult
male manual-working wage-earners in the kingdom. With the exception of
slight pauses in 1893-95, 1902-4, and 1908-9, this remarkable growth in
aggregate membership has been continuous during the whole thirty years.

It is important to notice the continuous acceleration of this increase.
For a few years after the high tide of 1889-92 the aggregate membership
dropped slightly. When in 1897 it started to rise again it took a whole
decade to add half a million to the total of 1892-96. Three years more
brought a second half million: a total growth in the eighteen years
from 1892 to 1910 of about a million, or only about 66 per cent. It
then took only three or four years to add another million; whilst
during the last few years the increase has not fallen far short of half
a million a year, or of the order of 10 per cent per annum. Trade Union
membership has, in fact, doubled in the last eight years.[600]

No less significant is the fact that the increase has not been confined
to particular industries, particular localities, or a particular
sex, but has taken place, more or less, over the whole field. It is
common in varying degrees to the skilled, the semi-skilled, and the
unskilled workers. Even the women, still much less organised than the
men, have in 1920 five or six times as many Trade Unionists as they
had thirty years previously; and have trebled or quadrupled the then
proportion of Trade Union membership to the adult women manual-working
wage-earners. Financially, too, the Trade Unions have, on the whole,
greatly advanced; and their aggregate accumulated funds in 1920 (apart
from the assets of their Approved Society sections under the National
Insurance Act) exceed fifteen millions sterling; being about ten times
as much as in 1890, and constituting a “fighting fund” unimaginably
greater than ever entered the mind of Gast or Doherty, Martin Jude
or William Newton, or any other Trade Union leader of the preceding
century. It is the stages and incidents of this past thirty years’
growth that we have now to describe. We shall refer incidentally
to half-a-dozen of the more important strikes of the generation;
but nowadays it is not so much industrial disputes that constitute
landmarks of Trade Union history as the steps, often statutory or
political in character, by which the Movement advances in public
influence and in a recognised participation in the government of
industry. During the present century, at any rate, the action of Trade
Unionism on legislation, and of legislation on Trade Unionism, has been
incessant and reciprocal. The growing strength of the Movement has
been marked by a series of legislative changes which have ratified and
legalised the increasing influence of the wage-earners’ combinations
in the government both of industry and political relations. And every
one of these statutes--notably the Trade Disputes Act of 1906, the
Trade Boards Act of 1908, the Coal Mines Regulation (Eight Hours) Act
of 1908, the National Insurance Act of 1911, the Trade Union Act of
1913, the Corn Production Act of 1917, and the Trade Boards Extension
Act of 1918--have been marked by immediate extensions of Trade Union
membership and improvements in Trade Union organisation in the
industries concerned.

During the thirty years which have elapsed since 1890 the progress of
the Trade Union Movement, enormous as it has been, has been accompanied
by relatively little change in the internal structure of the several
Unions. What has occurred has been a marked change in the relative
position and influence of the different sections of the Trade Union
world, and even in its composition. Some sections have declined
relatively to others. Even more significant is the vastly greater
consolidation of the Trade Unionism of 1920 than that of 1890. Not only
have many more of the societies grown into organisations of numerical
and financial strength, but there has also been developed, especially
during recent years, an interesting network of federations among Unions
in the same industry, and often among cognate or associated industries,
some of which, undertaking negotiations on a national scale for a whole
industry, have become more influential and important than any but the
largest Unions.


THE COTTON OPERATIVES

The most notable of these changes is the decline in relative influence
of the cotton operatives. It is not that the Unions of Spinners,
Weavers and Card-room Operatives have decreased in membership or
in accumulated funds. On the contrary, they have in the aggregate
during the past thirty years more than doubled their membership;
and the Amalgamated Association of Operative Cotton Spinners, with
three-quarters of a million pounds belonging to its 25,000 members
(exclusive of 26,000 piecers), is, now as formerly, the wealthiest
Trade Union of any magnitude. Nor have these Unions in any sense lost
their hold on their own trade, at least in its central district of
Lancashire and Cheshire, though its outlying areas in Derbyshire,
Yorkshire, and Glasgow are still somewhat neglected. But the growth of
Trade Unionism in other industries has reduced the “Cotton Men” from
ten or twelve to four or five per cent of the Trades Union Congress;
and, owing partly to internal differences, their leading personalities
no longer dominate the counsels of the Movement. The excellent
organisation of the Cotton Trade Unions has been maintained; but it
has not been copied by other trades, and their internecine dissensions
have detracted from the influence of their various federations. There
has been, in fact, during the whole thirty years, only two or three
important incidents. A general strike of cotton-spinners took place in
1893, when all the mills were stopped for no less than twenty weeks.
The employers had demanded a reduction of 10 per cent, whilst the
Trade Union urged that the depression should be met by placing all the
mills on short time. This stoppage was at last brought to an end by
agreement between the employers and the Trade Union, arrived at without
external intervention in a fourteen hours continuous session, which
made the reduction in rates only 7d. in the £ (2.916 instead of 10
per cent), and included elaborate arrangements for future adjustment
of wages and other differences by mutual discussion without cessation
of work.[601] This “Brooklands Agreement,” which we described in our
_Industrial Democracy_, governed the spinning trade from 1893 to 1905,
but was in the latter year formally terminated by the Unions concerned,
on the ground that the machinery worked both slowly and in such a way
as to hamper the operatives in obtaining the advantage of good times.
Provisional arrangements were made, but these did not prevent a strike
of seven weeks in 1908, which ended in a compromise advantageous to the
operatives. Apart from minor and local disputes, frequently about bad
material or refusal to work with a non-Unionist, there was, however, no
forward movement, notably with regard to the hours of labour. In 1902
a slight amendment of the Factory Act was secured by agreement with
the employers, by which the factory week was reduced from 56½ to
55½ hours; and with this the trade remained contented. Right down
to 1919 there was no important trade movement, but in February of that
year all sections of the cotton operatives claimed their share in the
general reduction of hours that was proceeding; and, after prolonged
negotiations, 300,000 operatives struck in June. When it was seen that
the stoppage of the mills had become general, the employers gave way
and conceded a Forty-eight Hours week, which has not yet been embodied
in law, accompanied by a 30 per cent advance in piece rates so as to
involve no reduction of earnings.

The organisation of the cotton operatives, whilst remaining
essentially as described in our _Industrial Democracy_, has gone
on increasing in federal complexity. The various sections--notably
spinners with their attendant piecers; weavers, including winders,
and in some towns also warpers, beamers, and reelers; card, blowing
and ring-room operatives; warp-dressers and warpers; tape-sizers;
beamers, twisters and drawers; and overlookers--continue to be
organised in very autonomous local bodies, which are styled sometimes
societies or associations, and sometimes merely branches, and which
vary in number in the different sections from half-a-dozen to ten
times as many. But these are nearly all doubly united, first in a
federal body for the whole of each section (which may be styled an
amalgamation, a federation, an association, or a General Union of
the section), and also in a local “Cotton Trades Federation” or
“Textile Trades Federation,” which combines the local organisations
of the weavers and sometimes other sections in each of a couple of
dozen geographical districts in Lancashire and Cheshire. The weavers’
“amalgamation,” and other sections of the “manufacturing” trade, are
further united in the Northern Counties Amalgamated Association, with
175,000 members. Finally, all the federal organisations of the several
sections are brought together in the United Textile Factory Workers’
Association, which focuses the opinion of all the cotton operatives,
including the Amalgamated Association of Bleachers and Dyers, on those
fundamental issues on which they are conscious of a common and an equal
interest.[602]

The officials of the Cotton Trade Unions--herein differing from those
of the greatly developed General Union of Textile Workers, which has
organised the (principally women) woollen weavers--have remained
predominantly technicians, devoting themselves almost entirely to the
protection of their members’ trade interests, without taking much part
in the wider interests now largely influencing the Trade Union world,
and showing little sympathy either in larger federations or in the new
spirit. They have been slow to take an active part in the political
development of the Trade Union world, which has manifested itself, as
we shall describe in a subsequent chapter, in the organisation of the
Labour Party. This backwardness may be ascribed, in some degree, to the
political history of Lancashire, where an ancestral Conservatism still
lingers, and where it was possible, even in the twentieth century, for
so prominent a Trade Union official as the late James Mawdsley, the
able leader of the cotton-spinners, to stand for Parliament in 1906 as
a member of the Conservative Party. The influence of an exceptionally
large proportion of Roman Catholics among the cotton operatives must
also be noted. It is a unique feature of the technical officials of
the Cotton Unions that they have frequently been willing to serve
the industry as the paid officials of the Employers’ Associations
when they have been offered higher salaries. Their main duty, whether
acting for the employers or the workmen, is to secure uniformity in
the application of the Collective Agreements as between mill and mill;
and such a duty, it is argued, like that of the valuer or accountant,
is independent of personal opinion or bias, and can be rendered with
equal fidelity to either client. This was not at first resented by the
workmen, who even saw some advantage in the Employers’ Association
being served by officers thoroughly acquainted with the complicated
technicalities as the operatives saw them. There has, however, latterly
been a change of feeling; and though such transfers of services cannot
be prevented (the Employers’ Associations constantly finding the Trade
Union official the best man available), they are now resented.[603]

It is felt in some quarters that many of the “cotton men” have fallen
out of harmony with the newer currents of thought in the Trade Union
world. It is alleged that they accept too implicitly the employers’
assumptions, and do not sympathise with aspirations of more fundamental
change than a variation of wages or hours. But the influence of the
“cotton men” is, in the Trade Union world, still important for their
specific contribution, to Trade Union theory and practice, of equal
piecework rates for both sexes; of a rigid refusal to allow an employer
to make the inferiority either of any workers or of any machines that
he chooses to employ an excuse for deductions from the Standard Rate,
and of the utmost possible improvement of machinery so long as the
piecework rates are strictly controlled by Collective Bargaining and
firmly embodied in rigidly enforced lists--points on which many Trade
Unionists who would deem themselves “advanced” have not yet attained
the same level.[604]


THE BUILDING TRADES

The Building Trades have lost their relative position in the Trade
Union world to nearly as great an extent as the cotton operatives.
Thirty years ago their representatives stood for 10 per cent of the
Trades Union Congress, whereas to-day they probably do not represent 3
per cent of its membership. They have, for a whole generation, supplied
no influential leader. The only large society in this section, the
Amalgamated Society of Carpenters, Cabinetmakers, and Joiners (133,000
members), has more than doubled its membership since 1890, drawing
in various small societies of cabinetmakers, and carpenters, but not
yet the older General Union of Carpenters and Joiners, which counts
15,000 members; and so, too, has the small but solid United Operative
Plumbers’ Society, with 14,000 members--neither of them, however,
commanding the allegiance of anything like the whole of its craft. The
numerous small societies of painters have, for the most part, drawn
themselves together in the National Amalgamated Society of Operative
House and Ship Painters and Decorators (30,000 members); whilst the
National Amalgamated Furnishing Trades Association (12,500 members)
represents a union of many small societies. Altogether the Trade Unions
in the building trades, including all the little local societies, have
probably done no more than double their membership of 1892, and the
increase has been relatively least in the most skilled grades. This
is due, in part, to an actual decline in the trade, the total numbers
enumerated in the 1911 census being actually less than in that of 1901,
the fall being even greater down to 1919, when it was estimated that
only seven-twelfths as many men were at work at building as in 1901.

The story of the Building Trade Unions during the thirty years is
one of innumerable small sectional and local disputes with their
employers--taking the form, during 1913, of repeated sudden strikes in
the London area against non-Unionists, forced on by the “hot-heads”
and discountenanced by the Executive Committees, and leading, in 1914,
to a general lock-out by the London Master Builders’ Association. The
employers demanded that the Trade Unions should penalise members who
struck without authority, and that the Unions should put up a pecuniary
deposit which might be forfeited when a strike occurred in violation
of the Working Rules. They also insisted on each workman signing a
personal agreement to work quietly with non-Unionists, under penalty of
a fine of 20s. In the lock-out that ensued the whole building trade of
the Metropolis was stopped for over six months. Efforts at a settlement
in June were rejected on ballot of the operatives; and whilst signs
of weakening occurred among the operatives the National Federation of
Building Trade Employers had decided on a national lock-out throughout
the kingdom in order to secure the employers’ terms, when the outbreak
of war brought the struggle to an end, and work was resumed practically
on the old conditions.

During the war, when the bulk of the operatives were enrolled in the
army, and building was restricted to the most urgently needed works,
disputes remained in abeyance. At the beginning of 1918 a new start
was made in the organisation of the industry by the establishment
of a National Federation of Building Trade Operatives, itself a
development from a previous National Building Trades Council, in
which all the national Trade Unions, 13 in number, for the first
time joined together. Notwithstanding great differences in numerical
strength, the Unions agreed to constitute the Federation Executive of
two representatives from each national union. The Federation is formed
of local branches, each of which is composed of the branches in the
locality of the nationally affiliated Unions, governed by the aggregate
of the “Trades Management Committee” of such branches, acting under
the direction and control of the Federation Executive. A significant
new feature, recalling an expedient of the Trade Unionism of 1834,
is the establishment of “Composite Branches” of individual building
trades operatives in localities where no branch of the separate
national unions exists. What success may attend this renewed effort at
unified national organisation of the whole industry it is impossible
to predict; there are signs of a movement for actual amalgamation.
The four principal Builders’ Labourers’ Unions are on the point of
uniting in a strong amalgamation with 40,000 members. Other attempts at
amalgamation, including one among the “house builders,” the societies
of bricklayers, masons and plasterers, have been voted. The Furnishing
Trades Association was only prevented from merging in the Amalgamated
Society of Carpenters by technical difficulties. On the other hand
the separate Scottish and Irish Unions (except for the merging of the
Associated Carpenters) stubbornly maintain their independence. Down to
the present it must be said that combination in the building trades,
torn by internecine conflicts and financially weakened by unsuccessful
strikes, has, on the whole, been falling back. The gradual change
of processes, and the introduction of new materials, with an actual
decline in the numbers employed, has not been met by any improvement
in the organisation of the older craft unions, whilst the workers in
the new processes have failed to achieve effective union. With the
great demand for building since the Armistice, the Building Trades
Unions have, however, shown increased vitality; and the position in
the negotiating Joint Boards, at which they are now regularly meeting
the employers’ representatives, has considerably improved. The latest
achievement of the industry is the establishment, jointly with the
employers, of a “Builders’ Parliament”--largely at the instance of Mr.
Malcolm Sparkes--which is the most noteworthy example of the “Whitley
Councils,” to which we shall refer later.


ENGINEERING AND THE METAL TRADES

The large and steadily increasing army of operatives in the various
processes connected with metals (who are combined in Germany in a
single gigantic Metal Workers’ Union) can be noticed here only in its
three principal sections, the engineering industry, boilermaking and
ship-building, and the production of iron and steel from the ore.

Trade Unionism in the engineering industry, though it has, during the
past thirty years, greatly increased in aggregate membership, notably
among the unskilled and semi-skilled workmen employed in engineering
shops, can hardly be said to have grown in strength, whether manifested
in effect upon the engineering employers, who have become very strongly
combined throughout the whole kingdom, or in influence in the Trade
Union world. This relative decline must be ascribed to the continued
lack of any systematic organisation of the industry as a whole; to a
failure to cope with the changing processes and systems of remuneration
which the employers have introduced; and to the persistence of
internecine war among the rival Unions themselves.

The trouble in the engineering world came to a head in 1897,
precipitated perhaps by the employers, who wanted, as they said, to be
“masters in their own shops.” The Amalgamated Society of Engineers,
which had maintained its predominant position among the engineering
workmen, but only commanded the allegiance of a part of them, after a
series of bickerings with the employers about the technical improvement
of the industry, in which the workmen had shown themselves, to say the
least, very conservative, found itself involved in a general strike
and lock-out in all the principal engineering centres, nominally
about the London engineering workmen’s precipitate demand for an
Eight Hours Day, but substantially over the employers’ insistence on
being masters in their own workshops, entitled to introduce what new
methods of working they chose, and whatever new systems of remuneration
according to results that they could persuade the several workmen to
accept. The Union, to which apparently it did not occur to use the
methods of publicity on which William Newton and John Burnett would
have relied, failed to make clear its case to the public; and public
opinion was accordingly against the engineering workmen, believing
them to be at the same time obstructive to industrial improvements and
unable to formulate conditions that would safeguard their legitimate
interests. The result was that the prolonged stoppage, which reduced
the funds of the A.S.E. down to what only sufficed to meet the accrued
liabilities for Superannuation Benefit, ended in a virtual victory for
the employers. The A.S.E. quickly resumed its growth and stood, in the
autumn of 1919, at 320,000 members, or over five times its membership
of 1892. But the sectional societies also increased in size, and down
to 1919 they counted in the aggregate, as in 1892, about half as many
members as the A.S.E. itself.[605] Meanwhile, the great development of
the engineering industry, and the successive changes in the machinery
employed, have been accompanied by the introduction of various forms
of “Payment by Results,” in which the engineering Trade Unions have
not known how to prevent the reintroduction of individual bargaining.
Owing to its quarrels with the various sectional societies in the
industry, the A.S.E. has been alternately in and out of the Trades
Union Congress; and, on general issues, has seldom sought to influence
the Trade Union world as much as its magnitude and position would have
entitled it to do. The same may be said of the other Trade Unions
in the engineering industry, which were contented to hold their own
against their greater rival, and to see their membership progress with
the growth of the industry itself.

The elaborate constitution of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers,
which we described in a preceding chapter, has been, during the past
thirty years, repeatedly tinkered with by delegate meetings, but
without being substantially changed. There has been a perpetual balance
and deadlock of opinion, which has led to successive modifications
and reactions. Alongside the skilled engineering craftsmen, of
different specialities in technique, there has grown up a vast number
of unapprenticed and semi-skilled men, whom the Union has failed to
exclude, not only from the workshops but also from the jobs formerly
monopolised by the legitimate craftsmen. Should these interlopers be
admitted to membership? At one delegate meeting (1912) the rules were
altered so as to admit (“Class F”) not only all varieties of skilled
engineering craftsmen, but also practically any one working in an
engineering shop. This was counteracted by the tacit refusal of most
branches to carry out the decision of their own delegates; and “Class
F,” which never obtained as many as 2000 members, was abolished by
the next delegate meeting (1915.) The method of remuneration has been
another bone of contention. Especially since the disastrous conflict
of 1897, the employers have more and more insisted on the adoption of
systems of “payment by results” instead of the weekly time rates, to
which the engineering operatives, like those of most of the building
trades, devotedly cling. What is to be the Union policy with regard to
these varieties of piecework and “premium bonus” systems? Failing to
discover any device by which (as among the cotton operatives, the boot
and shoe makers, and the Birmingham brassworkers) “payment by results”
can be effectively safeguarded by being subjected to collective
bargaining, the Amalgamated Society of Engineers has wavered, in its
decisions and in the policy of its various districts, between (_a_)
refusing to allow any other system than timework; (_b_) limiting
systems of payment by results to “those shops in which they have
already been introduced”; (_c_) insisting, as a condition of permitting
payment by results, on the “Principle of Mutuality,” which amounts to
no more than the claim that the workman shall not have the piecework
rates or “bonus times” arbitrarily imposed upon him, but shall be
permitted individually to bargain with the foreman or rate-fixer
for better terms. The result is a chaos of inconsistent customs and
practices varying from shop to shop; and withal, a tendency to a
continuous decline in piecework rates (mitigated only by the greater
or less extent to which collective “shop bargaining” prevails, and by
its efficiency) which leads, in sullen resentment, to “ca’ canny,” or
slow working. The third bone of contention has been how to deal with
the competing Trade Unions, which are either societies of varieties of
skilled engineers who prefer to remain unabsorbed in the A.S.E., or
societies of new classes of operatives such as machine workers, workers
in brass and copper, electrical craftsmen, and others, with whom the
A.S.E. found itself disputing the control of the industry. Should
these much smaller organisations be (_a_) ignored and their members
treated as non-unionists; or (_b_) admitted to joint deliberation and
action in trade matters with the view to formulating a common policy;
or (_c_) dealt with by amalgamation on a still broader basis than that
of the A.S.E.? It would be useless to trace the results of the ebb
and flow of these contrary views, which were, in the autumn of 1919,
for the time being, partly reconciled by an agreement by which six of
the competing Unions[606] are in 1920, with the A.S.E., to be merged
in the Amalgamated Engineering Union with a membership of 400,000
and accumulated funds amounting to nearly four millions sterling.
It remains to be seen whether this wider amalgamation will bring to
engineering Trade Unionism the formulation of a systematic policy,
national organisation, and competent leadership.

Underlying all these issues, and aggravating all the disputes to which
they give rise, is the fundamental divergence between those who insist
on an extreme local autonomy--the district being free to strike, and
free to refuse to settle a local strike,--and those who maintain the
importance of a national unity in trade policy, and the necessity,
with centralised funds, of centralised control. Still more keen is the
controversy between those who wish to maintain the present craftsmen’s
organisation, and those who seek to enlarge it into an organisation
comprising all the workers in the industry, whether skilled or
unskilled. During the past decade the discontent against the Central
Executive, especially on the Clyde, has led to a so-called “rank and
file” movement; the development of the shop steward from a mere “card
inspector” and membership recruiting officer into an aggressive strike
leader; and the joining together of the shop stewards (as at Glasgow,
Sheffield, and Coventry) into such new forms of organisation as the
“Clyde Workers’ Committee,” actively promoting their own local trade
policies irrespective of the views of the Union as a whole.

The “Shop Stewards’ Movement,” which assumed some importance in the
engineering industry in 1915-19, was a new development of an old
institution in Trade Unionism--we have referred elsewhere to the
“Father of the Chapel” among the compositors, and to the checkweighman
among the coal-miners--which acquired a special importance owing to
the growing lack of correspondence between the membership of the Trade
Union Branch or District Council and the grouping of the workmen in
the different establishments, and also from the fact that the workmen
in each establishment found themselves belonging to different Trade
Unions. “The shop steward,” it has been pointed out, “was originally
a minor official appointed from the men in a particular workshop and
charged with the duty of seeing that all the Trade Union contributions
were paid. He had other small duties. But gradually, as the branch got
more and more out of touch with the men in the shop, these men came to
look to the official who was on the spot to represent their grievances.
During the war the development of the shop steward movement was very
rapid, particularly in the engineering industry. In some big industrial
concerns, composed of a large number of workshops, the committees
of stewards from the various shops very largely took over the whole
conduct of negotiations and arrangement of shop conditions. Further, a
national organisation of shop stewards was formed, at first mainly for
propagandist purposes. The existing unions have considered some of the
activities of shop stewards to be unofficial, and there has been a good
deal of dissension within the unions on this score. Attempts have been
made to reach an agreement by which Shop Stewards’ Committees shall be
fully recognised at once by the unions and by the managements. So far
there has been no final settlement. An agreement was made in the early
summer of 1919 between the Engineering Employers’ Federation and the
Unions; how this will work in practice is not yet certain.”[607]

It must, in fact, be said that although the Engineering Trade Unions
have during the past thirty years not taken much part in general
Trade Union issues, they have (in contrast with some other sections)
contributed freely in both men and ideas. We have already dwelt upon
the activities of Mr. John Burns and Mr. Tom Mann. We shall mention the
political progress of Mr. George Barnes, who is also of the A.S.E.;
whilst the Friendly Society of Ironfounders has given Mr. Arthur
Henderson to the Movement. And, in the long run possibly more important
even than men, the ideas emanating from the engineering workshops have
had a more than proportionate share in the ferment of these years. The
vacancy in the office of General Secretary, occasioned by the election
to the House of Commons of Mr. Robert Young, was filled in the autumn
of 1919 by the election of Mr. Tom Mann; and this election, together
with the great amalgamation of competing Unions brought about at the
same time, may perhaps open up a new era in engineering Trade Unionism.

In contrast with the failure of Trade Unionism in the engineering
trades either to develop a systematic organisation or to cope with the
changes in processes and methods of remuneration, the two powerful
Unions of boilermakers and shipwrights have gone from strength to
strength, doubling their numbers, absorbing practically all the
remaining local societies in their industry, and closely combining
with each other in policy and other activities, concluding, indeed,
in the autumn of 1919 an agreement to submit to their respective
memberships a proposal for a formal amalgamation which may be joined
by the strong society of Associated Blacksmiths. This would mean the
consolidation, in one powerful Union of 170,000 members, of practically
all the skilled craftsmen working in the construction of the hulls of
ships, of boilers and tanks, and of steel bridge-work of all sorts.
Concentrated largely in the ports of the north-east coast and those of
the Clyde, with strong contingents in the relatively small number of
other shipbuilding centres, the boilermakers and shipwrights have held
their own in face of all the changes in their industry, and have known
how to maintain a fairly uniform national policy.

Passing from engineering and shipbuilding to the smelting of the iron
and steel from the ore, the one marked advance in organisation is that
of the British Steel Smelters, which, established in 1886, and in
1892 having still only 2600 members, had by 1918, under the prudent
leadership of Mr. John Hodge, drawn to itself over 40,000. The British
steel smelters have the credit of equipping themselves with the most
efficient office in the Trade Union world, with a real statistical
department and a trained staff, including, for all their legal
business, especially that connected with compensation for accidents,
a qualified professional solicitor. Already before the outbreak of
war a far-seeing policy of amalgamation had been virtually decided
on; and in 1915 a scheme was prepared for the merging of all the six
important Unions in the industry of obtaining the metal from the ore,
including the operatives in the tinplate and rolling mills. The plan
for surmounting the legal and other difficulties of amalgamation, of
which we may ascribe the authorship to Mr. John Hodge, Mr. Pugh, and
Mr. Percy Cole, the able officials of the British Steel Smelters’
Union, was one of extreme ingenuity as involving no more than a bare
majority of the members voting, which deserves the attention of other
societies as a “New Model.” Three only out of the six societies (the
British Steel Smelters’ Association, the Associated Iron and Steel
Workers of Great Britain, and the National Steel Workers’ Association)
were able to go forward in 1917,[608] when a new society, the British
Iron, Steel, and Kindred Trades Association, was formed. The four
societies then created the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation, to
which they formally ceded powers and functions affecting the members
of more than one of the constituent bodies, and therefore all general
negotiations with the employers. The three old societies continued
formally in existence, but they bound themselves not to enrol any new
members, who were all to be taken by the new society, to which all the
existing members were to be continuously urged to transfer themselves
voluntarily. This process has already gone so far that the new society
has swallowed up the British Steel Smelters’ Society, which has been
wound up and completely merged in the new body, into which the empty
shells of the other two old bodies will presently fall. The Iron and
Steel Trades Confederation will then be composed of one society only,
and may be kept alive only to serve the same transitional purpose for
other incoming societies.


THE COMPOSITORS

The printing trades have remained, during the past thirty years,
curiously stationary so far as Trade Unionism, is concerned, the
London Society of Compositors, the Typographical Association, the
Scottish Typographical Association, and the Dublin Typographical
Society having, in the aggregate, increased their membership by
three-fifths and steadily increased their rates of pay and strategic
strength against their own employers, but commanding little influence
in the Trade Union Movement as a whole, and in many small towns still
leaving a considerable portion of the trade outside their ranks. The
less-skilled workers in the papermaking and printing establishments
have greatly improved their organisation; and the National Union of
Printing and Paper Workers and the Operative Printers Assistants’
Society--both of them including women as well as men--have become
large and effective Trade Unions. All the societies are united in the
powerful Printing and Kindred Trades Federation, to which the National
Union of Journalists, now a large society, has recently affiliated.


BOOT AND SHOEMAKING

Among the other constituents of the Trade Union world in which a
relative decline in influence is to be noted, is that of the boot
and shoemakers. Thirty years ago the National Union of Boot and Shoe
Operatives had achieved a position of great influence in the trade.
It had joined with the Employers’ Associations in building up, as
described in our _Industrial Democracy_, an elaborate system of Local
Boards of Conciliation and Arbitration, united in a National Conference
of dignity and influence, with resort to Lord James of Hereford as
umpire, by means of which stoppages of work were prevented, and, more
important still, the illegitimate use of boy labour was restrained and
standard piecework rates were arrived at by collective bargaining, and
authoritatively imposed on the whole trade. In 1894 the whole machinery
was broken up, at the instance of the very employers who had agreed to
it, and had co-operated for years in its working, because they found
that, under the rules and at the piecework rates prescribed, the men
were “making too much.”

After a prolonged stoppage in 1894 the dispute was patched up by the
intervention of the Labour Department of the Board of Trade; and the
National Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives, with 80,000 members, has,
on the whole, held its own with the employers, with less elaborate
formal relations; but the work of the Union is impaired by the
weakness of the organisation in the smaller workshops and the less
important local centres of the trade.

On the other side, we have the rise to influence, not only in the
Trade Union counsels but also in those of the nation, of the Women
Workers, the General Labourers, the “black-coated proletariat” of shop
assistants, clerks, teachers, technicians, and officials, the miners
and the railwaymen, which has been the outstanding feature of the past
thirty years.


WOMEN WORKERS

In no section of the industrial community has the advance of Trade
Unionism during the last thirty years been more marked than among the
women workers. For the first half of this period, indeed--though the
aggregate women membership of Trade Unions approximately doubled--this
meant only a rise from about 100,000 in 1890 to about 200,000 in
1907, mostly in the textile industries; and the number of women Trade
Unionists outside those industries was in the latter year still under
30,000. But the long-continued patient work of the Women’s Trade Union
League was having its effect; and the idea of Trade Unionism was being
established among the women workers in many different industries. Much
is to be ascribed to the efforts during these years of Sir Charles and
Lady Dilke, who were unwearied in their assistance. In 1909, largely at
the instance of Sir Charles Dilke and the women’s leaders, especially
Miss Mary Macarthur, Miss Gertrude Tuckwell, and Miss Susan Lawrence,
Mr. Winston Churchill, as President of the Board of Trade, carried
through Parliament the Trade Boards Bill, which enabled a legal minimum
wage to be prescribed by joint boards in four specially low-paid
industries, in which mainly women were employed. This measure not only
considerably improved the position of the sweated workers in the chain
and nail trades, the slop tailoring trade, paper box making and machine
lace-making, but--as had been predicted on one side and denied on the
other--greatly stimulated independent organisation among the women
whose industrial status was raised. The extension of the Trade Boards
and of the legal minimum wage in 1913 to half a dozen other trades had
like effects, and the further extension of 1918 is already promising
in the same direction. Trade Union membership was further greatly
increased during 1912-14 as a result of the National Insurance Act,
which brought many thousand recruits to the Approved Society sections
of the Unions. It was, however, the Great War, with its unprecedented
demand for women workers, and their admission, in “dilution” of or
in substitution for men, to all sorts of occupations and processes
into which they had not previously penetrated, at earnings which they
had never before been permitted to receive, that brought the women
into Trade Unionism by the hundred thousand. The National Federation
of Women Workers--the largest exclusively feminine Union--rose from
11,000 in 1914 to over 60,000 in 1919. A small number of new Trade
Unions exclusively for women were established in particular sections,
such as the interesting little society of Women Acetylene Welders. The
bulk of the women, however, continued to be organised in Trade Unions
admitting both sexes. Besides the various Textile Unions, there are now
thousands of women in the National Union of Railwaymen, the Railway
Clerks’ Association, Boot and Shoe Operatives, and the Iron and Steel
Trades Confederation. Most of the general labour Unions, and others
like the National Union of Printing and Paper Workers, the National
Union of Shop Assistants, Warehousemen and Clerks, the Amalgamated
Union of Co-operative and Commercial Employees and Allied Workers, had
for a couple of decades been enrolling women members; and the female
membership of these societies now grew by leaps and bounds. But the
greater part of the field of women’s employment is still uncovered.
In 1920, though it may be estimated that the total women membership
of Trade Unions is nearly three-quarters of a million, this still
represents less than 30 per cent of the adult women wage-earners.

The outstanding feature in women’s Trade Unionism during the past
decade has been its advance, not merely in numbers and achievements,
but also in status and influence. This has come with accelerating
speed. To the first Treasury Conference in 1915, at which the
Government sought the help of the Trade Unions in the winning of the
war, it apparently did not occur to any official to invite the National
Federation of Women Workers; but in all subsequent proceedings of the
same nature Miss Mary Macarthur and Miss Susan Lawrence, on behalf
of the women Trade Unionists in this and other societies, occupied
a leading position. Whether before the Munitions Act Tribunals, the
Committee on Production, or the Special Arbitration Tribunal set up
by the Government to deal with the conditions of employment of women
munition-workers, the women’s case, whether put by the representatives
of the Women’s Unions, or by those of the principal Unions of general
workers that included women, was so ably conducted as to secure for
the women workers, almost for the first time, something like the
same measure of justice as that which the men had wrested from the
employers for themselves. The result was not only a marked rise in
the standard of remuneration for women, the opening up to them of
many fields of work from which they had hitherto been excluded, and a
general improvement in their conditions of employment, but also a rapid
development of Trade Unionism among them--nine-tenths of the women
Trade Unionists being in societies enrolling both men and women--and
the winning, for women’s Trade Unions, of the respect of the Trade
Union world. For the first time a woman was elected in 1919 by the
Trades Union Congress to its Parliamentary Committee, Miss Margaret
Bondfield, of the National Federation of Women Workers, receiving over
three million votes. On the reconstitution in 1918 of the Labour Party,
in which women had always been accorded equal rights, provision was
made so that there should always be at least four women elected to the
Executive Committee. A Standing Joint Committee of Women’s Industrial
Organisations, established in 1916, now initiates and co-ordinates the
action of the principal women’s Trade Unions, the Women’s Co-operative
Guild (which organises the women of the Co-operative movement), the
Railway Women’s Guild, composed of the wives of railwaymen, and the
Women’s Labour League, now the women’s section of the Labour Party
itself.


THE GENERAL WORKERS

In 1888 the leaders of the skilled craftsmen and better-paid workmen
were inclined to believe that effective or durable Trade Unionism
among the general labourers and unskilled or nondescript workmen was
as impracticable as it had hitherto proved to be among the mass of
women wage-earners. The outburst of Trade Unionism among the dockers
and gasworkers in 1888-89 was commonly expected to be as transient as
analogous movements had been in 1834 and 1871. In 1920 we find the
organisations of this despised section, some of them of over thirty
years’ standing, accounting for no less than 30 per cent of the
whole Trade Union membership, and their leaders--notably Mr. Clynes,
Mr. Thorne, and Mr. Robert Williams--exercising at least their full
share of influence in the counsels of the Trade Union Movement as a
whole. For a few years after 1889, indeed, the aggregate membership
of the newly-formed labourers’ Unions declined, and some of the
weaker ones collapsed, or became merged in the larger societies. But
the Gas-workers’ and General Labourers’ Union (established 1889),
which changed its name in 1918 to the National Union of General
Workers; and the Dock, Wharf, Riverside and General Workers’ Union
(established 1887) maintained themselves in existence; and already in
1907 there were as many as 150,000 organised labourers in half-a-dozen
well-established societies. The outburst of Trade Unionism among
the farm labourers in 1890 gradually faded away. But in 1906 a new
society, the National Agricultural Labourers and Rural Workers’ Trade
Union, was formed, which at once made headway in Norfolk and the
adjacent counties; to be followed in 1913 by the energetic Scottish
Farm Servants’ Trade Union. Organisation was, between 1904 and 1911,
steadily extending in all directions, when the passing of the National
Insurance Act, which practically compelled every wage-earner to join an
“Approved Society” of some kind, led to a dramatic expansion of Trade
Union membership, from which the various Unions of general workers,
as they now prefer to be styled, obtained their share of advantage.
The Workers’ Union, in particular, which had been established in 1898,
for the enrolment of members among the nondescript and semi-skilled
workers of all sorts not catered for by the craft Unions, had, after
twelve years’ existence, only 5000 members in 111 branches in 1910,
but grew during 1911-13 to 91,000 members in 567 branches. In three
years more it stood at 197,000 members in 750 branches, and by the
end of 1919 its membership had risen to about 500,000 in nearly 2000
branches, comprising almost every kind and grade of worker, of any
age and either sex, from clay-workers and tin miners to corporation
employees and sanitary inspectors, from domestic servants and waiters
to farm labourers and carmen, and every kind of nondescript worker in
the factory, the yard, or on the road. The organising of the rural
labourers has been shared by nearly all the principal Unions of
General Workers. The passing of the Corn Production Act in 1917, with
its incidental establishment of Joint Boards in every county of the
United Kingdom, empowered to fix a legal minimum wage for a prescribed
normal working day, had the result of greatly extending Trade Union
membership among all sections of agricultural labourers, who are now
(1920), for the first time in history, more or less organised in every
county of Great Britain--partly in the very successful Agricultural
Labourers’ Union, which had, at the end of 1919, 180,000 members in no
fewer than 2700 branches; partly in the Workers’ Union, which has a
large number of agricultural branches; partly in the National Union of
General Workers, the Dock, Wharf and Riverside Labourers’ Union, and
the National Amalgamated Union of Labour; in all the Scottish counties,
in the powerful Scottish Farm Servants’ Union; whilst in Ireland the
agricultural wage-earners have been enrolled in the Transport and
General Workers’ Union. The total number of agricultural labourers
in Trade Unions in 1920 probably reaches more than three hundred
thousand, being about one-third of the total number of men employed in
agriculture at wages.

Throughout the years of war the membership of the various Unions
classified under the head of Transport and General Labour (including
the dockers and seamen), which in 1892 was only 154,000, continued to
increase by leaps and bounds until, in 1920, their aggregate membership
considerably exceeds that of the entire Trade Union world of 1890, and
does not fall far short of a couple of millions.

Of recent years there has been a steady pressure towards amalgamation
and consolidation of forces. Many small and local Unions have been
merged, and several of the larger bodies seem to be on the point of
union. Meanwhile the movement towards closer federation is strong.
In 1908 all the big general Labour Unions became associated in the
General Labourers’ National Council, a useful consultative body,
having for its principal function the prevention of overlapping and
conflict among the different Unions. It was successful in arranging for
freedom of transfer and mutual recognition of each other’s membership
among its constituent Unions, and in promoting a certain amount of
demarcation of spheres, and even of amalgamation. This Council in May
1917 developed into a National Federation of General Workers, which
includes eleven important general Unions of General Workers, having an
aggregate membership of over 800,000. This important federation took a
significant step towards unification in November 1919, in appointing
ten District Committees, consisting of two representatives of each of
the affiliated societies, charged to consult with regard to any local
trade dispute involving more than one society.

Recent years have seen the rise of a new grouping. The several Unions
of seamen, lightermen, dock and wharf labourers, coal-porters and
carmen have asserted themselves as Transport Workers, seeking not
merely to take common action in matters of wages and hours, but also
to formulate regulations for the government of the whole industry of
transport (apart from that of railways), which is one more example of
the tendency to create “industrial” federations on a national basis.
The organisation for the purpose is the National Transport Workers’
Federation, comprising three dozen of the Unions having among their
members men engaged in waterside transport work, including seamen,
dockers, and carters. It was formed in November 1910 at the instance
of the Dockers’ Union, and came at once into prominence during the
London strike of 1911, which it handled with great vigour.[609] This
was the first great fight in the Port of London since the upheaval
of 1889. The National Union of Sailors and Firemen, which had in
vain appealed to the Shipping Federation to unite in constituting a
Conciliation Board, in June 1911 struck for a uniform scale at all
ports and various minor ameliorations of their conditions. Largely
as a result of the excitement caused by the seamen’s strike, the
dockers in July came out for a rise from 6d. to 8d. per hour, with 1s.
per hour for overtime. The stevedores, the gasworkers, the carmen,
the coal-porters, the tug-enginemen, the grain porters, and various
other bodies of men engaged in or about the port, put forward their
own claims. Amid great excitement the whole port was stopped, great
meetings on Tower Hill were held daily, and processions of strikers,
said to have been as many as 100,000 in number, paraded through the
City. The unrest spread to most other ports, and there were some local
disturbances. The Port of London Authority, under Lord Devonport,
refused all parley, and the Government for some time practically
supported this great corporate employer, which had failed (and has to
this day failed) to comply with the section of the Act of Parliament
by which it was constituted directing it to institute a scheme for
more civilised conditions of employment for its labourers. The War
Office, at the request of Mr. Winston Churchill, who was then at the
Home Office, accumulated troops in London, and actually threatened to
put 25,000 soldiers to break the strike by doing the dockers’ work--a
step which would undoubtedly have led to bloody conflict in the
streets. Finally, however, the Cabinet gave way, and persuaded Lord
Devonport and his colleagues, together with shipowners, wharfingers,
and granary proprietors, to meet the representatives of the Unions
with a view to agreement. For three whole days they sat and argued,
ultimately arriving at an agreement under which the men returned to
work on the immediate concession of about half their demand and the
remission of the other half to arbitration. This was undertaken by Sir
Albert Rollit, M.P., at the instance of the London Chamber of Commerce,
his award eventually conceding to the men substantially their whole
claim; summed up in 8d. per hour for the dockers, with 1s. per hour
for overtime, other trades, and the men at other ports, obtaining, in
one or other form, analogous advantages.[610] In May 1912 the dispute
flared up again in the Thames and Medway, when a combined strike
and lock-out, in which 80,000 men were involved, stopped the work of
the port for six weeks. Sympathetic strikes in other ports led to
some 20,000 men being idle for a few days. The men asserted that the
employers had not in all cases fulfilled the agreement of the previous
year, and were discriminating against Trade Unionists. The employers
seem to have been concerned, in the main, to avoid recognition of the
Transport Workers’ Federation, and to check its growing authority. In
spite of the vigorous support of the _Daily Herald_; of pecuniary help,
not only from Australia and the United States, but also from the German
Trade Unions; and of the mediation of the Government, the strike failed
owing to the men breaking away, and to the stubborn obstinacy of Lord
Devonport, as Chairman of the Port of London Authority, who insisted
on a resumption of work upon the employers’ assurance that they would
respect all agreements and consider any grievances put forward by the
representatives of any section. Notwithstanding the failure of this
somewhat premature effort of the Transport Workers’ Federation, its
formation, together with that of the National Federation of General
Workers, have gone far to transform the position. For a couple of
decades the efforts of the General Labourers’ Unions took the form of
innumerable local and sectional demands, not merely for higher rates
of pay, though advances of several shillings per week have continually
been secured, but for mutual agreement of piecework rates, a reduction
of working hours, insistence on compensation for accidents, the
provision of better accommodation or greater amenity in work, and extra
allowances for tasks of peculiar strain or discomfort. The efforts of
the federations have raised these local and sectional arrangements
to the level of national questions; and the agreements now concluded
with the employers’ national representatives amount to an increasingly
effective control over the industry.


THE “BLACK-COATED PROLETARIAT”

If Trade Unionism has, in the past thirty years, successfully
progressed downward to the women and the unskilled labourers, its
advance, in a sense upwards, among the various sections of the
“black-coated proletariat,” has been no less remarkable. In 1892
there were only the smallest signs of Trade Union organisation among
the clerks and shop assistants, the various sections of Post Office
and other Government employees, the municipal officers, and the life
assurance agents. Among wage-earners in these various occupations,
numbering in the United Kingdom possibly several millions--badly paid,
working under unsatisfactory conditions, and sometimes subject to
actual tyranny--there were, thirty years ago, a few dozen small and
struggling Trade Unions, with only a few tens of thousands of aggregate
membership. In 1920 these have developed into powerful amalgamations
in most of the several sections, nearly all fully recognised by their
employers, whether private or public, with whom they enter into
collective agreements; and enrolling a total membership falling not far
short of three-quarters of a million.

We may note first the army of shop assistants, warehousemen, and other
employees in the distributive trades, wholesale and retail.[611]
The National Amalgamated Union of Shop Assistants, Warehousemen,
and Clerks, established in 1891, made at first slow progress, and
counted in 1912, after a couple of decades of growth, fewer than
65,000 members. Partly as a result of the National Insurance Act,
which practically compelled all employees under £160 to join some
organisation, the Union went ahead by leaps and bounds, multiplying
its branches and swelling its numbers, until it counts now over
100,000 members. Meanwhile the Amalgamated Union of Co-operative
Employees (also established in 1891)--in 1918 adding to its title also
“Commercial Employees and Allied Workers”--has benefited by a similar
expansion, counting, in 1920, also about 100,000 members. This society
started on the basis of enrolling all employees of the Co-operative
Societies, whatever their crafts, and no other persons, a constitution
now disapproved of by the Trades Union Congress. It is, however, not
now confined to persons employed by co-operative societies; and whilst
it includes a number of carmen, tailors, bakers, bootmakers, and
others in co-operative employment who should more appropriately belong
to other Unions, the negotiations that have been for some time in
progress for the merging of both organisations in a single great Union
of persons employed in the distributive trades, and the transfer of
those belonging to specific crafts to their own societies, may probably
presently be successful.

Of clerks, the most effective organisation is that of the clerical
service of the railway companies, the Railway Clerks’ Association,
which takes in also stationmasters, inspectors, and ticket-collectors
(who are all eligible also for the National Union of Railwaymen, which
some of them have joined). Established in 1897, it continued for a
decade insignificant in magnitude, and had not by 1910 enrolled as many
as 10,000 members. After the railway strike of 1911 it began to forge
ahead, passing from 30,000 in 1914 to 42,000 in 1915--a total doubled
by 1920, and with increasing strength it obtained gradually increasing
recognition from the railway companies, successfully maintaining its
right to enrol, not only clerks in the General Managers’ offices, but
also inspectors and stationmasters. As its membership grew, it was
able successfully to contest the elections for representatives on
the committees of the various superannuation funds instituted by the
companies, and thereby to demonstrate its right to speak for the whole
body of railway clerks. Whilst acting in friendly association with
the National Union of Railwaymen, the Railway Clerks’ Association
has latterly drawn to itself an ever-increasing proportion of the
inspectors and stationmasters; and in 1920, when it can count on a
membership of nearly 90,000, it is claiming to speak for all grades
of the Railway Clerical Administrative and Supervisory Staff. Since
1913, at least, it has been asserting a claim, as soon as the railways
are nationalised, to some participation in their management; and
at the end of 1919, it is understood, some promise was made by the
Minister of Transport that, in any Railway Board or National Advisory
Committee that may be constituted, the Railway Clerks’ Association
would, with the National Union of Railwaymen and the Associated Society
of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen, be accorded its due share of
representation.

The great army of clerks in commercial offices has made less progress
in organisation than the shop assistants and the railway clerks. For
years, indeed, it seemed as if commercial clerks would not form a Trade
Union; and the National Union of Clerks (established 1890) made little
headway. In 1912 it had still under 9000 members. In the past seven
years it has bounded up to 55,000 members.[612] There is also a small
Irish Clerical Workers’ Union, principally in Dublin, resulting from a
secession from the National Union. Most remarkable of all has been the
formation, during the war, of a Bank Officers’ Guild and an Irish Bank
Officials’ Association, having definitely Trade Union objects (though
not yet seeking to join the Trades Union Congress), both of them being
independent of the Bankers’ Institute, which retains the character of
a scientific and educational society. There is now even a Guild of Law
Court Officials, having definitely Trade Union objects.

The great body of teachers of all kinds and grades, numbering
altogether about 300,000 men and women in the United Kingdom, have,
during the past thirty years, become strongly and very elaborately
organised in many different societies.[613] What is significant is
the extent to which many of these professional associations have
latterly adopted the purposes, and even the characteristic methods,
of Trade Unionism. The largest of these bodies, the National Union
of Teachers, established in 1890, has now over 102,000 members, and
exercises great influence upon the conditions of employment of the
teachers in elementary schools. During the past few years it has
supported various district or county strikes for better salary-scales.
The teachers in secondary schools are organised in four societies,
for headmasters, headmistresses, assistant masters, and assistant
mistresses respectively, united in a Federal Council of Secondary
School Associations, which, though it has not yet fomented or supported
a strike, has of late organised effective pressure to obtain greater
security of tenure for assistants, better salary-scales, and a
universal superannuation scheme.

Equally significant is the recent development of organisation
among the industrial technicians, whether engineers, electricians,
chemists, or merely foremen and managers; among the workers in
scientific laboratories, whether for research, medical, teaching,
or administrative purposes; and among the junior lecturers and
assistants at University institutions. These organisations overlap
in their spheres, if not also in their memberships, and are not yet
stabilised, but most of them are united in the National Federation of
Professional Workers of even wider scope. What is important is the
growing divergence between what are essentially Trade Unions of the
brain-working professionals and the purely “scientific societies” to
which such persons have, until recent years, restricted their tendency
to professional association. Some of the new bodies (such as the
Society of Technical Engineers) have actually registered themselves
as Trade Unions, a step taken also by the Medico-Political Union, a
vigorous association of medical practitioners; whilst the newly formed
Actors’ Association, like the National Union of Journalists, has
applied for affiliation to the Trades Union Congress.

The life assurance agents--principally those employed in “industrial”
insurance--number 100,000, and they have become organised in a score
of societies, restricted to the staffs of particular companies. These
organisations vary in their nature and in their degree of independence,
from mere “welfare societies,” dominated by the management, up to
aggressive Trade Unions--the strongest being the National Association
of Prudential Assurance Agents. They are mostly united in two different
federations. Another, and perhaps wholesomer, basis of organisation is
adopted by the National Union of Life Assurance Agents, which has now
some thousands of members.

But the greatest development of Trade Unionism among the “black-coated
proletariat” has been among the employees of the National and Local
Government. This has been entirely a growth of the past thirty years.
Beginning among the manual working staff of the Postmaster-General,
and among the artisans and labourers of the Government dockyards,
arsenals, and other manufacturing departments, there are now a hundred
and seventy separate Trade Unions of State employees, from the crews
of the Customs launches and the boy clerks, up to the Admiralty
Constructive Engineers and the Superintendents of Mercantile Marine
Offices. Of recent years, organisation has spread to the higher grades
of the Civil Service, even to the “Class I.” clerks; and practically
no one below the rank of an Under-Secretary of State is held to be
outside the scope of the Society of Civil Servants. All the various
societies are grouped in federations, from the “Waterguard Federation”
and the Prison Officers’ Federation of the United Kingdom; through
the United Government Workers’ Federation and the Federal Council of
Government Employees, combining the various kinds of manual working
operatives; up to the Customs and Excise Federation, the Civil
Service Federation, the Civil Service Alliance, and even the “National
Federation of Professional Workers,” which includes also teachers. The
strongest of all these bodies is probably that of the various employees
of the Postmaster-General, whose fight to secure “recognition” and the
opportunity for “Collective Bargaining” has extended over a couple
of decades. There are about fifty separate Unions of Post Office
employees, mostly small and sectional bodies; but the three principal
societies (the Postal and Telegraph Clerks’ Association, the Postmen’s
Federation, and the Fawcett Association) were amalgamated in 1919
into one powerful Union of Post Office Workers, with 90,000 members
with eleven salaried officers, and affiliated both to the Trades
Union Congress and the Labour Party, which can now meet the managing
officials of the Post Office on something like equal terms.

The employees of the Local Authorities--thirty years ago entirely
without organisation--are still not so well combined as those of the
National Government. A score of different societies, from such grades
as school-keepers, police and prison officers and asylum attendants,
up to municipal clerks, share the work with the National Union of
Corporation Workers and the Municipal Employees’ Association. A large
proportion of the wage-earners employed by Local Authorities are to
be found in the Unions of General Workers. The National Association
of Local Government Officers and Clerks is a large and powerful body,
composed mainly of the clerical and supervisory grades.

Trade Unionism in the public service received a great fillip after
1906, when Mr. Herbert Samuel at the Post Office, together with
some other Ministers, “recognised” the Unions of their employees,
considered their corporate representations, and agreed to meet their
officials. It was still further promoted when, in 1912, the Government
consented to the establishment of an independent Arbitration Tribunal
for determining the terms of employment in the Civil Service for
all grades and sections under £500 a year. Before this tribunal,
whose awards were definitively authoritative, the representatives of
any association could appear as plaintiffs, those of the Treasury
appearing always as defendants. Finally, after the promulgation in
1917 of the “Whitley Report,” which the Government, in impressing
on other employers, found itself constrained to adopt in its own
establishments, there was established during 1919 an elaborate series
of joint councils (including even the civil departments of the War
Office and the Admiralty) for particular branches of establishments;
for whole departments, and for whole grades of the service throughout
all departments, in which equal numbers of persons nominated by the
employees’ associations, and of superior officers chosen by the
Government, representing the management, meet periodically to discuss
on equal terms questions of office organisation, professional training,
conditions of service, methods of promotion, and what not.[614]


THE MINERS

The outstanding feature of the Trade Union world between 1890 and
1920 has been the growing predominance, in its counsels and in its
collective activity, of the organised forces of the coal-miners.
Right down to 1888, as we have seen, the coal-miners of England,
Scotland, and Wales, though sporadically forming local associations
and now and again engaging in fierce conflicts with their employers,
first in this coalfield and then in that, had failed to maintain
any organisation of national scope. Though their representatives
participated from time to time in the general activities of the Trade
Union Movement, and sat in the Trades Union Congress; though with the
guidance of W. P. Roberts in the ’forties, and under the successive
leadership of Alexander Macdonald and Thomas Burt in the ’sixties and
’seventies, they exercised intermittently a considerable influence
on its Parliamentary action--the miners, for the most part, kept to
themselves, framed their own policy, and fought their own battles, in
which, owing to an apparently incurable “localism,” their success was
not commensurate with their strength. The change came with the growing
dissatisfaction with the policy of the Sliding Scale. This device for
making the rate of wages vary in proportion to the selling price of
coal, the adoption of which between 1874 and 1880--against the wish
of Alexander Macdonald, and contrary to the advice of such friends as
Professor Beesly and Lloyd Jones--we have already described, produced
in the ’eighties an ever-increasing discontent. In 1881 the miners of
Yorkshire merged their two Unions of South and West Yorkshire into the
Yorkshire Miners’ Association, which began its successful career by
terminating the local Sliding Scale agreement, and resolutely refused
all future attempts to make wages depend on selling prices. The
Lancashire and Cheshire Miners’ Federation, a less well-organised body,
presently followed its example. In 1885 a Midland Federation was formed
by a number of smaller local associations for the purpose both of
abolishing the Sliding Scale and of promoting the movement for an Eight
Hours Day by legislative enactment. Three years later, at a conference
at Manchester, the associations of Yorkshire, Lancashire and Cheshire,
the Midlands, and Fifeshire, with a nascent local organisation in
South Wales, established the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain.[615]
The aggregate membership of all these bodies was amazingly small--at
the start only 36,000--but the new Federation had, from the first, a
definite policy and great driving force. Outside it there remained
the solid and numerically strong Durham Miners’ Association and the
Northumberland Miners’ Mutual Confident Association, which (together
with a surviving remnant of the Amalgamated Association in South
Staffordshire, and the purely nominal Sliding Scale Associations which
then characterised most of the South Wales coalfield) still clung
together as the National Union. It was the National Union which played
the leading part in securing reforms in the Coal Mines Regulation Act
of 1887, which firmly established the checkweigher in practically
every colliery of any importance. But this was its last constructive
effort. Its subsequent history is little more than the long-drawn-out
resistance of the able and respected leaders of the Northumberland and
Durham miners to the new ideas of Labour policy which were, as we have
described, becoming dominant in the Trades Union Congress, and which
were from the first adopted, if not by all the leaders, at least by the
successive delegate conferences of the Miners’ Federation.

The establishment of the Federation coincided with a period of rapid
expansion in the coal-mining industry. The number of persons employed
rose considerably year after year, and Trade Unionism spread rapidly
among them. An effective local organisation was built up in district
after district, everywhere based on the autonomy in local concerns of
the “lodge” or branch, consisting of the workers at a given colliery,
and governed by mass meetings of the members, who elect a committee,
which usually meets at least weekly. But although the National Union
declined steadily in influence, it took twenty years to bring all
the district associations into the Miners’ Federation, the aggregate
membership of which did not reach 200,000 until 1893, and seven years
later was still only 363,000. Even so, the miners were, as we described
them in 1892, in some ways the most effectively organised of the
industrial groups into which we divided the Trade Union world of that
date. With the adhesion of Northumberland and Durham in 1908, when the
National Union came finally to an end, the membership of the Federation
rose to nearly 600,000, whilst the next twelve years’ growth of the
industry, and the inclusion of a large proportion of the sectional
unions among different grades of mine-workers,[616] have brought it in
1920 to nearly 900,000.

Meanwhile issue was joined by the mine-owners, who insisted everywhere
in 1893 on considerable reductions in the wage-rates, on the plea that
selling prices had fallen. The great strike that followed involved
400,000 men, and lasted from July to November. In the end the men
had to submit to reductions, though they gained the important point
of the practical though not explicit recognition of a minimum below
which there was to be no fall. The next great achievement of the
Federation was the carrying into law of the Eight Hours Bill, which,
mainly owing to the opposition of the leaders of the Northumberland and
Durham Miners, was not accomplished until 1908; and their influence
in improving the Mines Regulation Act of 1911. Their third success,
the outcome of a decade of successful organisation and intellectual
leadership by Mr. Robert Smillie, who since 1912 has been annually
elected to the presidency, was attained only at the cost of the
greatest industrial struggle that Great Britain had yet experienced.

The national strike of miners in 1912, when practically every mine
was stopped, and nearly a million miners suspended work for more
than a month, arose out of the failure of the colliery companies to
make adequate provision for repeated cases of individual hardship
and injustice. The piecework rates of the hewers or getters of coal
might be satisfactorily adjusted to the agreed day-wage standard of
the district, though the arrangements for this adjustment vary from
district to district, and even from mine to mine, and are very far
from complete or satisfactory. But what was to happen when, from
circumstances beyond his own control, the miner found himself unable
to get enough coal to produce a subsistence wage? If he is assigned
an “abnormal place”--where the seam is thin or crushed into small
coal (for which, in South Wales, the hewer is not paid at all); or
where exceptional timbering is required to prevent dangerous falls;
or where there is much “stone” or water: or if, in “normal places,”
the colliery management does not keep him regularly supplied with
“trams” or “tubs” into which to load the coal; or with a sufficient
provision of timber for props and sleepers; or of rails--no amount of
skill, strength, or assiduity will prevent his earnings from falling
away, it may be to next to nothing. What had long been customary
was, in some coalfields, the casting of lots for “places,” and thus
a periodical exchange of opportunities; and in others the granting
of an allowance, or “consideration,” to hewers who complained of
insufficient earnings. These allowances were granted irregularly,
without the protection of Collective Bargaining, with insufficient
provision for ensuring the avoidance of injustice; and it is not now
denied that, in some collieries, particularly in South Wales, the
owners resorted to the simple expedient of restricting the manager to a
fixed maximum sum each “measuring-up day,” irrespective of the number
and extent of the men’s reasonable claims. These sums, moreover, were
much reduced in times of bad trade, when profits were at a minimum,
especially in collieries which were actually working at a loss. The
agitation for securing a prescribed minimum of daily earnings for all
the piece-workers continued for a whole decade without much result,
producing not a few local stoppages, especially in South Wales. These
flared up, in the latter part of 1910, in the Aberdare and Rhondda
valleys, into an almost continuous series of disputes. The Miners’
Federation found itself compelled in July 1911 to take the matter up
as a national question; and a ballot of its whole membership decided
for a national strike if the universal adoption of the principle of a
prescribed daily minimum, not merely for hewers but for all grades, was
not conceded. The owners quibbled and eventually refused; and after a
further ballot a national strike was decided on, which the Government
negotiations failed to avert, and which, after long and repeated
notice, began at the end of February 1912, and rapidly extended to
practically every colliery in the kingdom. As neither the employers nor
the workmen would give way, the Government then announced its intention
of introducing a Bill to provide for the payment, to all underground
workers in the mine, not of the prescribed minimum rates which the
several districts had formulated, nor yet of the overriding national
minima of 5s. for a man and 2s. for a boy which were being demanded,
but of district minima, to be prescribed in each coalfield by a Joint
Board of employers and workmen, presided over by an impartial chairman.
These provisions were bitterly opposed, not only by the coal-owners,
who objected to any legal minimum, but also by the workmen’s
representatives in the House of Commons, who demanded a prescribed
national minimum; but they were carried into law by substantial
majorities. The Federation Executive was perplexed as to the line to
take, as half the membership wanted to carry on the struggle; but it
was eventually decided to give the Act and the Joint Boards a chance,
and the strike was declared at an end. The district minima and the
rules applicable thereto had, in most cases, to be decided by the
impartial chairmen; and they varied considerably from district to
district, being usually a little less than the workmen had claimed. But
when the working of the system was understood, and it was got smoothly
into operation, it was recognised that the Miners’ Federation had
achieved a very substantial victory. The miners had brought to their
aid, in enforcing the payment of a periodically prescribed Minimum
Day Wage to all underground workers, the strong arm of the law--not,
it is true, as under the Mines Regulation Acts and the Factory and
Workshop Acts, the criminal law, enforced by Government inspectors
and prosecutions, but the civil law of contract, which they could
themselves enforce by actions in the County Court. What the Federation
extorted from the Government and the Legislature was “an extraordinary
piece of hastily prepared legislation rushed through Parliament in
the shadow of an unprecedented national calamity.”[617] It has been
found by experience that this Act, which is nominally only temporary,
does secure to the hewers a substantial minimum of day wages, however
unremunerative their conditions of work; and the fixing of rates by the
Joint Boards has, on the whole, considerably increased the wages of the
various grades of the less skilled workers. But more important than
these immediate results was the demonstration and the consolidation of
the national strength of the Miners’ Federation itself; and the respect
which its great power henceforth secured for it, alike in the Trade
Union Movement, with the employers, and at the hands of the Government
and the House of Commons.

The miners’ organisations were fully occupied for a year or two
in putting into operation the Act of 1912, and in enforcing the
determinations of the Joint Boards. But in 1913 the delegate conference
made a new move in authorising the Executive Committee to enter into
relations with other Trade Unions with a view to joint action for
mutual assistance. A formal alliance had been made between the Miners’
Federation, the National Union of Railwaymen, and the Transport
Workers’ Federation--commonly referred to as the Triple Alliance--when
everything was suddenly changed by the breaking out of the Great War.
The 1500 colliery companies and individual colliery owners, most of
whom are united in the Mining Association of Great Britain, as well as
in district associations, have, throughout, steadfastly refused to meet
the Miners’ Federation for the negotiation of any national agreement,
or the concession of national advances; although there has long been
elaborate machinery for negotiation in each district.

During the four and a quarter years that the world conflict lasted
(1914-18), the miners, like the rest of the British working class,
patriotically subordinated their interests to those of the nation as
a whole. They volunteered for military service in such numbers that
they had to be forbidden to leave the mines, and numbers of them were
sent back from the armies in order to maintain the output of coal.
Where, as in Durham, they had agreements securing them advances of
wages in proportion to the rise in the selling price, they forewent
these advances; and they contented themselves everywhere with less
substantial percentages of rise in rates, and with the two successive
war bonuses of eighteen pence a day each--much below the rise in the
cost of living--which the Government accorded to them in 1917 and 1918.
With the cessation of hostilities at the end of 1918, as the cost of
living continued to advance, the Miners’ Federation (which had elected
for its new secretary a young South Wales miner, Mr. Frank Hodges,
who had educated himself at Labour Colleges; and had also converted
its presidency into a full-time salaried post, and for the first time
acquired an office in London) again took up the forward movement
which it had been concerting five years before; and in February 1919,
after balloting its whole membership, and giving elaborate notice,
it demanded from the employers a general advance of wages of 30 per
cent, the reduction of the hours of labour by an average of one-fourth
(the nominal Eight Hours Day to be made a nominal Six Hours Day),
and--most momentous of all--the elimination of the profit-making
capitalist from the industry by the Nationalisation of the Mines,
for which the Trades Union Congress had been vainly asking for over
twenty years. As the railwaymen and the transport workers were at the
same time in negotiation for improvements in their condition, there
seemed, in March 1919, every prospect of the outbreak of a general
strike on a scale even greater than that of 1912, the “Triple Alliance”
uniting a membership of more than a million and a half, and wielding
in combination the adult male labour of something like one-sixth of
the whole nation. The Government, which was still, under war powers,
directing both the mines and the railways, responded by the offer
of a Statutory Commission, under a Judge of the High Court, with
practically unlimited powers of investigation and recommendation; at
the same time giving the Federation publicly to understand that, whilst
a strike would be suppressed with all the powers of the State, the
recommendations of the Commission would be accepted by the Cabinet. The
conference of the Miners’ Federation spent many hours in deliberation.
A large section of the delegates was for an immediate strike. The men
had, indeed, an extraordinarily advantageous strategic position. The
nation’s stocks of coal were at a minimum, London having only three
days’ supply in hand. Ultimately the advice of the leaders prevailed;
and it was decided to postpone the withdrawal of labour for three
weeks, and to take part in the Statutory Commission, on the express
condition that this body presented an Interim Report within that time;
and--most revolutionary of all--that the Federation should be allowed
to nominate to the Commission, not only three of its own members to
balance the three coal-owners who had been informally designated by
the Mining Association of Great Britain, but also three out of the
six professedly disinterested members, so as to balance the three
capitalists whom the Government had already chosen as representing the
principal industries dependent on the supply of coal at a moderate
price. To these terms the Prime Minister acceded. The Miners’
Federation, setting a new precedent of far-reaching effect, thereupon
nominated, along with its President, Vice-president, and Secretary, not
three other workmen, but three economists and statisticians belonging
to the Fabian Society, known to them by their lectures and writings.

The proceedings of this Commission, which sat daily in public in the
King’s Robing-Room at the House of Lords, created an immense sensation.
Instead of the Trade Union, it was the management of the industry that
was put upon its trial. The large profits of the industry under war
conditions were revealed, and especially the enormous gains of the most
advantageous mines; and although the Government itself had benefited
through the Excess Profits’ Duty by 50, 60, and eventually 80 per cent
of these gains, it became apparent to every one that, but for this
abstraction, the price of coal might have been reduced and the miners’
conditions improved to an extent never before suspected. It was seen,
too, that it was the separate ownership of the mines which stood in
the way of the national sharing of the advantages of the best among
them. The chaotic state of the industry, with 1500 separately working
joint-stock companies operating at very different costs--with no
co-ordination of production, and with extremely wasteful arrangements
for transport and retail distribution--was vividly presented. At
the same time the unsatisfactory conditions under which the miners
lived were impressively demonstrated, the scandalously bad housing of
the mining community in Lanarkshire and elsewhere making a national
sensation. Prompt to the appointed day the Commission presented
three Reports. The three mine-owners proposed no improvement in the
organisation of the industry, and offered an advance of eighteen pence
a day and a reduction of hours by one per day, being only half what
was demanded. The six representatives of the miners presented a long
and reasoned justification of the men’s case; arguing that, with a
unification of the industry in national ownership, with the adoption
in all the mines of the mechanical improvements already in use in the
best-managed among them, with a more carefully concerted transport
system, and with a municipal organisation of retail distribution,
it was practicable to concede the men’s full claim of 30 per cent
advance and a two hours’ shortening of the working day without any
increase in the price of coal to the consumer. The Chairman of the
Commission presented a third report, intermediate in its tenour, in
which he was joined by the three disinterested capitalist members,
proposing an immediate advance of two shillings per day, or 20 per
cent, and an immediate reduction of one hour per day, with a promise
of a further reduction by an hour in 1920, if the condition of the
industry warranted it. With regard to nationalisation, this Report
declared that, as there had not been sufficient time to investigate
the proposal, the Commission would continue its sittings, and promptly
present a further report; but that it was plain, even on the evidence
so far submitted, that the present system stood condemned, and
that some other system must, by national purchase of the mines, be
substituted for it--either State administration, or some plan by which
the mines could be placed under a joint control in which the miners
would share. This impressive declaration by the judicial Chairman,
supported by the three capitalist members who were not mine-owners,
made a great public sensation. The Cabinet immediately accepted the
Chairman’s Report, pledging itself to carry it out “in the letter and
in the spirit.” The Miners’ Federation hesitated, but ultimately, in
consideration of the offer of an immediate further examination of
nationalisation, in the light of Mr. Justice Sankey’s significant
findings, decided to ballot its members, who, to the great relief
of the public, by large majorities agreed to accept the Government
proposal.

The Coal Industry Commission accordingly continued its sittings, now
concentrating upon the issue of Nationalisation and the participation
of the miners in control. The dramatic feature of the inquiry was
the summoning of a succession of peers and other magnates owning
mining royalties to the witness-chair, there to explain to the
Commission and the public, under the sharp cross-examination of the
Miners’ Federation officials, how they or their ancestors had become
possessed of these property rights, how much they yielded in each
case, and what social service the recipients performed for their huge
incomes. Much evidence was taken for and against State administration.
Within a couple of months of almost incessant daily sittings this
indefatigable Commission presented its further Report, again hopelessly
divided. On the question of ownership of minerals, indeed, the whole
thirteen Commissioners were unanimous--a momentous decision--in
recommending that the royalty owners should be at once expropriated
in favour of the State. All thirteen Commissioners were unanimous,
too, in recommending the admission of the workmen to some degree of
participation in the management by Pit and District Committees. But
there the Commissioners’ agreement ended. What was significant was that
not the miners’ representatives only, but eight out of the thirteen
(including the Chairman) reported in favour of expropriating all the
existing colliery companies and other coal-owners. The Chairman,
supported (in general terms and subject to additional suggestion)
by the six miners’ representatives, proposed an elaborate scheme of
Nationalisation, with administration under a Minister of Mines by
joint District Councils and Pit Committees, in which the men would be
largely represented. The other expropriating Commissioner preferred to
vest the mines in a series of District Coal Corporations of capitalist
shareholders, limited as to dividend, and working under public control,
with a restricted participation of the men in the administration. Five
Commissioners, including all three coal-owners, whilst agreeing to the
Nationalisation of Minerals, refused to contemplate any substantial
change in the working of the mines, least of all any effective sharing
of the workmen in the administration; though even this capitalist
minority gave lip-homage to the principle by recommending the formation
of purely Advisory Pit and District Committees.

The Government, which had continued in administrative and financial
control of all the collieries of the United Kingdom, whilst agreeing
to adopt, in the spirit and in the letter, the terms of Mr. Justice
Sankey’s first Report, took no steps to bring it into effect, and left
the local mine-owners and miners’ Unions to adjust for themselves
the hours and new rates of pay which it involved. Suddenly, a few
weeks before the new arrangements were to come into force, the Coal
Controller issued an order that no increase of rates was to exceed 10
per cent--a patent blunder, as it was the average reduction of output
that Mr. Justice Sankey had estimated at 10 per cent, and it was the
actual reduction in each district that had to be compensated for. The
Yorkshire Miners’ Association had almost completed its arrangements
with the Yorkshire mine-owners for a higher percentage of increase
when the Government prohibition was received. The result was an
angry strike which stopped the whole Yorkshire coalfield for several
weeks, and spread to Nottinghamshire. In the end the Government had
to withdraw its mistaken prohibition; and the increase of rates, in
Yorkshire as elsewhere, was, as the miners had asked, made as nearly as
possible proportionate to the expected local reduction in output caused
by the reduction of hours. The hasty action on both sides and the
misunderstandings due to imperfect knowledge, or imperfect expression,
lost the nation some four million tons of coal, and cost the Yorkshire
Miners’ Association about £356,000.

In October 1919 Mr. Lloyd George announced that whilst the
Government would propose the nationalisation of mining royalties,
and some-undefined “trustification” of the mines by districts, there
would be no adoption of Mr. Justice Sankey’s Report. The Miners’
Federation refused to accept anything in the nature of capitalist
“trustification,” and called in vain on the Government to fulfil its
pledge to carry out the Report. In December 1919 the Federation, in
conjunction with the Labour Party, the Parliamentary Committee of the
Trades Union Congress, and the Co-operative Union, began a campaign
of propaganda in favour of the Nationalisation of the Coal Supply,
the effect of which, industrially and politically, has yet to become
manifest. We have to break off the story in the middle of a critical
period.


THE RAILWAYMEN

Another great industry, that of the operating staff of the railway
system--scarcely mentioned in the first edition of our _History_--has
come forcibly to the front. Right down to the end of the nineteenth
century, indeed, the railway guards and signalmen, engine-drivers and
firemen, shunters and porters, mechanics and labourers--though they
numbered something like 5 per cent of all the male manual-working
wage-earners--played hardly any part in the Trade Union Movement.
Scattered in small numbers all over the country, and divided among
themselves by differences of grade, conditions, and pay, they long
seemed incapable of organisation as a vocation. For a whole generation
after the establishment of railways no one appears to have thought
Trade Unionism any more permissible among their employees than
among the soldiers or the police. In 1865 an attempt to establish
“The Railway Working Men’s Provident Benefit Society”--which soon
became virtually a Trade Union--by Charles Bassett Vincent, a clerk
in the Railway Clearing House, was ruthlessly crushed by summary
dismissals. In the same year an Association of Engine-drivers and
Firemen on the North-Eastern Railway actually started a strike, but
perished of the attempt. Not until the end of 1871 was a lasting
Trade Union established, and then only by the assistance of Michael
Bass, M.P., a large railway shareholder, by whose long-continued
and entirely disinterested financial and other help the Amalgamated
Society of Railway Servants struggled into being, with Frederick
Evans as its first effective secretary. Other societies followed, of
local or sectional character; but even in 1892, after twenty years
of organisation, and various abortive strikes, there were fewer than
50,000 railwaymen in any sort of Trade Union, or less than one in seven
of the persons employed.[618]

The objects of such railwaymen’s societies as existed were for many
years confined to the protection of members from “victimisation” or
other tyranny; to the provision of friendly benefits; and to spasmodic
attempts to get accidents prevented or compensated for, and hours
of labour reduced. Wages questions took up little of the attention
of the railway Unions of these years; but strikes on particular
railways--sometimes of particular grades or at particular centres only
of a single railway--now and then occurred; usually in resentment
of some act of tyranny, or against some specially oppressive hours
of labour, and often without the prior approval of the Executive
Committee. In 1890 the Amalgamated Society for the first time launched
an aggressive policy, mainly as regards the hours of labour, which were
indeed scandalous.[619] A prolonged strike for a shorter working day on
the Scottish lines at Christmas 1890 ended in failure, and the merging
of the remnant of the Scottish Society of Railway Servants in the
larger Union. But it aroused public attention and led to an effective
exposure by a Select Committee of the House of Commons in 1891-92. As
a result the Board of Trade was given certain statutory powers in 1893
to remedy this tyranny--powers of which, unfortunately, little use was
made. Not for nine years afterwards did the Board of Trade even call
upon the railway companies for a return showing in how many cases men
were kept on duty in excess of twelve hours at a stretch. Four-fifths
of the railwaymen were still outside the ranks of Trade Unionism and
could therefore be both oppressed by their employers and flouted by
the Government Department. Their very right to combine was denied. Sir
George Findlay, the General Manager of the London and North-Western
Railway, voiced the common opinion of the Companies when he declared
that “you might as well have a Trade Union or an ‘Amalgamated Society’
in the Army, where discipline has to be kept at a very high standard,
as have it on railways.”

In December 1896, indeed, a determined attempt was made to root out
Trade Unionism in Sir George Findlay’s own railway company by the
dismissal of men discovered to be Trade Unionists. Through the activity
of the Society these victims found influential friends, who by public
and private pressure compelled their reinstatement. The excitement
caused by this incident had some share in swelling the membership of
the Amalgamated Society, which doubled its numbers during the year
1897; and made its first big stride in the “All Grades Movement” in
that year. Previous movements had been local and sectional, and nearly
always in the interests of particular grades. For the first time all
the railway companies were approached simultaneously, with a request
for improvements in all grades from one end of the service to the
other--a reduction of the time of duty, so as to bring the working
day down to ten, and for some grades eight hours; extra payments for
overtime, and a uniform advance of 2s. per week for all grades except
those for whom an eight hours day was sought. The Companies refused
even to consider this very moderate request, and nearly a decade was
to pass--a decade of slow building up of the organisation, first under
Mr. Richard Bell and Mr J. E. Williams, and then under Mr. J. H.
Thomas--before the Trade Unions of railwaymen were able to compel a
hearing for their case.[620]

Meanwhile the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, and with it the
whole Trade Union Movement, suffered in the law courts a temporary
set-back. An impulsive strike on the Taff Vale Railway in South Wales,
accompanied by extensive and successful picketing, was not countenanced
by the Executive, but was eventually endorsed by its decision to take
up the men’s case; and the Railway Company sued the Society for the
loss occasioned by what were alleged to be the unlawful acts of its
officers. To the surprise of the lawyers, as well as of the public, the
judges held that--in spite of what had seemed the explicit provisions
of the Trade Union Acts of 1871-76--a Trade Union could be made
answerable in damages for all the acts of its officials, central or
local, as if it were a corporate body, whilst still being denied the
privileges of a corporate body. The strike and legal proceedings cost
the Society from first to last nearly £50,000, whilst the danger to the
corporate funds of all Trade Unions that the decision revealed put a
damper on even the best justified strikes until, under persistent Trade
Union pressure, strengthened by the entry into the House of Commons of
a reinforced Labour Party, the Trade Disputes Act of 1906 restored the
law to its state prior to the judicial decisions of 1902.

The railwaymen could then renew their “All Grades Movement” which the
Companies in January 1907 again declined to consider, steadfastly
refusing any recognition of the men’s Trade Unions, and callously
denying their grievances.[621] Ballots of the membership of the
Amalgamated Society and the General Union decided on a strike by 80,026
to 1857 votes, and in November 1907 a national stoppage was at hand
when Mr. Lloyd George intervened as President of the Board of Trade,
compelled the Companies to listen to reason, and persuaded both parties
to accept an elaborate scheme of Local and Central Conciliation Boards,
composed of equal numbers representing management and men, with an
impartial chairman and authority to decide on wages and hours. These
Conciliation Boards, unsatisfactory as they proved, represented a real
triumph. For the first time the autocracy of the railway management
was broken. There was, it is true, still no express recognition of
the Trade Unions, but the men’s representatives were to be freely
elected on each railway by all the employees grouped according to
their grades; and these elected representatives met the management on
professedly equal terms. The elections showed how thoroughly justified
was the claim of the Railwaymen’s Trade Unions that they were voicing
the wishes of practically the whole body of railwaymen. In spite of
strenuous efforts by the management on most of the lines, and of the
unfortunate jealousies among the different societies, in nearly all
cases the nominees of one or other of the Unions were elected, often by
large majorities. For the next few years the Amalgamated Society and
the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen were busy
in fighting the cases of the various grades through the Conciliation
Boards, and in securing thereby many small increases of wages and
reductions of hours. But matters did not go smoothly. The Companies,
for the most part, pursued a policy of obstruction and postponement,
delaying the awards, quibbling about their application, and in some
cases deliberately evading their terms, notably by inventing new
grades to which men could be appointed at lower rates of pay than
those prescribed. The “impartial” chairmen, moreover, differed among
themselves in the assumptions on which they proceeded, and some of
the awards caused great resentment. Meanwhile the cost of living was
steadily rising, and railwaymen as a whole were falling further behind
other organised workers. Progress was delayed in 1909-10 by a new
set-back which the Amalgamated Society suffered in the law courts, in
the prolonged litigation carried by one of its members, with capitalist
assistance, right up to the House of Lords, by which the participation
of any Trade Union in political activity was declared invalid--a
piece of “judge-made law” to which we shall recur, and for which the
Government and Parliament at first refused all redress. Suddenly, in
August 1911, the pot boiled over. There was a spirit of revolt in the
Labour world. In June and July the seamen and the dockers had struck,
and stopped the port of London. There was an outburst of “unauthorised”
railway strikes at Manchester, Liverpool, and some other big towns,
and a general demand for a national strike. The Executives of the four
principal railwaymen’s Unions, for once acting closely in concert, gave
the Companies twenty-four hours to decide whether they would consent
to meet the men’s representatives, or face a national stoppage. Once
more the Government intervened, Mr. Asquith offering a Royal Commission
of indefinite duration and issue, merely to propose amendments in
the scheme of Conciliation Boards, and at the same time definitely
informing the men--a fact which they judiciously refrained from
publishing--that the Government would not hesitate to use the troops
to prevent the commerce of the country from being interfered with.[622]
The Unions refused the illusory offer, and a national strike began,
which, although far from universal, was sufficient to disorganise
the whole railway service--as many as 200,000 men stopping work--and
was rapidly bringing industry to a standstill. At the instance of
Mr. Winston Churchill, who was then Home Secretary, an overpowering
display was made with the troops, which were sent to Manchester and
other places, without requisition by the civil authorities, at the
mere request of the Companies. In fact, a policy of repression had
been decided on, and bloodshed was near at hand. In vain did the Union
leaders ask Mr. Asquith, as Prime Minister, to take steps to obtain a
meeting between the Companies’ managers and the Union representatives.
Wiser counsels seem to have prevailed in the Cabinet, which
peremptorily instructed the Companies to let their General Managers
meet the men’s representatives face to face at the Board of Trade.
For just upon twelve hours these managers, thus coerced, negotiated
with four representatives of the Unions, together with Mr. Henderson
and Mr. J. R. MacDonald of the Parliamentary Labour Party. At last
an agreement was made--the first ever concluded between the Railway
Companies as a whole and the Trade Unions of their employees--for
an ending of the strike, on terms of complete reinstatement of the
strikers; an immediate consideration by the Conciliation Boards of
all grievances; and a prompt investigation by a bipartite Royal
Commission of the dissatisfaction with these Boards, and the best way
of amending the scheme.[623] When the Commission reported--it was
ultimately termed a Special Committee of Inquiry--the Railwaymen’s
Union once more asked the Companies to meet them for negotiation, which
the Companies again refused to do. On the Unions resolving to ballot
their members as to a national strike, the House of Commons set a new
precedent by passing, at the instance of the Government, a resolution
formally recommending a joint meeting, whereupon the Companies gave
way. At the meeting that ensued a new scheme of Conciliation Boards
was jointly agreed to, amending the 1907 scheme generally on the line
of the Special Committee’s report, but introducing most of the other
modifications that the Unions thought necessary. The machinery was made
more rapid in action, and the scope of the Boards was extended. Most
important of all, the men’s side of each Board was allowed to choose as
secretary a person not in the employ of the Company; and it accordingly
became possible for a Trade Union official to take up this work, and
that not only for a single grade but, by acting for several Boards,
simultaneously for all grades. This was not “recognition” in form, but
at any rate the Trade Union official was let in. During the next two
years, in spite of incredible obstructions, quibblings, and evasions by
the Companies, a number of small improvements in the terms of service
were obtained from the Boards for all the grades on practically all
the lines. A result of this joint working of even greater importance
was the merging, in 1913, after prolonged negotiations, of three out
of the four principal societies of manual railway workers[624]--the
Amalgamated, the General Union, and the United Pointsmen and
Signalmen--into a new Trade Union upon a carefully revised basis, under
the title of the National Union of Railwaymen.

The “New Model” for Trade Union structure thus deliberately adopted
merits attention. In contrast with what we have called the “New
Model,” in 1851 of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, that of 1913
represents an attempt to include, in a single “amalgamated” Union,
all the various “crafts” and grades of workers engaged in a single
industry throughout the whole kingdom. The declared object of the
National Union of Railwaymen is “to secure the complete organisation
of all workers employed on or in connection with any railway in the
United Kingdom.” It thus definitely negatives both “sectionalism”
and “localism” in favour of “Industrial Unionism.” Indeed, it may be
suggested that the new constitution passes, by definition, even beyond
the “Industrial Unionism,” to which the most advanced section of Trade
Unionists were aspiring, into what has been termed “Employmental
Unionism,” in that it seeks to enrol in one Union, not merely all
sections of railway workers, but actually all who are employed by any
railway undertaking--thus including, not only the engineering and
wood-working mechanics in the railway engineering workshops,[625] but
also the cooks, waiters, and housemaids at the fifty-five railway
hotels; the sailors and firemen on board the railway companies’ fleets
of steamers, and (though no trouble has actually arisen about them)
the compositors, lithographers, and bookbinders whom the railway
printing works employ in the production of tickets, time-tables,
office stationery, and advertisement posters; even the men whom one,
at least, of the largest companies keeps in constant employment at
the manufacture of crutches and wooden legs for the disabled members
of its staff. This all-inclusiveness has, since 1913, brought the
National Union of Railwaymen into conflict with many other Trade
Unions; and the question of the proper lines of demarcation has so
far remained unsettled. The principal new feature in constitutional
structure was the establishment of a distinct legislature--the Annual
General Meeting--consisting, in addition to the President and General
Secretary, of sixty representatives elected by the membership in
geographical constituencies of approximately equal size. Subordinate
to the Annual General Meeting (which can be summoned specially when
required) is the Executive Committee of the President, General
Secretary, and twenty-four other members, the latter being severally
elected by the device of the Single Transferable Vote by each of four
prescribed departments of members in each of six gigantic geographical
constituencies; one-third of such representatives retiring annually,
and after each triennial term of service, becoming ineligible for three
years, whilst the Branches to which they belong also become unable to
nominate representatives for a like term. The Executive Committee,
which, like the Annual General Meeting, consists of working railwaymen,
paid only for their days of service, meets quarterly and appoints four
sectional sub-committees, which must also meet at least quarterly.
Noteworthy, too, is the District Council, which--constitutionally
only a voluntary federation of geographically adjacent Branches for
propagandist and purely consultative purposes--has, with an unofficial
National Federation of District Councils, developed into an active
“caucus” of the more energetic members for discussing and promoting
“forward movements” in the Annual General Meeting, and “organising” the
elections to the Executive Committee.

With such a constitution, and the administration of extensive friendly
benefits in a society now approaching half a million members, it is
inevitable that the Executive Committee should wield extensive powers.
It initiates and conducts all trade movements, and can therefore call
a national strike, even without a ballot vote; and whilst it may take
a ballot vote at any time on any question, the rules expressly provide
that it is not to be bound by the members’ decision. Originally the
Executive Committee had power also “to settle” any dispute; but this
was withdrawn by resolutions of the Annual General Meetings of 1915
and 1916, which required all settlements to be reported to itself for
ratification. In practice very large powers, both of office management
and of negotiation, are necessarily exercised by the six salaried
officers, the President, the General Secretary, and the four Assistant
Secretaries, each of whom is responsible for a separate branch of the
Union’s work. They have, however, not been able to prevent a series of
“unauthorised” strikes, local or sectional in character.

At the beginning of 1914 everything pointed to a further forward
movement by the N.U.R. Its Annual General Meeting cordially accepted
the Miners’ proposal to unite with them and the Transport Workers in
the so-called Triple Alliance. Moreover, its desires now began to go
beyond improvements in wages and hours. Its representatives had, for
twenty years, sometimes moved and always supported the resolutions
of the Trades Union Congress in favour of the Nationalisation of
Railways. In 1913 the Railway Clerks’ Association had gone a step
further, and had asked also for participation in control. In 1914 the
resolution intended to be submitted on behalf of the N.U.R. declared
that “no system of State Ownership of the railways will be acceptable
to organised railwaymen which does not guarantee to them their full
political and social rights, allow them a due measure of control
and responsibility in the safe and efficient working of the railway
system, and assure to them a fair and equitable participation in
the increased benefits likely to accrue from a more economical and
scientific administration.” Here we have the first expressions of
the desire for participation in the management of the railways.[626]
From that time forward the demand has become ever more explicit
and determined. Meanwhile, however, the first step was plainly the
drastic amendment of the scheme of Conciliation Boards; and proposals
were under consideration when war broke out. In marked contrast with
their previous action, the Railway Companies were actually meeting
the Union representatives in a joint committee of seven a side. The
growth in membership of the National Union of Railwaymen at that date
to over 300,000, and its entry into the “Triple Alliance” of miners,
railwaymen, and transport workers, had, in fact, at last compelled the
Companies, in fact, to concede “recognition,” although they denied at
the time that they were so doing. During the war the actual alteration
of the scheme was to remain in abeyance, but the Executive Committee
came in 1915 to a provisional agreement with the Companies as to
certain amendments, which the Annual General Meeting of that year
considered inadequate and refused to sanction. Meanwhile, in view of
the rising cost of living, successive war bonuses, uniform throughout
the Kingdom for all grades of the traffic staff, were obtained from the
President of the Board of Trade--the cost, in effect, falling on the
Government under its arrangement for guaranteeing to the shareholders
the net revenue of 1913--amounting altogether to 33s. per week for men,
16s. 6d. per week for women and boys, and 8s. 3d. per week for girls,
thus more than doubling the average pre-war wages. The Government,
moreover, promised sympathetic consideration of the men’s demand for an
Eight Hours’ Day immediately on the termination of the war.

When the Armistice in November 1918 brought hostilities to an end,
negotiations were at once begun for a settlement of the outstanding
questions. The National Union of Railwaymen, in more friendly
conjunction with the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and
Firemen, whilst gaining advances fully equivalent to the increase in
the cost of living, had secured in principle not only recognition, but
also the valuable right of entering into negotiation with the united
management of all the railways, instead of always being referred to
the several companies; and even more important, it had obtained, in
the uniform war bonuses, the basis of national rates of wages for
the several grades, instead of rates and classes of workers varying
from company to company. It was now to secure, without an effort, the
Eight Hours’ Day, to come into operation on February 1, 1919, which
the Government, not even consulting the Railway Companies, singly or
collectively, in December 1918, conceded in principle without reduction
of wages, whilst the necessary reclassification of workers and
adjustment of times and wages on a national system became the subject
of prolonged and difficult negotiations between the Railway Executive
Committee and the two principal Unions.

The negotiations for “standardisation” which necessarily involved
the amalgamation of the uniform war bonus with the varying basic
rate, were dragged out by the Government from February to the end of
August, to the growing irritation of the railwaymen. What occurred,
as Ministers subsequently confessed, or rather boasted, was that,
beginning actually in February, the Government made extensive secret
preparations to break the strike which it was foreseen would occur when
the Government’s decisions were made known. The railwaymen themselves
confidently expected, seeing that the cost of living had not fallen,
but was officially certified, in September 1919, at 115 per cent above
that of July 1914, that their rates would be “standardised upwards,” so
as both to adopt the scales of the best companies for all the staff,
and to include the whole of the war bonus. But this automatic inclusion
of the war bonus in the Standard Rate, which some trades had already
secured, was exactly what the leading industrial employers were, for
their own trades, anxious to prevent. They counted, indeed, on bringing
about throughout British industry, during 1919 or 1920, irrespective of
any change in the cost of living, a general reduction of the “swollen”
wages of war-time; and there was a prevalent feeling among them, which
is known to have been shared by some, at least, of the Ministers, and
quite frankly expressed, that a big “fight with the Trade Unions”
was inevitable, and that it would be “better to get it over” before
industry had generally restarted under peace conditions. How far Sir
Auckland Geddes, who as President of the Board of Trade was responsible
for the negotiations, and his brother, Sir Eric Geddes, who as Minister
of Transport took over the work, shared this view, and allowed it to
inspire their official action, has not been revealed. The historian
can only note that the Government proceedings appear consistent with
this hypothesis. The Government deliberately separated from the mass
of railwaymen the locomotive drivers and firemen, whose services were
regarded as specially indispensable, and whose allegiance was divided
between the two rival Unions. In August acceptable terms were proposed
for these two classes, which conceded not only the absorption of the
whole war bonus in the new scale of wages, but also certain further
increases of pay, coming near to the Union’s full claims. Such a
concession, it was subsequently noted, was admirably calculated, in
the event of a strike, to detach the drivers and firemen from their
fellow-members; to divide the two Unions, and to arouse expectations
in the other grades which would make it practically certain that they
would indignantly refuse the offer that was to be made in a few weeks.
When the “definite” decision of the Government was sent to the Union,
in a letter in which Sir Auckland Geddes with his own hand altered the
word to “definitive,” as if in order to ensure an explosion, it was
found that by the new scale, beginning on January 1, 1920, every grade
was to suffer a reduction of existing earnings, varying from only
a shilling or two per week in some cases up to as much as sixteen
shillings per week--the new standard rate of the porter, for instance,
being fixed at 40s., as compared with the 51s. or 53s. that he was
actually receiving, or with the 60s. per week for which the Union had
asked. No explanation was given by the brothers Geddes that what was
intended was that there should be on January 1, 1920, no reduction
whatever in the men’s earnings, and that the Government’s policy was
(as subsequently stated by Mr. Lloyd George, but only on the very
morning of the strike, which was the first revelation of it) that there
should never be any reduction at all unless the cost of living fell
for over three months below 110 per cent in excess of pre-war prices,
and that (as was announced only in the Government advertisements on
the eighth day of the strike) the future “sliding scale,” which had
never been definitely formulated, would be allowed to work upwards as
well as downwards. Unless the intention of the “definitive” offer was
then and there to provoke an indignant strike, why was no hint of this
“policy for 1920” included; why was it left to be only incidentally
revealed, in such a way as not to be easily understood, in the final
personal discussion with the Prime Minister; and, seeing that the
Minister of Food himself had publicly announced that what was probable,
from January 1920, was not a fall but a further rise in the cost of
living, why was the alarming suggestion of a reduction to 40s. per
week ever made at all? It is almost impossible to avoid the inference
that the Government, which certainly decided the date and the issues,
decided also the strike itself, with a view to “beating the Union,”
in order to get a free hand for railway reorganisation without the
necessity of consulting the operatives; in order, probably, to fit in
with the general capitalist project of a scaling down of the “swollen”
war-wages; and, as some say, in order to supply Mr. Lloyd George with a
useful “election stunt,” with which, in the eyes of the middle class,
irretrievably to damage the Labour Party.

Whether intentionally on the part of the Ministers, or by reason
of an amazing maladroitness in their negotiations, what had been
foreseen and expected by the Government, and for six months secretly
prepared for, actually came to pass. On Wednesday, September 24, the
Executive Council of the National Union of Railwaymen issued orders
for a national strike to begin at midnight on Friday, September 26,
unless countermanded by telegraph. So little had the Union intended
or contemplated such action that absolutely no notice of the crisis
had been given to the Miners’ Federation or the Transport Workers’
Federation, who were the railwaymen’s colleagues in the Triple
Alliance; and the Union had only some £3000 available in cash. Efforts
were made by the men to avert the stoppage, which it was recognised
would be a national calamity. The Executive Council sought and obtained
long interviews with the Prime Minister himself on Thursday, and even
on the Friday morning; and the verbatim reports of these discussions
reveal (_a_) that the Government showed no inclination to meet the
men’s case--Sir Eric Geddes peremptorily intervening at one point even
to prevent a criticism of the “definitive” new scale being adduced;
(_b_) that the Government did not even then set forth what subsequently
turned out to have been the proposal that the Ministry of Transport had
really intended to make (unless, indeed, we are to assume that the
“definitive” offer was silently changed in the course of the strike).
Again, it can only be inferred that Mr. Lloyd George either did not
wish to prevent the strike or else was quite exceptionally below his
usual level of lucidity in explanation of any scheme that he wished to
have accepted. What the Prime Minister did was immediately to denounce
to the public the National Union of Railwaymen as engaged in an
anarchist conspiracy!

The nine days’ stoppage that ensued was, in many respects, the most
remarkable industrial conflict that we have yet seen. Half a million
railwaymen left their work at midnight on the 26th of September, the
Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen at once joining
loyally with the N.U.R., and very nearly every member of either Union
coming out. The men on the Irish railways were directed to remain at
work. Never before had there been so nearly a complete stoppage of the
railway service from one end of Great Britain to the other. It is to be
noted that the third Union, the Railway Clerks’ Association (which had
come to include the Clerical, Administrative, and Supervisory Staffs),
directed its members to remain absolutely neutral, and not to do any of
the strikers’ work. The various Unions of Post Office employees sought
and obtained an official decision that they were not to be called upon
to do any service hitherto done by men on strike. The Government, which
sent soldiers to guard some of the railway stations,[627] hastened
to announce publicly--in significant contrast with its decision of
1912--that in no case would the troops be employed to run trains. For
the first time the Government found itself liable to pay unemployment
benefit to all other workers who were stopped as a result of the
strike; and for the enormous extension of the State Unemployment
Benefit that was expected to be required, arrangements were promulgated
under which the Benefit would be issued by each employer to his own
wage-earners, when these were thrown idle by the strike; and that
whilst such persons might be called upon to take temporary employment
in handling food supplies, they would not be required to accept service
on the railways themselves.

There was, in spite of wild newspaper exaggerations, practically no
disorder and no attempt to injure property. Except in a very few cases,
in which local mishandling of the situation by the authorities led to
resentment and misunderstanding, the Executive Council’s order that
the horses were not to be allowed to suffer was cordially acted on by
the men. The Government was allowed, without attempt at obstruction,
to bring at once into operation the elaborate arrangements it had long
been preparing, for ensuring the regular supply of London and other
large towns with milk and other foodstuffs by means of an extensive
motor-lorry service. Volunteers for railway work were called for, and
with the aid of the small remnant of non-unionists a tiny trickle of
trains was set going, which provided for the local passenger service
in London and some other cities; and gradually accomplished one or
two long-distance trains per day, which carried the mails and were
crowded with venturous passengers. What stopped almost completely
was the mineral and heavy goods traffic, and by the end of the week
so many industries had come to the end of their fuel, and so many
coalpits were short of waggons and of room at the pithead, that,
whilst nearly 400,000 workmen in collieries and factories were already
idle, the next week would have seen literally millions unemployed.
Meanwhile, in spite of press reports to the contrary, the Union
Executives knew that, whilst a few men returned to work, each day more
joined the strikers, so that there were actually a greater number
signing the book at the end than at the beginning of the struggle.
But the National Union of Railwaymen found considerable difficulty in
realising from its investments, and in making locally available at a
couple of thousand centres, sufficient cash to pay immediately the
half a million pounds of strike pay that was required; and only the
prompt and cordial assistance of the Co-operative Wholesale Society’s
printing department, which got out the necessary supply of cheques in
marvellously quick time, and of the Co-operative Wholesale Society’s
Bank, which made the N.U.R. cheques payable at the several Co-operative
Societies themselves, averted a breakdown. Food was in some cases
refused to the strikers by shopkeepers; and it may be that it was only
the prompt assistance of the Co-operative Societies, which agreed to
honour vouchers issued by the local strike committees, that prevented
the Government from putting in operation a project of starving out the
railwaymen’s families by withdrawing their ration cards or withholding
the food supplies under Government control. One blow below the belt
the Government did strike in arbitrarily commanding the withholding
from the strikers of a whole week’s pay which they had earned by their
service prior to the stoppage, and which it was the custom of the
companies always to keep in hand for a week by way of security against
theft or embezzlement. This had never been done in any previous railway
strike. Whether or not the railwaymen had broken any legal contract
of service by giving only three days’ notice of their strike, is not
clear--the point appears never to have been raised or decided,--but in
any case the companies had only a right to sue each man for any damages
that might be shown to be caused by such a breach of contract; and the
Government had plainly no legal warrant for becoming the judge in its
own cause, and itself arbitrarily assessing the damages due from each
man at precisely one week’s earnings. This action, coupled with the
evasive and ever-changing terms of the Government’s wage proposals,
and the campaign of abuse that the Government organised throughout the
press--personally directed by Sir William Sutherland, one of the Prime
Minister’s secretaries--had a great influence in rallying the Trade
Union world in support of the railwaymen.

The “publicity campaign,” by which, for the first time in an industrial
struggle, a persistent organised appeal was made by both sides to
public opinion, was, indeed, the most remarkable feature of the
struggle. At the outset the Government, in spite of the outspoken
advocacy of the _Daily Herald_, had it all its own way. The public,
seriously inconvenienced by the stoppage, was told by nearly every
newspaper in the Kingdom--daily supplied by a Government office with
a lengthy bulletin of “Strike News”--that the strike was the result
of an “anarchist” conspiracy among the railwaymen; that the Union had
wantonly broken off negotiations without cause because it positively
wished to “hold up” the whole community; that the Government had
not really intended any reduction of wages at all, and that the
figure of 40s. had reference only to the contingency of the cost of
living reverting to what it was before the war; that, in fact, the
Government were positively doubling the railwaymen’s wages, and that
the men, realising this, and discovering how they had been deceived
by their Executive Council, were resuming their duties at all points.
To counteract this Government propaganda, the _Daily Herald_ made
the most enterprising arrangements for getting its issue distributed
all over England, and more than doubled its circulation, whilst the
National Union of Railwaymen employed its own Publicity Department,
utilising for this purpose the Labour Research Department.[628] A
number of competent writers, cartoonists, and statisticians belonging
to the Labour Party placed their services in this way at the Research
Department’s disposal, so that the Executive Council was able, within a
couple of days, to pour forth a stream of articles, letters, speeches,
and cartoons, for which the newspapers generally accorded space.[629]
Every move of the Government, and every statement that it issued,
was immediately countered by an appropriate answer. When Mr. Lloyd
George supplied a message denouncing the strikers which appeared on
the film in every cinema, Mr. J. H. Thomas was himself filmed in the
act of delivering a cogent reply. But the Union’s Publicity Department
found the space given by the newspapers inadequate, and started
placing full-page advertisements in the _Times_ and other newspapers,
in which the Government’s equivocations and evasions as to the wages
offered were effectively exposed. The Government followed suit,
and presently the two advertisements appeared on successive pages,
with the unforeseen result that the Government’s statement of its
proposals to the men was detected in changing from day to day as the
strike continued, growing progressively more favourable to the men,
but professing still to be the “definitive” decision of Sir Auckland
Geddes which had provoked the strike. The outcome of a week’s skilfully
organised “publicity” was a steady shifting of public opinion, and even
a distinct change in the newspaper editorials. By the end of the week
the men’s case was winning.

Meanwhile, the leaders of the principal Trade Unions indirectly
affected by the railway stoppage, notably the various sections of
Transport Workers, together with officials or representatives of the
Miners, the Parliamentary Committee, and the Labour Party, had been
meeting in anxious conclave--summoned, it should be stated, by the
Executive of the National Transport Workers’ Federation--with a view to
restraining their own members from impetuous action in support of the
railwaymen, and to bringing pressure to bear on both parties to secure
a settlement. At first the prospect seemed hopeless. The Government
took up an attitude of defiance. Mr. Lloyd George declared that he
would not enter into any negotiations with the railwaymen’s Unions
until the men had unconditionally returned to their duty. A national
appeal was made to all the Local Authorities--not to strengthen the
police force by special constables, as is the constitutional procedure,
but to institute a “Citizen Guard,” in order to repel the forces of
disorder; a wild use of a term of bad omen, which was calculated,
if not intended, to bring the “class war” into the streets. It was
known that measures of arbitrary confiscation of the Union funds
were seriously under consideration, together with discriminatory
issues of food supplies. On the other side, the feeling of the Trade
Unionists was rising to anger. The position could not well have been
more serious. But the “eleven”--afterwards the “fourteen”--Trade
Union mediators were patient and persistent. They had long interviews
with the railwaymen’s Executive. They had long discussions with the
Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the Minister
of Transport. They cleared up misunderstandings. They eliminated
provocative expressions. They brought the Government to admit
that there was no present chance of reducing wages. They got the
railwaymen to see that merely to postpone the issue was to strengthen
their grip upon what they were actually receiving. Notwithstanding
the Government’s defiant words, the Trade Union mediators got the
railwaymen’s Executive Council into prolonged and repeated discussions
at 10 Downing Street with the Prime Minister and his colleagues.[630]
At last, on Sunday morning, October 3, Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. Thomas
were closeted together for the final stage; the news was immediately
flashed all over the kingdom that the strike was settled, and in the
evening Mr. Thomas announced to a mass meeting of railwaymen in the
Albert Hall the terms of settlement. These included an immediate
resumption of work without victimisation or recrimination; payment of
the impounded arrears of wages; “stabilisation” of existing earnings
of all rates (except where improved) until September 30, 1920;
negotiations as to “standardisation” and settlement of wage scales to
be begun again, and a settlement to be come to before December 31,
1919; and the lowest adult railwayman to be raised forthwith to 51s.
per week as a minimum. Before the end of 1919 it was announced that the
Government had agreed to concede, for the future, that all questions
relating to the conditions of service should be dealt with, not by
the railway companies but by a Central Board of ten members (with
power to increase by a further one on each side), five nominees of the
National Union of Railwaymen and the Associated Society of Locomotive
Engineers and Firemen, and five representatives of the railway
management. In case of disagreement, reference will be made to an
Appeal Board of twelve members, four nominated by these Trade Unions,
four representing the management, and four the general public, with a
chairman nominated by the Government. What is specially significant
is that it is recognised that “the public” does not consist merely of
the upper and middle, or of the capitalist and professional classes.
Of the four representatives of the public, two are to be nominated,
respectively, by the Associated Chambers of Commerce and the Federation
of British Industries, and two, respectively, by the Parliamentary
Committee of the Trades Union Congress and the Co-operative Union, who
are thus taken to represent the four-fifths of the population (and
therefore of the railway users) who are manual working wage-earners.
At the same time it was conceded that the Advisory Committee for
Railway Management, which replaces under the Minister of Transport
the Railway Executive Committee, is to include, from the start, three
representatives of the railwaymen’s Unions, all the members having
equal and identical functions and rights.

We do not yet know what agreement will be reached about
“standardisation” or the future scale of wages, but the Ministry of
Transport is not likely to try another fall with the railwaymen’s Trade
Unions. The strike has had, indeed, results of the first importance.
The Government has learnt that Trade Unionism is not easily beaten,
even when all the resources of the State are put forth against it, and
when public opinion is incensed. The great capitalist organisations
have seen the warning against their projects of a general reduction of
wages; and this is postponed, at least, for a year. On the other hand,
the railwaymen’s Unions have realised the magnitude of the struggle
into which they so precipitately entered, or into which they were so
artfully inveigled. The need for, and the potency of, skilled publicity
work, and the possibilities of a highly organised and adequately
supported Labour Research Department, are commonly recognised. Finally,
it is seen that national industrial conflicts of such a magnitude are
matters of wider concern to the Trade Union world than any one Union
can appreciate; and an attempt was made, to be subsequently described,
if not to continue in existence the group of “Fourteen Mediators,” at
least to get established some authoritative standing Council, by which
the approach of an impending industrial crisis of national scope could
be closely watched, so that all the necessary steps may be taken in
time to deal with the situation in the best possible way. The Trade
Union world realised its need for what was called a General Staff.


AMALGAMATIONS AND FEDERATIONS

Whilst the numerical strength and industrial and political influence
of the several Trade Unions have thus steadily increased during the
past thirty years, it is less easy to characterise the changes in the
relations of Trade Unions with each other.

The multiplicity of separate organisations in which the six or seven
million Trade Unionists are grouped, and the complication and diversity
of the relations among the various societies, continue to-day, as they
did thirty years ago, to baffle classification, and almost to defy
analysis. It remains as impossible as it was in 1890 to state precisely
how many distinct Trade Unions are in existence, because the endless
variety of their federal organisations makes it uncertain which
of the local or sectional Unions are to be counted as independent
societies. We estimate, however, that upon any computation the number
of financially distinct organisations, which we may put at about 1100,
remains approximately what it was thirty years ago. The tendency to
amalgamation, that is to say, has just about kept pace, arithmetically,
with the starting of new organisations, whilst the average membership
of each unit has more than quadrupled.

Such a statement fails, however, to do justice to the change that
has come over the Trade Union world. Thirty years ago it was, on the
whole, a congeries of numerically small units, only two or three of
which counted as many as 50,000 members. To-day there are nearly a
dozen which severally manage memberships of a quarter of a million,
and probably fifty which deal with more than 50,000 each. A few other
national societies of smaller membership are of some importance.
Scattered up and down the United Kingdom a thousand other local or
sectional societies exist, with memberships from a few dozen to a
few thousand, but these play no part and exercise no influence in
the movement as a whole. Probably five-sixths of all the Trade Union
membership, and practically all its effective force, are to be found
among the hundred principal societies to which the Ministry of Labour
has long confined its detailed statistics.[631]

The movement for the amalgamation of competing societies has, during
the past decade, been specially energetic and persistent. This has
arisen, partly spontaneously, from the obvious disadvantages attendant
both on rivalry between Trade Unions seeking to enrol the same classes
of members throughout the kingdom--such as that between the various
societies of railway employees--and on the division of workmen of the
same craft among a number of independent local societies, such as the
Coopers, the Chippers and Drillers, and the Painters and other branches
of the Building Trades. But during the past decade the movement has
been reinforced by the desire for an organisation based on the whole
of an industry, such as engineering, housebuilding, mining, or the
railway service, in which all the co-operating crafts and grades of
workers would be associated in a single Industrial Union; in contrast
with the earlier conception of the separate organisation of each craft
throughout the whole kingdom; such as that of the carpenters, the
enginemen, the engineering mechanics, the clerks, and by analogy the
general labourers, in whatsoever industry they may be working. The case
for the Industrial Union in such an industry as mining, for example,
merely from the standpoint of Collective Bargaining, and for the sake
of getting effective Common Rules, has always been a strong one; but
the movement for the substitution of “Industrial” for “Craft” Unionism
has been strengthened since about 1911 by the aspirations of those who
saw in Trade Unionism something more than an organisation for raising
wages and shortening the working day. If the wage-earners were ever to
obtain, through their own voluntary associations, the control of their
own working lives, and to obtain a steadily increasing participation
in the direction of industry; if a Vocational Democracy were to be
superimposed on a Democracy based on geographical constituencies; it
seemed as if this could be done only by Trade Unions co-extensive with
each separate industry. The influence of the movement known as “Guild
Socialism” has accordingly been exercised, on the whole, in favour
of Industrial Unionism, not so much for the sake of its immediate
advantages in improving the conditions of the wage-contract, as because
it was only in this form that Trade Unionism could become the vehicle
of aspirations to the control of each industry by the whole mass of the
workers employed therein.

Except in the way of industrial federations, to be hereafter referred
to, it is only in mining and the railway service that any great
progress has been made in this direction. The Miners’ Federation of
Great Britain, established, as we have seen, only in 1888, with no
more than 36,000 members, has attracted to itself, year by year, an
almost continuous stream of local or sectional organisations among
the 1,200,000 workers in and about the coal and iron-stone mines;
successively absorbing into one or other of its local units or
affiliating directly to itself, not only all the district associations,
old or new, of coal-hewers and other underground workers, but also
some of the separate organisations of enginemen and firemen, mine
mechanics, deputies and overmen, colliery clerks, cokemen, and others
employed in or about the mines, until its aggregate membership in 1920
is somewhere about 900,000. And though the Miners’ Federation is still
only a Federation of fully autonomous district associations--some
of these, too, being themselves federations of the organisations of
lesser localities; and although it still depends for its funds almost
entirely upon specific levies upon its constituents, it has found
means, by its frequently meeting delegate conferences, controlling
the strong Executive Committee which they elect, to centralise very
effectively the general policy of the whole mining industry, notably
with regard to the hours of labour, the conditions of safety, the
percentage of general advances of wages and the amount of the national
war bonuses, and last, though not least, on the burning issue of
nationalisation of the mines and the participation of the miners in
their administration. But although the Miners’ Federation embodies in
its constitution the principles of federalism and an extreme local
autonomy, it takes no account of sectional differences, and makes no
provision for the representation at its delegate conferences, or upon
its Executive Committee, of any distinct grades or sections. Perhaps,
for this reason, the Federation does not yet speak directly for all
the organised manual working wage-earners in the industry. There are
at least forty separate Trade Unions of enginemen, boilermen and
firemen, colliery mechanics, cokemen, under-managers, deputies, overmen
and other officials, colliery clerks, and surface-workers of various
kinds, not yet affiliated to the Miners’ Federation, either locally or
nationally; these have formed National Federations, parallel with the
Miners’ Federation of Great Britain, of enginemen, deputies, colliery
mechanics and under-managers respectively; and in February 1917
seventeen of the societies drew together to form the National Council
of Colliery Workers other than Miners, for the purpose of maintaining
their separate influence.

In the railway service, as we have already described, the merging in
the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, first of the Scottish
Society in 1892, and then of the General Railway Workers’ Union, and
the United Signalmen and Pointsmen’s Society in 1913, made possible the
establishment of the National Union of Railwaymen on the basis of an
organisation co-extensive with the industry, with the embodiment in the
constitution of sectional representation. The four “departments” into
which the members are divided vote separately in the elections. Under
these provisions the National Union of Railwaymen, though hampered
by the continuance of the separate Associated Society of Locomotive
Engineers and Firemen, has been able to make effective not only its
claims for higher remuneration, but also its demands for a normal
Eight Hours Day, a national system of classification, and national
wage scales for the several grades; though still not its aspirations
(expressed since 1914) to participation in management, or those
(expressed for over a decade) to the elimination from industry of the
capitalist profitmaker by the scheme of Railway Nationalisation.

In other industries, too, the concentration of Trade Union forces
during the past decade has increasingly taken the form of an
amalgamation of rival sectional organisations, sometimes in response
to a demand from the rank and file. Thus the Ship Constructors’ and
Shipwrights’ Association, established in 1888, has successfully
absorbed not only the very old Shipwrights’ Provident Union of London,
but also all the remaining local Trade Unions of shipwrights that long
lingered in Liverpool, Dublin, etc. The National Amalgamated Furnishing
Trades Association has taken over a number of small societies of French
polishers, gilders, and upholsterers. The United Garment Workers’ Trade
Union was formed in 1915 by the amalgamation of a number of societies
in the various sections of the tailoring trade; and in 1919 it was
agreed that this, together with the Scottish Society of Tailors and
Tailoresses, should be merged in the old Amalgamated Society of Tailors
and Tailoresses, which would then include practically all the organised
workers in the making of men’s and women’s clothing in Great Britain.
Many small Unions of machine workers, minor craftsmen, and general
labourers have been absorbed in one or other of the half-a-dozen large
Labour Unions. The Amalgamated Card and Blowing-Room Operatives have
taken over various small sectional societies in the Cotton trade. In
Sheffield thirteen small Unions, catering for different sections of
the gold and silver workers, joined together in 1910 in the Gold,
Silver, and Kindred Trades Society, which in 1913 absorbed several more
societies in this industry. In the autumn of 1919, as we have already
mentioned, six of the sectional societies in the engineering industry
decided to merge themselves, with the Amalgamated Society of Engineers,
in a new and more gigantic amalgamation with 400,000 members; the
United Pattern Makers’ Society, the Electrical Trades Union, and many
small and specialised societies of mechanics in iron still standing
aloof. In the same month three of the principal Unions of postal and
telegraph employees united in a single Union of Post Office Workers,
with 90,000 members. Other amalgamations among small or local
societies took place among the Basketmakers, the Block Printers, the
Leather-workers, the Dyers, the various sections in the Pottery Trade,
etc.

Such amalgamation is greatly obstructed by legal requirements.
Down to 1917 the law demanded that each society desiring to unite
should ratify the decision by a two-thirds majority not merely of
those voting, but of the entire membership. Such a poll is almost
impossible of attainment by Trade Unions, whose members cannot usually
be individually communicated with, owing not only to their frequent
changes of residence and the absence of many of them abroad, but also
to the lack, in most cases, of any complete register of addresses. In
1917 the Government at last permitted the passage of an Amending Act
for which Trade Unionists had often pressed; but even then insisted
on any amalgamation being carried, at a 50 per cent poll of the whole
membership, by at least 20 per cent majority, conditions which make
amalgamation everywhere difficult, and in some Unions (such as those
of seamen) quite impossible. In several cases Unions in which the
general opinion has been in favour of amalgamation have failed to get
the necessary vote. We have already described the ingenious device by
which the British Steel Smelters’ Society and the Iron and Steel Trades
Confederation surmounted this difficulty.

Meanwhile, of federations as distinct from amalgamations the Trade
Union world has a variety more bewildering than ever, some of which
have already been referred to. We have to note that the Engineering and
Shipbuilding Trades Federation, the establishment of which in 1889 we
described in _Industrial Democracy_, has continued in existence, doing
useful work from time to time in connection with demarcation disputes
and other subjects of inter-union controversy, especially on the
North-East Coast, notably contributing also in 1905 to the successful
claim of the Clyde trades to weekly instead of fortnightly pays,
which the employers had stubbornly resisted for a whole decade, but
continuing to be weakened by the abstention, except for a few years,
of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, which, however, now frequently
consents to act in conjunction with it in general trade questions.

What is significant is the change in type and purpose of these
multifarious industrial federations, which have now come to form
an important element in the Trade Union world.[632] Federation, in
fact, has undergone a subtle change of character. Instead of loose
alliances for mutual support in disputes, or for the adjustment of
mutual differences as to “demarcation” and transfer of members, the
federations of all the craft or sectional Unions engaged in particular
industries--notably those of the Building Trades, the Transport
Workers, and, though not yet to the same extent, the Printing Trades
and the Woollen Workers, like the older organisation of the Cotton
Operatives--have become increasingly, themselves negotiating bodies,
recognised by the equally organised employers, and concerting with
these what are, in effect, national regulations governing their
industries throughout the whole kingdom. The later development of the
Engineering and Shipbuilding Trades Federation has been in the same
direction. In the case of the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain
the development has gone still further; and this great organisation,
whilst retaining the federal form, and, even now, not completely
admitted to “recognition” by the Mining Association of Great Britain,
unquestioningly acts for the whole industry in national issues, as
if it were an “amalgamated” Union. Whether or not we are to see all
the rival and sectional Unions in each industry amalgamating into a
single “Industrial Union,” as many Trade Unionists desire, it must be
recognised that the development, during the past decade, of active
negotiating federations for the several industries goes far to supply
the most urgent need. In short, although financially distinct Trade
Unions remain, on the whole, as numerous as ever, the number of
separate negotiating bodies, so far as concerns matters relating to an
industry as a whole, becomes steadily smaller.

We pass now to federal bodies of a different character.


THE GENERAL FEDERATION OF TRADE UNIONS

In 1899, arising out of the losses caused by the costly engineering
dispute of 1897-98, the Trades Union Congress established a General
Federation of Trade Unions, largely at the instance of Robert Knight,
the able secretary of the Boilermakers, designed exclusively as a
mutual reinsurance agency against the heavy financial burden to which,
in the form of Strike Pay, or Dispute or Contingent Benefit, labour
disputes subject every active trade society.[633] By means of a small
contribution from a large aggregate membership (1s. or 2s. per year per
member), the General Federation is able to recoup to its constituent
societies 2s. 6d. or 5s. per week per member affected towards their
several expenditures upon disputes. Beginning with 44 societies,
having a total membership of 343,000, it steadily increased the number
of its adherents until, in 1913, it had affiliated as many as 150
societies, having at that date 884,291 members. Since that time the
number of societies has dropped to 141 in 1919; but their increase
in membership had raised the aggregate affiliation to 1,215,107, the
largest ever recorded. The General Federation, whilst suffering for the
past seven years from an arrest of growth, has to its credit twenty
years’ success in surmounting the difficulties which have destroyed
every previous attempt of the kind, and its prudent management is shown
by the fact that it was able, from its normal revenue, to discharge
all its obligations down to 1905, and to accumulate a reserve of
£119,656. In that year the members rashly insisted on a reduction of
the contribution by one-third, not foreseeing the outburst of disputes
in 1908-9, which caused the Federation to pay out for 638 disputes
no less than £122,778, and necessitated in 1913 the doubling of the
contribution. Since that date, in spite of payments to societies
averaging £1500 every week of the year, the Federation has not only
met its engagements, but also built up a reserve exceeding a quarter
of a million sterling. In 1911 it formed an Approved Society under the
National Insurance Act, with the object of relieving the separate Trade
Unions, and notably the thousand small ones, from the onerous task of
separately administering the Act, and to ensure that their members did
not go off to the Industrial Insurance Companies, an effort which has
failed to attract more than a few thousand members. An extension of
the effort to the provision of death benefits, by the formation of a
Friendly Society section in 1913, has proved scarcely more successful.

It must be recognised that during the past six or seven years the
Federation has lost favour with important sections of the Trade Union
world. It was probably inevitable that its inclusion of small sectional
societies should eventually bring it into conflict with the larger
Unions by whom such societies are often regarded as illegitimate
competitors. Grounds of this kind may be assigned for the secession
of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers and the Amalgamated Society
of Tailors in 1915; and for the powerful hostility shown since 1913
by the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain. But this feeling has been
accentuated by a growing resentment of the part played by the General
Federation--not unconnected with the forceful personality of the
General Secretary--first in international relations, and secondly in
the representation of Trade Union opinion to the Government and to the
public.

The General Federation, from its very establishment, affiliated
itself to the International Trade Union Federation, which aimed at
the collection and publication of statistics of Trade Unionism all
over the world by an International Trade Union Secretariat, and at
the mutual interchange of Trade Union information. For the first
fifteen years of its existence this action of the General Federation
was not objected to, although the fact that it represented only 25
to 30 per cent of British Trade Unionism impaired the value of its
statistical contributions. The Parliamentary Committee of the Trades
Union Congress, which might well have undertaken the task, long ignored
its international interests; but during the Great War increasingly
resented the appearance of the General Federation as the representative
of British Trade Unionism, and especially the almost continuous
negotiations between its secretary, Mr. Appleton, and Mr. Gompers, the
Secretary of the American Federation of Labor, and with M. Jouhaux, the
Secretary of the _Confédération Générale du Travail_ of France, along
lines not consistent with those of the Labour Party and the Trades
Union Congress. When, in 1918, attempts were made to reconstitute the
International Federation of Trade Unions, the Parliamentary Committee
claimed at first to be itself the representative of Great Britain; but
presently compromised on a joint and equal representation by the two
bodies.

But more serious than the question of international representation was
the resentment at the ever-widening range of subjects at home on which
Mr. Appleton, the Management Committee, and the Conferences of the
General Federation claimed to voice the feelings of Organised Labour.
It was urged that the Federation was formed exclusively for the purpose
of mutually reinsuring Strike Benefit, and that it had accordingly no
mandate, and did nothing but weaken the Trade Union forces, both in the
narrow field of the conditions of the wage contract, and on the broader
issues of Labour’s political aspirations, whenever it entered into
rivalry with the Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress
on the one hand, or with the Labour Party on the other. It looks as if
the General Federation must in future either restrict itself to the
limited range of its original purpose, or else run the risk of being
financially weakened by the secession of influential Trade Unions,
which will not permanently remain affiliated to all three national
bodies, when finding these speaking on the same subjects with different
voices.


TRADES COUNCILS

Of another form of loose federation of the branches of all the Trade
Unions within a given area we have already described the origin and the
development in the local Trades Councils. These have gone on increasing
in number, much more than in strength, until in 1920 we estimate that
more than 500 are in existence, with an aggregate affiliated membership
running into several millions of Trade Unionists. The character of
their active membership, their functions, and their proceedings have
remained much as we described them thirty years ago; but they have,
on the whole, increased in strength and local influence, as well as
in numbers and membership. They were, as we shall presently mention,
somewhat arbitrarily excluded in 1895 from the Trades Union Congress,
of which they were actually the originators; and although they have
since joined in various provincial federations of Trades Councils,[634]
these have never acquired any great strength, and do little more than
arrange for co-operation in local demonstrations. An attempt to form a
National Federation of Trades Councils did not succeed. On the other
hand, as we shall describe in Chapter XI., the Trades Councils were,
from its establishment in 1900, admitted, equally with Trade Unions,
as constituents of the Labour Representation Committee (now the Labour
Party), and whether as Trades Councils, or (notably with the smaller
ones) in their new form of “Trades Councils and Local Labour Parties,”
they are coming slowly to form its geographical basis. It is more and
more on the political side that they are in some degree succeeding in
uniting the energies of the Trade Unions of a particular town. This
is especially the case so far as municipal politics are concerned.
They have, for instance, been the main force in securing the general
adoption of the Fair Wages Clause, and in furthering the election of
Labour Candidates to local governing bodies. But they are rigidly
excluded from all participation in the government or trade policy
of the Unions; and, so far as Trade Unionism itself is concerned,
their direct influence on questions of national scope is not great.
Consisting, as in the main they do, of the delegates elected by
branches of national societies, they are hampered by the narrow limits
of the branch autonomy. For in trade matters the branch can bring to
the Council no power which it does not itself possess, whilst towards
any action involving expense by the Council it can, in many Unions,
contribute only the voluntary extra-subscriptions of its members.
During the present century, however, many Unions have started paying
from central funds the affiliation fees of their branches to Trades
Councils. Down to the end of the Nineteenth Century, however, the
resources of the Councils accordingly seldom sufficed for more than the
hire of a room to meet in,[635] the necessary postage and stationery,
and the payment of a few pounds a year for the “loss of time” of their
principal officers. In no case except London does a Trades Council as
such, even in 1920, pay a “full-time” salary, so as to command the
whole time of a single salaried official, though the Trades Councils of
cities like Glasgow, Manchester, and Bradford have salaried secretaries
who have other duties; and where the Trades Council is combined with
the Local Labour Party it is more and more coming to have the services
of a Registration Officer or Election Agent, whose salary is usually
provided as part of the election expenses of the Labour candidate.

For a long time it could hardly be said that the Trades Councils
enjoyed even the moral support of the great Unions. The central
executives of the national societies were apt to view with suspicion
and jealousy the existence of governing bodies in which they were not
directly represented. The local branches, if not actually forbidden,
were not encouraged to adhere to what might conceivably become a rival
authority. The strong county Unions frequently stood aloof unless they
were allowed an overwhelming representation. One of the notable changes
of the present century has been the diminution of this jealousy of the
Trades Councils. We know of no case in which branches are now forbidden
to join a Trades Council. In most cases, although permission may have
to be obtained from the Executive Council or Committee, it is nowadays
readily granted, and with the recognition of the need for political
action, between 1901 and 1913, came positive encouragement to the
branches to affiliate to the Trades Councils of their localities.[636]

It remains, however, true in 1920 as in 1890 that the Trades Councils
do not include the national leaders of the Trade Union world. The
salaried officials of the old-established societies seldom take part
in their proceedings. The London Trades Council, for instance, the
classic meeting-place of the Junta, has long since ceased to be able
to count among its delegates the General Secretaries of the Engineers,
Bricklayers, Railwaymen, Steel-smelters, or of any other of the great
Societies having their head offices in London. The powerful coterie
of cotton officials forms no part of the Manchester Trades Council.
Of the boilermakers, neither the General Secretary nor any one of the
nine District Delegates is usually to be found on a Trades Council.
The Miners’ Agents are notorious for abstention from the Councils in
their localities. This, however, is due nowadays, whatever may once
have been the reason, principally to the enormous additions to the work
of all the salaried officials of the Trade Union world, which make it
impossible for the majority of them to attend Trades Council meetings.
The Trades Councils now serve as a useful training-ground, wider than
that of the Trade Union Branch, for those whom we have elsewhere
described as the non-commissioned officers of the Movement, from whose
ranks nearly all the Trade Union leaders emerge.

Apart from their constant activity in municipal politics, and their
energetic support of the Labour Party in all elections, the Trades
Councils have, in the present century, considerably increased in
usefulness. They have given valuable assistance in Trade Union
propaganda, alike within their own districts and in the adjacent rural
districts. No small part of the increase in Trade Union membership,
notably among nondescript workers in the towns, and the agricultural
labourers in the country, is to be ascribed to the constant work and
support of some of the more active among them. They have done much to
appease quarrels among the local branches of different Unions, and they
are occasionally able to intervene successfully as arbitrators.[637]
Even without formal arbitration they bring warring parties together.
They nominate working-class representatives to many local committees
and conferences, and serve, in this way, as useful links with public
administration. Some of them have, of recent years, done a great deal
to promote the better education of the artisan class. They affiliate to
the Workers’ Educational Association or the Labour College, and support
its classes; they arrange public meetings and obtain outside speakers;
they affiliate to the Labour Research Department, which has a special
“Trades Councils and Local Labour Parties Section”; they subscribe to
the travelling library of book-boxes maintained by the Fabian Society;
they frequently issue their own monthly bulletin of Trade Union and
Labour news, or journal of local government information, or at least
their annual _Year-Book_; and they act as distributing centres for the
nationally published pamphlets and leaflets--sometimes even for the
more popular books on Labour questions.[638] They have come, in several
centres, to form, by Joint Councils, an indispensable connecting link
between the Trade Union and Co-operative Movements, and they serve,
more than any other agency, as the cement between the local branches of
these two movements and the Labour Party itself. To what extent they
are destined, in their character of constituent members of the Labour
Party, sometimes actually combined with Local Labour Parties (in the
latter cases with the inclusion, since 1918, of a section of individual
members, Trade Unionists or others, “workers by hand or by brain”),
to develop an effective political organisation, drawing together the
whole of the supporters of the Labour Party in each Parliamentary
constituency, remains yet to be demonstrated.


THE TRADES UNION CONGRESS

But the most extensive federation of the Trade Union world is to-day,
as it has always been, the Trades Union Congress, which could count in
September 1919 an affiliated membership of more than five and a quarter
millions, a number never paralleled in this or any other country. We
have described in previous chapters the origin and development of this
federal body, its uses in drawing together the scattered Trade Union
forces, and its failure either to help in the solution of the problems
of industrial organisation or to give an intellectual lead to the rank
and file.[639]

We drew attention in the first edition of this book in 1894 to the
weakness of the organisation of this imposing annual Congress; and,
from 1895 onward, certain changes have been successively made in its
constitution and procedure, not always, as we think, for the better.
At the Norwich Congress in 1894 the Parliamentary Committee, which the
Congress annually elects as its executive, was charged by a resolution
proposed by W. J. Davis to consider the amendment of the Standing
Orders, and to make the amended orders applicable to the next Congress.
On the authority of this ambiguous resolution, which seems to have had
in view only the establishment of Grand Committees to deal with the
multiplicity of resolutions on the annual agenda, the Parliamentary
Committee, of which the Chairman was then John Burns, M.P., decided
forthwith to expel all the Trades Councils from the Congress, to
make obligatory the “vote by card” according, not to the number of
delegates, but to the aggregate membership of each Union, and to
confine the delegates rigidly to the contemporary salaried officers and
the members of Trade Unions actually working at their crafts--thereby
excluding not only the veteran Henry Broadhurst, M.P., with John Burns
himself, but also Keir Hardie, Tom Mann, and other leaders of the new
movement that was seeking to make Trade Unionism a political force.
Who, exactly, was responsible for this _coup d’état_ was not officially
revealed. It was said, with some authority, that James Mawdsley, the
rough and forceful secretary of the Cotton-spinners, was at the bottom
of the move, and that he made use of the personal rivalry between Henry
Broadhurst and John Burns to get them both, and also the rebellious
element from the Trades Councils, which all three disliked, excluded
from future Congresses.[640] The Congress at Cardiff in 1895 was
very angry, and, in effect, rebuked the Parliamentary Committee, but
allowed the new Standing Orders to be confirmed on the newly adopted
“card vote.” In so far as the intention was to keep the new ideas out
of Congress, the result was plainly a failure, as within four years
(to be described in Chapter XI.) there was a majority in Congress
for the creation of the independent organisation entitled the Labour
Representation Committee, which became in due course the present Labour
Party. The effect was merely to weaken the intellectual influence on
the Trade Union world of the Congress and its Parliamentary Committee.

With this exception of the exclusion of the Trades Councils, and of the
outstanding personalities whom they occasionally sent as delegates,
the visitor to the Trades Union Congress in 1919 would have found very
little difference between it and the Congresses of thirty years before,
except for an increase in the size of the gathering and in the number
of members represented; and, as must be added, an all-round improvement
in the education and manners, especially of the younger delegates. As
an institution it can hardly be said to have shown, between 1890 and
1917 at least, any development at all.

It must be admitted that, with all its shortcomings, the Congress,
which has now for over fifty years continued to meet annually in some
industrial centre, serves many useful purposes. It is, to begin with,
an outward and visible sign of that persistent sentiment of solidarity
which has throughout the whole of the past century distinguished the
working class. Composed of delegates from all the great national and
county Unions and an increasing number of local societies, and largely
attended by the salaried officials, the Congress, unlike the Trades
Councils, is really representative (except for the absence of most
of the political side of its organisation) of all the elements of the
Trade Union world. Hence its discussions reveal, both to the Trade
Union Civil Service and to party politicians, the movement of opinion
among all sections of Trade Unionists, and, through them, of the great
body of the wage-earners. Moreover, the week’s meeting gives a unique
opportunity for friendly intercourse between the representatives of the
different trades, and thus leads frequently to joint action or wider
federations. Nevertheless the Congress remains, as we have described it
in its early years, rather a parade of the Trade Union forces than a
genuine Parliament of Labour.[641]

All the incidental circumstances tend to accentuate the parade
features of Congress at the expense of its legislative capacity. The
Mayor and Corporation of the city in which it is held are frequently
permitted to give a public welcome to the delegates, and to hold a
sumptuous reception in their honour. The Strangers’ Gallery is full
of interested observers, Distinguished foreigners, representatives of
Government departments, “fraternal delegates” from America and the
Continent, and from the Co-operative Union and the National Union of
Teachers, inquisitive politicians, and popularity-hunting ministers
sit through every day’s proceedings. The press-table is crowded with
reporters from all the principal newspapers of the kingdom, whilst
the local organs vie with each other in bringing out special editions
containing verbatim reports of each day’s discussions. But what more
than anything else makes the Congress a holiday demonstration instead
of a responsible deliberative assembly is its total lack of legislative
power. The delegates are well aware that Congress resolutions on
“subjects” have no binding effect on their constituents, and therefore
do not take the trouble to put them in practicable form, or even to
make them consistent one with another. From the outset the proceedings
are unbusiness-like. Much of the first day is consumed in pure routine
and a lengthy inaugural address from the President, who has been
since 1900 always the Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee of
the preceding year. The rest of the agenda consists of resolutions
sent in by the various Unions and brought higgledy-piggledy before
the Congress in an order determined by the chances of the ballot.
These resolutions are subjected to no selection or revision beyond an
attempt by subcommittees to merge in one the several proposals on each
subject. The delegates have at their disposal about twenty-five hours
to discuss every imaginable subject, ranging from the nationalisation
of the means of production down to the prohibition of one carter
driving two vehicles at a time. To enable even a minority of those
present to speak for or against the proposals, each speaker is limited
to five, or perhaps to three minutes, a rule which is more or less
rigidly enforced. But, in spite of this vigorous application of the
closure, the President is seldom able to get the business through,
and has frequently as much as he can do to maintain order. The
Standing Orders Committee is entirely taken up with its mechanical
business, and is not authorised, any more than is the Parliamentary
Committee itself, to formulate a programme for the consideration of
the delegates. Nor does the Congress receive much guidance from
experienced officials of the old-established Unions. Whether from a
good-natured desire to let the private members have their turn at
figuring in the newspapers, or from a somewhat cynical appreciation
of the fruitlessness of Congress discussions, many of them habitually
lie low, and seldom speak except to defend themselves against attacks.
Moreover, they are busily engaged, both in and out of Congress hours,
in arranging for the election of themselves or their friends on the
Parliamentary Committee, which has hitherto always been governed by
mutual “bargaining” for votes.[642] When the four days’ talk draws near
to an end, many of the resolutions on the agenda are still undisposed
of. On the Saturday morning, when most of the delegates have started
for home, a thin meeting hurries rapidly through the remainder of
the proposals, speeches are reduced to sixty seconds each, and the
Congress adopts a score of important resolutions in a couple of hours.
From first to last there is no sign of a “Front Bench” of responsible
leaders. As a business meeting the whole function of the Congress is
discharged in the election of the Parliamentary Committee, to which
the representation of the Trade Union world for the ensuing year is
entrusted.

In the first edition of this book, in 1894, we gave a description of
the work of the Parliamentary Committee which it is interesting to
recall:

 The duties of the Parliamentary Committee have never been
 expressly defined by Congress, and it will easily be
 understood that resolutions of the kind we have described
 afford but little guidance for practical work. But there is
 a general understanding that the Committee is to watch over
 the political interests of its constituents, in much the
 same way as the Parliamentary Committee of a town council
 or a railway company. It is obvious that, in the case of
 the Trade Union world, such a mandate covers a wide field.
 The right of Free Association, won by Allan, Applegarth,
 Odger, and their allies, is now a past issue, but the Trade
 Union interest in legislation has, with the advance of
 Democracy, extended to larger and more complicated problems.
 The complete democratisation of the political machinery,
 the duty of the Government to be a model employer,
 the further regulation of private enterprise through
 perfected factory legislation, the public administration
 of monopolies, are all questions in which the Trade Union
 world of to-day considers itself keenly interested. To
 these distinctly labour issues must be added such interests
 of the non-propertied class as the incidence of taxation,
 the public provision for education and recreation, and the
 maintenance of the sick and the aged. We have here an amount
 of Parliamentary business far in excess of that falling upon
 the Parliamentary Committee of any ordinary town council or
 railway company. To examine all bills, public or private,
 introduced into Parliament that may possibly affect any of
 the foregoing Trade Union interests; to keep a constant
 watch on the administration of the public departments; to
 scrutinise the Budget, the Education Code, and the Orders
 of the Local Government Board; to bring pressure to bear on
 the Ministry of the day, so as to mould the Queen’s Speech
 into a Labour Programme; to promote independent Bills on all
 the subjects upon which the Government refuses to legislate;
 and, lastly, to organise that persistent “lobbying” of
 Ministers and private members which finally clinches a
 popular demand--all this constitutes a task which would tax
 the energies of half a dozen highly trained Parliamentary
 agents devoting their whole time to their clients. This
 is the work which the Trade Union Congress delegates
 to a committee of busy officials, all absorbed in the
 multifarious details of their own societies, and served only
 by a Secretary who is paid for a small part of his time, and
 who accordingly combines the office with other duties.[643]

 The whole organisation is so absurdly inadequate to the
 task, that the Committee can hardly be blamed for giving up
 any attempt to keep pace with the work. The members leave
 their provincial headquarters fifteen or twenty times a year
 to spend a few hours in the little offices at 19 Buckingham
 Street, Strand, in deliberating upon such business as their
 Secretary brings before them. Preoccupied with the affairs
 of their societies, and unversed in general politics, they
 either confine their attention to the interests of their
 own trades, or look upon the fortnightly trip to London as
 a pleasant recreation from hard official duties. In the
 intervals between the meetings the Secretary struggles with
 the business as best he can, with such clerical help as he
 can afford to pay for out of his meagre allowance. Absorbed
 in his own Parliamentary duties, for the performance of
 which his constituents pay him a salary, he can devote
 to the general interests of the Trade Union world only
 the leavings of his time and attention. It is therefore
 not surprising to learn that the agenda laid before the
 Parliamentary Committee, instead of covering the extensive
 field indicated by the resolutions of the Congress, is
 habitually reduced to the barest minimum. The work annually
 accomplished by the Committee during the last few years
 has, in fact, been limited to a few deputations to the
 Government, two or three circulars to the Unions, a little
 consultation with friendly politicians, and the drafting
 of an elaborate report to Congress, describing, not their
 doings, but the legislation and other Parliamentary
 proceedings of the session. The result is that the executive
 committee of the United Textile Factory Workers’ Association
 and the Miners’ Federation exercised a far more potent
 influence in the lobby than the Committee representing the
 whole Trade Union world; whilst such expert manipulators as
 Mr. John Burns, Mr. Havelock Wilson, or Mr. George Howell,
 can point to more reforms effected in a single session than
 the Parliamentary Committee has lately accomplished during a
 whole Parliament.

 It is therefore not surprising that there exists in the
 Trade Union world a growing feeling of irritation against
 the Parliamentary Committee. In each successive Congress
 the Committee, instead of taking the lead, finds itself
 placed on its defence. But it is obvious that Congress
 itself is to blame. The members of the Committee, including
 the Secretary, are men of quite as sterling character and
 capacity as a board of railway directors or a committee
 of town councillors. But whereas a railway company or a
 town council places at the disposal of its Parliamentary
 Committee the whole energies of a specially trained town
 clerk or solicitor, and allows him, moreover, to call to
 his aid as many expert advisers as he thinks fit, the
 Trades Union Congress expects the Parliamentary affairs of
 a million and a half members to be transacted by a staff
 inferior to that of a third-rate Trade Union. At one period,
 it is true, the leaders of the Trade Union world as a whole
 successfully conducted a long and arduous Parliamentary
 campaign. We have described in a previous chapter the
 momentous legislative revolution in the status of Trade
 Unionism which was effected between 1867 and 1875. But the
 Conference of Amalgamated Trades, and its successors the
 Parliamentary Committee, had in these years at their command
 the freely given services of such a galaxy of legal and
 Parliamentary talent as Mr. Frederic Harrison, Professor
 E. S. Beesly, Mr. Henry Crompton, Mr. Thomas (now Judge)
 Hughes, Messrs. Godfrey and Vernon Lushington, and Mr. (now
 Justice) R. S. Wright. The objection felt by the present
 generation of Trade Unionists to be beholden to middle-class
 friends is not without a certain validity. But if the Trade
 Union Congress wants its Parliamentary business done it
 must, at any rate, provide such a salary as will secure the
 full services of the ablest man in the movement, equip his
 office with an adequate number of clerks, and authorise the
 Parliamentary Committee to retain such expert professional
 assistance as may from time to time be required.

Such was the position as we saw it in 1894. The Trades Union Congress
did not in any important respect improve its organisation, nor equip
its Parliamentary Committee with any adequate staff. Its failure to
cope with the Parliamentary business in which the Trade Union world
was interested became more and more manifest; and the discontent was
increased by the disinclination felt by many of the leading members of
the Committee for the larger aspirations and more independent attitude
in politics that marked the active spirits of the rank and file of
Trade Union membership. All this co-operated to produce the vote of
the 1899 Congress in favour of some definite step to increase the
number of Labour Members in the House of Commons, out of which sprang
the independent organisation subsequently known as the Labour Party,
which we shall describe in Chapter XI. But although the Trades Union
Congress thus created, at the very end of the nineteenth century, a
separate political organisation for the Trade Union world, into which
the steadily increasing political activity of the Trade Unions has
since flowed, the Congress and its Parliamentary Committee made no
change in their own work. There has accordingly continued to be the
same stream, year after year, of miscellaneous resolutions before
Congress, 99 per cent of them dealing with political issues, involving
either legislation or a change of Government policy, resolutions which
have continued to be presented and discussed without any regard to
their place in any consistent programme for the Trade Union world as
a whole. The Parliamentary Committee has continued to regard itself
almost entirely as a Parliamentary Committee, just as if the Trade
Unions had not united in a distinct political organisation and had
not created their own Parliamentary Labour Party. The futile annual
deputations to Ministers have continued to present to them the crude
resolutions of the Trades Union Congress, without regard to the
contemporary situation in the House of Commons, or the action taken by
the Parliamentary Labour Party, and without taking into account in what
relation they stand to the political programme of the Trade Union world
as formulated, year by year, in the Conferences of the Labour Party.
Meanwhile the essentially industrial work of the national organisation
of Trade Unions has continued to be neglected. Both the Trades Union
Congress and the Parliamentary Committee have shown the greatest
disinclination to tackle such essentially Trade Union problems as
those presented by the existence in the same trade of competing Trade
Unions;[644] by the formation of separate Unions on overlapping and
mutually inconsistent bases; by the growing rivalry between the warring
conceptions of organisation by craft and organisation by industry; by
the increasing failure of the membership of each branch to correspond
with the staffs of the separate gigantic establishments characteristic
of the present day; by the “rank and file movement,” demanding a
greater direct control of workshop conditions than can easily be
made compatible with the centralisation of policy in the national
executives; by the development of the “Shop Stewards’” organisation;
by the spread in different industries of systems of “payment by
results,” unsafeguarded by the necessary adaptations of the Standard
Rate and Collective Bargaining; by the tendency of the employers to
make deductions from the Standard Rate when it suits them to take on
individuals or new classes of workers whom they declare to be inferior,
whether women or boys, old men or partially incapacitated workers of
any sort; and by the introduction of “Scientific Management.”[645]

During the whole of this century, in fact, the Parliamentary Committee
of the Trades Union Congress, and the Congress itself, have failed
to grapple with the work that calls out to be done by some national
organisation of the Trade Union world. After allowing to be created,
on the one hand, the General Federation of Trade Unions, abandoning to
it the whole function of insurance, together with the representation
of British Trade Unionism in the International Federation of Trade
Unions, and, on the other, the Labour Party, with its inevitable
absorption of the political activity of the Trade Union world, the
Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress has failed to
recognise, and to concentrate upon, the sphere that it had left to
itself, namely, to become the national organ for the improvement and
development of British Trade Unionism in its industrial aspect. Whilst
the Trades Union Congress has continued anxiously and nervously to
abstain from any attempt to demarcate the spheres of rival Unions or
to improve their mutual relations, action which would have brought the
Parliamentary Committee dangerously into conflict with one or other of
its constituents, and has confined its attention as much as ever to the
statutory and governmental reforms which its various sections desired,
it has been progressively overshadowed, on the political side, by the
rise of the Labour Party, to be described in a subsequent chapter.

Towards the end of 1919 the discontent of the Trade Union world
with the position and attitude of the Parliamentary Committee came
to a head. The sudden railway strike, described in this chapter,
revealed the lack of any organ of co-ordination in industrial
movements which inevitably affected the whole Trade Union Movement.
The Parliamentary Committee itself laid before a special Trades Union
Congress in December 1919 a report declaring that “the need has long
been recognised for the development of more adequate machinery for
the co-ordination of Labour activities, both for the movement as a
whole, and especially for its industrial side. Again and again the
lack of co-ordination has resulted, not only in the overlapping of
administrative work, but also in unnecessary internal and other
disputes, involving vast financial and moral damage to the whole Labour
Movement. To do away with some of this overlapping and to provide means
of co-ordinating the work of certain sections was the object with which
the Triple Industrial Alliance was founded by the Miners, Railwaymen,
and Transport Workers, and the same object is behind the numerous steps
towards closer unity which have been taken in various industries and
groups. The Negotiating Committee, hastily improvised to deal with the
situation created by the railway strike this autumn, was generally felt
to have fulfilled, however imperfectly, a vital need of Labour; but it
is clear that it ought not to have been necessary to create a new and
temporary body to do this work; the necessary machinery should have
been already in existence in the form of a really effective central
co-ordinating body for the movement as a whole.

“It appears to us that the body which is required should and must
be developed out of the existing organisation of the Trades Union
Congress and out of its closer co-operation with other sections of the
working-class movement. At present, the Standing Orders do not permit
the Parliamentary Committee to undertake the work which is required.
Indeed, its functions, as they are now defined, are in great measure a
survival from a previous period, when the chief duties of the Congress
were political, and there existed no separate political organisation
to express the policy and objects of Labour. We accordingly suggest
that the whole functions and organisation of the Parliamentary
Committee demand revision, with a view to developing out of it a real
co-ordinating body for the industrial side of the whole Trade Union
Movement. It is also necessary to take into account the relation of the
reorganised Central Industrial Committee to the other sections of the
movement, and especially to the Labour Party and to the Co-operative
Movement.

“If a better central organisation could be developed both on the
industrial side and by the closer joint working with the other wings of
the working-class movement, a vast development of the very necessary
work of publicity, information, and research would at once become
possible. The research, publicity, and legal departments now working
for the movement require co-ordination and extension equally with its
industrial and political organisation. The research, publicity, and
legal work now done by the Trades Union Congress, the Labour Party,
and the Labour Research Department must be co-ordinated and greatly
enlarged in close connection with the development of the executive
machinery of the movement.”

The proposal did not secure the approval of the Miners’ Federation, but
the special Congress, by a very large majority, passed the following
resolution:

“That in view of the imperative need and demand for a central
co-ordinating body representative of the whole Trade Union Movement and
capable of efficiently dealing with industrial questions of national
importance, the Parliamentary Committee be instructed to revise the
Standing Orders of Congress in such manner as is necessary to secure
the following changes in the functions and duties of the Executive body
elected by Congress:

 “(1) To substitute for the Parliamentary Committee a Trades
 Union Congress General Council, to be elected annually by
 Congress.

 “(2) To prepare a scheme determining the composition and
 methods of election of the General Council.

 “(3) To make arrangements for the development of
 administrative departments in the offices of the General
 Council, in the direction of securing the necessary
 officials, staff, and equipment to secure an efficient Trade
 Union centre.

“Further, in order to avoid overlapping in the activity of
working-class organisations, the Parliamentary Committee be instructed
to consult with the Labour Party and the Co-operative Movement, with a
view to devising a scheme for the setting up of departments under joint
control, responsible for effective national and international service
in the following and any other necessary directions:

 “(_a_) _Research_: To secure general and statistical
 information on all questions affecting the worker as
 producer and consumer by the co-ordination and development
 of existing agencies.

 “(_b_) _Legal advice_ on all questions affecting the
 collective welfare of the members of working-class
 organisations.

 “(_c_) _Publicity_, including preparation of suitable
 literature dealing with questions affecting the economic,
 social, and political welfare of the people; with machinery
 for inaugurating special publicity campaigns to meet
 emergencies of an industrial or political character.”


THE OFFICERS OF THE TRADE UNION MOVEMENT

If we survey the growth of the British Trade Union Movement during the
past thirty years, what is conspicuous is that, whilst the Movement
has marvellously increased in mass and momentum, it has been marked
on the whole by inadequacy of leadership alike within each Union and
in the Movement itself, and by a lack of that unity and persistency
of purpose which wise leadership alone can give. Hence, in our
opinion, the organised workers, whilst steadily advancing, have not
secured anything like the results, either in the industrial or in the
political field, that the individual sacrifices and efforts in their
cause might have brought about. This deficiency in the brain-work of
successful organisation is very marked in the various sections of the
building trades, with their chaos of separate societies, and in the
engineering industry, with its persistence of competing Unions formed
on inconsistent bases, its lack of uniformity in Standard Rates, and
its failure to devise any plan of safeguarding Collective Bargaining in
the various systems of “Payment by Results.” But it has been equally
apparent in the incapacity of the Trade Union Movement as a whole to
establish any central authority to prevent overlapping organisations
and demarcation disputes, and to co-ordinate the efforts of the various
sections of workers towards a higher standard of life and greater
control over the conditions of their working lives. The British
workmen, it must be said, have not become aware of the absolute need
for what we may call Labour Statesmanship. They have not yet learnt
how, either in their separate Trade Unions or in the Labour Movement
as a whole, to attract and train, to select and retain in office, to
accord freedom of initiative to and yet to control, a sufficient staff
of qualified officials capable not merely of individual leadership, but
also of well devised “team play” in the long-drawn-out struggle of the
wage-earning class for its “place in the sun.” To this constant falling
short of the reasonably expected achievements is, we think, due the
perpetual see-saw in Trade Union policy: the Trade Unionists of one
decade relying principally on political action, to the neglect of the
industrial weapon, whilst those of a succeeding decade, temporarily
disillusioned with political action, rush wildly into strikes and
neglect the ballot-box. This change of feeling is due each time to the
failure of the results to come up to expectation. We shall understand
some of the reasons for this shortcoming if we examine how the Trade
Union Movement is, in fact, officered.

The affairs, industrial and political, of the six million Trade
Unionists, enrolled in possibly as many as fifty thousand local
branches or lodges (including a thousand independent small local
societies), are administered by perhaps 100,000 annually elected
branch officials and shop stewards. These may be regarded as the
non-commissioned officers of the Movement; and it is fundamentally
on their sobriety and personal integrity, combined with an intimate
knowledge of their several crafts and a steadiness of judgement,
that the successful conduct of the branch business depends. They
continue to work at their trades, and receive only a few pounds
a year for all their onerous and sometimes dangerous work. It is
these non-commissioned officers of the Trade Union army who keep the
Trade Union organisation alive. But they have neither the training,
nor the leisure, nor even the opportunity, so long as they remain
non-commissioned officers, working at their trades, to formulate a
detailed policy, or to supply the day-by-day executive leadership to
the particular Trade Union, or to the Trade Union Movement. For the
work of translating into action, industrial or political, the desires
or convictions of the whole body of the members, the Trade Union world
necessarily depends, in the main, on its salaried officers, who devote
the whole of their time to the service of the Movement, in one or other
capacity. Such a whole-time salaried staff was slow to be formed. In
1850 it did not exist at all. It probably did not in 1860 number as
many as a hundred throughout the whole kingdom. In 1892, in the first
edition of this book, we put it approximately at 600. In 1920, with a
fourfold growth in membership, and (under the National Insurance Act) a
vast increase in the office and financial business of the Trade Unions,
we estimate the total number of the salaried officers of all the Trade
Unions and their federations (not including mere shorthand typists
and office-boys) at three or four thousand, of whom perhaps one-tenth,
in or out of Parliament, are engaged exclusively on election and other
political work. But even on the industrial side, Trade Union officials
differ considerably in the work they have to do, and the differences in
function result in marked varieties of type.

We have first the salaried officials of the skilled trades. They are
broadly distinguished from the officers of the Labourers’ Unions by
the fact that they are invariably men who have worked at the crafts
they represent, and who have usually served their society as branch
secretaries. We may distinguish among them two leading types, the
Administrator of Friendly Benefits, and the Trade Official.

To the type of Administrator of Friendly Benefits, the school of
William Allan, belong most of the General and Assistant Secretaries at
the head offices of the great Trade Friendly Societies organisations
in which the mass of routine, financial, and other office business has
become so great that only the ablest men succeed in rising above it.
Owing to the continued increase in membership of the principal Unions,
to their tendency to amalgamate into larger and larger aggregations,
to the constant extension of friendly benefits, and since 1911 to
the enormous addition to the work made by the National Insurance
Act, the administrative staffs of the Unions have had to be doubled
and quadrupled. But the Trade Union official of this type, however
great may be his nominal position, has, during the past thirty years,
come to exercise less and less influence on the Trade Union world.
Rigidly confined to his office, he becomes in most cases a painstaking
clerk, and rises at the best to the level of the shrewd manager of an
insurance company. He passes his life in investigating the claims of
his members to the various benefits, and in upholding, at all hazard of
unpopularity, a sound financial system of adequate contributions and
moderate benefits. Questions of trade policy interest him principally
so far as they tend to swell or diminish the number of his members in
receipt of “Out of Work Pay.” He is therefore apt to be more intent on
getting unemployed members off the books than on raising the Standard
Rate of wages or decreasing the length of the Normal Day. For the same
reason he proves a tenacious champion of his members’ rights in all
quarrels about overlap and demarcation of work; and it may happen that
he finds himself more often engaged in disputes with rival Unions than
with employers. He represents the most conservative element in Trade
Union life. On all occasions he sits tight, and votes solid for what he
conceives to be the official or moderate party.

More influential in Trade Union politics is the salaried officer of
the other type. The Trade Official, as we have called him, is largely
the result of the prevalence, in certain industries, of a complicated
system of “Payment by Results.” We have already described how the
cotton lists on the one hand and the checkweigher clause on the other
called into existence a specially trained class, which has since been
augmented by the adoption of piecework lists in boot and shoemaking
and other industries. The officers of this type are professionals in
the art of Collective Bargaining. They spend their lives in intricate
calculations on technical details, and in conducting delicate
negotiations with the employers or their professional agents. It
matters little whether they are the general secretaries of essentially
trade societies, such as the federal Unions of Cotton-spinners and
Cotton-weavers, or the exclusively trade delegates of societies with
friendly benefits, such as the Steel-smelters, the Boilermakers,
and the Boot and Shoe Operatives. In either case their attention is
almost entirely devoted to the earnings of their members. Alert and
open-minded, they are keen observers of market prices, employers’
profits, the course of international trade, and everything which may
affect the gross product of their industry. They are more acutely
conscious of incompetency, whether in employer or employed, than they
can always express. Supporters of improved processes, new machinery,
and “speeding up,” they would rather see an antiquated mill closed or
an incompetent member discharged than reduce the Standard Rate. Nor
do they confine themselves exclusively to the money wages of their
clients. Among them are to be found the best advocates of legislative
regulation of the conditions of employment, and whilst they have during
the present century fallen somewhat into the background when wider
political issues have come to the fore, the elaboration of the Labour
Code during the past fifty years has been due, in the main, to their
detailed knowledge and untiring pertinacity.

The Trade Official, however, has the defects of his qualities. The
energetic workman, who at about thirty years of age leaves the factory,
the forge, or the mine, to spend his days pitting his brains against
those of shrewd employers and sharp-witted solicitors, has necessarily
to concentrate all his energies upon the limited range of his new
work. As a Branch Secretary, he may have taken a keen interest in the
grievances and demands of other trades besides his own. Soon he finds
his duties incompatible with any such wide outlook. The feeling of
class solidarity, so vivid in the manual working wage-earner, tends
gradually to be replaced by a narrow trade interest. The District
Delegate of the Boilermakers finds it as much as he can do to master
the innumerable and constantly changing details of every variety of
iron-ship, boiler, and bridge building in every port, and even at
every yard. The Investigator of the National Union of Boot and Shoe
Operatives is often hard put to it to estimate accurately the labour
in each of the thousand changing styles of boots, whilst at the same
time keeping pace with ever-increasing complexity both of machinery
and division of labour. The Cotton Official, with his bewildering
lists, throws his whole mind into coping with the infinite variety
of calculations involved in new patterns, increased speed, and every
alteration of count and draw and warp and weft. The Miners’ Agents can
seldom travel beyond the analogous problems of their own industry. Such
a Trade Official, if he has any leisure and energy left at the end of
his exhausting day’s work, broods over larger problems, still special
to his own industry. The Secretary of a Cotton Union finds it necessary
to puzzle his head over the employers’ contention that Bimetallism, or
a new Indian Factory Act, deserves the operatives’ support; or to think
out some way of defeating the evasions of the law against over-steaming
or of the “particulars clause.” The whole staff of the Boilermakers
will be absorbed in considering the effect of the different systems
of apprenticeship in the shipyards, or the proper method of meeting
the ruinously violent fluctuations in shipbuilding. The Miners will be
thinking only of the technical improvement of the conditions of safety
of the mine, or of the way to protect the interests of the hewer in
an “abnormal place.” And the modern Knight of St. Crispin racks his
brains about none of these things, but is wholly concerned with the
evil of home work, and whether the inspection of small workshops would
be more rigidly carried out under the Home Office or under the Town
Council. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Trade Officials
are characterised by an intense and somewhat narrow sectionalism. The
very knowledge of, and absorption in, the technical details of one
particular trade, which makes them such expert specialists, prevents
them developing the higher qualities necessary for the political
leadership of the Trade Union world.

In another class stand the organisers and secretaries of what used
to be called the Labourers’ Unions, and are now styled Unions of
General Workers--a less stable class, numbering in 1892 about two
hundred, and in 1920 possibly ten times as many. In contrast with
the practice of the old-established societies these officers have
at no time been always selected from the ranks of the workers whose
affairs they administer.[646] In “revivalist” times the cause of the
unskilled workers attracts, from the ranks of the non-commissioned
officers of other industries, men of striking capacity and missionary
fervour, such as John Burns and Tom Mann, who organised and led the
dock labourers to victory in 1889. But these men regarded themselves
and were regarded more as apostles to the unconverted than as salaried
officers, and they ceded their posts as soon as competent successors
among their constituents could be found. In the main the unskilled
workmen have had to rely for officers on men drawn from their own
ranks. In not a few cases a sturdy general labourer has proved himself
a first-rate administrator of a great national Union. But it was a
special drawback to these Unions in the early days of their development
that the “failures,” who drift from other occupations into the ranks of
general labour, frequently got elected, on account of their superior
education, to posts in which personal self-control and persistent
industry are all-important. Nor were the duties of an organiser of
unskilled labourers in old days such as developed either regular
habits or business capacity. The absence of any extensive system of
friendly benefits reduced to a minimum the administrative functions
and clerical labour of the head office. The members, for the most
part engaged simply in general labour, and paid by the day or hour,
had no occasion for elaborate piecework lists, even supposing that
their Unions had won that full recognition by the employers which such
arrangements imply. On the other hand, the branches of a Labourers’
Union in those days were, for one reason or another, always crumbling
away; and the total membership was only maintained by perpetually
breaking fresh ground. Hence the greater part of the organiser’s
time was taken up in maintaining the enthusiasm of his members, and
in sweeping in new converts. This involved constant travelling, and
the whirl of excitement implied in an everlasting round of missions in
non-Union districts. The typical organiser of a Labourers’ Union in
1889-94 approximated, therefore, more closely than any other figure in
the Trade Union world, to the middle-class conception of a Trade Union
official. He was, in fact, a professional agitator. He might be a saint
or he might be an adventurer; but he was seldom a man of affairs.[647]

During the past quarter of a century these Unions of Labourers, which
are now better styled Unions of General Workers, have changed in
character, and are now often huge national organisations of financial
stability, administered by men as competent as any in the Trade
Union world. Their officers, who have greatly increased in number,
have elaborated a technique of their own, combining an efficiency in
recruiting with an effective representation of their members’ case in
negotiations with the employers, and before arbitration tribunals,
which, particularly in such influential bodies as the National Union
of General Workers, the Dock, Wharf and Riverside Labourers’ Union,
the Workers’ Union and the National Federation of Women Workers,
brings them much nearer what we have described as the Trade Official
than the typical labourers’ organiser of 1889. The exclusively women’s
Unions, among which the National Federation of Women Workers is the
only one of magnitude, have been exceptionally fortunate in attracting
and retaining women of outstanding capacity--good organisers and
skilled negotiators--who have not only obtained for their members a
remarkable improvement in the conditions of employment, but have,
by their statesmanship, won a position of outstanding influence in
the Trade Union Movement. It is, indeed, important to note that the
accomplished officials of the larger Unions of General Workers, and
not those of women only, have become aware of a diversity of view
between the skilled craftsman with a “vested interest” in his trade,
and the unskilled or, as they prefer to call them, the semi-skilled
or general workers, bent on being considered qualified for any work
which the employer has to give. Hence these officials sometimes take a
larger view of Labour questions than the trade officials of the skilled
crafts. They tend to be in favour of the amalgamation of separate
societies into “One Big Union”; of much more equality of remuneration
among all manual workers; of the “open door” to capacity; of equal
rates for men and women on the same job; and of a levelling up of the
Standard of Life of the lowest section of the workers. This leads them
instinctively to a co-ordinated use of the industrial and the political
weapons.

Some of these officials, however, are paid in a manner which may
exercise an adverse influence on their activity. A new method of
remuneration of the officers of a Trade Union has been devised.
In one case the very able General Secretary of a Union of skilled
craftsmen, whose services have been in the past most valuable to the
trade, is reputed to be paid so much per member per annum, and with
the great increase in membership to be making an income four times
as large as the salaries of the General Secretaries of great Trade
Unions. In another very extensive Union of unskilled and semi-skilled
workers, practically the whole staff is paid “by results,” the Branch
Secretaries, for instance, by rule retaining for themselves “six per
cent on the contributions, levies and fines received from the members
of the Branch on behalf of, and remitted to, the Chief Office”; and
being paid also “a procuration fee of 1s.” for “introducing new
members” into the Approved Society; and for the extra work involved
in disputes, a further “6d. when under 25 members are affected, and
1s. for the first 25 or over; 2s. for the first 50; 6d. per 50 or
part thereof afterwards.” This method of remunerating Trade Union
officials--analogous to that successfully employed by the Industrial
Insurance Companies for their agents--has certain attractions. A fairly
adequate remuneration for the position and work can thus be allotted
to the officer, without its amount being specifically voted by the
members or appearing in the accounts in such a way as to offend the
rank and file by a contrast between their weekly wage for manual labour
and the Standard Rate of what is essentially a different occupation.
It is, however, rightly regarded as a pernicious system. The practice
of “paying by results” is alleged to lead sometimes to reckless
recruiting, to “in and out” Trade Unionism, and even to wholesale
poaching among the membership of other Unions; and it produces in the
Trade Union world a type of “business man” more concerned for numbers
than for raising the Standard of Life of the members he has enrolled,
or for co-operation with other Trade Unions for their common ends.

Quite another type, of more recent introduction, is the Political
Officer of the Trade Union world. He may be merely the Registration
Officer or Election Agent serving the local Labour Party and the
Labour Candidate in a particular constituency; he may be simply a
Labour M.P.; he may be the secretary or staff officer of a great Trade
Union or powerful federation, or, indeed, of the Labour Party itself,
devoting himself to political functions; he may combine with one or
other of these posts, or some other Trade Union office, that of a
Member of Parliament; but he is distinguished from the typical General
Secretary, Trade Official or Labour Organiser--from one or other of
which he has usually developed--by his absorption in the political work
of the Movement, either inside the House of Commons or outside it,
within one constituency or in a wider field. He may not always hold
a political office. A marked feature of the past decade has been the
frequency and the amount of the calls upon the time of the Trade Union
leaders who are not in Parliament, for public service in which their
own Unions have no special concern. The Trade Union official has to
serve on innumerable public bodies, nearly always without pay of any
kind, from local Pension or Food or Profiteering Act Committees, or
the magisterial bench, up to National Arbitration Tribunals, official
Committees of Enquiry or Royal Commissions. Such a man is perpetually
devoting hours every day to the consideration and discussion, and
sometimes to the joint decision, of issues of public character, in
which it is his special function to represent, not the opinions and
interests of the particular Trade Unionists by whom he is paid, but
the opinions and interests of the whole wage-earning class. All this
important work, a twentieth century addition to the functions of the
Trade Union staff, and not alone the increasing calls of Parliament,
is tending more and more to the development of what we have called the
Political Officer of the movement.

These three or four thousand salaried officials of the Trade Union
world, whatever their several types, and whatever the duties to which
they are assigned, are, with insignificant exceptions, all selected
in one way, namely by popular election by the whole body of members,
either of their respective Unions, or of particular districts of those
Unions. They are, in the skilled trades, required to be members of the
Union making the appointment; and in order to gain the suffrages of
their fellow-members they must necessarily have made themselves known
to them in some way. They are, accordingly, selected almost invariably
from among what we have described as the non-commissioned officers
of the Movement, those who are serving or who have served as Branch
Secretaries, or other local officers. They have thus all essentially
the same training--a training which has no more reference to the work
of an administrator of Friendly Benefits than to that of a Political
Officer. What happens is that the popular workman is, by the votes of
his fellow-workers, taken suddenly from the bench, the forge or the
mine, at any age from 30 to 50, with no larger experience than that of
a Branch Official, and put to do the highly specialised work of one
or other of the types that we have described.[648] It is a further
difficulty that such training and experience that an individual Trade
Unionist may have had, and such capacity as he may have shown, whilst
they may secure his election to a salaried office, or his promotion
from one such office to another, will be held to have no bearing on the
question of which office he will be chosen to fill. The popular Branch
Secretary, who has led a successful strike, may be elected as General
Secretary in a head office where his work will be mainly that of the
manager of an insurance company. The successful Trade Official, expert
at negotiating complicated changes in piecework lists, may find himself
elected as the Union’s candidate for Parliament; and will, in due
course, be sent to the House of Commons to deal on behalf of the whole
wage-earning class, with political issues to which he has never given
so much as a thought. The Trade Union secretary, whose daily work has
trained him to the meticulous supervision of the friendly benefits, may
find himself perpetually called away from his office to represent the
interests of Labour as a member of Royal Commissions and Committees of
Enquiry on every imaginable subject.

With such imperfect methods of selection for office, and with so
complete a lack of systematic training for their onerous and important
functions, it is, we think, a matter for surprise that Trade Union
officials should have won a well-deserved reputation for knowledge and
skill in negotiations with employers. But their haphazard selection
and inadequate training are not the only difficulties that they have
to overcome. Trade Union officials are nearly always overworked and
expected to become specialist experts in half-a-dozen techniques; they
are exposed to harassing and demoralising conditions of life, and they
are habitually underpaid. The conditions of employment and the terms
of service which the Trade Unions, out of ignorance, impose on those
who serve them, far from being conducive to efficient administration
and wise leadership, are often disgracefully poor. In November 1919
the National Union of Railwaymen set a notable example in raising
the salaries of their two principal officers to £1000 a year each.
But this is wholly exceptional. Even now, after the great rise in
the cost of living, the salary of the staff officer of an important
and wealthy Trade Union rarely exceeds £400 or £500 a year, without
any provision for any other retiring allowance than the Union’s own
Superannuation Benefit of ten or twelve shillings per week, if such
a benefit exists at all. The average member forgets that what he has
to compare the Secretary’s salary with is not the weekly wage of the
manual working members of the Union, but--on the very doctrine of
the Standard Rate in which they all believe--the remuneration given
by “good employers” for the kind of work that the Secretary has to
perform. When we remember that the modern Trade Union official has to
be constantly travelling and consorting with employers and officials of
much higher standards of expenditure than his own, and when we realise
the magnitude and financial importance of the work that he performs,
the smallness of the salary and the lack of courtesy and amenity
accorded to the office is almost ludicrous. The result is that the able
and ambitious young workman in a skilled trade is not much tempted by
the career, even if he regards it as one of Trade Union leadership,
unless he is (as so many are) an altruistic enthusiast; or unless his
ambitions are ultimately political in character. The able young workman
will both rise more rapidly and enjoy a pleasanter life by eschewing
any ostensible service of his fellow-workmen, and taking advantage
of the eagerness of intelligent employers to discover competent
foremen and managers, nowadays not altogether uninfluenced by the
sub-conscious desire to divert from Trade Unionism to Capitalism the
most active-minded of the proletariat. Nor does the danger to the Trade
Union world end with the refusal of some of its ablest young members
to become Trade Union officials. The inferiority of position, alike in
salary, in dignity and in amenity, to which a Trade Union condemns its
officers, compared with that enjoyed by men of corresponding ability
and function in other spheres, puts a perpetual strain on the loyalty
of Trade Union officials. They are constantly being tempted away from
the service of their fellows by offers of appointments in the business
world, or by Employers’ Associations, or in Government Departments. And
there are other evils of underpayment. A Trade Union official whose
income is insufficient for his daily needs is tempted to make unduly
liberal charges for his travelling expenses, and may well find it more
remunerative to be perpetually multiplying deputations and committee
meetings away from home than to be attending to his duties at the
office. He may be driven to duplicate functions and posts in order to
make a living wage. The darkest side of such a picture, the temptation
to accept from employers or from the Government those hidden bribes
that are decorously veiled as allowances for expenses or temporary
salaries for special posts, is happily one which Trade Union loyalty
and a sturdy sense of working-class honour have hitherto made it seldom
necessary to explore. But such things have not been unknown; and their
underlying cause--the unwise and mean underpayment of Trade Union
officials--deserves the attention of the Trade Union world.

We have so far considered the officials of the Trade Union world merely
as individual administrators. This, indeed, is almost the only way
in which their work is regarded by their members. It is remarkable
how slow the Trade Union world is to recognise the importance,
to administrative or political efficiency, of the constitution
of a hierarchy, a group or a team. Where a great society has a
salaried staff of half-a-dozen to a score of officials--under such
designations as General Secretary, Assistant Secretaries, President,
Members of Executive Council or District Delegates, Organisers or
Investigators--it is almost invariable to find them all separately
elected by the whole body of members, or what is even more destructive
of unity, by different district memberships. We only know of one
example in the Trade Union world--that of the Iron and Steel Trades
Confederation--in which the responsible Executive Committee itself
appoints the official staff upon which the performance of the work
depends. All the salaried officers of a Trade Union, whatever their
designations or functions, can usually claim to have the same, and
therefore equal authority, namely, their direct election by the
members. This results in the lack of any organic relation not only
between the Executive Committee and the District Officers who ought
to be its local agents, but even between the Executive Committee
and the General Secretary and Assistant Secretaries. The Executive
Committee can shunt to purely routine work a General Secretary whom it
dislikes, and an unfriendly General Secretary can practically destroy
the authority of the Executive Committee. In some cases the work of
the office is in practice divided up amongst all the salaried staff,
Executive Councillors, General Secretary, and Assistant Secretaries
indiscriminately, each man doing his own job in the way he thinks
best, and any consultation or corporate decision being reduced to a
minimum. There is, in fact, no guarantee that there will be any unity
of policy within an Executive Committee elected by a dozen different
districts, or between an Executive Committee and its leading officials,
who are elected at different times for different reasons. The members
may choose a majority of reactionary Executive Councillors and
simultaneously a revolutionary General Secretary. In nearly all Unions
any suggestion as to the desirability of adopting the middle-class
device of entrusting a responsible Executive Committee with the power
of choosing its own officers has been resented as undemocratic.[649] In
some Unions the indispensable amount of unity is secured, not without
internal friction, by the presence of some dominant personality, who
may be a secretary or president, or merely a member of the Executive
Committee. The same drawback is seen in the constitutions of such wider
federations as the Trades Union Congress and the Labour Party. The
result is that the Trade Union Movement has not yet evolved anything in
the nature of Cabinet Government, based on unity of policy among the
chief administrators, nor do we see any approach to the Party System,
which in our national politics alone makes Cabinet Government possible.
It looks as if any Democracy on a vocational basis must inevitably be
dominated by a diversity of sectional interests which does not coincide
with any cleavage in intellectual opinions. From the standpoint of
corporate efficiency the drawback is that the sectional divergencies
are always interfering with the formulation and unhesitating execution
of decisions on wider issues, on which it would be advantageous for
the Movement as a whole, in the interests of all, to have an effective
general will, even if it be only that of a numerical majority.

Finally, it is a great drawback to the Trade Union world that it
possesses no capital city and no central headquarters even in London.
Its salaried officials, on whom it depends for leadership and policy,
are scattered all over the country. The General Secretaries of the
great Trade Friendly Societies and of the Unions of General Workers are
dispersed between London, Manchester, Newcastle, Glasgow, Aberdeen,
Liverpool, and Leicester. The officials of the Cotton Operatives
are quartered in a dozen Lancashire towns, and those of the Miners
in every coalfield. The District Delegates of the Engineering and
Shipbuilding Trades and the organisers of the Dockers and the Seamen
are stationed in all the principal ports. We have seen how little
the Trades Union Congress, meeting once a year for less than a week,
supplies any central organ of consultation or direction. The meeting
in London, every few weeks, of the two or three dozen members of the
Parliamentary Committee and the Executive Committee of the Labour Party
is wholly inadequate for the constant consultation upon policy, the
mutual communication of each other’s immediate projects, and the taking
of decisions of common interest that the present stage of the Trade
Union Movement requires. Probably no single thing would do so much
to increase the efficiency of the Trade Union world as a whole as the
provision of an adequate Central Institute and general office building
in Westminster, at which could be concentrated all the meetings of
national organisations, federations and committees; and which would
make at any rate possible the constant personal communication of all
the different headquarters.[650]


FOOTNOTES:

[599] It is doubtful whether, in any country in the world, even in
Australia or Denmark, there is in 1920 so large a proportion of
the adult male manual workers enrolled in Trade Unions as in the
United Kingdom; and--Ireland being still relatively unorganised
industrially--certainly not so large a proportion as in Great Britain
alone.

The Trade Union Movement in Ireland has, apart from the Irish branches
of British Unions, largely concentrated in the Belfast area, little
connection with that in Great Britain, but its progress during the past
thirty years has been scarcely less remarkable. The Irish railwaymen
have abandoned their attempts at organisation in an Irish Union, and
have lately swarmed into the National Union of Railwaymen to the
number of over 20,000. The engineers in Ireland, whether at Belfast or
elsewhere, are, to the number of 9000, in the Amalgamated Society of
Engineers and other British Unions. The other great Unions have nearly
all their Irish branches. But the great transformation has been in the
foundation and remarkable development of the Transport and General
Workers’ Union, built up by James Connolly and James Larkin, which has
survived both its tremendous Dublin strike of 1913 and the loss of both
its leaders, and claims in 1920 over 100,000 members in 400 branches,
being half the Trade Unionists in all Ireland. The only other Irish
Trade Unions exceeding 5000 members are the Flax Roughers’ Union,
included with other Unions in an Irish Textile Workers’ Federation,
and the Clerical Workers’ Union, together with the Irish Teachers’
Society, which (unlike the National Union of Teachers in England
and the Educational Institute of Scotland) is frankly affiliated
with the (Irish) Labour Party. Scores of other Irish Trade Unions
exist, practically all small, local, and sectional in character, and
almost confined to the ten towns of Dublin, Belfast, Cork, Limerick,
Waterford, Dundalk, Derry, Clonmel, Sligo, and Kilkenny. The total
Trade Union membership in Ireland, which thirty years ago was only put
at 40,000, may now exceed 200,000, about one-fifth of which is in and
about Belfast. The Irish Trades Union Congress, established in 1894,
and the Irish Labour Party meet annually.

The Irish Trade Union Movement, emerging from handicraftsmen’s local
clubs, some of them dating from the middle of the eighteenth century,
and monopolist and sectional in policy, has, during the present
century, become fired with nationalist spirit and almost revolutionary
fervour. Its heroes are Michael Davitt, James Connolly, and James
Larkin. The story of the Transport and General Workers’ Union, with its
extraordinary extension to all grades of wage-earners all over Ireland,
and its sensational strikes in Dublin in 1913-14, is an epic in itself.
Some idea of this development may be gathered from _The Irish Labour
Movement_, by W. P. Ryan, 1919; _Labour in Irish History_, by James
Connolly; _Socialism Made Easy_, by the same (about 1905); the Annual
Reports of the Irish Trades Union Congress since 1895; and those of the
Irish Labour Party.

[600] Statistics of aggregate membership in the past are lacking. But
we suggest that after the transient mass enrolments of 1833-34 had
lapsed, the total membership in Great Britain of such Trade Unions as
survived probably did not reach 100,000. It is doubtful whether, as
late as 1860, there were half a million Trade Unionists. We give in an
Appendix such past statistics as we have found.

[601] _Industrial Democracy_, pp. 38, 92, 103, 123, 258, etc.

[602] The Amalgamated Association of Card and Blowing Room Operatives
is (1920) not now a member. A further development of federal complexity
is the formation of a Federation of Kindred Trades connected with the
Export Shipping Industry of Manchester.

An invidious feature, in which the textile industry is unique, is the
appearance during the present century, as the result of a quarrel as
to “political action,” of half-a-dozen separate local Trade Unions
of Roman Catholic weavers, which are united in what is termed the
Lancashire Federation of Protection Societies. These, which are neither
numerous nor of extensive membership, remain outside the Amalgamated
Association of Weavers; and are watchful critics of any proposals,
at the Trades Union Congress (to which they do not seek admission)
or elsewhere, that offend the Roman Catholic Church (notably any
suggestion of “Secular Education,” or educational changes deemed
inimical to the Roman Catholic schools). There is a National Conference
of Catholic Trade Unionists having similar objects.

There was, in 1919, also a Jewish National Labour Council of Great
Britain; and from time to time Unions are formed, especially in the
clothing trade (such as the Amalgamated Jewish Tailors, Machinists, and
Pressers, established 1893), and in baking and cabinetmaking, aiming
at enrolling Jewish workers. But this is not really a religious, or
even primarily a racial, cleavage, but merely sectional organisation,
usually transient, among particular branches of industry which happen
to be principally carried on by Jews. At present most such societies in
the clothing trade have been absorbed in the United Garment Workers’
Trade Union, which, with upwards of 100,000 members, is actively
negotiating for a merger with the older Amalgamated Society of Tailors
and Tailoresses (established 1865) and the effective Scottish Operative
Tailors’ and Tailoresses’ Association, with 5000 members, under the
title of the United Tailors and Garment Workers.

[603] A recent case in which the Trade Union Assistant Secretary left
the weavers for the employers, in the midst of a crisis, with the Union
affairs in confusion, was stigmatised as desertion.

[604] The workers in the woollen and worsted trades, whose organisation
went to pieces early in the nineteenth century on the extensive
introduction of women and the successive transformations of the
industry by machinery, have, during the past thirty years, developed
extensive Trade Unions, which have steadily gained strength. In 1892
we could count only 18,000 Trade Unionists in the whole industry. In
1920, whilst the National Society of Woolcombers and Kindred Trades
has 12,000 members and there are strong organisations of wool-sorters,
warp-dressers, and over-lookers, the General Union of Textile Workers,
established in 1881, now includes a membership, in the West of England
as well as in Yorkshire, principally male and female weavers, numbering
more than 100,000 (_The Heavy Woollen District Textile Workers’ Union_,
by Ben Turner, 1917). During the war these Unions were accorded equal
representation with the employers and with the Government on the Wool
Control Board, by which the Government supplies of wool were “rationed”
among the manufacturers, and the prices fixed.

In the dyeing and finishing branch of the textile industry the
Amalgamated Society of Dyers, Bleachers, Finishers, and Kindred
Trades (established 1878), with 30,000 members, has outstripped the
older National Society of Dyers and Finishers (established 1851;
12,000 members), and has entered into remarkable agreements with the
monopolist combination of employers. (The Amalgamated Association of
Bleachers and Dyers, centred at Bolton, which has over 22,000 members,
occupies a similar leading position as regards the dyeing of cotton
goods.) A recently formed National Association of Unions in the
Textile Trades seeks to co-ordinate the influence of all the woollen
workers and dyers, and counts a membership of about 150,000, in 35
societies, which are grouped in four sections (“Raw Wool,” “Managers
and Overlookers,” “Textile Workers,” and “Dyers’ Societies”).

[605] The history of the struggles in the engineering industry may
be gathered from the monthly _Journal_ of the A.S.E. and the Annual
Reports of this and other engineering Trade Unions; from the references
in _Engineering_ and other employers’ periodicals. For the lock-out
of 1897, see also the _Times_ and _Labour Gazette_ for that year, and
also an anonymous volume, _The Engineering Strike_, 1897. See also for
some of the points at issue, _Industrial Democracy_, by S. and B. Webb,
1897; _An Introduction to Trade Unionism_, by G. D. H. Cole, 1917, and
_The Works Manager To-day_, by Sidney Webb, 1918.

[606] The Unions which, along with the A.S.E., ratified the agreement
were the Steam Engine Makers’ Society, the United Machine Workers’
Association, the United Kingdom Society of Amalgamated Smiths and
Strikers, the Associated Brassfounders and Coppersmiths’ Society, the
North of England Brass Turners’ Society, and the London United Metal
Turners, Fitters and Finishers, having an aggregate membership of
70,000.

The societies which failed to secure ratification on the members’
vote, in some cases merely by the failure to obtain a sufficiently
large poll, were the Amalgamated Toolmakers’ Society, the Electrical
Trades Union, the United Brass Founders and Finishers’ Association,
the Amalgamated Instrument Makers’ Society, the United Pattern
Makers’ Association, the Associated Smiths and Strikers, the National
Brassworkers and Metal Mechanics, the Association of Engineering and
Shipbuilding Draughtsmen, and the Scale and Beam Makers’ Society, with
something like 100,000 members in the aggregate. Probably some of these
will take another vote in the near future.

The old-established Friendly Society of Ironfounders (35,000 members)
continues quite apart, though joining freely in engineering trade
movements. An unusually protracted national strike in 1919, which is
likely to end in a compromise, may possibly lead to proposals for
closer union.

[607] _Trade Unionism: a New Model_, by R. Page Arnot, 1919; and
_Is Trade Unionism played out?_ 1919, by the same. Some “extremist”
thinkers among workmen have put their hopes of achieving the
“Industrial Democracy” that they desire upon a development of the
Shop Stewards’ Movement, which should become, together with a “Works
Committee,” the instrument of transferring the management of each
undertaking from its present capitalist owners and directors to the
elected representatives of the persons employed. See _The Workers’
Committee, an Outline of its Principles and Structures_, by J. T.
Murphy (1918), and _Compromise or Independence, an Examination of the
Whitley Report_ (1918), by the same, both published by the Sheffield
Workers’ Committee.

[608] The Amalgamated Society of Steel and Ironworkers and the
Tin and Sheet Millmen’s Association failed to secure their
members’ ratification by vote, whilst the National Association of
Blastfurnacemen withheld its adhesion. These may be expected to adhere
in due course.

[609] The London dock labourers found themselves in 1911, with an
increased cost of living and the virtual abandonment of attempts to
improve their method of employment, little better off than in 1889.
See _Casual Labour at the Docks_, by H. A. Mess, 1916; and, for the
position at other ports, _Le Travail casuel dans les ports anglais_, by
J. Malégue, 1913; _The Liverpool Docks Problem_, 1912, and _The First
Year’s Working of the Liverpool Dock Scheme_, 1914, both by R. Williams
(of the Labour Exchange); and “Towards the Solution of the Casual
Labour Problem,” by F. Keeling, in _Economic Journal_, March 1913.

[610] _History of the London Transport Workers’ Strike_, by Ben
Tillett, 1911; _The Great Strike Movement of 1911 and its Lessons_, by
H. W. Lee, 1911; _The Times_ for June-August 1911; _Labour Gazette_,
1911-12.

[611] _The Working Life of Shop Assistants_, by Joseph Hallsworth and
R. J. Davis, 1913.

[612] A separate Association of Women Clerks and Secretaries, long
small in membership, has also risen to 4500 members.

[613] See _English Teachers and their Professional Organisations_, by
Mrs. Sidney Webb, published as supplements to _The New Statesman_ of
September 25 and October 2, 1915.

[614] From 1913 onward a persistent attempt to establish a Trade
Union was made by many of the Police and Prison Officers, which was
resisted by the Home Secretary, as responsible for the Metropolitan
Police, and by all the Local Authorities. In 1913 the Police and Prison
Officers’ Union was formed by ex-Inspector Symes, and in 1917 it was
reorganised, without securing either recognition or sanction. Cases of
“victimisation” having occurred, there was a sudden strike on August
29, 1918, which was participated in by nearly the whole of the police
in many London divisions. This took the world (and also the criminal
population) by surprise; but through good-humoured handling by the
Prime Minister (who received the Executive Committee of the Union and
told them that “the Union could not be recognised during the war”), the
Government persuaded the men promptly to resume their duties, with a
cessation of “victimisation” for joining the Union and a substantial
increase of pay. When hostilities ceased, the Union expected some
measure of official sanction, but none was accorded, and grievances
remained unredressed. On July 31, 1919, a second strike was suddenly
called, which resulted in failure, only a couple of thousand men
coming out in London, and a few hundred in Liverpool, Birkenhead, and
elsewhere, together with a small number of prison warders. At Liverpool
and Birkenhead there was serious looting of shops and public-houses
by turbulent crowds. The authorities stood firm, the Home Secretary
refusing all sanction for the establishment of a Trade Union in the
police force and prison staff, and summarily dismissing all the
strikers, at the same time announcing large concessions in the way of
wages, promotion, and pensions, and conceding, not a Trade Union, but
the establishment of an elective organisation of the police force, by
grades, entitled to make formal representations and complaints. This
concession was embodied in the Police Act, 1919, which explicitly
prohibited to the police either membership of, or affiliation to, any
Trade Union or political organisation. The dismissed policemen were
not reinstated, but the Government informally assisted some of them to
obtain other employment.

[615] For the history of the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain and
the contemporary District Unions, we have drawn on the voluminous
printed minutes of proceedings and reports which are seldom seen
outside the Miners’ Offices; the various publications of the Labour
Department of the Board of Trade (now the Ministry of Labour) and
the Home Office; _The British Coal Trade_, by H. Stanley Jevons
(1915); _The British Coal Industry_, by Gilbert Stone (1919); _Labour
Strife in the South Wales Coalfield, 1910-11_, by D. Evans (1911);
_The Adjustment of Wages_, by Sir W. J. Ashley; _Miners’ Wages and
the Sliding Scale_, by W. Smart (1894); _Miners and the Eight Hours
Movement_, by M. Percy; _History of the Durham Miners’ Association_,
by J. Wilson (1907); _A Great Labour Leader_ [Thomas Burt], by Aaron
Watson (1908); _Memoirs of a Miners’ Leader_, by J. Wilson (1910);
_Industrial Unionism and the Mining Industry_, by George Harvey (1917);
_A Plan for the Democratic Control of the Mining Industry_, by the
Industrial Committee of the South Wales Socialist Society (1919); the
Reports and evidence of the Coal Industry Commission, 1919, and the
voluminous newspaper discussion to which it gave rise, together with
_Facts from the Coal Commission_ and _Further Facts from the Coal
Commission_, both by R. Page Arnot (1919).

[616] The enginemen, boilermen and firemen, colliery mechanics,
cokemen, under-managers, deputies, overmen and other officials,
colliery clerks and various kinds of surface-workers about the mines
have all their own Unions, which have greatly developed of recent
years, and are in many districts not very willing to join the county
miners’ associations, though they often act in conjunction with these.
Their own federations are referred to on p. 550.

[617] _The British Coal Trade_ (by H. Stanley Jevons, 1915), p. 599.

[618] The other railwaymen’s Unions are the Belfast and Dublin
Locomotive Engine-drivers’ and Firemen’s Trade Union, founded in 1872,
and still existing (1920) with a few hundred members; the Associated
Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen, founded in 1880, a
powerful sectional society with 33,000 members, which long maintained a
jealous rivalry with the Amalgamated; the Railway Clerks’ Association,
founded in 1897, remaining very small for a whole decade, absorbing
in 1911 the Railway Telegraph Clerks’ Association, founded 1897, with
85,000 members; the Irish Railway Workers’ Trade Union, founded in
1910, tiny and insignificant; the National Union of Railway Clerks,
formed in 1913, a tiny local body, arising out of the suspension of the
Sheffield Branch of the Railway Clerks’ Association, temporary only.

We may mention the Scottish Society of Railway Servants, founded in
the eighteen-eighties, merged in the Amalgamated Society in 1892; the
United Signalmen and Pointsmen, founded in 1880, merged in the N.U.R.
in 1913; the General Railway Workers’ Union, founded in 1889, merged in
the N.U.R., 1913.

For the development of Trade Unionism in the railway world, and the
various controversies, we have drawn mainly on the numerous reports and
other publications of the Unions themselves; the _Railway Review_ and
the _Railway Clerk_ (the pleading for the Companies being found in the
_Railway News_, subsequently incorporated in the _Railway Gazette_);
_Trade Unionism on the Railways, its History and Problems_, by G. D.
H. Cole and R. Page Arnot (1917); the _Souvenir History_, published by
the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants (1910); _Men and Rails_,
by Rowland Kenney (1913); _Der Arbeitskampf der englischen Eisenbahner
im Jahre 1911_, by C. Leubuscher, 1913; the various publications on
the legal proceedings, for which see the next chapter; the Reports of
the Board of Trade on Railway Accidents, hours of labour, etc., of the
Select Committee of 1892, and the Special Committee of Inquiry of 1911;
_An Introduction to Trade Unionism_, by G. D. H. Cole (1918); _From
Engine-cleaner to Privy Councillor_ [J. H. Thomas], by J. F. Moir Bussy
(1917).

[619] _Slavery on Scottish Railways_ (1888); _The Scottish Railway
Strike_, by James Mavor (1891).

[620] The North Eastern Railway Company was so far an exception that,
already in 1890, it was willing to receive representations from the
Trade Union.

[621] A notable feature was a statistical census of the wages of the
railwaymen, compiled by the Amalgamated Society through its membership,
for the presentation of which Mr. Richard Bell, the Secretary, obtained
the services of a Cambridge graduate, Mr. W. T. Layton. This “Green
Book” revealed that 38 per cent received 20s. per week or under, and
49.8 per cent between 21s. and 30s.; with atrocious hours. Attempts
to discredit these statistics were made by the Companies, it being in
particular constantly suggested that nearly all the 100,000 paid under
£1 per week were boys. It took the Board of Trade four years to compile
and publish an official wage-census for October 1907, which eventually
revealed that 96,000 adult railwaymen were receiving 19s. per week or
less (Board of Trade Report, February 1912), an extraordinarily exact
confirmation of the much-abused census taken by the Union. See _Men and
Rails_, by Rowland Kenney, 1913.

[622] This intimation undoubtedly meant that the Government had
decided, as the _Times_ expressly said, to use the Royal Engineers to
run trains--a decision to be compared with that at once announced in
the national railway strike of 1919, that no use would be made of the
troops actually to run trains, nor would the Post Office officials
be asked to do railwaymen’s work, nor persons on State Unemployment
Benefit be called upon to accept employment on the railways. The change
in attitude of the Government in eight years is significant.

[623] The committee consisted, for the first time, of equal numbers
of persons appointed as being representative of employers and workmen
respectively--two on each side--none of them directly concerned with
the industry, with an “impartial chairman,” all five being selected by
the Government. For the Companies, Sir T. Ratcliffe Ellis and Mr. C.
G. Beale; for the workmen, Mr. Arthur Henderson, M.P., and Mr. John
Burnett; the Chairman was Sir David Harrel, K.C.B., an official of the
Irish Government.

[624] The Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen,
having now 51,000 members, unfortunately stood aloof; and the annals
of railway Trade Unionism were, down to 1918, largely made up of the
wrangling between this society and the National Union of Railwaymen.

[625] The mechanics and labourers in the railway companies’ engineering
and repairing shops, though many of them have always been members
of the various engineering and other craft Unions, long remained
relatively unorganised. Many of the less skilled were enrolled by the
General Railway Workers’ Union in 1889-1913; and when this was merged
in the National Union of Railwaymen, with its broadened constitution,
many more of the mechanics and labourers in the railway workshops
were recruited, and the N.U.R. sought to obtain for them the advances
and other benefits for which it was pressing. The railway companies
disputed the right of the N.U.R. to speak for the “shopmen,” and the
claim provoked the resentment of the craft Unions, which were now
paying increased attention to the organisation of men of their crafts
in the railway workshops. Repeated attempts have been made to arrive
at some “line of demarcation” or other compromise, by which this
rivalry between Unions could be brought to an end; but hitherto without
success. The quarrel is inflamed by a conflict of Trade Union doctrine.
The engineers, boilermakers, carpenters, and other trades assert that
organisation should be by craft, whatever may be the industry in which
the craftsman is working. The advocates of the “New Model” of the
N.U.R. assert the superiority of organisation by industry, including in
each industry all the crafts actually concerned. See _Trade Unionism on
the Railways, its History and Problems_, by G. D. H. Cole and R. Page
Arnot, 1917.

[626] The Presidential Address at the Annual Conference of the Railway
Clerks’ Association in 1913 had suggested that the representatives of
the railway workers should constitute one-third of a National Railway
Board--a proposal that did not content the larger Union.

[627] It was reported that in some cases the soldiers fraternised with
the pickets and were promptly withdrawn to barracks; and the Cabinet
was certainly warned, by high military authority, against attempting to
use the troops.

[628] For an account of this Department see pp. 571-2.

[629] A notable feature was a revolt of the compositors and printers’
assistants, who threatened to strike and stop the newspapers altogether
unless the railwaymen were allowed to present their case and unless
abusive posters were abandoned.

[630] _Railway Dispute, 1919: Report to the Labour Movement of Great
Britain by the Committee appointed at the Caxton Hall Conference_
(National Transport Workers’ Federation).

[631] British Trade Unionism has often been contrasted, to its
disadvantage, with the more scientifically classified German Trade
Unionism before the Great War. It was, for instance, often pointed
out that the three millions of German Trade Unionists were grouped in
no more than 48 Unions. This, however, ignored the numerous competing
Hirsch-Duncker and Christian Unions, which were far more destructive
of unity than are the crowd of minor societies in Great Britain and
Ireland. At present (1920) the 48 largest Trade Unions of this country
concentrate a larger membership than the much-praised 48 Trade Unions
of Germany did in 1914.

[632] See _An Introduction to Trade Unionism_, by G. D. H. Cole, 1917.

[633] See the _History of the British Trades Union Congress_ (by W. J.
Davis), vol. ii. (1916), p. 156; and the successive _Annual Reports_ of
the General Federation of Trade Unions from 1900 onward.

[634] Such as those for Kent, Lancashire and Cheshire, North Wales, the
South-Western Counties, and Yorkshire.

[635] At Nottingham, Leicester, Brighton, Hanley, Manchester,
Worcester, and some other towns, the Trades Council has at times
been allowed the use of a room in the Town Hall, or other municipal
building. The Local Government Board in 1908 suggested to Local
Authorities that this assistance should be generally afforded to them.

[636] One of the most active supporters of the Trades Council
Movement is the National Union of Railwaymen, which has been largely
responsible for the valuable help rendered by the Trades Councils in
the organisation of agricultural labourers. The Amalgamated Union of
Co-operative Employees, that of Operative Bakers of Great Britain and
Ireland, and the Municipal Employees’ Association are also outstanding
supporters of the Trades Councils, whilst the Oldham Operative
Cotton-spinners, and the Operative Lace Makers of Nottingham make
branch affiliation compulsory. In many of the principal Unions branch
affiliation fees are contributed wholly, or in large proportion, from
Central Funds.

[637] The Manchester Trades Council, and especially its Chairman, Mr.
Purcell, of the Amalgamated Furnishing Trades Association, successfully
brought to a compromise the very serious strike of the Amalgamated
Union of Co-operative Employees against the Lancashire and Yorkshire
Co-operative Societies in 1919.

[638] The Gateshead Trades Council and Local Labour Party holds
an “Information Bureau meeting” once a week, devoted to answering
inquiries and affording information on Local Government affairs.

[639] The Trades Union Congress has, since 1873, published a long and
detailed _Annual Report_; and the Parliamentary Committee has, for some
years past, issued a _Quarterly Circular_ to its constituent bodies.
Besides these, there should be consulted the _History of the British
Trades Union Congress_, by W. J. Davis, of which two volumes have been
issued (1910 and 1916); _Henry Broadhurst, the Story of his Life_, by
himself, 1901.

[640] See the significant comments in _History of the British Trades
Union Congress_, by W. J. Davis, vol. ii., 1916, pp. 102-8.

[641] In the early period of its history the middle-class friends of
Trade Unionism read papers and took part in debates. But for many
years no one has been allowed to participate in its proceedings in
any capacity except duly elected delegates who have worked at the
trade they represent, or are actually salaried officials of affiliated
Trade Unions. In 1892 and 1893 admission was further limited to those
societies which contributed a specified amount per thousand members
to the funds of the Congress. The Parliamentary Committee consists of
seventeen members, elected by ballot of the whole of the delegates
on the fifth day of the Congress. The successful candidates are
usually the salaried officers of the great societies, the Standing
Orders expressly providing that no trade shall have more than one
representative except the miners, who may now have two. The Secretary
receives, even in 1920, only £500 a year, and the post has nearly
always been filled by an officer enjoying emoluments for other duties.
For the last forty years the holder has almost constantly been a
member of Parliament, with prior obligations to his constituents,
which are not always consistent with the directions of his fellow
Trade Unionists; and with onerous Parliamentary duties, which often
hamper his secretarial work. For many years he had to provide whatever
clerical assistance he required; but in 1896 a clerk, and in 1917 an
Assistant Secretary, were added to the staff.

[642] Each Union casts votes in proportion to its affiliated
membership, but can divide them as it pleases among the candidates.
Between 1906 and 1915 the delegates were divided into ten groups of
allied industries, and each group chose its own member. At the 1919
Congress a resolution was carried directing that the election should
henceforth be by the transferable vote; and it remains to be seen
whether this will upset the “dickering for votes.”

[643] The situation was for years further complicated by the fact
that C. Fenwick, M.P., who in 1890 succeeded Henry Broadhurst in the
office, was one of the Parliamentary representatives of the Durham
miners, a majority of whom were not in accordance with the decision of
the Congress on the crucial question of an Eight Hours’ Bill. It was
in vain that Fenwick, with most engaging candour, explained to each
successive Congress that his pledge to his constituents, no less than
his own opinions, would compel him actively to oppose all regulation
of the hours of adult male labour. The Congress nevertheless elected
him for four successive years as Secretary to the Parliamentary
Committee, replacing him only in 1894 by an officer who was prepared
to support the policy of the Congress. This is only another example
of the extraordinary constancy (referred to at p. 471) with which a
working-class organisation adheres to a man who has once been elected
an officer--a constancy due, as we think, partly to a generous
objection to “do a man out of his job,” and partly to a deep-rooted
belief that any given piece of work can be done as well by one man as
another. Much the same situation has recurred frequently in the record
of the Parliamentary Committee.

[644] One such case may be mentioned. In 1898 a small Trade Union
of old standing (Co-operative Smiths’ Society, Gateshead) formally
complained that the Amalgamated Society of Engineers had allowed its
members to take the places of men who had struck. The Parliamentary
Committee, acting under Standing Order No. 20, appointed three of its
members as arbitrators, who, after elaborate inquiry, found the charge
proved, and requested the A.S.E. to withdraw its members from the place
in dispute. The A.S.E. refused to accept the award, and withdrew from
the Congress (Annual Report of Trades Union Congress, 1899; _History
of British Trades Union Congress_, by W. J. Davis, vol. ii., 1916, pp.
161-62, 165-67).

Another case, in 1902, was adjudicated on in a similar way, where
the United Kingdom Amalgamated Smiths and Strikers complained of the
Associated Blacksmiths’ Society, which was found to blame (_ibid._ p.
208).

[645] In view of the failure of the Trades Union Congress to equip its
Parliamentary Committee with any staff that would enable it to deal
with these problems, the Fabian Society started in 1912 the Fabian
Research Department, to investigate and supply information upon these
and other questions. This organisation has now become the Labour
Research Department, an independent federal combination of Trade
Unions, Co-operative and Socialist societies, and other Labour bodies
(including the Labour Party, the English, Scottish, and Irish Trades
Union Congresses, the Co-operative Union, the _Daily Herald_, most of
the big Trade Unions, and some hundreds of Trade Councils, Local Labour
Parties, etc.), with individual students and investigators. It has its
offices at 34 Eccleston Square, London, S.W.1, next door to those of
the Trades Union Congress and the Labour Party; issues to its members a
monthly bulletin of information, and has published many useful books,
pamphlets, and monographs. It answers a stream of questions from Trade
Unions all over the country on every conceivable point of theory or
practice; it supplies particulars of rates of pay, hours of labour,
and conditions of employment in other trades; and it is frequently
employed in helping to prepare cases for submission to Joint Boards or
Arbitration Tribunals. Its influential conduct of the “publicity” of
the National Union of Railwaymen in the 1919 strike has already been
described.

[646] For instance, Henry Taylor, the coadjutor of Joseph Arch in
organising the agricultural labourers in 1872, was a carpenter;
Tom Mann, for two years salaried President of the Dock, Wharf, and
Riverside Labourers, has always been a member, and is now General
Secretary, of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers; whilst Edward
M’Hugh, for some time General Secretary of the National Union of Dock
Labourers, is a compositor; Mr. Charles Duncan, President of the
Workers’ Union, is an engineer; Mr. R. Walker, General Secretary of
the Agricultural Labourers’ Union, was successively a shopkeeper and a
railway clerk, and so on.

[647] The fervent energy of the typical official of the Labour Union
of that day was well described in 1894 in the following sketch by Mrs.
Bruce Glasier (Katherine Conway), a member of the “Independent Labour
Party.” “He has his offices, but is generally conspicuous there from
his absence. Walter Crane’s ‘Triumph of Labour’ hangs on the wall, and
copies of _The Fabian Essays_, and the greater proportion of the tracts
issued by the Manchester or Glasgow Labour Presses, lie scattered over
the room. In England, Byron and Shelley, in Scotland, Byron and Burns,
are the approved poets. Carlyle and a borrowed Ruskin or two are also
in evidence, and a library edition of Thorold Rogers’ _Work and Wages_.
John Stuart Mill’s _Political Economy_, side by side with a _Student’s
Marx_, give proof of a laudable determination to go to the roots of the
matter, and to base all arguments on close and careful study. But the
call to action is never-ceasing, and train-travelling, if conducive to
the enormous success of new journalism, affords but little opportunity
for serious reading. ‘The daily newspapers are continually filled with
lies, which one ought to know how to refute,’ and the situation all
over the globe ‘may develop at any moment.’

“Yet, unlike the old Unionist leader, he is ever ready for the
interviewer or the sympathetic inquirer, of whatever class or sex.
Right racily he will describe the rapid growth of the movement since
the great dock strike of 1889, and show the necessity in dealing with
such mixed masses of men as fill the ranks of unskilled labour to-day,
of continually striking while the iron is hot, and of substituting
a policy of _coup d’état_ for the deliberate preparation of the
older Unions. ‘Lose here, win there,’ is our only motto, he says,
resolutely determined to look at defeat from the point of view of a
general-in-chief, and not from the narrower range of an officer in
charge of a special division. At the moment of surrender he may have
been white to the lips, but the next day will find him cheery and
undaunted in another part of the country, carrying on his campaign and
enrolling hundreds of recruits by the sheer energy of his confident
eloquence.” (_Weekly Sun_, January 28, 1894.)

[648] It is, we think, only the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation
that had laid down and acted on the principle of entrusting the
appointment of salaried officials to the Executive Committee, on the
express ground that popular election by ballot is not the right way to
select administrative officers.

[649] It would clearly be an advantage if the distinction between those
responsible for policy (whether designated Executive Councillors,
President or otherwise) and those whose function should be executive
only, were fully borne in mind. Whilst the former should certainly be
elected by, and held responsible to, the membership, it is submitted
that experience shows the advantage of purely executive officers--which
may be what the secretaries and district delegates should become--being
appointed by, and held responsible to, those who are elected.

At least, a separation should be made between persons elected to be
responsible for policy, and officers employed for tasks requiring
specialised training (such as the whole of the insurance work of
the Union and of its Approved Society; its constantly increasing
statistical requirements, and its legal business). Such officers should
certainly be appointed, not elected; and should take no part in the
decision of issues of policy, even as regards their own department.
Speaking generally, much more specialisation of functions and officers
should be aimed at in all Unions of magnitude.

[650] Such a building was decided on in 1918-19 by joint and separate
conferences of the Trades Union Congress and Labour Party, as a
“Memorial of Freedom and Peace,” in memory of those who lost their
lives in the Great War. It is, however, by no means certain that the
necessary large cost will be subscribed.




CHAPTER X

THE PLACE OF TRADE UNIONISM IN THE STATE

[1890-1920]


In 1890 Trade Union organisation had already become a lawful
institution; its leading members had begun to be made members of Royal
Commissions and justices of the peace; they were, now and then, given
such Civil Service appointments as Factory Inspectors; and two or three
of them had won their way into the House of Commons. But these advances
were still exceptional and precarious. The next thirty years were to
see the legal position of Trade Unionism, actually in consequence of
renewed assaults, very firmly consolidated by statute, and the Trade
Union claim to participation in all public enquiries, and to nominate
members to all governmental commissions and committees, practically
admitted. Trade Union representatives have won an equal entrance to
local bodies, from Quarter Sessions and all the elected Councils down
to Pension and Food and Profiteering Act Committees; an influential
Labour Party has been established in Parliament; and most remarkable of
all, the Trade Union itself has been tacitly accepted as a part of the
administrative machinery of the State.

It is a characteristic feature of Trade Union history, at the end as
at the beginning of the record of the past hundred years, that we
have to trace the advance of the Movement through a series of attacks
upon Trade Unionism itself. It is in this light that we regard the
Royal Commission on Labour set up by the Conservative Government
of 1891. Its professed purpose was to enquire into the relations
between Capital and Labour, with a view to their improvement. But its
composition was significantly weighted against the wage-earners. It is
true that, in the large total membership, seven Trade Union officials
were included, among them being Mr. Tom Mann; but whilst the great
employers who sat on the Commission were supported by legislators,
lawyers, and economists of their own class, having substantially
their own assumptions and opinions, the Trade Unionist minority was
allowed no expert colleagues. From the start the Commission set
itself--probably quite without any consciousness of bias--to discredit
alike the economic basis of the workmen’s combinations, the methods
and devices of Trade Unionism, and the projects of social and economic
reform that were then making headway in the Trade Union world. In the
end, after two years’ exhaustive enquiry, which cost the nation nearly
£50,000, the majority of the Commissioners either found it impossible,
or deemed it inexpedient, to report anything in the nature of an
indictment against Trade Unionism in theory or practice; and could not
bring themselves to recommend any, even the slightest, reversal of
what had, up to the very date of the report, been conceded or enacted,
whether with regard to the recognition of Trade Unions, the collective
regulation of wages, the legal prescription of minimum conditions of
employment or the political activities of the workmen’s combinations.
The majority of the Commissioners--it is significant that they were
joined by three out of the seven Trade Unionists--contented themselves
with deprecating, and mildly arguing against, every one of the projects
of reform that were then in the air. What is interesting is the fact
that the most reactionary section of the Commission nearly persuaded
their colleagues of the majority to recommend putting Trade Unions
compulsorily into the strait-jacket of legal incorporation, involving
them in corporate liability for the acts of their officers or agents,
with the object of inducing the Unions to enter--not, as is usual
in Collective Bargaining, into treaties defining merely _minimum_
conditions--but into legally binding obligations with the employers, in
which the Unions would become liable in damages if any of their members
refused to work on the collectively prescribed terms. At the last
moment the majority of the Commissioners recoiled from this proposal,
which was left to be put forward as a separate report over the names of
seven Commissioners. The Labour Minority Report, signed by four[651]
out of the seven Trade Unionist Commissioners, whilst protesting
strongly against any interference with Trade Union freedom, took the
form of a long and detailed plea for a large number of immediately
practicable industrial, economic, and social reforms, envisaged as
step by step progress towards a complete transformation of the social
order.[652]

The Commission had no direct results in legislation or administration;
but the Board of Trade set up a Labour Department, appointed a number
of Trade Unionists as its officials or correspondents, and started the
admirably edited monthly _Labour Gazette_. The next move came in the
form of an assault on the legal position of Trade Unionism, which, in
one or other manifestation, held the stage for more than a decade.

For a quarter of a century the peculiar legal status which had been
conferred upon a Trade Union by the Acts of 1871-76 was not interfered
with by the lawyers. At the close of the nineteenth century, when
Trade Unionism had by its very success again become unpopular among the
propertied and professional classes, as well as in the business world,
a new assault was made upon it.


ACTIONS FOR DAMAGES

The attempt to suppress Trade Unionism by the criminal law was
practically abandoned.[653] But officers of Trade Unions found
themselves involved in civil actions, in which the employers sued them
for damages caused by Trade Union activity which the judges held to
be, although not criminal, nevertheless wrongful. What could no longer
be punished by imprisonment with hard labour might at any rate be
penalised by heavy damages and costs, for which the Trade Unionist’s
home could be sold up. The Trade Unions in 1875-80, though, as we have
described, warned by their friendly legal advisers, had not realised
the importance of insisting that the elastic and indeterminable law
of conspiracy should be put on a reasonable footing; and though they
were, by 1891, fairly safe from its use to reinforce the criminal
law, the lawyers found means, under the figment of “conspiracy to
injure,” to bring under the head of torts or actionable wrongs the
most ordinary and non-criminal acts of Trade Union officers which
would have been, if done by one person only, without conspiracy, no
ground for legal proceedings. After-ages will be amazed at the flagrant
unfairness with which the conception of a “conspiracy to injure”
was applied at the close of the nineteenth century. The greatest
possible injury to other people’s income or business, not involving
the violation of a recognised legal right, if committed by employers
for the augmentation of their profits (even in “restraint of trade,”
by means of the deliberate conspiracy of an association), was held
not to be actionable.[654] But it was held to be an actionable wrong
to the employer for a couple of men to wait in the street, in a town
many miles distant, for the purpose of quite quietly and peacefully
persuading a workman not to enter into a contract of service. The
most pacific “picketing” of an employer’s premises, though admittedly
no longer a criminal act, was, if done in concert, held to be an
actionable wrong. If a Trade Union Secretary published a perfectly
accurate list of firms which were “non-Union,” with the intention of
warning Trade Unionists not to take service with them, this gave each
of the “blacklisted” firms the right to sue him for damages. It was
held to be ground for damages for a Trade Union official merely to
request one firm not to supply goods to another; or to ask an employer
not to employ any particular person; or even to urge the members of
his own Union quite lawfully to come out on strike on the termination
of their engagement of service, if the object of the strike was
considered by the Court to be to put pressure on the will of some
other employer or some other workman. And whilst any solicitation or
persuasion to break a contract of service by a Trade Union official
was certainly actionable, it became doubtful whether he would not be
equally liable if he had carefully abstained from, and had really not
intended, any such suggestion, whenever the members of his Society
became so influenced by his action, or were thought by the Court to
have been so influenced, that they, spontaneously and against his
desires, impetuously came out on strike before their notices had
expired.[655] It was a further aggravation, of which less advantage
was actually taken by employers in this country than by those of the
United States, that where the Court was convinced that an actionable
wrong was threatened or intended, it was possible very summarily to
obtain an injunction against its commission, any breach of which was
punishable by imprisonment for contempt of Court. It became, therefore,
at least theoretically possible that almost any action by a Trade Union
by which an employer felt himself injured might be summarily prohibited
by peremptory injunction; and some things were thus prohibited, even in
this country.


THE TAFF VALE CASE

All this development of the Law of Conspiracy and the Law of
Torts, though it went far to render nugatory the intention of the
Legislature in 1871-76 to make lawful a deliberately concerted
strike, left unchallenged the position of the Trade Union itself
as immune from legal proceedings against its corporate funds, an
anomalous position which everybody understood to have been conceded
by the Acts of 1871-76. In 1901, after thirty years of unquestioned
immunity, the judges decided, to the almost universal surprise of the
legal profession as well as of the Trade Union world, that this had
not been enacted by Parliament. In 1900 a tumultuous and at first
unauthorised strike had broken out among the employees of the Taff
Vale Railway Company in South Wales, in the course of which there
had been a certain amount of tumultuous picketing, and other acts of
an unlawful character. In the teeth of the advice of the Company’s
lawyers, Beasley, the General Manager, insisted on the Company suing
for damages, not the workmen guilty of the unlawful acts, but the
Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants itself; and on fighting the
case through to the highest tribunal. After elaborate argument, the Law
Lords decided that the Trade Union, though admittedly not a corporate
body, could be sued in a corporate capacity for damages alleged to
have been caused by the action of its officers, and that an injunction
could be issued against it, restraining it and all its officers, not
merely from criminal acts, but also from unlawfully, though without
the slightest criminality, causing loss to other persons. Moreover, in
their elaborate reasons for their judgement, the Law Lords expressed
the view that not only an injunction but also a mandamus could be
issued against a Trade Union, requiring it to do anything that any
person could lawfully call upon it to do; that a registered Trade
Union could be sued in its registered name, just as if it were a
corporation; that even an unregistered Trade Union could be made
collectively liable for damages, and might be sued in the names of
its proper officers, the members of its executive committees and its
trustees; and that the damages and costs could be recovered from the
property of the Trade Union, whether this was in the hands of separate
trustees or not. The effect of this momentous judgement, in fact,
was, in flagrant disregard of the intention of the Government and of
Parliament in 1871-76, to impose upon a Trade Union, whether registered
or not, although it was still denied the advantages and privileges of
incorporation, complete corporate liability for any injury or damage
caused by any person who could be deemed to be acting as the agent
of the Union, not merely in respect of any criminal offence which he
might have committed, but also in respect of any act, not contravening
the criminal law, which the judges might hold to have been actionable.
The Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, which had not authorised
the Taff Vale strike nor any wrongful acts that were committed by the
strikers, but which, after the strike had occurred, had done its best
to conduct it to a successful issue, and had paid Strike Benefit, was
compelled to pay £23,000 in damages, and incurred a total expense of
£42,000.[656] It has been estimated that, from first to last, the
damages and expenses in which the various Trade Unions were cast, owing
to this, and the other judgements against Trade Unions and Trade Union
officials personally, amounted to not less than £200,000.

The little world of Trade Union officials, already alarmed at
the prospect of being individually sued for damages, was thrown
into consternation by the Taff Vale judgement, which seemed to
destroy, at a blow, the status that had been, with so much effort,
acquired in 1871-76. The full extent of the danger was not at first
apprehended. Why, it was asked, should not the Trade Union rules,
and the instructions of Trade Union Executive Committees, expressly
forbid the commission by officials of any wrongful acts? It was only
gradually realised that, under the figment of “conspiracy to injure”
that the lawyers had elaborated, even the most innocent acts, which
an individual could quite lawfully commit, might be held wrongful and
actionable if they were committed by or on behalf of an association
to the pecuniary injury of any other person; and that there was no
assignable limit, as the cases had shown, either to what might be
held to be wrongful acts, or to the nature or amount of the damage
that the Courts might hold to have been caused by such acts in the
ordinary course of any extensive strike. Moreover, under the ordinary
law of agency, the most explicit prohibition of unlawful acts in the
rules of the association, coupled with the most scrupulous care in the
Executive Committee in framing its instructions to its officials, would
not prevent the Trade Union from being held liable for any pecuniary
injury that might be caused, even in defiance of instructions and in
disobedience to the rules, by any of its officers acting within the
scope of their employment; or, indeed, by any member, paid or unpaid,
whom the Courts might hold to be acting as the agent of the Union.
And as every stoppage of work, however lawful, necessarily involved
financial loss to the employers, it could be foreseen that even the
most carefully conducted strike might be made at least the occasion
for costly litigation, and probably the opportunity for getting the
Trade Union cast in swingeing damages. The immediate result was very
largely to paralyse the Executive Committees and responsible officials
of all Trade Unions, and greatly to cripple their action, either in
securing improvements in their members’ conditions of employment or
in resisting the employers’ demands for reductions. In particular,
the general advances for which the railway workers were asking were
delayed. The capitalists did not fail to use the opportunity to break
down the workmen’s defences. Trade Unionism had to a great extent lost
its sting.[657]

Though it took some time for the Trade Union world to realise the
peril, the effect on the Movement was profound. Up and down the country
every society, great and small, and practically every branch, rallied
in defence of its right to exist. The first result was to make the
newly-formed Labour Party, which will be hereafter described, and which
had hitherto hung fire, into an effective political force. The effect
of the Taff Vale judgement was, in 1902-3, to double, and by 1906-7 to
treble the number of adhering Trade Unions, and to raise the affiliated
membership of the Party to nearly a million. As the Dissolution of
Parliament approached, the Trade Unions organised a systematic canvass
of all prospective candidates, making it plain that none would receive
working-class support unless they pledged themselves to a Bill to
undo the Taff Vale judgement and put back Trade Unionism into the
legal position that Parliament had conferred upon it in 1871. When the
General Election at last took place, in January 1906, the Labour Party
(still known as the Labour Representation Committee) put no fewer than
fifty independent candidates in the field, of whom, to the astonishment
of the politicians, twenty-nine were at the head of the poll.[658]


THE TRADE DISPUTES ACT

The first claim of the Labour Party was for the statutory reversal of
the Taff Vale judgement, which every one now admitted to be necessary.
The question was what should be done. There were, substantially,
only two alternatives. One was that, in view of the difficulty of
effectually maintaining it against legal ingenuity, the Trade Unions
should forgo their position of being outside the law, and should
claim, instead, full rights, not only of citizenship, but actually
of being duly authorised constituent parts of the social structure,
lawfully fulfilling a recognised function in industrial organisation.
But for the Trade Union to become, not merely an instrument of defence,
but actually an organ of government in the industrial world, required
a great advance in public opinion. It assumed an explicit recognition
of the legitimate function of the Trade Union, as the basis of a
Vocational Democracy, exercising a definite share in the control and
administration of industry. It involved a complete transformation of
both the criminal and the civil law, so that workmen’s combinations
and strikes, together with peaceful picketing in its legitimate form,
should be unreservedly and explicitly legalised; the law of civil
conspiracy practically abrogated, so that nothing should be unlawful
when done in concert with others which would not be unlawful if done
by an individual alone; and reasonable limits set to liability for
the acts of agents and to the scope for injunctions, so that a Trade
Union Executive would be able both to know the law and to be ensured
against its perversion. The alternative was to make no claim for the
profound advance in Trade Union status that would be involved in such
a policy; to forgo any hope of satisfactory or complete amendment of
the law, and merely to re-enact the exceptional legislation of 1871,
this time specifically insisting that a Trade Union, whether registered
or not, should be put outside the law, and made expressly immune from
legal proceedings for anything, whether lawful or unlawful, done by
its officers or by itself. The outgoing Conservative Government had
appointed in 1903 a small Royal Commission to consider the state of the
law as to Trade Unionism, before which the Trade Unions had refused
to give evidence, because the Commission, which was made up almost
entirely of lawyers, included no Trade Unionist. This Commission, it
is believed, was told privately not to report until after the General
Election, in order that the Conservative Government might not be
embarrassed by the dilemma. Early in 1906 it reported in favour of the
Trade Union accepting full responsibility for its own actions, subject
to considerable, but far from adequate, amendments of the law.[659]
This proposal was definitely rejected by the Labour Party, which
introduced a Bill of its own, merely restoring the position of 1871.
When the Liberal Government brought in a Bill very much on the lines
of the Commission’s Report, there was a dramatic exhibition of the
electoral power that Trade Unionism, once it is roused, can exercise
in its own defence. Member after member rose from different parts of
the House to explain that they had pledged themselves to vote for the
complete immunity which Trade Unions were supposed to have been granted
in 1871. Nothing less than this would suffice; and the most powerful
Government hitherto known was constrained, in spite of the protests
of lawyers and employers, to pass into law the Trade Disputes Act of
1906.[660]

The Trade Disputes Act, which remains (1920) the main charter of Trade
Unionism, explicitly declares, without any qualification or exception,
that no civil action shall be entertained against a Trade Union in
respect of any wrongful act committed by or on behalf of the Union; an
extraordinary and unlimited immunity, however great may be the damage
caused, and however unwarranted the act, which most lawyers, as well
as all employers, regard as nothing less than monstrous.[661] At the
same time the Act, whilst not abrogating or even defining the law
as to civil conspiracy, gives three exceptional privileges to Trade
Union officials by declaring that, _when committed in contemplation
or furtherance of a trade dispute_, (1) an act done in concert shall
not be actionable if it would not have been actionable if done
without concert; (2) attendance solely in order to inform or persuade
peacefully shall be lawful; and (3) an act shall not be actionable
merely by reason of its inducing another person to break a contract
of employment, or of its being an interference with another person’s
business, or with his right to dispose of his capital or his labour as
he chooses. These exceptional statutory privileges for the protection
of Trade Union officials in the exercise of their lawful vocation, and
of “pickets” in the performance of their lawful function--in themselves
a triumph for Trade Unionism--have ever since excited great resentment
in most of those who are not wage-earners. Some friends of the Trade
Unions expressed at the time the doubt whether the policy thus forced
upon Parliament would prove, in the long run, entirely in the interest
of the Movement; and whether it would not have been better to have
chosen the bolder policy of insisting on a complete reform of the law,
to which, when properly reformed, Trade Unions should be subject in the
same way as any other associations. The lawyers, as it proved, were not
long in taking their revenge.


THE OSBORNE JUDGEMENT

This time the legal assault on Trade Unionism took a new form. The
result of the dramatic victory of the Trade Disputes Act, and of
the activity of the Labour members in the House of Commons, was
considerably to increase the influence of the Labour Party in the
country, where preparations were made for contesting any number of
constituencies irrespective of the convenience of the Liberal and
Conservative parties. The railway companies, in particular, found the
presence in Parliament of the secretary of the railwaymen’s principal
Trade Union very inconvenient. Within a couple of years of the passing
of the Trade Disputes Act, on July 22, 1908, one of the members of
the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants took legal proceedings
to restrain it from spending any of its funds on political objects,
contending that this was beyond the powers of a Trade Union. Such a
contention found no support among eminent lawyers, several of whom
had formally advised that Trade Unions were undoubtedly entitled
to undertake political activities if their rules authorised such
action and a majority of their members desired it. W. V. Osborne, the
dissentient member of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, took
a different view; and, liberally financed from capitalist sources,
carried his case right up to the highest tribunal. As a result, in
December 1909, as in 1825, 1867-71, and 1901-6, every Trade Union in
the land found its position and status once more gravely impugned.
In what became widely known as the Osborne Judgement, the House of
Lords, acting in its judicial capacity as the highest Court of Appeal,
practically tore up what had, since 1871, been universally understood
to be the legal constitution of a Trade Union.[662]

The decision of the judges in the Osborne case throws so much light,
not only on the status of Trade Unionism in English law, but also on
the animus and prejudice which the Trade Disputes Act and the Labour
Party had excited, that we think it worth treating at some length.
Formally this judgement decided only that W. V. Osborne, a member of
the Walthamstow Branch of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants,
was entitled to restrain that Trade Union from making a levy on its
members (and from using any of its funds) for the purpose of supporting
the Labour Party, or maintaining Members of Parliament. But in the
course of that decision a majority of the Law Lords, therein following
all three judges of the Court of Appeal, laid it down as law (and
thereby made it law until Parliament should otherwise determine), (_a_)
that although Parliament has always avoided any express incorporation
of Trade Unions, these were all now to be deemed to be corporate
bodies, formed under statute, and not unincorporated groups of
individual persons; (_b_) that it follows, by an undoubted principle
of English law, that a body corporate, created under statute, cannot
lawfully do anything outside the purposes for which the statute has
incorporated it; (_c_) that as the purposes for which Trade Unions are
incorporated have to be found somewhere authoritatively given, the
definition which Parliament incidentally enacted in the Trade Union Act
of 1876 must be taken to enumerate, accurately and exhaustively, all
the purposes which any group of persons falling within that definition
can, as a corporate body, lawfully pursue; and (_d_) that the payment
of the salaries and election expenses of Members of Parliament, and
indeed, any political action whatsoever, not being mentioned as one of
these purposes and not being considered by the judges incidental to
them, could not lawfully be undertaken by any Trade Union, even if it
was formed, from the outset, with this purpose duly expressed in its
original rules, and even if all its members agreed to it, and continued
to desire that their organisation should carry it out.

This momentous judgement destroyed, at a blow, the peculiar legal
status which Frederic Harrison had devised for Trade Unionism in
1868, and which Parliament thought that it had enacted in 1871-76.
The statutes of 1871 and 1876, which had always been supposed to
have enlarged the freedom of Trade Unions, were now held to have
deprived these bodies of powers that they had formerly enjoyed. It
was not, as will be seen, a question of protecting a dissentient
minority. Whether the members were unanimous, or whether they were
nearly evenly divided, did not affect the legal position. Trade Unions
found themselves suddenly forbidden to do anything, even if all their
members desired it, which could not be brought within the terms of a
clause in the Act of 1876, which Parliament (as Lord James of Hereford
emphatically declared) never meant to be taken in that sense. “What
is not within the ambit of that statute,” said Lord Halsbury, “is, I
think, _prohibited_ both to a corporation and a combination.” This was
the new limitation put on Trade Unions. All their educational work was
prohibited; all their participation in municipal administration was
forbidden; all their association for common purposes in Trades Councils
and the Trades Union Congress became illegal. The judges stopped the
most characteristic and, as was supposed, the most constitutional of
the three customary ways that (as we have shown in our _Industrial
Democracy_) Trade Unions pursued of enforcing their Common Rules,
namely, the Method of Legal Enactment; grave doubt was thrown on
the legality of some of the developments of their second way, the
Method of Mutual Insurance; whilst the way that the House of Lords
expressly prescribed was exactly that which used to give rise to so
much controversy, namely, the Method of Collective Bargaining, with its
concomitant of the Strike. So topsy-turvy a view of Trade Unionism, a
view which seems to have arisen from the judges’ ignorance of its two
centuries of history, could not have survived open discussion, and
therefore could hardly have been taken by even the most prejudiced
Parliament.


THE DEVELOPMENT OF ENGLISH LAW

What was the explanation of the view of the Trade Union constitution
that the judges took? The English Courts of Justice, it must be
remembered, have peculiar rules of their own for the construction of
statutes. When the plain man wants to know what a document means, he
seeks every available explanation of the intention of the author.
When the historian inquires the purpose and intention of an Act of
Parliament, he considers all the contemporary evidence as to the
minds of those concerned. The Courts of Law, for good and sufficient
reasons, debar themselves from going behind the face of the document,
and are therefore at the mercy of all the unstudied ineptitudes
of House of Commons phraseology. Along with this rigour as to the
intention of a statute, the English and American judges combine a
capacity for developments of doctrine in the form of legal principles
which is, we believe, unequalled in other judicial systems. Now, the
subject of corporations is one of those in which there had been,
among the past generations of English lawyers, a silent and almost
unselfconscious development of doctrine, of which, in Germany, Gierke
had been the great inspirer, and Maitland in this country the brilliant
exponent.[663] Our English law long rigidly refused to admit that
a corporate entity could arise of itself, without some formal and
legally authoritative act of outside power. How, it was asked, except
by some definite act of creation by a superior, could the _persona
ficta_ come into existence? How, otherwise (as Madox quaintly puts it),
could this mere “society of mortal men” become something “immortal,
invisible, and incorporeal”?[664] As a matter of fact, associations or
social entities of all sorts always did arise, without the intervention
of the lawyers, and nowadays they arise with amazing ease, without any
act of creation by a superior; and when the English lawyers refused
to recognise them as existing, it was they who were irrational, and
the common law itself that was at fault. Nowadays we live in a world
of social entities of all sorts, and of every degree of informality,
corporate entities that to the old-fashioned lawyers are still legally
non-existent as such--clubs and committees of every possible kind;
groups and circles, societies and associations for every conceivable
purpose; unions and combinations and trusts in every trade and
profession; schools and colleges and “University Extension Classes,”
often existing and spending and acting most energetically as entities,
having a common purse and a single will, in practice even perpetual
succession, and (if they desire such a futile luxury) a common seal,
without any sort of formal incorporation. Gradually English lawyers
(whom we need not suspect of reading Gierke, or even, for that matter,
Maitland) were unconsciously imbibing the legally heterodox view that
a corporate entity is anything which acts as such; and so far from
making it impossible for the _persona ficta_ to come into existence
without a formal act of creation, they had been, by little alterations
of procedure and imperceptible changes in legal principles, sometimes
by harmless little dodges and fictions of the Courts themselves,
coming near to the practical result of putting every association which
is, in fact, a social entity, however informal in its constitution,
and however “spontaneous” in its origin, in the same position of a
_persona ficta_, for the purpose of suing and of being sued, as if it
had been created by a formal instrument of incorporation, decorated
by many seals, and procured at vast expense from the post-Reformation
Pope himself; or as if it had been expressly incorporated by the Royal
Charter of a Protestant King or the private statute of a Victorian
Parliament.

Now this development of legal doctrine to fit the circumstances of
modern social life is, when one comes to think of it, only common
sense. If twenty old ladies in the workhouse club together to provide
themselves with a special pot of tea, and agree that one among them
shall be the treasurer of their painfully-hoarded pennies as a common
fund, they do, in fact, create a social entity just as real in its way
as the Governor and Company of the Bank of England. Why should not the
law, if it ever comes to hear of the action of the twenty old ladies
in the workhouse, deal with the situation as it really is, according
to their wishes and intentions, without inquiring by what formal act
of external power a _persona ficta_ has been created; and therefore
without demanding that the old ladies shall first procure a charter of
incorporation from the Pope, from the King, or from Parliament? And
considering that Trade Unions were now in fact social entities, often
having behind them more than a hundred years of “perpetual succession”;
counting sometimes over a hundred thousand members moving by a single
will; and occasionally accumulating in a common purse as much as half
a million of money, the Law Lords might well think it absurd and
irrational of Parliament to have decided in 1871-76, and again in
1906, to regard them as unincorporated groups of persons, having, in a
corporate capacity, no legally enforceable obligations and hardly any
legally enforceable rights. It may have been absurd and irrational, but
what right--so the Trade Unionists asked--had the judges to change the
law?

Whatever may be the justification for the momentous change in the
law which the Six Judges (namely, the three members of the Court
of Appeal, and three out of the five Law Lords, all of whom agreed
in the series of propositions that we have cited) suddenly, without
Parliamentary authority, of their own motion effected, it created an
intolerable situation. There was, in the first place, the application
of the doctrine of _ultra vires_ to corporate entities quite unaware
of its existence. It was all very well, in order to fit the law to the
facts, to throw over the old legal doctrine that the _persona ficta_
of a corporation could only come into existence by some formal act
of incorporation by an external authority. But then it plainly would
not do to retain, as the Six Judges quite calmly retained, the severe
limitations on the action of statutory corporate entities which is
involved in the doctrine of _ultra vires_, and which, as Lord Halsbury
put it, was to _prohibit_ them from doing what they liked. The argument
for that principle is that such a corporate entity owes its existence
entirely to the statutory authority by which it is created; that the
legislature has brought it into being for certain definite purposes;
that for those purposes and no others the exceptional powers of a
corporation have been conferred upon it; that as such it is, in a
sense, the agent whom the community has entrusted with the execution of
these functions, and who cannot therefore (even if all the constituent
members of its body so agree and desire) assume any other purposes or
functions. But any such doctrine of _ultra vires_ can have no rational
application to the corporate entity formed by the twenty old ladies in
the workhouse for their private pot of tea. If we are going, in effect,
to treat as corporate entities all sorts of spontaneously arising
associations, such as an unregistered Trade Union (and some of the
wealthiest and most powerful Trade Unions were still unregistered), or
such as an Employers’ Association (which was hardly ever a registered
body)--corporate entities which were, in fact, lawfully in existence
long before the Act of 1876--we must give up the fiction that the
purposes of these associations have been authoritatively fixed and
defined in advance by Parliament in such a way that the members
themselves, even when they are unanimous and when they are acting
in strict accord with their constitution and rules, cannot add to
or alter the objects or methods of their organisation. What was
logically required, in fact, was not the arbitrary identification
of spontaneously arising associative entities with legally created
corporations, but the formulation of a new conception as to the
functions and legal rights that such spontaneously arising associative
entities--to which the limitations of legally created corporations
could not be simply assumed to apply--should, as a class, be permitted
to exercise.


THE MISCARRIAGE OF JUSTICE

We come now to the second cardinal feature of the decision of the Six
Judges in 1909, in which they showed both prejudice and ignorance.
Having found that the Trade Unions were, in fact, corporate entities,
and that they had been, in various clumsy ways, dealt with by
Parliament very much as if they were legally corporate entities--though
Parliament had advisedly abstained from incorporating them, and had,
indeed, always referred to them as being what in fact they were, namely
already existing and spontaneously arising associations, not created
by its will--the Six Judges took the view that some authoritative
specification of the objects and purposes of a Trade Union had to
be discovered by hook or by crook. It seems to have been by them
inconceivable (though Lord James of Hereford, one of their own number,
who had personally taken part in all the legislation, expressly told
them it was in fact so) that no such specification should exist. They
accordingly found it in an enumeration which Parliament had given in
the Act of 1876 of all the various bodies which were to be entitled
to the privileges conferred by the Act--a definition introduced, so
a well-informed writer mentioned in 1878, for the special advantage
of Trade Unions[665]--principally to enable them to be registered by
the Chief Registrar of Friendly Societies. The Law Lords now held that
this definition must be deemed to be an exhaustive enumeration, not
merely of the kinds of societies to be eligible for registration, but
also of all the objects and purposes that Parliament intended any of
those bodies, whether registered or unregistered, to be free at any
time to pursue. The result was that all Trade Unions and Employers’
Associations, and, indeed, all informal groups of workmen or employers
falling within this definition, suddenly found themselves (to the
complete amazement of every one concerned, including the lawyers)
rigidly confined in their action, even if all their members otherwise
wished and agreed, to matters which were specified in an enumerating
clause of an Act of Parliament of a generation before, which had never
before been supposed to have that meaning, or to have any restrictive
effect at all. We ought to speak with proper respect of the judges,
though sometimes, by their curious ignorance of life outside the Law
Courts, and especially of “what everybody knows,” they try us hard.
But it is necessary to state plainly, with regard to this part of
the Osborne Judgement, that to the present writers, as to the whole
British working class and many other people, including lawyers, it
seemed an astounding aberration, amounting to a grave miscarriage of
justice. Again, let it be noted that Lord James of Hereford, who knew
what Parliament had intended, and what Trade Unions actually were,
expressly dissented from his colleagues on this point, saying that
the enumeration clause in the Act of 1876 was never intended to be “a
clause of limitation or exhaustive definition” of objects and purposes;
and arguing that it did not prevent a Trade Union from having other
purposes, or pursuing other methods, not in themselves unlawful, even
though these were not enumerated in the definition clause and were not
even incidental to the purposes therein enumerated. But what is the
history of this definition clause? As it stands in the Act of 1876 it
runs as follows:

 The term “Trade Union” means any combination, whether
 temporary or permanent, for regulating the relations between
 workmen and masters, or between workmen and workmen, or
 between masters and masters, or for imposing restrictive
 conditions on the conduct of any trade or business, whether
 such combination would or would not, if the principal Act
 had not been passed, have been deemed to have been an
 unlawful combination by reason of some one or more of its
 purposes being in restraint of trade.

Now, to the lay mind, this extremely loose enumeration[666] of kinds
of societies seems plainly intended to bring within its net, and
therefore to admit to the advantages of the Act, a wide range of
existing or possible associations of different kinds. It was to include
all sorts of Employers’ Associations as well as Trade Unions. It was
to include bodies already in existence as well as those to be formed
in the future. It was to include bodies seeking to impose restrictive
conditions “in restraint of trade,” as well as those having no such
unlawful objects. It was to include, therefore, bodies already enjoying
a full measure of lawful existence and legal recognition, as well
as those for the first time fully legalised by the legislation of
1871-76. To the logician it will be clear that we have here a case
of classification by type, not by delimitation. “It is determined,”
says Whewell and J. S. Mill, “not by a boundary line without, but by a
central point within; not by what it strictly excludes, but by what it
eminently includes; by an example, not by a precept.”[667] Accordingly
the clause names specifically one by one the various attributes, any
one of which is to be typical of the class. It sufficed for the purpose
to name only one attribute belonging to each body which it was desired
to include. What its other attributes might be was irrelevant. It
does not occur to the ordinary reader, any more than to the logician,
that the effect of the clause is, not merely to include associations
of different kinds, but also to limit the legal freedom of all those
associations, with all their varied functions, exclusively to the
purposes specified in the definition, which were merely recited in
order to bring a number of heterogeneous bodies into one class. On the
construction put upon this clause by the Six Judges, the Act of 1876
was a measure which deprived Trade Unions and Employers’ Associations,
many of which had been for years lawfully in existence, without any
unlawful objects or methods, of a freedom that they had up to then
enjoyed; it was an Act rigidly confining their operations to a limited
field, and for ever prohibiting them (as Lord Halsbury expressly
declared) from doing anything not included in the list of functions
incidentally then and there given. It is safe to say that, to any
historical student who knows anything of the circumstances of the case,
such a supposition is preposterous. No Trade Union and no Employers’
Association was aware in 1876 that its freedom was being thus
restricted. Thomas Burt, M.P., and Lord James of Hereford (then Sir
Henry James, M.P.), who took part in passing the Act, certainly never
dreamed that they were doing anything of the sort. The Home Office
officials who prepared it, and Lord Cross (then Home Secretary) who
introduced it, quite plainly had not the remotest notion that they were
taking away from Trade Unions (which they were anxious to legalise)
any of the functions which these Unions were in fact exercising, and
which such Trade Unions as were lawful associations were already
_lawfully_ exercising; or that they were prohibiting these Trade Unions
from doing anything not specified in the incidental enumeration of
attributes that was then, merely for the purpose of including various
kinds of associations, statutorily enacted. As a matter of fact, the
definition clause in the Act of 1876 was enacted merely to correct in
one small particular the definition clause in the Act of 1871. That
clause had defined a Trade Union as meaning “such combination ... as
would, if this Act had not passed, been deemed to have been an unlawful
combination by reason of some one or more of the purposes being in
restraint of trade.” This was found in practice inconvenient, because
it had inadvertently excluded from registration and all the benefits
of the Act those Trade Unions and Employers’ Associations which were
already lawful associations, free from any unlawful purpose. A Trade
Union had to prove that it was (but for the Act) an unlawful body
before it could be admitted to the advantages of the Act. It was
also inexpedient, because it actually offered an inducement to Trade
Unions to have purposes or methods “in restraint of trade,” in order
to obtain these advantages. Now, supposing that the Act of 1876 had
not been passed, and that the definition clause had remained in the
terms of that of the Act of 1871, would the Six Judges have equally
construed it as offering a complete and exhaustive enumeration of the
permissible activities of a Trade Union, making it actually illegal
for the future for any association of workmen or employers to deal
with the conditions of employment, _except in ways that would (but for
the 1871 Act) have been unlawful_? And if the definition clause in
the 1871 Act cannot be construed as (to use Lord James of Hereford’s
words) “a clause of limitation or exhaustive definition” of Trade
Union activities, with what consistency can the definition clause of
the 1876 Act (which follows the same wording, and merely extends the
definition so as to take in lawful as well as unlawful societies) be
so construed? Successive Chief Registrars of Friendly Societies, like
every one else, had always understood the definition clause to be an
enabling clause, not a restricting one; and they had accordingly for
a whole generation willingly registered rules presented to them by
Trade Unions, including in their objects and purposes all sorts of
things not enumerated in the definition, and not even incidental to
any of the purposes therein enumerated. It was, in 1909, not at first
realised--certainly the Six Judges did not realise--how extensive and
how varied were the actually existing operations of Trade Unions that
they were rendering illegal. Not political action alone, not municipal
action alone, but any work of general education of their members or
others; the formation of a library; the establishment or management of
“University Extension” or “Workers’ Educational Association” classes;
the subscription to circulating book-boxes; the provision of public
lectures; the establishment of scholarships at Ruskin College, Oxford,
or any other College--all of which things were at the time actually
being done by Trade Unions--were all henceforth to be _ultra vires_
and illegal. The two hundred Trades Councils, local federations of
different Trade Unions for the purpose of dealing with matters of
general interest to workmen, which took no part in the collective
bargaining of any particular Trade Union, were probably thereby
equally made illegal; though they were in 1876 already a quarter of a
century old, and in 1909 numbered nearly a million members. The annual
Trade Union Congress itself, then in its fortieth year, and dealing
almost exclusively with Parliamentary projects, came under the same
ban. The active participation which Trade Unions had here and there
taken in technical education, and their co-operation with the Local
Education Authorities, which had sometimes been found so useful, were
certainly _ultra vires_. One would suppose, strictly speaking, that a
similar illegality was to attach to all the vast “friendly society”
side of Trade Unionism, with its sick and accident and out-of-work
benefits--not one of them being referred to in the definition which
the Six Judges declared to contain an exhaustive enumeration of the
purposes and objects that Parliament intended to permit Trade Unions
to pursue. But here the Six Judges saved themselves--though in a
way logically destructive of their claim that the definition clause
itself was one of “exhaustive” enumeration of permissible Trade Union
purposes--by holding that these friendly benefits, though not mentioned
in the definition clause, were referred to elsewhere in the Act, and
might be regarded as incidental to the purpose of regulating the
conditions of employment. This, indeed, so far as benefits paid to the
workman himself are concerned, was a plausible view. Strike Benefit, in
particular, is plainly incidental to striking, and sick benefit might
conceivably be held to protect the worker from industrial oppression
whilst sick. But the same cannot be said of the most widely spread of
all Trade Union benefits, the provision of funeral money on a member’s
death. In some cases the Trade Unions were actually paying for the
funerals of their deceased members’ widows and orphan children. This
was a mere act of humanity to the deceased member’s widow and orphans;
and it could not, by any stretch of imagination, be supposed to improve
the workers’ bargaining power, or to be in any way incidental to the
regulation or restriction of the conditions of employment. Yet Funeral
Benefit was in 1909 (as it was in 1876) the one among the so-called
“friendly” benefits most universally adopted by Trade Unions. More than
a million Trade Unionists were thus effecting through their societies a
humble life insurance. This extensive life insurance business of Trade
Unions could not be said to be in any way included in the definition
clause of the 1876 Act, even if the sick and unemployment benefits
were. If the judgements in the Osborne Case were correct, the whole of
this life insurance business of Trade Unions (as distinguished from
the sick and unemployment benefits), or at least the whole of that
relating to widows and orphans, must be held to have been inadvertently
prohibited by Parliament in 1871 and 1876, and to have been ever
since _ultra vires_ and illegal. It is impossible for the plain man
to avoid the conclusion, even though the six other authorities take
a contrary view, that Lord James of Hereford was right in declaring
that the definition in the Act of 1876 was not meant by Parliament
to be “a clause of limitation or exhaustive definition” of the
permissible purposes of a Trade Union; and, accordingly, that the Six
Judges had--presumably following quite accurately the narrow technical
rules of their profession--put upon the statute a construction which
Parliament had in no way intended.

What then did Parliament intend to fix and define as the permissible
objects and functions of a Trade Union? The answer of the historical
student is clear and unhesitating. Parliament quite certainly intended,
in 1871 and 1876, to fix and define nothing of the sort; but meant,
whether wisely or not, to leave Trade Unions as they then were--as
such of them, indeed, as had no unlawful purpose or method had long
_legally_ been--namely, as free as any other unincorporated groups of
persons to take whatever action they might choose, subject only to
their own contractual agreements, and to the general law of the land.
From this position we venture, as historians, to say that Parliament
did not, in 1871 or 1876, intentionally depart.

Finally, we have the argument of the Six Judges that, seeing that the
sole lawful purposes of a Trade Union are “regulating the relations
between workmen and masters, or between workmen and workmen, or
between masters and masters,” and “imposing restrictive conditions on
the conduct of any trade or business,” no action of a Parliamentary
or political kind is within the definition, or even incidental to
anything therein. This view, to put it bluntly, showed an ignorance
of Trade Unionism, British industrial history, and the circumstances
not only of 1871-76, but also of 1908-9, which was as remarkable as
it was deplorable. On the face of it, to take first the words of the
statute, the most usual and the most natural way of “regulating” the
relations between people, and the most obvious expedient for “imposing”
restrictive conditions on industry, is an Act of Parliament. It was
to Acts of Parliament, as we have abundantly shown in _Industrial
Democracy_, that the Trade Unions had for a century been looking,
and were in 1871-76, many of them, looking, for a very large part of
the “regulating” of industrial conditions, and of the “restrictive
conditions” that they existed to promote. What the judges apparently
forgot is that conditions of employment include not merely wages,
but also hours of labour, sanitary conditions, precautions against
accident, compensation for injuries, and what not. If the Six Judges
had remembered how, in fact, in Great Britain the great majority
of industrial relations were regulated, and how the great mass of
restrictive conditions were, in fact, imposed on industry; or if they
had had recalled to them the long and persistent struggle of the Trade
Unions to get adopted the Factory Acts, the Mines Regulation Acts,
the Truck Acts, the Shop Hours Acts, and so many more, they could
hardly have argued that such actions as engaging in Parliamentary
business, supporting or opposing Parliamentary candidates, and helping
members of Parliament favourable to “regulating,” and “imposing
restrictive conditions”--actions characteristic of Trade Unions
for generations--were not incidental to these legitimate purposes.
As a matter of fact, the getting and enforcing of legislation is,
historically, as much a part of Trade Union function as maintaining a
strike.[668] One Trade Union at least, which no one ever dreamt to be
illegal, the United Textile Factory Workers’ Association, has existed
exclusively for political action, and had no other functions.[669] This
kind of Trade Union action is even antecedent in date to any corporate
dealing with employers. During the whole two centuries of Trade Union
history, as in _Industrial Democracy_ we have described, the Unions
have had at their disposal, and have simultaneously adopted, three
different methods of imposing and enforcing the Common Rules which
they sought to get adopted in the conditions of employment. From 1700
downwards they have used the Method of Mutual Insurance; from the very
beginning of the eighteenth century down to the present day the records
show them to have been continuously employing the Method of Legal
Enactment; whilst only intermittently during the eighteenth century,
and not openly and avowedly until 1824, could they rely on the Method
of Collective Bargaining. The Miners’ Unions, and the Agricultural
Labourers’ Unions, in particular, had been particularly active in
support of the extension of the franchise between 1863 and 1884. Even
the expenditure of Trade Union funds on Parliamentary candidatures
was practised by Trade Unions at any rate as early as 1868, as soon,
in fact, as the town artisans were enfranchised; and the payment of
Trade Union Members of Parliament was begun as early as 1874, and
had lasted continuously from that date. Yet the Six Judges assumed,
apparently without adequate consideration, and certainly on inaccurate
information, that Parliament in 1876 intended to authorise Trade Unions
to pursue their first and third methods, but intended to prohibit them,
from that time forth, from using the Method of Legal Enactment, just
at the moment when this latter was being most effectively employed. It
is, indeed, almost comic to remember that the Bill which is supposed to
have effected this revolution in the Trade Union position was brought
in by Lord Cross, then Sir R. A. Cross, M.P., fresh from his election
by a constituency in which the Trade Unionists had been, politically,
the dominant factor; that it was debated in a House of Commons in which
the direct influence of the Trade Unions was at the highest point
that it had hitherto reached; that at the General Election of 1874,
from which the members had lately come, the Trade Unions, as we have
described in the present volume, had worked with might and main for
the rejection of candidates opposed to their political claims, and had
had a much larger share than political historians usually recognise
in the Gladstonian defeat; that two Trade Union members were actually
then sitting in the House, one, at least (Thomas Burt), being openly
maintained as a salaried representative of his Union, by a salary
avowedly fixed on a scale to enable him to sit in Parliament;[670] that
the Conservative Government promptly introduced the particular legal
enactments to obtain which the Trade Unions had spent their money,
namely, the Nine Hours Bill, the Employer and Workman Bill, and the
Trade Union Bill; and that the Six Judges ask us to believe that the
latter Bill, which the Trade Union members themselves helped to pass,
was designed and intended to prevent Thomas Burt from drawing a salary
from the Northumberland Miners’ Mutual Confident Society whilst sitting
in the House of Commons; to prohibit the Northumberland Miners’ Mutual
Confident Society, just because it was a Trade Union, from taking any
part in future elections in the Morpeth Division, and to make the
action of this and all other Trade Unions in paying for political work
and Parliamentary candidatures, even with the unanimous consent of
their members, from that time forth illegal.

We have thought it worth while to place on record this analysis of the
legally authoritative part of the Osborne Judgement, which, though
partly modified by a subsequent statute, has not been overruled, and is
still legally authoritative, because it is of historical importance. It
is significant as showing how far the Courts of Justice were, as lately
as 1909, still out of touch, so far as Trade Unionism is concerned,
either with Parliament or with the political economists. The case was,
however, of even greater import. The bias and prejudice, the animus and
partiality--doubtless unconscious to the judges themselves--which were
displayed by those who ought to have been free from such intellectual
influences; the undisguised glee with which this grave miscarriage of
justice was received by the governing class, and the prolonged delay of
a professedly Liberal and Radical Cabinet, and a professedly Liberal
and Radical House of Commons in remedying it, had a great effect on the
minds of the wage-earners, and contributed notably to the increasing
bitterness of feeling against the “governing class,” and against a
State organisation in which such a miscarriage of justice could take
place. We must, indeed, look behind the legal technicalities of the Six
Judges, and consider what was the animus behind their extraordinary
judgement. The “subservience” of Parliament to the Trade Unions
in passing the Trade Disputes Act of 1906 had excited the deepest
resentment of the lawyers. The progress of the Labour Party was causing
a quite exaggerated alarm among members of the governing class. What
lay behind the Osborne Judgement was a determination to exclude the
influence of the workmen’s combinations from the political field. This
is really what the Osborne Judgement prohibited. One irreverent legal
critic, indeed, went so far as to remark that the Law Lords were so
anxious to make it clear that Trade Unions were not to be entitled
to pay for Members of Parliament, that they failed to heed how much
law they were severally demolishing in the process! It is instructive
to examine the arguments adduced by the Law Lords and the judges on
this point, apart from their decision as to Trade Union status. These
opinions could hardly be deemed to be law, as they all differed one
from another, and none of them obtained the support of a majority
of the Law Lords. Such as they are, however, they seem not to have
been connected with Trade Unionism at all, but with the nature of the
House of Commons. One of the Law Lords (Lord James of Hereford) merely
objected to Trade Unions paying a Member of Parliament who was (as was
quite incorrectly assumed) bound by a rule of the paying body requiring
him to vote in a particular way, not on labour questions only, but on
all issues that might come before Parliament. Another Law Lord (Lord
Shaw), with whom Lord Justice Fletcher Moulton seemed to agree, held
that what was illegal was not the payment of Members of Parliament,
but their subjection, by whomsoever paid, to a “pledge-bound” party
organisation (as the Labour Party was alleged to be). Another judge
(Farwell, L.J.) took a different line, and held that it was illegal for
a corporate body to require its own members to subscribe collectively
towards the support of a Member of Parliament with whose views they
might individually not agree. What the historian and the student of
political science will say is that these were matters for legislation,
not for the sudden intervention of the judiciary. The House of Commons
is prompt enough to defend its own honour and its own “privilege”; and
the function of the judges will begin when any of the acts referred
to has been made an illegal practice. In 1909, as now, the practices
complained of, whether or not they were correctly described, and
however objectionable to these particular gentlemen they might be, were
all lawful; and the judges and Law Lords were abusing the privileges of
their office by importing them to prejudice the legal issue.

The Osborne Judgement received the support, not only of the great mass
of property owners and professional men, but also, though tacitly, of
the Liberal and Conservative Parties. A distinct challenge was thereby
thrown down to the Trade Union world. Not only were the activities of
their Unions to be crippled, not only was their freedom to combine for
whatever purposes they chose to be abrogated, they were to be expressly
forbidden to aspire to protect their interests or promote their objects
by Parliamentary representation, or in any way to engage in politics.
It was this challenge to Organised Labour that absorbed the whole
interest of the Trade Union world for the next three or four years.

The experienced Trade Union leaders did not forget that it might
well be a matter for Trade Union consideration how far it is wise
and prudent for a Trade Union to engage in general politics. We have
elsewhere pointed out[671] with some elaboration how dangerous it may
become to the strength and authority of a Trade Union if any large
section of the persons in the trade are driven out of its ranks, or
deterred from joining, because they find their convictions outraged
by part of its action. Nothing could be more unwise for a Trade Union
than to offend its Roman Catholic members by espousing the cause of
secular education.[672] But this is a point which each Trade Union must
decide for itself. It is not a matter in which outsiders can offer
more than counsel. It is clearly not a matter in which the discretion
of the Trade Union, any more than that of an individual employer, can
properly be limited by law. For no Trade Union can nowadays abstain
altogether from political action. Without co-operating with other
Trade Unions in taking Parliamentary action of a very energetic and
very watchful kind, it cannot (as long experience has demonstrated
to practically all Trade Unionists) protect the interests of its
members. Without taking a vigorous part in promoting, enforcing, and
resisting all sorts of legislation affecting education, sanitation,
the Poor Law, the whole range of the Factories, Mines, Railways, and
Merchant Shipping Acts, the Shop Hours, Truck, Industrial Arbitration
and Conciliation, and now even the Trade Boards’ Act, the Trade Union
cannot properly fulfil its function of looking after the regulation of
the conditions of employment. But this is not all. The interests of
its members require the most watchful scrutiny of the administration
of every public department. There is not a day passes but something in
Parliament demands its attention. On this point Trade Union opinion is
unanimous. We have never met any member of a Trade Union--and Osborne
himself is no exception--who has any contrary view. To suggest that
there is anything improper, or against public policy, for a Trade
Union to give an annual retaining fee to a Member of Parliament whom
its members trust, or to take the necessary steps to get that member
elected, in order to ensure that what the Trade Union conceives to
be its own interests shall be protected, was to take up a position
of extraordinary unfairness. When more than a quarter of the whole
House of Commons habitually consists, not merely of individual
employers, but actually of persons drawing salaries or stipends from
capitalist corporations of one kind or another--when, in fact, the
number of companies of shareholders in railways, banks, insurance
companies, breweries, ocean telegraphs, shipbuilding yards, shipping
companies, steamship lines, iron and steel works, coal mines, and
joint stock enterprises of all sorts actually represented in the
House of Commons by their own salaried chairmen, directors, trustees,
managers, secretaries, or solicitors is beyond all computation--the
claim that there is something improper, something inconsistent with
our electoral system, something at variance with the honourable nature
of the House of Commons, for the workmen’s organisations to retain
a few dozen of the Members whom the constituencies (knowing of this
payment) deliberately elect, or to help such Members to provide their
election expenses, is an argument so extraordinary in its unfairness
that it drives the active-minded workman frantic with rage. It is no
answer to say that these representatives of capitalist corporations
are not expressly paid to sit in Parliament. They are at any rate
desired by their employers to sit, and permitted by the law to receive
their salaries notwithstanding that they do sit. This was forbidden
to representatives of Trade Unions. That it should be illegal for the
salaried President or Secretary of the Amalgamated Society of Railway
Servants to sit in Parliament, when it is perfectly legal for the much
more generously salaried Chairman or Director of a Railway Company to
sit there, is an anomaly hard for any candid man to defend; and the
anomaly is all the greater in that the interests of the railway company
come, almost every year, into conflict with those of the community at
large, and the railway chairman is, on these occasions, quite frankly
there to promote his own company’s Bill, and to defend the interests
of the shareholders by whom he is paid. To say that the workmen’s
organisations shall not pay their representatives in the way that
suits working-class conditions, whilst railway shareholders may pay
their representatives in the way that suits capitalist conditions--to
assume a great concern for the wounded conscience of a Liberal or
Conservative Trade Unionist who finds his Union paying its Secretary or
its President to sit as a Radical or Labour Member of Parliament, and
no concern at all for the Socialist or Radical shareholder in a railway
company who finds his company paying its Conservative Chairman M.P.--is
to be guilty of an amazing degree of class bias, if not of hypocrisy.
After all, it is not the Trade Union but the constituency that elects
the Member of Parliament. The Trade Union payment only enables him to
stand. Whatever may be thought of the policy of the Labour Party, or
the particular form of its organisation, if we regard the Trade Union
payment as a retaining fee for looking after what the Trade Union
members as a whole conceive to be their own interest; if the Trade
Union members have the opportunity of choosing, by a majority, which
among competing persons (or, for that matter, which among competing
groups of persons) they will entrust with this Trade Union task; if the
Trade Union assumes no responsibility for and exercises no coercion
upon its Parliamentary representative with regard to issues on which
it has not voted, no Trade Unionist’s political conscience need be
wounded by the fact that, outside the range of the task that the
Trade Union has confided to him, the Union’s Parliamentary agent (who
must have views of one sort or another) expresses opinions in accord
with those of the constituency that elected him, or joins together
with other members of like opinions to form a political party. When,
three-quarters of a century ago, J. A. Roebuck was the salaried agent
in the House of Commons for the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada,
no one complained that it was against the dignity of Parliament for him
to be thus retained and paid; and so long as he attended faithfully to
Canadian business it was never contended that the tender conscience of
any Canadian Conservative was offended by the ultra-Radical utterances
or extremely independent political alliances of the Member for Bath.


THE TRADE UNION ACT OF 1913

It is an instance of the failure of both the governing class and
the party politicians to appreciate the workman’s standpoint, or to
understand the temper of the Trade Union world, that this crippling
judgement remained for nearly four years unreversed. The Liberal and
Conservative Parties were, during 1910 and 1911, quarrelling about the
Budget and the exact powers to be exercised by the House of Lords;
and two successive General Elections were fought without bringing
the Trade Unions any redress. Meanwhile, up and down the country
discontented or venal Trade Unionists were sought out by solicitors and
others acting for the employers; and were induced to lend their names
to proceedings for injunctions against their own Unions, prohibiting
them from subscribing to the Labour Party, from contributing towards
the election expenses of candidates, from taking action in municipal
elections, from subscribing to educational classes, and from taking
shares in a “Labour” newspaper. It may have seemed a skilful political
dodge, during the elections of 1910, to hamstring in this way the
growing Labour Party; but the resentment caused by such behaviour
makes it doubtful whether action of this kind is, in the long run,
politically advantageous. In the first place, the House of Commons,
in 1911, felt itself compelled, as an alternative to restoring Trade
Union liberties, to concede the payment of £400 a year to all Members
of Parliament. Finally, in 1913, the Cabinet, after a severe internal
struggle, brought itself to introduce a Bill giving power generally
to any Trade Union to include in its constitution any lawful purpose
whatever, so long as its principal objects were those of a Trade
Union as defined in the 1876 Act; and to spend money on any purpose
thus authorised. It was, indeed, provided that before the financing of
certain specified political objects could be undertaken, including the
support of Parliamentary or Municipal candidates or members, or the
publication or distribution of political documents,[673] a ballot of
the members was to be held in a prescribed form, and a simple majority
of those voting secured; the payments were to be made out of a special
political fund, and any member was to be entitled to claim to be exempt
from the special subscription to that political fund. These restrictive
provisions were opposed by the Labour Members in the House of Commons;
but with slight amendment the measure was passed into law as the Trade
Union Act of 1913.[674]

It is not easy to sum up the whole effect of the legal assaults upon
Trade Unionism between 1901 and 1913. Politically, the result was to
exasperate the active-minded workmen, and greatly to promote, though
with some delay, the growth of an independent Labour Party in the
House of Commons. On the other hand, it must not be overlooked that
the temporary crippling of Trade Unionism seemed to be of financial
advantage to that generation of employers. It was, perhaps, not
altogether an accident that the brunt of the attack had to be borne by
the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, a Union then struggling
for “recognition” in such a position as to make effective its claims
to better remuneration and shorter hours of labour for the whole body
of railwaymen. It may fairly be reckoned that the railwaymen were, by
means of the two great pieces of litigation to which their Union was
subjected, held at bay for something like a decade, during which the
improvement in their conditions, in spite of a slowly-increasing cost
of living, was (mainly through the evasions of the railway companies
by their silent “regrading” of their staffs) extremely small.[675] A
rise of wages to the extent of only a penny per hour for the whole body
of railwaymen would have cost the railway companies, in the aggregate,
something like five or six million pounds a year. If any such advance
was, by means of the Taff Vale Case and the Osborne Judgement, staved
off for ten years, the gain to the whole body of railway shareholders
of that generation might be put as high as fifty or sixty millions
sterling--a sum worth taking a little trouble about and spending a
little money upon, in items not revealed in the published accounts.
But the crippling effect of the litigation was not confined to the
Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, which spent, altogether,
nearly £50,000 in law costs in defending the pass for the whole Trade
Union Movement. If, in the temporary set-back to trade in 1903-5,
and in the revival that immediately followed it; or in the recurring
set-back of 1908-9, and the great improvement of the ensuing years, the
whole body of wage-earners in the kingdom lost only a penny per hour
from their wages, or gained less than they might otherwise have done to
the extent of no more than a penny per hour, their financial loss, in
one year alone, would have amounted to something like a hundred million
pounds. And whatever they forwent in this way, they lost not during
one year only, but during at least several years, and many of them
for a whole decade. There is no doubt that the capitalist employers,
thinking only of their profits for the time being, regarded even a
temporary crippling of the Trade Union Movement as well worth all that
it might cost them. The historian, thinking more of the secular effort
upon social institutions, will not find the balance-sheet so easy to
construct. The final result of the successive attempts between 1901 and
1913 to cripple Trade Unionism by legal proceedings was to give it the
firmest possible basis in statute law. The right of workmen to combine
for any purpose not in itself unlawful was definitely established.
The strike, with its “restraint of trade,” and its interference with
profits and business; peaceful picketing even on an extensive scale;
the persuasion of workmen to withdraw from employment even in breach
of contract, and the other frequent incidents of an industrial dispute
were specifically declared to be, not only not criminal, but actually
lawful. The right of Trade Unions to undertake whatever political and
other activities their members might desire was expressly conceded.
Finally, a complete immunity of Trade Unions in their corporate
capacity from being sued or made answerable in damages, for any act
whatsoever, however great might be the damage thereby caused to other
parties, was established by statute in the most absolute form.[676]
The Trade Unions, it must be remembered, had not asked for these
sweeping changes in their position. They had been, in 1900, content
with the legislation of 1871-76. It was the successive assaults made
upon them by the legal proceedings of 1901-13 that eventually drove
the Government and Parliament, rather than formally concede to Trade
Unionism its proper position in the government of industry, and effect
the necessary fundamental amendment of the law, once more to create for
the workmen’s organisations an anomalous status.


THE RISE IN STATUS OF TRADE UNIONISM

So far we have described only the changes in the legal status of the
Trade Unions and the consequent increase in their freedom of action
and in their influence, alike in the industrial and political sphere.
This advance in legal status has been accompanied by a still more
revolutionary transformation of the social and political standing of
the official representatives of the Trade Union world--a transformation
which has been immensely accelerated by the Great War. We may, in fact,
not unfairly say that Trade Unionism has, in 1920, won its recognition
by Parliament and the Government, by law and by custom, as a separate
element in the community, entitled to distinct recognition as part of
the social machinery of the State, its members being thus allowed to
give--like the clergy in Convocation--not only their votes as citizens,
but also their concurrence as an order or estate.

Like all revolutionary changes in the British constitution, the
recognition of the Trade Union Movement as part of the governmental
structure of the nation began in an almost imperceptible way. Though
Trade Union leaders had been, since 1869, appointed occasionally and
sparsely on Royal Commissions and Departmental Committees, it was
possible, as recently as 1903, for a Government to set up a Royal
Commission on Trade Disputes and Trade Combinations without a single
Trade Unionist member. Such a thing has not been repeated. It is
now taken for granted that Trade Unionism must be distinctively and
effectually represented, usually by men or women of its own informal
nomination, on all Royal Commissions and Departmental Committees,
whether or not these inquiries are concerned specifically with “Labour
Questions”--excepting only such as are so exclusively financial or
professional that the representatives of Labour do not seek or desire
representation upon them.

In 1885-86, and again in 1892-95, Liberal Prime Ministers had appointed
leading Trade Unionists (who were, it must be noted, also Liberal
M.P.’s) to subordinate Ministerial positions, where they were permitted
practically no influence.[677] In 1905 Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman
startled some of his Whig associates by asking Mr. John Burns--who
had presided over the Trades Union Congress as a representative of
the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, but who had sat in Parliament
since 1892 as a Liberal supporter--to join his Cabinet as President
of the Local Government Board. This recognition of Labour in the
inner councils of the Government was quickly followed by an explicit
recognition of the Trade Unions as part of the machinery of State
administration. In 1911, when the vast scheme of National Insurance
was brought forward by Mr. Asquith’s Government, and Parliament
sanctioned the raising and expenditure of more than twenty million
pounds a year for the relief of sickness and unemployment, the Trade
Unions, equally with the universally praised Friendly Societies, were
made the agents for the administration of the sickness, invalidity,
and maternity benefits, and, parallel with the Government’s own local
organisation, and to the exclusion of the Friendly Societies, also
for the administration of the State Unemployment Benefit to their
own members. But it was during the Great War that we watch the most
extensive advance in the status, alike of the official representatives
of the Trade Unions and of the Trade Unions themselves, as organs
of representation and government. It is needless to say that this
recognition was not accorded to the Trade Union world without a _quid
pro quo_ from the Trade Union Movement to the Government. Hence the
part played by the Trade Unions in the national effort, and its effect
on their influence and status, demands explicit notice.


BRITISH TRADE UNIONISM AND THE WAR

Though theoretically internationalist in sympathy, and predominantly
opposed to “militarism” at home as well as abroad, British Trade
Unionism, when war was declared, took a decided line.[678] From
first to last the whole strength of the Movement--in spite of the
pacifist faith of a relatively small minority, which included the
most fervent and eloquent of the Labour members and was supported by
the energetic propaganda of the fraction of the Trade Unionists who
were also members of the Socialist Society known as the I.L.P.--was
thrown on the side of the nation’s effort. From every industry workmen
flocked to the colours, with the utmost encouragement and assistance
from their Trade Unions; until the miners, the railwaymen, and the
engineers, in particular, had to be refused as recruits, exempted
from conscription, and even returned from the army, in order that the
indispensable industrial services might be maintained. The number of
workers in engineering and the manufacture of munitions of war had,
indeed, to be largely increased; and the Government found itself,
within a year, under the necessity of asking the Trade Unions for the
unprecedented sacrifice of the relinquishment, for the duration of the
war, of the entire network of “Trade Union Conditions” which had been
slowly built up by generations of effort for the protection of the
workmen’s Standard of Life. This enormous draft on the patriotism of
the rank and file could only be secured by enlisting the support of
the official representatives of the Trade Union world--by according to
them a unique and unprecedented place as the diplomatic representatives
of the wage-earning class. In the famous Treasury Conference of
February 1915 the capitalist employers were ignored, and the principal
Ministers of the Crown negotiated directly with the authorised
representatives of the whole Trade Union world, not only in respect of
the terms of service of Government employees, but also with regard to
the conditions of employment of all persons, men and women, skilled
and unskilled, unionists and non-unionists, engaged on any work needed
for the conduct of the war--a phrase which was afterwards stretched to
include four-fifths of the entire manual-working class. The Trade Union
Executives agreed, at this Conference or subsequently, to suspend,
for the duration of the war, all their rules and customary practices
restrictive of the output of anything required by the Government for
the conduct of the war; all limitation of employment to apprenticed
men, to Trade Unionists, to men of proved technical skill, to adults
and even to the male sex; all reservation of particular jobs or
particular machines to workers of particular trades; all definition
of a Normal Day, and all objection to overtime, night-work, or Sunday
duty; and even many of the Factory Act prohibitions by which the health
and even the safety of the operatives had been protected. In order that
the utmost possible output of munitions of every kind might be secured,
elaborate schemes of “dilution” were assented to, under which the
various tasks were subdivided and rearranged, a very large amount of
automatic machinery was introduced, and successive drafts of “dilutees”
were brought into the factories and workshops--men and boys from other
occupations, sometimes even non-manual workers, as well as women and
girls--and put to work under the tuition and direction of the minority
of skilled craftsmen at top speed, at time wages differing entirely
from the Trade Union rates, or at piecework prices unsafeguarded by
Collective Bargaining, for hours of labour indefinitely lengthened,
sometimes under conditions such as no Trade Union would have permitted.
It must be recorded to the credit of the Trade Unions that not one
of the societies refused this sacrifice, which was made without any
demand for compensatory increase of pay, merely upon the condition--to
which not only the Ministry, but also the Opposition Leaders and
the House of Commons as a whole, elaborately and repeatedly pledged
themselves--that the abandonment of the “Trade Union Conditions” was
only to be for the duration of the war, and exclusively for the service
of the Government, not to the profit of any private employer; and that
everything that was abrogated was to be reinstated when peace came.

Under stress of the national emergency, the Government made ever
greater demands on the patriotism of the Trade Unions, which accepted
successively, so far as war-work was concerned, a legal abrogation
of the employers’ competition for their members’ services by the
prohibition of advertisement for employees, and of the engagement
of men from other districts--an unprecedented interference with the
“Law of Supply and Demand”--the suspension of the right to strike
for better terms; the submission of all disputes to the decision of
a Government Department of arbitration, the awards of which, with
the abrogation of the right to strike, or even freely to relinquish
employment, became virtually compulsory; the legal enforcement
under penalties of the employer’s workshop rules; and even legally
enforced continuance, not only in munition work, but actually in the
service of a particular employer, under the penal jurisdiction of
the ubiquitous Munitions Tribunals. The Munitions of War Acts, 1915,
1916 and 1917, by which all this industrial coercion was statutorily
imposed, were accepted by overwhelming majorities at successive Trade
Union and Labour Party Conferences. It was a serious aggravation of
this “involuntary servitude” that the rigid enforcement of compulsory
military service--extended successively from single men to fathers of
families, from 18 years of age to 51--had the incidental effect of
enforcing what was virtually “industrial conscription” on those who
were left for the indispensable civilian employment; and the individual
workman realised that the penalty for any failure of implicit obedience
to the foreman might be instant relegation to the trenches. Although
this inevitable result of Compulsory Military Service was foreseen
and deplored,[679] the successive Military Service Acts were--in view
of the nation’s needs--ratified, in effect, by great majorities at
the workmen’s National Congresses. The strongest protests were made,
but as each measure was passed it was accepted without resistance,
and proposals to resist were always rejected by large majorities. It
speaks volumes, both for the patriotism of the Trade Unionists and for
the strength of Trade Union loyalty and Trade Union organisation, that
under such repressive circumstances the Trade Union leaders were able,
on the whole, to prevent their members from hindering production by
industrial revolts. A certain amount of friction was, of course, not to
be avoided. Strikes, though greatly reduced in number, were not wholly
prevented; and the South Wales coal-miners and the engineering workmen
on the Clyde--largely through arbitrary and repressive action by their
respective employers--broke into open rebellion; which led, in the one
industry, to the Government overriding the recalcitrant South Wales
employers and assuming the direction and the financial responsibility
of all the coal mines throughout the kingdom; and, in the other, to
the arbitrary arrest and deportation of the leaders of the unofficial
organisation of revolt styled the “Clyde Workers’ Committee.” The Trade
Union Executives and officials, whilst restraining their members and
deprecating all stoppages of production, were able to put up a good
fight against the unnecessary and unreasonable demands which, with a
view to “after the war” conditions, employers were not unwilling to
use the national emergency to put forward. These Trade Union spokesmen
had to obtain for their members the successive rises in money wages
which the steadily rising cost of living made necessary, and they had
constantly to stand their ground in the innumerable mixed committees
and arbitration proceedings into which the Government was always
inveigling them. On the whole, whilst co-operating in every way in
meeting the national emergency, the Trade Union organisation during
the four and a-quarter years of war remained intact; and Trade Union
membership--allowing for the millions absent with the colours--steadily
increased. Nor did the Trade Union Movement make any serious revolt
when the Government found itself unable to fulfil, with any literal
exactness, the specific pledges which it had given to Organised Labour.
The complications and difficulties of the Government were, in fact, so
great that the pledges were not kept. The first promise to be broken
was that the abrogation of Trade Union Conditions and the removal of
everything restrictive of output should not be allowed to increase the
profits of the employers. The so-called “Munitions Levy” was imposed
in 1916 on “controlled establishments,” in fulfilment of this pledge,
in order to confiscate for the Exchequer the whole of their excess
profit, over and above a permitted addition of 20 per cent and very
liberal allowances for increased capital and extra exertion by the
employers themselves. It will hardly be believed that, in flagrant
disregard of the specific pledge, within a year this Munitions Levy
was abolished; and the firms especially benefiting by the workmen’s
sacrifices were made merely subject, in common with all other trades
where there had been no such abrogation of Trade Union Conditions, to
the 80 per cent Excess Profits Duty, with the result of increasing
the net income left to those employers whose profits had doubled,
and of doing, with regard to all the employers, the very thing that
the Trade Unions had stipulated should not be done, namely, giving
the employers themselves a financial interest in “dilution.”[680] As
the war dragged on, and prices rose, the successive war-bonuses and
additions to wages--especially those of the miners and the bulk of
the women workers--in many cases fell steadily behind the rise in the
cost of living; and in 1917 the War Cabinet was actually guilty of a
formal instruction to the presumedly impartial central arbitration
tribunal that no further increase of wages was to be awarded--an
instruction which, on its public disclosure, had to be apologised for
and virtually withdrawn. Even the pledge as to wages in the solemn
“Treasury Agreement” of 1915, at which the “Trade Union Conditions”
were surrendered, was not fulfilled, at any rate as regards the women
workers; and had to be made the subject of a subsequent serious
investigation by the War Cabinet Committee on Women in Industry, in
which all the “white-washing” of a Government majority failed to
convince the Trade Unionists, any more than it did the only unpaid
member of the Committee, that the Government officials had not
betrayed them.[681] The solemnly promised “Restoration of Trade Union
Conditions” was only imperfectly carried out. What the Government did,
and that only after long delay, was not what it had promised, namely,
actually to see the pre-war conditions and practices reinstated, but
to enact a statute enabling the workmen to proceed in the law courts
against employers who failed to restore them; continuance of any such
restoration to be obligatory only for one year.[682]

The Trade Unionists, in fact, who had at the outset of the war
patriotically refrained from bargaining as to the price of their
aid, were, on the whole, “done” at its close. Though here and there
particular sections had received exceptionally high earnings in the
time of stress, the rates of wages, taking industry as a whole, did
not, as the Government returns prove, rise either so quickly or so high
as the cost of living; so that, whilst many persons suffered great
hardship, the great majority of wage-earners found the product in
commodities of their rates of pay in 1919 less rather than more than
it was in 1913. During the war, indeed, many thousands of households
got in the aggregate more, and both earned and needed more; because
the young and the aged were at work and costing more than when not
at work, whilst overtime and night-work increased the strain and the
requirements of all. When peace came, it was found that the Government,
for all its promises, had made no arrangements whatever to prevent
unemployment; and none to relieve the unemployed beyond an entirely
improvised and dwindling weekly dole, which (so far as civilians were
concerned) was suddenly brought to an end on November 20, 1919, without
any alternative provision being immediately made.

It would thus be easy to argue that the representatives of the Trade
Union world made a series of bad bargains with the Government, and
through the Government with the capitalist employers, at a time when
the nation’s needs would have enabled the organised manual workers
almost to dictate their own terms. But this is to take a short-sighted
view. It is a sufficient answer to say that the great mass of the Trade
Unionists, like the leaders themselves, wanted above all things that
the nation should win the war; found it repugnant to make stipulations
in the national emergency, and did not realise the extent to which
they were being tricked and cheated by the officials. But apart from
this impulsive and unself-regarding patriotism we think that, when
it becomes possible to cast up and balance all the results of the
innovations of the war period, the Trade Union Movement will be found
to have gained and not lost. We may suggest, perhaps paradoxically,
that the very ease with which the War Cabinet suppressed the civil
liberties of the manual-working wage-earners during the war, and even
continued after the Armistice a machinery of industrial _espionage_,
with _agents provocateurs_ of workshop “sedition,” enormously increased
the solidarity of the Trade Union Movement--an effect intensified
during 1919 by the costly and futile intervention of the British
Government in Russia on behalf of military leaders whom the Trade
Unionists, rightly or wrongly, believed to be organising the forces of
political and economic reaction. Sober and responsible Trade Unionists,
who had taken for granted the easy-going freedom and tolerance
characteristic of English life in times of peace, suddenly realised
that these conditions could at any moment be withdrawn from them by
what seemed the arbitrary fiat of a Government over which they found
that they had no control. In this way the abrogation of Trade Union
liberty during the war gave the same sort of intellectual fillip to
Trade Unionism and the Labour Party in 1915-19 that had been given in
1901-13 by the Taff Vale Case and the Osborne Judgement. At the same
time the Government found itself compelled, in order to secure the
co-operation of the Trade Unions, both during the war and amid the
menacing economic conditions of the first half of 1919, to accord to
them, and to their leaders, a _locus standi_ in the determination of
essentially national issues that was undreamt of in previous times.
The Trade Unions, in fact, through shouldering their responsibility in
the national cause, gained enormously in social and political status.
In practically every branch of public administration, from unimportant
local committees up to the Cabinet itself, we find the Trade Union
world now accepted as forming, virtually, a separate constituency,
which has to be specially represented. We shall tell the tale in our
next chapter of the participation of members of the Parliamentary
Labour Party in the Coalition Governments of Mr. Asquith and Mr. Lloyd
George. What is here relevant is that these Trade Union officials
were selected in the main, not on personal grounds, but because they
represented the Trade Union Movement. They accepted ministerial office
with the approval, and they relinquished ministerial office at the
request of the National Conference of the Labour Party, in which the
Trade Unions exercised the predominant influence. A similar recognition
of the Trade Union Movement has marked all the recently constituted
Local Government structure, from the committees set up in 1914 for
the relief of distress to those organised in 1917 for the rationing
and control of the food supply, and the tribunals formed in 1919 for
the suppression of “profiteering.” In all these cases the Government
specifically required the appointment of representatives of the local
Trade Unions. Trade Unionists have to constitute half the members
appointed to the Advisory Committees attached to the Employment
Exchanges; and Trade Unionist workmen sit, not only on the temporary
“Munitions Courts” administering the disciplinary provisions of the
Munitions of War Acts, but also on the local Tribunals of Appeal to
determine whether a workman is entitled to the State Unemployment
Benefit. In the administration of the Military and Naval Pensions Act
of 1916 a further step in recognition of Trade Unionism was taken. Not
only were the nominees of Labour placed upon the Statutory (Central)
Pensions Committee, but, in the order constituting the Local Pensions
Committees, the Trade Union organisations in each locality, which
were named in the schemes, were expressly and specifically accorded
the right to elect whom they chose as their representatives on these
committees by which the pensions were to be awarded.[683] When,
towards the close of the war, the Committee presided over by the Rt.
Hon. J. H. Whitley, M.P., propounded its scheme of Joint Industrial
Councils of equal numbers of representative employers and workers
for the supervision and eventual administration of many matters of
interest in each industry throughout the kingdom--the “mouse” which
was practically the whole outcome as regards industrial reorganisation
of the Ministry of Reconstruction--it was specifically to the Trade
Unions in each industry, and to them alone, that the election of the
wage-earners’ representatives was entrusted.[684] When, in 1919, it
seemed desirable to make a series of comprehensive reforms in the terms
of employment, it was not to Parliament that the Prime Minister turned,
but to a “National Industrial Conference,” to which he summoned some
five hundred representatives of the Employers’ Associations and Trade
Unions. It was by this body, through its own sub-committee of thirty
employers’ representatives and thirty Trade Union representatives,
that were elaborated the measures instituting a Legal Maximum Eight
Hours Day and a statutory Minimum Wage Commission that the Ministry
undertook to present to Parliament. In the Royal Commission on
Agriculture of 1919, the several Unions enrolling farm labourers were
invited to nominate as many members (eight) as were accorded to the
farmers, whilst of the four remaining members appointed as scientific
or statistical experts--all landlords being excluded--two were chosen
among those known to be sympathetic to Labour. In the statutory Coal
Industry Commission of the same year, to which reference has already
been made, the Miners’ Federation made its participation absolutely
conditional on being allowed to nominate half of the total membership,
under a presumedly impartial Judge of the High Court, including not
merely three Trade Union officials to balance the three mine-owners,
but also three out of the six “disinterested” members by whom--all
royalty owners being excluded--the Commission was to be completed.
All this constitutional development is at once the recognition and the
result of the new position in the State that Trade Unionism has won--a
position due not merely to the numerical growth that we have described,
but also to the uprise of new ideas and wider aspirations in the Trade
Union world itself.


THE REVOLUTION IN THOUGHT

The new ideas which are to-day taking root in the Trade Union world
centre round the aspiration of the organisations of manual workers
to take part--some would urge the predominant part, a few might say
the sole part--in the control and direction of the industries in
which they gain their livelihood. Such a claim was made, as we have
described in the third chapter of this work, in its most extreme form,
by the revolutionary Trade Unionism of 1830-34; and it lingered on
in the minds of the Chartists as long as any of them survived. But
after the collapse, in 1848, of Chartism as an organised movement
British Trade Unionism settled down to the attainment of a strictly
limited end--the maintenance and progressive improvement, within each
separate occupation or craft, of the terms of the bargain made by the
wage-earner with the employers, including alike all the conditions of
service and complete freedom from personal oppression. Hence the Trade
Unionist as such, during the second half of the nineteenth century,
tacitly accepted the existing organisation of industry. He discussed
the rival advantages of private enterprise carried on in the interests
of the capitalist profit-maker on the one hand, and of the Consumers’
Co-operative Movement or State and Municipal enterprise on the other,
almost exclusively from the standpoint of whether the profit-making
employers or the representatives of the consumers or the citizens
offered better conditions of employment to the members of his own
organisation. Right down to the end of the nineteenth century this
remained the dominant working-class view. We find in the proceedings
of the Royal Commission on Labour, 1891-94, a striking demonstration of
the strictly limited purpose of British Trade Unionism at that date.
Whether we study the elaborate collection of Trade Union rules and
other documents made by the Commission, or the personal evidence given
by the leaders or advocates of Trade Unionism, we find from beginning
to end absolutely no claim, and even no suggestion, that the Trade
Union should participate in the direction of industry, otherwise than
in arranging with the employers the conditions of the wage-earner’s
working life.[685] One or two Unions included, among their published
“objects,” vague and pious references to the desirability of
co-operative production; but the assumption was always that any such
co-operative production would be carried out by the members of the
Union working in and managing a particular establishment, which would
take its place, like any private establishment, within the framework of
the capitalist system. When a Trade Union leader was also a Socialist
he assumed that the “Socialisation” of industry would be carried out
by the Central or Local Government, or by the Consumers’ Co-operative
Movement. Hence, Mr. Tom Mann, himself a Royal Commissioner, who was
called as a witness before the Commission, was a powerful advocate of
nationalisation and municipalisation. “I am distinctly favourable,
and am associated with those who are earnestly advocating,” he stated
from the witness-chair, “the advisability of encouraging the State to
at once entertain the proposal of the State control of railways. I am
also identified with those who are favourable to the nationalisation
of the land, which means, of course, a State control of land in the
common interest; and I am continually advocating the desirability
for statesmen and politicians and municipal councillors to try and
understand in what particular departments of industry they can get to
work and exercise their faculties in controlling trade and industry in
the common interest where that interest would be likely to be secured
better than under the present method.” When asked by the Duke of
Devonshire whether his advocacy of the nationalisation of the railways
was in the interests of the public or mainly in the interests of the
workmen employed on the railways, he replied: “Not mainly on behalf
of the workers; I would put it equally so. I believe it would serve
the public interest, the general well-being of the community.... I do
not believe that a Government Department will ever be healthy until
the public themselves are healthy in this direction, and are keeping a
watchful eye upon the whole governmental show and secure the general
well-being by their watchfulness. I do not think that State control of
industry will ever be brought about until that development on the part
of the public themselves is brought about, and they desire to see it
controlled in the common interest.... When a sufficient number of men
are prepared to take the initiative, and educate public opinion to the
desirability of a superior method of control in the common interest,
then I believe it will be done, not all at once, but gradually.”[686]

But Mr. Tom Mann did not stand alone. The Independent Labour Party,
the largest and the most popular of Socialist societies in the United
Kingdom, established in 1893, and largely recruited from the ranks of
Trade Unionists, carried on, right down to the outbreak of the Great
War, a vigorous propaganda in favour of an indefinite extension of
State and Municipal administration of industrial undertakings, whilst
the more doctrinaire Social Democratic Federation was, in its early
days, outspokenly contemptuous of the whole Trade Union Movement as a
mere “palliative” of the Capitalist system. This bias in favour of the
communal organisation, in favour of the government of the people by and
for the people organised in geographical areas, was, until the opening
of the twentieth century, equally dominant among the most “advanced”
Labour and Socialist thinkers on the Continent of Europe.[687]

But in spite of the assumption that services and industries ought to
be carried out by democracies of consumers and citizens, organised in
geographical districts--that is, by the Central and Local Government
of a Political Democracy--there always remained, in the hearts of the
manual working class in Great Britain, an instinctive faith in the
opposite idea of Associations of Producers owning, as such, both the
instruments and the product of their labour. Throughout the whole
of the second half of the nineteenth century it was pathetic to see
this faith struggling on, in spite of the almost constant failure of
the innumerable little manufacturing establishments carried on by
Associations of Producers. What finally killed it as an ideal, in
the eyes of the Trade Unionists of Great Britain, was the fact that
Co-operative Production and its child, Co-partnership, were taken up by
the most reactionary persons and parties in the State. Great peers and
Conservative statesmen were always blessing “Co-operative Production,”
and always trying to stimulate the workers to undertake business on
their own account. When the invariable failure of self-governing
workshops became too obvious, the advocates of Co-operative Production
fell back on “Labour Co-partnership”--partnership in business with the
capitalist class! This was so obviously, and almost avowedly, an attack
on, or at least a proposal for the supersession of Trade Unionism, that
it aroused the fiercest opposition; and the very idea became anathema
in the Trade Union world. In short, there was, from the collapse of
Owenism and Chartism in the eighteen-thirties and -forties, right
down to 1900, practically no sign that the British Trade Unions ever
thought of themselves otherwise than as organisations to secure an
ever-improving Standard of Life by means of an ever-increasing control
of the conditions under which they worked. They neither desired nor
sought any participation in the management of the technical processes
of industry (except in so far as these might affect the conditions
of their employment, or the selection of persons to be employed);
whilst it never occurred to a Trade Union to claim any power over, or
responsibility for, buying the raw materials or marketing the product.
On the contrary, the most advanced Trade Union leaders were never tired
of asserting that their members must enjoy the full standard conditions
of employment, whatever arrangements the employers might make with
regard to the other factors of production; or however unskilful
employers or groups of employers might prove to be in the buying of the
raw material, or in the selling of the commodities in the markets of
the world.

With the opening years of the twentieth century we become aware of a
new intellectual ferment, not confined to any one country, nor even
to the manual working class. We watch, emerging in various forms, new
variants of the old idea of the organisation of industries and services
by those who are actually carrying them on. We see it working among
the brain-working professionals. Alike in England and in France the
teachers in the schools and the professors in the colleges began to
assert both their moral right to manage the institutions as they alone
know how, and the advantage that this would be to the community. The
doctors were demanding a similar control over the exercise of their own
function. But the most conspicuous, and the most widely influential,
of the forms taken by the idea was the revolutionary movement that
spread among large sections of the wage-earners almost simultaneously
in France, the classic home of associations of producers, and in the
United States, with its large population of foreign immigrants. In both
these countries any widespread Trade Unionism was of much more recent
growth than in Great Britain, and was still regarded, alike by the
employers and by the Government, as an undesirable and revolutionary
force. The “_syndicats_” of France, and the Labour Unions among the
foreign workers in the United States were, in fact, at the opening
of the twentieth century, in much the same stage of development as
the British Trade Unions were when they were swept into the vortex of
revolutionary Owenism in 1834. Alike in their constitutions and in
their declared objects, in the first decade of the new century, the
General Confederation of Labour in France and the Industrial Workers of
the World in the United States bear a striking resemblance to the Grand
National Consolidated Trades Union that we have described in an earlier
chapter; and, like that organisation, both of them excited a quite
exaggerated terror in the hearts of magistrates and Ministers of State.
Indeed, the doctrines and phraseology of the mass of literature turned
out by French Trade Unionists between 1900 and 1910 are remarkably
like--allowing for the superior literary power of the French--the
pamphlets and leaflets of the Owenite Trade Unionism.[688] There is the
same conception of a republic of industry, consisting of a federation
of Trade Unions, local and central; the federation of shop clubs,
branches, or local unions forming the Local Authority for all purposes,
whilst a standing conference of the national representatives of all the
Trade Unions constitutes a co-ordinating or superintending National
Authority. There is the same reliance, as a means of achievement, on
continuous strikes, culminating in a “general expropriatory strike.”
There is the same denunciation of the political State as a useless
encumbrance, and the same appeal to the soldiers to join the workers in
upsetting the existing system.

We need not stay to inquire how this new ferment crossed the Atlantic
or the Channel. Between 1905 and 1910 we become aware of the birth,
in some of the industrial districts, of a number of new propagandist
groups--more especially among the miners and engineers--groups of
persons in revolt not only against the Capitalist System but against
the limited aims of contemporary Trade Unionism and the usual
categories of contemporary Socialism. The pioneer of the new faith
in the United Kingdom seems to have been James Connolly, afterwards
organiser of the Irish Transport and General Workers Union, to
which we have already referred, a man of noble character and fine
intelligence, whose tragic execution in 1916, after the suppression of
the Dublin rising, made him one of the martyred heroes of the Irish
race. Connolly, who was a disciple of the founder of the American
Socialist Labour Party, Daniel De Leon, started a similar organisation
on the Clyde in 1905. In opposition to the contemporary Socialist
propaganda in favour of the nationalisation and municipalisation of
industries and services, to be brought about by political action, he
advocated the direct supersession of the Capitalist System in each
workshop and in every industry, by the organised workers thereof.
“It is an axiom,” he said, “enforced by all the experience of the
ages, that they who rule industrially will rule politically....
That natural law leads us as individuals to unite in our craft, as
crafts to unite in our industry, as industries in our class; and the
finished expression of that evolution is, we believe, the appearance
of our class upon the political battle-ground with all the economic
power behind it to enforce its mandates. Until that day dawns our
political parties of the working class are but propagandist agencies,
John the Baptists of the New Redemption; but when that day dawns our
political party will be armed with all the might of our class; will
be revolutionary in fact as well as in thought.” “Let us be clear,”
he adds, “as to the function of Industrial Unionism. That function is
to build up an industrial republic inside the shell of the political
State, in order that when that industrial republic is fully organised
it may crack the shell of the political State and step into its place
in the scheme of the universe.... Under a Socialist form of society
the administration of affairs wall be in the hands of representatives
of the various industries of the nation; ... the workers in the
shops and factories will organise themselves into unions, each union
comprising all the workers at a given industry; ... said union will
democratically control the workshop life of its own industry, electing
all foremen, etc., and regulating the routine of labour in that
industry in subordination to the needs of society in general, to the
needs of its allied trades and to the department of industry to which
it belongs.... Representatives elected from these various departments
of industry will meet and form the industrial administration or
national government of the country. In short, Social Democracy, as
its name implies, is the application to industry, or to the social
life of the nation, of the fundamental principles of Democracy. Such
application will necessarily have to begin in the workshop, and
proceed logically and consecutively upward through all the grades of
industrial organisation until it reaches the culminating point of
national executive power and direction. In other words, Socialism must
proceed from the bottom upwards, whereas capitalist political society
is organised from above downward; Socialism will be administered by a
committee of experts elected from the industries and professions of
the land; capitalist society is governed by representatives elected
from districts, and is based upon territorial division.”[689] A similar
ferment was to be seen at work amongst the South Wales miners, giving
rise to a series of propagandist organisations, preaching the doctrine
of Industrial Unionism as a revolutionary force, and culminating in the
much-denounced pamphlet _The Miners’ Next Step_, 1912, which created
some sensation in the capitalist world.[690]

In 1910 we find Mr. Tom Mann, fresh from organising strikes in
Australia, and inspired by a visit to Paris, preaching the new faith
to large popular audiences in London and the principal provincial
cities with the same sincerity and eloquence with which he had formerly
advocated State and Municipal Socialism and the statutory regulation
of the conditions of employment. “The Industrial Syndicalist,” he
explains, holds that “to run industry through Parliament, that is
by State machinery, will be even more mischievous to the working
class than the existing method, for it will assuredly mean that the
capitalist class will, through Government Departments, exercise over
the national forces, and over the workers, a domination that is
even more rigid than is the case to-day. And the Syndicalist also
declares that in the near future the industrially organised workers
will themselves undertake the entire responsibility of running the
industries in the interest of all who work, and are entitled to enjoy
the result of labour.”[691] “We therefore most certainly favour
strikes; we shall always do our best to help strikes to be successful,
and shall prepare the way as rapidly as possible for +The General
Strike+ of national proportions. This will be the actual Social and
Industrial Revolution. The workers will refuse to any longer manipulate
the machinery of production in the interest of the capitalist class,
and there will be no power on earth able to compel them to work
when they thus refuse.... When the capitalists get tired of running
industries, the workers will cheerfully invite them to abdicate, and
through and by their industrial organisations will run the industries
themselves in the interests of the whole community.”[692] “Finally, and
vitally essential it is,” sums up Mr. Tom Mann in 1911, “to show that
economic emancipation to the working class can only be secured by the
working class asserting its power in workshops, factories, warehouses,
mills and mines, on ships and boats and engines, and wherever work is
performed, ever extending their control over the tools of production,
until, by the power of the internationally organised Proletariat,
capitalist production shall entirely cease, and the industrial
socialist republic will be ushered in, and thus the Social Revolution
realised.”[693]

The revolutionary Industrial Unionism and Syndicalism preached by
James Connolly and Tom Mann and other fervent missionaries between
1905 and 1912 did not commend itself to the officials and leaders of
the Trade Unions any more than it did to the cautious and essentially
Conservative-minded men and women who make up the rank and file of
the British working class. But, like other revolutionary movements in
England, it prepared the way for constitutional proposals. The ideal of
taking over the instruments of production appealed to all intelligent
workmen as workmen. To them it seemed merely Co-operative Production
writ large, the ownership of the instruments and of the product of
labour by the workers themselves. But the ownership and management was
now to be carried out, not by small competing establishments doomed
to failure, but in the industry as a whole by a “blackleg-proof”
Trade Union. To the idealistic and active-minded Trade Union official
in particular, weary of the perpetual haggling with employers over
fractional changes in wages and hours, the prospect of becoming the
representative of his fellow-workers in a self-governing industry,
with all the initiative and responsibility that such a position
would involve, was decidedly attractive. So long as this ideal was
associated with violent and revolutionary methods, and left no room
for the political democracy to which Englishmen are accustomed,
or even for the Consumers’ Co-operative Movement, it failed to get
accepted either by responsible officials or by the mass of sober-minded
members. The bridge between the old conception of Trade Unionism and
the new was built by a fresh group of Socialists, who called themselves
National Guildsmen. This group of able thinkers, largely drawn
from the Universities, accepted from what we may call the Communal
Socialists the idea of the ownership of the instruments of production
by the representatives of the citizen-consumers, but proposed to vest
the management in national associations of the producers in each
industry--organisations which they declared ought to include, not
merely the present wage-earners, but all the workers, by hand or by
brain.[694] These guilds were to grow out of the existing Trade Unions,
gradually made co-extensive with each industry. We have neither the
space, nor would it be within the scope of this book, to describe or
criticise this conception of National Guilds, or the theories and
schemes of the Guild Socialists. These theories and schemes are none
the worse for being still in the making. What we are concerned with, as
historians of the Trade Union Movement, is the rapid adoption between
1913 and 1920 by many of the younger leaders of the Movement, and
subject to various modifications, also by some of the most powerful of
the Trade Unions, of this new ideal of the development of the existing
Trade Unions into self-organised, self-contained, self-governing
industrial democracies, as supplying the future method of conducting
industries and services. The schemes put forward by the National Union
of Railwaymen, the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain, and the Union
of Postal Workers differ widely from the revolutionary Syndicalism
of Mr. Tom Mann and the large visions of the Industrial Workers of
the World. They do not even go so far as the projects of the National
Guildsmen. In fact, they limit the claim of the manual workers merely
to participation in the management, fully conceding that the final
authority must be vested in the representatives of the community
of citizens or consumers. Thus we see the Annual General Meeting
of the National Union of Railwaymen in 1914 resolving unanimously:
“That this Congress, while reaffirming previous decisions in favour
of the nationalisation of railways, and approving the action of the
Executive Committee in arranging to obtain and give evidence before
the Royal Commission, declares that no system of State ownership of
the railways will be acceptable to organised railwaymen which does not
guarantee to them their full political and social rights, _allow them
a due measure of control and responsibility in the safe and efficient
working of the railway system_, and assure to them a fair and equitable
participation of the increased benefits likely to accrue from a more
economical and scientific administration.”[695] In a modified form this
resolution was brought forward by the Railway Clerks’ Association,
supported by the N.U.R., and passed by the Trades Union Congress of
1917.[696] A similar movement in favour of participation in management
has taken root among the postal workers of all kinds, in England as
also in France. At the Annual Conference, in May 1919, of the Postal
and Telegraph Clerks’ Association, which had in previous years been
passing resolutions on the subject, it was emphatically pointed out
that the control demanded by the postal employees was not restricted
to securing better conditions of employment, but that they desired
to participate in directing the technical improvement of the service
for the good of the community.[697] The Conference resolved: “That in
view of the obstructive attitude of the Department on the question of
the development of the Post Office Savings Bank, the modernising of
the Post Office Insurance System, and the expansion and improvement
of the Post Office Services generally, this Conference directs that
representatives of the Association be appointed to investigate and
report on the working of the postal cheque and transfer services from
both the national and international standpoint, and that the report
be widely circulated, and propaganda work undertaken, so that this
development of the Post Office Savings Bank--giving a greatly improved
transmission of moneys system--be introduced throughout.”[698] Finally,
we may cite the scheme for the Nationalisation of the Coal-mines that
the Miners’ Federation brought formally before the Coal Industry
Commission in 1919. Six years previously the Miners’ Federation had had
a Bill drafted and published, which provided merely for the vesting of
the collieries in a Ministry of Mines, and for the administration of
the whole industry by that department.[699] All that the Federation was
then concerned to secure for the miners themselves was the continuance
of free and lawful Trade Unionism. The Bill of 1919[700] imposed on the
Minister of Mines a whole series of National and District Councils,
and Pit Committees, each of which was to consist, to the extent of one
half, of members nominated by the Federation, the other half being
nominated by the Minister; and the expectation was not concealed that
it would be by these bipartite bodies that the administration would be
conducted. We record these schemes, which are by the nature of the case
only imperfect drafts prepared for propaganda, not so much for their
importance as precisely defined industrial constitutions, but as being
indicative of the change of spirit that has come over the Trade Union
world.


THE INCREASED RELIANCE ON DIRECT ACTION

The acceptance, during the last decade, by Parliament, by the Executive
Government, and by public opinion, of the Trade Union organisation as
part of the machinery of government in all matters concerning the life
and labour of the manual working class, has been coincident, some would
say paradoxically coincident, with an increased reliance on the strike,
commonly known as the method of Direct Action, and with an enlargement
of the purposes for which this method is used by Trade Unionists.
There is an impression in the public mind, which easily forgets its
previous impressions of the same kind, that we are to-day (1920) living
in an era of strikes. Although this impression is not justified
by the number of strikes, as compared with those of 1825, 1833-34,
1857-60, 1871-74, and 1885-86, there is some basis for the feeling. The
strikes and threats of strikes during the past decade (excluding the
four years of war) have been on a larger scale, and, in a sense, more
menacing, than those of previous periods. When we published, in 1897,
our detailed analysis of the theory and practice of contemporary Trade
Unionism (_Industrial Democracy_), the very term “direct action” was
unknown in this country. The strike was regarded, not as a distinct
method of Trade Union action, but merely as the culminating incident
of a breakdown of the Method of Collective Bargaining.[701] The Trade
Union plea for the right to strike has always been a simple one. It
is a mere derivative of the right of Freedom of Contract. Whenever an
individual workman had the right to refuse to enter or continue in a
contract of service, any group of individuals might, if they chose,
exercise a like freedom. After the collapse of Owenism and Chartism
all thought of using the weapon of the strike, otherwise than as an
incident in Collective Bargaining with the employers, seems to have
left the Trade Union Movement in Great Britain. Indeed, during the
last half of the nineteenth century, the use of the weapon of the
strike was falling into disrepute, even as an incident of Collective
Bargaining, not only among the officials of the great trade friendly
societies, such as the Amalgamated Society of Engineers and Carpenters,
but also among the younger and more militant members of the Trade
Union movement. The “extremists” of the last decade of the nineteenth
century, as we have described in a previous chapter, were out for the
“capture” of Parliament and Local Authorities by an “independent” Party
of Labour; and political action was commonly regarded as the shortest
and most convenient way of securing not only Socialist but also the
distinctively Trade Union objects. It was at that time left to the
“reactionaries” in the Trade Union Movement, who disliked the idea of a
political Labour Party, to advocate reliance on “ourselves alone.”[702]

But with the revolution of thought that we have described there has
arisen, with regard to Direct Action, a change of practice. In 1913-14
there was an outburst of exasperated strikes designed, we may almost
say, to supersede Collective Bargaining--to repudiate any making of
long-term agreements, to spring demand after demand upon employers,
to compel every workman to join the Union, avowedly with the view
of building up the Trade Union as a dominant force. This spasm of
industrial “insurrectionism” was abruptly stopped by the outbreak of
war. The “political” element creeps in with the strikes and threats
of strikes of the Miners’ Federation in 1912 and 1919, designed, not
to further Collective Bargaining with the employers, but to cause the
Government and Parliament to alter the organisation of the industry,
in the earlier case by the enactment of a Minimum Wage law, and in the
other by the elimination of the capitalist profitmaker in favour of
public ownership and workers’ control. During the years of war Direct
Action took another form. The weapon of a concerted refusal to work was
used by some Trade Unions, in matters entirely unconnected with their
conditions of employment, in order to prevent particular individuals
from doing what they wished to do. The most sensational examples were
afforded by the National Union of Sailors and Firemen in 1917-18,
when its members, by refusing to work, at the dictation of Mr. J.
Havelock Wilson, the Secretary of the Union, prevented certain Labour
Leaders[703] from proceeding to Petrograd, actually by direction of
the Government; and subsequently others[704] from going to Paris with
Government passports, on the instructions of the Labour Party, because
the Union, or at any rate Mr. Havelock Wilson, disapproved of these
visits, and of their supposed object in arranging for an International
Labour and Socialist Congress. Another case was the withdrawal by the
Electrical Trades Union in 1918 of their members (taking with them
the indispensable fuses) from the Albert Hall in London, when the
directors of the Hall cancelled its letting for a Labour Demonstration,
of the purposes and resolutions of which they disapproved, or thought
that their patrons would disapprove. What the Electrical Trades Union
intimated was that, unless the Hall was allowed, as heretofore, to
be used for Labour meetings, it should not be used for a forthcoming
demonstration of the supporters of the Coalition Government, or for any
other meetings. The result was that (it is said on a hint from Downing
Street) the directors of the Hall withdrew their objection to the
Labour Demonstration, and have since continued to allow such meetings.
Yet another example of Direct Action was given by the printing staffs
of certain newspaper offices in London during the railway strike of
1919, when they threatened instantly to withdraw their labour, and thus
absolutely to prevent the issue of the newspapers, unless the use of
“lying posters” was given up, and unless the case of the National Union
of Railwaymen was fairly treated in the papers, and accorded reasonable
space. The gravest case of all was the threat by the Miners’ Federation
in 1919, that all the coal-mines might stop working unless Compulsory
Military Service was immediately brought to an end, and unless the
policy of military intervention in Russia against the Bolshevik
Government of Russia was abandoned. By what was perhaps a fortunate
coincidence the Secretary of State for War was able to declare that all
Compulsory Military Service was to cease at or before the end of the
current financial year; and the Prime Minister to announce that no more
troops, and, after certain consignments already arranged for, no more
military stores, would be sent in aid of those who were attacking the
Bolshevik Government.

How far can these instances of Direct Action be deemed to indicate
a change of thought in the Trade Union world with regard to the use
of the strike weapon? We must note that, in spite of the temporary
lull in strikes in the latter part of the last century, there has
been no change in Trade Union policy with regard to the strike in
disputes with employers about the conditions of employment. The Trade
Unions have always included in this term the dismissal of men for
reasons other than their inefficiency as workmen, the engagement of
non-Unionists, the presence of an obnoxious foreman or manager, or any
interference with the conduct of employees outside the works. Nor has
there been any development in the original Trade Union position with
regard to sympathetic strikes in aid of other sections of workers in
their struggles with their employers. It is possible that some of the
insurrectionary strikes of 1911-14 were inspired by the new thought
that we have described--the disillusionment as to the Parliamentary
potency of a Labour Party, and the vision of a Democracy based on
industrial organisation and secured by industrial action. But, in the
main, the increased frequency and magnitude of strikes in these years
are sufficiently accounted for by the continued fall in real wages due
to rising prices, combined with the steadily improving organisation
of the workers concerned. There was a new element in the proposal of
the Miners’ Federation in 1919 to strike if the Government did not
fulfil its pledge to carry into effect the Sankey Report described
in the last chapter. The significant and authoritative declaration
in the first Report of March 20, 1919, that “the present system of
ownership and working in the coal industry stands condemned, and some
other system must be substituted for it, either nationalisation or a
method of unification by national purchase and/or by joint control,”
and the explicit acceptance of this Report by the Government “in the
spirit and in the letter,” formed an integral part of the bargain
between the Miners’ Federation and the Government, on the strength of
which they forewent the strike at the end of March 1919 on which they
had decided. It can hardly be contended that the “present system of
ownership and working” is not a necessary part of the conditions of
employment, or that the Miners are not entitled to refuse to enter into
contracts of service under a system that Mr. Bonar Law agrees with
Mr. Justice Sankey, and nine out of the other twelve members of the
Royal Commission, in holding to “stand condemned.” On the other hand,
though the Government controls the industry and dictates the wages, the
alterations in the conditions of employment that the Miners’ Federation
asks for require not only one but probably several Acts of Parliament,
which a majority of the members of the present House of Commons,
notwithstanding the explicit Government pledge, refuses to pass. What
the Miners’ Federation threatens, by a stoppage of the coal industry,
is to coerce into agreement with them not their employers, the colliery
owners, not even the Ministry with whom they made the bargain, but, in
effect, the recalcitrant capitalist majority of the House of Commons
which cannot be displaced without a General Election.

But an entirely new development of Direct Action, alike in form and
in substance, is the distinctly political, or, as we should prefer to
call it, the non-economic strike--that is, the strike, not for any
alteration in the conditions of employment of any section of the Trade
Union world, but with a view to enforce, either on individuals, on
Parliament, or on the Government, some other course of action desired
by the strikers. So far as we know, there is, on this question, no
consistent body of opinion in the Trade Union world; all that we find
are currents of opinion arising from different assumptions of social
expediency. There is, first, a small section of Trade Unionists who
are Syndicalists or extreme Industrial Unionists in opinion, and who
look forward to the supersession of political Democracy, and the
reconstitution of society on the basis of the suffrages of the several
trades. Like the Sinn Feiners in Ireland, though on different grounds,
they do not acknowledge the competency of the existing Parliament to
undertake the government of the country, and they advocate Direct
Action as the only weapon of revolt accessible to the workers organised
as workers. But it was no such theory of social revolution that induced
Mr. Havelock Wilson to prevent the visit of Mr. G. H. Roberts and
Mr. MacDonald to Petrograd, when the Government wished them to go;
or to prevent Mr. Henderson and M. Camille Huysmans from using their
passports to Paris. Nor were the electricians of the Albert Hall
inspired by faith in an immediate revolution of the Russian type. It
cannot even be suggested that the widespread approval by the more
active spirits of the Trade Union world of the proposed strike to stop
the intervention of Great Britain in support of the reactionary Russian
leaders was accompanied by any desire to set up in Great Britain the
constitution which is believed to obtain in Moscow and Petrograd. We
must look elsewhere for the motive that underlies and is held by many
to justify the non-economic or “political” strike.

We suggest that the explanation is a more complex one. We have first
the impulsive tendency of some men in all classes to use any powers
that they possess, whether over land, capital, or labour, to dictate to
their fellow-men a course of conduct on any question on which they feel
hotly, even if it is wholly unconnected with their several economic
functions. This delight in an anarchic use of economic power is, it is
needless to say, not peculiar to those whose economic power is that of
labour. There have been innumerable instances, within our own memories,
among landlords and capitalists, of actions no less arbitrary than that
of Mr. Havelock Wilson (who, it must be remembered, had the general
approval of the capitalist press; and, in the case of the attempted
internment in this country of a distinguished Belgian visitor,
M. Huysmans, the connivance of the naval officers, if not of the
Admiralty). We find within the last few decades many cases of landlords
who have ejected persons, not because they were objectionable tenants,
or had failed to pay their rent, but because they had supported a
political candidate, or had led to action on the part of the Local
Authority, to which the landlord objected. We have seen landed
proprietors refusing sites for Nonconformist chapels, not because they
objected to buildings of that character, or were dissatisfied with the
price offered, but because they disliked the theology of the promoters.
We have heard of banks refusing to the Trade Unions who were their
customers any accommodation at all on the occasion of a strike, merely
because they disliked the strike. We have seen employers dismissing
workmen, not for their inefficiency, not even for their Trade Union
activities, which might be held to affect the economic interest of the
capitalist, but because the workmen held different political opinions
from those of the employer. But these cases of the use of economic
power to prevent individuals from pursuing or promoting their own
religious or political creeds are emphatically condemned by the Trade
Union Movement. Thus no Trade Union support was overtly given to Mr.
Havelock Wilson, even by those Trade Union leaders who agreed with him
in detesting any meeting between Britons and enemy subjects.

We have a quite different class of cases when Direct Action is taken in
reprisal for the Direct Action of other persons or groups of persons.
This was the case in the strike of the electricians at the Albert
Hall. It was a reprisal for the use by the directors of the Albert
Hall of their power over lettings to ban opinions that they happened
to dislike, whilst permitting the use of their hall to the other side.
A more difficult case is that of the threatened refusal to work of
the compositors against the newspapers who denied fair play to the
railwaymen. Here our judgement may depend on what view is taken of the
function of newspapers; how far are newspapers what their name implies,
the public purveyors of news? Supposing that all the capitalist press
were deliberately to boycott all Labour news, whilst deliberately
giving currency to false statements about Labour Leaders and the Labour
Movement, would the compositors, as representing the Trade Union world
in this industry, be justified in a strike? The only conclusion we
can suggest is that, human nature being instinctively militant, any
anarchic use of the power given by one form of monopoly will lead to a
similar anarchic use of the power given by another form of monopoly.

We come now to the third class of use of the method of Direct Action,
a general strike of the manual workers to compel the Government of the
country to abstain from political courses distasteful to those who
control a monopoly of labour power, or to the majority of them. This
form of Direct Action is justified by a minority of Trade Unionists,
who consider that under the present constitution of Parliament the
organised workmen have practically no chance of getting their fair
share of representation--an argument strengthened by every election
trick, and especially by the partisan use of the capitalist press as
an election instrument. The majority of Trade Unionists, however,
do not, at the present time, seem to support this view. They reply
that the manual workers and their wives now constitute, in every
district, a majority of the electorate. They can, if they choose,
return to Parliament a Labour majority and make a Labour Government.
This very consideration, indeed, seems to make any such general strike
impracticable, and, as a matter of fact, no such proposal of a general
strike has yet been endorsed by the Trades Union Congress. We can
imagine occasions that might, in the eyes of the Trade Union world,
fully justify a general strike of non-economic or political character.
If, for instance, a reactionary Parliament were to pass a measure
disfranchising the bulk of the manual workers, or depriving them of
political power by such a device as the “Three Class Franchise” of
Prussia and Saxony--if any Act were passed depriving the Trade Unions
of the rights and liberties now conceded to them--if the Executive
or the judges were to use against the Trade Unions, by injunction or
otherwise, any weapon that might be fished up from the legal armoury,
confiscating their funds or prohibiting their action--then, indeed,
we might see the Trades Union Congress recommending a General Strike;
and it would be supported not only by the wage-earning class as a
whole, but also by a large section of the middle class, and even by
some members of the House of Lords. That is one reason why, short
of madness, no such act would be committed by the Government or by
Parliament. If any such act were perpetrated, it would probably involve
a revolution not in the British but in the continental sense. It must
be remembered that the “last word” in Direct Action is with the police
and the army, and there not with the officers but with the rank and
file.

To sum up, the vast majority of Trade Unionists object to Direct
Action, whether by landlords or capitalists or by organised workers,
for objects other than those connected with the economic function
of the Direct Actionists. Trade Unionists, on the whole, are not
prepared to disapprove of Direct Action as a reprisal for Direct Action
taken by other persons or groups. With regard to a general strike of
non-economic or political character, in favour of a particular home or
foreign policy, we very much doubt whether the Trade Union Congress
could be induced to endorse it, or the rank and file to carry it out,
except only in case the Government made a direct attack upon the
political or industrial liberty of the manual working class, which it
seemed imperative to resist by every possible means, not excluding
forceful revolution itself.


THE DEMAND FOR THE ELIMINATION OF THE CAPITALIST PROFIT-MAKER

It is interesting to note that this widening enlargement of the
aspirations and purposes of Trade Unionism has been accompanied, not
by any decline, but by an actual renewal of the faith in Communal
Socialism, towards which we described the Trade Union Movement as
tending in 1889-94. For the Trade Unionist objects, more strongly than
ever, to any financial partnership with the capitalist employers, or
with the shareholders, in any industry or service, on the sufficient
ground that any such sharing of profits would, whilst leaving intact
the tribute of rent and interest to proprietors, irretrievably break up
the solidarity of the manual working class. To the new school of Trade
Unionists the nationalisation or municipalisation of industry, or its
assumption by consumers’ co-operation, is a necessary preliminary to
the partnership of Labour in its government. What they are after is to
alter, not only the status of the manual worker, but also the status of
the employer who is the director of industry; they wish them both to
become the agents of the community; they desire that manual workers and
brain workers alike should be inspired, not by the greed of gain made
by profit on price, but by the desire to produce the commodities and
services needed by the community in return for a sufficient livelihood,
and the personal freedom and personal responsibility which they believe
would spring from vocational self-government. Thus we find Mr. Hodges,
the General Secretary of the Miners’ Federation, in one of his numerous
speeches in favour of the nationalisation of the mines, declaring that
what they demanded was “a new status for the worker as a controller of
his industry. Miners were not anarchists, although they had the power
to be. They realised that their interests were bound up with those
of the community, and therefore they demanded conditions which would
develop the corporate sense.... Education was carrying men along social
rather than individualistic lines, and right throughout the mining
industry there was the desire to be something different from what they
were. This desire to be master of the work in which the man was engaged
was the great thing that was vital in working-class life.... There
had never been a movement born of greater moral aspiration than this
movement for the nationalisation of the mines. The miner wanted to be
in a position where it would be to him a point of honour not to allow
even a piece of timber to be wasted, where he would want to do his work
well. He wanted a Social Contract.”[705]

The demand for the nationalisation or municipalisation of industries
and services, or their absorption by the Consumers’ Co-operative
Movement, was greatly strengthened by the experience, during the war
and after the Armistice, of the failure of every alternative method
of preventing “profiteering.” The rapid development of capitalist
combinations and price-agreements[706]; the ill-success of the most
stringent Government control in preventing alarming increases of price;
the inability of even legally fixed maximum prices to do anything more,
under private ownership, than authorise the charge required to cover
the cost at the least efficient and least well-equipped establishment
of which the output was needed; the enormous and even unprecedented
profits made throughout the whole range of business enterprise; the
helplessness of the consumers, in the mere expectation of shortage,
and their willingness to pay almost any price that was demanded rather
than go without--combined with the obvious breakdown of capitalist
competition as a safeguard of the public which the proceedings under
the Profiteering Act revealed--all these things co-operated to convince
the bulk of the wage-earning class, many of the families living on
fixed incomes, and (in spite of the objection to “bureaucratic
control”) some even among business men, that there was practically
no other course open, in the industries and services that were
sufficiently highly developed to render such a course practicable, than
a gradual substitution of public for private ownership. This advance
in public opinion is naturally reflected in the passionate support of
public ownership, with participation of the workers in administration
and control, given by the Trades Union Congress and Labour Party
Conference.

It will have become clear from our review of the larger conception
now current of the place of Trade Unionism in the State, that the
Trade Unionist, as such, no longer retains the acquiescent and neutral
attitude towards the two great parties of British politics, nor to the
Capitalist System itself, which characterised the Trade Unionism of
thirty or forty years ago. The object and purpose of the New Unionism
of 1913-19--not without analogy with that of 1830-34, but with a
significant difference--cannot be attained without the transformation
of British politics, and the supersession, in one occupation after
another, of the capitalist profit-maker as the governor and director
of industry. Meanwhile, as a result of the successive attacks upon the
very existence of Trade Unionism, even in its most limited form, there
has been growing up a distinct political organisation of the Trade
Union Movement, aiming at securing the acceptance by the electorate,
as a whole, of a definitely Socialist policy in the administration of
both home and foreign affairs. It is this formation of a Labour Party,
ready for the carrying into effect of the new ideas, that we have now
to describe.


FOOTNOTES:

[651] William Abraham (South Wales Miners), J. Mawdsley
(Cotton-spinners), Michael Austin, M.P. (Irish Labour), and Tom Mann
(Amalgamated Society of Engineers).

[652] For the Labour Commission see its Report and Evidence, published
in 1892-94 in many volumes, the Report itself being C. 2421 of 1894. An
epitome was published as _The Labour Question_, by T. G. Spyers, 1894;
see also “The Failure of the Labour Commission,” by Mrs. Sidney Webb,
in _Nineteenth Century_, 1893. The Trade Unionist Minority Report had a
wide circulation as an Independent Labour Party pamphlet. It reads, in
1920, curiously prophetic of the actual legislative and administrative
changes that have taken place.

[653] For half a century after the repeal of the Combination Acts in
1824-25 the controversy as to the legal position of Trade Unionism was
always muddled up, in the minds of lawyers as well as economists and
the public, with that of physical violence. Because angry strikers here
and there committed assaults, and occasionally destroyed property,
it was habitually assumed, as it still is by some people thinking
themselves educated, that Trade Unionism practically depended on, and
inevitably involved, personal molestation of one sort or another.
This led magistrates, right down to 1891, occasionally to regard as
a criminal offence, under the head of “intimidation,” any threat or
warning uttered by a Trade Unionist to an employer or a non-unionist
workman, even if the consequences alluded to were of the most peaceful
kind. In 1891 a specially constituted Court of the Queen’s Bench
Division definitely laid it down that “intimidation,” under the Act
of 1875, was confined to the threat of committing a criminal offence
against person or tangible property (Memorandum by Sir Frederick
Pollock in Appendix to Report of Royal Commission on Labour, C. 7063;
see also _Law Quarterly Review_, January 1892; _Industrial Democracy_,
by S. and B. Webb, Appendix I., 1897; Gibson _v._ Lawson, and Curran
_v._ Treleaven, 1891, 2 Q.B. 545).

Magistrates continued, however, for some time to treat unfairly
such breaches of public order as “obstructing the thoroughfare”
or committing acts of annoyance to the public, when committed in
connection with a strike of which they disapproved, which would not
be proceeded against as criminal if they had been done by an excited
crowd of stockbrokers in the City, by the audience of a street-corner
preacher, or by a gathering of the Primrose League. Such discrimination
by the police or the magistrate is unjust.

[654] Mogul Steamship Company _v._ M’Gregor, Gow & Co. (1892), A.C.
25; Scottish Co-operative Wholesale Society _v._ Glasgow Fleshers’
Trade Defence Association (1897), 35 Sc.L.R. 645; see _History of
Co-operation in Scotland_, by William Maxwell, 1910, p. 349.

[655] For all these cases see _Industrial Democracy_, by S. and B.
Webb, Appendix I., 1897; _Trade Union Law_, by H. Cohen and G. Howell,
1901; _The Law Relating to Trade Unions_, by D. R. C. Hunt, 1902;
_Trade Unions and the Law_, by G. F. Assinder, 1905; _The Present and
Future of Trade Unions_, by A. H. Ruegg and H. Cohen, 1906; Report of
Royal Commission on Trade Disputes, Cd. 2825, 1906; Temperton _v._
Russell (1893), 1 Q.B. 715; 62 L.T.Q.B. 412; 62 L.T. 78; 41 W.R. 565.
57. J.P. 676; Trollope and Others _v._ The London Building Trades
Federation and Others (1895), 72 L.T. 342; 11 T.L.R. 280; Pink _v._
The Federation of Trade Unions (1893), 67 L.T. 258; 8 T.L.R. 216, 711;
36 S.T. 201; J. Lyons and Son _v._ Wilkin (1896), 1 Ch. 811; the same
again (1899), 1 Ch. 255; Allen _v._ Flood (1898), A.C. 1; 67 L.J.Q.B.
119; 77 L.T. 717; 14 T.L.R. 125; 46 W.R. 258; 47 S.J. 149; 62 J.P. 595;
Quinn _v._ Leathem (1901), A.C. 495; 70 L.J.P.C. 76; 85 L.T. 289; 17
T.L.R. 749; 50 W.R. 139; 65 J.P. 708; W.N. 170. For foreign comments
see _La Situation juridique des Trade Unions en Angleterre_, by Morin
(Caen, 1907); _Le Droit d’Association en Angleterre_, by H. E. Barrault
(Paris, 1908); _Das englische Gewerkvereinsrecht seit 1870_, by F.
Haneld, 1909.

[656] Taff Vale Railway Company _v._ Amalgamated Society of Railway
Servants (1901), A.C. 426; 70 L.J.K.B. 905; 85 L.T. 147; 17 T.L.R.
698; 65 J.P. 596; 50 W.R. 44; Report of Royal Commission on Trade
Disputes, 1906, Cd. 2825; _The Law and Trade Unions: A Brief Review
of Recent Litigation, specially prepared at the instance of Richard
Bell, M.P._, 1901; _Statement by the Parliamentary Committee on the
Taff Vale Case_, 1902; _History of the British Trades Union Congress_,
by W. J. Davis, vol. ii. 1916, pp. 201-2; _Trade Union Law_, by H.
Cohen and George Howell, 1901; _The Legal Position of Trade Unions_,
by H. H. Slesser and W. S. Clark, 1912; _Industrial Democracy_, by
S. and B. Webb, Introduction to the 1902 edition, pp. xxiv-xxxvi.
It does not appear that, in the strictly legal sense, the Taff Vale
judgement was unwarranted. Though the Act of 1871 had been supposed to
prevent a Trade Union from being proceeded against, it contained no
explicit grant of immunity from being made answerable for any damage
that might be wrongfully caused. In fact, both the 1871 Act and that
of 1876 expressly provided that the registered Trade Union itself
should be liable to be brought into Court for the petty penalties
instituted for failure to supply the Registrar with copies of rules
and balance-sheets; and also that the trustees of a registered Union
should sue and be sued on its behalf. What the Act of 1871 did was to
relieve the Trade Union from its character of criminality by reason
of its purposes being in restraint of trade, and of its character of
illegality from the same cause; and to prohibit legal proceedings
directly to enforce certain agreements among its members, or between
it and its members, or among different Unions. These were assumed to
be all the cases that could arise. It seems to have been taken for
granted by the Minority of the Trade Union Commission of 1869, by
the Home Office in 1870-71, by the Parliament of 1871-76, and the
Royal Commission on Labour in 1893, that an unincorporated body could
not be sued for damages in tort any more than for a civil debt. But
in the following years, without any reference to Trade Unionism,
the Courts successively enlarged their procedure so as to admit of
any group of persons having a common interest being made parties to
a “representative action” (Duke of Bedford _v._ Ellis, 1901, A.C.
1, where the tenants of shops in Covent Garden were parties). This
enabled even an unregistered Trade Union to be sued (Yorkshire Miners’
Association _v._ Howden, 1905, A.C. 256). In 1893, and again in 1895,
actions against unregistered Trade Union organisations had been
maintained in the lower Courts (Trollope and Others _v._ The London
Building Trades Federation and Others, 1895, 72 L.T. 342; 11 T.L.R.
280; W.N. 45; Pink _v._ The Federation of Trades and Labour Unions,
etc., 1893, 67 L.T. 258; 8 T.L.R. 216, 711; 36 S.J. 201). But these had
not been noticed by the Trade Union Movement as a whole; and they had
not been seriously defended, not fully argued, and not carried to the
highest tribunal.

[657] The number of stoppages through disputes known to the Labour
Department of the Board of Trade, which between 1891 and 1899 had never
been fewer than 700 in a year, did not again reach this figure for a
whole decade; and sank in 1903-5--years during which trade was checked,
and some reduction of wages took place--to only half the number. Of the
135 claims to the Strike Benefit admitted by the General Federation of
Trade Unions in 1903, we read that “no less than 130 have been caused
by attempts on the part of employers to encroach upon the recognised
conditions prevailing in the particular trades” (_Fifth Annual Report
of the Federation_, 1904, p. 11).

[658] In addition, twelve workmen, mostly miners, were elected under
the auspices of the Liberal Party. Nearly all these came over to the
Labour Party in 1910 (_History of Labour Representation_, by A. W.
Humphrey, 1912).

[659] _Report of Royal Commission on Trade Disputes and Trade
Combinations_, Cd. 2825.

[660] 6 Edward VII. c. 47.

[661] Trade Unionists would be well advised not to presume too far on
this apparently absolute immunity from legal proceedings. It must not
be imagined that either the ingenuity of the lawyers or the prejudice
of the judges has been exhausted. It has already been urged that
the immunity of a Trade Union from being sued should be regarded as
implicitly limited to acts done in contemplation or furtherance of a
trade dispute; but such a limitation has so far been negatived (Vacher
_v._ London Society of Compositors, 29 T.R. 73). It is now suggested
that the immunity might one day be held to be limited to acts committed
by a Trade Union _in the exercise of its specifically Trade Union
functions_, or for the “statutory objects” of Trade Unions as defined
by the Act, and not to acts which the Court might hold to be beyond its
legitimate scope, or not specifically connected with what they might
in their wisdom consider to be the principal purpose of a Trade Union.
(But see Shinwell v. National Sailors’ and Firemen’s Union, 1913, a
decision of the Scottish Court of Session, limiting the liability of a
Union to reimburse its trustees for damages incurred by them.) Thus, a
new Taff Vale case, at a moment when public opinion was exceptionally
hostile to Trade Unionism, is by no means impossible. Similarly, Trade
Union officials should remember that their privileged position is
confined to a _trade dispute_, which, as specifically defined in the
Act, _does not include all strikes_; and what limits the Courts might
set to the phrase is uncertain. Moreover, the Trade Disputes Act does
not repeal other statutes; and Trade Union officials have been fined
for persuading sailors not to embark, in contravention of the Merchant
Shipping Acts. The Trade Disputes Act does not protect officials
committing illegalities other than those to which it expressly refers,
or under circumstances other than those indicated. See Valentine _v._
Hyde (1919); Conway _v._ Wade (1908), A.C. 506; Larkin _v._ Belfast
Harbour Commissioners (1908), 2 Ir.K.B.D. 214; _Legal Position of Trade
Unions_, by H. H. Slesser and W. S. Clark, 1912.

[662] A verbatim report of the proceedings (November 1908) in the Court
of Appeal in Osborne _v._ Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants was
published by the defendants (Unity House, Euston Road, London). The
House of Lords’ judgement was given on December 21, 1909, when it was
widely commented on. The most convenient analysis is that by Professor
W. M. Geldart, _The Osborne Judgment and After_, 1910, and _The Present
Law of Trade Disputes and Trade Unions_, 1914. See “The Osborne
Revolution,” by Sidney Webb, in _The English Review_ for January 1911;
and _My Case_, by W. V. Osborne, 1910.

[663] _Political Theories of the Middle Ages_, by O. Gierke, with
introduction by F. W. Maitland, 1900; see also the works of J. N.
Figgis.

[664] _Firma Burgi_, by T. Madox, 1726, pp. 50, 279.

[665] _Conflicts of Capital and Labour_, by G. Howell, 1st edition,
1878, 2nd edition, 1890, p. 479.

[666] It should be recorded, as an instance of the prescience of Sir
Charles Dilke, that he is reported to have declared at the time that
“the trade union Acts were spoilt during their passage through the
House by the insertion of obscure definition clauses” (_Conflicts of
Capital and Labour_, by G. Howell, 1890, p. 479).

[667] Whewell, _History of Scientific Ideas_, vol. ii. p. 120; J. S.
Mill, _System of Logic_, vol. ii. p. 276.

[668] George Howell, in his _Conflicts of Capital and Labour_, 1890,
gives a list, three pages long, of Acts which, as he expressly
testifies from personal knowledge, were promoted or supported by the
Trade Unions; and in his _Labour Legislation, Labour Movements and
Labour Leaders_, 1902, pp. 469-73, a still longer one.

[669] _Industrial Democracy_, pp. 124, 251, 258-60.

[670] _A Great Labour Leader_ [Thomas Burt], by Aaron Watson, 1908.

[671] _Industrial Democracy_, by Sidney and Beatrice Webb, 1897, pp.
838-40.

[672] For this reason the Trades Union Congress now refuses to
entertain any motion on this subject.

[673] If the main object of a newspaper is political, any expenditure
by a Trade Union upon it (including the purchase of shares) is itself
political (Bennett _v._ National Amalgamated Society of Operative
Painters (1915), 31 T.L.R. 203).

[674] 3 George V. c. 30.

[675] “The average weekly earnings of railway servants, as given by the
Board of Trade, were lower in 1910 than in 1907” (_Trade Unionism on
the Railways_, by G. D. H. Cole and R. Page Arnot, 1917, pp. 21-22).

[676] _The Legal Position of Trade Unions_, by H. H. Slesser and W.
Smith Clark, 2nd ed., 1914; _The Present Law of Trade Disputes and
Trade Unions_, by Professor W. M. Geldart, 1914; _Entwicklung des
Koalisationsrechts in England_, by G. Krojanker, 1914; _An Introduction
to Trade Union Law_, by H. H. Slesser, 1919; _The Law of Trade Unions_,
by H. H. Slesser and C. Baker (to be published in 1920).

[677] Henry Broadhurst (Friendly Society of Operative Stonemasons) was
Under Secretary of State for the Home Department (1885-86); and Thomas
Burt (Northumberland Miners’ Mutual Confident Society) Parliamentary
Secretary to the Board of Trade (1892-95).

[678] For the facts as to Trade Unionism during the war, the most
convenient source is the _Labour Year Book_ for 1916 and 1919; see also
_Labour in War Time_, by G. D. H. Cole, 1915, and _Self-Government
in Industry_, by the same, 1917; the large number of Government
publications issued by the Local Government Board, the Board of Trade,
the Ministry of Labour, and especially the Ministry of Munitions,
together with the awards of the Committee on Production, most of
which are briefly noticed in the monthly _Labour Gazette_; the
monthly Circular (since 1917) of the Labour Research Department; the
unpublished monthly journal of the Ministry of Munitions; Reports
of the Trades Union Congress, 1915-19, and of the Labour Party
Conferences, 1914-19; publications of the War Emergency Workers’
National Committee; _The Restoration of Trade Union Conditions_, by
Sidney Webb, 1916; _Women in the Engineering Trades_, by Barbara Drake,
1917.

[679] _Compulsory Military Service and Industrial Conscription: what
they mean to the Workers_ (War Emergency Workers’ National Committee,
1915); _Memorandum on Industrial and Civil Liberties_ (Woolwich Joint
Committee on Problems arising from the War).

[680] The Government seems to have hoodwinked the public into believing
that 80 per cent of all the excess profits was the same thing as 100
per cent of the profits in excess of 20 per cent addition to the
pre-war profits.

[681] _Report of the War Cabinet Committee on Women in Industry_, Cmd.
135, 1919. The Minority Report by Mrs. Sidney Webb was republished by
the Fabian Society, under the title of _Men’s and Women’s Wages: Should
they be equal?_, 1919.

[682] Restoration of Pre-War Practices Act, 1919 (9 and 10 George V.
c. 42). During the first year after the cessation of hostilities the
problem of restoration did not assume so acute a form as had been
expected. A large part of the new automatic machinery which had been
introduced in 1915-18 was found to have been greatly deteriorated
by excessive working and had to be scrapped; there was an immediate
demand for ordinary engineering work of the old type; and the British
employers did not, in fact, set themselves at once to apply “mass
production” to the making of steam engines and motor cars, agricultural
implements and machinery generally, nor make any dramatic advances
in its application to the production of sewing-machines, bicycles,
and electrical apparatus. During 1919: the extensive readaptation of
the machine-shops, and the great demand for new tools (especially
machine-tools) facilitated the absorption, often in new situations, of
all the skilled engineers. There was, accordingly, little difficulty
in finding employment at good wages for practically all the skilled
workmen, and (except for temporary dislocations arising in consequence
of the disputes in coalmining, ironfounding, and other trades) the
percentage of members of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers and
other Unions of skilled craftsmen remained throughout the year at a
minimum. The great bulk of the “dilutees,” including substantially all
the women, received their discharge on the cessation of their jobs
of “repetition work” on munitions of war, the employers preferring,
in face of the immediate demand, to avoid trouble, to revert to the
old methods and to get back their former staffs, rather than engage
in the hazardous enterprise of reorganising their factory methods.
Hence, taking the engineering industry as a whole, the men got back the
work from the women; though not without some attempts at resistance
by individual employers, which were not persisted in; and not without
leaving the total number of women employed in 1920 in what might be
deemed their own branches of the engineering industry apparently double
that of 1913. Many of the male “dilutees” on discharge also reverted
to other employment, but some proportion of them, who had acquired
skill, and were members of various Unions admitting semi-skilled
workers, found employment in engineering shops on particular machines
or in particular jobs. There has apparently been a continuous increase
in the proportion of machines demanding less than full skill (such
as milling machines and small turret lathes), and therefore of
“semi-skilled” men in employment, without (owing to the expansion of
the industry as a whole) any reduction in the number of skilled men. In
face of the great demand for output, and of the fact that hardly any
members of the skilled Unions were unemployed, this fact did not evoke
objection. The position as regards the Premium Bonus System or other
form of “Payment by Results” was left unchanged. Few, if any, legal
proceedings were actually taken against employers in the Munitions
Courts under the Restoration of Pre-War Practices Act. The employers
and the Government were, during the first half of the year, in a state
of alarm lest there should be a Labour uprising, which would seriously
interfere with the resumption of business; and great care was exercised
to avoid any disputes. Successive advances of wages were awarded to
meet the rising cost of living, and all rates were “stabilised” by
law, so as to prevent any employer from effecting a reduction, first
until May 20, 1919, then until November 20, 1919, and finally until
September 30, 1920; a new “Industrial Court” being set up by statute
(Industrial Courts Act 1919) empowered to give non-obligatory decisions
in any disputes that might be voluntarily referred to it--a measure
from which the Parliamentary Labour Party succeeded in eliminating
every implication of Compulsory Arbitration, Obligatory Awards, or
the Abrogation of the Right to Strike. But the difficulties are not
yet surmounted; and when there comes a slump in business, and skilled
engineers find themselves unemployed, the Government pledge will be
heard of again.

[683] See this noted in the report of the Parliamentary Committee in
the _Annual Report of the Trades Union Congress_, 1917.

[684] The “Whitley Report,” published early in 1917, when possibilities
of industrial and social “reconstruction” were much discussed, made
a great stir, which was increased by the definite endorsement of its
recommendations by the Government, and its energetic promotion of their
adoption throughout British industry. Whilst significantly abstaining
from any suggestion of “profit-sharing, co-partnership, or particular
systems of wages,” the Report emphasised the importance of (_a_)
“adequate organisation on the part of both employers and employed”;
(_b_) the imperative need for a greater opportunity of participating
in the discussion about and adjustment of “those parts of industry by
which they are most affected” of the work-people in each occupation;
(_c_) the subordination of any decisions to those of the Trade Unions
and Employers’ Associations. Among the subjects to be dealt with by
the hierarchy of National, District, and Works Councils or Committees
were: (i.) “the better utilisation of the practical knowledge and
experience of the work-people ... and for securing to them a greater
share in and responsibility for the determination and observance of the
conditions under which their work is carried on”; (ii.) “the settlement
of the general principles governing the conditions of employment ...
having regard to the need for securing to the work-people a share in
the increased prosperity of the industry”; (iii.) the methods to be
adopted for negotiations, adjusting wages, determining differences
and “ensuring to the work-people the greatest possible security of
earnings and employment”; (iv.) technical education, industrial
research, utilisation of inventions, and improvement of processes;
(v.) proposed legislation affecting the industry. After two years’
propagandist effort, it seems (1920) as if the principal industries,
such as agriculture, transport, mining, cotton, engineering, or
shipbuilding are unlikely to adopt the scheme; but two or three score
trades have equipped themselves either with “Whitley Councils”--the
District Councils and Works Committees are much more slow to form--or
with “Interim Industrial Reconstruction Committees,” which may be
regarded as provisional Councils, in such industries as pottery,
house-building, woollen manufacture, hosiery, heavy chemicals,
furniture-making, bread-baking, match-making, metallic bedstead
manufacturing, saw-milling, and vehicle building. The Government found
itself constrained, after an obstinate resistance by the heads of
nearly all the departments, to institute the Councils throughout the
public service. We venture on the prediction that some such scheme
will commend itself in all nationalised or municipalised industries
and services, including such as may be effectively “controlled” by the
Government, though remaining nominally the property of the private
capitalist--possibly also in the Co-operative Movement; but that it is
not likely to find favour either in the well-organised industries (for
which alone it was devised) or in those in which there are Trade Boards
legally determining wages, etc.; or, indeed, permanently in any others
conducted under the system of capitalist profit-making. See the series
of “Whitley Reports,” Cd. 8606, 9001, 9002, 9085, 9099, and 9153; the
Industrial Reports, Nos. 1 to 4, of the Ministry of Reconstruction;
the able and well-informed article, “La politique de paix sociale
en Angleterre,” by Élie Halévy, in _Revue d’Économie Politique_,
No. 4 of 1919; _Recommendation on the Whitley Report put forward by
the Federation of British Industries_, 1917; _National Guilds or
Whitley Councils?_ (National Guilds League), 1918. For the “Builders’
Parliament,” in many ways the most interesting of these Councils,
though as yet achieving only schemes in which the employers, as a
whole, do not concur, see _A Memorandum on Industrial Self-Government_,
by Malcolm Sparkes; _Masters and Men, a new Co-partnership_, by Thomas
Foster; and _The Industrial Council for the Building Industry_, by the
Garton Foundation, 1919.

[685] It must be remembered that the conditions of the manual worker’s
life dealt with by the Trade Unions up to 1894 included a wide
range of material circumstances and moral considerations. Besides
the maintenance of standard rates and methods of remuneration, the
reduction of the normal day, and payment for overtime, we find
among the objects of Trade Unions, as reported to the Commission,
the prevention of stoppages from wages; the maintenance of the
apprenticeship system and the keeping out of the trade all who are
not qualified; the abolition of the character note; the prevention of
victimisation; the provision of legal assistance to members in respect
of compensation for accidents; the establishment of an agency through
which employers may obtain efficient men; watching over the proceedings
of local boards and law courts; the enforcement of the Factory Acts and
other protective legislative enactments; the improvement of dietary
scales and house and shop accommodation where workers have to live in;
the collection and circulation of information on trade matters; the
establishment of benefit funds for unemployment, disputes, sickness,
accidents and death; the assistance of members anxious to migrate
or emigrate; the establishment of “that reciprocal confidence which
is so essential between workmen and masters,” and the promotion of
arbitration and conciliation; the regulation of output; the promotion
of friendly intercourse with workers of other countries; the assistance
of other trades in times of difficulty; and political action--the
support of Parliamentary and Municipal Labour candidates, of Trades
Councils, of the Trades Union Congress, and of Labour newspapers.
Some Unions decide to promote co-operative enterprise, “to secure the
legal recognition of the natural rights of labourers to the produce of
their toil,” whilst others promote the “moral, social, intellectual
and professional advancement” of the working class. “Trade Societies,”
state the rules of the Associated Shipwrights, “must be maintained as
the guard of workmen against capitalists until some higher effort of
productive co-operation has been inaugurated which shall secure to
workers a more equitable share of the product of labour.”

[686] _Minutes of Evidence, Royal Commission on Labour_: “Report of
Evidence from Co-operative Societies and Public Officials,” 1893, C
7063-1 (Q 2098, 2117-8).

Mr. Tom Mann was also in favour of the Consumers’ Co-operative
Movement, and had in those days a distinct bias for legal enactment
over direct action in determining the conditions of employment. “I
should have said,” he stated in the witness-chair, “that I, as a Trade
Unionist, am of opinion that in my capacity of citizen I have just
as full a right to use Parliament for the general betterment of the
conditions of the workers, of whom I am one, as I have to use the
Trade Union; and when I could use the institution of Parliament to do
that constructive work that I sometimes use the Trade Union for, and
could use Parliament more effectively than I could the Trade Union,
then I should favour the use of Parliament, not necessarily in order
to enforce men to do something which they might not wish to do, but
because it was the more effective instrument to use to bring about
changed conditions” (_Ibid._ Q 2531).

[687] An interesting sidelight is afforded by the reprobation by the
German Social Democratic Party, in 1894, of Eduard Bernstein for
translating our _History of Trade Unionism_, on the ground that Trade
Unionism had no place in the Socialist State, and that it was needless
to trouble about it!

[688] See, for convenient summaries, _Syndicalism in France_, by Louis
Levine, 1911, and _What Syndicalism Means_, by S. and B. Webb, 1912;
see also _American Syndicalism_, by J. Graham Brooks, 1913.

[689] _Socialism made Easy_, by James Connolly, 1905, pp. 13, 16-17.

[690] _The Miners’ Next Step_, 1912.

[691] _The Syndicalist_, January 1912. Column entitled, “What we
Syndicalists are after” (by Tom Mann).

[692] _The Industrial Syndicalist_, March 1911. “The Weapon Shaping”
(by Tom Mann; p. 5).

[693] _Ibid._, April 1911. “A Twofold Warning” (by Tom Mann). We are
concerned, in this volume, only with the effect of these new movements
of working-class thought upon British Trade Unionism, and this is not
the occasion for any complete appreciation of Syndicalism or Industrial
Unionism. The Syndicalist Movement in this country had died down
prior to the war, but the Industrial Unionist Movement simmered on in
the Clyde district and in South Wales. Its chief organisation is the
Socialist Labour Party, which is not, and has never been, connected
either with any other Socialist organisation in this country or with
the Labour Party that is described in the next chapter. It was, we
think, the moving spirits of the Socialist Labour Party who were, as
Trade Unionist workmen, mainly responsible for the aggressive action
of the Clyde Workers Committee between 1915 and 1918, and also for
the rise of the Shop Stewards Movement, and for its spread from the
Clyde to English engineering centres. At the present moment (1920) the
Socialist Labour Party, owing to the personal qualities of its leading
spirits, J. T. Murphy and A. MacManus, holds the leading position
in this school of thought, which received a great impulse from the
accession of Lenin to power in Russia. But it remains a ferment rather
than a statistically important element in the Trade Union world.

[694] The revival of the Owenite proposal to develop existing Trade
Unions into great Associations of Producers for the carrying on of
each industry must be attributed perhaps to Mr. A. J. Penty (_The
Restoration of the Gild System_, 1906), or to Mr. A. R. Orage, aided
by Mr. S. G. Hobson, in a series of articles in _The New Age_, 1911
(afterwards published in a volume, _National Guilds_, 1913, edited by
A. R. Orage). But _The New Age_ had a limited circulation in the Trade
Union world, and the plan proposed was not worked out in detail. The
idea was afterwards developed by Mr. G. D. H. Cole and his associates,
and widely promulgated in the Trade Union world. An organisation for
this propaganda, the National Guilds’ League, was started in 1915, and
has now a membership of several hundred, amongst whom are included
some of the younger leaders of the Trade Union Movement. It publishes
a monthly, _The Guildsman_, edited by Mr. and Mrs. G. D. H. Cole.
The various books by Mr. Cole--especially _The World of Labour_,
_Self-Government in Industry_, and _Labour in the Commonwealth_--should
also be consulted.

[695] _N.U.R. Agenda and Decisions of the Annual General Meeting_, June
1914, p. 7.

[696] The resolution runs as follows: “That in view of the success
which, in spite of unparalleled difficulties, has attended the
working of the railways under State control, this Congress urge the
Parliamentary Congress to press the Government to arrange for the
complete nationalisation of all the railways, and to place them under
a Minister of Railways, who shall be responsible to Parliament, and
_be assisted by national and local advisory committees, upon which the
organised railway workers shall be adequately represented_” (_Trades
Union Congress Annual Report_, 1917, p. 345).

[697] _Postal and Telegraph Record_, May 22, 1919, p. 237.

[698] _Ibid._

[699] _The Nationalisation of Mines Bill_ (Fabian Tract, No. 171, 1913).

[700] The Nationalisation of Mines and Minerals Bill, 1919, given
in full in _Further Facts from the Coal Commission_, by R. Page
Arnot, 1919. The Miners’ Federation Conference of 1918 had passed the
following resolution: “That in the opinion of this Conference the
time has arrived in the history of the coal-mining industry when it
is clearly in the national interests to transfer the entire industry
from private ownership and control to State ownership with joint
control and administration by the workmen and the State. In pursuance
of this opinion the National Executive be instructed to immediately
reconsider the draft Bill for the Nationalisation of the Mines ... in
the light of the newer phases of development in the industry, so as
to make provision for the aforesaid joint control and administration
when the measure becomes law; further, a Conference be called at an
early date to receive a report from the Executive Committee upon the
draft proposals and to determine the best means of co-operating with
the National Labour Party to ensure the passage of a new Bill into
law” (_Report of Annual Conference of the Miners’ Federation of Great
Britain_, July 9, 1918, p. 44).

[701] At the end of our chapter on the “Method of Collective
Bargaining” we cursorily dealt with the strike as a necessary incident
of collective bargaining: “It is impossible to deny that the perpetual
liability to end in a strike or a lock-out is a grave drawback to the
Method of Collective Bargaining. So long as the parties to a bargain
are free to agree or not to agree, it is inevitable that, human
nature being as it is, there should now and again come a deadlock,
leading to that trial of strength and endurance which lies behind all
bargaining. We know of no device for avoiding this trial of strength
except a deliberate decision of the community expressed in legislative
enactment” (_Industrial Democracy_, p. 221).

[702] See, for instance, _Trade Unionism New and Old_, by George
Howell, 1891.

[703] Mr. G. H. Roberts (Typographical Society), then Parliamentary
Secretary to the Board of Trade; and Mr. J. Ramsay MacDonald, Treasurer
of the Labour Party.

[704] The Rt. Hon. Arthur Henderson (Friendly Society of Ironfounders),
and M. Camille Huysmans, Secretary of the International Socialist
Congress.

[705] These extracts from a speech by Mr. Hodges are put together
from the separate imperfect reports in the _Times_, _Daily News_, and
_Daily Herald_ of October 27, 1919. A more explicit statement of Mr.
Hodges’ views will be found in his speech at the Annual Conference
of the Miners’ Federation in July 1918: “For the last two or three
years a new movement has sprung up in the labour world which deals
with the question of joint control of the industry by representatives
from the side which represents, for the most part, the consumer, and
representatives of the workmen, who are the producers. Nationalisation
in the old sense is no longer attractive. As a matter of fact, you can
have nationalisation, but still be in no better position than you are
now under private ownership. That is the experience of institutions
which have been State owned and State controlled for many years. The
most remarkable scheme worked out during the last year is the theory
worked out by the ... Postmen’s Federation. He has endeavoured to
provide a scheme by which the postal workers should have a definite
amount of control, a definite form of control, in the postal service,
and in working it out he has demonstrated beyond all doubt how at every
point he is up against the power of the bureaucrats, as exemplified
by the State. Now, is it any good to have these mines nationalised
unless we are going to exercise some form of control as producers? If
not, the whole tendency will be towards the power of bureaucracy. We
shall be given no status at all in the industry, except to be the mere
producers, as we have been in the past years. Under State ownership
the workmen should be desirous of having something more than the mere
question of wages or the mere consideration of employment; the workmen
should have some directive power in the industry in which they are
engaged. Now, how are we going to have this directive power under
State control? I think we must admit that the side representing the
consumers (the State) should have some form of control on property
which will be State property, and when a national industry becomes
State controlled you must have permanent officials to look after the
consumers’ interests, and from the purely producers’ point of view
the Miners’ Federation must represent the producers in the central
authority and in the decentralised authority, right down to the
separate collieries. Are we ready to do this? Are we prepared for this,
starting at the separate collieries, indicating how the industry is to
be developed locally? Men must take their share in understanding all
the relations embodied in the export side of the trade; they must take
a share even in controlling the banking arrangements which govern the
financial side of the industry, and with that comes a very great deal
of responsibility. Now, are we prepared to assume that responsibility,
a responsibility which is implied in the term workmen’s control? It is
going to be a big task and a test of the educational attainments of the
miners themselves if they assume control of the industry, and if it did
not thrive under that control there is the possibility we should have
to hark back to private ownership in order to make it successful....
I hold these views, and unless they are accompanied by an effective
form of working-class control, I do not believe that nationalisation
will do any good for anybody” (_Report of Annual Conference of the
Miners’ Federation of Great Britain, July 9, 1918_, pp. 49-51).

[706] Report of the Committee on Combinations and Trusts, 1919.




CHAPTER XI

POLITICAL ORGANISATION

[1900-1920]


Fifty years ago, when Professor Brentano described the British Trade
Union Movement with greater knowledge and insight than any one else
had then shown,[707] nothing seemed more unlikely than that the
Movement would become organised as an independent political party,
appealing to the whole electorate on a general programme, returning
its own contingent of members to the House of Commons, and asserting
a claim, as soon as that contingent should become the strongest party
in Parliament, to constitute a national administration. For nearly a
quarter of a century more, as we have described in a previous chapter,
though Trade Unionism was making itself slowly more and more felt in
politics, it was still possible for economists and statesmen to believe
that “Labour” in Great Britain would organise only to maintain its
sectional industrial interests, and that it would impinge on politics,
if at all, only occasionally, in defence of Trade Unionism itself,
or in support of some particular project of industrial law. By 1894,
when the first edition of this book was published, there was already
manifest, as we then stated, a great shifting of Trade Union opinion on
the

 “pressing question of the position to be taken by the
 Trade Union world in the party struggles of To-day and the
 politics of To-morrow. In our chapter on ‘The Old Unionism
 and the New,’ we described the rapid conversion of the
 superior workman to the general principles of Collectivism.
 This revolution of opinion in the rank and file has been
 followed by a marked change of front on the part of the
 salaried officials, and by a growing distrust of the
 aristocratic and middle-class representatives of both the
 great political parties. To the working-man politician
 of 1894 it seems inconceivable that either landlords or
 capitalists will actively help him to nationalise land and
 mining royalties, to absorb unearned incomes by taxation,
 or to control private enterprise in the interests of the
 wage-earner. Thus we find throughout the whole Trade Union
 world an almost unanimous desire to make the working-class
 organisations in some way effective for political purposes.
 Nor is this a new thing. The sense of solidarity has, as we
 have seen, never been lacking among those active soldiers
 and non-commissioned officers who constitute the most
 vital element in the Trade Union army. The generous aid
 from trade to trade, the pathetic attempts to form General
 Unions, the constant aspirations after universal federation,
 all testify to the reality and force of this instinctive
 solidarity. The Collectivist faith of the ‘New Unionism’ is
 only another manifestation of the same deep-rooted belief in
 the essential Brotherhood of Labour. But, as we have seen,
 the basis of the association of these million and a half
 wage-earners is, primarily, sectional in its nature. They
 come together, and contribute their pence, for the defence
 of their interests as Boilermakers, Miners, Cotton-spinners,
 and not directly for the advancement of the whole working
 class. Among the salaried officers of the Unions, it is,
 as we have said, the Trade Official, chosen and paid for
 the express purpose of maintaining the interests of his own
 particular trade, who is the active force. The effect has
 been to intensify the sectionalism to which an organisation
 based on trades must necessarily be prone. The vague
 general Collectivism of the non-commissioned officers has
 hitherto got translated into practical proposals only in so
 far as it can be expressed in projects for the advantage
 of a particular trade. Some organised trades have known
 how to draft and to extort from Parliament a voluminous
 Labour Code, the provisions of which are exceptionally
 well adapted for the protection of the particular workers
 concerned. The ‘particulars clause’[708] and the law against
 the ‘over-steaming’ of weaving sheds are, for instance,
 triumphs of collective control which could hardly have been
 conceived by any one except the astute trade officials of
 the Cotton Operatives. But there is no attempt to deal with
 any question as a whole. Trade Unionists are, for instance,
 unanimously in favour of drastic legislation to put down
 ‘sweating’ in all trades whatsoever. But no salaried officer
 of the Trade Union world feels it to be his business to
 improve the Labour Code for any industry but his own. Thus,
 whereas the Factory Acts have been effectively elaborated to
 meet the special circumstances of a few trades, for all the
 rest they remain in the form of merely general prohibitions
 which it is practically impossible to enforce. How far it is
 possible, by the development of Trades Councils, the reform
 of the Trades Union Congress, the increased efficiency of
 the Parliamentary Committee, the growth of Trade Union
 representation in the House of Commons, or, finally, by the
 creation of any new federal machinery, to counteract the
 fundamental sectionalism of Trade Union organisation, to
 supplement the specialised trade officials by an equally
 specialised Civil Service of working-class politicians,
 and thus to render the Trade Union world, with its million
 of electors, and its leadership of Labour, an effective
 political force in the State, is, on the whole, the most
 momentous question of contemporary politics.”[709]

The quarter of a century that has elapsed since these words were
written has seen an extensive political development of the Trade Union
Movement, taking the form of building up a separate and independent
party of “Labour” in the House of Commons, which we have now to
record.[710]

The continued propaganda of the Socialists, and of others who wished to
see the Trade Union Movement become an effective political force, which
we have described as active from 1884 onwards, did not, for nearly a
couple of decades, produce a political “Labour Party.” So strong was
at that time the resistance of most of the Trade Union leaders to any
participation of their societies in general politics, even on the lines
of complete independence of both Liberal and Conservative Parties,
that “Labour Representation” had still, for some years, to be fought
for apart from Trade Unionism. The leaders, indeed, did not really
care about Trade Union influence in the House of Commons.[711] Many
of them, as we have described, remained for a whole generation averse
even from legal regulation of the conditions of employment. In national
politics they were mostly Liberals, with the strongest possible
admiration for Gladstone and Bright; or else (as in Lancashire)
convinced Conservatives, concerned to defend the Church of England or
Roman Catholic elementary schools in which their children were being
educated or carried away by the glamour of an Imperialist foreign
policy. They asked for nothing more than a few working-class members in
the House of Commons, belonging to one or other of the “respectable”
parties, to which they could thus obtain access for the adjustment of
any matters in which their societies happened to be interested.

In 1887, at his first appearance at the Trades Union Congress, J. Keir
Hardie,[712] representing a small Union of Ayrshire Miners, demanded a
new start. He called upon the Trade Unionists definitely to sever their
connection with the existing political parties, by which the workmen
were constantly befooled and betrayed, and insisted on the necessity
of forming an entirely independent party of Labour, to which the whole
working-class movement should rally. On the Congress he produced no
apparent effect.[713] But, six months later, when a Parliamentary
vacancy occurred in Mid-Lanark, Keir Hardie was nominated, against
Liberal and Tory alike, on the principle of entire independence; and
in spite of every effort to induce him to withdraw,[714] he went to
the poll, obtaining only 619 votes. A society was then formed to
work for independent Labour representation, under the designation of
the Scottish Labour Party, having for chairman Mr. R. B. Cunninghame
Graham, M.P., who had been elected as a Liberal but who had become a
Socialist. The “new spirit” of 1889, which we have described, put heart
into the movement for political independence; and after much further
propaganda by the Socialists,[715] at the General Election of 1892 Keir
Hardie was elected for West Ham, avowedly as the first member of an
independent Party of Labour; together with fourteen other workmen,[716]
whose independence of the Liberal Party, even where it was claimed,
was less marked than their obvious jealousy of Keir Hardie. There was
apparently still no hope of gaining the adherence of the Trade Unions
as such; and at the Glasgow Trades Union Congress of 1892 arrangements
were made by a few of the delegates to hold a smaller conference, which
took place at Bradford, in 1893, under the chairmanship of Keir Hardie,
when those who were determined to establish a separate political party
formed a society, made up of individual adherents, which was styled the
Independent Labour Party. In this the Scottish Labour Party was merged,
but it remained without the affiliation of Trade Unions in their
corporate capacity. The Independent Labour Party, of which throughout
his life Keir Hardie was the outstanding figure, carried on a strenuous
propagandist campaign, and during the next two years put up independent
candidates at by-elections, with uniform ill-success. At the General
Election of 1895, no fewer than twenty-eight “I.L.P.” candidates
went to the poll, every one of them (including Keir Hardie himself
at West Ham) being unsuccessful. With two or three exceptions, the
Trade Unionist members in alliance with the Liberal Party successfully
maintained their seats. The establishment of an aggressively
independent Labour Party in Parliament still looked hopeless.

With the new century an effort was made on fresh lines. The continuous
propaganda had had its effect, even on the Trades Union Congress.
In 1898 it could be suggested in the presidential address[717] that
a “committee should be appointed to draft a scheme of political
organisation for the Trade Union world on the ground that just as
trades federation is a matter of vital necessity for industrial
organisation, so also will a scheme of political action be of vital
necessity if we wish Parliament to faithfully register the effect of
the industrial revolution on our social life.” The very next year a
resolution--which had been drafted in London by the members of the
Independent Labour Party--was carried on the motion of the Amalgamated
Society of Railway Servants, against the votes of the miners as well as
of the textile workers, directing the convening of a special congress
representing Trade Unions, Co-operative Societies, and Socialist
organisations, in order to devise means of increasing the number of
Labour members.[718] It was urged on the Parliamentary Committee that
the Socialist organisations had a right to be strongly represented on
the proposed Committee; and the Parliamentary Committee, which had no
faith in the scheme and attached little importance to it, nominated
four of its members (S. Woods, W. C. Steadman, R. Bell, and W. Thorne),
all of whom afterwards became Members of Parliament, to sit with two
representatives each from the Independent Labour Party (Keir Hardie
and J. Ramsay MacDonald), the Fabian Society (G. Bernard Shaw and E.
R. Pease), and the Social Democratic Federation (H. Quelch and H. R.
Taylor). This Committee took the business into its own hands, and drew
up a constitution, upon a federal basis, for a “Labour Representation
Committee,” as an independent organisation, including Trade Unions
and Trades Councils, along with Co-operative and Socialist Societies;
and in February 1900 a specially summoned congress, attended by 129
delegates, representing Trade Unions aggregating half a million
members, and Socialist societies claiming fewer than seventy thousand,
adopted the draft constitution, established the new body, appointed its
first executive, and gave it, in Mr. J. Ramsay MacDonald, not merely
its first secretary but also a skilful organiser, to whose patient and
persistent effort no small part of its subsequent success has been due.

For two years the Labour Representation Committee, in spite of diligent
propaganda among Trade Union Executives, seemed to hang fire. The
General Election of 1900 found it unprepared; and, though it put
fifteen candidates in the field, only two of them were successful.
No Co-operative Society joined; the Social Democratic Federation
withdrew; scarcely a score of Trades Councils were enrolled; and though
sixty-five separate Trade Unions gradually adhered--being only about
five or six per cent of the total number--the aggregate affiliated
membership of the Party did not reach half a million. Then the tide
turned, mainly through the rally of Trade Unionism as it became aware
of the full implications of the assault upon it made by the decision in
the Taff Vale case, which we have already described. The miners stood
aloof only because they preferred to use their own organisation. In
1901 the Miners’ Federation voted a levy of a penny per month on all
its membership in order to create a Parliamentary Fund; and the running
of as many as seventy candidates was then talked about. During the year
1902 the number of adhering Trade Unions and Trades Councils, and the
total affiliated membership, were alike practically doubled. In the
next two years the Committee contested no fewer than six Parliamentary
by-elections, returning its members in half of them.[719] Meanwhile
the Conservative Government obstinately refused to allow legislation
restoring to Trade Unions the statutory status of 1871-76, of which
the judges’ decision in the Taff Vale case had deprived them. Careful
preparation was accordingly made for a successful appeal to Trade
Unionists at the General Election which was approaching; and when
it came, in January 1906, no fewer than fifty independent Labour
candidates were put in the field against Liberals and Conservatives
alike. To the general surprise of the political world, as many as
twenty-nine of these were successful; besides a dozen other workmen,
mostly miners, who again stood with Liberal Party support and were
still regarded as belonging to that Party. The twenty-nine at once
formed themselves into, and were recognised as, a separate independent
party in the House of Commons, with its own officers and whips,
concerned to push its own programme irrespective of the desires and
convenience of the other political parties. At the same time the Labour
Representation Committee changed its name to the Labour Party.

We need not concern ourselves with the Parliamentary struggles of the
next three years, during which the Parliamentary Labour Party may claim
to have indirectly secured the passage, as Government measures, of the
Trade Disputes Act, the Miners’ Eight Hours Act, and the Trade Boards
Act, and to have developed something like a Parliamentary programme.
It suffered, however, in the Trade Union world, from its inevitable
failure to impress its will on the triumphant Liberal majority of
these years. What saved the Labour Party from decline, and gave it
indeed fresh impetus in the Trade Union movement, was the renewed legal
assault on Trade Unionism itself, which in 1909, as we have described,
culminated in the Osborne Judgement of the highest Appeal Court, by
which the Trade Unions were prohibited from applying any of their
funds to political activities and to the support of the Labour Party
in particular. The refusal of the Liberal Government for four whole
years to remedy this gross miscarriage of justice though conscious that
it was not permanently defensible; and the unconcealed desire of the
Liberal Party politicians to put the Labour Party out of action as an
independent political force, swung over to its side the great bulk of
active Trade Unionists, including many, especially in Lancashire, who
had hitherto counted to the Conservative Party. By 1913, in spite of a
large number of injunctions restraining Trade Unions from affiliating,
the Labour Party could count on a membership of nearly two millions,
and this number has since steadily grown. The two General Elections
of 1910, though dominated by other issues, left the Parliamentary
Labour Party unshaken; whilst the accession to the Party of the Miners’
members raised its Parliamentary strength to forty-two. Payment of
members was secured in 1911, and the Mines (Minimum Wage) Act in 1912,
but not until 1913 could the Government be induced to pass into law
the Trade Union Act, which once more permitted Trade Unions to engage
in any lawful purposes that their members desired. This concession
was, even then, made subject to any objecting member being enabled
to withhold that part of his contribution applicable to political
purposes--an illogical restriction, because it applied only to the
dissentient’s tiny fraction of money, and he was not empowered to
prevent the majority of members from using the indivisible corporate
power of the Union itself. This restriction, not put upon any other
corporate body, was universally believed to have been imposed, in the
assumed interest of the Liberal Party, with the object of crippling
the political influence of Trade Unionism; and is still bitterly
resented.[720]

Whilst it was very largely the successive assaults on Trade Unionism
itself that built up the Labour Party, the ultimate defeat of these
assaults, the concession of Payment of Members, and the attainment of
legal security by the Trade Union Act of 1913, did nothing to stay its
progress. At the same time, the injunctions of the years 1909-12,
and the fear of litigation, together with a certain disillusionment
with Parliamentary action among the rank and file, led to the gradual
falling away of some Trade Unions, mostly of comparatively small
membership. The very basis of the Labour Party, upon which alone it
has proved possible to build up a successful political force--the
combination, within a political federation, of Trade Unions having
extensive membership and not very intense political energy, and
Socialist societies of relatively scanty membership but overflowing
with political talent and zeal--necessarily led to complications. It
needed all the tact and patient persuasion of the leaders of both
sections to convince the Socialists that their ideals and projects were
not being sacrificed to the stolidity and the prejudices of the mass of
Trade Unionists; and at the same time to explain to the Trade Unionists
how valuable was the aid of the knowledge, eloquence, and Parliamentary
ability contributed by such Socialist representatives as Keir Hardie,
Philip Snowden, J. Ramsay MacDonald, and W. C. Anderson. Moreover, the
complications and difficulties of Parliamentary action in a House of
Commons where the Government continuously possessed a solid majority;
the political necessity of supporting the Liberal Party Bills relating
to the Budget and the House of Lords, and of not playing into the hands
of a still more reactionary Front Opposition Bench, were not readily
comprehended by the average workman. What the militants in the country
failed to allow for was the impotence of a small Parliamentary section
to secure the adoption of its own policy by a Parliamentary majority.
But it is, we think, now admitted that it was a misfortune that the
Parliamentary Labour Party of these years never managed to put before
the country the large outlines of an alternative programme based on the
Party’s conception of a new social order, eliminating the capitalist
profit-maker wherever possible, and giving free scope to communal and
industrial Democracy--notably with regard to the administration of
the railways and the mines, the prevention of Unemployment, and also
the provision for the nation’s non-effectives, which the Government
dealt with so unsatisfactorily in the National Insurance Act of 1911.
The failure of the Parliamentary Labour Party between 1910 and 1914
to strike the imagination of the Trade Union world led to a certain
reaction against political action as such, and to a growing doubt among
the active spirits as to the value of a Labour Party which did not
succeed in taking vigorous independent action, either in Parliament
or on the platform and in the press, along the lines of changing the
existing order of society. A like failure to strike the imagination
characterised _The Daily Citizen_--the organ which the Labour Party and
the Trade Union Movement had established with such high hopes--and its
inability to gain either intellectual influence or adequate circulation
did not lighten the somewhat gloomy atmosphere of the Labour Party
councils of 1913-14.[721] This reaction did not appreciably affect the
numerical and financial strength of the Labour Party itself, as the
relatively few withdrawals of Unions were outweighed by the steady
increase in membership of the hundred principal Unions which remained
faithful, by the accession of other Unions, and by the continual
increase in the number and strength of the affiliated Trades Councils
and Local Labour Parties. But the reaction in Trade Union opinion
weakened the influence of the members of the Parliamentary Party,
alike in the House of Commons and in their own societies. A wave of
“Labour Unrest,” of “Syndicalism,” of “rank and file movements” for
a more aggressive Trade Unionism, of organisation by “shop stewards”
in opposition to national executives, and of preference for “Direct
Action” over Parliamentary procedure swept over British Trade Unionism,
affecting especially the London building trades, the South Wales
Miners, and the engineering and shipbuilding industry on the Clyde.
The impetuous strikes in 1911-13 of the Railwaymen, the Coal-miners,
the Transport Workers, and the London Building Trades, which we have
already described, were influenced, partly, by this new spirit. The
number of disputes reported to the Labour Department, which had sunk
in 1908 to only 399, rose in 1911 to 903, and culminated in the latter
half of 1913 and the first half of 1914 in the outbreak of something
like a hundred and fifty strikes per month. British Trade Unionism was,
in fact, in the summer of 1914, working up for an almost revolutionary
outburst of gigantic industrial disputes, which could not have failed
to be seriously embarrassing for the political organisation to which
the movement had committed itself, when, in August 1914, war was
declared, and all internal conflict had perforce to be suspended.

During the war (1914-18) the task of the Labour Party was one of
exceptional difficulty. It had necessarily to support the Government in
a struggle of which five-sixths of its Parliamentary representatives
and probably nine-tenths of its aggregate membership approved. The very
gravity of the national crisis compelled the Party to abstain from any
action that would have weakened the country’s defence. On the other
hand, the three successive Administrations that held office during the
war were all driven by their needs, as we have already described, to
impose upon the wage-earners cruel sacrifices, and to violate, not
once but repeatedly, all that Organised Labour in Britain held dear.
The Party could not refrain, at whatever cost of misconstruction, from
withstanding unjustifiable demands by the Government;[722] protesting
against its successive breaches of faith to the Trade Unions; demanding
the conditions in the forthcoming Treaty of Peace that, as could be
already foreseen, would be necessary to protect the wage-earning class;
standing up for the scandalously ill-used “conscientious objectors,”
and doing its best to secure, in the eventual demobilisation and
social reconstruction, the utmost possible protection of the mass of
the people against Unemployment and “Profiteering.” In all this the
Labour Party earned the respect of the most thoughtful Trade Unionists,
but necessarily exposed itself to a constant stream of newspaper
misrepresentation and abuse. Any opposition or resistance to the
official demands was inevitably misrepresented as, and mistaken for, an
almost treasonable “Pacifism” or “Defeatism”--a misunderstanding of the
attitude of the Party to which colour was lent by the persistence and
eloquence with which the small Pacifist Minority within the Party--a
minority which, it must be said, included some of the most talented
and active of its leading members in the House of Commons--used every
opportunity publicly to denounce the Government’s conduct in the war.
But although the Pacifist Group in Parliament was strenuously supported
in the country by the relatively small but extremely active constituent
society of the Labour Party styled The Independent Labour Party--the
very name helping the popular misunderstanding--the Trade Unionists,
forming the vast majority of the Labour Party, remained, with extremely
few exceptions, grimly determined at all costs to win the war.

If Organised Labour had been against the war, it is safe to say that
the national effort could not have been maintained. The need for the
formal association of the Labour Party with the Administration was
recognised by Mr. Asquith in 1915, when he formed the first Coalition
Cabinet, into which he invited the chairman of the Parliamentary Labour
Party, Mr. Arthur Henderson (Friendly Society of Ironfounders), who
became President of the Board of Education. Later on, in 1916, Mr. G.
N. Barnes (Amalgamated Society of Engineers) was appointed to the new
office of Minister of Pensions. When, in December 1916, Mr. Asquith
resigned, and Mr. Lloyd George formed a new Coalition Government, Mr.
Henderson entered the small War Cabinet that was then formed, with
the nominal office of Paymaster-General; whilst Mr. Barnes continued
Minister of Pensions, Mr. John Hodge (British Steel Smelters’ Society)
was appointed to the new office of Minister of Labour, and three other
members of the Party (Mr. W. Brace, South Wales Miners; Mr. G. H.
Roberts, Typographical Society; and Mr. James Parker, National Union of
General Workers) received minor ministerial posts.[723]

Throughout the whole period of the war all the several demands of
the Government upon the organised workers, the abrogation of “Trade
Union Conditions” in all industries working for war needs, the first
and second Munitions of War Acts, the subversion of individual liberty
by the successive orders under the Defence of the Realm Acts, the
successive applications of the Military Service Acts, the imposition
of what was practically Compulsory Arbitration to settle the rates
of wages--were accepted, though only after serious protest, by large
majorities at the various Conferences of the Labour Party, as well as
by the various annual Trades Union Congresses,[724] in spite of the
resistance of minorities, including more than “pacifists.” The entry of
Mr. Henderson into Mr. Asquith’s first Coalition Government, and that
of Mr. Barnes into Mr. Lloyd George’s War Cabinet, together with the
acceptance of ministerial office by other leading members of the Labour
Party--though any such ministerial coalition was in flagrant violation
of the very principles of its existence, and was strenuously combated
on grounds of expediency by many of its members who loyally supported
the war--equally received the endorsement of large majorities at the
Party Conferences. From the beginning of the war to the end, the Labour
Party, alike in all its corporate acts and by the individual efforts of
its leading members (other than the minority already mentioned), stuck
at nothing in its determination to help the Government to win the war.

More controversial were the persistent efforts made by the Labour
Party to maintain its international relations with the Labour and
Socialist Movements of Continental Europe. From the first it was seen
to be important to get the representatives of the Trade Unions and
Socialist organisations of the Allied Nations, and not merely their
Governments, united in a declaration of the aims and the justification
of a war that was everywhere outraging working-class idealism. Such a
unanimity was successfully achieved in February 1915 at a conference,
held in London at the instance of the Labour Party, of delegates
from the working-class organisations of France, Belgium, and Great
Britain, with Russian representatives, then allied in arms against
the Central Empires.[725] Later on, when a Minority Party had been
formed among the German Socialists, and when the Austrian and Hungarian
working-class Movements were also in revolt against the militarism of
their Government, repeated efforts were made by the Labour Party to
encourage this revolt, and for this purpose to obtain the necessary
Government facilities for a meeting, in some neutral city, of the
working-class “International,” at which the Allied Case could be laid
before the neutrals, and a basis found for united action with all
the working-class elements in opposition to the dominant military
Imperialism. After the Russian revolution of March 1917, the Petrograd
Workmen’s and Soldiers’ Council actually issued an invitation for a
working-class “International” at Stockholm; and the participation
of the British Labour Party in this International Congress, which
was not then favoured by Mr. Henderson, received at one time no
small support from the Prime Minister, Mr. Lloyd George. In the end
the Government despatched Mr. Henderson on an official mission to
Petrograd (incidentally empowering him, if he thought fit, to remain
there as Ambassador at £8000 a year). Meanwhile the proposal for an
International Congress had been modified, first into one for a purely
consultative gathering, and then into one for a series of separate
interviews between a committee of neutrals and the representatives of
each of the belligerents in turn, with a view to discovering a possible
basis for peace--a project to which Mr. Henderson, from what he learnt
at Petrograd, was converted. A National Conference of the Labour
Party in August 1917 approved of participation in such a Congress at
Stockholm; but the French and Italian Governments would not hear of
it, and Mr. Lloyd George went back on his prior approval, absolutely
declining to allow passports to be issued. Amid great excitement, and
under circumstances of insult and indignity which created resentment
among the British working class, Mr. Henderson felt obliged to tender
his resignation of his place in the War Cabinet, in which he was
succeeded by Mr. Barnes, who was getting more and more out of sympathy
with the majority of the Party.[726] The Labour Party Executive, in
alliance with the Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress,
then applied itself to getting agreement among the Labour and Socialist
Movements of the Allied Nations as to the lines on which--assuming
an Allied victory--the terms of peace should be drawn, in order to
avert as much as possible of the widespread misery which, it could be
foreseen, must necessarily fall upon the wage-earning class. In this
effort, in which Mr. Henderson displayed great tact and patience, he
had the implicit sanction of the British Government, and, with some
reluctance, also of the Governments of the other Allied Nations by whom
the necessary passports were issued for an Inter-Allied Conference in
London in August 1917, which was abortive; for provisional discussions
at Paris in February 1918; and for a second Inter-Allied Conference
at the end of the same month in London, which resulted in a virtually
unanimous agreement upon what should be the terms of peace,[727] on a
basis already approved on December 28, 1917, by a Joint Conference of
the Trades Union Congress and the Labour Party, and widely published
all over the world. The terms thus agreed were, in fact, immediately
adopted in outline in a public deliverance by Mr. Lloyd George as those
on which Germany could have peace at any time; and the same proposals
were promptly made the basis of President Wilson’s celebrated “Fourteen
Points” on which eventually (but only after another ten months’ costly
war) the Armistice of November 11, 1918, was concluded. Profound was
the disappointment, and bitter the resentment, of the greater part of
the organised Labour Movement of Great Britain when it was revealed how
seriously the diplomatists at the Paris Conference had departed from
these terms in the Treaty of Peace which was imposed on the Central
Empires.[728]

We have already attempted to sum up the effect of the Great War on
the industrial status of Trade Unionism. It is more difficult to
estimate its effect on the political organisation of the movement. The
outbreak of the war had found the Labour Party, in the see-saw of Trade
Union opinion to which we have elsewhere referred, suffering from an
inevitable disillusionment among Trade Unionists as to the immediate
potency of Parliamentary representation--a disillusionment manifested
in the outbreak of rebellious strikes that characterised the years
1911-14. The achievements of the Labour Party in the House of Commons
had fallen short of the eager hopes with which the new party had raised
its standard on its triumphant entry in 1906. In 1914, it may be said,
the Labour Party was at a dead point. The effect upon it of the Great
War was to raise it in proportion to the height of the vastly greater
issues with which it was compelled to deal. Amid the stress of war,
and of the intensely controversial decisions which it had necessarily
to take, the Labour Party revised its constitution, widened its aims,
opened its ranks to the “workers by brain” as well as the workers by
hand, and received the accession of many thousands of converts from
the Liberal and Conservative Parties. It made great progress in its
difficult task of superimposing, on an organisation based on national
societies, the necessary complementary organisation of its affiliated
membership by geographical constituencies. It equipped itself during
the war, for the first time, with a far-reaching and well-considered
programme not confined to distinctively “Labour” issues, but covering
the whole field of home politics, and even extending to foreign
relations.[729] The formulation of such a programme, from beginning to
end essentially Socialist in character, and including alike ideals of
social reconstruction and detailed reforms of immediate practicability,
together with the wholehearted adoption of this programme, after six
months’ consideration by the constituent societies and branches, was
a notable achievement, which placed the British Labour Party ahead of
those of other countries. Moreover, the formulation of a comprehensive
social programme and of “terms of Peace,” based on the principles
for which the war had ostensibly been fought--principles which were
certainly not carried in the Treaty of Peace--transformed the Labour
Party from a group representing merely the class interests of the
manual workers into a fully constituted political Party of national
scope, ready to take over the government of the country and to conduct
both home and foreign affairs on definite principles. Taken together
with the intellectual bankruptcy of the Liberal Party and its apparent
incapacity to formulate any positive policy, whether with regard to
the redistribution of wealth within our own community or with regard
to our attitude towards other races within or without the British
Empire, the emergence of the Labour Party programme meant that the
Party stood forth, in public opinion, as the inevitable alternative to
the present Coalition Government when the time came for this to fall.
The result was that, aided by the steady growth of Trade Unionism,
the Party came near, between 1914 and 1919, to doubling its aggregate
membership. When hostilities ceased, it insisted on resuming the
complete independence of the other political parties, which it had, by
joining the successive Coalition Governments, consented temporarily to
forgo; and such of its leaders as refused to withdraw from ministerial
office[730] were unhesitatingly shed from the Party. Meanwhile, the
extension of the franchise and redistribution of seats, which had
been carried by general consent in the spring of 1918, turned out to
raise the electorate to nearly treble that of 1910, whilst the new
constituencies proved to have been so adjusted as greatly to facilitate
an increase in the number of miners’ representatives. When the General
Election came, in December 1918, though the Labour Party fought under
great disadvantages and it was seen that most of the soldier electors
would be unable to record their votes, it put no fewer than 361 Labour
candidates in the field against Liberal and Conservative alike,
contesting two-thirds of all the constituencies in Great Britain. In
face of a “Lloyd George tide” of unprecedented strength these Labour
candidates received nearly one-fourth of all the votes polled in
the United Kingdom; and though five-sixths of these numerous Labour
candidatures were unsuccessful (including, unfortunately, most of its
ablest Parliamentarians such as Messrs. Henderson,[731] MacDonald,
Anderson, and Snowden), the Party increased its numerical strength in
the House of Commons by 50 per cent, and, to the universal surprise,
returned more than twice as many members as did the remnant of the
Liberal Party adhering to Mr. Asquith--becoming, in fact, entitled to
the position of “His Majesty’s Opposition.” It can hardly be said that
during the session of 1919 the Parliamentary Labour Party, considerably
strengthened in numbers but weakened by the defeat of its ablest
Parliamentarians, has, under the leadership of the Right Honourable
W. Adamson (Scottish Miners), made as much of its opportunities as
the Labour Party in the country expected and desired. The political
organisation of the Trade Union world remains, indeed, very far from
adequate to the achievement of its far-reaching aims. It is not merely
that the average British Trade Unionist, unlike the German, the Danish,
Swedish, or the Belgian, has learnt so little the duty of subordinating
minor personal or local issues, and of voting with his Party with
as much loyalty as he shows in striking with his fellow-unionists,
that by no means all the aggregate British Trade Union membership
can steadfastly be relied on to vote for the Labour candidates. Nor
is it only that the British Labour Party still fails to command the
affiliation of as many Trade Unions as the Trades Union Congress, and
that the great majority of the smaller and the local societies--less
from dissent than out of apathy--remain aloof from both sides of
the national organisation. The Trades Union Congress itself, after
engendering, as independent organisations, first the General Federation
of Trade Unions, and then the Labour Party, has not yet resigned itself
to limiting its activities. The General Federation of Trade Unions may
be said, indeed, to have now disappeared from the Trade Union world
as an effective force in the determination of industrial or political
policy. There remain three separate organisations of national scope;
the Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress which it
is now proposed to transform into a General Council, the Executive
Committee of the Labour Party, and the members of the House of Commons
who form the Parliamentary Labour Party. Unfortunately, between these
three groups there has been some lack of mutual consultation, and an
indefiniteness if not a confusion of policy which stands in the way
of effective leadership.[732] This has prevented the bringing to bear
upon the political field of the full force, now almost a moiety of the
whole registered electorate of Great Britain, that the Trade Union
world may (including the wives of Trade Unionist electors) fairly
claim to include. Fundamentally, however, the shortcomings of the
political organisation of the Trade Union world are to be ascribed
to its failure, down to the present, to develop a staff of trained
political officers at all equal to those of the Trade Union organisers
and Trade Union negotiators in the industrial field. The Labour Party,
which can as yet rely only on the quite inadequate contribution from
its affiliated societies of no more than twopence per member annually,
has, so far, not succeeded in obtaining and keeping the services,
as Registration Officers and Election Agents, of anything like so
extensive and so competent a staff as either of the other political
parties; and Labour Party candidatures are still run, occasionally with
astonishing success, very largely upon that transient enthusiasm of
the crowd upon which experienced electioneers wisely decline to rely
for victory. What is, however, much more crippling to the Labour Party
than the scanty funds with which its constituent societies supply it,
and this insufficiency in the staff of trained election organisers, is
the scarcity of trained Parliamentary representatives. Down to to-day
the great bulk of Labour Members of Parliament have been drawn from
the ranks of the salaried secretaries and other industrial officers
of Trade Unions, who are nearly always not only men of competence in
their own spheres, but also exceptionally good speakers for popular
audiences, and, generally, in many respects above the average of
middle-class candidates. But as Members of Parliament they have serious
shortcomings. They can, to begin with, seldom devote the necessary
time to their new duties. They usually find themselves compelled to
strive to combine attendance at the House of Commons with the onerous
industrial service of their societies. The Trade Unions have, as yet,
only in a few cases realised the necessity of setting free from the
constant burden of Trade Union work--as they might by promotion to
some such consultative office as that of a salaried President--such
of their officials as secure election to Parliament; whilst these
officers, unable to maintain themselves and their families in London
on their Parliamentary allowance for expenses of £400 a year, and
afraid lest the loss of their seats may presently leave them without
incomes, dare not resign their Trade Union posts. The result is an
imperfect and always uncertain attendance of the Labour Members at the
House of Commons; a fatal division and diversion of their attention;
and an inevitable failure on their part to discharge with the fullest
efficiency the duties of their two offices. Equally destructive of
Parliamentary efficiency is the omission of the Trade Union world to
provide or secure any training in the duties of a Member of Parliament
for those whom they select as candidates and whose election expenses
they defray with unstinted liberality. The lifelong training which
these candidates have enjoyed as Branch and District Secretaries, as
industrial organisers and negotiators, and as administrators of great
Trade Unions, valuable as it is for Trade Union purposes, does not
include, and indeed tends rather to exclude, the practical training
in general politics, the working acquaintance with the British
Constitution, the knowledge of how to use and how to control the adroit
and well-equipped Civil Service, and the ability to translate both the
half-articulate desires of the electorate to the House of Commons,
and the advice of the political expert to the electorate, which,
coupled with the general art of “Parliamentarianism,” constitutes the
equipment of the really efficient Member of the House of Commons. Add
to this that the very training which the life of the successful Trade
Union official has given him, his perpetual struggle to rise in his
vocation in competitive rivalry, not with persons of opposite views but
actually with personal acquaintances of the same craft and the same
political opinions as himself, is, in itself, not a good preparation
for the incessant mutual consultation and carefully planned “team-work”
which contributes so much to the effectiveness of a minority party
in the House of Commons. Add to this again the personal rivalries
among members of the Party, the jealousies from which no party is
free, and the almost complete lack of opportunity for the constant
social intercourse with each other away from the House of Commons that
the members of the other parties enjoy--and it will be realised how
seriously the Parliamentary Labour Party is handicapped by being made
up, as it is at present, almost entirely of men who are compelled also
to serve as Trade Union officials. Already, however, there are signs of
improvement. Some Trade Unions, whilst willing to spend large sums on
Parliamentary candidatures, are demurring to their salaried officials
going to Westminster. The Workers’ Educational Association, Ruskin
College, and other educational agencies are doing much to provide a
wider political training than Trade Unionists have heretofore enjoyed.
And as the Parliamentary Labour Party, claiming to-day to represent,
not the Trade Unionists only, but the whole community of “workers
by hand or by brain,” expands from sixty to four or six times that
number--as it must before it can be confronted with the task of forming
a Government--it will necessarily come to include an ever-increasing
proportion of members drawn from other than Trade Union ranks; whilst
even its Trade Union members cannot fail to acquire more of that habit
of mutual intercourse and that art of combined action which, coupled
with the Parliamentary skill and capacity for public administration
of those who rise to leadership, is the necessary basis of successful
party achievement.

Meanwhile, the political organisation of the Trade Union Movement, and
the enlargement of its ideas on Communal and Industrial Democracy,
have been manifesting themselves also in the important sphere of Local
Government. After the “Labour” successes at the elections of Local
Authorities, which continued for a whole decade from 1892, and placed
over a thousand Trade Unionists and Socialists on Parish, District,
Borough and County Councils, there ensued another decade in which,
in the majority of districts, this active participation in local
elections was impaired by the diversion of interest, both to Parliament
and to industrial organisation. From 1914 to 1919 local elections
were suspended. On their resumption in the latter year, they were
energetically contested by the Labour Party, all over Great Britain, on
its new and definitely Socialist programme, with the unexpected result
that, up and down the country, the Labour candidates frequently swept
the board, polling in the aggregate a very substantial proportion of
the votes, electing altogether several thousand Councillors (five or
six hundred in Scotland alone), and being returned in actual majorities
in nearly half the Metropolitan Boroughs, several important Counties
and Municipalities, and many Urban Districts and Parishes.

       *       *       *       *       *

It must be apparent that any history of Trade Unionism that breaks off
at the beginning of 1920 halts, not at the end of an epoch, but--we may
almost say--at the opening of a new chapter. British Trade Unionism, at
a moment when it is, both industrially and politically, stronger than
ever before, is seething with new ideas and far-reaching aspirations.
At the same time, its most recent advances in status and power are
by no means yet accepted by what remains the governing class; its
political and industrial position is still precarious, and within a
very brief space it may again find itself fighting against a frontal
attack upon its very existence. And in face of the common enemy--now
united as an autocratic capitalism--Industrial Democracy is uncertain
of itself, and almost blindly groping after a precise adjustment of
powers and functions between Associations of Producers and Associations
of Consumers.

Let us elaborate these points in detail. One result of the Great War
has been, if not the actual enthronement of Democracy, a tremendous
shifting of authority to the mass of the people. Of this shifting of
the basis of power the advance in the status of Trade Unionism and the
advent, in British politics, of the Labour Party, are but preliminary
manifestations. As yet the mass of the people, to whom power is
passing, have made but little effective use of their opportunities. At
least seven-eighths of the nation’s accumulated wealth, and with it
nearly all the effective authority, is still in the hands of one-eighth
of the population; and the seven-eighths of the people find themselves
in consequence still restricted, as regards the means of life, to less
than half of that national income which is exclusively the product of
those who labour, by hand or by brain. The “leisure class”--the men
and women who live by owning and not by working, a class increasing in
actual numbers, if not relatively to the workers--seem to the great
mass of working people to be showing themselves, if possible, more
frivolous and more insolent in their irresponsible consumption, by
themselves and their families, of the relatively enormous share that
they are able to take from the national income. It is coming to be
more and more felt that the continued existence of this class involves
a quite unwarranted burden upon their fellow-citizens working by
hand or by brain. Very naturally there is widespread discontent, and
the emergence of all sorts of exasperated criticisms and extravagant
schemes.

The truth is, of course, that Democracy, whether political or
industrial, is still in its infancy. The common run of men and women,
who have only just been enfranchised politically, and are even yet only
partially organised industrially, are as yet unable to make full use
of Democratic institutions. The majority of them cannot be induced,
in the economic pressure to which Capitalism subjects them, to take
the trouble or give the continuous thought involved in any effective
participation in public affairs. The result is that such Democratic
institutions as we possess are, of necessity, still inefficiently
managed; and neither the citizen-consumers nor the Trade Unionist
producers find themselves exercising much effective control over their
own lives. The active-minded minority sees itself submerged by the
“apathetic mass”; the individual feels enslaved by the “machine.” The
complaint of the “rank and file”--using that term to mean, not any
“extremist” minority, but merely the majority, the “common run of
men”--comes to no more than that they do not find themselves obtaining
the results in their daily lives which they expected, and which they
were, as they understood, promised. This, we think, is the explanation
of the perpetual “see-saw” within the Labour Movement, decade after
decade, between an infatuation for industrial or “direct” action and
an equal infatuation for political or Parliamentary and Municipal
action--each, unfortunately, to the temporary neglect of the other. Or
to state the Democratic problem in a more fundamental form, the see-saw
is between the aspiration to vest the control over the instruments of
production in Democracies of Producers, and the alternating belief
that this control can best be vested in Democracies of Consumers. But
it is abundantly clear, alike from history and economic analysis, that
in any genuine Democracy both forms of organisation are indispensably
required. In the modern State every person throughout his whole life
consumes a great variety of commodities and services which he cannot
produce; whilst men and women, occupied in production, habitually
produce a single commodity or service for other persons to consume.
Their interests and desires as producers, and as producers of a single
commodity or service, are not, and can never be, identical with the
interests and desires of these same people as consumers of many
different commodities and services--just as their interests and desires
as citizens of a community, or as members of a race which they wish to
continue in independent existence, are not necessarily identical with
those of which they are conscious either as producers or as consumers.

It is, in fact, now realised that Democratic organisation involves
the acceptance, not of a single basis--that of the undifferentiated
human being--but of various separate and distinct bases: man as a
producer; man as a consumer; man as a citizen concerned with the
continued existence and independence of his race or community; possibly
also other bases, such as man as a scientist or man as a religious
believer. What is wrong in each successive generation is the intolerant
fanaticism of the enthusiasts which leads them to insist on any
one form of this multiplex Democracy to the exclusion of the other
forms. We see to-day uppermost a revival of faith in Associations of
Producers, as being, in an industrial community, the form of Democratic
organisation most important to the working people. To some one-sided
minds, as was inevitable, the all-embracing Association of Producers
seems the only form that Democratic organisation can validly take.
Interesting to the historian is the intellectual connection of this
revival with the previous manifestations, in the Trade Union Movement,
of the idea of “Co-operative Production,” whether in the revolutionary
Owenism of 1830-34, the Christian Socialism of 1848-52, or the
experiments of particular Unions in 1872. As we have explained, the
Trade Union, being essentially an Association of Producers, has never
quite lost the idea that, so far as industry is concerned, this form
of association, and no other, is Democracy. But the new form in which
the faith in Associations of Producers is now expressing itself is
concerned less with the ownership of the instruments of production (it
being to-day commonly taken for granted that this must be vested in the
community as a whole) than with the management of industry. According
to the most thoroughgoing advocates of this creed, the management of
each industry should be placed, not separately in the hands of those
engaged in each establishment, any more than in the hands of private
capitalist employers, but in the hands of the whole body of persons
throughout the community who are actually co-operating in the work
of the industry, whether by hand or by brain; this management being
shared, by Workshop or Pit Committees, District Councils and National
Boards, among all these “workers.”

This conception seems to us too one-sided to be adopted in its
entirety, or to be successful if it were so adopted. We venture to
give, necessarily in a cursory and generalised form, the results
of our own investigations into the management of industries and
services by Democracies of Producers and Democracies of Consumers
respectively. In so far as we may draw any valid inferences from
previous experiments of different kinds, we must note that the record
of the successive attempts, in modern industry, to place the entire
management of industrial undertakings in the hands of Associations
of Producers has been one of failure. In marked contrast, the
opposite form of Democracy, in which the management has been placed
in the hands of Associations of Consumers, has achieved a large and
constantly increasing measure of success. We do not refer merely to the
ever-growing development throughout the civilised world, in certain
extensive fields of industrial operation, of Municipal and National
Government, though from this some valuable lessons may be learnt.
Even more instructive is the continuous and ever-widening success, in
the importing, manufacturing, and distributing of household supplies,
of the voluntary Associations of Consumers known as the Co-operative
Movement, which is almost entirely made up of the same class of men and
women--often, indeed, of the very same individuals--as we find in the
abortive “self-governing workshops” and in the Trade Union Movement.
Why, for instance, is it possible for the manual workers, organised as
consumers, to carry on successfully the most extensive establishments
for the milling of flour, the baking of bread, the making of boots and
shoes, and the weaving of cloth, when repeated attempts to conduct such
establishments by the same kind of members organised as Associations of
Producers have not succeeded?[733]

The Democracy of Associations of Consumers, whatever its shortcomings
and defects, has, we suggest, the great advantage of being demonstrably
practicable. The job can be done. It has also the further merit that
it solves the problem presented by what the economists call the Law
of Rent. It does not leave to any individual or group of individuals
the appropriation and enjoyment of those advantages of superior sites
and soils, and other differential factors in production, which should
be, economically and ethically, taken only by the community as a
whole. Moreover, management by Associations of Consumers, whether
National, Municipal, or Co-operative, gives one practical solution to
the problem of fixing prices without competition, by enabling every
producer to be paid at his own full Standard Rate, and distributing
the various products at prices just over cost, the whole eventual
surplus being returned to the purchasers in a rebate or discount
on purchases, called “dividend”; or otherwise appropriated for the
benefit and by direction of the consumers themselves. Hence there is
no danger of private monopoly; no opportunity for particular groups of
producers to make corners in raw materials; to get monopoly prices for
commodities in times of scarcity, or to resist legitimate improvements
in machinery or processes merely because these would interfere with
the vested interests of the persons owning particular instruments
of production or possessing a particular kind of skill. In short,
the control of industries and services by Democracies of Consumers
realises the Socialist principle of production for use and not for
exchange, with all its manifold advantages. The most significant
of these superiorities of Production for Use over Production for
Exchange is its inevitable effect on the structure and working of
Democracy. Seeing that the larger the output the smaller the burden
of overhead charges--or, to put it in another way, the greater the
membership the more advantageous the enterprise--Associations of
Consumers are not tempted to close their ranks. This kind of Democracy
automatically remains always open to new-comers. On the other hand,
Associations of Producers, whether capitalists, technicians or manual
workers, exactly because they turn out commodities and services not
for their own use, but for exchange, are perpetually impelled to
limit their numbers, so as to get, for the existing membership, the
highest possible remuneration. This kind of Democracy is, therefore,
instinctively exclusive, tending always to become, within the
community, a privileged body. All this amounts to a solid reason in
favour of “nationalisation,” “municipalisation,” and the consumers’
Co-operative Movement, which is reflected in the continuous and
actually accelerating extension of all of them, not in one country
only, but throughout the civilised world.[734]

But the Democracy based on Associations of Consumers, whether in the
National Government, the Municipality, or the Co-operative Society,
reveals certain shortcomings and defects, some transient and resulting
only from the existing Capitalism, and others needing the remedy of
a complementary Democracy of Producers. So long as we have a society
characterised by gross inequalities of income, it is inevitable that
the conduct of industries and services by Associations of Consumers
should be even more advantageous to the rich than to the poor, and
of little or no use to those who are destitute. The same trail of a
Capitalist environment affects also the conditions of employment. The
Co-operative Society, the Municipality or the Government Department
cannot practically depart far from the normal conditions of the rest
of the community; and thus avails little to raise the condition of
the manual working class. If, however, the Associations of Consumers
were co-extensive with the community, they would themselves fix the
standard. But there is a more fundamental criticism. The Democracy
of Consumers, in Co-operative Society, Municipality or State--however
wide may be the franchise, however effective may be the Parliamentary
machinery, and however much the elected executive is brought under
constituency control--has the outstanding defect to the manual-working
producer that, so far as his own working life is concerned, he does
not feel it to be Democracy at all! The management, it is complained,
is always “government from above.” It is exactly for this reason
that in the evolution of British Democracy the conduct of industries
and services by Associations of Consumers--whether in the voluntary
Co-operative Society or in the geographically organised Municipality
or State--has had, for a correlative, the organisation of Associations
of Producers, whether Professional Societies or Trade Unions. Their
first object was merely to maintain and improve their members’ Standard
of Life. Without the enforcement of a Standard Rate and protection
against personal tyranny, government by Associations of Consumers is
apt to develop many of the evils of the “sweating” characteristic of
unrestrained capitalism. It is not now denied, even by the economists,
that Trade Unionism, in its establishment of the Doctrine of the Common
Rule, and the elaboration of this into the Standard Rate, the Normal
Day, and the Policy of the National Minimum, has to its credit during
the past three-quarters of a century no small measure of success, with
more triumphs easily within view. Trade Unionism among the manual
workers, like Professional Association among the brain-workers,[735]
has emphatically justified itself by its achievements.

But Trade Unionism, though it has gone far to protect the worker from
tyranny, has not, as yet, gained for him any positive participation in
industrial management. To this extent the complaints of the objectors
among the manual-working class are justified. In the perpetual see-saw
of opinion in the Labour world the movement towards Parliamentary
action and in favour of what we may call Communal Socialism became,
at one time, almost an infatuation, in that its most enthusiastic
advocates thought that it would, by itself, solve all problems. A
reaction was inevitable. The danger is that this reaction may itself
take on the character of an infatuation--this time in favour of the
universal domination of Associations of Producers, and the “Direct
Action” to which they are prone--against which, in the perpetual
see-saw, there will come, in its turn, a contrary reaction, in the
course of which Trade Unionism itself may suffer.

This is not to say that the legitimate and desirable movement,
specially characteristic of the present century, for increased direct
participation in “management” of the Associations of Producers--whether
of Professional Societies or of Trade Unions, of doctors and teachers,
or of miners and railwaymen--has been, in this or any other country,
anything like exhausted. In our view, in fact, it is along these lines
that the next developments are to be expected. But, unless we are
mistaken in our analysis, this does not mean that the Trade Unions or
Professional Societies will take over the entire management of their
industries or services, for which, in our opinion, no Association
of Producers can be fitted.[736] Democracies of Producers, like
Democracies of Consumers, have their peculiar defects, and develop
certain characteristic toxins from the very intensity of the interests
that they represent. The chief of these defects is the corporate
exclusiveness and corporate selfishness habitually developed by
associations based on the common interest of a particular section of
workers, as against other sections of workers on the one hand, and
against the whole body of consumers and citizens on the other. When
Democracies of Producers own the instruments of production, or even
secure a monopoly of the service to be rendered, they have always
tended in the past to close their ranks, to stereotype their processes
and faculties, to exclude outsiders and to ban heterodoxy. We see
this tendency at work alike in the ancient and modern world, in the
castes of India and the Gilds of China, in the mediæval Craft Gilds as
well as in the modern Trade Unions and Professional Associations. So
long as the Trade Union is an organ of revolt against the Capitalist
System--so long as the manual workers are fighting a common enemy in
the private owner of land and capital--this corporate selfishness is
held in check; though the frequency of demarcation disputes, even in
the Trade Union Movement of to-day, gives some indication of what might
happen if the Trade Union became an organ of government. We see no
way of securing the community of consumers and citizens against this
spirit of corporate exclusiveness, and against the inherent objection
of an existing generation of producers to new methods of working
unfamiliar to them, otherwise than placing the supreme control in the
Democracies of Consumers and citizens. There is a further and more
subtle defect in Democracies of Producers, the very mention of which
may perhaps be resented by those Industrial Unionists who seek to curb
the “corporateness” of National Gilds by the “self-government” of the
workshop. The experience of self-governing workshops shows that the
relationship between the indispensable director or manager (who must,
like the conductor of an orchestra, decide the tune and set the time)
and the workers whom he directs becomes hopelessly untenable if this
director or manager is elected or dismissible by the very persons to
whom he gives orders. Over and over again, in the records of the almost
innumerable self-governing workshops that have been established in
Great Britain or on the Continent, we find their failure intimately
connected with the impracticable position of a manager directing the
workers during the day, and being reprimanded or altogether superseded
by a committee meeting of these same workers in the evening! Finally,
there is the difficult question of the price to be put on the article
when it passes to the consumer. Normally the price of a commodity must
cover the cost of production, and this cost is, in the main, determined
by the character of the machinery and process employed. Hence, if the
organised workers are given the power to decide not only the number and
qualifications of the persons to be employed but also the machinery
and process to be used, they will, in fact, determine the price to be
charged to the consumer--not always to the consumer’s advantage, or
consistently with the interests of other sections of workers.[737]

To sum up, we expect to see the supreme authority in each industry
or service vested, not in the workers as such, but in the community
as a whole. Any National Board may well include representatives
of the producers of the particular product or service, and also
of its consumers, but they must be reinforced by the presence of
representatives of the community organised as citizens, interested
in the future as well as the present prosperity of the community. The
management of industry, a complex function of many kinds and grades,
will, as we see it, not be the sole sphere of either the one or the
other set of partners, but is clearly destined to be distributed
between them--the actual direction and decision being shared between
the representatives of the Trade Union or Professional Society on
the one hand, and those of the community in Co-operative Society,
Municipality, or National Government on the other. And this recognition
of the essential partnership in management between Associations of
Producers and that Association of Consumers which is the community
in one or other form, will, we suggest, take different shapes in
different industries and services, in different countries, and at
different periods; and, as we must add, will necessarily take time
and thought to work out in detail. One thing is clear. There will
be a steadily increasing recognition of a fundamental change in the
status both of the directors and managers of industry (who are now
usually either themselves capitalists, or hired for the service of
capitalist interests), and of the technicians and manual workers. The
directors and managers of industry, however they may be selected and
paid, will become increasingly the officers of the community, serving
not their own but the whole community’s interests. The technicians and
manual workers will become ever less and less the personal servants
of the directors and managers; and will be more and more enrolled,
like them, in the service, not of any private employer, but of the
community itself, whether the form be that of State or Municipality
or Co-operative Society, or any combination or variant of these. To
use the expression of the present General Secretary of the Miners’
Federation (Frank Hodges), manager, technician, and manual worker alike
will become parties to a “social” as distinguished from a commercial
contract. All alike, indeed, whatever may be the exact form of
ownership of the instruments of production, will, so far as function
is concerned, become increasingly partners in the performance of a
common public service.

We see in this evolution a great future for the Trade Unions, if they
will, in organisation and personal equipment, rise to the height of
their enlarged function. They will need, by amalgamation or federation,
and by affording facilities for easy admission and for a simple
transfer of membership, to make themselves much more nearly than at
present co-extensive with their several industries. They will have to
make special provision in their constitutions to secure an effective
representation, on their own executive and legislative councils, of
distinct crafts, grades, or specialisations, which must always form
small minorities of the whole body. They will find it necessary to
make the local organisation of their members, in branch or district,
much more coincident than at present with their members’ several
places of employment, so as to approximate to making identical the
workshop and the branch. There would seem to be a great development
opening up for the Works Committees and the “Shop Stewards,” brought
effectively into organic relation with the nationally settled
industrial policy. At any rate, in industries already passing under
the control of Associations of Consumers, whether by nationalisation
or municipalisation, or by the spread of consumers’ co-operation,
there will be great scope for District Councils and National Boards,
as well as for Advisory and Research Committees representative of
different specialities, in which managers and foremen, technicians and
operatives, will jointly supersede the capitalist Board of Directors.
But the management of each industry is very far from being the whole
of the task. In Parliament itself, and on Municipal Councils, the
World of Labour, by hand or by brain, will need to give a continuous
and an equal backing to its own political party, in order to see to
it that it has its own representatives--specialised and trained for
this supreme political function--not by ones and twos, but in force;
gradually coming, in fact, to predominate over the representatives of
the surviving capitalist and landlord parties. Trade Unionists, in
the mass, will not only have to continue and extend the loyalty and
self-devotion which have always been characteristic of successful Trade
Unionism, but also to acquire a more comprehensive understanding of
the working of democratic institutions, a more accurate appreciation
of the imperative necessity of combining both the leading types of
democratic self-government--on the one hand the self-government based
on the common needs of the whole population divided into geographical
constituencies, and on the other the self-government springing from the
special requirements of men and women bound together by the fellowship
of a common task and a common technique. The Trade Unions and
Professional Societies, if they are increasingly to participate in the
government of their industries and services, will in particular have
to provide themselves with a greater number of whole-time specialist
representatives, better paid and more considerately treated than at
present, and supplied with increased opportunities for education and
training.

We end on a note of warning. The object and purpose of the workers,
organised vocationally in Trade Unions and Professional Associations,
and politically in the Labour Party, is no mere increase of wages
or reduction of hours.[738] It comprises nothing less than a
reconstruction of society, by the elimination, from the nation’s
industries and services, of the Capitalist Profitmaker, and the
consequent shrinking up of the class of functionless persons who live
merely by owning. Profit-making as a pursuit, with its sanctification
of the motive of pecuniary self-interest, is the demon that has to
be exorcised. The journey of the Labour Party towards its goal must
necessarily be a long and arduous one. In the painful “Pilgrim’s
Progress” of Democracy the workers will be perpetually tempted into
by-paths that lead only to the Slough of Despond. It is not so much the
enticing away of individuals in the open pursuit of wealth that is to
be feared, as the temptation of particular Trade Unions, or particular
sections of the workers, to enter into alliances with Associations
of Capitalist Employers for the exploitation of the consumer.
“Co-partnership,” or profit-sharing with individual capitalists, has
been seen through and rejected. But the “co-partnership” of Trade
Unions with Associations of Capitalists--whether as a development
of “Whitley Councils” or otherwise--which far-sighted capitalists
will presently offer in specious forms (with a view, particularly,
to Protective Customs Tariffs and other devices for maintaining
unnecessarily high prices, or to governmental favours and remissions
of taxation) is, we fear, hankered after by some Trade Union leaders,
and might be made seductive to particular grades or sections of
workers. Any such policy, however plausible, would in our judgement
be a disastrous undermining of the solidarity of the whole working
class, and a formidable obstacle to any genuine Democratic Control of
Industry, as well as to any general progress in personal freedom and in
the more equal sharing of the National Product.


FOOTNOTES:

[707] See his _Arbeitergilden der Gegenwart_, 1871-72; his more
generalised survey, _Das Arbeitsverhältniss gemäss den heutigen Recht_
(Leipsic, 1877), translated as _The Relation of Labour to the Law of
To-day_ (New York, 1890); and his article on “The Growth of a Trades
Union,” in the _North British Review_, October 1870.

[708] Sec. 24 of the Factory Act of 1891 provides, as regards textile
manufactures, that the employer shall supply every worker by the
piece with certain particulars as to the quantity of work and rate of
remuneration for it.

[709] _History of Trade Unionism_, by S. and B. Webb, 1st ed., 1894,
pp. 476-78.

[710] The most important sources of information are the Annual Reports
of the Trades Union Congress, 1874-1919, and other publications of its
Parliamentary Committee; those of the Annual Conferences of the Labour
Representation Committee, 1901-5, and of the Labour Party, 1906-19,
together with the Party’s other publications, especially _Labour and
the New Social Order_, 1918; the reports and contemporary publications
of the Socialist Societies, especially the Independent Labour Party
from 1893, and the Fabian Society from 1884; _Labour Year Book_ for
1916 and 1919; _History of British Socialism_, by M. Beer, vol. ii.,
1920; _History of the British Trades Union Congress_, by W. J. Davis,
2 vols., 1910, 1916; _Die englische Arbeiterpartei_, by G. Guettler,
1914; _Aims of Labour_, by Rt. Hon. A. Henderson, 1918; _History
of the Fabian Society_, by E. R. Pease, 1916; _History of Labour
Representation_, by A. W. Humphrey, 1912; biographies of Joseph Arch,
Henry Broadhurst, Robert Applegarth, Thomas Burt, John Wilson, J. H.
Thomas, W. J. Davis, etc.

[711] The movement for “Labour Representation” (which “at that time
meant working-men members of Parliament and nothing else,” _History
of Labour Representation_, by A. W. Humphrey, 1912) was first got
under way by George Potter’s London Working Men’s Association in
1866, mentioned at the end of Chapter VI. At the second Trades Union
Congress, at Birmingham in 1869, a paper had been read on “Direct
Labour Representation in Parliament,” but Congress took no action.
A separate “Labour Representation League” was then formed under the
presidency of R. M. Lathom, a Chancery barrister, to which many leading
Trade Unionists belonged, of which Henry Broadhurst was secretary
from 1872 to about 1878, and which sought from the Liberal Party
opportunities for the return of a few working-class members; but
(as formerly in the cases of William Newton’s contest for the Tower
Hamlets in 1852 and George Odger’s at Southwark in 1870) in vain. At
the General Election of 1874, as we have already described, fourteen
workmen went to the poll; but in ten of the constituencies they were
fought by both parties, and only in the other four did the Liberals
allow them to be fought by Conservatives alone, with the result that
two only (out of the latter four) were elected, namely, Alexander
Macdonald and Thomas Burt. At the General Election in 1880, again with
Liberal acquiescence, Henry Broadhurst was added to their number;
and in 1885 this was raised to eleven (of whom six were miners). All
these, whilst pushing measures desired by the Trade Unions, acted
habitually with the Liberal Party. In 1886--the Labour Representation
League having faded away about 1881--the Congress appointed a “Labour
Electoral Committee” to do the same work; but this was never able to
free itself from subserviency to the Liberal Party, and it achieved no
success, dying away in 1893. Some personal reminiscences are given in
“Labour Representation Thirty Years Ago,” by Henry Broadhurst, M.P., in
the _Fourth Annual Report of General Federation of Trade Unions_, 1903;
see also _History of Labour Representation_, by A. W. Humphrey, 1912.

[712] In a “scribbling diary” of 1884 is the following entry:

“Written by Jas. K. Hardie, born August 15, 1856, married August 3,
1879, began work as a message boy in Glasgow when 8 years and 9 months
old, wrought for some time also in a printing office in Trongate, in
the brass finishing shop of the Anchor Line Shipping Co., also as a
rivet heater in Thompson’s heatyard. Left Glasgow in the year 1866 and
went into No. 18 pit of the Moss at Newarthill, from thence to Quarter
Iron Works, and again to one or two other collieries in neighbourhood
of Hamilton. Was elected Secretary to Miners’ Association in 1878, and
for the same position in Ayrshire in 1879; resigned April, 1882, when
got appointment unsolicited as correspondent to _Cumnock News_. Brought
up an atheist, converted to Christianity in 1878.”

Keir Hardie, whose kindliness and integrity of character endeared
him to all who knew him, was from 1887 down to his death in 1915 the
apostle of “independency” in the political organisation of Labour. He
sat in the Trades Union Congress from 1887 to 1895 as representative
of the Ayrshire Miners; and in the House of Commons from 1892 to 1895
(for West Ham), from 1906 to 1915 (for Merthyr). He was Chairman of the
“I.L.P.” from 1893 to 1898, and again in 1914. Pending the publication
of a biography by W. Stewart, reference may be made to a biographical
Sketch entitled _From Pit to Parliament_, by Frank Smith; a character
sketch by F. Pethick Lawrence in the _Labour Record_ for August 1905;
the issues of the _Labour Leader_ for September 30 and October 7, 1915;
and an article entitled “An Old Diary,” by F. J. in the _Socialist
Review_, January 1919.

[713] _Annual Report of Trades Union Congress_, 1887.

[714] It is said that the Liberal Party agents attempted, in vain, to
bribe him to withdraw; eventually offering as high a price as a safe
Liberal seat on the first opportunity, all his election expenses, and
£300 a year--if only he would wear the Liberal badge!

[715] See, for instance, the following “Fabian Tracts,” which had a
large circulation among Trade Unionists: No. 6 of 1887, “The True
Radical Programme”; No. 11 of 1890, “The Workers’ Political Programme”;
No. 40 of 1892, “The Fabian Election Manifesto”; No. 49 of 1894, “A
Plan of Campaign for Labour” (_History of the Fabian Society_, by E. R.
Pease, 1916).

[716] These included John Burns (Amalgamated Society of Engineers),
J. Havelock Wilson (National Sailors’ and Firemen’s Union), Joseph
Arch (Agricultural Labourers’ Union), W. R. (afterwards Sir William)
Cremer (General Union of Carpenters), G. Howell (Operative Bricklayers’
Society), J. Rowlands (an ex-watchcase-maker), and eight coalminers.

[717] By J. O’Grady (Furnishing Trades), afterwards M.P. for Leeds;
_Annual Report of Trades Union Congress_, 1898.

[718] This was adopted in preference to what was considered a
more extreme proposal (moved by P. Vogel of the Waiters’ Union,
a Socialist), appointing the Trades Union Congress itself the
organisation for independent Labour representation in Parliament;
requiring every Union to contribute a halfpenny per member per annum,
and making the Parliamentary Committee disburse the election expenses
and the salaries of the members returned to the House of Commons
(_Annual Report of Trades Union Congress_, 1899).

It was afterwards stated that the leaders of the Trades Union Congress
had had in contemplation the subordination of the Labour Representation
Committee to the Congress. But with a different constituency the new
body had necessarily to be an independent organisation; and in 1904
the General Purposes Committee reported to the Trades Union Congress,
which endorsed the report, that any resolution to endorse or amend the
constitution of the Labour Representation Committee would not be in
order at the Trades Union Congress (_ibid._, 1904).

[719] D. J. (afterwards Sir David) Shackleton (Lancashire Weavers) was
allowed a walk-over at Clitheroe in 1902; and in 1903 W. (afterwards
the Rt. Honourable W.) Crooks (Coopers) carried Woolwich after an
exciting contest, and Arthur (afterwards the Rt. Honourable Arthur)
Henderson (Friendly Society of Ironfounders) won Barnard Castle in a
three-cornered fight.

[720] In some Unions outside influence, notably that of the railway
companies, went to the expense of printing and distributing hundreds of
thousands of forms by which dissentient members could claim exemption
from the tiny “political” contribution; and in the Amalgamated Society
of Railway Servants, in particular, thousands of such claims were made.
The number has now greatly diminished (1920).

[721] _The Daily Citizen_ was started by a separate limited company,
in which the control was permanently secured to representatives of
the Trade Unions and the Labour Party, on November 8, 1912. The
total capital raised from the Trade Unions from first to last was
approximately £200,000. This important journalistic venture, starting
under good auspices, met with untoward circumstances. It was crippled
by a legal decision that Trade Unions had no power to subscribe to
its cost, or even to make investments in its shares (an inference
from the Osborne Judgement, which was reversed by the Trade Union Act
of 1913, subject to compliance with the conditions as to political
expenditure). Before this set-back could be got over, the outbreak
of war upset all financial calculations, and made the conduct of a
newspaper increasingly onerous. The paper stopped on June 5, 1915, and
the company was wound up, all creditors being paid in full, but the
shareholders losing practically all that they had ventured. The failure
was a serious blow to the Labour Party, which has been badly in want
of a daily newspaper--a lack supplied in 1919 by the energetic and
adventurous _Daily Herald_, which, under the direction of Mr. George
Lansbury, has drawn to itself an unusual amount of talent, and now
needs only whole-hearted support from the Trade Unions.

[722] It was, for instance, only the determined private resistance
of the Trade Unionist leaders of the Labour Party that compelled the
Government to abandon its project of introducing several hundred
thousand Chinese labourers into Great Britain; a project which, if
carried out, not only might have been calamitous in its effect upon
the Standard of Life of the British workman--not to mention other evil
consequences--but would almost certainly have also led to a Labour
revolt against the continuance of the war. In this connection may be
noted the valuable work done throughout the war, not in the interests
of Trade Unionism only, but in those of the wage-earning class, and
of the community as a whole, by the War Emergency Workers’ National
Committee (J. S. Middleton, Honorary Secretary), a body which included
representatives not only of the Parliamentary Committee, Labour
Party, and General Federation, but also of the Co-operative Union,
the National Union of Teachers, and other organisations. The valuable
though often unwelcome assistance which this Committee gave to the
Government by insisting on the redress of grievances that officialdom
would have ignored, and by its working out of policy and persistence
in agitation on such matters as pensions, limitation of prices,
food-rationing, rent restriction, and other subjects, on which its
publications had marked results, deserve the attention of the historian.

[723] Subsequently Mr. J. R. Clynes (National Union of General Workers)
was appointed Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Food; and on
Lord Rhondda’s death he succeeded him as Minister of Food.

[724] See the printed reports of Labour Party Conferences and Trades
Union Congresses, 1914-19.

[725] _Report of the Inter-Allied Socialist and Labour Conference_,
February 15, 1915.

[726] Mr. Hodge succeeded to Mr. Barnes as Minister of Pensions, Mr.
Roberts to Mr. Hodge as Minister of Labour, and Mr. G. J. Wardle
(National Union of Railwaymen) to Mr. Roberts as Parliamentary
Secretary of the Board of Trade.

[727] _Memorandum on War Aims_ (Labour Party), February 1918.

[728] It is difficult not to be struck with the greater breadth of
vision, the higher idealism, and (as we venture to say) the larger
statesmanship of the Labour Party in its projects and proposals for
the resettlement of the world after the Great War, compared with
those which the statesmen and diplomatists of the capitalist parties
of Great Britain, France, Italy, and, as we grieve to say, also the
United States, with the acquiescence of deliberately inflamed popular
electorates, succeeded in embodying in the Treaty of Peace. Apart
from the indefensible redistributions of political sovereignty, not
essentially differing in spirit from those of the Congress of Vienna
in 1814-15 (and probably less stable even than these), against which
Labour opinion had strongly protested in advance, it is impossible
not to regret the failure to incorporate in the Treaty the proposals,
for which the Labour Party had secured the support of the organised
working-class opinion of the world, for (i.) the universal abandonment
of discriminatory fiscal barriers to international trade; (ii.) the
administration of Colonial possessions exclusively in the interest of
the local inhabitants, and on the basis of equality of opportunity
for traders of all nations; (iii.) concerted international control
of the exportable surplus of materials and food-stuffs of all the
several countries, so as to mitigate, as far as possible, in the
general world-shortage which the Labour Party foresaw, the inevitable
widespread starvation in the most necessitous areas, whether enemy,
allied, or neutral; (iv.) deliberate Government action in each country
for the prevention of unemployment, instead of letting it occur and
then merely relieving the unemployed. In questions of foreign policy
the Labour Party, inspired by its idealism, has shown itself at its
best, instead of this department of politics being, as is often
ignorantly assumed, altogether beyond its capacity.

[729] The new constitution and enlarged programme which the Labour
Party adopted at its Conferences of 1917-18, after six months’
consideration and discussion by the constituent organisations, were
little more than a ratification for general adoption of what had
become the practice of particular districts. Thus, the more active
Local Labour Parties, such as those of Woolwich and Blackburn, had
long welcomed the adhesion of supporters who were not manual workers.
The successive annual Conferences had passed resolutions which, taken
together, amounted to a pretty complete programme of constructive
legislation, wholly Collectivist in principle. Hence the deliberate
and formal opening of the Party, through the Local Labour Parties,
to “workers by brain” as well as “workers by hand”; and the explicit
adoption, as a programme, of _Labour and the New Social Order_ were not
such innovations as the newspapers made out and as the public generally
supposed. But they created a sensation, not only in the United
Kingdom, but also in the United States and in the British Dominions;
and they led to a considerable accession of membership, largely from
the professional and middle classes, which was steadily increased as
the unsatisfactory character of the Treaty of Peace, the continued
“militarism” of the Government, and the aggression of a “Protectionist”
capitalism became manifest.

[730] Messrs. Barnes, Roberts (who became Minister of Food), Parker,
and Wardle.

[731] Mr. Henderson was re-elected to Parliament in 1919 at a
bye-election, capturing a strong Conservative seat at Widnes
(Lancashire).

[732] A “Joint Board”--from which the General Federation of Trade
Unions was afterwards excluded--and, later on, joint meetings of the
Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress and the Executive
Committee of the Labour Party, did something to remove friction.

[733] For the successive experiments in Co-operative Production by
Associations of Producers the student is referred to _The Co-operative
Movement in Great Britain_, by Beatrice Potter (Mrs. Sidney Webb)
(1891); _Co-operative Production_, by Benjamin Jones (1894); and, for a
more recent survey, the supplement to _The New Statesman_ of February
14, 1914, entitled “Co-operative Production and Profit Sharing.”

[734] See _Towards Social Democracy?_ by Sidney Webb (1916); and for
recent surveys, the supplements to _The New Statesman_ of May 30, 1914,
and May 8, 1915, entitled, respectively, “The Co-operative Movement”
and “State and Municipal Enterprise.”

[735] For a recent survey of Professional Association in England and
Wales--the only general study of it known to us--see the supplements
to the _New Statesman_ of September 25 and October 2, 1915 (“English
Teachers and their Professional Associations”), and April 21 and
28, 1917 (“Professional Associations”). The student will note the
distinction between two types of associations among professional
brain-workers, one having essentially Trade Union purposes, the other
(which we distinguish as the Scientific Society) concerned only for the
increase of knowledge.

[736] We add as an Appendix an extract from the concluding chapter of
our _Industrial Democracy_, published in 1897, in which we dealt with
this point.

[737] We do not discuss here all the difficulties inherent in the
government of a large and populous community--such, for instance, as
that of combining a large measure of local autonomy (which is what many
people mean by freedom) with the necessary unity of national policy
and central control (without which there would be gross inequality,
internecine strife, and chaos). This difficulty has to be faced
alike by Industrial Unionists, Gild Socialists, and the advocates of
Democracy based on geographical constituencies. Nor have we mentioned
the problems, in which the Trade Unions have their own wealth of
experience, as to the relationship between elected representatives and
their constituents; between representative assemblies and executive
committees; and between executive committees and the official
staff. These problems and difficulties (on which we have written in
our _Industrial Democracy_) are common to all democratic systems
of administration, whether based on constituencies of producers,
consumers, or citizens. It seems to us that constituencies of producers
present special difficulties of their own, such as (i.) that of
defining the boundaries between industries or services, and (ii.) the
problem, within an industry or a service, of how to provide for the
representation of numerically unequal distinct sections, groups, or
grades, each with its own _technique_. The further we go in Democracy
the more complicated it becomes, and the greater the need for knowledge.

[738] This is well put by an American economist. “The Trade Union
programme, or rather the Trade Union programmes, for each Trade Union
has a programme of its own, is not the unrelated economic demands
and methods which it is usually conceived to be, but it is a closely
integrated social philosophy and plan of action. In the case of most
Union types the programme centres indeed about economic demands and
methods, but it rests on the broad foundation of the conception of
right, of rights, and of general theory peculiar to the workers; and
it fans out to reflect all the economic, ethical, juridical, and
social hopes and fears, aims, attitudes, and aspirations of the group.
It expresses the workers’ social theory and the rules of the game to
which they are committed, not only in industry but in social affairs
generally. It is the organised workers’ conceptual world” (_Trade
Unionism in the United States_, by R. F. Hoxie, p. 280).




APPENDICES




APPENDIX I

 ON THE ASSUMED CONNECTION BETWEEN THE TRADE UNIONS AND THE GILDS IN
 DUBLIN


In Dublin the Trade Union descent from the Gilds is embodied in the
printed documents of the Unions themselves, and is commonly assumed to
be confirmed by their possession of the Gild charters. The Trade Union
banners not only, in many cases, bear the same arms as the old Gilds,
but often also the date of their incorporation. Thus, the old society
of “regular” carpenters (now a branch of the Amalgamated) claims to
date from 1490; the “Regular Operative House-painters’ Trade Union”
connects itself with the Guild of St. Luke, 1670; and the local unions
of bricklayers and plasterers assume the date of the incorporation of
the Bricklayers’ and Plasterers’ Company by Charles II. (1670). The box
of the Dublin Bricklayers’ Society does, in fact, contain a parchment
which purports to be the original charter of the latter Company. How
this document, given to the exclusively Protestant incorporation of
working masters, which was abolished by Statute in 1840, came into the
possession of what has always been a mainly Roman Catholic body of
wage-earners, dating certainly from 1830, is not clear. The parchment,
which is bereft of its seal and bears on the back, in the handwriting
of a lawyer’s clerk, the words “Bricklayers, 28th June, 1843,” was
probably thrown aside as worthless after the dissolution of the Company.

A search among contemporary pamphlets brought to light an interesting
episode in the history of the Dublin building trades. It appears that,
after the dissolution of the Company, Benjamin Pemberton, who had been
Master, and who was evidently a man of energy and ability, attempted
to form an alliance between the then powerful journeymen bricklayers’
and plasterers’ societies and the master bricklayers and plasterers,
in order to resist the common enemy, the “foreign contractor.” This
had long been a favourite project of Pemberton’s. Already in 1812
he had urged the rapidly decaying Company to resist the uprising of
“builders,” and to admit Roman Catholic craftsmen. But the Company,
which then included scarcely a dozen practising master bricklayers
or plasterers, took no action. In 1832 Pemberton turned to the men,
and vainly proposed to the “Trades Political Union,” a kind of Trades
Council, that they should take common action against “the contract
system.” At last, in 1846, six years after the abolition of the
Company, he seems to have succeeded in forming some kind of alliance.
The journeymen bricklayers and plasterers were induced to accept, from
himself and his associates, formal certificates of proficiency. Several
of these certificates, signed by Pemberton and other employers, are in
the possession of the older workmen, but no one could explain to us
their use. The alliance probably rested on some promise of preference
for employment on the one part, and refusal to work for a contractor
on the other. This close connection between a leading member of the
Company and the Trade Unionists may perhaps account for the old
charter, then become waste paper, finding its way into the Trade Union
chest.

Particulars of Pemberton’s action will be found in the pamphlet
entitled _An Address of the Bricklayers and Plasterers to the Tradesmen
of the City of Dublin on the necessity of their co-operating for the
attainment of their corporate rights and privileges_, by Benjamin
Pemberton (Dublin, 1833, 36 pages), preserved in Vol. 1567 of the
_Haliday Tracts_ in the Royal Irish Academy. In no other case, either
in Dublin or elsewhere, have we found a Trade Union in possession of
any Gild documents or relics.

The absolute impossibility of any passage of the Dublin Companies into
the local Trade Unions will be apparent when we remember that the
bulk of the wage-earning population of the city are, and have always
been, Roman Catholics. The Dublin Companies were, to the last, rigidly
confined to Episcopalian Protestants. Even after the barriers had been
nominally removed by the Catholic Emancipation in 1829, the Companies,
then shrunk up into little cliques of middle-class capitalists, with
little or no connection with the trades, steadfastly refused to admit
any Roman Catholics to membership. A few well-to-do Roman Catholics
forced themselves in between 1829 and 1838 by mandamus. But when
inquiry was made in 1838 by the Commissioners appointed under the
Municipal Corporations Act, only half a dozen Roman Catholics were
members, and the Companies were found to be composed, in the main, of
capitalists and professional men. There is no evidence that even one
wage-earner was in their ranks. Long before this time the Trade Unions
of Dublin had obtained an unenviable notoriety. Already, in 1824, the
Chief Constable of Dublin testified to the complete organisation of
the operatives in illegal associations. In 1838 O’Connell made his
celebrated attack upon them in the House of Commons, which led to a
Select Committee. In short, whilst the Dublin Companies were, until
their abolition by the Act of 1840, in much the same condition as those
of London, with the added fact of religious exclusiveness, the Dublin
Trade Unions were long before that date at the height of their power.

The adoption by the Dublin Trade Unions of the arms, mottoes, saints,
and dates of origin of the old Dublin Gilds is more interesting as a
trait of Irish character than as any proof of historic continuity.
Thus, in their rules of 1883, the bricklayers content themselves with
repeating the original preface common to the Trade Societies which
were formed in the beginning of this century, to the effect that “the
journeyman bricklayers of the City of Dublin have imposed on themselves
the adoption of the following laudable scheme of raising a Fund for
friendly society purposes.” A card of membership, dated 1830, bears no
reference to the Gild or Company of Bricklayers and Plasterers from
whom descent is now claimed. The rules of 1883 are entitled those of
the “incorporated” brick or stone layers’ association, and in the
edition of 1888 this had developed into the “Ancient Gild of Saint
Bartholomew.” Finally, the coat of arms of the old company with the
date of its incorporation (“A.D. 1670”) appear on the new banner of
the society. Similarly, the old local society of “Regular Carpenters,”
which was well known as a Trade Union in 1824, and was engaged in a
strike in 1833 (seven years before the abolition of the “Company of
Carpenters, Millers, Masons, and Tylers, or Gild of the fraternity
of the Blessed Virgin Mary, of the house of St. Thomas the Martyr,”
established by Henry VIII. in 1532), adopted for the first time, in its
rules of 1881, the coat of arms and motto of the Gild, but retained
its own title of “The United Brothers of St. Joseph.” The card of
membership, printed in 1887, boldly gives the date of establishment
as 1458, whilst other printed matter places it at 1490. The Dublin
painters now inscribe 1670 on their new banner, but the earliest
traditions of their members date only from 1820. In short, the Irish
Trade Unionist, with his genuine love for the picturesque, and his
reverence for historical association, has steadily “annexed” antiquity,
and has embraced every opportunity for transferring the origin of his
society a few generations further back.




APPENDIX II

 RULES AND REGULATIONS OF THE GRAND NATIONAL CONSOLIDATED
 TRADES UNION OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND, INSTITUTED FOR
 THE PURPOSE OF THE MORE EFFECTUALLY ENABLING THE WORKING
 CLASSES TO SECURE, PROTECT, AND ESTABLISH THE RIGHTS OF
 INDUSTRY (1834).

 (Goldsmiths’ Library, University of London.)


I. Each Trade in this Consolidated Union shall have its Grand Lodge in
that town or city most eligible for it; such Grand Lodge to be governed
internally by a Grand Master, Deputy Grand Master, and Grand Secretary,
and a Committee of Management.

II. Each Grand Lodge shall have its District Lodges, in any number, to
be designated or named after the town or city in which the District
Lodge is founded.

III. Each Grand Lodge shall be considered the head of its own
particular trade, and to have certain exclusive powers accordingly; but
in all other respects the Grand Lodges are to answer the same ends as
the District Lodges.

IV. Each District Lodge shall embrace within itself all operatives of
the same trade, living in smaller towns or villages adjacent to it; and
shall be governed internally by a President, Vice-President, Secretary,
and a Committee of Management.

V. Each District Lodge shall have (if necessary) its Branch Lodge
or Lodges, numbered in rotation; such Branch Lodges to be under the
control of the District Lodge from which they sprung.

VI. An unlimited number of the above described Lodges shall form and
constitute the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union of Great
Britain and Ireland.

VII. Each District shall have its Central Committee, composed of a
Deputy, or Deputies, from every District Lodge of the different trades
in the district; such Central Committee shall meet once in every
week to superintend and watch over the interests of the Consolidated
Union in that District, transmitting a report of the same, monthly,
to the Executive Council in London, together with any suggestions of
improvements they may think proper.

VIII. The General government of the G.N.C.T.U. shall be vested in a
Grand Council of Delegates from each of the Central Committees of all
the Districts in the C.U., to be holden every six months, at such
places as shall be decided upon at the preceding Council; the next
Meeting of the Grand Council of the C.U. to be held on the first day of
September 1834, and to continue its sitting so long as may be requisite.

IX. During the recess of the Grand Council of Delegates, the Government
of the C.U. shall be vested in an Executive Council of Five; which
Executive will in future be chosen at the Grand Delegate Council
aforesaid.

X. All dispensations or grants for the formation of new Lodges shall
come from the Grand Lodge of each particular trade, or from the
Executive Council. Applications for dispensations to come through the
Central Committee of the District or by memorial, signed by at least 20
Operatives of the place where such new Lodge is proposed to be founded.

XI. The Executive Council shall act as trustees for all Funds provided
by the C.U., for the adjustment of strikes, the purchasing or renting
of land, establishing provision stores, workshops, etc.; or for any
other purposes connected with the general benefit of the whole of the
Union.

XII. All sums for the above purposes to be transmitted from the Lodges
to the Executive Council through some safe and accredited medium.

XIII. District and Grand Lodges shall have the control of their own
funds, subject to the levies imposed upon them by the Executive Council.

XIV. The ordinary weekly subscriptions of members be threepence each
member.

XV. No strike or turn out for an _advance_ of wages shall be made by
the members of any Lodge in the Consolidated Union without the consent
of the Executive Council; but in all cases of a _reduction_ of wages
the Central Committee of the District shall have the power of deciding
whether a strike shall or shall not take place; and should such Central
Committee be necessitated to order a levy in support of such strike
brought on by such reduction of wages, such order shall be made on
all the Lodges; in the first instance, in the District in which such
reduction hath taken place; and on advice being forwarded to the
Executive they shall consider the case, and order accordingly.

XVI. No higher sum than 10s. per week each shall be paid to members
during a strike or turn out.

XVII. All Lodges shall be divided into local sections of 20 men each,
or as near that number as may be.


_Miscellaneous and Auxiliary Lodges_

XVIII. In all cases where the number of operatives in a particular
Trade, in any District, is too limited to allow of such Trade forming
a Lodge of itself, the members of such Trade shall be permitted to
become Unionists by joining the Lodge of any other Trade in the
District. Should there be several Trades in a District thus limited
with respect to the number of their Operatives, they shall be allowed
to form together a District Miscellaneous Lodge, with permission, in
order to extend the sphere of the brotherhood, to hold out the hand of
fellowship to all really useful Labourers employed productively.

XIX. And, in order that all acknowledged Friends to the Productive
Classes may attach themselves to the C.U., an Auxiliary Lodge may be
established in every City or Town in the Kingdom. The members of each
Lodge shall conform to all the Rules and Regulations herein contained,
and be bound in the same manner, and subject to all the Laws of the
G.U.C.T.U.; and shall not, in any manner, or at any time or place,
speak or write _anything_ in opposition to these Laws or the interests
of the Union aforesaid. The Auxiliary Lodge shall be liable to be
dissolved according to Article XXII.

XX. Lodges of Industrious Females shall be instituted in every District
where it may be practicable; such Lodges to be considered, in every
respect, as part of, and belonging to, the G.N.C.T.U.


_Employment of Turn Outs_

XXI. In all cases of strikes or turn outs, where it is practicable
to employ Members in the making or producing of such commodities
or articles as are in demand among their brother Unionists, or any
other operatives willing to purchase the same, each Lodge shall
provide a work-room or shop in which such commodities and articles
may be manufactured on account of that Lodge, which shall make proper
arrangements for the supply of the necessary materials; over which
arrangements the Central Committee of the District shall have the
control, subject to the scrutiny of the Grand Lodge Committee of the
Trade on strike.

XXII. The Grand Lodge of each Trade to have the power of dissolving
any District Lodge, in that Trade, for any violation of these Laws,
any outrage upon the Public Peace, or for gross neglect of Duty. All
Branch, Miscellaneous, or Auxiliary Lodges to be subject to the same
control.

XXIII. The internal management and general concerns of each Grand or
District Lodge are vested in a Committee of Management, composed of at
least Seven, and not more than 25 Members, each to be chosen by Ballot,
and elected by having not less than three-fourths of the Votes of the
Members present, at the time of his election, in his favour. The whole
of this Committee to go out of office Quarterly, eligible, however,
to re-election. The Grand Master, or President, and the Secretary,
or Grand Secretary of a Grand or a District Lodge, to be considered
Members of its Committee of Management by virtue of their Offices.

XXIV. Each Grand Lodge, in this C.U., to be considered the centre of
information regarding the general affairs of its particular Trade; each
District Lodge to communicate with its Grand Lodge at the end of each
month, and to give an account to it of the number of people Members in
the District Lodge--the gross number of hours of labour performed by
them in that district--the state of its funds--and any local or general
intelligence that may be considered of interest to the Grand Lodge.

XXV. The Committee of Management in each Lodge shall sit at least on
one evening in every week for the despatch of business--and oftener if
necessary.

XXVI. Each Grand or District Lodge to hold its meetings on one evening
in every month; at which meeting a Report of the Proceedings of the
Committee, during the past month, shall be laid before the Members,
together with an Abstract of the state of the Funds, an account of the
prospects of the Society, and any propositions or By-Laws which the
Committee may have to suggest for adoption, and any other information
or correspondence of interest to the Members. All nominations of fresh
Officers to be made at Lodge meetings, and all complaints of Members to
be considered and discussed therein.

XXVII. The Grand Master or Deputy Grand Master, President, or
Vice-President, or both, shall preside at all meetings of Grand or
District Lodges, to keep order, state and put questions according to
the sense and intention of the Members, give effect to the resolutions,
and cause them to be put in force; and they shall be addressed by
Members, during Lodge hours, by their proper titles.

XXVIII. No subject which does not immediately concern the interests of
the Trade shall be discussed at any meetings of Committees or Lodges;
and no proposition shall be adopted in either without the consent of
at least three-fourths of the members present at its proposal--the
question to be decided by ballot if any Member demand it. Not less
than five Members of Committee of Management to constitute a Quorum,
provided the rest have all been duly summoned; no Grand or District
Lodge to be considered open unless at least 30 members be present.

XXIX. Each Grand or District Lodge shall have the power to appoint
Sub-Committees to enquire into or manage any affair touching their
interests, of which Committees the head officers of the Lodge are
always to be considered Members.


_Of Secretaries_

XXX. The duties of a secretary to a Grand or District Lodge are:--To
attend Lodge and Committee meetings and take minutes of the
proceedings, entering the same in a book to be kept for that purpose.

To conduct all the correspondence of the Society. To take down the
names and addresses of parties desirous of being initiated into the
Order; and upon receiving the initiation fee from each, and entering
the amount into a book, he will give each party a card, by which they
may be admitted into the place appointed for the ceremony.

To receive the subscriptions of members, entering the same into a small
account book, numbering the Subscribers from No. 1, and following up
the sequence in regulation order, giving to each Subscriber a card, on
which his contribution or payment shall be noted.

To enter all additional weekly payments, and all levies, into separate
small books; all subscriptions and payments to be afterwards copied
into a ledger, ruled expressly for the purpose.

The Secretary to be paid an adequate weekly salary; and to be allowed
an Assistant if the amount of business require it.

The Secretary of each Grand or District Lodge shall balance his books
once every fortnight, and the Managing Committee shall audit them,
going over each item of receipt and expenditure with strict attention,
checking the same with scrupulous care; and if found correct, three of
the Committee shall verify the same by affixing their signatures to the
page on which the balance is struck.


_Initiation_

XXXI. Any of the Officers or Members of a Lodge may be appointed by the
Committee of Management to perform the Initiation Service; and to have
charge of the Robes, etc., for that purpose; for which the Committee
may allow him a reasonable remuneration.

Any party applying to be initiated must bring forward two witnesses as
to character and the identity of his trade or occupation.


_Of Branch Lodges_

XXXII. Branch Lodge Meetings shall be held on one evening in every
week, in the respective localities; at which Lodges any motion,
proposed by law, etc., may be discussed and considered by the Members
previous to its being finally submitted to the Grand or District Lodge
Committee.

XXXIII. The Members of each Branch may elect a President to preside at
the Branch Lodge, and a Secretary to collect subscriptions or levies
for their Grand or District Lodge; who shall also attend meetings of
the Committee of Management for instructions and information, and
to submit suggestions, complaints, etc., from his Branch Lodge. No
salaries or fees to be allowed to officers of Branch Lodges, unless by
the unanimous consent of their Members.


_Wardens, Etc._

XXXIV. In addition to the Officers before mentioned in these
regulations, there shall be, in each Grand and District Lodge a Warden,
an Inside Tyler, an Outside Tyler, and a Conductor, whose principal
duties are to attend Initiations, and see that no improper persons be
admitted into the meetings. These officers to be elected in the same
manner, and at the same periods, as other officers.


_Miscellaneous Articles_

XXXV. Any Member shall be liable to expulsion from the Lodges for any
improper conduct therein; and shall be excluded from the benefits of
the Society if his subscriptions be more than six months in arrear,
unless the Committee of Management shall see cause to decide otherwise.

XXXVI. The _G.U.C.T.U. Gazette_ to be considered the official organ of
the Executive Council, and the general medium of intelligence on the
affairs of the Union.

XXXVII. Each Lodge shall, as soon as possible, make arrangements for
furnishing the means of instituting Libraries or Reading-Rooms, or any
other arrangements, affording them every facility for meeting together
for friendly conversation, mutual instruction, and rational amusement
or recreation.

XXXVIII. In all cases, where it be practicable, each Lodge shall
establish within its locality one or more Depots for provisions and
articles in general domestic use, in order that its Members may be
supplied with the best of such commodities at little above wholesale
prices.

XXXIX. Each District and Grand Lodge shall endeavour to institute
a Fund for the support of sick and aged Members, and for defraying
the funeral expenses of deceased Members, on a similar principle to
that of Benefit Societies; such fund to be kept up by small monthly
contributions from those Unionists who are willing to subscribe towards
it.

XL. Each Grand or District Lodge to have the power of making its own
By-Laws for purposes not comprised in these Regulations; but such
By-Laws or Laws must not be in opposition to, or in counteraction of,
any of the Articles herein specified.

XLI. No Member can enter Lodge Meetings without giving the proper
signs, and producing his card to prove his membership, and that he is
not in arrears of subscription for more than one month, unless lenity
has been granted by order of Committee.

XLII. That a separate Treasurer be appointed for every £20 of the funds
collected; and that such Treasurers shall not suffer any money to be
withdrawn from their hands without a written order, signed by at least
three of the Managing Committee and presented by the Secretary, or one
of the other officers of the Society.

XLIII. All sums under £30 shall be left in the hands of the Secretary
for current expenses; but no outlay shall be made by him without an
express order from the Managing Committee, signed by at least three of
its Members.

XLIV. That every Member of this Union do use his best endeavours,
by fair and open argument, and the force of good example, and not
by intimidation or violence, to induce his fellows to join the
brotherhood, in order that no workmen may remain out of the Union
to undersell them in the market of labour; as, while that is done,
employers will be enabled to resist the demands of the Unionists,
whereas, if no operatives remain out of union, employers will be
compelled to keep up the price of Labour.

XLV. That each Member of the C.U. pay a Registration Fee of 3d. to
defray the general expenses; which fee is to be transmitted to the
Executive once in every month.

XLVI. That although the design of the Union is, in the first instance,
to raise the wages of the workmen, or prevent any further reduction
therein, and to diminish the hours of labour, the great and ultimate
object of it must be to establish the paramount rights of Industry and
Humanity, by instituting such measures as shall effectually prevent
the ignorant, idle, and useless part of Society from having that undue
control over the fruits of our toil, which, through the agency of a
vicious money system, they at present possess; and that, consequently,
the Unionists should lose no opportunity of mutually encouraging and
assisting each other in bringing about +A Different Order of Things+,
in which the really useful and intelligent part of society only shall
have the direction of its affairs, and in which well-directed industry
and virtue shall meet their just distinction and reward, and vicious
idleness its merited contempt and destitution.

XLVII. All the Rules and Regulations herein contained be subject to the
revision, alteration, or abrogation of the Grand Delegate Council.




APPENDIX III

SLIDING SCALES


The Sliding Scale, an arrangement by which it is agreed in advance that
wages shall vary in a definite relation to changes in the market price
of the product, appears to have been familiar to the iron trade for a
couple of generations. “About fifty years ago Mr. G. B. Thorneycroft,
of Wolverhampton, head of a well-known firm of iron-masters, suggested
to certain other houses that wages should fluctuate with the price
of ‘marked bars’--these words indicating a quality of iron that then
enjoyed a high reputation. The suggestion was adopted to this extent,
that when a demand was made by the men for an advance in wages, any
advance that was given was proportionate to the selling price of
‘marked bars.’ The puddlers received, as a rule, 1s. for each pound of
the selling price; but on exceptional occasions, a special temporary
advance or ‘premium’ was conceded. The terms of this arrangement do not
seem to have been reduced to writing, though they remained in force for
many years, and were well known as the Thorneycroft scale.”[739]

At the time of the great strike of Staffordshire puddlers, in 1865,
a local understanding of a similar nature appears to have been in
existence. The joint committee of iron-masters and puddlers, which
was established at Darlington in 1869 as the “North of England
Manufactured Iron Board,” soon worked out a formal sliding scale for
its own guidance. This scale, as well as that adopted by the Midland
Iron Trade Board, has been repeatedly revised, abandoned, and again
re-established; but its working has, on the whole, commended itself
to the representatives of the ironworkers, and has, so far as the
principle is concerned, produced no important dissensions among them.
“We believe,” said Mr. Trow, the men’s secretary, to the Labour
Commission in 1892, “it would be most satisfactory if this principle
were generally adopted.... In all our experience of the past we have
had less trouble in the periods in which sliding scales have obtained.”
The cause of the exceptional satisfaction of the ironworkers with their
Wages Boards and Sliding Scales is obscure, but it may be interesting
to the student to note that the members of the Ironworkers Association
are largely sub-contractors, themselves employing workmen who are
usually outside the Union, and have no direct representation on the
Board. For a careful statement of the facts as to these Wage Boards
and Sliding Scales in the iron industry, see _The Adjustment of Wages_
(by Sir W. J. Ashley, 1903), pp. 142-151, and specimen rules, reports,
and scales, pp. 268-307. At present (1920) separate Sliding Scales of
this nature are in force for the Cleveland and the North Lincolnshire
Blast-furnacemen; the Scottish Iron and the Consett Millmen; Brown
Bayley’s No. 1 Mill; the Scottish Enginemen and Steel Millmen; the
Staffordshire Sheet Trade; the Midlands Puddling Mills and Forges; and
the South Wales and Monmouthshire Iron and Steel Trade.

Widely different has been the result of the Sliding Scale among the
coal miners. Its introduction into this trade dates from 1874, though
it was not until 1879 that its adoption became common. Since then it
has been abandoned in all districts, and it is energetically repudiated
by the Miners’ Federation. The following table includes all the Sliding
Scales in the coal industry known to us. Between 1879 and 1886 there
were a number of informal Sliding Scales in force for particular
collieries, which were mostly superseded by the more general scales, or
otherwise came to an end. It is believed that no Sliding Scale is now
in force in any coal district.

 July 24,      1874  South Staffordshire I.              Revised  1877.
 May 28,       1875  South Wales I.                      Revised  1880.
 April 13,     1876  Somerset.                           Ended    1889.
 February 6,   1877  Cannock Chase I.                    Revised  1879.
 March 14,     1877  Durham I.                           Revised  1879.
 November 1,   1877  South Staffordshire II.             Revised  1882.
 April 14,     1879  Cannock Chase II.                   Revised  1882.
 October 11,   1879  Durham II.                          Revised  1887.
 October 31,   1879  Cumberland I.                       Ended    1881.
 November 3,   1879  Ferndale Colliery I. (S. Wales).    Revised  1881.
 November 10,  1879  Bedworth Colliery I. (Warwick).     Revised  1880.
 November 15,  1879  Northumberland I.                   Revised  1883.
 December 19,  1879  Ocean Colliery I. (S. Wales).       Revised  1882.
 January 17,   1880  South Wales II.                     Revised  1882.
 January 20,   1880  West Yorkshire.                     Ended      ?
 January 26,   1880  North Wales.                        Ended    1881.
 February 14,  1880  Bedworth Colliery II.               Ended      ?
 January 1,    1881  Ashton and Oldham I.                Revised  1882.
 December 31,  1881  Ferndale Colliery II.                          ?
 January 1,    1882  South Staffordshire III.            Ended    1884.
 April 29,     1882  Durham III.                         Revised  1884.
 June 6,       1882  South Wales III.                    Revised  1889.
 June 22,      1882  Cannock Chase, &c. III.             Ended    1883.
 July 18,      1882  Ashton & Oldham II.                 Ended    1883.
 August 24,    1882  South Wales (Anthracite).           Ended      ?
 September 29, 1882  Cumberland II.                      Revised  1884.
 March 9,      1883  Northumberland II.                  Ended    1886.
 June 12,      1884  Durham IV.                          Ended    1889.
 November 28,  1884  Cumberland III.                     Revised  1886.
 March 12,     1886  Forest of Dean.                     Ended    1888 ?
 April 14,     1886  Altham Colliery (Northd.).          Ended      ?
 February 25,  1887  Cumberland IV.                      Ended    1888 ?
 May 24,       1887  Northumberland III.                 Ended    1887.
 June,         1887  Lanarkshire.                        Ended    1889.
 October,      1888  South Staffordshire IV.             Ended      ?
 January 18,   1890  South Wales IV.                     Ended      ?
 September,    1893  Forest of Dean.                     Ended      ?

An exposition of the construction and working of Sliding Scales is
contained in _Industrial Peace_, by L. L. Price. Details of numerous
Scales are given in the report made by a Committee to the British
Association, entitled _Sliding Scales in the Coal Industry_, which was
prepared by Professor J. E. C. Munro (Manchester, 1885), and in the
_Particulars of Sliding Scales, Past, Present, and Proposed_; printed
by the Lancashire Miners’ Federation in 1886 (Openshaw, 1886, 20 pp.).
Supplementary information is given in Professor Munro’s papers before
the Manchester Statistical Society, entitled, “Sliding Scales in the
Iron Industry” (Manchester, 1885), and “Sliding Scales in the Coal
and Iron Industries from 1885 to 1889” (Manchester, 1889). The whole
question is discussed in _The Adjustment of Wages_ (by Sir William
Ashley, 1903), pp. 45-71; and in our own _Industrial Democracy_, 1897.

The proceedings in the numerous arbitrations in the coal and iron
trade in the North of England, as well as several others which are
printed, furnish abundant information on the subject of their working.
A table of the variations of wages under sliding scales was prepared by
Professor J. E. C. Munro for the Royal Commission on Mining Royalties,
and published as Appendix V. to the First Report, 1890 (C 6195).


FOOTNOTES:

[739] Statement furnished to Professor Munro by Mr. Daniel Jones, of
the Midland Iron and Steel Wages Board, quoted in _Sliding Scales in
the Coal and Iron Industries_ (p. 141).




APPENDIX IV

THE SUMMONS TO THE FIRST TRADE UNION CONGRESS


No copy of the invitation to the first Trade Union Congress has been
preserved, either in the archives of the Congress, the Manchester
Trades Council, or any other organisation known to us. Fortunately, it
was printed in the _Ironworkers’ Journal_ for May 1868. But of this
only one file now exists, and as the summons is of some historical
interest we reprint it for convenience of reference.

                                “Manchester, _April 16, 1868_.

 “Sir--You are requested to lay the following before your
 Society. The vital _interests_ involved, it is conceived,
 will justify the officials in convening a special meeting
 for the consideration thereof.

 “The Manchester and Salford Trades Council having recently
 taken into their serious consideration the present aspect
 of Trades Unions, and the profound ignorance which prevails
 in the public mind with reference to their operations and
 principles, together with the probability of an attempt
 being made by the Legislature, during the present Session
 of Parliament, to introduce a measure which might prove
 detrimental to the interests of such Societies _unless some
 prompt and decisive action be taken by the working classes
 themselves_, beg most respectfully to intimate that it has
 been decided to hold in Manchester, as the main centre of
 industry in the provinces, a Congress of the representatives
 of Trades Councils, Federations of Trades, and Trade
 Societies in general.

 “The Congress will assume the character of the Annual
 Meetings of the Social Science Association, in the
 transactions of which Society the artisan class is almost
 excluded; and papers previously carefully prepared by
 such Societies as elect to do so, will be laid before the
 Congress on the various subjects which at the present time
 affect the Trade Societies, each paper to be followed by
 discussion on the points advanced, with a view of the merits
 and demerits of each question being thoroughly ventilated
 through the medium of the public press. It is further
 decided that the subjects treated upon shall include the
 following:

 “1. Trade Unions an absolute necessity.

 “2. Trade Unions and Political Economy.

 “3. The effect of Trade Unions on foreign competition.

 “4. Regulation of the hours of labour.

 “5. Limitation of apprentices.

 “6. Technical Education.

 “7. Courts of Arbitration and Conciliation.

 “8. Co-operation.

 “9. The present inequality of the law in regard to
 conspiracy, intimidation, picketing, coercion, etc.

 “10. Factory Acts Extension Bill, 1867: the necessity of
 compulsory inspection and its application to all places
 where women and children are employed.

 “11. The present Royal Commission on Trades Unions--how far
 worthy of the confidence of the Trade Union interests.

 “12. Legalization of Trade Societies.

 “13. The necessity of an Annual Congress of Trade
 Representatives from the various centres of industry.

 “All Trades Councils, Federations of Trades, and Trade
 Societies generally are respectfully solicited to intimate
 their adhesion to this project on or before the 12th of
 May next, together with a notification of the subject of
 the paper that each body will undertake to prepare, and
 the number of delegates by whom they will be respectively
 represented; after which date all information as to the
 place of meeting, etc., will be supplied.

 “It is not imperative that all Societies should prepare
 papers, it being anticipated that the subjects will be
 taken up by those most capable of expounding the principles
 sought to be maintained. Several have already adhered to the
 project, and have signified their intention of taking up the
 subjects Nos. 1, 4, 6, and 7.

 “The Congress will be held on Whit-Tuesday, the 2nd of June
 next, its duration not to exceed five days; and all expenses
 in connection therewith, which will be very small, and as
 economical as possible, will be equalized amongst those
 Societies sending delegates, and will not extend beyond
 their sittings.

 “Communications to be addressed to Mr. W. H. Wood,
 Typographical Institute, 29 Water Street, Manchester.

 “By order of the Manchester & Salford Trades Council.

                                  “S. C. Nicholson, President.
                                  “W. H. Wood, Secretary.”




APPENDIX V

DISTRIBUTION OF TRADE UNIONISTS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM


We endeavoured in 1893-94 to analyse the membership of all the Trade
Unions of which we could obtain particulars, in such a way as to show
the number and percentage to population in each part of the United
Kingdom. The following table gives the local distribution of 1,507,026
Trade Unionists in 1892. The distribution was, in most cases, made by
branches, special estimates being prepared for us in a few instances
by the officers of the Unions concerned. With regard to a few Unions
having about 4000 members no local distribution could be arrived at.

 _Table showing the distribution of Trade Union membership in
 1892 in each part of the United Kingdom, with the percentage
 to population in each case._

 ------------------------------+-------------+-------------+------------
                               |             |             | Number of
                               |             | Ascertained |   Trade
       County.                 | Population  |    Trade    | Unionists
                               |  in 1891.   |  Unionists  | per 100 of
                               |             |   in 1892.  | population.
 ------------------------------+-------------+-------------+------------
 Bedfordshire                  |    165,999  |        553  |    0·33
 Berkshire                     |    268,357  |        975  |    0·36
 Buckinghamshire               |    164,442  |        720  |    0·44
 Cambridgeshire                |    196,269  |      2,855  |    1·45
 Cheshire                      |    707,978  |     32,000  |    4·52
 Cornwall                      |    318,583  |        630  |    0·20
 Cumberland                    |    266,549  |     10,280  |    3·86
 Derbyshire                    |    432,414  |     29,510  |    6·82
 Devonshire                    |    636,225  |      6,030  |    0·95
 Dorsetshire                   |    188,995  |        305  |    0·16
 Durham                        |  1,024,369  |    114,810  |    1·21
 Essex                         |    396,057  |      3,370  |    0·85
   (without West Ham,          |             |             |
     included in London).      |             |             |
 Gloucestershire               |    548,886  |     26,030  |    4·74
 Hampshire                     |    587,578  |      5,665  |    0·96
   (without Isle of Wight,     |             |             |
     treated separately).      |             |             |
 Herefordshire                 |    113,346  |        385  |    0·34
 Hertfordshire                 |    215,179  |      1,125  |    0·52
 Huntingdonshire               |     50,289  |         20  |    0·04
 Isle of Wight                 |     78,672  |        295  |    0·37
 Kent                          |    737,044  |     12,445  |    1·69
   (without Bromley,           |             |             |
     included in London).      |             |             |
 Lancashire                    |  3,957,906  |    331,535  |    8·63
 Leicestershire                |    379,286  |     27,845  |    7·34
 Lincoln                       |    467,281  |      9,480  |    2·03
 London                        |  5,517,583  |    194,083  |    3·52
   (including Bromley,         |             |             |
     Croydon, Kingston,        |             |             |
     Richmond, West            |             |             |
     Ham and Middlesex).       |             |             |
 Norfolk                       |    460,362  |      4,880  |    1·06
 Northamptonshire              |    308,072  |     12,210  |    3·96
 Northumberland                |    506,030  |     56,815  |   11·23
 Nottinghamshire               |    505,311  |     31,050  |    6·14
 Oxford                        |    188,220  |      1,815  |    0·96
 Rutland                       |     22,123  |          0  |    0·00
 Shropshire                    |    254,765  |      3,225  |    1·26
 Somerset                      |    510,076  |      6,595  |    1·29
 Staffordshire                 |  1,103,452  |     49,545  |    4·49
 Suffolk                       |    353,758  |     14,885  |    4·21
 Surrey                        |    275,638  |        730  |    0·26
   (without Croydon,           |             |             |
     Kingston, and Richmond,   |             |             |
     included in London).      |             |             |
 Sussex                        |    554,542  |      2,810  |    0·51
 Warwickshire                  |    801,738  |     33,600  |    4·19
 Westmoreland                  |     66,215  |        530  |    0·80
 Wiltshire                     |    255,119  |      3,680  |    1·44
 Worcestershire                |    422,530  |      7,840  |    1·86
 Yorkshire, East Riding        |    318,570  |     23,630  |    7·42
 Yorkshire, North Riding       |    435,897  |     15,215  |    3·49
   (with York City).           |             |             |
 Yorkshire, West Riding        |  2,464,415  |    141,140  |    5·73
                Total, England | 27,226,120  |  1,221,141  |    4·49
 ------------------------------+-------------+-------------+------------
 North Wales                   |    451,090  |      8,820  |    1·96
 South Wales and Monmouth      |  1,325,315  |     88,810  |    6·70
                               +-------------+-------------+------------
     Total, Wales and Monmouth |  1,776,405  |     97,630  |    5·50
 ------------------------------+-------------+-------------+------------
      Total, England and Wales | 29,002,525  |  1,318,771  |    4·55
 ------------------------------+-------------+-------------+-----------
 Scotland                      |  4,033,103  |    146,925  |    3·64
 Ireland                       |  4,706,162  |     40,045  |    0·85
 Isle of Man                   |     55,598  |         75  |    0·13
 Guernsey                      |     35,339  |      1,170  |    3·31
 Jersey                        |     54,518  |         40  |    0·07
 Alderney and Sark             |      2,415  |          0  |    0·00
 ------------------------------+-------------+-------------+------------
         Total, United Kingdom | 37,889,660  |  1,507,026  |    3·98
 ------------------------------+-------------+-------------+------------




APPENDIX VI

THE STATISTICAL PROGRESS OF TRADE UNION MEMBERSHIP


It is unfortunately impossible to present any complete statistics of
Trade Union membership at different periods. Until the appointment, in
1886, of John Burnett as Labour Correspondent to the Board of Trade,
no attempt was made to collect any statistics of the movement; and the
old Unions seldom possess a complete series of their own archives. The
Friendly Society of Ironfounders, it is true, has exact figures since
its establishment in 1809. No total figures can be given with any
confidence.

The following tables may be useful as placing on record such
comparative figures as we have been able to collect:

  1.  Amalgamated Society of Engineers.
  2.  Friendly Society of Ironfounders.
  3.  Steam Engine Makers’ Society.
  4.  Associated Ironmoulders of Scotland.
  5.  United Society of Boilermakers and Iron Shipwrights.
  6.  Operative Stonemasons’ Friendly Society.
  7.  Operative Bricklayers’ Society.
  8.  General Union of Operative Carpenters and Joiners.
  9.  Typographical Association.
 10.  London Society of Compositors.
 11.  Bookbinders’ and Machine Rulers’ Consolidated Union.
 12.  United Kingdom Society of Coachmakers.
 13.  Flint Glass Makers’ Friendly Society.
 14.  Amicable and Brotherly Society of Machine Printers.
 15.  Machine, Engine, and Iron Grinders’ Society.
 16.  Associated Blacksmiths’ Society.
 17.  Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners.
 18.  Associated Carpenters and Joiners.
 19.  National Association of Operative Plasterers.
 20.  Northumberland Miners’ Mutual Confident Association.
 21.  United Journeymen Brassfounders’ Association of Great Britain and
      Ireland.
 22.  United Operative Plumbers’ Association.
 23.  Alliance Cabinet Makers’ Association.
 24.  United Operative Bricklayers’ Trade, Accident, Sick, and Burial
      Society.
 25.  Amalgamated Society of Tailors.
 26.  Amalgamated Association of Operative Cotton Spinners.
 27.  Glass Bottle Makers of Yorkshire United Trade Protection Society.
 28.  Durham Miners’ Association.
 29.  National Society of Amalgamated Brassworkers.
 30.  United Pattern Makers’ Association.
 31.  National Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives.
 32.  Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants.
 33.  Yorkshire Miners’ Association.
 34.  United Machine Workers’ Association.
 35.  National Amalgamated Furnishing Trades Association.
 36.  Railway Clerks’ Association.
 37.  Amalgamated Tramway and Vehicle Workers.
 38.  National Union of Dock Labourers.
 39.  British Steel Smelters.
 40.  National Amalgamated Union of Shop Assistants.
 41.  Amalgamated Union of Co-operative Employees.
 42.  National Union of Clerks.
 43.  Workers’ Union.
 44.  Amalgamated Musicians’ Union.
 45.  National Amalgamated Union of Labour.
 46.  Postmen’s Federation.
 47.  Post Office Engineering Stores.

_Table showing the Membership of certain Trade Unions at Successive
Periods, from 1850 to 1918 inclusive._

 --------+---------+------+------+------+------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+---------
  Number | Year    |      |      |      |      |       |       |       |       |       |       |       |
    of   |  of     | 1850.| 1855.| 1860.| 1865.| 1870. | 1875. | 1880. | 1885. | 1890. | 1900. | 1910. | 1918.
 Society.| Estab-  |      |      |      |      |       |       |       |       |       |       |       |
         |lishment.|      |      |      |      |       |       |       |       |       |       |       |
 --------+---------+------+------+------+------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+---------
     1.  |1851[740]| 5,000|12,553|20,935|30,984| 34,711| 44,032| 44,692| 51,689| 67,928| 87,672|110,733|  298,782
     2.  |1809     | 4,073| 5,685| 7,973|10,604|  8,994| 12,336| 11,580| 12,376| 14,821| 18,357| 17,990|   28,586
     3.  |1824     | 2,068| 1,662| 2,050| 2,521|  2,819|  3,871|  4,134|  5,062|  5,822|  8,566| 14,401|   27,206
     4.  |1831     |   814| 1,381| 2,084| 3,046|  2,766|  4,346|  4,664|  5,611|  6,198|  7,504|  7,880|    7,961
     5.  |1832     | 1,771| 3,500| 4,146| 8,621|  7,261| 16,191| 17,688| 28,212| 32,926| 47,670| 49,393|   95,761
     6.  |1832     | 4,671| 8,093| 9,125|15,483| 13,965| 24,543| 12,610| 11,285| 12,538| 19,419|  7,055|    4,929
     7.  |1848     |   340|   924| 1,641| 4,320|  1,441|  4,832|  5,700|  6,412| 12,740| 38,830| 23,284|   34,441
     8.  |1827     |   535| 1,180| 2,228| 6,986|  8,008| 10,885|  4,420|  1,734|  2,485|  7,727|  5,653|   12,000
     9.  |1849     |   603| 1,288| 1,473| 1,992|  2,430|  3,600|  5,350|  6,551|  9,016| 16,179| 21,436|   11,602
    10.  |1848     | 1,800| 2,300| 2,650| 2,800|  3,350|  4,200|  5,100|  6,435|  8,910| 11,287| 12,230|   12,940
    11.  |1835     |   420|   340|   500|   748|    915|  1,670|  1,501|  1,788|  2,910|  4,064|  5,027|  --[741]
    12.  |1834     | 1,567| 3,040| 4,086| 4,599|  5,801|  7,251|  4,989|  4,560|  5,367|  6,536|  6,854|   15,118
    13.  |1849     |   500|   897| 1,355| 1,606|  1,776|  2,005|  1,963|  1,985|  2,123|  2,409|    916|      775
    14.  |1841     |   375|   452|   508|   530|    570|    650|    690|    740|    860|    963|    983|      228
    15.  |1844     |   200|   110|   330|   449|    280|    390|    258|    277|    304|    433|    703|      746
         |         +------+------+------+------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+---------
         |         |24,737|43,405|61,084|95,289| 95,087|140,802|125,339|144,717|184,948|277,616|284,538|  551,075
         |         |      |      |      |      |       |       |       |       |       |       |       |
         |         |      |      |      |      |       |       |       |       |       |       |       |
    16.  |1857     |  --  |  --  |  856 | 1,815|  1,590|  2,113|  2,002|  2,335|  2,300|  2,933|  2,953|   17,238
    17.  |1860     |  --  |  --  |  618 | 5,670| 10,178| 14,917| 17,764| 25,781| 31,495| 65,012| 55,785|} 124,841
    18.  |1861     |  --  |  --  |  --  | 4,453|  3,585|  6,642|  4,673|  4,535|  4,742|  9,808|  3,964|}
    19.  |1862     |  --  |  --  |  --  | 4,441|  2,461|  3,742|  3,211|  2,110|  4,236| 11,009|  6,522|    4,110
    20.  |1863     |  --  |  --  |  --  | 4,250|  5,328| 17,561| 10,707| 13,128| 16,961| 23,950| 37,361|   40,000
    21.  |1866     |  --  |  --  |  --  |  --  |  1,457|  1,821|  1,890|  2,344|  2,162|   --  |  5,241|    7,500
    22.  |1832     |   ?  |   ?  |   ?  |   ?  |  1,537|  1,679|  2,232|  2,666|  5,350| 11,186| 10,907|   13,000
    23.  |1865     |  --  |  --  |  --  |   ?  |    242|  1,965|  1,346|  1,246|  4,298|  5,270|   --  |  --[742]
    24.  |1832     |   ?  |      |   ?  |   ?  |  3,850|  7,350|  3,282|  1,975|  1,725|  3,428|  1,655|    2,950
    25.  |1866     |  --  |  --  |  --  |  --  |  4,006| 14,352| 12,583| 13,969| 16,629| 13,439| 12,143|   29,422
    26.  |1853     |  --  |   ?  |   ?  |   ?  | 10,518| 14,257| 11,834| 16,579| 18,145| 18,384| 22,992|   24,806
    27.  |1860     |  --  |  --  |   ?  |   ?  |    792|  1,120|  1,061|  1,522|  1,899|  2,840|  2,450|    2,800
    28.  |1869     |  --  |  --  |  --  |  --  |  1,899| 38,000| 30,000| 35,000| 49,000| 80,260|121,805|  126,250
         |         |      |      |      |      +-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+---------
         |         |      |      |      |      |142,530|266,321|227,924|267,907|343,890|546,135|559,316|  944,992
         |         |      |      |      |      |       |       |       |       |       |       |       |
    29.  |1872     |  --  |  --  |  --  |  --  |   --  |  5,271|  4,633|  3,582|  7,958|  8,675|  7,373|   25,000
    30.  |1872     |  --  |  --  |  --  |  --  |   --  |    418|    824|  1,241|  2,205|  4,604|  7,214|   10,290
    31.  |1874     |  --  |  --  |  --  |  --  |   --  |  4,311|  6,404| 10,464| 23,459| 27,960| 30,197|   83,017
    32.  |1872     |  --  |  --  |  --  |  --  |   --  | 13,018|  8,589|  9,052| 26,360| 62,023| 75,153|  --[743]
    33.  |1858     |  --  |  --  |   ?  |   ?  |   ?   |  8,000|  2,800|  8,000| 50,000| 54,475| 88,271|  100,400
    34.  |1844     |   ?  |   ?  |   ?  |   ?  |   ?   |    276|    279|    455|  2,501|  3,769|  4,843|   23,374
         |         |      |      |      |      |       +-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+---------
         |         |      |      |      |      |       |297,615|251,453|300,701|456,373|707,641|772,367|1,187,073
         |         |      |      |      |      |       |       |       |       |       |       |       |
    35.  |1902     |  --  |  --  |  --  |  --  |  --   |   --  |   --  |   --  |   --  |  6,248|  6,685|   47,220
         |         |      |      |      |      |       |       |       |       |       | (1902)|       |
    36.  |1897     |  --  |  --  |  --  |  --  |  --   |   --  |   --  |   --  |   --  |  1,550|  9,476|   66,130
    37.  |1889     |  --  |  --  |  --  |  --  |  --   |   --  |   --  |   --  |   ?   |  9,214| 17,076|   40,564
    38.  |1889     |  --  |  --  |  --  |  --  |  --   |   --  |   --  |   --  |   ?   | 13,388| 14,253|   45,000
    39.  |1886     |  --  |  --  |  --  |  --  |  --   |   --  |   --  |   --  |   ?   | 10,467| 17,491|   40,000(?)
         |         |      |      |      |      |       |       |       |       |       |       |       |    [744]
    40.  |1891     |  --  |  --  |  --  |  --  |  --   |   --  |   --  |   --  |   --  |  7,551| 22,426|   83,000
         |         |      |      |      |      |       |       |       |       |       |       |       |   (1919)
    41.  |1891     |  --  |  --  |  --  |  --  |  --   |   --  |   --  |   --  |   --  |  6,733| 29,886|   87,134
    42.  |1891     |  --  |  --  |  --  |  --  |  --   |   --  |   --  |   --  |   --  |     82|  3,166|   35,000
    43.  |1898     |  --  |  --  |  --  |  --  |  --   |   --  |   --  |   --  |   ?   |  2,879|  5,016|  230,000
    44.  |1893     |  --  |  --  |  --  |  --  |  --   |   --  |   --  |   --  |   --  |  3,286|  6,182|   14,649
    45.  |1889     |  --  |  --  |  --  |  --  |  --   |   --  |   --  |   --  |   ?   | 21,111| 16,017|  143,931
    46.  |1891     |  --  |  --  |  --  |  --  |  --   |   --  |   --  |   --  |   --  | 23,180| 37,892|   65,078
    47.  |1896     |  --  |  --  |  --  |  --  |  --   |   --  |   --  |   --  |   --  |    940|  3,500|   14,000
         |         |      |      |      |      |       |       |       |       |       +-------+-------+---------
         |         |      |      |      |      |       |       |       |       |       |106,629|189,046|  911,706
         |         |      |      |      |      |       |       |       |       |       +-------+-------+---------
         |         |      |      |      |      |       |       |       |       |       |814,270|961,413|2,098,779
 --------+---------+------+------+------+------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+---------

We have suggested that it is doubtful whether, in 1842, there were
as many as 100,000 enrolled and contributing members. A quarter of a
century later George Howell and others could talk vaguely of a million
members, but we doubt whether this number was reached until the years
of good trade that followed 1871. In 1878-80 there was a great falling
off, and we doubt whether the aggregate of a million was again reached
until 1885. In 1892 we recorded a million and a half. Not until the end
of the century were two millions attained--a number doubled by 1915,
and in the last four or five years again increased by over fifty per
cent.

_Table showing the aggregate Trade Union Membership in groups of
Industries at the end of each of the years 1892-1917 inclusive._[745]

 -----+---------+--------+---------+--------+---------+----------+-----------------------------+---------
      |         |        |  Metal, |        |         |          |                             |
      |         | Mining | Engin-  |        |         |          |                             | Total,
 Year.|Building.|   and  | eering, |Textile.|Clothing.|Transport.|        Other Trades.        |  all
      |         | Quarry-|   and   |        |         |          |                             | Unions.
      |         |   in   |  Ship-  |        |         |          |                             |
      |         |        |building.|        |         |          |                             |
 -----+---------+--------+---------+--------+---------+----------+-----------------------------+---------
  1892| 157,971 | 315,272|  279,534| 204,022|  83,299 |  154,947 |            307,313          |1,502,358
  1893| 172,870 | 318,112|  266,813| 205,546|  80,768 |  142,084 |            293,224          |1,479,417
  1894| 178,721 | 307,276|  263,572| 214,331|  81,786 |  123,896 |            266,718          |1,436,300
  1895| 179,283 | 280,065|  269,169| 218,805|  78,560 |  120,475 |            261,479          |1,407,836
  1896| 193,341 | 279,977|  303,518| 217,950|  76,997 |  134,877 |            287,805          |1,494,465
  1897| 215,603 | 283,054|  319,745| 218,619|  75,852 |  183,994 |            317,131          |1,613,998
      |         |        |         |        |         |          | +--------+--------+-------+ |
      |         |        |         |        |         |          |/Printing,| Wood-  |   Other\|
      |         |        |         |        |         |          |  Paper,  |working.|  Trades.|
      |         |        |         |        |         |          |   etc.   |        |         |
  1898| 232,040 | 366,731|  312,444| 240,895|  69,954 |  147,957 |   54,436 |   ---- |  264,074|1,688,531
  1899| 249,988 | 445,706|  335,746| 245,301|  66,777 |  163,685 |   56,727 |   ---- |  284,640|1,848,570
  1900| 253,412 | 524,150|  342,079| 245,438|  67,183 |  171,599 |   57,228 |   ---- |  294,615|1,955,704
  1901| 248,967 | 530,953|  338,468| 243,474|  65,660 |  169,199 |   58,274 |   ---- |  311,766|1,966,761
  1902| 245,141 | 532,082|  337,064| 246,829|  64,094 |  158,714 |   59,062 |   ---- |  310,321|1,953,307
  1903| 238,141 | 529,028|  337,122| 244,081|  61,713 |  159,051 |   60,138 |   ---- |  301,769|1,931,043
  1904| 225,149 | 501,764|  334,822| 246,473|  58,598 |  159,788 |   62,428 |   ---- |  306,087|1,895,109
  1905| 205,179 | 496,828|  340,364| 266,416|  60,394 |  167,017 |   62,368 |   ---- |  321,807|1,920,373
  1906| 196,492 | 571,336|  361,453| 302,968|  59,806 |  190,155 |   64,451 |   ---- |  367,145|2,113,806
  1907| 193,190 | 703,344|  376,805| 354,427|  68,810 |  238,813 |   68,221 |   ---- |  403,136|2,406,746
  1908| 177,718 | 719,384|  365,134| 362,540|  65,637 |  230,642 |   72,970 |  41,797|  353,505|2,388,727
  1909| 162,278 | 722,639|  359,838| 366,445|  65,882 |  224,037 |   71,531 |  39,240|  357,177|2,369,067
  1910| 156,985 | 731,305|  370,055| 379,644|  67,158 |  245,223 |   74,275 |  38,881|  382,816|2,446,342
  1911| 173,182 | 752,419|  415,176| 436,927|  74,423 |  513,538 |   77,252 |  45,474|  530,512|3,018,903
  1912| 203,773 | 757,147|  479,471| 478,097|  91,855 |  514,724 |   76,807 |  50,853|  635,107|3,287,884
  1913| 248,647 | 915,734|  538,541| 515,684| 105,929 |  699,952 |   84,414 |  64,442|  813,772|3,987,115
  1914| 235,828 | 870,198|  557,769| 497,494| 102,538 |  705,501 |   92,283 |  64,296|  796,902|3,918,809
  1915| 228,475 | 857,183|  633,502| 507,731| 114,085 |  737,004 |   97,290 |  65,210|  886,313|4,126,793
  1916| 229,272 | 877,694|  695,347| 530,411| 121,656 |  803,872 |   97,669 |  69,403|1,012,623|4,437,947
  1917| 257,286 | 941,120|  847,202| 627,919| 149,756 |  903,109 |  109,586 |  83,369|1,360,165|5,287,522
 -----+---------+--------+---------+--------+---------+----------+----------+--------+---------+---------


FOOTNOTES:

[740] Established January 10, 1851. The membership given for 1850 is
that with which the amalgamation started.

[741] Merged in the National Union of Bookbinders and Machine Rulers,
1911.

[742] In 1902 joined with the Operative Cabinet and Chair Makers of
Scotland to form the National Amalgamated Furnishing Trades Association.

[743] Amalgamated in 1913 with the United Pointsmen and Signalmen
and the General Railway Workers’ Union to form the National Union of
Railwaymen.

[744] In 1917 the members of the British Steel Smelters were merged in
the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation.

[745] [From Labour Department’s Reports on Trade Unions for 1900,
1905-7 and 1912, Cmd. 773, 4651 and 6109, and _Labour Gazette_.]




APPENDIX VII

PUBLICATIONS RELATING TO TRADE UNIONS


In the first edition of this book we gave a list, 45 pages long, of
books, pamphlets, reports, and other documents bearing on the workmen’s
combinations. In _Industrial Democracy_, 1897, we gave a supplementary
list, 23 pages long. We do not reproduce these lists, to which the
student can always refer; nor have we attempted to bring them down to
date. The really useful material for Trade Union study is to be found
in the publications of the Trade Unions themselves--the innumerable
editions of rules, the thousands of annual and monthly reports, the
voluminous lists of piecework prices, the intricate working agreements,
the verbatim reports of conferences, delegate meetings and proceedings
before Conciliation and Arbitration Boards--which are ignored by the
British Museum, and are practically never preserved in local public
libraries. We made an extensive collection in 1891-97, which we have
deposited in the British Library of Political Science, attached to the
London School of Economics and Political Science, where it has been,
to some extent, kept up to date, and where it is accessible to any
serious student. Some old pamphlets and reports of interest are in
the Goldsmiths’ Library at the University of London. Of Trade Union
publications since 1913 the most extensive collection is that of the
Labour Research Department, attached to the Labour Party, 34 Eccleston
Square, London.




APPENDIX VIII

THE RELATIONSHIP OF TRADE UNIONISM TO THE GOVERNMENT OF INDUSTRY


In our work on _Industrial Democracy_, published in 1897, we formulated
the following tentative conclusions with regard to the participation of
the workmen’s organisations in industrial management, and the relation
of Trade Unionism to political Democracy:

“This survey of the changes required in Trade Union policy leads us
straight to a conclusion as to the part which Trade Unionism will be
expected to play in the management of the industry of a democratic
state. The interminable series of decisions, which together make up
industrial administration, fall into three main classes. There is,
first, the decision as to what shall be produced--that is to say, the
exact commodity or service to be supplied to the consumers. There is,
secondly, the judgement as to the manner in which the production shall
take place, the adoption of material, the choice of processes, and the
selection of human agents. Finally, there is the altogether different
question of the conditions under which these human agents shall be
employed--the temperature, atmosphere, and sanitary arrangements amid
which they shall work, the intensity and duration of their toil, and
the wages given as its reward.

“To obtain for the community the maximum satisfaction it is essential
that the needs and desires of the consumers should be the main factor
in determining the commodities and services to be produced. Whether
these needs and desires can best be ascertained and satisfied by the
private enterprise of capitalist profit-makers, keenly interested
in securing custom, or by the public service of salaried officials,
intent on pleasing associations of consumers (as in the British
Co-operative Movement), or associations of citizens (the Municipality
or the State), is at present the crucial problem of Democracy. But
whichever way this issue may be decided, one thing is certain, namely,
that the several sections of manual workers, enrolled in their Trade
Unions, will have, under private enterprise or Collectivism, no more
to do with the determination of what is to be produced than any other
citizens or consumers. As manual workers and wage-earners, they bring
to the problem no specialised knowledge; and as persons fitted for the
performance of particular services, they are even biassed against the
inevitable changes in demand which characterise progressive community.
This is even more the case with regard to the second department of
industrial administration--the adoption of material, the choice of
processes, and the selection of human agents. Here, the Trade Unions
concerned are specially disqualified, not only by their ignorance of
the possible alternatives, but also by their overwhelming bias in
favour of a particular material, a particular process, or a particular
grade of workers, irrespective of whether these are or are not the
best adapted for the gratification of the consumers’ desires. On
the other hand, the directors of industry, whether thrown up by the
competitive struggle or deliberately appointed by the consumers or
citizens, have been specially picked out and trained to discover the
best means of satisfying the consumers’ desires. Moreover, the bias of
their self-interest coincides with the object of their customers or
employers--that is to say, the best and cheapest production. Thus, if
we leave out of account the disturbing influence of monopoly in private
enterprise, and corruption in public administration, it would at first
sight seem as if we might safely leave the organisation of production
and distribution under the one system as under the other to the expert
knowledge of the directors of industry. But this is subject to one
all-important qualification. The permanent bias of the profitmaker,
and even of the salaried official of the Co-operative Society, the
Municipality, or the Government Department, is to lower the expense
of production. So far as immediate results are concerned, it seems
equally advantageous whether this reduction of cost is secured by a
better choice of materials, processes, or men, or by some lowering
of wages or other worsening of the conditions upon which the human
agents are employed. But the democratic state is, as we have seen,
vitally interested in upholding the highest possible Standard of Life
of all its citizens, and especially of the manual workers who form
four-fifths of the whole. Hence the bias of the directors of industry
in favor of cheapness has, in the interests of the community, to be
perpetually controlled and guided by a determination to maintain, and
progressively to raise, the conditions of employment.

“This leads us to the third branch of industrial administration--the
settlement of the conditions under which the human beings are to be
employed. The adoption of one material rather than another, the choice
between alternative processes or alternative ways of organising the
factory, the selection of particular grades of workers, or even of a
particular foreman, may affect, for the worse, the Standard of Life of
the operatives concerned. This indirect influence on the conditions
of employment passes imperceptibly into the direct determination
of the wages, hours, and other terms of the wage contract. On all
these matters the consumers, on the one hand, and the directors of
industry on the other, are permanently disqualified from acting as
arbiters. In our chapter on ‘The Higgling of the Market’ we described
how, in the elaborate division of labour which characterises the
modern industrial system, thousands of workers co-operate in the
bringing to market of a single commodity; and no consumer, even if
he desired it, could possibly ascertain or judge of the conditions
of employment in all these varied trades. Thus, the consumers of
all classes are not only biassed in favour of low prices; they are
compelled to accept this apparent or genuine cheapness as the only
practicable test of efficiency of production. And though the immediate
employer of each section of workpeople knows the hours that they work
and the wages that they receive, he is precluded by the stream of
competitive pressure, transmitted through the retail shopkeeper and
the wholesale trader, from effectively resisting the promptings of his
own self-interest towards a constant cheapening of labour. Moreover,
though he may be statistically aware of the conditions of employment
his lack of personal experience of those conditions deprives him of
any real knowledge of their effects. To the brain-working captain of
industry, maintaining himself and his family on thousands a year,
the manual-working wage-earner seems to belong to another species,
having mental faculties and bodily needs altogether different from his
own. Men and women of the upper or middle classes are totally unable
to realise what state of body and mind, what level of character and
conduct, result from a life spent, from childhood to old age, amid the
dirt, the smell, the noise, the ugliness, and the vitiated atmosphere
of the workshop; under constant subjection to the peremptory, or it may
be brutal, orders of the foreman; kept continuously at the laborious
manual toil for sixty or seventy hours in every week of the year; and
maintained by the food, clothing, house-accommodation, recreation, and
family life which are implied by a precarious income of between ten
shillings and two pounds a week. If the democratic state is to attain
its fullest and finest development, it is essential that the actual
needs and desires of the human agents concerned should be the main
considerations in determining the conditions of employment. Here then
we find the special function of the Trade Union in the administration
of industry. The simplest member of the working-class organisation
knows at any rate where the shoe pinches. The Trade Union official is
specially selected by his fellow-workmen for his capacity to express
the grievances from which they suffer, and is trained by his calling
in devising remedies for them. But in expressing the desires of their
members, and in insisting on the necessary reforms, the Trade Unions
act within the constant friction-brake supplied by the need of securing
employment. It is always the consumers and the consumers alone, whether
they act through profit-making _entrepreneurs_ or through their own
salaried officials, who determine how many of each particular grade of
workers they care to employ on the conditions demanded.... Thus we find
no neat formula for defining the rights and duties of the individual
in society. In the democratic state every individual is both master
and servant. In the work that he does for the community in return
for his subsistence he is, and must remain, a servant, subject to
the instructions and directions of those whose desires he is helping
to satisfy. As a Citizen-Elector jointly with his fellows, and as a
Consumer to the extent of his demand, he is a master, determining,
free from any superior, what shall be done. Hence, it is the supreme
paradox of democracy that every man is a servant in respect of the
matters of which he possesses the most expert proficiency, namely,
the professional craft to which he devotes his working hours; and he
is a master over that on which he knows no more than anybody else,
namely, the general interests of the community as a whole. In this
paradox, we suggest, lies at once the justification and the strength
of democracy. It is not, as is commonly asserted by the superficial,
that Ignorance rules over Knowledge, and Mediocrity over Capacity:
In the administration of society Knowledge and Capacity can make no
real and durable progress except by acting on and through the minds of
the common human material which it is desired to improve. It is only
by carrying along with him the ‘average sensual man,’ that even the
wisest and most philanthropic reformer, however autocratic his power,
can genuinely change the face of things. Moreover, not even the wisest
of men can be trusted with that supreme authority which comes from
the union of knowledge, capacity, and opportunity with the power of
untrammelled and ultimate decision. Democracy is an expedient--perhaps
the only practicable expedient--for preventing the concentration in any
single individual or in any single class of what inevitably becomes,
when so concentrated, a terrible engine of oppression. The autocratic
emperor, served by a trained bureaucracy, seems to the Anglo-Saxon a
perilously near approach to such a concentration. If democracy meant,
as early observers imagined, a similar concentration of Knowledge and
Power in the hands of the numerical majority for the time being, it
might easily become as injurious a tyranny as any autocracy. An actual
study of the spontaneous democracies of Anglo-Saxon workmen, or, as we
suggest, of any other democratic institutions, reveals the splitting
up of this dangerous authority into two parts. Whether in political or
in industrial democracy, though it is the Citizen who, as Elector or
Consumer, ultimately gives the order, it is the Professional Expert who
advises what the order shall be.

“It is another aspect of this paradox that, in the democratic state, no
man minds his own business. In the economic sphere this is a necessary
consequence of division of labour; Robinson Crusoe, producing solely
for his own consumption, being the last man who minded nothing but
his own business. The extreme complication brought about by universal
production for exchange in itself implies that every one works with a
view to fulfilling the desires of other people. The crowding together
of dense populations, and especially the co-operative enterprises which
then arise, extend in every direction this spontaneous delegation to
professional experts of what the isolated individual once deemed ‘his
own business.’ Thus, the citizen in a modern municipality no longer
produces his own food or makes his own clothes; no longer protects
his own life or property; no longer fetches his own water; no longer
makes his own thoroughfares, or cleans or lights them when made; no
longer removes his own refuse or even disinfects his own dwelling.
He no longer educates his own children, or doctors and nurses his
own invalids. Trade Unionism adds to the long list of functions thus
delegated to professional experts the settlement of the conditions on
which the citizen will agree to co-operate in the national service.
In the fully-developed democratic state the Citizen will be always
minding other people’s business. In his professional occupation he
will, whether as brain-worker or manual labourer, be continually
striving to fulfil the desires of those whom he serves; whilst as an
Elector, in his parish or his co-operative society, his Trade Union or
his political association, he will be perpetually passing judgment on
issues in which his personal interest is no greater than that of his
fellows.

“If, then, we are asked whether democracy, as shown by an analysis of
Trade Unionism, is consistent with Individual Liberty, we are compelled
to answer by asking, What is Liberty? If Liberty means every man being
his own master, and following his own impulses, then it is clearly
inconsistent, not so much with democracy or any other particular form
of government, as with the crowding together of population in dense
masses, division of labour, and, as we think, civilisation itself. What
particular individuals, sections, or classes usually mean by ‘freedom
of contract,’ ‘freedom of association,’ or ‘freedom of enterprise’
is freedom of opportunity to use the power that they happen to
possess--that is to say, to compel other less powerful people to accept
their terms. This sort of personal freedom in a community composed of
unequal units is not distinguishable from compulsion. It is, therefore,
necessary to define Liberty before talking about it; a definition which
every man will frame according to his own view of what is socially
desirable. We ourselves understand by the words ‘Liberty’ or ‘Freedom,’
not any quantum of natural or inalienable rights, but such conditions
of existence in the community as do, in practice, result in the utmost
possible development of faculty in the individual human being. Now, in
this sense democracy is not only consistent with Liberty, but is, as
it seems to us, the only way of securing the largest amount of it. It
is open to argument whether other forms of government may not achieve
a fuller development of the faculties of particular individuals or
classes. To an autocrat, untrammelled rule over a whole kingdom may
mean an exercise of his individual faculties, and a development of
his individual personality, such as no other situation in life would
afford. An aristocracy or government by one class in the interests
of one class, may conceivably enable that class to develop a
perfection in physical grace or intellectual charm attainable by no
other system of society. Similarly, it might be argued that, where
the ownership of the means of production and the administration of
industry are unreservedly left to the capitalist class, this ‘freedom
of enterprise’ would result in a development of faculty among the
captains of industry which could not otherwise be reached. We dissent
from all these propositions, if only on the ground that the fullest
development of personal character requires the pressure of discipline
as well as the stimulus of opportunity. But however untrammelled
power may affect the character of those who possess it, autocracy,
aristocracy, and plutocracy have all, from the point of view of
the lover of liberty, one fatal defect--they necessarily involve a
restriction in the opportunity for development of faculty among the
great mass of the population. It is only when the resources of the
nation are deliberately organised and dealt with for the benefit, not
of particular individuals or classes, but of the entire community;
when the administration of industry, as of every other branch of human
affairs, becomes the function of specialised experts, working through
deliberately adjusted Common Rules; and when the ultimate decision on
policy rests in no other hands than those of the citizens themselves,
that the maximum aggregate development of individual intellect and
individual character in the community as a whole can be attained.

“For our analysis helps us to disentangle from the complex influences
on individual development those caused by democracy itself. The
universal specialisation and delegation which, as we suggest,
democratic institutions involve, necessarily imply a great increase
in capacity and efficiency, if only because specialisation in service
means expertness, and delegation compels selection. This deepening and
narrowing of professional skill may be expected, in the fully-developed
democratic state, to be accompanied by a growth in culture of which our
present imperfect organisation gives us no adequate idea. So long as
life is one long scramble for personal gain--still more, when it is one
long struggle against destitution--there is no free time or strength
for much development of the sympathetic, intellectual, artistic, or
religious faculties. When the conditions of employment are deliberately
regulated so as to secure adequate food, education, and leisure to
every capable citizen, the great mass of the population will, for the
first time, have any real chance of expanding in friendship and family
affection, and of satisfying the instinct for knowledge or beauty. It
is an even more unique attribute of democracy that it is always taking
the mind of the individual off his own narrow interests and immediate
concerns, and forcing him to give his thoughts and leisure, not to
satisfying his own desires, but to considering the needs and desires of
his fellows. As an Elector--still more as a chosen Representative--in
his parish, in his professional association, in his co-operative
society, or in the wider political institutions of his state, the
‘average sensual man’ is perpetually impelled to appreciate and to
decide issues of public policy. The working of democratic institutions
means, therefore, one long training in enlightened altruism, one
continual weighing, not of the advantage of the particular act to the
particular individual, at the particular moment, but of those ‘larger
expediencies’ on which all successful conduct of social life depends.

“If now, at the end of this long analysis, we try to formulate our
dominant impression, it is a sense of the vastness and complexity
of democracy itself. Modern civilised states are driven to this
complication by the dense massing of their populations, and the course
of industrial development. The very desire to secure mobility in the
crowd compels the adoption of one regulation after another, which limit
the right of every man to use the air, the water, the land, and even
the artificially produced instruments of production, in the way that he
may think best. The very discovery of improved industrial methods, by
leading to specialisation, makes manual labourer and brainworker alike
dependent on the rest of the community for the means of subsistence,
and subordinates them, even in their own crafts, to the action of
others. In the world of civilisation and progress, no man can be his
own master. But the very fact that, in modern society, the individual
thus necessarily loses control over his own life, makes him desire to
regain collectively what has become individually impossible. Hence
the irresistible tendency to popular government, in spite of all its
difficulties and dangers. But democracy is still the Great Unknown.
Of its full scope and import we can yet catch only glimpses. As one
department of social life after another becomes the subject of careful
examination we shall gradually attain to a more complete vision. Our
own tentative conclusions, derived from the study of one manifestation
of the democratic spirit, may, we hope, not only suggest hypotheses for
future verification, but also stimulate other students to carry out
original investigations into the larger and perhaps more significant
types of democratic organisation.”

In 1920, after nearly a quarter of a century of further experience and
consideration, we should, in some respects, put this differently. The
growth, among all classes, and especially among the manual workers and
the technicians, of what we may call corporate self-consciousness and
public spirit, and the diffusion of education--coupled with further
discoveries in the technique of democratic institutions--would lead us
to-day to include, and even to put in the forefront, certain additional
suggestions, which we can here only summarise briefly.

There is, in the first place, a genuine need for, and a real social
advantage in giving recognition to, the contemporary transformation
in the status of the manual working wage-earners, on the one hand,
and of the technicians on the other, as compared with that of the
manager or mere “captain of industry.” This change of status, which is,
perhaps, the most important feature of the industrial history of the
past quarter of a century, will be most easily accorded its legitimate
recognition in those industries and services in which the profit-making
capitalist proprietor is dispensed with in favour of public ownership,
whether national, municipal, or co-operative. This is, incidentally,
an important reason for what is called “nationalisation.” It is a
real social gain that the General Secretary of the Swiss Railwaymen’s
Trade Union should sit as one of the five members of the supreme
governing board of the Swiss railway administration. We ourselves look
for the admission of nominees of the manual workers, as well as of
the technicians, upon the executive boards and committees, on terms
of complete equality with the other members, in all publicly owned
industries and services; not merely, or even mainly, for the sake
of the advantages of the counsel and criticism that the newcomers
may bring from new standpoints, but principally for the sake of
both inspiring and satisfying the increasing sense of corporate
self-consciousness and public spirit among all those employed in these
enterprises.

In the second place we should lay stress on the change that is taking
place in the nature (and in the conception) of authority itself. In
our analysis of 1897 we confined ourselves unduly to a separation of
spheres of authority. Whilst still regarding that analytic separation
of “management” into three classes of judgements or decisions as
fundamentally valid, we should nowadays attach even more importance
to the ways in which authority itself, in industry as well as in the
rest of government, is being rapidly transformed, alike in substance
and in methods of expression. The need for final decisions will remain,
not merely in emergencies, but also as to policy; and it is of high
importance to vest the responsibility for decision, according to the
nature of the case, in the right hands. But we suggest that a great
deed of the old autocracy in industry and services, once deemed to
be indispensable, is ceasing to be necessary to efficiency, and will
accordingly, as Democracy becomes more genuinely accepted, gradually
be dispensed with. A steadily increasing sphere will, except in
matters of emergency, be found for consultation among all grades and
sections concerned, out of which will emerge judgements and decisions
arrived at, very largely, by common consent. This will, we believe,
produce actually a higher standard of industrial efficiency than mere
autocracy could ever hope for. Where knowledge is a common possession
the facts themselves will often decide; and though decisions may be
short, sharp, and necessarily formulated by the appropriate person,
they will not inevitably bear the impress of (or be resented as) the
dictates of irresponsible autocracy. We may instance two large classes
of considerations which will, we think, with great social advantage,
come to be matters for mutual consultation in those committees
and councils which already characterise the administration of all
industry on a large scale, whether under private or public ownership,
and which will, in the future, be increasingly representative of
all grades of workers by hand or by brain. To such committees and
councils there will come, as a matter of course, a stream of reports
from the disinterested outside costing experts, which will carry with
them no coercive authority, but which will graphically reveal the
efficiency results, so far as regards cost and output, of each part
of the enterprise, in comparison both with its own past, and with
the corresponding results of other analogous enterprises. Similarly,
there will come a stream of financial and merely statistical reports
from equally disinterested outside auditors and statisticians,
making graphic revelations as to the progress of the enterprise, in
comparison with its own previous experience and with the progress
of like enterprises elsewhere. Further, there will be a stream of
what we may call scientific reports, also from disinterested outside
experts, not only describing new inventions and discoveries in the
technique of the particular enterprise, but suggesting, in the light
of recent surveys of the work, how they could be practically applied
to its peculiar circumstances. These three classes of reports, all of
them by disinterested experts, engaged in keeping under review all
analogous enterprises at home or abroad, and having neither interest
in, nor authority over, any of them, will, we suggest, be discussed by
the members of the committees and councils on terms of equality; the
decisions being taken, according to the nature of the case, by those in
whom the responsibility for decision may be vested.

But there will be a second extensive class of reports of a different
character, conveying not statements of fact but views of policy.
There will, we must assume, be reports from those responsible, not
merely or mainly for satisfying the existing generation of consumers,
producers, or citizens, but for safeguarding the interests of the
community as a whole, in the future as well as in the present. There
will be the reports from the organs of the consumers or users of the
particular commodity or service (such as the District Committees
representing telephone users set up by the Postmaster-General as
organs of, criticism and suggestion for his telephone administration).
Finally there will be reports conveying criticisms and suggestions
from committees or councils representing other enterprises, or other
sections of producers (whether technicians or manual workers), which
may have something to communicate that they deem important. These
reports will, none of them, come with coercive authority, but merely
as conveying information, to be considered in the consultations out of
which the necessary decisions will emerge.

Opinions may differ as to the competence to take part in such
consultations of the selected representatives of the manual workers
and the technicians respectively. We are ourselves of opinion that,
taking the business as a whole, such representatives will be found to
compare, in competence, quite favourably with the average member of a
Board of Directors. But whether or not the counsels and decisions of
great industrial enterprises are likely to be much improved by such
consultations--and we confidently expect that they will be--we suggest
that it is predominantly in this form that the principles of Democracy
may, in practice, be applied to industrial administration; and that it
will be for the Professional Associations of the technicians and the
Trade Unions of the manual workers to prove themselves equal to the
transformation in their status that this or any other application of
Democracy involves.

But here we must pause. In a future work on the achievements, policy,
and immediate controversies of the British Labour and Socialist
Movement we shall give the historical and the psychological analysis,
in the light of the experience of the past few decades, upon which we
base our present conclusions.




INDEX


  Aberdare, 514

  Aberdare, Lord, 276-7, 285

  Aberdeen, cotton-weavers of, 82;
    tailors of, 79

  Abnormal place, 513-16

  Abraham, William, 596

  Acetylene Welders, 495

  Acland, Sir A. H. Dyke, 308

  Actions for damages, 597-634

  Actors’ Association, 507

  Actuarial position of T.U., 267-8

  Adamson, W., 699

  Admiralty Constructive Engineers, 507

  Agricultural Labourers, 136, 144-6, 328-34, 405, 416, 439-40, 488-9,
        624, 648

  Agriculture, Royal Commission on, 648

  Albert Hall, 666, 669

  Alison, Sir Archibald, 170, 173

  “All Grades Movement,” 525-6

  Allan, Wm., 210-14, 232, 234 (life), 233-40, 243, 248, 350, 362, 419.

  Alliance Cabinet Makers’ Association.
    _See_ Cabinet Makers

  Almshouses, provided by the Liverpool Shipwrights, 39

  Althorpe, Lord, 132

  Amalgamated Association of Boot and Shoe Makers, 436

  Amalgamated Association of Miners, 306, 349, 511

  Amalgamated Engineering Union, 488, 551

  Amalgamated Metal Wire and Tube Makers’ Society, 359

  Amalgamated Society of.
    _See_ Carpenters, Engineers, Cotton-spinners, Cotton-weavers, Boot
      and Shoemakers, Builders’ Labourers, Card and Blowing Room
      Operatives, Metal Planers, Railway Servants, Tailors, Watermen and
      Lightermen

  Amalgamated Tramway and Vehicle Workers, 744

  Amalgamations and Federations, 546-554

  American Federation of Labour, 135, 556

  Amicable and Brotherly Society of Machine Printers (Cotton and
        Calico), 70, 75

  Amicable Society of Woolstaplers, 83

  Anderson, W. C., 699

  Anti-corn Law League, 174, 176

  Applegarth, Robert, 232, 233-40, 236-7 (life), 248, 350, 362, 391,
        419, 680

  Appleton, W. A., 556

  Apprentices, 27, 29, 38, 45, 47, 83, 267

  Apprentices, Statute of, 47, 59, 66, 250-51

  Arbitration, 29, 71, 226-7, 337, 643

  Arch, Joseph, 329, 334, 680, 682

  Armstrong, Lord, 315

  Arnot, R. Page, 489, 511, 524, 532, 633, 662

  Ashley, Sir W. J., 4, 5, 13, 15, 29, 511, 735-7

  Ashton, murder of, 122

  Ashton, Thomas, 311, 356

  Ashton-under-Lyne, strikes at, 119, 122

  Ashworth, 169

  Asquith, H. H., 528-9, 636, 645, 692

  Assinder, G. F., 599

  Associated.
    _See_ Blacksmiths, Carpenters, Engineers, Iron-forgers,
      Railwaymen, and Shipwrights

  Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen, 439, 505,
        527, 530, 535, 539, 545.
    _See also_ Railwaymen

  Associations of Consumers, 706-18

  Associations of Producers, 653-63, 704-18, 752-62

  Atchison’s Haven, 10

  Austin, Michael, 596

  Ayrshire Miners, 681


  Bachelor Companies, 4, 5, 6, 7

  Baernreither, Dr., 220, 300

  Baker, C., 634

  Bakers, 369, 438, 559

  Bamford, Samuel, 96, 164

  Bank Officers’ Guild, 505

  Barker, Ernest, 414

  Barnes, Geo. N., 490, 692-3, 695, 698

  Barnsley, first working-man Town Councillor elected in, 305

  Basketmakers, 14, 45, 438, 552

  Bass, Michael, 523

  Bass-dressers, 336

  Beale, C. G., 530

  Beamers, 477

  _Beehive_, the, 36, 254-5, 298

  Beer, M., 131, 157, 162, 175, 414, 680

  Beesly, Professor E. S., 222, 231-2, 236, 238, 246, 250, 263-4, 269,
        275, 288, 293, 298, 312, 341, 362, 415, 510.
    _See_ Positivists

  Belfast, 123, 136, 523

  Belfast and Dublin Locomotive Engine-drivers’ and Firemen’s Trade
        Union, 523

  Bell, Sir Hugh, xiv

  Bell Inn, Old Bailey, 205, 243, 245

  Bell, Richard, 526-7, 601, 684

  Bell, Robert, 58

  Benbow, William, 163-4

  Bennett, T. R., 246

  Bentham, Jeremy, 96, 178

  Bernstein, Eduard, 652

  Besant, Mrs. Annie, 396, 399, 402

  Bevan, G. Phillips, 347

  Bibliography, 751

  Birmingham, building trades of, 129;
    “Builders’ Parliament” at, 130;
    tailors of, 32;
    Trade Unionism in, 358-9;
    Trades Council of, 280, 329-30, 399;
    trades procession at, 177

  Birtwistle, Thomas, 309

  Bit and Spur Makers, 92

  Blackburn, 307, 697;
    riots at, 344

  Blackburn List, the, 226

  “Black-coated proletariat,” 503-9

  Blacklisting, 284, 598

  Blacksmiths, Associated Society of. Scotland.
    _See_ Smiths

  Blastfurnacemen.
    _See_ Ironworkers

  Bleachers, 478, 480

  Block Printers, Glasgow, 552

  Blok, P. J., 24

  Boa, Andrew, 290

  “Board of Green Cloth” at Dublin, 104

  Boilermakers, 174, 205, 230, 247, 259, 261-2, 314, 321-2, 348, 353,
        365, 378, 428-31, 490-91, 559, 744

  Bolton, calico-printers at, 79;
    cotton operatives of, 81, 92, 307;
    engineers of, 207-8

  Bondfield, Miss Margaret, 496

  Bookbinders, 23, 77, 79, 91, 176, 188, 196-7, 201, 244-5, 437-8, 744

  Boot and Shoe Operatives, 57, 68, 77, 79-80, 143, 150, 192, 228,
        236, 336, 407, 436-7, 493-4, 744.
    _See also_ Shoemakers

  Booth, Charles, 375, 380-81

  Bowerman, C. W., 362

  “Box Club,” 36-7

  Boy labour, 202

  Brace, W., 692

  Bradford, woollen strike of 1825, 111

  Bradlaugh, Charles, 289, 370-71

  Bradninch, woolcombers in, 34

  Brainworkers, inclusion of, 697;
    organisations of, 503-9

  Bramwell, Lord, 279, 363

  Branch meeting, description of, 446-8

  Brassey, Lord, 269

  Brassfounders.
    _See_ Brassworkers

  Brassworkers, 323, 353, 358-9, 430-31, 486-8, 744

  Braziers, 80, 91

  Breeches Makers’ Benefit Society, 24

  Brentano, Dr. Luigi, 9, 12, 13, 15, 16, 25, 39, 47, 52, 209, 212,
        339, 677

  Brett, Lord Justice, 285

  Bricklayers, 125, 169, 223, 226-32, 241, 245, 275, 282, 354, 365,
        407, 428-9, 431-3, 559, 744

  Bricklayers’ and Plasterers’ Company, Dublin, 721-4

  Brickmakers, 241, 267-9;
    Hebrew in Egypt, 2

  Brief Institution, 40, 67

  Bright, John, 35-6, 178, 247, 293, 382

  Brighton Trades Council, 558

  Bristol, 14, 33, 35, 53, 133, 243, 252, 350

  British and Foreign Consolidated Association of Industry, Humanity,
        and Knowledge, 167

  British Association of Steel Smelters.
    _See_ Steel Smelters

  Broadhead, W., 268-9

  Broadhurst, Henry, 240, 285, 289, 295, 311-12, 325, 353, 362-3, 365,
        370, 372, 395, 401, 408, 635, 680

  Brontë, Charlotte, 89

  Brooklands Agreement, 476

  Brooks, J. G., 655

  Brougham, Lord, 156, 178

  Brushmakers, 14, 45, 75, 84, 91, 438

  Buchez, 225

  Builders’ Labourers, 125, 483

  “Builders’ Parliament” of 1833, 130;
    of 1918-19, 483, 649

  Building Trades, early combinations, 8-11;
    lock-out in 1833, 150;
    in 1860, 228-32;
    in 1912, 690;
    nine hours movement in, 312-17;
    statistics of, 407, 428-9, 431-3, 481-3

  Bull & Co., 343

  Bullinger, 4

  Burdett, Sir Francis, 69, 109

  Burgess, Joseph, 412

  Burnett, John, 19, 36, 211, 314-15 (life), 316, 325, 347, 368, 423,
        530

  Burns, John, 298, 375, 383, 385
   (life), 387-8, 396, 400, 402-3, 407-13, 419, 490, 636, 682

  Burrows, Herbert, 402

  Burt, Thomas, 181, 289-90, 296, 307, 340, 342, 362, 510-11, 625, 635,
        680

  Burton, hatters of, 53

  Bussy, J. F. Moir, 524

  Buxton, Lord, 404

  Buxton, Sir T. Fowell, 264

  Byron, Lord, 89


  Cab-fare regulations, 9

  Cabinetmakers, 76-8, 83-4, 136, 243, 248, 290, 389, 432-3, 481, 744-5

  Cabmen, 369

  “Ca’ Canny,” 487

  Cairns, Earl, 275

  Calender-men, Glasgow, 110

  Calhoun, J. C., 167

  Calico Engravers of Manchester, 80

  Calico-printers, 45, 56-7, 70, 75, 79, 90, 121, 193, 436

  Callender, W. R., 272

  Cambridge, tailors of, 68

  Campbell, Alexander, 30, 240, 243, 249-53

  Campbell, G. L., 366

  Campbell-Bannerman, Sir Henry, 635

  Candidatures, independent, 287-9

  Canning, 60

  Capitalist, elimination of, 673-6

  Card and Blowing Room Operatives, Amalgamated Association of, 435,
        475-80.
    _See also_ Cotton Operatives and Textiles

  Carlisle, cotton-weavers of, 82

  Carmarthenshire, coal-miners of, 44

  Carmen, 439-40

  Carpenters, 18, 75, 110, 125, 169, 192, 202, 224, 228-32, 245, 254,
        259, 265-7, 313, 319, 323-4, 343, 346, 354-5, 391, 415, 432-3,
        481, 744;
    Company of London, 18;
    of Dublin, 721-4

  Carpet-weavers, 112, 224, 435-6

  Cartwright, 36

  Census of Trade Unionists, 741-750

  Central Institute, 593

  Chalmers, G., 62

  Chamberlain, Joseph, 370, 373

  Champertors, 67

  Champion, H. H., 387, 400

  Chandler, F., 354

  Channel Isles, etc., T.U. in, 743

  Chapel, 27, 74, 489

  Character Note, 29, 284

  Chartism, 164, 174-8, 649, 653

  Checkweigher, 302, 304-6, 466, 489

  Chester, hatters of, 53

  Chimney-sweeps, 136

  Chinese Labour, 691

  Chippers and Drillers, 548

  Chipping Norton case, 332

  Christian Socialists, the, 215, 225, 246, 263-4, 707.
    _See also_ Hughes, Ludlow and Neale

  Churchill, Winston, 494, 501

  Cigarmakers, T.U. among, 438

  “Citizen Guard,” 544

  City of Glasgow Bank failure, 345

  Civil Service, 507-8;
    Arbitration Tribunal, 508-9

  Clark, W. S., 601, 607, 634

  Clayden, A. W., 329

  Clerical Workers’ Union of Ireland, 473

  Clerks, 440, 473, 504-5, 744

  Clode, 3, 6

  Clothiers, 33-6, 40, 67-8, 151

  Clothiers’ Community, the, 40

  Clothing Trades, statistics of, 428-429, 436-7

  Clothworkers’ Company, 5, 33-4

  Clyde, depression on, 346;
    engineers on, 690;
    ferment on, 656, 659;
    shipyard workers of, 256;
    shorter day on, 316;
    strike on, in 1877, 343;
    “Weekly Pays” on the, 552

  Clyde Workers’ Committee, 488, 640, 659

  Clynes, J. R., 497, 692

  Coachmakers, 46, 80, 230, 423, 438, 744

  Coal Industry Commission, 511, 518-22, 648, 662-3

  Coal-miners.
    _See_ Miners

  Coal-porters, 18, 439, 500-501

  Cobbett, Wm., 94, 96, 132, 154-5;
    the younger, 253

  Cobden, Richard, 178, 383

  Cohen, H., 599, 601

  Cokemen, 434, 512, 549

  Cole, G. D. H., 485, 524, 532, 553, 633, 637, 660

  Cole, Percy, 491

  Colliery Clerks, 513, 549;
    Enginemen, 434, 512, 549;
    Mechanics, 434

  Combe, Delafield & Co., 150

  Combination Acts, 64, 251

  “Committee Liquor,” 203

  Common employment, 364-6

  Common Rules, 758

  Composite Branches, 483

  Compositors, 27, 57-8, 77-8, 169, 176, 181, 196, 198-9, 201, 205,
        361, 389, 398-9, 415, 437-8, 492-3, 606, 666, 671, 744,
    _See also_ Typographical

  Conditions of Employment, 754

  Confédération Générale de Travail, 655

  Conference of Amalgamated Trades, 263-83

  Confiscation of funds proposed, 140

  Congress, Trades Union, origin of, 280-81;
    description of, 561-6;
    summons to, 738-740

  Congreve, Richard, 269

  Connolly, T., 248, 273;
    James, 472-3, 655-7

  Conscription, 639-40, 666-7

  Consolidated Society of Bookbinders, London.
    _See_ Bookbinders

  Conspiracy, law of, 67, 367, 598;
    to injure, 598

  Constitution of Labour Party, 697;
    of Trade Unions, 716

  Consumers, organisation of, 762

  Contagious Diseases Acts, 237

  Contracting Out, 366

  Cook, A. G., 399

  Co-operative Employees, 504, 559, 744;
    Movement, 225, 647, 675, 752-62;
    production, 168, 194, 225-6, 335-6, 650-51, 659, 707-8;
    Society of Smiths.
      _See_ Smiths;
    Union, the, 545, 691;
    Wholesale Society, 541;
    workshops, 194

  Coopers, 74-5, 104, 230, 350, 423, 438, 548, 685

  Co-partnership, 653

  Copper-miners, absence of T.U. among, 434

  Cordwainers.
    _See_ Boot and Shoe Operatives

  Corn Production Act, 475, 498

  Costing experts, 761

  Cotton-spinners, 7, 41, 56, 81, 92, 116-24, 127, 151-2, 170-71, 176,
        181, 191, 226, 259, 307-13, 415-16, 423, 435, 475-80, 744

  Cotton-weavers, 56-9, 81-2, 86, 109, 307-13, 344, 435, 475-80

  Coulson, Edward, 233-40, 248, 252, 255, 282, 362

  Coventry, 95

  Cowen, Joseph, 316

  Cox, Harold, 391, 393

  Craft Gilds, 4-21;
    labourers excluded from, 43

  Cranmer, Archbishop, 4

  Crawford, William, 296, 303-4, 391

  Crayford, calico-printers of, 193

  Cremer, Sir W. R., 248, 289, 682

  Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1871, 282-3, 290-91, 364

  Crompton, Henry, 265, 278, 282, 284, 286, 298, 338, 362, 374.
    _See_ Positivists

  Cromwell, combinations reported to, 3

  Crooks, W., 685

  Cross, Viscount, 291, 312, 618, 624

  Cruikshank, James, 20

  Cubitt’s, Messrs., strike at, 150

  Cunningham, Dr. William, 9, 15, 16, 49, 52, 55, 62, 308

  Curriers, 37, 45, 46, 59, 90, 92, 181, 236

  Customs officers, 507

  Cutlers, 73, 80, 92, 108, 241

  Cutlers’ Company, 39


  _Daily Citizen_, 689

  _Daily Herald_, 502, 542, 689

  Dale, David, 328, 339

  Danter, 255, 318

  Dartmouth, 34

  Davenport, W., 30

  Davis, J. E., 251

  Davis, R. J., 503

  Davis, W. J., 281, 324, 356, 358-9 (life), 368, 391, 395, 401, 554,
        601, 680

  Davitt, Michael, 473

  Defoe, Daniel, 35

  Delahaye, Victor, 385

  De Leon, Daniel, 656

  Demarcation disputes, 247, 353

  Democracy, nature of, 704-18;
    analysis of, 752-62

  Deportation of Clyde workers, 640

  Deputies, 513, 549

  Derby, hatters of, 53;
    potters of, 133;
    “turn-outs” of, 137-8

  Devon, clothiers of, 33-5, 68

  Devonport, Lord, 501-2

  Dilke, Sir Charles, 238, 494, 617

  Dilution, 637-43.

  Direct action, 663-73, 712

  Directory of Trade Unions, 244-5

  District Committee, 221-2, 449;
    Councils, 547

  District Delegate, 322, 462-3

  Dock Foremen and Clerks, London Society of, 440

  Dockers, 401-5, 416, 420, 439, 497-502, 744

  Document, the, 130, 150-51, 164, 193, 215-16, 244, 255

  Doherty, John, 107, 117-18, 122, 124

  Dolléans, E., 175

  Dorchester labourers, 138, 144-8

  Dowlais iron workers, 224

  Drake, Barbara, 637

  Dronfield, William, 240, 252, 257-8

  Druitt, 278-9

  Drummond, C. J., 398

  Drummond, Henry, 277

  Drury, John, 184, 186

  Dublin, 14, 37, 53, 76, 104, 172, 243, 551, 721-4

  Dugdale, 6

  Duncombe, Thomas Slingsby, 185-7, 193-5, 277

  Dundee, 136

  Dunning, T. J., 23, 188, 228, 240, 243, 245, 252, 321

  Dunsford, Martin, 34

  Durham, coal-miners of, 44, 181-2, 186, 304, 342, 349, 386, 391-2,
        511-12, 517

  Dyer, Colonel, xiv

  Dyers, 100, 243, 436, 478, 480, 552


  Eastern Counties Labour Federation, 405.
    _See also_ Agricultural Labourers

  Edinburgh, compositors of, 58;
    trade clubs of, 177;
    Trades Council of, 242, 252;
    Upholsterers’ Sewers’ Union at, 336

  Educational Institute of Scotland, 473

  Eight Hours Bill, textile agitation for, in 1867-75, 309;
    general, 387, 390-92, 408, 648

  Eight hours day, 402-3;
    demanded in 1834, 151;
    on the railways, 535

  Elcho, Lord.
    _See_ Wemyss, Earl of

  Eldon, Lord, 105

  Election expenses, 368

  Electioneering by Trade Unions, 274-5

  Electrical Trades Union, 488, 551

  Elizabeth, Act of, 47-9

  Ellenborough, Lord, 59-60, 144

  Ellicott, Dr., Bishop of Gloucester, 332

  Ellis, Sir T. Ratcliffe, 530

  Ely, Bishop of, 3

  Emblem, 450

  Emigration, 201-2, 328

  Employer and Workman Act, 291, 625

  Employers’ Associations, service of, 479;
    as combinations, 73

  Employers’ liability, 364-6, 370, 373

  Employers of Labour, National Federation of Associated, 326-7

  Employment Exchanges, 646

  Engels, Friedrich, 186

  Engineering and Shipbuilding Federation, 552-3

  Engineers, 174, 176, 178, 196-7, 201, 204-24, 230, 232-4, 245, 255,
        259, 261, 313-17, 346, 348, 353, 355, 384-5, 408, 415-16,
        420-21, 551, 555, 559, 636, 643, 692, 744;
    statistics of, 407, 428-31, 484-490;
    strike of 1836, 206;
    strike of 1852, 214-16;
    strike of 1897, 484-5

  Enginemen, 440

  Equalisation of funds, 220

  Erle, Sir William, 195, 264, 279

  Evans, D., 511

  Evans, Frederick, 523

  Eversley, Lord, 228

  Excess Profits Duty, 641

  Excise officers, 507-8

  Exeter, 34-5, 136


  Fabian Research Department.
    _See_ Labour Research Department

  Fabian Society, 375, 399, 414, 561, 642, 662, 680-82, 684

  Factory Acts, 679

  Factory Acts Reform Association, 310-13

  Factory inspectors, 371-2

  Fagniez, 3, 7, 8

  Fairbairn, Sir W., 84, 205

  Fair Trade League, 394-5

  “Fair Wages” agitation, 398-9, 558

  Farr, Dr. William, 228

  Farriers, 46

  Farringdon, prosecution of labourers at, 332

  Farwell, Lord Justice, 627

  Faulkner, H. V., 175

  Fawcett Association, 508

  Fawcett, Henry, 228, 238, 312

  Federal Council of Secondary School Associations, 506

  Federation of British Industries, 545

  Federation of the Engineering and Shipbuilding Trades, 355, 421, 552-3

  Federation of Organised Trade Societies, 356

  Felkin, W., 38, 52, 169

  Feltmakers’ Company, 28, 30, 52-3

  Female Umbrella Makers, 337

  Fenwick, Charles, 362

  Fernehough, Thomas, 260

  Ferrand, M.P., 186

  Fielden, J., 132, 151, 158

  Fielding, Sir John, 54

  Figgis, J. N., 611

  Filesmiths of Sheffield, 80

  Findlay, Sir George, 525

  Finlaison, 268

  Flannel-weavers of Rochdale, 127

  Flax Roughers, 473;
    workers, 133, 435-6

  Flint Glass Makers, 181, 183-4, 197, 199-202, 228, 230, 379-80, 423,
        744

  Forbes, Archibald, 329

  Foreign policy of Labour Party, 695-6

  Foremen, 440, 506

  Forest of Dean Miners’ Association, 434. _See also_ Miners

  Forster, W. E., 228

  Foster, Thomas, 118-20;
    (another) 648

  Foxwell, Professor H. S., 58, 155, 157, 162, 308

  Framework-knitters, 14, 38-9, 51, 51-2, 62, 75, 88-9, 94, 121

  Franchise, 368, 372, 624, 672

  Franklin, Benjamin, 27

  Free Colliers of Scotland, 20

  Freemasons, 19

  French Polishers, 432-3

  Friendly Benefits, 222, 445, 620-21

  Friendly Societies, 19, 24;
    Act for, 261

  Friendly Society of Oddfellows, 19

  Friendly Society of Operative Stonemasons.
    _See_ Stonemasons

  Friendly Union of Mechanics, 208

  Friendly United Smiths of Great Britain and Ireland, 207.
    _See also_ Smiths

  Friziers, 91

  Frost, Williams, and Jones, Newport Chartists, 177

  Froude, J. A., 48

  Furnishing Trades, 481

  Fynes, Richard, 90, 124, 181, 186


  Gaevernitz, von Schulze, 339, 414

  Galloway, 61, 205

  Galton, F. W., 23, 97, 150

  Gammage, R. G., 175

  Garibaldi, 247

  Garment Workers.
    _See_ Tailors

  Garton Foundation, 648

  Gascoyne, Colonel, 71

  Gas-stokers, London (1872), 284-5;
    strike of (1834), 138, (1888) 395.
    _See_ Gas-workers

  Gast, John, 84-5, 107, 111, 115

  Gas-workers, 402, 406, 420, 439, 497, 499

  Gateshead Trades Council, 561

  Geddes, Sir Auckland, 536-7

  Geddes, Sir Eric, 536-8

  Geldart, W. M., 609, 634

  General Federation of Trade Unions 554-7, 603-4, 700

  General Labourers’ National Council, 499

  General Railway Workers’ Union, 405-6, 524, 530.
    _See also_ Railwaymen

  General staff, need for, 546

  General Union of Carpenters.
    _See_ Carpenters

  General Union of Sheet Metal Workers.
    _See_ Sheet Metal Workers

  General Union of Textile Workers, 480

  General Workers, 497-502

  George, D. Lloyd, 509, 518, 522, 527, 537-9, 541, 543-4, 645, 692,
        694-5

  George, Henry, 375-6, 389

  Gierke, O., 611-12

  Giffen, Sir Robert, 424

  Gig-mill, 48

  Gild of St. George, Coventry, 6

  Girdlestone, Canon, 329

  Gladstone, W. E., 248, 262, 284-6, 302, 365

  Glasgow, calico-printers of, 75;
    cotton operatives of, 56, 58-9, 89, 170-71;
    gilds of, 14;
    labourers’ society in, 417;
    stonemasons of, 347;
    Trades Council of, 240, 242-3, 252-3, 258, 280;
    violent Trade Unionism of, 165

  Glass-bottle Makers, 259, 423, 441, 744

  Glass-workers.
    _See_ Flint Glass Makers and Glass-bottle Makers

  Glaziers of London, 66

  Gloucestershire, clothiers of, 33-5;
    weavers of, 50;
    woollen-workers of, 33-4, 50

  Glovers, 43, 437

  Goderich, Lord.
    _See_ Ripon, Marquis of

  Gold, Silver, and Kindred Trades Society, 551

  Goldasti, 20

  Goldbeaters, 37, 91

  Gompers, Samuel, 556

  _Gorgon_, the, 99

  Government of Industry, 752-62

  Government officials, 507-8

  Graham, Sir James, 60, 185

  Graham, R. B. Cunninghame, 386, 682

  Grain-porters, 501

  Grand National Consolidated Trades Union, 125, 417;
    rules of, 725-733

  Grey, Sir George, 185

  Grinders, 80, 260

  Gross, Dr., 15

  Grote, George, 178

  Guild Socialism, 548, 660-1

  Guilds.
    _See_ Craft Gilds

  Guile, Daniel, 233-40, 238 (life of), 252, 291, 362

  Gurney, J, and W. B., 89

  Gurney, Russell, 275


  Haddleton, 197

  Halévy, Élie, 648

  Halifax, woollen-workers of, 35

  Hall, Rev. Robert, 94

  Halliday, Sir Leonard, 4

  Halliday, Thomas, 289

  Hallsworth, Joseph, 503

  Halsbury, Lord, 610, 614

  Hamilton, A. H. A., 33

  Hammond, J. L. and B., 70-71, 82, 86, 89, 100, 105, 112, 115, 144

  Hanley Trades Council, 558

  Hansom, 130

  Hardie, J. Keir, 396, 681-4, 688

  Harford, E., 390

  Harrel, Sir David, 530

  Harrison, Frederic, 246, 262, 263, 265, 267, 270-71, 273-4, 275, 279,
        284, 286, 295-7, 298, 362, 374, 610.
    _See also_ Positivists

  Harvey, George, 511

  Hasbach, Dr. W., 329, 405

  Hatters, 28, 30, 45, 52-3, 68, 90, 437.
    _See also_ Feltmakers’ Company

  Headlam, Rev. S. D., 399

  Heath, F. G., 329

  Henderson, Arthur, 490, 529-30, 666, 669, 680, 685, 692, 694-5, 699

  Henson, Gravener, 38, 77, 81, 89, 94, 100, 105

  Hepburn, Tommy, 124

  _Herald of the Rights of Industry, The_, 158

  Herbert, Hon. Auberon, 329

  Hewins, W. A. S., 49

  Hexham, hatters of, 53

  Hibbert and Platt, 214

  Hill, Frank, 14, 228

  Hill, Frederic, 257, 272

  Hilles, Richard, 4

  Hobhouse, Benjamin, 69, 70

  Hobhouse, John Cam, 122

  Hobson, S. G., 660

  Hodge, John, 491, 692, 695

  Hodges, Frank, 517, 673-5, 715

  Hodgskin, T., 162

  Holders-up.
    _See_ Boilermakers.

  Holland, John, 124

  Holland, Lord, 70

  Holyoake, G. J., 302

  Holy town, miners of, 193

  Hornby _v._ Close, 262

  Hosiery-workers, 435-6.
    _See also_ Framework-knitters

  Hour, payment by the, 245-6

  House of Call, 69, 77, 445

  Hovell, Mark, vi, 158, 164, 170, 175

  Howell, George, 12-13, 17, 27, 30, 40-41, 65, 71, 100, 105, 139, 144,
        170, 173, 188, 195, 228, 240, 245, 248, 255, 275, 281, 285-6,
        289, 291-2, 295, 298, 325, 329-30, 352, 361, 370, 372, 391,
        395, 416, 599, 601, 616-17, 623, 665, 682, 748

  Howick, Lord, 146

  Hoxie, R. F., 717

  Hozier, J. H. C., 393.

  Huddersfield, 125

  Hughes, Judge Thomas, Q.C., 216, 228, 244, 246, 265, 270, 274-5, 282,
        290, 263-4, 341.
    _See also_ Christian Socialists

  Hughson, David, 32, 34

  Hull, ropemakers of, 91;
    Trade Unionism at, 136

  Hume, James Deacon, 158

  Hume, Joseph, M.P., 72, 81, 99-168, 142, 186, 251, 277, 415

  Humphrey, A. W., 237, 275, 289, 604, 680

  Humphries, E., 195

  Hunt, D. R. C., 599

  Hunt, Henry, 96, 164

  Hunter, Thomas, 170

  Huskisson, W., M.P., 60, 105-6

  Hutchinson, Alexander, 153, 207-8

  Hutton, R. H., 228, 246

  Hutton, W., 177

  Huysmans, Camille, 666, 669, 670

  Hyde, spinners’ strike at, 117

  Hyett, W. H., 111

  Hyndman, H. M., 376-7, 387, 400, 409-11


  “Illegal men,” 59

  Incorporation of Trade Unions, 596

  Independent Labour Party, 384, 652, 680-84, 692

  Independent Order of Engineers and Machinists.
    _See_ Engineers

  Index numbers, 339

  Industrial Conscription, 639-40

  Industrial Courts Act, 1919, 643

  Industrial Remuneration Conference, 380

  Industrial Unionism, 656-9

  Industrial Unions, 548-50

  Industrial Workers of the World, 655

  Industries, difficulty of delimiting, 714

  Ingram, Dr. J. K., 26

  Initiation Parts, 149

  Injunctions, 599, 600, 688

  Inspectors, 504-5

  Insurance Agents, 440, 507

  Inter-Allied Conferences, 693-6

  Interlocutor, 581

  International Association of Working-men, 235-6, 248, 297, 316, 379,
        396-7, 421, 666, 693-6

  International Federations of Trade Unions, 555-6

  Intimidation, 597

  Ireland, laws in, 68-9;
    Trade Unionism in, 472-3

  Irish Bank Officials’ Association, 505

  Irish Clerical Workers’ Union, 505

  Irish Labour Party, 473

  Irish Railway Workers’ Trade Union, 524

  Irish Teachers’ Society, 473

  Irish Textile Workers’ Federation, 473

  Irish Trades Union Congress, 473

  Iron and Steel Trades Confederation, 492, 552, 749

  Iron and Steelworkers, Associated Society of.
    _See_ Ironworkers

  Iron Forgers, Associated Fraternity of, or Old Smiths, 205

  Ironfounders, 78, 121, 174, 176, 198-9, 200-203, 205, 213, 226, 233,
        245, 261, 319-20, 348-9, 353, 391, 415, 429-30, 488, 685, 692,
        744

  Irongrinders, 744

  Ironmoulders.
    _See_ Ironfounders

  Iron shipbuilders.
    _See_ Boiler makers

  Iron Trade--Midland Wages Board, 734-5;
    North of England Wages Board, 734-5

  Ironworkers, 240, 259, 273, 324, 339, 349, 430-31, 491-2, 734-5;
    of Dowlais, 224;
    of Staffordshire, 256;
    sliding scales of, 734-5


  Jackson and Graham, 290

  Jackson, Col. Raynsford, 344

  James, 37

  James of Hereford, Lord, 206, 493, 610, 615-16, 618, 626

  Jeffrey, Lord, 72

  Jevons, H. Stanley (the younger), 186, 511, 516

  Jewish Unions, 478

  Joiners.
    _See_ Carpenters

  Joint Board, 700

  Joint Committees.
    _See_ Arbitration, Whitley Councils

  Jones, Benjamin, 225, 708

  Jones, Daniel, 734

  Jones, Lloyd, 243, 298, 329, 340-41 (life), 510

  Jones, W. C., 341

  Journalists, 493, 507

  Journeyman Fraternities, 4-9

  Journeymen Steam Engine and Machine Makers and Millwrights Friendly
        Society, 204-20.
    _See also_ Engineers

  Jude, Martin, 182, 299

  Junta, the, 233-98

  Jupp, 18

  Jury service, 367-8, 372

  Justices of the Peace, 372, 594


  Kane, John, 240 (life of), 273, 286, 289, 299, 324, 339

  Karslake, Sir John, 275

  Kay-Shuttleworth, Sir James, 228

  Keeling, F., 500

  Keelmen, 44

  Kenney, Rowland, 524, 527

  Kettel, F. E., 329

  Kettle, Sir Rupert, 338-9

  Kidderminster, 112;
    carpet-weavers of, 224

  Kitchen-range, etc., Fitters’ Union, 323

  Knight, Charles, 141, 178

  Knight, Robert, 322, 324, 351, 355, 378, 421, 554

  Knights of Labour, 135


  Laboratory workers, 506

  Labour and the New Social Order, 679, 697

  Labour Commission, 595-6, 602, 650, 735

  Labour Department, 596

  _Labour Elector, The_, 387

  Labour Electoral Committee, 680

  Labour League, London and Counties, 417, 439

  Labour members, characteristics of, 701-2

  Labour Party, 604

  Labour Representation League, 287-9, 680

  Labour Research Department, 225, 542, 561, 751

  _Labour Standard, The_, 298

  Labour Time, 162-3

  Labourers, no early organisation among, 43;
    statistics of, 428-9, 438-40;
    increase of, 497-502

  Lacemakers, 435-6, 441, 559

  Ladies’ Shoemakers’ Society, 238

  _Laisser-faire_, 56

  Lanarkshire, cotton-weavers of, 58, 170

  Lancashire Federation of Protection Societies, 478

  Lancashire Miners, 182, 433, 511

  Land Nationalisation, 389, 390, 395

  Langford, 32

  Lansbury, George, 689

  Larkin, James, 472-3

  Lathom, R. M., 680

  Laundresses, T.U., 336

  Law, Bonar, 668

  Law reforms, 367-8

  Lawrence, F. Pethick, 681

  Lawrence, Miss Susan, 494, 496

  Laws, Mr., 287

  Layton, W. T., 527

  Lead miners, absence of T.U. among, 434

  Leathergrounders, 92

  Leatherworkers, 437, 552

  Lee, H. W., 501

  Leech, H. J., 293

  Leeds, 35;
    clothing trade of, 35, 40, 127;
    Clothiers’ Union, 133, 147

  Leeds, Huddersfield, and Bradford District Union, 147

  Legal assaults, 597-634

  Legal Minimum Wage, under Trade Boards Act, 494-5;
    under Corn Production Act, 498;
    under Mines Act, 514-16

  Leicester, 94, 125, 137;
    hosiery workers of, 335;
    Trades Council, 558;
    woolcombers of, 36

  Levi, Leone, 424

  Levine, Louis, 655

  Lewis, Sir G. C., 247

  Liberty, analysis of, 757

  Lichfield, Earl of, 254

  Life Assurance Agents.
    _See_ Insurance Agents

  Linen Weavers, 436

  _Link, The_, 402

  Liquor, 448;
    allowance, 203-4

  Litchfield, R. B., 246

  Liverpool, building trades of, 128-130;
    dockers of, 405;
    hatters of, 53;
    ropemakers of, 91;
    shipwrights of, 551;
    Trades Council, 242-3, 252, 354-5

  Liverpool, Lord, 105

  Liverpool Sailmakers’ Friendly Association of Shipwrights,
    _See_ Shipwrights

  Liverpool, Trades Guardian Association of, 243

  Lloyd, C. M., 160

  Local Government elections, 305, 399, 413;
    employees, 508;
    successes, 703-4

  Local _versus_ Central Administration, 714

  Lock-out, the, 255-6;
    of agricultural labourers, 332, 334

  London and Counties Labour League, 417, 439

  London Carpenters’ Company, 18;
    city companies of, 14;
    coal-porters of, 18;
    early combinations in the City of, 2, 3;
    framework knitters of, 14, 38, 51-2;
    joiners’ company of, 18;
    shipwrights’ company of, 18;
    Trades Council, 231, 236, 238, 285, 333, 558-60;
    woodsawyers of, 18

  London Consolidated Society of Bookbinders, 188, 196

  London Society of Compositors, 181, 399, 415, 437-8, 492

  London Working Men’s Association, 298, 680

  Londonderry, Lord, 90, 166, 186

  Longe, F. D., 228

  Looms, renting of, forbidden, 48

  Loveless, George, John, and James, 144-6, 148

  Lovett, Samuel, 96

  Lovett, William, 84, 114, 145, 156, 157, 172, 174

  Lowe, Robert.
    _See_ Sherbrooke, Lord, 285

  Lucraft, Benjamin, 235, 289

  Luddites, the, 87-9

  Ludlow, J. M., 14, 26, 216, 228, 246, 264, 341.
    _See_ Christian Socialists

  Lushington, Sir Godfrey, 228, 246, 264

  Lushington, Vernon, 264


  Macarthur, Miss Mary, 494, 496

  Macclesfield, hatters of, 30

  McConnel and Co., 308

  McCulloch, J. R., 23, 99, 197

  Macdonald, Alexander, 240, 249, 252, 277, 286, 289, 290, 299, 300
   (life of), 301-7, 338, 342, 362, 393, 510, 680

  MacDonald, J. Ramsay, 23, 337, 529, 666, 669, 684-5, 688, 699

  McGowan, Patrick, 118, 120

  Machine, Engine, and Iron Grinders’ Society, 744-7

  Machine Printers, 744.
    _See also_ Compositors

  Machine Workers.
    _See_ Engineers

  Machinery, export of, 100, 103

  M’Hugh, Edward, 582

  MacManus, A., 619

  Madox, T., 612

  Maitland, F. W., 611-12

  Maitland, General, 88

  _Man, The_, 134

  Management, analysis of, 752

  Manchester--Association of T.U. Officials, Manchester and District,
        324;
    brickmakers of, 268;
    building trades of, 130-31, (strike of 1846) 193;
    carpenters of, 343;
    cotton-spinners of, 81;
    lengthening of hours at, 348;
    painters of, 275;
    Trades Council, 243, 280, 558-60, 738-40

  Mandamus, 600

  Manley, Thomas, 22

  Mann, Tom, 383-4
    (life), 396, 402, 406-7, 409, 412-14, 419, 490, 595-6, 651-2, 657-8

  Manners, Lord John, 186

  Manning, Cardinal, 332, 404

  Marcroft family, the, 152

  Marine Engineers’ Union.
    _See_ Engineers

  Marlborough, Duke of, 332

  Marshall, James, 170

  Martineau, Harriet, 141

  Marx, Karl, 162, 235, 297, 367, 376, 389

  Masons.
    _See_ Stonemasons

  Master and Servant, law in 1844, 185-6;
    Act of 1867, 249-53

  Match girls, London strike of, 402

  Maudsley, 61

  Maurice, Rev. F. D., 228

  Mavor, James, 524

  Mawdsley, James, 379, 479, 596

  Mawdsley, Thomas, 311

  Maxwell, William, 598

  May, John, 33

  Mayhew, 11

  Mechanics’ Friendly Union Institution, 208

  _Mechanics’ Magazine_, the, 197

  Medico-Political Union, 506-7

  Melbourne, Lord, 138-48

  _Memorandum on War Aims_, 695

  Memorial of Freedom and Peace, 593

  Menger, Anton, 155, 157, 162

  Mercantile Marine Offices, Superintendents of, 507

  Merchant Shipping Acts, 607

  Merchant Taylors’ Company, 3, 6

  Mersey Quay and Railway Carters’ Union.
    _See_ Carmen

  Merton College buildings, 10, 11

  Mess, H. A., 500

  Middleton, J. S., 691

  Midland Iron Trade Board, 734

  Miles, Wm., 185

  Military Service Acts, 639-40

  Mill, James, 96, 157

  Mill, John Stuart, 287, 617

  Millers, 59, 438;
    of Kent, 59-60

  Millmen.
    _See_ Ironworkers

  Millwrights, 45, 69, 83-4, 92, 204-6

  Miners, 415, 510-22, 624, 690;
    Amalgamated Association of, 289;
    Co-operative Production and, 335;
    Association of, G. B. and I., 181, 182, 186, 299, 517-18;
    Eight Hours Act, 686;
    Federation, 393-4, 408, 433-4, 510-22, 538, 549-50, 553, 555, 648,
        661, 662-3, 665, 668, 673-5, 685, 715;
    Minimum Wage Act, 687;
    of Ayrshire, 681;
    of Carmarthenshire, 44;
    of Durham, 44, 124, 166, 182-3, 296, 304, 335, 338, 342, 349, 386,
        391, 392, 434, 511-12, 517, 744;
    of Holytown, 193;
    of Lancashire, 111-12, 123, 143, 182-183, 188, 392-3, 433, 511;
    of Lothian, 434;
    of Midlands, 349, 393, 511;
    of Monmouthshire, 89;
    of Northumberland, 124, 127, 182, 296, 335, 338, 340, 342, 347,
        349, 386, 391-2, 433, 511-12;
    of Nottingham, 258;
    of Scotland, 192, 393, 434, 511;
    of Somerset, 44;
    of Staffordshire, 124, 511;
    of South Wales, 89, 343, 349, 434, 511, 640, 690;
    of Yorkshire, 124, 182, 228, 230, 256, 301-2, 304-5, 335, 338,
        349, 370, 392-3, 433, 510-11, 522, 744;
    reorganisation of, in 1858, 300-7;
    statistics of, 407, 428-9, 433-4;
    strike of 1810, 90.
    _See also_ Iron-miners, Lead-miners, Copper-miners.

  Miners’ Attorney-General, the, 183

  _Miners’ Next Step_, the, 657

  Minimum to Sliding Scale, 340-42

  Minimum Wage Commission, 648

  Mining Association of Great Britain, 553

  Ministry of Reconstruction, 647-8

  Mogul Case, 598

  Molestation, 597

  Moncrieff, Lord, 343

  Moore, Peter, 251

  Morley, Samuel, 310, 332

  Morris, William, 377

  Morrison, James, 131

  Mottershead, 289

  Mulineaux, Thomas, 30

  Mundella, A. J., 264-5, 274-5, 282, 288, 290, 310, 338-9, 362

  Municipal Employees’ Association, 508

  Munitions, Levy, 641;
    Ministry of, 637-43;
    Munitions of War Acts, 637, 643;
    Tribunals, 639, 643, 646

  Munro, Prof. J. E. Crawford, 308, 734-7

  Murphy, J. T., 490, 659

  Musical Instrument Makers, 92

  Musicians, 744

  Mutual Association of Coopers.
    _See_ Coopers

  Mutuality, 487


  Nash, Vaughan, 404

  National Amalgamated Furnishing Trades Association, 551, 744.
    _See also_ Furnishing, French Polishers, Cabinetmakers, Upholsterers

  National Amalgamated Sailors’ and Firemen’s Union.
    _See_ Sailors.

  National Association for the Protection of Labour, 120-24

  National Association of Miners, 299-300

  National Association of Operative Plasterers.
    _See_ Plasterers

  National Association of United Trades for the Protection of Labour,
        186-95

  National Association of United Trades, 277

  National Companies, 160

  National Cordwainers’ Society, 192

  National Council of Colliery Workers, 550

  National Federation of Building Trade Operatives, 482-3;
    of Colliery Enginemen, 550;
    of Colliery Mechanics, 550;
    of Deputies, 550;
    of General Workers, 499-500;
    of Mine Managers, 550;
    of Professional Workers, 506-7;
    of Women Workers, 495

  National Guilds, 660-61

  National Industrial Conference, 648

  National Insurance Act, 475, 495, 498, 503, 555, 636, 689

  National Society of Amalgamated Brassworkers.
    _See_ Brassworkers

  National Transport Workers’ Federation, 500-502, 538, 543

  National Typographical Association, 181, 191

  National Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives.
    _See_ Boot and Shoe Operatives

  National Union of Clerks, 505;
    of Dock Labourers.
      _See_ Dockers;
    of General Workers, 692.
      _See also_ Gas-workers;
    of Miners, 300-307, 511-12;
    of Railway Clerks, 524;
    of Railwaymen, 530-46.
      _See also_ Railwaymen;
    of Teachers, 440, 473, 506;
    of the Working Classes, 156

  National United Trades’ Association for the Employment of Labour, 192

  Nationalisation, 651;
    of the coal supply, 517-22;
    of Mines Bill, 662-3;
    of railways, 534.

  Navvies, 439.
    _See also_ Labourers

  Neale, E. Vansittart, 216, 341.
    _See_ Christian Socialists

  Neale, Professor, 264

  _New Age_, the, 660

  New Sarum, Cordwainers at, 57

  “New Unionism,” the, of 1833-34, 153-67;
    of 1845-52, 195-204;
    of 1889-90, 414-21

  Newcastle, potters of, 133;
    ropemakers of, 91;
    Trades Council, 252

  Newcastle-on-Tyne--engineers’ strike at, 315-16;
    gilds of, 14;
    shoemakers at, 24

  Newton, George, 258

  Newton, William, 206-24, 234, 243, 680

  Newton-le-Willows, trial of engineers of, 209-10

  Nine Hours’ Bill, 311-12, 625

  Nine Hours’ Day, 245, 391, 397;
    attack on, 347, 355;
    in building trades, 228-32;
    movement in engineering and building, 313-17

  Nixon, J., 340

  Non-Unionists, 441, 443;
    refusal to work with, 295-6

  Normal Day, the, 246

  Normansell, John, 305

  North of England Manufactured Iron Board, 734-5

  Northern Counties’ Amalgamated Association of Weavers, 423, 478

  _Northern Star, The_, 166, 174-7, 181-2, 186, 216

  Northumberland Miners, 181-2, 304, 340, 342, 347, 349, 386, 391-2,
        511-12, 625, 744

  _Notes and Queries_, 34

  Nottingham, 52;
    framework knitters of, 52;
    Hosiery Board, 338;
    stockingers of, 62;
    Trades Council, 252, 558


  O’Brien, J. Bronterre, 178

  Obstruction, 597

  O’Connell, Daniel, 148, 171, 173

  O’Connor, Fergus, M.P., 174-5, 177-8, 182, 188. See _Northern Star_

  Odger, George, 233-98, 238 (life), 243, 245, 247-8, 361-2, 680

  O’Grady, J., 683

  Oldham, cotton operatives of, 307;
    strike of, in 1834, 151-2;
    cotton spinners of, 41, 559;
    strike of, in 1871, 310;
    engineers of, 214

  “One Big Union,” 114

  Onslow, Serjeant, 61-2

  Operative Society of Bricklayers.
    _See_ Bricklayers

  _Operative, The_, 213

  Orage, A. R., 660

  Osborne Judgement, 608-34, 686

  Osborne, W. V., 608-9, 628

  Ouseburn Engine works, 335

  Outrages, Glasgow, 165, 170-71;
    Manchester, 268;
    Sheffield, 259-260, 268

  Overlap.
    _See_ Demarcation

  Overlookers, 477

  Overmen, 434, 513, 549

  Over-steaming, 679

  Overtime, 317;
    in Government Departments, 390-91;
    prevalence of, 348

  Owen, Robert, 130, 132, 134-5, 154-64, 167-8, 177, 251, 341, 409-10,
        418-19

  Owenism, 653, 707

  Oxford, Cordwainers at, 5


  Pacifists, the, 691-6

  Packing-case Makers, 432

  Painters, 125, 275, 432-3, 481, 548;
    of Dublin, 721-4;
    of Liverpool, 128;
    of London, 66

  Paisley, operatives at, 23;
    weavers of, 23

  Papermakers, 68, 77, 90, 92, 438, 493

  Paris, Comte de, 272

  Parker, James, 692, 698

  Parliamentary Committee of Trades Union Congress, 361, 554-6, 700;
    cotton officials demur to alliance with, 310;
    origin of, 281, 283

  Parnell, Sir Henry, 172-3

  Particulars Clause, 679

  Patent laws, 368-9

  Paterson, Mrs., 336-7 (life)

  Patrimony in apprenticeship, 83

  Patternmakers, 205, 353, 430, 488, 551;
    society formed, 322;
    statistics of, 745, 749

  Payment by Results, 643;
    in engineering, 485-7

  Payment of members, 368, 374, 631

  Peasant proprietorship, 368, 389-390, 395

  Pease, E. R., 414, 680

  Peel, Sir Robert (the elder), 57, 60;
    (the younger), 139

  Pemberton, Benjamin, 721-2

  Pension Committee, 594, 646

  Penty, A. J., 660

  Percy, M., 511

  Perthshire, 136

  “Philanthropic Hercules,” 114

  Pianoforte Makers, 230

  Picketing, 278, 598, 607;
    legalisation of, 291

  Picton, Sir J. A., 40

  Piecers, 435;
    associations of, 7

  Piecework Lists in cotton industry, 307-9

  Pilots, 440

  Pinmakers, Corporation of, 42

  _Pioneer_, or _Trades Union Magazine, The_, 131

  Pipemakers, 91

  Pit Committee, 521

  Pitt, William, 69, 71

  Place, Francis, 32, 61, 73, 84-5, 89, 94, 96-110, 114, 117, 156, 159,
        175, 251, 415, 416

  Plasterers, 125, 354, 432-3, 744;
    of Dublin, 172, 721-4

  Platers’ Helpers, 353-4, 360

  Plimsoll, S., 354, 370

  Ploughmen’s Union, Perthshire, 136

  Plumbers, 125, 169, 316, 348, 429, 432-3, 481, 744

  Podmore, Frank, 130, 160

  Police Union, 509

  Political expenditure, 632

  Pollock, Sir F., 597

  _Poor Man’s Advocate, The_, 117, 120

  _Poor Man’s Guardian, The_, 114, 134, 136, 142-3, 155

  Porters, 442

  Positivists, 246, 262-4.
    _See_ Beesly, Crompton, and Harrison

  Post Office annuities, 248, 296-7;
    employees, 507-8, 539;
    Savings Bank, 262

  Post Office workers, 440, 744;
    union of, 508, 661

  Postal and Telegraph Clerks’ Association, 507-8, 662

  Postmen’s Federation, 507-8

  Potter, Edmund, 274

  Potter, George, 231

  Potter, George, 248, 252, 254-5, 272-3, 289, 298, 361, 680

  Potters, 133, 147, 168-9, 181, 185, 192, 201, 438, 552;
    and co-operative production, 336;
    of Staffordshire, 123;
    of Wolverhampton, 143;
    Union, 181, 197

  _Potters’ Examiner, The_, 197, 202

  Precious metals, workers in, 431, 551

  Premium Bonus System, 643

  Pressmen, 27;
    prosecution of, 78;
    _See_ Compositors

  Preston, carpenters of, 75;
    cotton-spinners’ strike of 1836, 169;
    gilds of, 14

  Price, Rev. H., 112

  Price, L. L., 338, 736

  Printers.
    _See_ Compositors, Pressmen, and Typographical

  Printing Trades, statistics of, 428, 437-8, 744-9

  Prior, J. D., 240, 324, 362-3, 372

  Prison Officers’ Federation, 507

  Production for use, 709

  Professional Association, 711-12

  Profiteering Act, 675

  Profit-sharing, 403

  Publicity, use of, 222-3

  Puddlers.
    _See_ Ironworkers

  Pugh, Arthur, 491

  Purcell, A., 560


  Quarrymen, 433-4

  Quittance Paper, 208.


  Radstock Miners’ Association.
    _See_ Miners, Somersetshire

  Rae, Sir William, 95

  Railway Clerks’ Association, 504-5, 523, 534, 539, 545, 661, 744

  Railway Telegraph Clerks’ Association, 523

  Railway Working Men’s Benefit Society, 523

  Railwaymen, 365, 390, 407, 439, 442, 504-5, 522-46, 550, 559,
        600-634, 661, 666, 684, 687, 690, 744;
    statistics of, 407, 744-9

  Railway Women’s Guild, 497

  Ramsey, conference at, 117

  Rattening, 260

  Raynes, Francis, 89

  Razor-grinders, 184, 343

  Reade, Charles, 257

  “Red Van” Campaign, 405

  Reform Act of 1832, 155-6, 177;
    of 1867, 248;
    of 1918, 698

  Registrar of Friendly Societies, Chief, 261, 423, 619

  Renals, E., 339

  Rennie, 84

  Representative actions, 602

  Restoration of Trade Union conditions, 642-3

  Restraint of trade, 67, 262, 617

  Revolution in Thought, 649-76

  Rhondda, 514

  Ribbon-weavers, Coventry, 95

  Ricardo, David, 178

  Richmond the spy, 89

  Rick-burning, 144

  Riley’s _Memorials_, 3, 6

  Ripon, Marquis of, 215, 244

  Rites of admission, 127

  Roberts, G. H., 666, 692, 698

  Roberts, W. P., 182-5, 210, 510

  Rochdale, flannel-weavers of, 127;
    Pioneers, 177, 225

  Roebuck, J. A., 148

  Rogers, J. E. Thorold, 10, 49, 56

  Rollit, Sir Albert, 501

  Roman Catholic Unions, 478

  Ropemakers, 91, 438

  Rose, George, 61, 70

  Rosebery, Lord, 374

  Rosenblatt, F. F., 175

  Rosslyn, Lord, 108

  Rotherhithe Watermen, 11

  Rowlands, J., 682

  Rowlinson, John, 208

  Ruegg, A. H., 599

  Rules, Trade Union, 651

  Rutland, Duke of, 332

  Ryan, W. P., 473


  Saddlers, 92;
    of London, 3

  Sadler, Michael, 123

  Sailmakers, 46, 120, 430

  Sailors, 405-6, 438, 440, 500-501, 607, 665;
    on North-East Coast, 104, 106, 108

  St. Leonards, Lord, 230

  Salisbury, bootmakers of, 57

  Samuel, Herbert, 508

  Sankey, Mr. Justice, 518-22, 668

  Saturday half-holiday, 229;
    Oldham Spinners’ strike for, 310

  Saw-grinders, 260

  Sawyers, 433

  Scale Beam-makers, 92

  Scalemakers, 92

  Schoenlank, Dr. Bruno, 25

  Scissorsmiths, 39, 80

  Scott, W., 124

  Scottish Farm Servants’ Union, 498-9

  Scottish National Operative Tailors’ Society.
    _See_ Tailors

  Scottish Society of Railway Servants, 524-5

  Scottish Typographical Association, 181, 423, 437, 482.
    _See also_ Compositors

  Scottish United Operative Masons, 196

  Seagoing Engineers’ Union.
    _See_ Engineers

  Seaham, 166

  Secondary School Teachers, 506

  Secular Education, 628

  Self-governing Workshops, 225

  Selley, Ernest, 329, 405

  Selsby, 209-10, 234

  Senior, Nassau, 103, 139-41, 173

  Serfdom of miners, 89

  Sewing-machine, introduction of, 228

  Shackleton, Sir D., 685

  Shaen, Roscoe & Co., 275

  Shaftesbury, Lord, 293, 434

  Shale Oil-Workers, 434

  Shaw, Lord, 626

  Shearmen of Dundee, 136;
    of Wiltshire, 144

  Sheet Metal Workers, 431

  Sheffield, 94;
    carpenters of, 232, 236;
    conference at, 257;
    cutlery made, 39;
    gilds of, 14;
    Mercantile and Manufacturing Union, 73, 80;
    outrages at, 259-61, 263, 268-9;
    prosecution at, 184-5;
    Trades Council, 242-3, 252, 280, 299;
    United Trades of, 184, 187

  Shepton Mallet, woollen-workers of, 51

  Sherbrooke, Lord, 285

  Sheridan, R. B., 57, 71

  Ship Constructors’ and Shipwrights’ Association, 551.
    _See also_ Shipwrights

  Shipton, George, 240, 290, 298, 325, 331, 362, 395, 406, 408

  Shipwrights, 45, 77, 247, 353, 429-30, 490-91, 551;
    of Deptford, 85;
    of Liverpool, 39-40, 71;
    of London, 104, 110;
    of Newcastle, 106;
    of the Clyde, 256

  Shirland Colliery, 335

  Shirt and Collar-makers, Women’s Society of, 336

  Shoemakers’ wages in London in 1669, 21;
    of Wisbech, early combination of, 3

  Sholl, S., 37, 55

  Shop Assistants, 440, 503-4, 744;
    of Sheffield, 109;
    organisation among, 136-7;
    statistics of, 745-749

  Shop Stewards, 488-90, 659, 690

  Shopmen, Railway, 531

  Shorrocks, Peter, 278-9

  Short Time Committees, 194

  Show Stewards, 716

  Sidgwick, Henry, 308

  Sigismund, the Emperor, 20

  Silk-weavers, 37, 54-5, 66, 68, 98, 112, 121, 435-6;
    at Coventry, 95;
    at Spitalfields, 37;
    at Dublin, 37

  Silversmiths, 80, 91, 551

  Simpson, Mrs., 141

  Six Acts, the, 95

  Six Hours’ Day, 517-22

  Skelton, O. D., 414

  Slaters, 432

  Slesser, H. H., 601, 607, 634

  Sliding Scales, 338-42, 391, 510, 734-7

  Slosson, P. W., 175

  Smart, W., 511

  Smillie, R., 513

  Smith, Adam, 23, 49, 55, 73, 162

  Smith, Adolphe, 379

  Smith, Frank, 681

  Smith, Sidney, 216, 287, 347

  Smith, Sir H. Llewellyn, 404

  Smith, Toulmin, 8

  Smiths, 46, 121, 205, 207-8, 213, 323, 430-431, 487-8, 491, 744;
    early clubs of, 46.
    _See_ Blacksmiths and Engineers

  Snowden, Philip, 688, 699

  Social Contract, 674, 715

  Social Democratic Federation, 376-377, 384-5, 387-9, 400, 409-14,
        652, 685

  Social Science Association Report, 14, 23, 227-8

  Socialism, revival of, 374-414

  Socialist Labour Party, 659

  Socialist League, 388

  Society for National Regeneration, 132

  Society for obtaining Parliamentary Relief, 62

  Somers, Robert, 272

  Somerset, clothiers of, 33-5;
    coal-miners of, 44;
    weavers of, 49, 51, 65;
    woollen-workers of, 33-4, 49, 51

  South Metropolitan Gas Company, 403

  South Wales, depression in, 343;
    miners of, 511, 514, 640, 690, 692;
    ferment among, 657, 659

  Sparkes, Malcolm, 483, 648

  Spitalfields, 37, 54-5, 61, 66, 98, 112

  Spyers, T. G., 596

  Stabilisation of Wages, 643

  Staffordshire, ironworkers of, 256

  Stalybridge, cotton-spinners of, 2

  Standard of Life, the, 303, 369

  “Standardisation” on the railways, 535-46

  Stationers’ Company, 27

  Stationmasters, 504-5

  Statistics, 422-44, 741-50

  Status, rise in, 634-6

  Statute of Apprentices, 47-9;
    repeal of, 57-61.
    _See_ Apprentices

  Statute of Labourers, 250

  Steadman, W. C., 362, 684

  Steam-engine makers, 203, 205.
    _See_ Engineers

  Steel-smelters, 430, 491-2, 552, 559, 692, 744

  Steffen, Gustav, 86

  Stephen, J. Fitzjames, 70, 279

  Stephens, Rev. J. R., 302, 309

  Stevedores, 403

  Stockholm, 694

  Stocking Makers’ Association, 52

  Stockingers.
    _See_ Framework-knitters

  Stockport, cotton-spinners of, 41

  Stone, Gilbert, 511

  Stonemasons, 125, 127, 149, 151, 166, 172, 176, 184, 191, 196, 199,
        200, 202, 213, 223, 226-32, 241, 243, 248, 274, 277, 313, 316,
        319-20, 343, 347, 348-9, 354, 383, 408, 429, 432-3, 744;
    early combinations among, 8;
    Friendly Society of Operative, 8;
    of Scotland, 174;
    of Sheffield, 80

  _Stonemasons’ Fortnightly Circular, The_, 185, 196, 202

  Strike, first use of the word, 46;
    “in Detail,” 199-200;
    origin of the term, 46;
    the General, 163-4, 658, 671-3;
    the right to, 664

  Strikes of 1876-89, 347;
    in 1891-99, 603;
    in 1900-1910, 603-4;
    of miners (1912), 513;
    of police, 509;
    of railwaymen, (1912) 508-530, (1919) 535-46

  Stroud, woollen-workers of, 50

  Sturgeon, Charles, 277

  Summons to the first T.U. Congress, 738-40

  Supply and Demand, 201

  Surface workers, 513

  Sutherland, Sir William, 541

  Sweating, 371, 380-81

  Swinton, Archibald, 170

  Swinton, potters of, 133

  Swiss Railway Management, 760

  Symes, Inspector, 509

  Symons, J. G., 170

  Syndicalism, 654-9, 690


  Taff Vale Strike and Case, 526, 600-608

  Tailoresses, 136

  Tailors, 44, 77, 97, 192, 259, 319, 360, 369, 371, 478, 551, 555, 744;
    early combination of, in London, 3;
    First Grand Lodge of Operative, 149;
    of Cambridge, 68;
    of London, 67-8;
    of Nottingham, 75;
    of Sheffield, 80;
    statistics of, 436-7;
    strike of, in London, 1833, 149;
    strike of, in 1867, 278

  Tankard-bearers, 42

  Tanners, Bermondsey, prosecution of, 143

  Tape Sizers, 477

  Tarleton, General, 71

  Taunton, 35

  Taylor, Henry, 331

  Taylor, Sir Herbert, 138, 141

  Taylor, W. C., 48

  Taylor, William, 23

  Teachers, 505-6

  Teachers, National Union of, 691

  Tea-workers’ and General Labourers’ Union, 403-4

  Technical Engineers, Society of, 506

  Telegraph clerks, 440

  Terra-cotta, 354

  Tester, John, 127

  Textile Factory Workers, United Association of, 435, 478, 623

  Textile Operatives.
    _See_ Cotton-spinners, Cotton-weavers, Woollen-workers, etc.

  Textile Trades, statistics of, 428-9, 434-6, 475-80, 744-9

  Thomas, J. H., 524, 526, 543-4, 680

  Thompson, James, 36

  Thompson, J. B., 181

  Thompson, Colonel Perronet, 148

  Thompson, William, 116, 162

  Thorne, Will, 402, 497, 684

  Thorneycroft, G. B., 734

  Thornton, W. T., 272

  Ticket-collectors, 504

  Tildsley, John, 175

  Tillett, B., 402-3, 406, 414, 501

  _Times_, prosecution by the, 78-9

  Tinplate Workers, 92, 431, 492;
    Co-operative Production and, 336;
    of Wolverhampton, 243;
    strike of, 194-5

  Tiverton, 33-5, 93;
    woollen-workers of, 34, 35

  Tolpuddle, 145

  Tomlinson, 139

  “Tommy Shops,” 89

  Trade Boards, 647;
    Acts, 475, 494-495, 686

  Trade Disputes Act, 606-8, 686

  Trade Disputes Commission, 605-6

  Trade Union Act of 1913, 631-4, 687

  Trade Union conditions, 637-43

  Trade Union, definition of, 1;
    and the wage-system, 1;
    legal definition of, 617;
    life, 444-71;
    origin of term, 113

  _Trades Advocate and Herald of Progress, The_, 211

  Trades Councils, 242-9, 354-5, 453-7, 557-61, 685;
    exclusion from Congress, 557;
    federations of, 557;
    in Labour Party, 557;
    meetings in Municipal Buildings, 558

  _Trades Journal, The_, 171, 208

  _Trades’ Newspaper and Mechanics’ Weekly Journal, The_, 111

  Trades Union Congress, 350, 358-375, 700, 738-40

  Trafalgar Square, 386-8

  Tramping, 451-2

  Transport and General Workers’ Union, 472-3, 499, 656

  Transport workers, 438-40;
    in Ireland, 472-3

  Trant, William, 3

  Treasury Agreement, 637-8, 642

  “Triple Alliance,” the, 516, 517

  Trollope & Sons, 229, 328

  Trow, Edward, 735

  Truck, 50, 89, 371

  Trusts, 675

  Tucker, 268

  Tuckwell, Miss Gertrude, 494

  Tufnell, E. Carlton, 141

  Turner, Ben, 480

  Turner, William H., 5

  Tyneside and National Labour Union, 439

  Typographical Association, 181, 423, 437, 482.
    _See also_ Compositors

  Typographical Society, 692.
    _See also_ Compositors


  Unemployed agitation, 385, 387-8

  Unemployment benefit, 644, 646

  Unemployment, failure to prevent, 644;
    prevention of, 696

  _Union Pilot and Co-operative Intelligencer, The_, 124

  Union of Post Office Workers, 508, 551.
    _See also_ Post Office Employees

  United Garment Workers’ Trade Union, 551.
    _See also_ Tailors

  United Kingdom Alliance of Organised Trades, 258-9

  United Signalmen and Pointsmen, 524, 531

  United Textile Factory Operatives’ Association, 478

  United Textile Factory Workers’ Association, 435, 478, 623

  United Trades Association, 207

  _United Trades’ Co-operative Journal, The_, 121

  United.
    _See_ Boilermakers, Brassworkers, Bricklayers, Coachmakers,
      Curriers, Machine-workers, Patternmakers, Pilots, Plumbers,
      Stonemasons, etc.

  Unskilled Labourers.
    _See_ General Workers

  Unwin, George, vi, 5, 12, 18, 29, 30, 34

  Upholsterers, 432-433;
    Sewers’ Society (first women’s union), 336


  Vehicular workers, 442

  Verinder, F., 329

  Villiers, Rt. Hon. C. P., 186

  Vincent, Charles Bassett, 523

  Vincent, J. E. Matthew, 329

  Vogel, P., 684

  _Voice of the People, The_, 117, 122-4


  Wade, Rev. A. S., 147

  Wage, a legal minimum in Gloucestershire, 50

  Wage-System, relation of Trade Unions to the, 1

  Wages in London in 1669, 21

  Waiters’ Union, 684

  Wakefield, cloth trade of, 35

  Wakefield, E. G., 35, 61

  Wakley, Thomas, 148, 171, 173, 186

  Wallace, 106

  Wallas, Professor Graham, vi, 32, 62, 89, 97, 175

  Walton, A. A., 289

  Wapping Society of Watermen, 11

  War Cabinet Committee on Women in Industry, 642

  War Emergency Workers’ National Committee, 691

  War Office and strike-breaking, 247, 332-3

  War, Trade Unions during the, 636-649

  Warde, Mark, 128

  Wardle, G. T., 689, 695

  Warehousemen, 442, 503-4

  Warpdressers, 477

  Waterguard Federation, 507

  Watermen, London, 11, 14, 21

  Watermen’s Protective Society, 11

  Watson, Aaron, 181, 296, 511, 625

  Watson, R. Spence, 339

  Watts, Dr. John, 211

  Weavers, an Act touching, 48, 50;
    Paisley, 23.
    _See also_ Cotton-weavers

  Webb, J. J., 37

  Weeks, Joseph D., 338

  Weiler, Adam, 389-90

  Wellington, Duke of, 145

  Wemyss, Earl of, 253

  West Bromwich Miners, 434

  Whewell, 617

  Whitbread, W., 68, 69

  White, George, 40, 57, 61, 76, 77, 81, 89, 94, 100, 105, 251

  Whitley Councils, 490, 646-8, 718

  Widnes election, 699

  Wilkinson, Rev. J. Frome, 128

  Williams, John, 146

  Williams, J., 387, 400

  Williams, J. E., 526

  Williams, R., 497, 500

  Williamson, S., 393

  Wilson, J., 511

  Wilson, J. Havelock, 406, 665-6, 669-70, 682

  Wilson, John, 680

  Wiltshire, shearmen of, 144;
    weavers of, 49;
    woollen-weavers of, 65;
    woollen-workers of, 49

  Winters, Thomas, 195

  Wisbech, shoemakers of, 3

  Witanagemot, 20

  Wolverhampton, 248, 259;
    Building Trades Joint Committee, 308;
    tinplate workers of, 243;
    (strike), 194-5;
    Trades Council, 399

  Women Clerks and Secretaries, Association of, 505

  Women in Engineering, 638, 642-3

  Women in Trade Unionism, 335-6, 424, 426-7, 474, 494-7

  Women’s Co-operative Guild, 497

  Women’s Labour League, 497

  Women’s Protective and Provident League, 336

  Women’s Wages, 424, 642

  Wood, G. H., 86, 308

  Woods, Samuel, 362, 684

  Woodsawyers, 18

  Woolcombers, 36-7, 44-5, 90, 127, 436, 480

  Woollen Cloth Weavers, Act of 1756, 50-51

  Woollen Cloth Weavers, Fraternity of, 66

  Woollen Workers, 40-41, 435-6;
    of Yorkshire, 123, 125;
    statistics of, 480

  Woolstaplers, 37, 45, 83, 90, 178, 203;
    London Society of, 203;
    Old Amicable Society of, 37

  Woolwich, 697

  Worcester, Gild Ordinances of, 8;
    Trades Council, 558

  Workers’ Union, 498-9, 744

  Working Men’s Association, 255, 298, 680

  Working Rules, 228

  Workmen’s Compensation Act, 364-6

  Works Committee, 490, 647, 707, 716

  Worsted manufacture, 36-7

  Wright, Justice R. S., 68, 279, 362


  Yearly bond; 44, 89, 169

  Yeomen, 4, 5, 6

  Yorkshire, clothiers of, 35-6, 67;
    miners, 182, 301, 304-5, 349, 370, 433, 510-11, 522, 744

  Young, Ralph, 340, 342

  Young, Robert, 490




THE END


_Printed in Great Britain by_ R. & R. Clark, Limited, _Edinburgh_.




OTHER WORKS BY

SIDNEY AND BEATRICE WEBB.


Those who read the _History of Trade Unionism_ will want to know
how far the Trade Union, as an industrial device, is an economic
success--how its operations affect the National Being--whether it is a
cause of loss to the employers--what effect it has on prices.

These questions, and many more, are explicitly answered in


INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY

=12s. net=

which _The Times_ described as

 “A permanent and invaluable contribution to the sum of human
 knowledge.... We commend to the public a book which is a
 monument of research and full of candour.... Indispensable
 to every publicist and politician.”

See also


PROBLEMS OF MODERN INDUSTRY.

=7s. 6d. net.=

Eleven short studies by the same Authors.


THE WORKS MANAGER TO-DAY.

=5s. net.=

A series of Addresses to Works Managers by Sidney Webb on such problems
as Reducing Costs, Systems of Payment by Results, How to Prevent “Ca’
Canny,” Fatigue and Accidents, the Changing Status of Employers and
Wage-Earners, etc.


THE PUBLIC ORGANISATION OF THE LABOUR MARKET.

By SIDNEY and BEATRICE WEBB.

=5s. net.=

A description and an attempted solution of the Problem of Unemployment
and the Unemployed.


THE BREAK-UP OF THE POOR LAW.

By SIDNEY and BEATRICE WEBB.

=7s. 6d. net.=

The Minority Report of the Poor Law Commission. A description of the
policy now adopted by the Government in the Bill being prepared by
the Minister of Health for the Abolition of the Poor Law, and the
Supersession of the Boards of Guardians by the Local Health, Education,
Lunacy, Pension, and Unemployment Authorities.


THE PREVENTION OF DESTITUTION.

By SIDNEY and BEATRICE WEBB.

=10s. net.=

A comprehensive and practical programme of how it can be done.


ENGLISH POOR LAW POLICY.

By SIDNEY and BEATRICE WEBB.

=7s. 6d. net.=

The “Missing Link” in histories of the Poor Law--an analysis of the
successive transformations of the policy of the Government and the
Guardians since the “Principles of 1834.”


GRANTS IN AID: A CRITICISM AND A PROPOSAL.

By SIDNEY WEBB.

=6s. net.=

The only book on this important subject, affecting every Local
Government Official and Councillor, and every Ratepayer.


THE PARISH AND THE COUNTY.

By SIDNEY and BEATRICE WEBB.

=16s. net.=

A new picture of English Country Life since 1689, drawn from original
records.


THE MANOR AND THE BOROUGH.

By SIDNEY and BEATRICE WEBB.

2 vols. =25s. net.=

How the Municipal Boroughs and London Government grew into their
present forms.


THE STORY OF THE KING’S HIGHWAY.

By SIDNEY and BEATRICE WEBB.

=6s. net.=

How the English Roads became as they are--from the chariot of Boadicea
to the motor omnibus.


THE HISTORY OF LIQUOR LICENSING IN ENGLAND.

By SIDNEY and BEATRICE WEBB.

=2s. 6d. net.=

A record of experiments in policy with regard to the public-house, from
Henry VIII.


LONGMANS, GREEN & CO.


Published by

GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN, LIMITED.

THE CO-OPERATIVE MOVEMENT IN GREAT BRITAIN.

=2s. 6d. net.=

By BEATRICE POTTER (Mrs. Sidney Webb).

“Without doubt the ablest and most philosophical analysis of the
Co-operative Movement.”--_The Speaker._


SOCIALISM IN ENGLAND.

By SIDNEY WEBB.

=2s. 6d. net.=

“The best general view, of the subject from the moderate Socialist
side.”--_The Athenæum._

       *       *       *       *       *

 Published by THE FABIAN BOOKSHOP (25 Tothill Street,
 Westminster), and GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN, LIMITED.

HOW TO PAY FOR THE WAR.

Edited by SIDNEY WEBB.

=6s. net.=

Containing The Development of the Post Office, A Public Service of
Railway and Canal Transport, The Nationalisation of the Coal Supply, A
State Insurance Department, and a Revolution in the Income Tax.

FABIAN ESSAYS IN SOCIALISM.

=2s. net=

The New Edition (50th thousand), with Introduction by Sidney Webb.


TOWARD SOCIAL DEMOCRACY?

By SIDNEY WEBB.

=1s. net.=

A survey of Modern Social and Industrial History since 1840, with a
description of tendencies.


MEN’S AND WOMEN’S WAGES: SHOULD THEY BE EQUAL?

By Mrs. SIDNEY WEBB.

With Portrait. =1s. net.=

A suggested solution of a difficult problem.


GREAT BRITAIN AFTER THE WAR.

By SIDNEY WEBB and ARNOLD FREEMAN.

=1s. net.=

A guide to study of “After-War Problems.”

Published by NISBET & CO., LIMITED.

THE RESTORATION OF TRADE UNION CONDITIONS.

By SIDNEY WEBB.

=1s. net.=

A description of the problem and a suggestion for its lasting solution.


Published at THE FABIAN BOOKSHOP (25 Tothill Street,
Westminster).

REPORT ON THE WORKING OF THE NATIONAL INSURANCE ACT.

=1s. net.=


 REPORT ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF STATE AND MUNICIPAL ENTERPRISE
 ALL OVER THE WORLD.

=1s. net.=


SOCIALISM AND INDIVIDUALISM.

=1s. net.=


THE BASIS AND POLICY OF SOCIALISM.

=1s. net.=


SOCIALISM AND NATIONAL MINIMUM.

=1s. net.=




Transcriber's Notes


A number of typographical errors were corrected silently.

Cover image is in the public domain.

Table of Contents augmented with “Other Works”.



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