CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY GIFT OF Buss Nixon UNDERGRADUATE HD 6664.P28"l92o""""'' '"'"'^ i2?.,H°i:y'..°0'-a«le unionism, DATE DUE PRINTCOINU'S>A. fim-'^ B Cornell University ^ Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924006358414 THE HISTORY OF TRADE UNIONISM THE HISTORY OF TRADE UNIONISM: BY SIDNEY AND BEATRICE WEBB (REVISED EDITION, EX-' TENDED TO 1920). LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON ' FOURTH AVENUE & 80TH STREET, NEW YORK BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS 1920 A^ ^ ^. ^ff \\'^<^ 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 i^i^status, which was thein indefinite and precarious, has now ; been explicitly defined and embodied in precise and abso- lutely expressed statutes. Its internal organisation has been, m 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 Grgat 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 accoimt 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 Unionisin in this country. We have naturally examined the new material that has been made accessible during the past quarter of a century, in ordter to VI Introduction incorporate in our work whatever has thus been added to pubhc knowledge. But we have not found it necessary to make any but trifling changes in our original interpre-> tation 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 Pro^ fessor George Unwin. Mr. and Mrs. Hammond, Professor Graham WaUas; Mr. Mark Hovell, and Mr. M. Beer, have enabled us both to verify and to amphfy 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 fac^s, suggestions, and criticisms that we have had from Mr. G. D. H. Cole and Mr. R. Page Amot. 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 Tr3,de Union organisation, policy, and methods, or any judgement upon the vaUdity 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 con- ventional 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 fhat 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 owii, 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 organ- isation 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 viii Preface 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 rfecords 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 significaJit with regard to the development of the general movement. Many famous strikes and lock-outs, many interesting trade disputes, many sensational prosecu- tions, 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 rela- , tion to the history of Trade Unionism as a whole. All analysis of the economic effects of Trade Union action we resprve 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, wiU be found to be part of the political history of England. In spite of all the pleas of modem historians for less history of the actions of govern^ ments, 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 aijd morals of the people, must, if it is to be history at all, follow the course of continuous organisations. The Preface ix 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 move- ment. 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 j^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 pohtics. ^ 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 atteinpted to give a bird's-e^e view of the Trade Union world of to-day, with its uhequal 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 whiph it stands confronted. A few words upon the work of qoUetting materials for X ' Preface 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 workings class history, and of Mr. George Howell's thoroughly prac- tical 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 i860, a compact storehouse of carefully sifted facts which compares favourably with the enormous bulk of scrappy and unverified information collected by the five historic ofiicial inquiries into Trade Unionism between 1824 and 1894. We have, more- over, found a great many miscellaneous facts about Trade Unions in periodical hteratture and ephemeral pamphlets in the various puljlic libraries aU over the country. To facihtate the work of future students we append to this volume a complete Est of such pubUshed materials as we have been able to discover. For the early history of com- binations 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 Coupcil, the publications of the Record Office, and the innumerajble broadsheet petitions, to Parliament and old tracts relating to Trade which have been preserved in the British Museum, the GuUdhall Library, and the in- ■ valuable collection of economic hterature made by ProfessorJ H. S. FoxweU, St. John's College, Cambridge.^ Most im- portant 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 ^ Now in the Goldsmiths' Library at the University of London. Preface , xi only to the student of working-class moviements, but also to any historian of English political or social life during the first forty years of the century.^ But the greater part of our material, especially that relating to the present century, has come frpm the Trade Unionists themselves. The offices of the older unions contain interesting archives, sometimes reaching back to the eigliteenth centaury — ^minute-books in which generations of i^iligent, 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, throuigh which the plans and aspirations of ardent working-class politicians and adnlinistrators 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 Glasgpw and Manchester — the descendants of the old -skiUed handicraftsmen have un- earthed " 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 annsds of their class. The whole of the docu- "• 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 tlirow much new light on all the social and political events of English history between 1798 and 1840 [published, ist edition, 1898; '2nd edition, 1918]. xii "Preface i ments in the offices of the great National and County Ufiiops 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 bpoks 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 myisty 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 delibera- tions of the Executive Committees of various national' societies, as well as at the special delegate meetings sum- mbned by the great federal Unions of Cotton-spinners; Cotton-weavers, and Coalminers for the settlement of momentous issues of trade pohcy, 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'J organisation. . * We have naturally not confined ourselves to the work- men'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, ab- sorbed 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 Preface xiii various employers' associations. Est)ecially 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 them- selves often been workmen, the best infprmed and most suggestive critics of Trade Union organisation and methods. We have often regretted that precisely this class is the iliost difificult of access to the investigator of industrial problems, and the least often (ialled as witnesses before Jloyal Commissions. The difficulty of welding into narrative form the innumer- able 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 painfuUy aware of the • shortcomings of bur 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 utrnost 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 pos- session of individnal workmen, who are insensible of their laistorical 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 hew 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 wiU appreciate the "extremity of the vexation with which we have learnt on arriving at an ancient Trade ynion centre that the , " old rubbish " of the office had been " cleared out " six- months before. The local public Ubraries, and even the- •British Museum, seldom contain any of the internal Trade 'Union records new or old. We have therefore not only xiv Preface 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 handi- craftsman, 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 Mfe 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 aU 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 neces- sary, 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 Biims, M.P., we are especially • iiidebted for the loan of many scarce pamphlets and working- class journals, whilst Mr. John Burnett and Mr. Henry Crompton Jiave 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 Preface xv 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. Peddle, to whom, as well as to Miss Apple- yard for the laborious task of verif yiiig nearly aU the quota- tions, our thanks are due. SIDNEY AND BEATRICE WEBB. 41 Grosvenor Road, Westminster, April 1894. CONTENTS CHAP. --S PACE , Introduction to the Edition of 1920 ... v '" -■ - Preface TO the Original Edition of 1894. . vii I.' The Origins of Trade Unionism .... i 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 "VeaRs' Growth [1890-1920] . . . 472 X. The Place of Trade Unionism in the State [1890-1920] 594 XI. Political Organisation [1900-1920] . . . 677 ^PEENDIX. — On the assumed connection between the Trade •f^ Unions and the Gilds in Dublin — The Rules of the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union — Sliding Scales — xviii . Contents PAGB The Sumnjons to the First Trade- Union Congress — , Distribution of Trade Unionists in the United King- dom — The Progress in Membership of particular Trade Unions^PubHcations on Trade Unions and Combinations of Workmen — The Relationship of Trade Unionism to th&- Government of Industry . . , . . . 721 IlfDEX 7^i 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-eamerS for the purpose of maintaining or improving the conditions of their working lives. ^ 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 some- times 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 ' 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 implica- tion 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. B 2 The Origins of Trade Unionism exercised any influence whatever upon the rise and develop- ment of the Trade Union Movement in this country. We feel ourselves, therefore, warranted, as we are indeed com- pelled, to limit our history exclusively to thfe 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 combina- tions 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 Egjrpt 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 insm-rections, and the semi-servile peasant revolts of which the annals of history are fuU. These forms of the " labour war " fall outside our subject, not only because they in no case resulted in permanent asso- ciations, 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 mediaeval 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 crafts- men, a number of hired journejnnen 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 cord- Journeymen Fraternities 3 wainers, in rebellion against the " overseers of the trade," ^ 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, a;nd that its object was to raise wages. ^ 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.* 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 hiU without the town, and sent three of their number to. summon aU the master shoe- makers 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 woU have an harme or a legge of hjnn, except they woU take an othe as we have doon." * 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 k ^ 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). ^ Ibid. pp. 542-3. ' Ibid, p, 6og ; Clode's Early History of the Merchant Taylors' Com- pany, vol. i. p. 63. * 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, 6tudes sur I'industrie et la classe industrielle d, Paris (Paris, 1877), pp. 76, 82, etc. 4 The Origins of Trade Unionism the others, represent the embryo stage of a Trade Union. Supposing, therefore, that further investigation were to prove that such ephemeral combinations by hired journey- men 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 journe5nnan'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,^ maintained : ^ 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 iis 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 Uke Richard Hilles, the friend of Cranmer and BulUnger, 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 manageil the whole proceedings. The Bachelors "in Fojmes " 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 Xyster, the Bachelors contributed nearly as much as the merchants (£155, los. from ten members as compared with ;£i87, los. 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 Bachelors' Companies 5 a continuous existence. But in all these cases, so far as we have been able to investigate them, the " Bachelors' Com- pany," presumed to be a joumejrmen's fraternity, formed a subordinate department of the masters' gild, by the rulers of which it was governed. It will be obvious that associa- tions in which the employers dispensed the funds and appointed the officers can bear no analogy to modern Trade Unions. Moreover, these " yeoman " organisations or 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 l^eonard Halliday, for instance, became a freeman in April 1564 on completing his apprentice- ship, 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 iucomyng to the bachelers' Company and to be broder with thejhn iij" iii* " (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 em- ployers. 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 wi1;h 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 Organisa- tion 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 WilUam H; Turner, Oxford, 1880). See, on the whole subject, the chapter on " Mediaeval Journeymen's Clubs,'' in Sir WiUiam 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.). 6 The Origins of Trade Unionism " Bachelors' Companies " do not appear to have long sur- vived the sixteenth century. The explanation of the tardy growth of stable independ- ent combination among hired journesrmen is, we beheve, 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 Enghsh 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 com- paratively modem 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 joume3mien, 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 organ- isation 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," ^ or like the ephemeral fraternity of joiurneymen tailors of 1415-17, to " a race at once youthful and tm- stable," ^ 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 imtil the changing conditions of industry had reduced to an infinitesimal chance the journe57man's prospect of becoming himself a master, that we find the passage of ephemeral combinations into permanent trade societies. This inference is supported by ' Dugdale's Antiquities ofWarwickshire (1656), p. 125. 2 Riley's Memorials, p. 653 ; Clode, Early History of Merchant Taylors' Company, vol. i. p. 63. Piecers' Associations y 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, how- ever, 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 compul- sory, 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 sUghtest degree consulting the piecers themselves. It is not difficult to understand that the master craftsmen who formed the court of a mediaeval 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 theyfixed the quarterly dues, appointed the "wardens" or "wardens' substitutes," adminis- tered the funds, and in every way controlled the affairs, with- out admitting the j ourneymen to any voice in the proceedings'.^ ^ Compare Fagniez, j&iudes sur I'industrie et la classe industrielle d Paris (Paris, 1877), p. 123. 8 The Origins of Trade Unionism If further proof were needed that it was the prospect of economic advancement that hindered the formation of per- manent combinations among the hired journeymen of the Middle Ages, we might adduce the fact that certain classes of skiUed 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 con- gregations and confederacies made in their general chapiters assembled," which were expressly prohibited by Act of Parliament in 1425.^ And the tilers of Worcester are ordered by the Corporation in 1467 to " sett no parliament amonge them." ^ 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 re- searches 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.' In contrast with the handicraftsmen of the towns, the masons, tilers, etc., remained, from the completion of their apprentice- ship 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 in- dependent producers, each controlhng the processes. of his 1, 3 Henry VI. c. i ; see also 34 Edward III. c. 9. 2 •; Ordinances of Worcester," Art. Ivii. in Toulmin Smith's English Gilds, p. 399. ^ Compare the analogous instances given by Pagniez, 6tudes sur I'indusfrie et la classe industrielle d Paris, p. 203 (Paris, 1877). MedicBval Building Trades g own craft, and dealing directly with the customer. But unlike the tj^pical master craftsman of the handicraft trades they sold nothing but labour, and their own labour only, at regulated customary rates, and were unconcerned, there- fore, with the making of profit, whether upon the purchase and sale of materials or upon the hiring of subordinate workers.^ The stabiUty of their combinations was accord- ingly 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 journejmien 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 mediaeval asso- ciations in the building trades we know unfortimately next to nothing.^ 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 com- binations 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 '■ Dr. Brentano has noticed (p. 8i) '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. ' See " Notes on the Organisation of the Mason's Craft in England," by Dr. William Cunningham {British Academy Proceedings). B 2 10 The Origins of Trade Unionism 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 con- federacies " 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 dis- tinction between the economic position of workers who hire themselves out to the individual consumer direct, and those who, like the tjrpical 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 wiU 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.^ Under such a system of industry the journe5^men would possess the same prospects of economic advancement that hindered the growth of stable combinations in the ordinary handi- crafts, 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. ^ When, how- ^ Such a master craftsmen's society we see in ttie Masons' " Lodge of Atchison's Haven," which, on December 27, 1735, passed the following resolution : " The Company of Atchison's Haven being mett together, liave found Andrew Kinghorn guilty of a most atrocious crime against . the whole Trade of Masonry, and he not submitting himself to the Com- pany 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 In- corporation of Masons, by James Cruikshank, Glasgow, 1879, pp. 131 132). * Thorold Rogers points out that the Merton College bell-tower was Watermen's Societies ii ever, 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 journe3nnan 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." ^ We have dwelt at some length upon these ephemeral associations of wage-earners and on the journeymen frater- nities 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 modem Trade 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). '^ 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 upoii 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 Water- men's Protective Society, to resist non-freemen {London Labour and the London Poor, 1851). 12 The Origins of Trade Unionism Union, men have turned, not to the mediaeval associations of the wage-eamers, but to those "of their employers — that is to say, the Craft Gilds.^ 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 pubHcation in 1870 of Professor Brentano's brilliant study on the " Origin of Trades Unions " that gave form to the popular idea.^ Without in the least implpng that any connection could be traced between the mediaeval 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." * And when George Howell ^ Schanz, however, in his Zur Geschichie der deutschen Gesellenver- bdnde (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). Pro- fessor 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 (Octqber 1910) ; and compare Les Compagnonnages des arts et mitiers A Dijon aux xvii' et xviii' siicles, by H. House. 1909, and EnquStes sur les associations professionnelles d'artisans et ouvriers en Belgique, by E. Vandervelde, 1891. ^ Dr. Brentano's essay was originally prefixed to Toulmin Smith's English Gilds, pubUshed by the JEarly 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 UnionSi 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. 3 Page 102. No direct affiliation 13 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.^ We are therefore under the obligation of digressing to examine the relation between the mediaeval gild and the modem 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 mediaeval 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 imbroken existence from the eighteenth century. The Craft Gilds stiU exist in the City Companies, and at no point in their history do we find the sUghtest evidence of the branching off from them of independent journeymen's societies. By the eighteenth century the London journey- men had in nearly all cases lost whatever participation they may possibly once have possessed in the Companies, 1 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 Journey- men Fraternities, which he suggests may have " awaked under changed circumstances to new strength and Ufe, and to a new policy." We gather , tiiat 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 modem Trade Union." Sir WilUam Ashley does not assert that any con- tinuity 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, rgoo). 14 The Origins of Trade Unionism which had for the most part already ceased to have any connection with the trades of which they bore the names.^ 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 con- nection 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 ^ that direct afiiihation 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 impossibiHty 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.* 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. ^ So long as the Companies continued to exercise aily jurisdiction over their trades, we find them (as in the cases of the London Frame- work-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. 2 Macmillan's Magazine (February 1861), reljfingon the Social Science Report on Trade Societies and Strikes (i86o), p. 521. ' See Appendix On the Assumed Connection between the Trade Unions and the Gilds in Dublin. Craft Gilds 15 It is often taken for ,granted that the Trade Union, whatever may have beeji 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 ^ in maintaining that the free craftsmen associated in order to stop the deteri- oration 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 ^ 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 of&cers or the local Gild Merchant," as a kind of " pohce system," in fact, by which the community controlled the local industries in the interest of the con- sumer. Or again, we may accept the middle view advanced by Sir WilUam Ashley,' that the gilds were self-governing bodies of craftsmen, initiating their own trade regulations, the magistrates or town council having a real, if some- what 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 ^ Gilds and Trade Unions (1870), p. 54. ^ History of Industry and Commerce, vol. i. p. 310. Dr. Gross, in his Gild Merchant, apparently takes a similar view. ' See his Introduction to Economic History and Theory, vol. i. (1891); vol. ii. (1893) ; see also his Surveys: Historic and Economic (1900), i6 The Origins of Trade Unionism 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, hke 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 joume5rmen 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 through- out the whole range of gild history the master craftsman, controlling the processes and selling the products of the labour of his Uttle industrial group, was the practical ad- rninistrator of, and the dominant influence in, the gild system.^ In short, the typical gild member was not wholly, or even chiefly, a manual worker. From the first he suppUed not only whatever capital was needed in his industry, but also that knowledge of the markets for both raw material and "■ 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 re- cognition of political equality of trade stock and real property in the towns " (Gilds and Trade Unions, p. 73). Employers' Associations 17 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 Uijion, 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 sub- stitution, 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 beheve, with George Howell, that it was the " early protot5rpe " 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 con- sumer at large. We do not need to discuss the soundness of the mediaeval 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 per- mitted to lower the standard of production. " The i8 The Origins of Trade Unionism Fundamental Ground," says the petition of the Carpenters', j 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." ^ The leading men of the gild became, in effect, officers of the munici- pality, 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 mediaeval gild have, in fact, been broken up and dispersed. The friendly society and ^ 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 los. 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 com- bination were recognised by incorporation they would be able to bring the whole building trade to a standstill, as experience had already de- monstrated 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 govern- ment 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 i6th and lyth Centuries, 1904). Common Features 19 the Trade Union, the capitahst 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.i Although there is an essential difference in the com- position 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 associa- tion 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 organisa- tion, 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 ordiijances of the Graft Gilds. The fantastic ritual peculiar to the Trade Unionism of 1829-34, which we shall describe in a subse- quent chapter, was, as we shall see, taken from the cere- monies 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 ^ " The Trade Union of to-day is often spoken of as the lineal de- scendant 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; pubr lished in The Claims of Labour (Edinburgh, i8' 20 The Origins of Trade Unionism 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 gUd 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 degrada- tion 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 mediaeval 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." ^ But in this respect the Trade Union does not so ipuch resemble the Craft Gild, as reassert what was once the accepted principle of mediaeval society, of which the gild policy was only one manifestation. We do not wish, in our historical survey of the Trade Union Move- ment, to enter into the far-reaching controversy as to the political validity either of the mediaeval theory of the com- " 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 i6tk and lyth Centuries, by Professor George Unwin, 1904, p. 8). 1 Goldasti's Constitutiones Imperiales, torn. iv. p. 189, quoted by Dr. Brentano, p. 60. Beginnings of Trade Unionism 21 piolsory maintenance of the Standard of Life, or of such analogous modem expedients as Collective Bargaining on the one hand, or Factory Legislation on the other. Nor do we wish to imply that the mediaeval 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 re- spect 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 cor- porations, in the innumerable trade pamphlets and broad- sheets 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,^ or indeed much before ^ 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 " 22 The On'gins of Trade Unionism 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, memoriaUsed 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.^ We do, however, discover in the latter half of the seventeenth century various traces of sporadic combinations and associa- tions, 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 journe5nnen's associations in most of the skilled trades. And finally, we may infer the wide extension of the move- ment from the steady multiplication of the Acts against combinations in particular industries, and their culmination in the comprehensive statute of 1799 forbidding all com- binations whatsoever. If we examine the evidence of the rise of combinations in particular trades, we see the Trade Union springing, {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. ^ 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 stubborn- ness of our poor," who insist on excessive wages. But the author attri- butes 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. The House of Call 23 not from any particular institution, but from every oppor- tunity 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." ^ And there is actual evidence of the rise of one of the oldest of the existing Trade Unions out of a gathering of the joumejmien " to take a social pint of porter together." ^ 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 enforce- ment 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 organisa- tion. 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 1 Wealth of Nations, bk. i. ch. x. p. 59 of McCuUoch's edition, 1863. In an operative's description, dated i8og, 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. Car tile's Sketches of Paisley, by William Taylor, Paisley, 1809, pp. 15-17). ' 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, i860, 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. 24 The Origins of Trade Unionism unite themselves in societies to promote Amity and true Christian Charity," and estabUshing 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.^ And if the trade is one in which the journesmien frequently travel in search of work, we note the slow elaboration of systematic arrange- ments ior the relief of these " tramps " by their fellow- workers in each town through which they pass, and the 1 Articles of Agreement made and confirmed by u 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 spontane- ous organisations. The rules of upwards of a hundred of these societies, dating between 1750 and i8zo, and aU 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 aU 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 mediaeval fraternities and the modern Trade Unions (see review in the English His- torical Review, October 1918, of P. J. Blok's Geschiedenes einer HoUandischen Stad). Tramping Societies 25 inevitable passage of this far-extending tramping society into a national Trade Union.-"^ 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 fundajnental condition of Trade Unionism we discover in the economic revolution through which certain industries were passing. In all cases in which Trade Unions arose, ' Schanz (Gesellenverbdnde, p. 25) follows Brentano (p. 94) in attribut- ing 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 wool-combers 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 Irom. that Committee, July 17, 1806). 26 The Origins of Trade Unionism 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, gUd mastership — the mastership of the masterpiece — becomes httle 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." ^ Or, to express this Industrial Revolution in more abstract terms, we may say, in the words of Dr. Ingram, that " the whole modem 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." ^ 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 h5q)othesis, have expected to find Trade Unions at an earlier date than factories, or in in- dustries 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. ^ J. M. Ludlow, in article in Macmillan's Magazine, February i86i. ' Work and the Workman, by Dr. J. K. Ingrain (Address to the Trailes Union Congress at Dublin, 1880). The Printers' Chapel 27 We may note, to begin withj the very old institution of the printers' "chapel," with its "father" and "clerk," an informal association among the compositors of a par- ticular estabUshment 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 journejmien. The " chapel " may possibly be nearly as old as the introduction of printing into this country.^ 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 " turn- overs " — grievances which vexed every compositors' Trade Union throughout the nineteenth century.^ Whether the " Free Joume5mien Printers " managed to continue in existence as a Trade Union is uncertain. We have found no actual evidence of any other combination among com- ^ 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 pre- served in the Place MSS. 27799 — 88. ^ 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 con- cerned, 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 Phoenix, or Society of Compositors " meeting at " The Hole in the Wall " tavern. Fleet Street, shows that this organisation was " in- stituted 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 sen- tenced to two years' imprisonment (Conflicts of Capital and Labour, by George Howell, i8go, p. 92). 28 The Origins of Trade Unionism posifors than the " chapel " earlier than the eighteenth century. One of the earliest proven cases of continuous associa- tion 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 jour- nejnuen in the various London workshops — each of which had apparently a workshop organisation somewhat resem- bling 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 Alder- men. The journeymen seem to have co-operated with the employers in presenting this Ust, and in preventing the employment of non-freemen. The rates fixed did not, how- ever, always satisfy the journeymen, especially when the ernployers were successful in getting them lowered ; and in 1696 we read of a deputation appearing before the Coiurt 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 journe3nnan 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 consider- able 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 Hatters 29 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 certifi- cate 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 le^al 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 prosecu- tion 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 re- ferred 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.^ 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 estabhshed 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 main- taining 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 " con- gresses " of the hatters in 1772, 1775, and 1777, held in London for the adoption of " byelaws " for the whole trade ; but we beheve that these " congresses " were attended by delegates from the workshops in and near London only. ' For this interesting case we are indebted to Professor George Unwin's researches in the records of the Feltmakers' Company, whosei " Court Book " contains the record. See Industrial Organisation in the i6ih and lyth Centuries, by George Unwin, 1904 ; "A Seventeenth-Century Trade Union," by the same, in Economic Journal, 1910, pp. 394-403 ; the chapter " Medijeval Journeymen's Clubs " in Sif William Ashley's Sztrwej/i. Historic and Economic, 1900. 30 The Origins of Trade Unionism 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 regula- tions 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.^ 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.* " The tailor," says an eighteenth-century manual for the yotmg 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." * 1 House of Commons Journals, vol. xxxvi. ; 8 Eliz. c. ii ; i 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 Seven- teenth Century Trade Union," by Professor George Unwin, in Economic Journal, 1910, pp. 394-403 ; Conflicts of Capital and Labour, Ijy 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. 2 For the whole history of this industry, see The Tailoring Trade by F. W. Galton, 1896. ' a . j * The London Tradesman, by Campbell, 1747, p. 192. The Capitalist Employers 31 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." ^ The " accustomed tailor," or working craftsman, making up the customer's own cloth, objected to " taylers being sales- men," pajnng high rents for shops in fashionable neigh- bourhoods, giving long credit to their aristocratic clients, and each employing, in his own workshops, dozens or even scores of journe5mien, 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 pos- sible 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 West- minster had become a lifelong Wage-earner. It is not sur- prising, therefore, that one of the earliest instances of permanent Trade Unionism that we have been able to dis- cover occurs in this trade. The master tailors in 1720 complain to Parliament that " the Joumejnnen 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 ^ The Trade of England Revived, 1681, p. 36, 33 The Origins of Tfade Unionism London and Westminster) which they use ; and collect several considerable sums of money to defend any prosecu- tions against them." ^ Parliament listened to the masters' complaint, and passed the Act 7, Geo. . I. st. i, 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 journejnnen 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 1720.2 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.' In 1810 a master declared before a Select Com- mittee that their combination had existed for over a century.* An equally early instance of permanent trade combina- tion is the woollen manufacture of the West of England. 1 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 (TAe Tailoring Trade, by F. W. Galton, 1896), with an elaborate bibliography. 2 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 Taylorsin and about the Cities of London and Westminster (January 7, 1745). ' Gentlemen's Magazine, 1750, 1768. 1 Place MSS. 27799 — 10 ; see The Life of Francis Place, 1771-1854, by Professor Graham WaUas, 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 Birminghanit Life, pp. 225, etc. ; The Tailoring Trade, by F. W. Galton, 1896). , The Clothiers 33 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, Glouces- tershire, and Devon, who during the sixteenth century had " mightily increased in fame and riches, their houses fre- quented like kings' courts," ^ provided and owned the material of the industry throughout the whole manufacturing process, but employed a separate class of operatives at each stage. Bu3dng 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 yam in the village households. The yam was passed on to another set — ^the hand-loom weavers — ^to be made into cloth in their cottages. The cloth was then " fulled " at the capitahst'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 enter-' ing into extensive combinations from the closing years of the seventeenth century. Already in 1675 the journey-' ipen 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, ' A Declaration of the Estate of Clothing now used within this Realnie 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 manu- facture 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. C 34 The Origins of Trade Unionism in concert, to work under 12s. per week. But it is not clear whether any lasting association then resulted.^ 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.^ 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 wool- combers and weavers in those parts have been confederat- ing how to incorporate themselves into a club : and have to t|ie number of some thousands in this county, in a very riotous and tumultuous manner, exacted tribute from many." ^ The House of Commons apparently thought the evil could be met by Royal Authority and requested thQ King to issue a Proclamation. Accordingly on February 4, 1718, a Royal Proclamation was issued against these " law- less 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 Journey- men each man should keep at once, together with the prices i of aU their manufactures, and the manner and materials of which they should be wrought." * 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 con- tinuance of the combinations,^ which are constantly heard ^ MS. Minutes, Court BookoftheClothworkers' Company, December lo, 1675 ; August i6, i68z ; Industrial Organisation of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, by George Unwin, 1904, p. 199. 2 History of Tiverton, by Martin Dunsford (Exeter, 1790). ' House of Commons journals, vol. xviii. p. 715, February 5, 1717. Tiverton and Exeter petition to the same effect. ' * Hughson's London, p. 337. The proclamation was reprinted in Notes and Queries, September 21 , 1867, from a copy preserved by the Sun Fire OfEice. * See the petitions from Exeter and Dartmouth, February 24, 1723, The Domestic System 35 of throughout the whole of the eighteenth century, dsdng 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 York- shire, on the so-called " Domestic System." The Yorkshire weaver was a small master craftsman of the old type, him- self 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 HaUfax, " there was a Tenter, and almost on every Tenter a piece of cloth, or kersey, or shalloon, ... at 'every considerable house was a manu- factory ; . . . then, as every clothier must keep a horse, perhaps two, to fetch and carry for the use of his manu- facture, viz., to fetch home his wool and his provisions from the market, to carry his yam to the spinners, his manu- facture 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." ^ Not until the Yorkshire cloth vol. XX. pp. 268-g ; 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 ;^iooo (Gentlemen's Magazine, 1738, p. 658 ; see also " An Essay on Riots, their Causes and Cure," published in the Gloucester Journal, and reprinted in iJaG 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). '■ Defoe's Tour, vol. iii. pp. 97-101, 116 (1724). John Bright mentions 36 The Origins of Trade Unionism dealers began, about 1794, to establish factories on a large scale do we find any Trade Unions, and then joumejmien 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 eveiywhere 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 wool- combers, like the weavers of the West of England, formed but one of several classes of workers for whose employ- ment both capital and commercial knowledge was indis- pensable. We hear, already in 1674, of an attempt by the Leicester woolcombers to " form a company," ^ 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 httle formidable they gave laws to their masters, as also to themselves — viz.. That no man should coinb. 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 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 seven- teenth century, often mere wage-earners, see Cartwiight's Chapters o/j Yorkshire History. 7; * History of Leicester,. hy James Thompson, 1849, pp. 431-2. Woolcombers' Clubs 37 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." ^ 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 centtury.^ 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.' The gold-beaters, whose union dates at any rate from 1777, were similarly debarred from owning the material. • 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. * See, in corroboration, Leicester Herald, August 24, 1793 ; Morning Chronicle, October 13, 1824 ; Place MSS., 27801 — 246, 247. ' The Dublin silk-weavers, owing perhaps to their having been largely Huguenot refugees in a Roman Catholic town, appear to have been associ- ated 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, 181 1, and Industrial Dublin since i6g8 and the Silk Industry in Dublin, by J. J. Webb, 1913. 38 The Origins of Trade Unionism 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 hmitation 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.^ The development of the industrial organisation of the 1 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 ig, 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. The Shipwrights 39 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 pre- valent relaxation in the customary restrictions as to appren- tices, 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 suppljdng power. It is no mere coincidence that in the year 1790 the Sheffield employers found them- selves obliged to take concerted action against the " scissor- grinders and other workmen who have entered into un- lawful combinations to raise the price of labour." ^ 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 nominat- ing its own candidate, and, in the end, actually put him at the head of the poll. The society, which had a contribu- tion in 1824 of fifteen pence per month, and had built alms- houses for its old members, is reputed to have been at one ' 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. 40 The Origins of Trade Unionism time so powerful that any employer who refused to obey its rules found his business absolutely brought to a stand- ,stm.i But the cardinal example^ of the conception of Trade Unionism with the divorce of the worker from the instru- ments of production is seen in the rapid rise of trade com- binations 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 estabhshing 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 Parhamentary 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 through^ out 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 — ih& ^ 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. The Cotton-spinners 41 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, other- wise than in solitude, who should refuse to submit to the obligations and rules of the society." ^ The transformation of cotton-spinning into a factory in4ustry, 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. ^ 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 journe57men'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 capitaUst 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 ^ Report of Committee on the Woollen Manufactuye, 1806, p. 16 ; see also Conflicts of Labour and Capital, by G. Howell, 1890. 2 See Chapter III. „ „ 42 The Origins of Trade Unionism 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 mediaeval 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 pur- chase 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 them- selves, 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 cemnot have money to buy bread. And these are daily so exceed- v ingly multiplyed and encreased by reason- of the unlimited number of apprentices that some few covetous-minded members of the company (who have considerable stocks) 5 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." ^ ^ In volume entitled Tracts Relating to Trade, in British Museum, 8i6, .j m. 13. Tankard -bearers were water carriers. The Glovers 43 And the glovers complain at the same period that " they are generally so poor that they are suppKed with leather upon credit, not being able to pay for that or their work- folk's wages till they have sold the gloves." ^ 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. SeUing as they did, not their labour alone, but also its product, their only resource was legislative protection of the price of their wares.* 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 com- mercial monopoly was resorted to as the only expedient for protecting the Standard of Life of the producer. We do not contend that the divorce suppUes, 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 participa- tion in the gild.* By the eighteenth century, at any rate, ^ Reasons against the designed leather impositions on gloves, B.M. 816, m, 13. , 2 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. ' 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. 44 The Origins of Trade Unionism , 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.^ 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 jovuTie3iTnen whose skill and Standard of Life had been for centuries encouraged and protected by legal or customary regulations as to apprenticeship, and by the hmitation of their mmibers 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 tmited, 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 ■• " Tumults," or strikes, among the coal-miners are occasionally men- tioned 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). Trade Clubs 45 drink with other operatives, and were strong enough, as we have seen, to give " laws to their masters." ^ 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." ^ 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 with- out 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 journey- men, 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 them- selves 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 ^ 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. ^ Jubilee Souvenir History of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, igoi, p. 12. 46 The Origins of Trade Vnionism 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 modem Trade Union Movement.^ 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 associa- tions that initiated what afterwards became the common purpose of nearly aU eighteenth-century combinations — ^the appeal to the Government and the House of Commons to save the wage-earners from the new poUcy of bu5dng labour, like the raw material of manufacture, in the cheapest ^ 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, Sail- makers, Coachmakers, and artificers of divers otlxer 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 MSB, 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. The Industrial Revolution 47 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 poHcy 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.^ 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 beheved 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 poUcy 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 fuUy intelligible, we must now retrace our steps, and follow the political history of industry in the eighteenth century. ' 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. 48 The Origins of Trade Unionism 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." ^ To the Parliament of these 63.ys 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-miU, restrict the number of looms that one person may own to two in towns and one in the country, and absolutely pro- hibit the letting-but 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 locaUty 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 1 Preamble to " An Act touching Weavers " (2 and 3 Philip and Mary, c. xi.) ; see Fronde's History of England, vol. i. pp. 57-9 ; and W. C. Taylor's Modern Factory System, pp. 53-5. The Act of Elizabeth 49 time," were to fix the wages of practically every kind of labour/ 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 mediaeval gild were, in fact, enacted in minute detail in a comprehensive general statute appljdng 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. ^ But codifying and enacting as it did the fundamental principles of the mediaeval social order, we can scarcely be surprised that its adoption by Parliament confirmed the working man in the once universal behef in the essential justice and good pohcy securing by appropriate legislation " the getting of a com- petent MveUhood " by all those concerned in industry.^ Exactly the same view prevailed at the beginning of the eighteenth century. We again find the newly estabHshed 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 * As expanded by i James I. c. 6 and i6 Car. I. c. 4 ; see R. v. Justices of Kent, 14 East, 395. * See on these points, Dr. Cunningham's History of English Industry and Commerce, Mr. Hewins' English Trade and Finance chiefly in the lyth 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. * 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. 50 The Origins of Trade Unionism 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,^ admonishing the weavers " for the future " not to attempt to help themselves by unlawful combinations, but alwa5rs " 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." ^ More often the operatives appealed to the Housp of Commons. In 1719 the " broad and narrow weavers " of Stroud and places round, petitioned Parliament to put down the t57rannical capitahst clothiers by enforcing the " Act touching Weavers " of I555-' In 1728 the Gloucestershire operatives appealed to the local justices of the peace, and induced thein, 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.* Twenty years later the operatives obtained from Parliament a special prohibition of truck.^ Finally, in 1756 they persuaded the House of Commons to pass an Act * pro- viding for the fixing of piecework prices by the justices, in order that the practice of cutting down rates and under- selling 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.' The next few years saw a revolutionary change in the industrial policy of the legislature which must have utterly ^ Privy Council Minutes of 1726, p. 310 (unpublished) ; see also House of Commons Journals, vol. xx. p. 745 (February 20, 1726). * Privy Council Minutes, February 4, 1726. ' House of Commons Journals, vol. xix. p. 181 (December 5, 1719). * 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). 6 22 Geo. II. c. 27. ' 29 Geo. II. c. 53. ' Report of Committee on Petitions of West of England Clothiers, House of Commons Journals, vol. xxvii. pp. 730-2. Laisser-faire 51 bewildered the operatives. "Within a generation the House of Commons exchanged its poHcy of mediaeval protection for one of " Administi'ative 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 free- dom of contract and unrestrained competition. The weavers received the support of the landowners and gentry in claim- ing 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.^ The Act of 1756 was, in 1757, unconditionally repealed ; and Parliament was now heading straight for laisser-faire. The struggle over this WooUen 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 Uvelihood by the introduction of the spinning- jenny into Shepton Mallet, the House of Commons, which had two centuries before abso- lutely prohibited the gig-mill, refused even to allow the petition to be received.^ 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 regu- lating 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 ^ For all these proceedings, see House of Commons Journals, vol. xxvii. ' House of Commons Journals, vol. xxxvi. p. 7 (November i, 1776). 52 The Origins of Trade Unionism the Company, was brought to an end in 1753 by an ex- haustive Parliamentary inquiry. The bye-laws of the Com- pany, upon the enforcement of which the journeymen had rested aU their hopes, were solemnly declared to be " in- jurious and vexatious to the manufacturers," whilst the Company's authority was pronounced to be " hurtful to the trade." ^ The total abandonment of aU legal regulation of the trade led, after numerous transitory revolts, to the estabUshment in 1778 of "The Stocking Makers' Associa- tion 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." Through the influence of their Union a sym- pathetic member was returned for the borough of Notting- ham. 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 actu- ally 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 unfortimate framework knitters back into despairing poverty.^ By this time the town craftsmen were also beginning to be menaced by the revolutionary proposals of their em- ployers. The hatters, for example, whose early combina- tion we have already mentioned^ had hitherto been pro- tected 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 * House of Commons Journals, April 13 and 19, 1753, vol. xxvi. pp. 764, 779 ; Felkin's History of the Machine-wrought Hosiery and Lace Manufac- ture, p. 80 ; Cunningham, Growth of English Industry and Commerce in Modern Times, 1903, vol. 1. p. 663. ^ Gilds and Trade Unions, pp. 115-21. * House of Commons Journals, vols, xxxvi. and xxxvii. The Commons Perplexity 53 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 travelHng 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.^ 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 capitaUst competi- tion, the journeymen, and often also the smaUer employers, w6uld petition for redress, usually demanding the prohibi- tion 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 fuU 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 1 House of Commons Journals, vol. xxxvi. pp. 192, 240, 26S, 287, 1777 ; Act 17 Geo. III. c. 55, repealing ,8 Eliz. i,. 11, and i Jac. i. 54 The Origins of Trade Unionism case as this for the masters even the most sjrmpathetic 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 liveli- hood by circumstances which enormously increased the pro- ductivity of their labour. But they mistook the remedy ; and Parhament, though it saw the mistake, could devise nothing better. Common sense forced the Government to take the easy and obvious step of abolishing the mediaeval 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 ex- pedients of Collective Bargaining and Factory Legisla,tion, 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 Parhament to- wards 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 loiig after it had begun the work of sweeping away the mediaeval regula- tions 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 importa- tion of foreign silk. Assembling in crowds, they marched in processions to Westminster, headed by bands and bannersi and demanded the prohibition of the import of the foreign - product. Riots opcurred sufficiently serious to induce Par- hament to pass an Act in the terms desired ; ^ but this experiment in Protection failed to maintain wages, and the riots were renewed in 1769. Finally Sir John Fielding, the well-known London pohce magistrate, suggested to the . 1 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, The Spitalfields Acts 55 London silkweavers that they should secure their earnings by an Act.^ Under the pressure of another outbreak of rioting in 1773, Parliament adopted this proposal, and em- powered 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." ^ 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 fists of piecework rates are period- ically 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 Engfish gospel of freedom of contract and " natural liberty," was pub- lished 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 tinie, it must have seemed not so much a novel view of industrial economics as the explicit generafisation 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 pohcy. 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. '. ' '■ Act 13 Geo. III. c. 68 ; see A Short Historical Account of the Silk Manufacture in England, by Samuel ShoU, 1811 * Ibid. p. 4. 56 The Origins of Trade Unionism When the handloom-weavers, earning little more than a third of the livelihood they had gained ten years belore, 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 pro- , ductive 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 manu- facturer as well as to the labourer." ^ Here we have laisser- faire fully established in Parhament as an authoritative industrial doctrine of political economy, able to overcome the great bulk of the evidence given before this Committee, which was decidedlj' in favour of the minimum wage. The House of Commons had no lack of opportunities for educat- ing itself on the question. The special misery caused by bad harvests and the prolonged war between 1793 and 1815 ^ 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 Hmitation of apprentices. In 1795, and again in 1800, and once more in 1808, Bills fixing a minimum rate were intro- duced 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 * Reports on Petitions of Cotton Weavers, iSog and 1811. ' "The period between 1795 and 181 5 was characterised by dearths which on several occasions became well-nigh famines" (Thorold Rogers, History of Agriculture and Prices, vol. i. p. 692). The Appeal to the Law 57 limitation of the number of apprentices, although warmly supported by the Select Committee to which they were re- ferred, met with the same fate. Sheridan, indeed, was not .convinced, and brought in a Bill proposing, among other things, to hmit 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.^ 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. ^ " 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.^ The Edinburgh \ ' 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. ' 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. ' 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 ; IJovember 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. 58 The Origins of Trade Unionism compositors were more successful ; on being refused an advance of wages, to correspond with the rise in the cost of Mving, they presented, February 28, 1804, a memorial to the Court of Session, and obtained the celebrated " Inter- locutor " of 1805, which fixed a scale of piecework prices for the Edinburgh printing trade.^ 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 Parhamentary agitation for additional legisla- tion, 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 king- dom conraienced legal proceedings at the LanarkshiEe 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 magis- trates were competent to fix a scale of wages, and a table of piecework rates was accordingly drawn up. The em- ployers immediately withdrew from the proceedings ; but the operatives were nevertheless compelled, at great ex- pense, 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 en- forcing 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 Carhsle to Aberdeen every loom stopped, forty thousand weavers ceasing work almost simultaneously. After three weeks' strike the employers ^ Professor Foxwell kindly placed at our disposal a unique series oif 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 Belli 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. " Illegal Men " 59 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 com- bination, of which the authorities, in that revolutionary period, were very jealous on purely political grounds. The five leaders were sentenced to terms of imprisonment vary- ing 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.^ 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 soHcitor, who prosecuted masters for emplo5dng " illegal men," that is to say, men who had not by apprentice- ship gained a right to foUow 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. ^ 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 EUenborough, 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 *• See, for these proceedings, the two Reports of the Committee on the Petitions of the Cotton Weavers, April 12, j8o8, and March 29, 1809; and Richmond's evidence before the Committee on Artisans and Machinery, 1824, Second Report, pp. 59-64. ^ It is now in the British Library of Political Science at the London School of Economics. 6o The Origins of Trade Unionism 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, dechned to fix the wages.^ It soon became apparent that legal pro- ceedings 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 Parhament 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.^ 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 Uberty 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 estabhshing 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 1 R. V. Justices of Kent, 14 East, 395 ; see F. D. Longe's Inquiry into ihe Law of Strikes, i860, pp. 10, 11. » 53 Geo. III. c. 40 (1813). Repeal of the Statute 6i 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 aboUtion 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 3000 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 com- mittee of the previous session, introduced a Bill to repeal the whole apprenticeship law. The " Masters and Journey- men 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 pro- tection of the Standard of Life which survived from the Middle Ages.^ The triumphant manufacturers presented Serjeant Onslow with several pieces of plate for his champion- ship of commercial Uberty.* ^ The Spitalfields Acts, relating to the silkweavers, were, however, not repealea until 1824 ; and the last sections of 5 EUz. c. 4 were not formally repealed until 1875. , ^ 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 : 62 The Origins of Trade Unionism 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 molesta* tion 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." ^ But it must be added that the governing class was by no means impartial in the appHcation of its new doctrine. Mediaeval 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 " 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. Ixviii. and Ixix. ; 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 Appren- tice Laws, 1814, 26 pp., preserved in the Pamphleteer, vol. iii. The Resolu- tions of the Master Manufacturers and Tradesmen of the Cities of London and Westminster on the Statute s 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 1 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. ^ Report of the Committee on the State of the Woollen Manufacture in England, July 4, 1806, p. 12. Repression 63 to abolish the laws against combination as to maintain those fixing wages and limiting apprenticeship ; just as the capitaUsts, 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. 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 pos- sesses a romantic legend of its early years. The midnight 5 meeting of patriots in the comer 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-in3rthical 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 com- binations of journe5nnen 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 pohcy marked by the severe Acts of 1799-1800, which applied to all indus- tries 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. 64 The Society to enforce the Law 65 , There is a clear distinction^at any rate, as regards England — ^between the various statutes which forbade com- bination prior to the end of the eighteenth century, and the general Combination Acts of 1799-1800. In the numerous earher 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 Pariia- ment and the law courts to regulate the conditions of labour ; and combinations could, no more than individuals, be per- mitted 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 arrange- ments 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.^ Thus one of the earliest t3^es of combination among journe3nTien — 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 per- sisted in disobeying the law, we have seen how, in 1756, the ^ An elaborate account of this legislation will be found in Labour Legislation, Labour Movements, and Labour Leaders, by G. Howell, 1902, pp. 21-42. D 66 The Struggle for Existence 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 accord- ance with their desires. The almost perpetual combinations of the framework knitters between 1710 and 1800 were never made the subject of legal proceedings. The com- binations 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 com- binations had been greatly increased, the Glasgow and Lan- cashire cottonweavers 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 combina- tion 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 journey- men and thirty masters with the City Corporation, at which the regulations were altered.^ No one seems to have ques- tioned the legaUty 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 1 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). The Law of Conspiracy 67 by the competition of the new capitalist and his "hire- lings." 1 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 joumejnnen 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 hke 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 combina- tion to raise wages among cotton-spinners, whose leaders were sentenced to two years' imprisonment under this Act. The " Bill of Conspiracies of Victuallers and Crafts- men " 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 com- binations of j'ourne5mien craftsmen tq keep up wages or reduce hours. It is some proof of the novelty of the workmen's com- binations 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 ^ This term was used to denote men who had not served a legal appren- ticeship. See " Rules and Regulations of the Journeymen Weavers," reprinted in Appendix No. lo to Report on Combination Laws, 1825. 68 The Struggle for Existence 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 Joume37men Tailors within the bills of mortahty " (7 Geo. I. st. i, c. 13, amended by 8 Geo. III. c. 17).^ Similarly, when the clothiers of the West of England began between 1717 and 1725 to be in- convenienced by the " riotous and tumultuous clubs and societies " of woolcombers and weavers, who made bye-laws and maintained a Standard Rate,^ they did not put in force the existing law, but successfully petitioned Parhament for the Act " to prevent unlawful combinations of workmen employed in the WooUen Manufactures " (12 Geo, I. c. 34). Indeed, prior to the general Acts of 1799 and 1800 against aU combinations of journejmien, Parhament was, from the beginning of the eighteenth century, perpetually, enacting statutes forbidding combinations in particular trades.^ In the EngHsh 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 rehgion 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 com- * 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 convictejd. See Wright's Law of Criminal Conspiracies and Agreements, p. 53. ' 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). ' See, for instance, the Acts regulating the woollen industry, 12 Geo. I. 0. 34 (1725)'; against embezzlement or fraud by shoemakers, 9 Geo. I. 0. 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. iii (1795). Whitbread declared in the House of Commons that there were in i8oo no fewer than forty such statutes. The Combination Act 69 binations 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 ruUng that a:ny 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 penaUsed 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 ' ' neces- sary 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 combina- tion 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 compre- hensive Bill, applicable to all trades, which^ Whitbread had suggested. Thiswas introduced on June 17, 1799, by William Pitt himself, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, who referred 70 The Struggle for Existence to -fhe 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 Uttle opportunity for any effective demon- stration 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 unlaw;ful combinations," it created " new crimes of so indefinite a nature that no one joume57man 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.^ 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 preven- * 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\|or 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 1 799-1 800 by quotations from the Parliamentary Register, the Senator, The Times, London Chronicle, True Briton, and Morning Post. See The Town Lahourer, 1917, ch. vii. pp. 1 11-42 ; also Cunningham, Growth, etc., 1903, pp. 732-7. The Act of 1800 71 tion of conspiracies among journeymen tradesmen to raise their wages. All benefit clubs and societies are to be im- mediately suppressed."^ 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 recom- mended certain amendments. Two justices were substi- tuted for one as the tribunal ; no justice engaged in the same trade as the defendant could act ; the quaUfpng words " wilfully and mahciously " 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 them- selves 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 ^ — raroused 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.* The general Combination Act of 1800 was not merely the codification of existing laws, or their extension from 1 Times, January 7, 1800; Labour Legislation, Labour Movements, and Labour Leaders, by George Howell, 1902, p. 23. " 39 and 40 George III. c. 90 ; see Cunningham, 1903, p. 634. ' 39 and 40 George III. c. 5o ; 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 byHhe employers was mentioned to the Committee on Artisans and Machinery, 1824, p. 603. 72 The Struggle for Existence particular trades to the whole field of industry. It repre- sented 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 joumesonan 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. Prob- ably 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 cus- tomary 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 pro- hibiting combinations of journejnnen 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." ^ What was even more oppressive in practice was the employers' use of the threat of prosecution to prevent even the begin- nings 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 journejmien. 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 1 Combinations of Workmen : Substance of the Speech of Francis Jeffrey at the Dinner to Joseph Hume, M.P., at Edinburgh, November i8, zSzs (Edinburgh, 1825). The Law's Unfairness 73 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 pre- ceding year, with a penalty of £100 for each contravention of this illegal agreement.^ 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 com- parable. The former was, at most, an industrial misde- meanour : 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 capitahst's objection to high wages and the poli- tician's disUke of Democratic institutions. The Combination Laws, as Francis Place tells us, " were considered as abso- lutely 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 work- men 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 con- 1 Sheffield Iris, March 23, 1814. D 2 74 The Struggle for Existence viction 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 coiild 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 pimishments inflicted would not, after a few years have passed away, be credited on any but the best evidence." * It must not, however, be supposed that every combina- tion 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 pubhc 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.^ 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 journey- men as an organised body. In 1804 we even hear of a joint committee consisting of an equal number of masters and joumejTmen, authorised by their respective bodies to frame regulations for the future pasnnent of labour, and resulting in the elaborate " scale " of 1805, signed by both masters and men.* The London coopers had a recognised organisa- > Place MSS. 27798 — 7. The Act of 1800 was scathingly denounced by Cobbett in the Political Register , August 30, 1823. ^ This is a constant subject oi complaint by other employers. ' Introduction to the London Scale of Prices (in London Society of Compositors' volume). Unmolested Unions 75 tion 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.^ 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.^ The minute books of the local Trade Union of the carpenters of Preston for the years 1807 to 1824 chronicle an apparently uncon- cealed 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 pa57ments for advertisements and pubHc 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 appren- tice, 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 ^ House of Commons Return, No. 135, of 1834. ^ Advertisements in Nottingham Journal, 1794-1810. 76 The Struggle for Existence apprentices, and oftentimes even the number of our journey- men. 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." ^ Notwith- standing 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 journey- men. Many of the masters on rfeceiving the bill of a journeyman were in the habit of sending it to the trades' society committee to be taxed, after which the word Com- mittee was stamped upon it. One case was mentioned, when between two and three pounds were knocked oif a bill of about eight pounds by the trade committee." ^ * Considerations addressed to the Journeymen Calico-Printers by one 0} their Masters (Manchester, 1815) ; see also the Report of House of Commons Committee on the Case of the Calico-Printers, 1806. * Evidence before Committee on Artisans and Machinery, 1824, as summarised in the Report on Trade Societies (i860) of the Social Science Association : see also A Digest of the Evidence before the Committee on Artizans and Machinery, by George White, 1824. Laws not enforced 77 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.^ " The London Cabinet- makers' Union Book of Prices," of which editions were pubhshed in 1811 and 1824, was a costly and elaborate work, with many plates, pubhshed " by a Committee of Masters and Journejnnen ... to prevent those litigations which have too frequently existed in the trade." Various supplements and " index keys " to this work were pubhshed ; 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 travelhng rehef societies ; and the roads and parishes would be much pestered with these travelhng trades, who travel from want of employ- ment, were it not for their societies who relieve what they caU tramps." ^ ^ But although clubs of journejmien might be allowed to take, Hke the London bookbinders, " a social pint of porter togather," and even, in times of industrial peace, to provide for their tramps and perform aU the functions of a Trade Union, the employers had always the power of f "• 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. ^ ^ A Few Remarks on the State of the Laws at present in Existence for regu- lating Masters and Workpeople, 1823 (142 pp.), p. 84. Anonymous, but evidently by George White and Gravener Henson. 78 The Struggle for Existence 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 un- finished, but really for the crime of combination.^ 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 Chiurch, 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 journey- men, 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 aU the defendants to two years' imprisonment.^ Twelve years later it was the brutality of another prose- cution of the compositors that impressed Francis Place with the necessity of an alteration in the law. " The cruel persecutions," he writes, " of the Joume57men Printers employed in The Times newspaper in 1810 were carried to an almost incredible extent. The judge who tried and ^ See, for instance. The Times from 17th to 25th of June 1819. * 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 Univer- sity of London. " Bloody Black Jack " 79 Sentenced some of them was the Common Sergeant of London, Sir John Sylvester, commonly known by the cogno- men 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." ^ Nor did prosecution always depend on the caprice of an employer. In Decem- ber 1 8 17 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. ^ 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.^ 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 journejnuen prosecuted and fined for the crime of combining.* 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 * Place MSS. 27798 — 8 ; Times, November 9, 1810. * Report in Manchester Exchange Herald, preserved in Place MSS. 27799—156. " Bookfinishers' Friendly Circular, 1845-51, pp. 5, 21. * Bain's Merchant and Craft Gilds of Aberdeen, p. 261. An earlier combination of 1768 is also mentioned. 8o The Struggle for Existence seven years old, and return to work at once.^ 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." * 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.* In 1819 some caHco-engravers in the service of a Manchester firm protested against the undue multiphcation of apprentices by their employers, and enforced their protest by declining to work. For this " conspiracy " they were fined and imprisoned.* 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' imprison- ment for belonging to what they called the " Misfortune Club," which paid out-of-work benefit, and sought to main- tain the customary rates.^ ^ R. V. Hammond and Wobb, 2 Esp. 719 ; see the Morning Chronicle report, preserved in Place MSS. 27799 — 29. ^ Star, November 26, 1799. ' R. V. Connell and others. Times, July 10, i8ig. * R. V. Ferguson and Edge, 2 St. 489. ^ 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 £t^o Braziers, ,. 664 „ 1768 Masons, .. 693 „ 1852 Scissorsmiths, .. 550 ., 1309 Filesmiths, „ 260 „ 600 United Silversmiths 1 .. 240 .. 299 Cutlers, „ 65 .. 450 Grinders, .. 283 Sheffield Iris, 185 1. , Legal Persecution 8i 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 Govern- ment : every committee or active man among them was regarded as a turbulent, dangerous instigator, whom it was necessary to watch and crush if possible.'"^ 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.^ 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 ^ A Few Remarks, etc., p. 86. 2 Committee on Artisans and Machinery, 1824, p. 395. 82 The Struggle for Existence 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 L3mn 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 varjnng terms of imprisonment.^ 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 con- victed 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 varjdng from four to eighteen months ; the strike failed, and the association broke up.** The student of the newspapers between 1800 and 1824 wUl 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 ^ See the Gorgon for January and February 1819. ^ Second Report of Committee on Artisans and Machinery, 1 824, p. 62. For other cases, see The Town Labourer, by J. L. and B. Hammond, 1917, pp. ,130-33. A Labour Aristocracy 83 a necessary preliminary to the growth among the most oppressed sections of the workers of any real power of pro- tecting 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 handi- craftsmen, and their ef&cacy 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-spinher 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.^ Even after the repeal of the laws requiring a formal appren- ticeship 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.^ We find the London hatters, ^ 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 ;£2o was exacted by the employer. The secretary of the Old Amicable Society of Wool- staplers thirty years ago informed us that,»as his brother had already entered the trade, his father had to pay ;£ioo for his indentures. ' To take, for instance, the cabinetmakers and millwrights. When 84 The Struggle for Existence coopers, curriers, compositors, millwrights, and shipwrights maintaining earnings which; upon their own showing, amounted to the comparatively large sum of thirty to fifty shilUngs per week. At the same period tl^e 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 unlaw- ful 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 incon- sistent with their subscribing to the funds of the 183 1 agitation for the Reform Bill.^ 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.^ But wherever Lovett came to London in 1819 he found that he could not get employmenti without joining the Union (Z,i/e o/ William Lovett, by himself). The millwrights at the beginning of the centuiry were so strongly organised — this probably led to the engineering employers' petition in 1799 out of which the Combination Acts sprang — that when Fairbcdrn (after being actually engaged at Ronnie'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 0/ 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. ^ Articles of the Society of Journeymen Brushmakers, held at the sign of the Craven Head, Drury Lane, 1806 ; Minutes, April 27, 1831. ^ 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 • John Gast 85 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 disci- pline 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 (Home Office Papers in Record Office, 65 — i, 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 de- scribed 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 counter- acted the design of the Board of Admiralty, of allowing the London ship- builders to borrow men from the Portsmouth Navy Yard, contributed mainly to the success of the fight. 86 The Struggle for Existence 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." ^ In the new machine industries, on the other hand, the repeated reductions of wages, the rapid alterations of pro- cesses, 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 Parlia- mentary 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 combina- tions, betrayed, prosecuted, convicted, sentenced, and monstrously severe punishments inflicted on them : they were, reduced to and kept in the most wretched state of existence."^ Their employers, instead of being, as in the older handicrafts, httle more than master worlcmen, recog- 1 Place MSS. 27800—195. "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 Lohn- arbeit, by Gustav Stefifen, 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., The Luddites 87 nising 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 tradifion, 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 subsist- ence wage. In place of the steady organised resistance to encroachments maintained by the handicraftsmen, we watch, in the machine industries, the alternation of out- bursts of machine-breaking and outrages, with intervals of abject submission and reckless competition with each other for emplojmient. 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 imphcitly 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.'^ Both leaders and rank and file, too, were largely implicated in pohtical 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 sensationaUsm 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 1 See on all these points the evidence given before the Committee on Artisans and Machinery, 1824 ; especially that of Richmond. 88 The Struggle for Existence 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." ^ But money was collected from men of other trades, notably bridilayers, masons, spinners, weavers, and colliers, as well as from the soldiers in some of the regiments stationed at provincial centres ; and such evi- dence 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." ^ On the other hand, it looks as if the various local Trade Clubs were m9,de use of, in some cases informally, as agents or branches of thq con- spiracy. 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 > Letter to the local Major-General, June 15, 1812, in Home Office Papers, 40 — i. 2 /jj^_ "KingLud" 89 made by these associations for many years past to keep up the price of the manufacturers' wages ; that finding their efforts for this unavaihng, 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 con- siderable 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 tr3dng 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 pre- paration 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 Bronte'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." ^ 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 ^ The Town Labourer, 1160-1832, 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 Frame- work-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 l8i2, by Francis Raynes, 1817 (in Home Office Papers, 40) ; Report of Proceedings under Commission of Oyer and Terminer, January 2 to Z2, 1813, at York, by J. and W. B. Gurney, 1813 ; Digest of Evidence of Committee on Artizans and Machinery, by George White, 1 824 (see p. 36, Richmond's evidence as to the appeals of the Luddites to the Glasgow cotton-spinners) ; and Annual Register, 181 2. go The Struggle for Existence system, and the arbitriary 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 confedera.cy 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." ^ 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 for- bidding the existence of " corresponding societies," the various federal organisations of Curriers, Hatters, Calico- printers, Woolcombers, Woolstaplers, and other handi- craftsmen 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 meetingsj like that of the Calico-printers who were arrested by the Bolton constables in 1818. The rules of the Papermakers,'' which certainly date from" 1803, provide for the division of England into five districts, with detailed arrangements for * Evidence of a colliery engineer in the Newcastle district before Committee on Combination Laws, 1825 ; summarised in Report on Trade Societies, i860, 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 Papersj 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. * See Appendix to Report of Select Committee on Combinations, 1825. The Liverpool Ropemakers 91 rfepresentation and collective action. This national organi- sation 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 yam ; but the London workmen, finding that the yarn was for a "struck shbp," refused to complete the order. The last resource of the employers was an indictment at the Sessions for combina- tion, but a Liverpool jury, in the teeth of the evidence and the judge's summing up, gave a verdict of acquittal.' This sohdarity 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. 2 The Home Secretary was informed in 1823 that ^ R. V. Yates and Others, Liverpool Sessions, August lo, 1823. See newspaper report preserved in Place MSS. 27804 — 154. ^ The entries in this old cash-book are of son le interest : May 29, 1810 Paid ye Brushmakers . • • £^5 Lent ye Brushmakers . . 10 , Paid ye Friziers . 20 June 26, 1810 Paid ye Silversmiths . . JO Expenses to Pipemakers 4 10 July 24, 1810 Paid ye Braziers . 10 10 Paid ye Bookbinders . . 10 Paid ye Curriers . 10 92 The Struggle for Existence 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.i 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." * 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 Parlia- mentary 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.^ This tendency to form joint Aug. 21, 1810 Lent ye Bit and Spurmakeis . 1 i5 Lent ye Scalemakers . 5 Paid ye Leathergrounders . 5 Oct. 26, i8io Paid ye Tinplate Workers 30 Dec. 11, 1810 Lent ye Ropemakers . 10 May 30, 1811 Received of Scale Beam-makers ■ 5 June 25, 1811 Expenses with Papermakers c 12 6 July 20, 1812 Lent ye Sadlers .... 10 Oct. 12, 1812 Paid to Millwrights . 50 Dec. 7, 1812 Borrowed from the Musical lustru - ment-makers . . . . 200 * Home Office Papers, 40 — 18, March 31, 1823. ^ See report in the Manchester Exchange Herald, about i8i8, preserved in Place MSB. 27799 — 156. * See, for instance, the witnesses delegated by the Glasgow and Man- chester 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. The Class War 93 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 legis- lative 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 naive 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 exist- ence 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 Tiver- ton, for instance, at a " numerous and respectable/meeting at the Town HaU " in 1816, resolved " that, in consequence of the low price of provisions," not more than certain specified wages should be given , to smiths, carpenters. 94 The Struggle for Existence masons, thatchers, or masons' labourers.^ The Compositors, Coopers, Shoemakers, Carpenters, and many other trades record serious reductions of wages at thi^ 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 joumejTmen 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,^ And in 1820 a pubhc 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.^ Finally we have the employers themselves pubhcly denouncing the ruinous extent to which the cutting of wages had been carried. A declaration dated June 16, 1819, and signed by fourteen Lancashire manufactmrers, " 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. " The Stocking Makers' Monitor, January 1818 ; A jew Remarks on the State of the Law. etc., by White and Henaon, 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 Artisans and Machinery, by George White, 1824. " Proceedings at a public Meeting of the Inhabitants of the Township of Sheffield, held at the Town Hall, March ij, 1830 (Sheffield, 1820, 16 pp.). The Weavers' Provident Union 95 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 caUco-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." ^ At Coventry the ribbon manufacturers combined with the Weavers' Provi- dent 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 cos^ 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 Com- mittee 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 counte- nance.* The workers, on attempting some spasmodic pre- parations for organised political agitation, were further coerced, in i8];9, 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 Hbels. The ' whole system of repression which had characterised the ;■;' ^ Times, August 5, 1819. * ^ Evidence of Sir William Rae, Bart,, before Select Committee on Artisans and Machinery, 1824, p. 486. 96 The Struggle for Existence 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 ener- getic 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 Com- bination 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 WiUiam 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. J 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 IndividuaHsm. No one who has closely studied his life and work wiU doubt that, within the narrow sphere to which his unswerving practicality con- fined 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, ParUamentary lobbying, the drafting of resolutions, petitions, and bills — ^in short, of all -those arti- fices by which a popular movement is first created and then made effective on the Parliamentary system — ^he was an Francis Place 97 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 ParUamentary figures of the time owing all their knowledge on his questions to the briefs with which he suppUed 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 readi- ness 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 Parlia- mentary 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.'- 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 joumesnnen 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 pressiure 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.* This experiience of the practical freedom of employers to combine intensified Place's sense of the injustice of densdng a like freedom to the journeymen, whilst the brutal prose- ^ An admirable biography has now been written, The Life of Francis Place, ly ^1-18 34, by Prof. Graham Wallas; first edition, 1898; revised edition, 1918. 2 Place MSS. 27798 — 8, 12, etc.; Times, November 9, 1810; The Tailoring Trade, by F. W. Galton, 1896, pp. iio-ii. g8 The Struggle for Existence cution 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 combina- tions 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 legis- lation of greater stringency as the only safeguard for their " freedom of enterprise." ^ The politicians were equally certain that Trade Union action would raise prices, and thus undermine the foreign trade upon which the pros- perity 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.^ 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 ^ See the petitions of the Master Manufacturers of Glasgow, Lancashire, and Nottinghamshire, in the Home Office Papers (42 — 141, 149, 150, 195, etc.). 2 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 I ' " Place MSS. 27800 — 52 ; Morning Chronicle, February 9, 1S24. Joseph Hume gg 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} a little working- class political newspaper, started by one Wade, a wool- comber, and subsidised by Bentham and Place himself. This gained him his two most important disciples, event- ually the chief instruments of his work, J. R. McCuUoch and Joseph Hume. McCuUoch, 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 con- tributed 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 acknow- ledged 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 Parhament. Among a certain section in the House the desirability of freedom of com- bination began to be discussed ; presently it was considered practicable ; and soon many came to regard it as an inevit- able 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. ^. In these contemporary pictures of the inner 1 The volumes for 1818-19 are in the British Museum. ^ The story has now been well told in The Life of Francis Plate, by Prof. Graham Wallas, revised edition, 1918, ch. viii. ; and in The Town 100 The Struggle for Existence 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./ and finally, in February 1824, packing the Com- mittee 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 encoiiraging the rising manu- facture of machinery, which was seriously hampered by the prohibition of sales to foreign coimtries. 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 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 CJeorge White, 1824, and in Labour Legislation, Labour Movements, and Labour Leaders, by G. Howell, 1902, pp. 43-57. 1 In 1823 George White, a " clerk of committees " of the House of Commons, had formed an alUance 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 repeahng all the Combination Acts, and substituting a complicated machinery for regulating piecework and settling industrial disputes. Some of these proposals were meritorious anticipation^ 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 — la. Packing the Committee loi 'b 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 Com- mittee ; 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 mem- bers." ^ 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. Pubhc meetings were held at Stockport and other towns to depute witnesses to attend the Committee.^ Meanwhile Place, who had by this time acquired the con- fidence 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 corre- spondence 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.^ 1 Place MSS. 27798 — 30. " This attracted the attention of the Home Secretary (Home Office Papers, 40 — 18). * 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 ! 102 The Struggle for Existence 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." ^ 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." ^ 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 1 Place MSS. 27798—22. 2 Ibid. 27798 — 23. Repeal Triumphant 103 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 ever5rthing with them most carefully, to arrange and pre- pare everything, and so completely did these things occupy my time that for more than three months I had hardly any rest." ^ 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 news- papers without." ^ So quietly was the Bill smuggled through Parhament that the magistrates at a Lancashire town un- wittingly sentenced certain cotton-weavers to imprison- ment for combination some weeks after the laws against that crime had been repealed.* 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 1 Place MS. 27798 — 22. 2 The Act was 5 George IV. c. 95. The question of the exportation oi machinery was deferred until the next session. ' Letter in the Manchester Gazette, preserved in the Place MSS. ■27801 — 214. 104 3"Ae Struggle for Existence operatives the conviction of the justice of their cause, tardily and reluctantly, but at last fully, conceded by the Legis- lature. I 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 combina- tions to raise wages, and shorten the time or diminish the severity of labour, were not only innocent, but meritorious." ^ Trade Societies accordingly sprang into existence or emerged into aggressive pubhcity 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 rumomrs 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 ship- ping trade of the North-East Coast was temporarily para- lysed by a strong combination of the seamen on the Tyne and Wear, who refused to sail except with Unionist seamen and Unionist oflftcers. 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.^ 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- 1 MS. Report of Nassau Senior to Lord Melbourne on Trade Combina- tions (1831 ; unpublished; in Home Office Library). • Sheffield Iris, April 2, 1825. The Capitalist Reaction 105 sustained conflict. In fact, as a provincial newspaper remarked a little later, " it is no longer a particular class of journejTmen at some single point that have been induced to commence a strike for an advance of wagesj but almost the whole body of the mechanics in the kingdom are com- bined in the general resolution to impose terms on their employers." ^ 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. ^ This time the composition of the committee was not left to chance, or to Hume's manipulation. The members were, as Place com- plains, selected almost exclusively from the Ministerial benches, twelve out of the thirty being placemen, and many being representatives of rotten boroughs. Huskisson,^ ^ Sheffield Mercury October 8, 1825 ; see the Manchester Guardian for August 1824 to a similar effect. ^ 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. * The Annual Register for 1825 gives a fuller report of Huskisson's speech than Hansard's Parliamentary Debates. Further particulars are suppHed in George White's Abstract of the Act repealing the Laws against Combinations of Workmen (1824) ; in Place's Observations on Mr. Huskis- son's Speech on the Law relating to Combinations of Workmen, by F. P. (1825, 32 pp.) ; in Wallas's Li/e 0/ i^yoMCM P/ace, 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. E2 io6 The Struggle for Existence 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 pre- liminary to the introduction of the BiU which the. shipping interest had drafted,^ 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 caU 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 suppl3dng 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. AH this ^ 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. Re-enactment 107 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.^ The nett result of the inquiry was, on the whole, satisfactory. The Select Committee found thefnselves 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 BUI.* 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 expen- diture 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 BiU, and still more the vague terms " molest " and " obstruct," which it contained, would be used as weapons against Trade Unionism. The Goverimient, however, held to the draft of the Committee. * Place MSS. 27803 — 299. • Ibid. 27803 — 212. io8 The Struggle for Existence 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) ^ — 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.^ It is a suggestive feature of this, as of other great re- forms, 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 subse- quent developments. And the workman, to whom Uberty to combine opened up vistas of indefinite advancement of 1 Home Office Papers, letter of January 3, 1832 (H.O. 40 — 30). ^ It is pleasant to record that some of the workmen expressed theii 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 sub- scription ; and the cutlers of Sheffield sent me an incomparable set of knives and forks in a case" (Place MSS. 27798 — 66). The Restilt 109 his class at the expense of his oppressors, was, we now see, looking rightly forward, though he, too, greatly miscalcu- lated the distance before him, and overlooked many arduous stages of the journey. But what is to be said of the fore- casts of Place and the Philosophic Radicals ? " Combina- tions," 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." ^ 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. ^ 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 ^ June 25, 1825. Ibid. 27798 — 57. ^ Sheffield Iris, September 27, 1825. no The Struggle for Existence a unifonn wage, the notice stating that it was by their secret combinations that the tailors, joiners, and spinners had succeeded in keeping up wages.^ In the same month the Manchester dyers turned out for an advance, and paraded the streets, which they had placarded with their proposals.^^ The Glasgow calender-men struck for a regular twelve hours' day, and carried their point. The success of the ship^ Wrights on the north-east coast ' induced the London ship- wrights to convert their " Committee for conducting the Business in the North " into the " Shipwrights' Provident Union of the Pprt 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 Opera- tive House Carpenters and Joiners of Great Britain, which was established by a delegate meeting in London in 1827,, states that, " for the amehoration 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." * 1 Handbill preserved in Place MSS. 27803 — 255. 2 Manchester Guardian, August 7, 1824 ; see also On Combinations oj Trades (1830). ^ 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. ^ This society afterwards developed into the existing General Union of Carpenters and Joiners of Great Britain. A Commercial Slump' iii 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.' "^ 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.2 The high hopes of which all this exultant activity was the sjnnptom were soon rudely dashed. The year 1825 closed with a financial panic and widespread commercial disaster. The four years that followed were years of con- traction 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.^ Strikes under these circumstances ended invariably in disaster. A notable stand made by the Bradford wool- combers and weavers in 1825 resulted in complete defeat and the break-up of the Union.* During the greater part of the following year aU Lanca- shire was convulsed by incessant strikes of coal-miners and textile workers against the repeated reductions of wages to ^ Two rival journals. The Joui^neyman' s and Artisan's London and Provincial Chronicle, and The Mechanic's Newspaper and Trade Journal, were also started, but soon expired. * 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. ^ ^£232,000 was raised by one committee ^lone 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. ' Wool and Wool-combing, by Burnley, p. 169. 112 The Struggle for Existence which the employers resorted — strikes which were marred by- serious disorder, the destruction of many hundreds of looms, and severe repression by the troops.^ 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 ^ — 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 resist- ance to a further cut at wages. ^ The emancipated com- binations 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 futiUty of mere sectional corribina- tion, 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. ' Home Office Papers, 40 — 20, 21, etc. ; Annual Register, 1826, pp. 63, 70, III, 128 ; Walpole's History of England, vol. ii. p. 141. 2 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. ' Resolutions of the Meeting of Journeymen Broad Silk Weavers at Spitalfields, April 16, iSzg ; 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 u.se 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 dubs, 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 " repre- sented the New Unionism, and the trade club, or Trade Union, as we have called it, the Old. The distinction be- tween 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 combina- tion of different trades. " The Trades Union," the bug- bear 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 dis- tinguished from Trade Union must be carefully borne in "3 114 The Revolutionary Period 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 fotm 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.^ We are not alto gether without information as to th e genesis of_theJd£a«— 'l'be-iii§t_atteir^t at ^ General Trades UmonTof which we have any record is that^oFthe"" Phil- anthropic Society " or " PEnanthjopic. Hercules ".o£-i-8i8.~ This we hear of almost sim ultaneously in Manche ster , the Potteries and London, though it., seems to^ have originated in~fhe*first-named to\yn._.. A.Jnejeting of wo.rkm.en^ various trades, held at Manchester in August 1818, convinced of~ the impotence of isolated Trade ^lubs,_sought to establish a" society oh a^TiefaT15asis7"each constituent trade raising itS~own"Iun'ds~lLnd "separately moving for advances or resisting re(rucHOTs;,but_pledged first to consult the^com-^ 1 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 transfotmation, makes, in a letter published in the Poor Man's Guardian of August 30, 1834, exactly the same distinction. f " One Big Union " 115 Toiittee and the other tra des, and pr omised the support ;of all, bdtF^in approved trade„movements andTnfcase of lggal_j)rosecution or_op£^^^ A committee of eleve n •' was to be cho sen byballot, one-th ird re tiring monthly by rotation ; and was to be assisted by a similarlocal organi- satbn~"ur5arh~townT]|^ow far €Ee""" G eneral~Union ,^l_a5 the " Ph ilanthropic Society ' seem s also to have been called, got under way in Lancashire o r St affords hire remains uncertain ; but in London, the. ideajvas.Jakfi31..up by oije of the ablest Trade Unionists of the time — the shipwright John Gast, whom we have alfeaH y'ineHtioned as an ally of Francis Place, who became president and called u pon " the general body of rnechan ics"^'* to subscribe a pe nny nper week to a central fimd for the defence of their common interests.^ ~ """ ' "" — — ■ — ™— —-^ Whether anything c ame of the attempts at a General Union in i8i8-ig we have not discovered, but in all proba- biG.l^'^the project immediately failed. Seven years later a similar efiEort met with no gr eater success. " In 1826^" as vTelSEtaentally learn from a subsequent Labour journal,^ ''^TTradeS"Unio_nt(ras formed in Manchester, which extended slightly to ¥ome of the surrounding districts, and embraced several trades in" each ; Buf it expired befo re it w as so much gsTgJOTOf Tdala^ majority of the operatives_in the neigh- ^durllooH?'^"' ™" '~ "~~ What was aimed at is clear enough. It was being recomiHBnded" to the workrhen by some of tjieirJnte]ie.c.tHAl_ advisers. An able pamphlet of 1^2. t ells them that 'Against tKe^coirTpetitioii of the tmderpaid of surrounding trades, the ready remedy is a central union of all th e general, I 1 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. ^ 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. Cast's preUminary address appears in the issue for December 5, i8i8, and in that of January 29, 1819, the society is described as established (Place MSS. 27899 — 143). ' The Herald of the Rights of Industry (Manchester, April 5, 1834). Ii6 The Revolutionary Period unions of all the trades of the country. The rem uneratio n of all the different branches_of artisans and mechani cs in the country mighty 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 branSito transfer their ~skiir~in~ order to undersell the labour ^^oT the ^well- remunerated in another branch : the Central Union fund being always ready to assist the . unemployed Jn„-an5i_par- jticular branch, when their, own local and general _fuitds were exhausted; provided always their c laims to suppor t Bjere by the Central U nion deemed to be iust. " ^ Experie nce "see ms to show that national o rganisati on of parffcular trades must precede the formati on of an y Gfeneral Trades Dnion"; and it was iiTthis 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 injthe autumn ot 1825, after the repeal of the Com- bination Laws, witnessed the establishment of important national Unions in both industries, but tha t of the Cotton- spimiers-^atmj^recedlnce in respect of its more rapid development. The Cotton-sp inners' trade clubs of Lancashire date apparent ly from 179?,,^, and they spread, within a genera- tion, to thirty or forty towns, remaining always strictly local organisations. In the early years of the nin eteent h centur^^atternpts had been made byytEe^Glas gow spinners t q. unite th e " Lanc ashire and Scottish org anisatinns iff a national associationT but thes e attempts had no t resulted in'more than temporar3raIEancesi n particular e mergendes^ T[ie~rapicnmpfovemenf~bf spinning machinery^ and the enterprise of the Lancashire millowners, were, at the d ate of the repeal of the^ Combination Laws, shifting the centre 1 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. John Doherty 117 of the trade from Glasgow to Manchester ; and it was the tancashifeXotton-^ginners^wEo now took the lead in trade ^^^^^,^J!he failure of a disastrous^x"monlKs' 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,^ 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, ^ secretary and leader of 1 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. ^ 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 1 799, and went to work in a cotton-mill at Lame, Co. Antrim, at the age of ten. In i8i6 he migrated to Manchester^ where he quickly became one of the leading Trade Unionists, and secretary to th^ 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 oiiSce he is reported, probably inaccurately, to have received the then enormous salary of £toQ a year. We naturally find him the object of great suspicion by the Government, but no charge seems ever to have been brought agiinst 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 informa- tion, great natural shrewdness, and far-reaching aims. His idea was that all the local and district Unions were to be federated in a national organisa- tion for the sole purpose of deaUng 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 deiicribes him as advising the working classes to use the occasion for a social revolution. He sub- Ii8 The Revolutionary Period the Manchester Cotton-spinners, advocated a central execu- tive ; 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 estabhshed, subject to an annual delegate meeting and three national com- mittees. 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 legis- lative 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 through- out 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 sub- committees. To these orders the most implicit deference sequently 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 Workmela, in which he described the spinners' organisa- tions and strikes. There is Ja pamphlet by him in the Goldsmiths' Library at the University of London* entitled A Letter to the Members of the National Association for the Protectio^ of Labour (Manchester, 1831). The Cotton-spinners 119 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 impohtic, 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." ^ 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 ielected 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. ^ 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 * Home Office Papers, 40" — 27. ^ Ibid., December 3, 1830, 40 — 26. 120 The Revolutionary Period into a federation of Lancashire societies, mainly preoccu- pied in securing a legislative restriction of the hours of labour.^ 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 Liver- pool Sailmakers, and expressing " a hope that our joint efforts may eventually lead to a Grand General Union of aU trades throughout the United Kingdom." ^ At his instigation a meeting of delegates from twenty organised trades was held at Manchester in February 1830, which ended in the estabKshment, 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 reHgious hberty, 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 ' 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." 2 The letter is preserved in the MS. " Contribution Book " of the Liverpool Sailmakers' Friendly Association, established 1817. The National Association I2i the Association is formed,^ 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 con- tributed 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 siUc- 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 * of the receipts of the Associa- tion for the first nine months of its existence includes pay- ments amounting to £1866, a sum which indicates a member- ship 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.* Undeterred by this failure, the committee undertook the more serious task of starting a sevenpenny stamped weekly, and requested Francis Place "• 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. * Given as Appendix to the pamphlet On Combination of Trades (1830). Compare Wade's History of the Middle and Working Classes (1834). P- 277- ■ Thirty-one numbers, extending from March 6 to October z, 1830, are in the Manchester Public Library (620 B). 122 The Revolutionary Period to become the treasurer of an accumulated fund. " The subscription," writes Place to John Cam Hobhouse, Decem- ber 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, vrith which sum, when raised, they pro- pose 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 com- mittee 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.^ 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-L3aie, 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.^ Con- siderable 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 Feb- ruary 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. 1 The numbers from January to September 1831 are in the British Museum. See Place's letter in Westminster Review (1831), p. 243. 2 Home Office Papers, 40 — 26, 27. The Voice of the People 123 The refusal of the Lancashire branches to support the great Nottingham strike which immediately ensued led to the defection of the Nottingham members. Neverthe- less 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.i 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 yd. 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 newspapersto 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 ''- Home Office Papers, April 8, 1831, 44 — 25. 124 ^^^ Revolutionary Period 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." ^ 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.* The place of the National Association was soon fiUed by other contemporary general trade societies, of which' the first and most important was the Builders' Union, or * Union Pilot and Co-operative Intelligencer, March 24, 1832 (Man- chester PubUc Library, 640 E). 2 Meanwhile the coaliainers of Northumberland and Durham, under the leadership of " Tommy Hepburn," an organiser of remarkable abihty, 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 oj Northumberland and Durham (Blytli, 1873), chaps, iv. v. vi. ; An Earnest Address and Urgent Appeal to the People oj 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. The Builders' Union 125 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 loiow, the sohtary example, prior to the present century, in the history of those trades of a federal union embracing aU classes of building operatives, and purporting to extend over the whole country.^ The Grand Rules of the Builders' Union set forth an elaborate constitution in which it was attempted to com- bine 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 equahse 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 ^ It is not clear whether this scheme was initiated by carpenters or masons. The carpenters and joiners are distinguished among the build- ing 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 Hudders- field, 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. 126 The Revolutionary Period 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 par- ticularly 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' Parhament," consisted of one representative of each lodge, and was the supreme legislative authority, altering rules, deciding on general questions of policy, and electing the pre- sident and other officials. The local lodges, though directly represented at the annual meetings, had had apparently Uttle connection in the interim with the seat of govern- ment. The society was divided into geographical dis- tricts, 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 execu- tive. 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 with- hold 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. Trade Union Ritual 127 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 tha't 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 " prin- cipal conductor " — and taken part in by the candidates and the members of the lodge. Besides the opening prayer, and religious hymiis sung at intervals, these " initiation parts " consisted of questions and responses by the dramatis personcB 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.^ Ceremonies of this kind, including ^ 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 Stoaemasons' 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 -vyhose 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 Birming- ham, 1834, his name is omitted, and that of Solomon substituted, ap- parently 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 iu 1825, afterwards turned against the Unions, and published, iu 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 128 The Revolutionary Period what were described to the Home Office as " oaths of a most execrable nature," ^ 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 iJie OddfeUows, yet the excitement and sensation of the proceedings may have predisposed light- headed 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 " con- tractor," 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 buUding," in order to put down " that baneful, unjust, and ruinous system originated. ... A great part of the ceremony, . . . particularly the death scene, was taken from the ceremonial of one division of the OddfeUowSiM . . . 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 altera- tions." 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 cere- mony 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. ^ Home Oflice Papers, December 29, 1832, 40 — 31. Union Demands 129; I of monopolising the hard-earned profits of another man's business, called ' contracting.' " Naturally, the httle 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 limi- tation 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 insult- ing 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." ^ ' 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 workingmen 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 legiti- mate 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 ybur 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 F 130 The Revolutionary Period 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.^ In the very heat of the battle (September 1833) the Builders' Union held its annual delegate meeting at Man- chester, 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 Ms influence, to build central offices at Birmingham, which should also serve as an educational estabUshment. 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 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 Bior graphy, by Frank Podmore, 1906, vol. ii. p. 442-4). ^ 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 Probablf Termination of the Struggle now existing between the Master and Journey- man Builders (Manchester, 1833) ; Times, June 27, 1833. The Gild of Builders 131 that was proceeding also in this town. It included, on paper, a lecture-hall and various schoolrooms for the chil- dren 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.^ 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 ^), 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 wiU now be put to the test : we shaU soon discaver its worthless- ness when deprived of your labour. Labour prolific of wealth wUl 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 instiga- tion of the Midland societies. Two great strikes at Liver- pool and Manchester ended towards the close of the year in total failure. The Builders' Gild HaU was abandoned ; ^ and the Pioneer moved to London, where it became the organ of another body, the Grand National Consolidated ^ Pioneer, December 7, 1833 ; History of Birmingham, by W. Hutton (Birmingham, 1835), p. 87. ' It was edited by James Morrison, an enthusiastic Owenite, who died, worn out, in 1835 {Beer's History of British Socialism, 1919, p. 328). ' It was eventually iinished by the landlord, and still e?;ists as a metal warehouse in Shadwell Street. 132 The Revolutionary Period Trades Union, with which the south country and metro- politan branches of the building trade had already pre- ferred to affihate themselves. Nevertheless the Builders' Union retained its hold upon the northern counties during the early months of 1834, ^^^ held another " parliament " at Birmingham in April, at which Scotch and Irish repre- sentatives were present.^ 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 ist 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." * 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 " uni- ' In May 1834 an informer oflfered to supply the Horae Secretary ■With full particulars of its organisation, leading members and their activities, for two sums of ^$0 each (Home Office Papers, 40 — 32). 2 Letters to Cobbett's Weekly' Register, reprinted in the Pioneet, December 21, 1833. See also Home Office Papers, 40 — 32 ; and the Crisis for Kovember and December 1833. The Voice of the West Riding, an unstamped weekly, June and July 1833, was devoted to this agitatiott'l in the Yorkshire textile industry (see Home Office Papers, 40 — 31). : ' The "Manufacturers' Bond" 133 versal " 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.^ 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. '^ 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 ^^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, ^ For an unfavourable account of this Union, see the extremely biassed statement given in the pamphlet Character, Objects, and Effects oj 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 ilaxworkers of Leeds,' November 30, 1832, refers with admiration to the effectiveness of this Union (Home Office Papers, 40 — 31 ; see also 41 — 11). 2 Times, October 28, 1833. * Crisis, October 19, 1833. 134 ^^^ Revolutionary Period 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 fuU 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 Associa- tions of lodges to consist of a convenient number for carry- ing on the business : ... all individuals of the specific craft shall become members." ^ Immediately after this we find in existence a " Grand National ConsoMdated 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 affiUated all over the country. Innumerable local trade clubs were ^ 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 Owenits 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 Consoli- dated 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. The " Grand National " 135 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 " miscel- laneous 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 superannua- tion 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.^ 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 organisa- tions 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 ^ 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. 136 The Revolutionary Period Scotland that is not now in a state of Union." ^ The Times reports that two delegates who went to Hulf enrolled in one evening a thousand men of various trades. ^ 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 garment-s or robes, a large figure of Death with the dart and hourglass, a Bible and Testament." * 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." * We hear of " Ploughmen's Unions " as far off as Perthshire,* and of a " Shearman's Union " at Dundee. And the then rural character of the Metro- politan 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 " Anciei^t Virgins," who afterwards dis- tinguished themselves in the riotous demand for an eight hours day at Oldham,* is not clear;.. How the business of this colossal federation was actually ^ Glasgow Argus, quoted, in People's Conservative, December 28, 1833. 2 May 5. 1834. , ' Times, January 23 and 30, 1834. * Kerr's Exposition of Legislative Tyranny and Defence of the Trades Union (Belfast, 1834), vol. i6ii of the Halliday Tracts in the Royal Irish Academy, Dublin ; see The Irish Labour Movement, by W. P. Ryan, 1919. ° Poor Man's Guardian, July 26, 1834. ' Times, April 19, 1834. The "Derby Turn-outs" 137 managed we do not know.^ Some kind of executive com- mittee 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 arti- ficial money price in exchange for their labour, health, hberty, 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 inces- santly 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 struggUng 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, hke 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 ^ 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. F2 138 The Revolutionary Period 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 triimiph of the employers, and the return of the operatives to work. The " Derby turn-out " was widely advertised by the newspapers, and brought much odiimi 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 per- form their work,^ 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 con- viction 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 Govern- ment and the propertied classes of the menacing ideal of " the Trades Union," brought home by the aggressiverl poHcy 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 ofdce in November last," writes Lord Melbourne, the Whig Home Secretary, to Sir Herbert Taylor, " the * See the London newspapers for March 1834 ; a good summary is given in the Companion to the Newspaper for that month (p. 71). Nassmi Senior 139 Unions of trades in the North of England and in other parts of the country for the purpose of raising wages, etc., and tlie 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." 1 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 PoUtical 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 judge- ment 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 pro- duced, 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, ^ 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. 140 The Revolutionary Period 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 essen- tial ; — ^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 manu- facturing 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 sohcitations to combinations " to threaten masters, to persuade blacklegs, or even simply to ask work- men to join the Union.^ Picketing, however peaceful, was to be comprehensively forbidden and ruthlessly punished. Employers or their assistants were to be authorised them- selves 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 systeih cannot be subdued at a less price, . . . we must recommend the experiment of confiscation," — confiscation, that is, of the " funds sub- scribed for purposes of combination and deposited in Savings Banks or otherwise." ^ '^ " We recommend that the soliciting of any person to join in com- binations, or to subscribe to the like purposes, should be punishable on summary conviction by imprisonment for a shorter period, say not ex- ceeding two months." ' The report was never published, and lies in MS. in the Home Lord Melbourne 141 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 con- sidered much ourselves," writes Lord Melbourne,^ " and we consulted much with others as to whether the arrange- ments of these unions, their meetings, their communica- 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 Man- chester manufacturers were not agreed upon, the desirability of re-enact- ing 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 manu- facturers in the district, who sometimes went so far as to pubUsh 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. ^ 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 tljan they had hitherto received. Two able pamphlets, published anonymously — there is reason to believe at the instance and at the cost of the Whig Govern- ment — 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 ; i2mo) ; and Harriet Martineau one , On the Tendency of Strikes and Sticks to produce Low Wages (Durham, 1834 ; i2mo), neither of which we have seen. A weU-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 move- ment. 142 The Revolutionary Period tions, 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 Hberties 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.^ 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.* 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 work-' men'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." ' 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 1 See his letter of March 30, 1834, in Lord Melbourne's Papers, chap. v. * Leeds Mercury, April 26, 1834. Joseph Hume said he had had the " greatest difificulty in prevailing upon the Ministers not to bring in a bill for putting down the Trades Unions " (Poor Man's Guardian, March 29, 1834). » Letter dated September 3, 1833, in Times, September 9, 1833. Repression 143 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.^ 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.^ Picket- ing, even of the most peaceful kind, was frequently severely punished under this head, as four Southwark shoemakers found in 1832 to their cost.' 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.* With the authorities in this temper, their alarm at ihe 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 pohtical 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 ^ R. V. Bykerdike, i 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 com- bination. See Leeds Mercury, May 24, 1834. 2 Times, August 22, 1835. * Poor Man's Guardian, September 29, 1832. * Times, February 27, 1834. 144 ^^^ Revolutionary Period Lord Ellenborough, in an isolated prosecution in 1802/ had held that an oath administered by a committee of journey- men 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 ConsoUdated 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 Dor- chester labourers is the best-known episode of early Trade Union history. ^ 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 excep- tionally demoraUsed by the Old Poor Lawj 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.* With the improvement of trade a general movement for higher ^ R. V. Marks and others, 3 East Rep. 157. ^ 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 ist). 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 Love- less, etc. {1838), which are in the British Museum., See also Labour Legis- lation, Labour Movements, and Labour Leaders, by G. Howell, 1902, pp. 62-75 ; Spencer Walpole's History of. England, vol. ui. chap. xiii. pp. 229-31 ; and Hansard's Parliamentary Debates, vols. xxii. and xxiii. ' The student is referred to the admirable account of these proceed- ings in The Village Labourer, by J, L. and B. Hammond, 1912. See, for a contemporary account, Swing Unmasked, or the Cause of Rural In- cendiarism, by G. C. Wakefield, M.P., 1831. The Dorchester Labourers 145 wages seems to have been set on foot. In 1832 we find the Duke of W^eUington, 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 affiHated, as he thought, to some National Union. " The labourers said that they had received directions from the Union not to take less than ten shilHngs, and that the Union would stand by them."i 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 Agri- cultural Labourers," having its " Grand Lodge " at Tol- puddle. 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," ^ 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 1 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 callpd the National Union of the Working Classes, founded by William Lovett in 1831, to support the Reform Bill. 2 Times, March 20, 1834. 146 The Revolutionary Period the Union would be sentenced to seven years' transportation. This was no idle threat. Within three days of the publica- tion 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 conscious- ness 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 com- mitted 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 " ; ^ 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.^ The Grand National Consolidated Trades Union proved to have a wider influence than the Government expected. ^ Lord Melbourne's Papers, p. 158. 2 Times, March 18, 20, 31; April i, 16, 19, 1834; Leeds Mercury, April 26, 1834. The London Demonstration 147 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.^ 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 ^ A prominent Owenite agitator of the time, incumbent of St. Nicholas, Warwick, who is said to have been inhibited from px-eaching by his bishop. 148 The Revolutionary Period 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 pro- portion of the London of that time equivalent to 100,000 to-day.^ 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'Cormell spoke ; and a debate took place in the House of Commons in which the ferocious sentence was strongly attacked by Joseph Hume.^ 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.' 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 ^ 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 A utobiography of a Working Man (1848), not usually a trustworthy work. " Times, April 19, 1834. * 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 re- turned 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 pre- ferring (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. The Tailors' Strike 149 it lingered a few years longer.^ 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 regu- lations 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 ^ The series of " Initiation Parts," or forms to be observed on admis- sion of new members, which are preserved in the archives of the Stone- masons' 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 cere- monial, 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. 150 The Revolutionary Period that the men gradually returned to work on the employers' terms.^ 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 publish- ing 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.^ 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.* 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' tJnion ; and in the summer of 1834 ^^ ^-^t 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 1 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, 1 896. ^ Leeds Mercury, May 3, 1834. ' See the address of the " Grand Master " to the " Operative Cord- wainers of the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union," Crisis, June 28, 1834 ; also Times, May 2, 1834 ; Home Office Papers, 40—32. The Builders' Strike 151 departments in which building operatives were employed placed themselves in line with private employers by making the same demands.^ 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.^ 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 ist 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 un- prepared for action, and the strike was further postponed until the ist of September. After that we hear no more of it. The Oldham operatives did indeed in April 1834 make ^ Times, August 21, 1834. ^ 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. 152 The Revolutionary Period an unpremeditated attempt to secure eight hours. It hap- pened 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.^ 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 uni- formly unsuccessful. In July 1834 the federal organisa- tions 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 Consohdated Trades Union, and have a distinct recollection of the excitement that pre- vailed 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 ^ 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 Marcrofl Family (1889), pp. 1036. The Collapse 153 opinion of many at that time that Uttle 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." ^ A period of general apathy in the Trade Union world ensued. The " London Dorchester Comnlittee " 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 ; some- ^ Trades Journal, March i, 1841; probably written by Alexander Hutchinson, general secretary of the Friendly United Smiths of Great Britain and Ireland. 154 The Revolutionary Period times 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 con- centrated 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 t5n:anny 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 hving 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 pheno- menon was beyond the comprehension of its victims. Each of them knew what was happening to himself as an indivi- dual ; 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 The Disillusionment 155 in all industrial processes which had been brought about by machinery and factory organisation, and which had removed manufacture irrevocably from the separate fire- sides 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 persua,ded that a universal voluntary association of workers for pro- ductive 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 coUapse of 1825 left the working-class organisa- tions 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 of&cers, clergymen, tnagistrates, 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." ^ 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 " Metro- politan 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.^ But under the influence of ^ England and A merica : a Comparison of the Social and Political State of both Nations, 1833, 2 vols. " 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). '' 1 . ; 156 The Revolutionary Period 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.^ 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 communi- ties 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, ' See the volumes of the Poor Man's Guardian, preserved in the British Museum. ^ The Owenite Ideas 157 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 con- siderable 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." ^ This jumble of ordinary Trade Union aims and com- munist 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.^ But Owen did 1 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 Sep- tember 3, 1832, as follows : " Nothing can be conceived more miscljievous 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 Hodgskia, 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 Manger's Right to the Whole Produce of Labour, 1 899 ; and more fully and philosophic- ally in M. Beer's History of British Socialism, 1919, vol. i. ' "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 158 The Revolutionary Period 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 uni- versal 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," ^ 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 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 HoveU, 1918, jj^ 45). ^ The prospectus of this Society is in the British Library of Pohtical Science at the London School of Economics. A copy is given in the Mortting 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. Impracticable Ideals 159 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 abohshed and ownership sociahsed 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 beheve that it was possible, by a universal non-poUtical 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 insigni- ficant 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 there- fore considered as usurpers to be as soon as, possible super- i6o The Revolutionary Period, seded 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 oi&cials of the Municipality or State was unthinkable at a period when all local governing bodies jvere 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, miUiners, and mantua-makers ; and all the different manufacturers [i.e. operatives] shall be arranged in a similar way ; com- munications 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.^ The Agri- cultural Union was to take possession of the lanfl, the Miners' Union of the mines, the Textile Unions of the fac- tories. 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 SociaUsm 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 homo- geneous 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 ^ See Owen's elaborate speech, reported in. the Crisis, October 12, 1833; Robert Owen : a Biography, hy 'Fxa.vik.VQixaote, igoft; andiTwrfs Unionism', by C. M. Lloyd, 1915. " National Companies " i6i 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 momen- tarily 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 competi- tive 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 trans- form 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 continuaV perplexity as to the exact boundaries between them ; for example, the niinute-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 i62 The Revolutionary Period 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 coUectivist economy. He took his economics from his friend William Thompson,^ 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 - ' Inquiry into the Principles of the Distribution of Wealth most con- ducive to Human Happiness, by William Thompson, 1824 ; also his Labouir 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 Pro- fessor 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. 1. ; and The Irish Labour Movement, by W. P. Ryan, 1919, ch. iii. The Nature of Value 163 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 f ertiUty of soil, distance to be traversed, proximity to good highways, waterways, or ports, accessi- bility of water-power or steam fuel, and a hundred other circumstances, including the organising ability and execu- tive 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 spontan- eously 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 incHned 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 en- thusiastic Owenite economists of this period. One question, and that the mos.t 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 Govern- ment ? The answer must have been that the overwhelming numbers of " the Trades Union " would render conflict impossible. His enthusiastic disciple, William Benbow, suc- cessively a shoemaker, bookseller, and coffee-house keeper, invented the instrument of the General Strike — a sacred 164 The Revolutionary Period " 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 aU existing institutions. Whether this was in Owen's mind in 1834, as it was, in 1839, avowedly in those of the Chartists, is uncertain.^ At all events, Owen, Uke 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 estabhshed. 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." ^ 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 ^ The pamphlet, entitled The Grand National Holiday and Congress oj the Productive Classes, by William Benbow, 1831, had an extensive circu- lation. Mark Hovell (The Chartist Movement, igi8, 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 re- ported by a Government spy to be manufacturing pikes in 1816 (The Green Bag Plot, 1918). - Leading article in the Crisis, October 12, 1833. Why the Unions were Insolent 165 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 vfiih. an equally unreason- able 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 work- men from the franchise made constitutional action on their side impossible. The employers, on the other hand, used theii' 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 Union- ism 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. i66 The Revolutionary Period Again, the aggressive conduct of certain sections of the bailding 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.^ 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 London- derry in his dual capacity as mine-owner and Lord-Lieu- tenant 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." ^ The s^me intolerance 1 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 sick- ness 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. ' See his manifestoes reprinted in Northern Star, July 6 and July 27, 1844. " Lord Londonderry again warns all the shopkeepers and trades- men 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 The Close of Owenism 167 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. Com- binations 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 mis- cellaneous 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 Consohdated 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 estabhshment of a " New Moral World " by the reconciUation of all classes. Beyond one or two small and futile experiments in co-operative production, it had attempted nothing to reahse Owen's Utopia. Its whole powers had been spent, seemingly with his own consent, in a series of aggressive strikes. Eor 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 pitmen in prolonging their own miseries by continuing an insane strike, and an unjust and senseless warfare against their proprietors and masters." 1 68 The Revolutionary Period phraseology, such as the classification of Society into the " idle " and the " industrious " classes, the latter apparently meaning — and being certainly understood to inean — 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 IndividuaUsm from the idealists of the Trade Union Move- ment ; 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," " Equit- able Labour Exchanges," and industrial communities which may be considered the most direct result of the Owenite propaganda, or with the fortunes of the innumer- able co-operative associations of producers, whose delegates formed the backbone of the Owenite congresses of these years.^ 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 ' Some account of these developments will be found in The Co-operaiive Movement in Great Britain, by Beatrice Potter (Mrs. Sidney Webb). The Survival of Trade Unionism i6g in the tirade. Renewed demands led to the formation by the employers ot 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.^ 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.^ 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,^ 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 Ufe 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 infltiential in trade regulation, and as having included practically all the Scottish masons. There is evi- dence, 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, ^ The collapse was duly reported to the Home Secretary (Home Ofl&ce Papers, 40—33, 34, 35)- * See Ashworth's paper before British Association, 1837 ; Remarks upon the Importance of an Inquiry into the Amount and Appropriation oj 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). ^ The United Society of Operative Plumbers (reorganised 1848) still dominates its branch of the trade, and retains traces of the federal con- stitution of the Builders' Union. The sister organisation of carpenters (now styled the General Union of Carpenters and Joiners) has been over- taken 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. G2 170 The Revolutionary Period 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 ParUamentary 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 con- spiracy, 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 feehng which it provoked show to the depths the state of mind of the working classes.^ 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 ^ Glasgow was still the principal centre of the cotton industry, especi- ally 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. The Glasgow Spinners 171 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.^ 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 0' Council, 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-estabhshed methods of modern Trade Unionism, such as the maintenance of a minimum rate, received from him the same condemnation as the unsocial and oppressive ' 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. 172 The RevoluHoftary Period 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 Com- mittee 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." ^ The Dublin Plasterers formally suspended their exclusive rules, and deferred the issue of a new edition until after the inquiry.^ 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 com- inittee, " The London Trades Combinatiop Committee," to conduct the Unionist case in the Parliamentary inquiry. Lovett, then well known as a Radical politician, becanie secretary, and issued a stirring address to the Trade Unions throughout the country, asking for subscriptions and evi- ' stonemasons' Fortnightly Circular, January 19, 1838. 2 Evidence of W. Darcy, the secretary, second report of 1838 Com- mittee, p. 130. The Parliamentary Inquiry 173 dence.^ 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 Dubhn 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.^ The temporary fillip given by the cotton-spinners' trial and the ParUamentary 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 de- creased. The English Stonemasons, perhaps the strongest ^ Circular dated March i, 1838, in Stonemasons' archives; and An Address from the London Trades Committee appointed to watch the Parlia- mentary Inquiry into Combinations, 1838. ^ 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. 174 The Revolutionary Period 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 agitatidn 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 supre- macy 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 The Chartist Strikes i^5 elements, finally brought it to nought. An adequate history of it would be of extreme value to our young Democracy.^ 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." ^ 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 *• A series of subsequent publications has now gone far to iill 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. DoU^ans, 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 okonomischen Grund- sdtze der Chartistenbewegung , by John Tildsley (Jena, 1898) ; and especi- ally by the two separate volumes on the History of British Socialism, by M. Beer, 1919 and 1920. ' Northern Star, August 20, 1844. 176 The Revolutionary Period 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.^ 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 pro- portion 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 ; ^ 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 Con- ference.' 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 ^ Sheffield Iris, August 1842. ^ See, for instance, that for October 1839. ' 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 in- duced to imperil their funds and existence at the orders of the Chartist Convention " (The Chartist Movement, by Mark Hovell, 1918, p^ 169). The Trade Union Refusal -l'j'j 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.^ 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 at 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." ^ 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 poUtical democracy to an ignoble scramble for the ■^ History of Birmingham, by W. Hutton (Birmingham, edition of 1835), p. 149- ^ Northern Star, August 24, 1846. ty8 The Revolutionary Period 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 fete 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 genera- tion 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-Com 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 pro- test 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 ^re expressly told, who strenuously but vainly resisted this action, which resulted ruinously for the society. The End of Insurrectionism 179 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 " amalga- mated " societies of skilled artisans, with their centralised administration, friendly society benefits, and the substitu- tion, wherever possible, of Industrial Diplomacy for the ruder methods of the Class War. 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 successfiil in reaching their more limited aims. La5dng 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 organisa" tions which have become integral parts of the structure of a modem 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.^ It is no mere coincidence ^ Between 1850 and 1874 there was {except, perhaps, during the American Civil War) no falling off in the value of our export trade com- parable 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. 180 Revival of Trade Unionism i8i 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 pro- sperity 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 amalgamatiqn of the metropolitan and provincial societies of compositors into the National Typographical Society.^ 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.^ 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 1 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. 2 The Colliers'- Guide, showing the Necessity of the Colliers Uniting to Protect their Labour from the Iron Hand of Oppression, etc., by J. B. l;^ompson (Bishop Wearmonth, 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. 1 82 The New Spirit and the New Model Northumberland and Durham on the one hand, and Lanca- shire 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 pajdng 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.^ 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' inter- pretation 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 emplo3niient. 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,^ an able and energetic solicitor, with strong 1 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. 2 William Prowting Roberts, the youngest son of the Rev. Thomas Roberts, of Chelmsford, was bom 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. The '■'■Miners' Attorney-General" 183 labour sympathies, to fight 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 ser- vices 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 185 1, 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 hsten 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 good- will ; 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, 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, 184 The New Spirit and the New Model and this begets naturally a corresponding desire to resist you at all hazards. And there are hundreds of other con- siderations 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 uphiU 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." ^ 1 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 accusa- tions 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 laiJ A Dangeyous Bill 185 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, ser- vants, and artificers," which the Government got referred to a committee, by which various extraordinary interpola- tions were made in what was at first a harmless measure.^ 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 emplojonent '' 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 giveii 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.^ A friendly member, Thomas Slingsby Duncombe, obstructed its further progress, and got it postponed until after the Easter recess. Mean- while 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. ^ — . 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 " {Si'onemasons' Fortnightly Circular, November 23, 1848). '■ Bill No. 58 of 1844, introduced by William Miles, M.P. (Hansard, vols. 73 and 74.) L " Potters' Examiner, April 13, 1844. , 1 86 The New Spirit and the New Model Gladstone. But the combination on the other side of Duncombe, Wakley, Hume, and Ferrand, with Tories hke 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.^ 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, ^ 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.^ 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 com- bined 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 m the isolation of the different sections of working men, and 1 Hansard, vols. 73 and 74. The Bill was lost by 54 tq 97 (May i, 1844) ; see Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844, by Friedrich Engels, 1892, pp. 283-4. * The Miners of Northumberland and Durham, by Richard Fynes, 1873, chap. ix. ; The British Coal Trade, by H. Stanley Jevons, 1915, pp. 448-51. A National Federation 187 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 sur- vival 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 ef&cient internal govern- ment 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 federa- tion 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." ^ This new attempt to form a National Federation origin- ated in a suggestion from the " United Trades " of Sheffield, embodied in an able letter written to Duncombe ^ by their secretary, John Drury. Duncombe had become widely ' 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 timis as its ofi&cial organ. * Thomas SHngsby 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 18 45 -8. i88 The New Spirit and the New Model known to the Trade Unionists, not only through his friend- ship with Fergus O'Connor, and his outspoken support of Chartism in the House of Commons, but also by his suc- cessful 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 aU parts of the country. At Easter, 1845, no 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 hmited statesmanship which characterised the Trade Union leaders of the next thirty years. ^ 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 ^ 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 annvial congresses. His chief literary production is the essay entitled. Trades Unions and Strikes ; their philosophy and intention (i860, 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 pub- lisher would accept, and which was printed by his society, remains, per- haps — 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. A Conciliatory Policy i8g 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 Con- ference to cultivate a good understanding with the employer, and thereby remove those prejudices which exist \gainst 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 ijnportant 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 con- ceive it necessary to call the attention of those trades who are comparatively disunited, and whose men are conse- quently 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-regii- lated society for their mutual interests. . . . And, finally, the Committee would earnestly recommend to this Con- ference, in order that these important points may be con- sidered and dispassionately argued, that no proposition of a political nature, beyond what has been already alluded igo The New Spirit and the New Model to, should be introduced, or occupy its attention ; con- vinced as they are that the only way to carry out these desirable objects satisfactorily, and with a due considera- tion 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." ^ 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 wer^ 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 auxihary 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 poUcy 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 becam? a very distinctive feature of British Trade Unionism in the last half of the nineteenth century. ' Report of London Committee of Trades Delegates to the Nationsd Conference of Trades Delegates, Easter, 1845 ; preserved in the archives of the Friendly Society of Operative Stonemasons. Trade Union Caution igi " But the shadow of the failure of 1834 still hung over projects of universal Trade Unions. Although nearly aU 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 omrselves, 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." ^ 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 T5^ographical 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 perambu- lating lecturers to explain the advantages of the new organisation, but never actually decided to join.^ The adjourned conference on July 28, 1845, was there- fore 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 • Stonemasons' Fortnightly Circular, May 14, 1846. ' 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. 192 The New Spirit and the New Model 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 iip 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 ConsoUdated 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 thte Friendly Society of Opera- tive Carpenters and Joiners — the association that had played so important a part in the movement of 1830 — issued a mafiifesto 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} "■ Times, November 16, 1846. The "Document" again! 193 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 reduc- tions 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 pro- longed strike of the Manchester building trades in 1846, begun without sanction, failed miserably, the local com- mittee 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 Buncombe'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 exist- ence of any kind of central committee, however representa- tive it might be, prevented the men from being free agents, H 194 The New Spirit and the New Model and exposed them to the arbitrary commands of an irre- sponsible 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 Lanca- shire cotton-spinners' " Short Time Committee," which secured the Ten Hours Act of 1847. The Central Executive was, indeed, during these years, more a ParHamentary 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 con- ference 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 ^^848 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.^ * 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 Decline of the Federation 195 The later History of the association is obscure.^ 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 establish- ment 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 revolu- tionary voluntaryism of 1830-4 and the Pariiamentary 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 thought, adequately prepared himself, he threw off the mask in July 1850, and flatly refused to continue the negotiations. The fierce in- dustrial and legal conflict which ensued attracted general attention. Many of the strikers were imprisoned for breach of contract ; and the straggle culminated in the prosecution of three members of the com- mittee of the National Association, together with several of the local Unionists, for conspiracy to molest and intimidate the employer by inducing men to leave tis 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. Row- lands, 5 Cox C. C. p. 436 ; also Appendix A to The Law relating to Trade Unions, by Sir William Erie, 1869. ' Buncombe 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 6,060, 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 i860 or 1861 (see his article " Trades Union Congresses and Social legislation " in Contemporary Review for September 1889). ig6 The New Spirit and the New Model proceedings, its moderate and unaggressive policy was only one manifestation of the new spirit which now pre- vailed 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 Parlia- mentary formality — one might almost say the statehness of their proceedings. Instead of rhetorical abuse of all employers as " the unproductive classes," and total abstin- ence from investigation of the details of disputes, we find the compositors deahng 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 Journejmaen 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 ? " ^ But the most effective outcome of this desire for information was the starting by the Uriions 1 English Stonemasons' Fortnightly Circular, December 25, 1845. Trade Union Journals 197 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. ^ The Journeymen Steam-Engine and Machine Makers' Friendly Society issued the Mechanics' Magazine between 1841 and 1847. In November 1850 Dunning persuaded the London Consoli- dated Society of Bookbinders to pubHsh the Bookbinders' Trade Circular, in the pages of which he promulgated a theory of Trade Unionism, from which McCuUoch himself would scarcely have dissented,^ 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 pubUcations, and the only on6 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 Fhnt Glass Makers' Friendly Society,* 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 ' 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. * See especially the articles on " Wages of Labour and Trade Societies " in the second, third, and fourth numbers (December 1850 to February 185 1), in which he assumes that the general level of wages is irresistibly determined by Supply and Demand, but that Trade Unionism, in pro- viding out-of-work pay, enables the individual workman to resist ex- ceptional tyranny or exaction. ' 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 in- debted to Mr. Haddleton, Secretary to the Birmingham Trades Council, who, in 1893, possessed a complete set, for our acquaintance with its contents. 198 The New Spirit and the New Model power. . . . JLet us earnestly advise you to educate; get intelligence instead of alcohol — ^it is sweeter and more lasting." 1 With increased acquaintance with industrial conditions came a reaction against the poHcy 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 mem- bers, " 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 dis- united and powerless they have stigmatised their employeis 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 emplo3mient 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." ' 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 I Opening Address to the Glass Makers of England, Ireland, and Scotland, No. i. ^ Report of London Compositors' Committee on Amalgamation, 1834; Annual Report, February 2. 1835. opposition to Strikes tgg is surely no dishonour to explain to your employer the nature and extent of your grievance." ^ 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." ^ 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," * 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 fioll of similar denunciations. " We believe," writes the editor, " that strikes have been the bane of Trades Unions."* 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 • Address of Delegate Meeting to the Members of the Friendly Society of Ironmoulders of England, Ireland, and Wales, September 26, 1846, ^ Fortnightly Circular, December 25, 1845. ' Ibid., June 1849. ' January 1855. 200 The New Spint and the New Model oppressor is brought down, and he feels the power he cannot see." ^ 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 4 plausible letter from the scene of the dispute, is decidedly bad. Our members do not feel that responsibihty 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." ^ The Stone- masons' 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. ^ 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. " Address of the Delegate Meeting to the Members of the Friendly Society of Ironmoulders, 1846. "Supply and Demand" 201 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 particu- lar 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 experi- ence 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 Emigra- tion 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." ^ 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.* 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 ' " Emigration as a Means to an End," Flint Glass Makers' Magazine, August 1854 ; address of Executive, September 1857. " " Thus if in a depression you have fifty men out of work they will receive ;£i,oi5 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 £i$, and send them to plenty instead of starvation at home ; yon keep your own wages good by the simple act of clearing the surplus labour ont of the market " (Farewell Address of the Secre- tary, Flint Glass Makers' Magazine, August, 1854). " Remove the surplus labour and oppression itself will soon be a thiijg of the past " (Ibid.). H 2 202 The New Spirit and the New Model 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.^ The harmless but ineffective expedient of emigration was accompanied by the more equivocal plan of closing t^e 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 nimiber of appresn- tices. The constant refrain of their trade organ is " Look to the rule and keep boys back ; for this is the foimdation of the evil, the secret of our progress, the dial on which our society works, and the hope of future generations." * 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 ^ 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 £^,J12 was spent in this way between 1855 and 1 874 , 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 i860 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 abandon*' ment of the policy, until it was revived in 1872 for a decade or so, by the Agricultural Labourers' Unions. • Flint Glass Makers' Magazine, September 1857. The "Liquor Allowance" 203 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 of&cial, 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 dis- bursement of friendly benefits by branch meetings, the custody and remittance of the funds, the charges for local expenses (including " committee liquor "),^ the mysteries ' 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 of&cers 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 alter- ing 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, con- 204 ^^^ iVeze' Spirit and the New Model 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 worid 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 con- stitution-making. The records of the Iromnoulders 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 mill- fusion, and scenes of violence and disorder are often the characteristic of meetings where order, calmness, and impartiality should prevail." By i860 most of the larger societies had aboUshed 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 pubUcan, and that their payment for drink was pi the nature of rent. Meanwhile the ComJ)ositors 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 llie growth of Temperance. The Rise of the Engineers 205 Wrights possessed strong, exclusive, and even tyrannical trade societies, the chief of them being the " London Fellowship," meeting at the Bell Inn, Old Bailey.^ The tnillwrights, 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 introduc- tion 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 " pajnnent 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 u!pon 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 engineer- ing centres. Of these the Steam-Engine Makers (established 1824) > t^6 Journeymen Steam-Engine and Machine Makers and Millwrights (established 1826) ; the Associated Frater- nity of Iron Forgers, usually called the " Old Smiths " (established 1830) ; and the Boilermakers (estabhshed 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, Pattern-makers, ^ It was the strength of their prganisation in London in 1799, as we have seen, that led to the employers' petition to the House of Commons, out of which sprang the Combina,tion 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 con- sequent on the introduction of the steam-engine. 2o6 The New Spirit and the New Model 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 success- fully 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,^ * 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 ari 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 Ratclifife, 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 i860 he was presented with a testi- monial (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 repre- sentative 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 William Newton 207 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 quahties 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 foUoAving 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 establish- ment 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 Mill- wrights." The objects of this association were ably repre- 2,890 votes ; and in 1875 lie unsuccessfully fought a bye-election at Ipswich. He died March 9, 1876, when his funeral, in which the Metro- politan Board of Works took part, assumed a public character. 2o8 The New Spirit and the New Model sented and promoted by its organ, the Trades Journal, established to extend and " improve Trades Unions generally in Great Britain and Ireland." ^ 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 estabUshing a permanent " Pro- tection 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" (char- acter 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 member- ship 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 ' This journal is preserved in the Manchester Public Library (341, P. 37). It was a well-written t6 pp. 8vo, issued, at first fortnightly and afterwards monthly, at 2d. No. i is dated July 4, 1840. Rise of the Engineers 209 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.^ 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-WUlows, 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.* The trial ^ 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 A malgamated Society of Engineers, igoi. ' 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 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 shiUing 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 shiUing 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.^ In scarcely less marked contrast with the current tradition of Trade Unionism was the pubUcity which the Amalgamated Engineers from the first courted. Powerful societies, such as the existing Union of Stonemasons, had ' , ^ Such protests were frequent in the evidence before the Royal Com- mission 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 tlie Fortnightly Review, 18.67, which was. republished as a pamphlet, The Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners, 1867, 20 pp. The Need for Publicity 223 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.^ At the Royal Commission of 1867-8 the employers' witnesses bitterly complained of their inabiUty to get copies of this publication and of a similar periodical circular of the Bricklayers' Society.^ 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-Hved 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 praf tice to forward to the press, for publication or review, all the monthly, quarterly, and annual reports, as \vell 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, ^^^ 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 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. * See, for instance, the evidence of Mault, Questions 3980 in Second Report and 4086 in Third Report. 224 ^^^ ■^'^^'^ Spirit and the New Model 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.^ 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 featiires. 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 ; ^ 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 iron- workers,' increased the disincKnation of the Unions to aggressive trade action on a large scale. The disrepute ^ Report of Special Committee, 1869. * The National Association of United Trades continued, as we have already seen, in nominal existence until i860 or 1861, but after 1852 it sank to a membership of a few thousands, and played practically no part in the Trade Union world. ^ Times, June to December 1853. The Self-Governing Workshop 225 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.^ 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 sm5.ll 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 ^ A more detailed account of these developments will be found in The Co-operaiive Movement in Great Britain (i8gi ; second edition, 1893), by Beatrice Potter (JVErs. Sidney Webb) ; Co-operative Production, by Benjamin Jones, 1 894 ; and in the Report of the Fabian Research Department on Co-operative Production, published as a supplement to The New Statesman, February 14, 1914. I 226 The New Spirit and the New Model 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 estabhshments of 1848-52 it ceases, for nearly twenty years, to be a question of " practical poUtics " in the Trade Union world. In spite of this intellectii,al 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 OH The Buildin" Trades t> 227 middle-class eopnomics. The contributions of the Amal- gamated Engineers are described " as a general voluntary rate in aid of the Poor's Rate." ^ 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 Concihation " 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 i860 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 Stone- masons, Bricklayers, and other building trade operatives, often against the wish of their Central Committees, were engaged between 1853 and 1859 in an almost constant suc- cession of little strikes against separate firms, in which the men were generally successful in gaining advances of wages.^ • Address of the Executive Council of the Amalgamated Society of En- gineers to their Fellow-Workmen, 1855. ^ 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 i860 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 illustra- 228 The New Spirit and the New Model 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), specif jdng 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 pre- ceded 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 ai-ose 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 move- ment for a shortening of the hours of labour.^ 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 tion this Report on Trade Societies and Strikes (i860', 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. "• See the account of it in Labour Legislation, Labour Movements, and Labour Leaders, by G. Howell, 1902. The Nine Hours Day 229 conference, by a decisive refusal. Meanwhile the Stone- masons 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 thatthe 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. TroUope, 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 estabhshment, and twenty-four thousand men were peremptorily deprived of their employment. The contro- versy which raged in the columns of contemporary news- papers 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 modera- tion 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 representa- tives of the men even to discuss with them the conditions of employment. This attitude was combined with a deter- mined attempt to destroy all combination, the instru- ment adopted being the weU-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 employ- ment any contributor to the funds of any Trades Union or Trades Society which practises interference with the regulation of any estabhshment, the hours or terms of 230 The New Spirit and the New Model 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 Metro- politan 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 un- suspected reserves of financial strength. The London Pianoforte Makers contributed £300. The FKnt Glass Makers, who had just emerged from a prolonged struggle on their own account, sent a similar sum. " Trades Com- mittees " 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 con- cerned), 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 despe- rately 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 The Amalgamated Carpenters 231 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 i860, 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 com- mittee 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 whatso- ever, 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, hke 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 build- 2^2 The New Spirit and the New Model ing 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 indefiliite time ; but the other trades, split up into numerous local societies, were soon reduced to extremities." ^ 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 Uttle 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, i860, 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 admini- stration the new Union advanced by leaps and boimds, and in a few years it stood, in magnitude of financial trans- actions and accumulated funds, second only to the Amalga- mated 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. 1 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 establish- ment of such great trade friendly societies as the Amalga- mated 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 of&cers into close personal intimacy with each other. And it so happened that during these years the little circle of secretaries included men of marked chai'acter and abiUty, who were, both by experience and by temperament, ad- mirably 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 amal- gamated societies of Engineers and Carpenters, William Allan and Robert Applegarth, whose success in building up these powerful organisations had given them great influence ia 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 Brick- layers, 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. 233 I 2 234 ^^^ Junta and their Allies William Allan was the originator of the " New Unionism " of his time.^ We have already described how, with the aid of William Newton, he had gathered up the scattered frag- ments 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 pigeon- holes. 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. AUan, moreover, though not a brilliant speaker, or a man of wide general interests, was a keen working-class politician, whose temper and judgemeiit could always be depended on. And he has * William Allan was born of Scotch parents at Carrickfergus, Ulster, in 1813. His father, who was manager of a cotton-spinning mill, re- moved 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 Isecame 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. Robert Applegarth 235 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-hke 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 justi- fying 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 con- cerned. Hence we find him, during his career as general secretary, a leading member of the famous " International," ^ ^ 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 prinsiples 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 prin- ciples 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 Enghsh 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 236 The Junta and their Allies and an energetic promoter of the Labour Representation League, the National Education League, and various philan- thropic 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 Birming- ham 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. ■"• School Board, and other well-known working-men politicians. But few Enghsh 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 interest- ing account of its Trade Unionist action appeared in the Fortnightly Review for November 1870, by Professor E. S. Beesly. 1 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 Car- penters and Joiners offered a prospect of more efficient trade action. George Odger 237 The permanait of&cials of the Ironfounders and the London Bricklayers were men of less originahty 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 Httle 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 AUan or the lawyer- like capacity of Applegarth. Of the five men we have men- tioned 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 Elected general secretary in 1862, he retained the office until 1871, when, in consequenqe of various personal disputes in the society, he voluntarily resigned. In 1870, on the formation of the Loudon 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 ParUament 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 lie became foreman to a firm of manufacturers of engineering and diving apparatus, eventually becoming the proprietor of this flourishing busi- ness 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- 238 The Junta and their Allies 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 un- businessUke 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. ^ 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 ^ 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 Decembery, 1883. George Odger, the son of a Cornish miner, was born in 1820, at Rouborough, near Tavistoct, 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 Loudon trades on the build- ing trades lock-out in 1859. On the formation of the London Trades Council in i860 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 RadicaUsm he made five attempts to get into Parliament, but was each time baulked by the opposi- tion 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 demonstra- tion" 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 Georgi Odger, 1877. The Policy of the Junta 239 the working-class movement came under the direction, not of middle and upper class sympathisers hke Place, Owen, Roberts, O'Connor, or Duncombe, but of genuine workmen specially trained for the position. For the first time, more- over, 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 move- ments. They brought to their task, it is true, no consis- tent economic theory or political philosophy. They sub- scribed with equal satisfaction to the crude Collectivism of the " International," and the dogmatic industrial Indivi- dualism of the English Radicals. This absence pf a definite basis to their political activity accounts, we think, for the drying up of Trade Union politics after their withdrawal. We shaU 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 diffi- culties of the situation, saved them from being mere dema- gogues. For the next ten years, >vhen it was all-important to obtain a legal status for trade societies and to obliterate the unfortunate impression created by the Sheffield outrages, their quahties exactly suited the emergency. The posses- sion 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, 240 The Junta and their Allies habits of personal propriety, and a remarkable freedom from all that savoured of the tap-room. , In Allan and Apple- garth, Guile, Coulson, and Odger, the traducers of Traide 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 Uke 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, theft busily organising the Miners' National Union, John Kane,^ 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 combina- tion 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 ^ John Kane was born at Alnwick, Nortliumberland, 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 genera] secretary, a position he retfiined until his death in March 1876. Old-fashioned Unionism 241 whole group of capitalists, might be effectually prevented from obtaining labour at anything but the standard condi- tions. 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 poKtical 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 pohcy. The use of the Trade Union organisa- tion for Parliamentary agitation, on which Macdonald, Applegar^h, 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 com- pelling 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, Uke the Midland Brickmakers and the Sheffield Cutlers, still wedded to the old ideas of seorecy and coercion, whilst the powerful society of Masons, then centred at Leeds, held aloof from the general movement. But this resistance was 242 The Junta and their Allies not confined to the older societies, nor to those of any par- ticular locality. All the Unions of that time, even those of the Metropolis, retained a strpng traditional repugnance to political action. In many cases the rules expressly forbade all mention of poUtics 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 estabHshed 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 iniportant 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 i860 permanent councils were in existence in Glasgow, Sheffield, Liverpool, and Edinburgh, and their example was, in 1861, followed by the London trades.^ • The first permanent committee of the nature of a Trades Counci) The London Trades Council 243 Like many provincial organisations, the London Trades Council originated in a " Strike Committee." During the 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 Sheifield razor-grinders from malicious prosecution, and to help the Liver- pool masons who had been indicted for conspiracy. Of its activity from 1850 to 1857 we possess no records, but in August 1857 it subscribed 1^400 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 estabhshed, composed principally of the building trades, was in i860 enjoying a vigorous life. Shef&eld, too, had long had ephemeral federations of the local trades, which came near having a continuous existence. One of these, the " Asso- ciation 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 iox 1854. In Londoii, as may be gathered from George Odger's evidence before the Master and Servant Law Committee in 1867, the meetings of "Metro- politan 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 committeb 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' BiU, 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 ion 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 244 The Junta and their Allies 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 estabHsh 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." ^ In March i860 the provisional committee formed with this object issued an " Address " to the trades, which resulted, on July 10, i860, 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, com- positors, 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 forma- tion. In order to faciUtate 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 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, .througE the help of Thomas Hughes and Lord Goderich, secured. Between 1858 and 1867 Trades Councils were estab- lished 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. * Second Annual Report of London Trades Council, March 31, 1862. Payment by the Hour 245 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.^ 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 BeU 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.* For the ' 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. * On receipt of a memorial from the operatives asking for the intro- duction 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 246 The Junta and their Allies historian of the general movement the dispute is chiefly important as furnishing the occasion of the first interven- tion 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 Chris- tian Socialists, which did much to bring, about the tacit compromise in which the struggle ended.^ 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 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 con- cerned, to separate contracts with each individual workman. The work- men reaUsed, what they failed clearly to explain, that the proffered free- dom was illusory. In the modem 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 i86i 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, biit 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 con- ceded by the men, and the Hour System, guarded by strict limitation of the working day, has come to be preferred by both parties. ^ The letters were drawn up by Frederic Harrison and Godfrey Lush- ington, after personal investigation and inquiry, and were signed also by T. Hiiglie^. J. M.Xudlow, E. S. Beesly, R. H. Hutton, R. B Litchfield, and T, R.Beniiett. They appeared in July i86i. Trades Council Policy 247 construction, by a large contractor, of the new Chelsea barracks. The War Department saw no harm, in per- mitting 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 ^'^^ 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 feeUng to compel him to withdraw the troops. The minute-books of the London Trades Council from i860 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 Enghsh, all the varied events of the Labour Move- ment as they were brought before the Council. In 1861-62, for instance, we see the Council tr37ing 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 Hes in their unconscious revelation of the way in which the Council became the instmment of the new policy of partici- pation 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 HaU 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 248 The Junta and their Allies 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 Gladstoiie 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 poHcy with regard to pohtical reform. The, early members had set themselves against the introduction of politics in any guise whatso- ever, 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 enthusi- astically 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.^ In the same year the Council agreed to co-operate with the " Inter- national " 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 1 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. The Master and Servant Act 249 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 legis- lative reform to the London officials. Under the brUliant leadership of Alexander Macdonald, whose work we shall hereafter describe, the force of the coal - miners was being marshalled for ParUamentary agitation ; and Mac- donald'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 equaUty 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 wilfuUy 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 wilfuUy 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 worlanan, who thus fomid himself. 250 The Junta and their Allies when a dispute occurred, suddenly seized, even in his bed,^ 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.^ * The obligation to proceed by warrant was at firat 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 tlie 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 pohce 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). 2 See Question 864, Master and Servant Law Select Committee, 1866; Unwin v. Clarke, i 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 Appren- Legal Persecution 251 Early in 1863 Alexander Campbell ^ brought the Master tices 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 leither 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 in- ferior 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 comniences, 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 re- pealing 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 punish- ment 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 Labojir Laws, 1875 ; The Labour Laws, by James Edward Davis (1875) ; and Stephen's History of the Criminal Law, vol. iii. ^ 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, 252 The Junta and their Allies 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 bf 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 estabhshed for the express purpose of forwarding the agitation ; and 15,000 copies of a " Memorial of Infonnation intended for the use of such workmen as fall under the provisions of the Statute 4 Geo. IV. c. 34 " ■^ were circulated to aU the leading workmen throughout the country. At the instance of Campbell and Macdonald, the Glasgow Trades Council con- vened a conference of Trade Union representatives to con- sider 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 dele- gates did not exceed twenty, but these included the leading officials of all the great national and amalgamated Unions.* 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. "■ 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. * Among those present were Robert Applegarth, George Odger, Daniel Guile, "J. J. Dunning, Alexander Macdonald, William Dronfield, Alexander Campbell, Edwin Coulson, and George Potter. The societies represented included the London Trades Council, Glasgow Trades Com- mittee, 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 Amal- A Parliamentary Success 253 The transactions of the Conference were thoroughly businessHke. Three members of the Government were asked to receive deputations ; a large number of members of Parliament were " lobbied " on the subject of an im- mediate 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' Com- mittee 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 imder the notice of Parliament, and in 1866 a Select Committee was appointed to inquire into the subject. Upon its report Lord Elcho ^ 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 legis- lative field, did much to increase their confidence in Parlia- mentary agitation. But whilst the Junta and their alUes were, by the capture of the Trades Councils, using the Trade Union organisation for an active pohtical 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 imder the invidious necessity of either giving its sanction gamated 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. ' Afterwards Earl of Wemyss. 254 The Junta and their Allies to, or withholding approval from, practically every import- ant 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 tiie 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 Stafford- shire 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 pohcy of the Jimta. 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 George Potter . 255 leader of the working-class movement. As a matter of fact, he at no time represented any genuine trade organisa- tion, 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 deleigates of the London trades to denounce the Junta, and their instrument, the London Trades Council. The minutes of the latter body contain abun- dant 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." ^ 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 joperatives 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 ' Minutes of meeting of London Trades Council, March 1864. 256 - The Junta and their Allies two firms only.-'^ 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." ^ 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 t^e emplayers' 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 foi: 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.* 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 ^ It must not be supposed that the lock-oilt 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). '• Report of Conference of Trade Delegates at Sheffield (June 1866), p. 22. ' " An Ironmaster's View of Strikes," by W. R. Hopper, Fortnightly Review (August i, 1865). The Sheffield Outrages 257 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 coihbinations 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." ^ The Trade Unions world seems to have been quite unconscious of the gathering storm. In June 1866 138 delegates, representing aU 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 wiU 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 ' " 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). K 258 The Junta and their Allies r 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.^ Meanwhile, in order to meet the grqat federations of employers, they formed " The United Kingdom AUiance of Organised Trades," to support the members of any trade who should find themselves " locked out " by their employers.^ Un- fortunaf:ely the conference utterly failed to decide what constituted a " lock-out," as distinguished from a strike ; and the " Judicial Council " of the Alliance, consist jgig 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 unwilhngly responded to ; and the Executive Committee, sitting at Sheffield, had seldom any cash at its command. The Alhance hngered on until about the end of 1870, when the defection of its last important Unions brought it absolutely to an end.* In ^ 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). ^ Rules adopted at Manchester Conference, 1867 (Sheffield, 1867, 12 pp.). ' 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 Amal- Rattening 259 1866, however, the Alhance 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 sensa- tion 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 pubhc 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 perpe- trators 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 gamated Tailors, Boilermakers, Cotton-spinners, Scottish Associated Carpenters, Yorkshire Glass-bottle Makers, North of England Iron- workers, 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 Alhance was held at Manchester from the ist to the 4th of January 1867, when fifty-three trades had been enrolled, numbering 59,750 members. The " Rules " >fidopted 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.). 26o The Junta and their Allies to demoralise those who are concerned in it, and to bring disgrace on all trade combinaMons." ^ 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 Royail Commission of Inquiry was ofi&ciaUy announced in the Queen's Speech of February 1867. That the Govern- ment meant business was proved by the prompt intro- duction 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 ^ The town of Sheffield had long been noted for the custom of "ratten- ing," 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 contribu- tions, 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 in- effectual. 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 Acom 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 prder 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-girinders, had struck. Trade Union Funds 261 gave evidence, but the same privilege was extended to the actual perpetrators of the crynes. The investigation, more- over, 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 mem- bers 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.^ So thoroughly has the legality of their position been accepted ' Among other societies, the Amalgamated Engineers and Carpenters and the national Unions of Boilermakers and Ironfounders appear to have deposited their rules. 262 The Junta and their Allies 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 with- holding 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, confimied 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 them- selves 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 work- men 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." ^ Trade Unionism was now at bay, assailed on both sides, 1 Beehive, January 26, 1867. Organisation of the Defence 263 It was easy to foresee that the emplpyers and their allies would make a determined attempt to, use the Royal Com- mission 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. i 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 publi- cation 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 hfe 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. Apple- garth'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 264 The Jmnta and their Allies 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. ^ It is obvious from the private transactions of the con- ference 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 tj^iical 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 representa- tives of each view, but persons presumably impartial, with Sir William Erie, 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 1" Along with these, in helping and advising the Trade Unions at this time, were Vernon Lushington, Godfrey Lushington (afterwards Per- manent 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. FowelJ Buxton, M.P., and A. J. Mundella. The Royal Commission 265 chiefly from the ranks of high of&cials, 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 httle 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.^ The actual conduct of the Trade Unionist case was under- taken by Harrison and Hughes, in consultation with Apple- garth, whom the Junta deputed to attend the sittings on their behalf. The ground of defence was chosen with con- siderable shrewdness. The pohcy 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 httle 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 ' 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 ineeting of Trades held at the Bell Inn. It was introduced into the House of Commons early in the follow- ing 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. K2 266 The Junta and their Allies 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 mem- bers, 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. WiUiam 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 dis- claimers, in persuading the Conimission 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 Associa- tion 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 impenetrabiUty 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 "un- warrantable encroachments on their rights as employers." The Amalgamated Societies 267 The number of apprentices, like indeed the whole administra- tion 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 amalga- mated societies with their far-reaching power and accumu- lated wealth, effective as it had been in alarming the public, proved disastrous to the employers when their case was sub- jected 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 Coimcils 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 im- possible 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 268 The Junta and their Allies Amalgamated Carpenters could possibly meet their accumu- lating liabilities, and that these must, in a few years, in- exatably 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 un- limited power to raise funds by special levies, or by in- creased contributions, whenever it may seem good to the majority of the members. But even had the actuarial in- dictment 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 comphcity on the part of other trades was shown. It was made evident to all candid Lord Brassey 269 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.^ 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, " wiU seek neither to augment nor to reduce their influence, but, accepting it as a fact, will give it free scope for legitimate development." ^ Thus the ofiicial report of the Commission, from which the enemies of Trade Unionism had hoped so much, contained no recom- mendation 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 legaUsation 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 ^ 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, j6 pp. ; and that by Richard Congreve, Mr, Broadhead and the Anonymous Press, 1867, 16 pp. ' * 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, i86g). The speech was after- wards republished, with some additions, under the title of Trade Unions and the Cost of Labour, by T. Brassey, 1870, 64 pp. 270 The Junta and their Allies Commissioners recommended that no combination should henceforth be Hable 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, carr5dng 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 Com- mission 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 futiUty 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 state- ment, 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 de- fended 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 The Dangers of the Law 271 referred to. We have here a striking instance of the advan- tage to a Labour Movement of expert professional advice. The Junta had been demanding the complete legaHsation of their Unions in the same manner as ordinary Friendly Societies. They had failed to reahse that such a legahsation 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 stiU are, ahen 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 legahsation would place the most formidable weapon in the hands of imscrupulous 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 re- taining to the full the exceptional legal privilege of being incapable of being sued or othei-wise 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 hberty, which Harrison and his friends had elaborated, became for seven years the political programme of the Trade Unionists. 272 The Junta and their Allies 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 Parhaments, were both of them exclusively the work of a group of Radicals it was, as we shall see, a Conservative Cabinet which eventu- ally passed it into law.^ The effective though informal leadership of the move- ment 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 popiilar 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. ^ The Junta, perhaps rather unwisely, refused to have anything to do with a meeting held under Potter's auspices. But mq.ny of their provincial allies came up without any suspicion of the sectional char- acter 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 ^ 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 Shef5eld 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, httle 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. * Report of the Trades Conference, 1867, 32 pp. Divided Counsels 273 to the Junta and the London Trades Council. The Confer- ence 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 ConoUy, 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 dele- gates to pass a resolution expressing full confidence in the policy and action of the Conference of Amalgamated Trades.^ And at the Congress of 1869, Odger and Howell, as repre- sentatives of the Junta, managed to get adopted a series of resolutions embodjdng Frederic Harrison's proposals.^ Meanwhile a change had come over the political situa- tion. At the outset of the crisis Frederic Harrison had urged upon the Trade Union world the necessity of turning ' Beehive, June 13, 1868. * Ibid., August 28, 1869. 274 The Junta and their Allies to the polling booth for redress. " Nothing," he writes in January, 1867, " will force the governing classes to re- cognise [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 move- ments has brought them." ^ Within a few months of this advice the Reform Bill of 1867 had enfranchised the work- ing 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 Amalga- mated 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 poHtical 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.^ By the beginning of 1869 Frederic Harrison had drafted a comprehensive Bill, embodying all the legislative pro- posals of his minority report. This was introduced by Mundella and Hughes, and although its provisions were received with denunciations by the employers,* it gained some support among the newly elected members, and was strongly backed up outside the House. The Liberal Govern- ment of that day, and nearly all the members of the House of Commons, were still covertly hostile to the very principles ' Beehive, January 26, 1867. * Fortnightly Circular, June 1868. * See, for in.stance. Some opinions on Triidi> Unions and the Bill of iS6g, 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. Provisional Protection 275 of Trade Unionism, and every attempt was made to burke the measure.^ But the Jimta 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 Govern- ment abandoned its attitude of hostiUty 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.^ The Junta had gained the first victory of their political campaign. ^ In his Letters to the Working Classes, 1870, Professor Beesly gives a graphic account of the shufaing of the Government, and advises politica) 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, igo2, pp. 156-172. 2 32 and 33 Vic. u. 61 (1869). This provisional measure was bitterly opposed in the House of Lords by Earl Cairns, who argued that its uni- versal 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 soUcitors 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 276 The Junta and their Allies 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 Govern- ment proposed to concede all the points on which it had been specially pressed by the Jvmta. 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 fimds 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.^ But from the men's point of view this " complete charter legalising Unions " had a serious drawback. The BiU, as was complained, " while repeahng 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 pimished. All the terms of the old Combination Laws, " molest," " ob- struct," " threaten," " intimidate," and so forth, were used 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 BiU," in Fortnightly Review, July i, 1869, and the leaflet published by the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, on Russell Gurney's Act, December, 1868. 1 See, for instance, the report of the Leeds meeting of the Master Builders' Association to object to the Bill, Beehive, March 11, 1871. Picketing 277 without any definition or limitation, and picketing, more- over, 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.^ 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 ^ A short Act had been passed in 1859 (22 Vic. c. 34) which excluded from the definition of " molestation " or " obstruction " the mere agree- ment 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 re- ferred 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. 278 The Junta and their Allies Clause " was intended to effect any alteration in the law. Its comprehensive prohibition of violence, threats, intimida- tion, 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." ^ Druitt, Shorrocks, and other officers of the ^ Henry Crompton gives the following account of the practice of picketing : — " Kcketing 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 trjdng 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 con- demned by those imbued with a higher sense of national duty. Picketing is justified on these grounds by the workmen, but all physical molesta- tion 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.) The Criminal Law 279 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 " molesta- tion " 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 com- bined 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 maiiagement might become a crime. ^ 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.^ Indeed, merely giving notice of a projected strike, even in the most court- eous and peaceful manner, had frequently been held to be an act of intimidation punishable as a crime.^ In 185 1 the posting up of placards announcing a strike was held to be intimidation of the employers.* 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 1 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 lo Cox, 600. 2 R. w. 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). 3 R. V. Hewitt, 5 Cox, C.C. 163 (1851). * See Walsby v. Anley, 30 L.J.M.C. I2i (i86i) ; Skinner -u. 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) V\fright (1873) ; Sir William Erie's Law Relating to Trade Unions (1873) ; and Stephen's History of the Criminal Law, vol. iii. chap. xxx. 28o The Junta and their Allies 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 with- drawing 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 Union- ists 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 deter- mined to follow the example set by the Manchester and Birmingham Trades Councils in 1868 and 1869 by calling together a national Trade Union Congress.^ 1 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 " Parhament 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 (for- tunately preserved in the Ironworkers' Journal for May i868. 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 CourciJ. The Trades Union Congress 281 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 legahsing 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 This second Congress, which met in August 1869, included forty-eight delegates from forty separate societies, having, it was said, 250,000 mem- bers. 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 Man- chester 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. 282 The Junta and their Allies 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 illu- sory concession sufficed to detach from the opposition many of those who had at the General Election professed friend- ship 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 incUned to help to some extent, the second reading was agreed to without a division. Thte other stages were rapidly run through without serious opposition. In the House of Lords the proAdsions 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.^ Trade Societies became, for the first time, legally recognised and fuUy 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.^ The Secretaries of the Amal- gamated 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 them- selves of the Trade Union Act, by registering their rules in accordance with its provisions ; * and in September ' 34 and 35 Vic. c. 31 (Trade Union Act), and 34 and 35 Vic. c. 32 (Criminal Law Amendment Act) . ' See, for instance, the article by Henry Crompton in the Beehive, September 2, 1871. . » The Operative Bricklayers' Society (London), of which Coulson was general secretary, stands No. i on the Register. The Criminal Law Amendment Act 283 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 Amend- ment Act, the Government had dehberately struck a blow against the methods of all trade societies at all periods. The growing strength of the organisations of the coal- miners 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 jnetropoUtan 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 inteUigent 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 legis- lation of 1871 was regarded by the Government and the House of Commons as the fidl and final solution of a long-standing problem. " The judges, however, declared," 284 The Junta and their Allies 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." ^ 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 convic- tions 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 intoler- able 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 1873, deepened into anger by the sentence of twelve months' imprisonment passed upon the London gas-stokers. These men were found guilty of "conspiracy" 1 Digest of the Labour Laws, signed by F. Harrison and H. Crompton, and issued by the Trades Union Congress Parliamentary Committees, September 1875. Trade Union Agitation 285 to coerce or molest their employers by merely preparing for a simultaneous withdrawal of their labour. The vin- dictive 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.^ 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 dele- gate 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.^ Rarely has poMtical agitation been begun in such appar- ently 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 antagon- ism felt by the njanufacturers to any effettive 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, ^ They were, however, eventually released after a few months' im- prisonment ; see Henry Broadhurst, the Story of His Life, by himself, igoi, pp. 59-64 ; Labour Legislation, Labour Movements and Labour Leaders, by G. Howell, T902, pp. 237-53. - See letter to Beehive, January ii, 1873. 286 The Junta and their Allies refused in 1872 to admit that there was any necessity for further legislation, and utterly declined to take the matter up ; ^ 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 hostifity of the Trade Unionists than to the sullen abstention of the Nonconformists. The time happened ^o 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 * Hansard, vol. 212, p. 1132, July 15, 1872. Political Action 287 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 01 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.^ 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 pohtics 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.^ At a bye-election ' This formed the subject of bitter comment in the Beehive, January 1874, just before the General Election. ^ The following letter, addressed to Odger by John Stuart Mill, will be of interest in connection with the perennial questjpfl of the expediency of 288 The Junta and their Allies 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 aU 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. Mimdella's Bill for repeaUng the Criminal Law Amendment Act, it has never "independent" candidatures. It will be found in the Beehive for Feb- ruary 13, 1875 :— " Avignon, February 19, 1871. " Dear Mr. Odger, — Although you have not been successful, I con- gratulate you on the result of the polling in Sonthwark, 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 sacrificiiig any prin- ciple. The worldng 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," ''Splitting the Vote" 289 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. Every- thing 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." ^ 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.^ But at Stafford and Morpeth the official Liberals accepted what they were powerless to prevent ; and Alexander Macdonald and Thomas Burt, the two leading ' Beehive, August 9, 1873 ; see also that of August 30. * 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 connec- tion 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 (Ayles- bury), Cremer (Warwick), Lucraft (Finsbury), Potter (Peterborough), Bradlaugh (Northampton), Kane (Middlesborough), Odger (Southwark), Mottershead (Preston), and Walton (Stoke). See History of Labour Repre- sentation, by A. W. Humphrey, igiz. L 290 The Junta and their Allies of&cials 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-caUed " 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 re- fused 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. an57thing to do with the Com- mission. Ultimately, Alexahder 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 Coimcil, and a prominent Birmingham Trade Unionist gave evidence. The investigation of the Commission was perfunctory, and the report inconclusive. ; But the Govern- ment were too, fully alivfe to the new-found poMtical power of the Unions to attempt to play with the question At. the beginning of 1875 the imprisonment; of five cabinet-- makers employed at Messrs. Jackson & Graham, a well- known London firm, roused considerable pubHc feeling, and led to many questions in Parliament.^ In June the Home, Sfecretary, 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, v^hich completely satisfied the Trade Union demands. The \ See House of Commons Ketums. No. 237 of the 2nd,, and No. 273 of the 23rd of June 1875. ■- • ,. ' •-' The Employers and Workmen Act -291 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 aboHshed. The legaMsation 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 op- pression, 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 hence- forth 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.^ * 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 sous 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. 292 • The Junta and their Allies The paramount importance of the legal and Parlia- mentary struggle from 1867 to 1875 has compelled us to relegate to the next chapter all mention of striking con- temporary events in Trade Union history. The sustained efforts of this decade, too often ignored by a younger genera- tion 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 sub- jected 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." ^ 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 philanthrop- ists, of perfect freedom of contract and complete competi- tion 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 ^ Speech at Trades Union Congress, Glasgow, October 1875. John Bright ' 293 a criminal offence, on the plea that, however beneficial it might seem to the workmen, it cut at the root of national prosperity. It wiU be obvious that in urging this conten- tion the employers were taking up a,n 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 com- pulsory 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." ^ Lord Shaftes- bury, the lifelong advocate of factory legislation, was pra3dng 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." ^ The Sheffield and other outrages, the rumours of constant persecution of non-Unionists, the hand- workers' perpetual objection to ' In his letter to a Blackburn mill-owner, November 3, i860. Public Letters of John Bright, collected and edited by H. J. Leech, 1885, p. 80. ' Letter to Colonel Maude, quoted by Professor Beesly in his address to the London Trade's Council, 1869, reported iu Bricklayers' Circular, March 1870. 294 The Junta and their Allies machinery, the restrictions on piecework and apprentice- ship — 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 detri- mental, right or wrong. They insisted only on the right of every Englishman to bargain for the sale of his labour in the inanner 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 em- ployers to insist on the principle of non-interference of the State in industry whenever they were pushed by the advo- cates 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 unUmited 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 con- tract. " 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 legis- lating 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 pubUc mind has been of late conscious of serious embarrassment, and eagerly expecting some legislative solution, some heaven-born dis- The Trade Union Case 295 cdverer to arise, wifh a new Parliamentary nostrum. As usual in such cases, it now turns out that there is no legis- lative solution at all ; and that the true solution requires, as its condition, the removal of the mischievous meddling of the past." ^ This doctrine " that aU 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 1873, " 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 inter- fered 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 inten- tion 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 suffi- ciently large majority to do otherwise. The trades to which Henry Broa^dhurst and George Howell belonged were notori- ous for the success with which the Unions had maintained their practice of excluding. non-society men from their jobs. ^ Fortnightly Review, July i, 1869. " The Trades Union Bill," by Frederic Harrison. 296 The Junta and their Allies The coal-miners of Northumberland and Durham habitually refused to descend the shaft in company with a non- Unionist.-^ 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 foot- ing as the enforcement of citizenship. But, however this may be, it is evident that the refusal of the Northumber- land miners to " ride " with non-society men is, in effect, as coercive on the dissentient minority as the Mines Regula- tion 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." ^ The force of this caution must have 1 William Crawford, the trusted leader of the Durham miners, and a steadfeist opponent of the Eight Hours Bill, in a weU-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. Kegard 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. * 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 poUtical econo- mists 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 Trade Union Inconsistency ' 297 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 com- bination 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 inter- vention, or that, they deliberately set to work to win their case upon false premisses. 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 ideq, 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 CoUectivist views was perceived. Applegarth and Odger, for instance, saw no inconsistency in becoming leading officials of the " Inter- national " 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 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 opposi- tion 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). L2 298 The Junta and their Allies that the exclusive insistence upon the Individualifet argu- ments, 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 participa- tion of working men in the Liberal poUtics of the tim^, and, above all, the close intimacy which many of them enjoyed with able and fertile thinkers of the middle class, air 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, how- ever, 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.^ 1 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 Labo^r 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 Macdonaid and John Kane, began, to play an important part in the general movemeiif. 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 contingent^ 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 299 300 Sectional Developments 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 frag- ments 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." ^ 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, Hke William Newton, midway between the casual and amateur leaders of the old Trade Unionism and the paid officials of the new tj^pe. Himself originally a miner and the son of a miner, the education and independent * Address of Alexander Macdonald to the Leeds Conference, 1873. Alexander Macdonald, the son of a sailor, who became a miner in Lanark- shire, 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, sup- porting 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 promo- tion of the Parliamentary programme which he had impressed upon the miners. He gave important evidence before the Select Comfeittee 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 spUt. At the General Election of 1874 he was more successful, being returned for Stafford, and thus becoming (with ThomEis 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, l8j2 (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. Baern- reither's English Associations of Working Men, p. 408. Alexander Macdonald 301 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 effective- ness lay, however, neither in his oratory nor in his powers of organisation, but in his exact appreciation of the partic- ular 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 originahty 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 restric- tion 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." ^ 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 * Address to the Miners' National Conference at Leeds, 1873. 303 Sectional Developments the miners of that coal-field into a compact district asso- ciation, 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 i860, 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/ how- ever, 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 Asso- ciation 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.-^ 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.^ In the reports of the sections and the * The Conference appointed a sub-committee to compile and publish its proceedings, " a thing,*" as the preface explains, " altogether unpar- alleled 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 p, zo, 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 pubUc. 2 For this militant Chartist (1805-79), see Life of Joseph Rayner Stephens, by G. J. Holyoake, 1881. Legal Regulation 303 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- regu* lation of the conditions of work is embodied in a lengthy series of proposals which have nearly all since been inserte4 in the detailed code of mining law. In contradistinjCtion 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 main- tenance is clearly foreshadowed. " Overtoil," says the report, " prodiices over-supply ; low prices and low wages follow ; bad habits and bad health follow, of course ; and then diminished production a^d profits are inevitable. Re- duction 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.fajr 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." ^ The restriction of labour in mines to a maximum of eight hours per day was strongly urged ; bir^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 pf boys and the fixing of the men's day is brought out by William Crawford^ the future leader 1 Xmiisactions and Results of the National A ssociation of Coal, Lime, and Ironstone Miners of Great Britain, held at Leeds, November g, lo, ii, 12, 13,. and 14, 1863, p. 14. 304 Sectional Developments of the Durham men. The general feeUng 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." ^ 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 BiU drafted in this sense was eventually adopted without dissent. Anothei: reform advocated by Macdonald has had far- reaching though unforeseen effect upon the miners' organisa- tion. 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 accord- ingly 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 resist- ance, the employers in several colheries conceded this boon. A determined attempt was then made by the South York- shire 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 i860 empowered the miners of each pit to appoint a checkweigher, but confined their choice to persons actually in employment ^ Transactions and Results of the National Association of Coal, Lime, and Ironstone Miners of Great Britain, held at Leeds, November 9, 10, zi, 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. The Checkweigher 305 at the particular mine.^ This important victory was long rendered nugatory by the evasions of the coal-owners. At Bamsley, 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.* 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 per- fect independence for the checkweigher. The Mines Regu- lation Act of 1872 shghtly 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 ^ Section 29 of Mines Regulation Act of i860. " Normansell v. Piatt. 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 nine- teen, he married, he was unable to write his own name. Migrating to South Yorkshire, he became a leader in the agitation to secure a check- weigher, 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 ;fiooo to lodge in the bank in his name, in order to enable him to declare himself possessed of the pecuniary quaUfication 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. 3o6 Sectional Developments 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 xecog- nition and promotion of colle6tive 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 inajority 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 bulljTing 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 check- weighers 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 consoUdate their organisation. The powerful aid brought by Macdonald to the movement for the Master and Servant Act of 1867 has already been de- scribed. But between 1864 and i86g the almost uninter- rupted 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 Cotton Op^rdtiv&s 307 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 Comniittee 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, becanie, 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 a,s 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 Com- mittees " 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 com- .plicated lists of piecework rates which characterise the English cotton industry.^ ' 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 3o8 Sectional Developments 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 opera- tives 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, com- prising eighty-five pages closely filled with figures ^ — the intricacy of the calculations is such as to be beyond the com- prehension not only of the ordinary operative or manufac- turer, 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 Hst is in question, the standard wage of a whole district may depend upon the qtiickness 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 wiU be obvious that for work of this nature 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. 1 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-)- The Short Time Bill 309 the successful organiser or " born orator " was frequently quite tmfit. There grew up, therefore, both among the weavers and the spinners, a system of selection of new secre- taries 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,^ 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 intro- duction 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 restric- tion on the moving power." ^ On the improvement of trade ' Birtwistle was, in 1892, at an advanced age, appointed by the Home Secretary an Inspector in the Factory Department, under the "particu- lars 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. * Beehive, February 23, 1867. The circular announcing the resolu- tion is signed by the leading officers of the Cotton-spinners' and Cotton- weavers' Unions of the time. 310 Sectional Developments 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 dele- gates of the various local societies, both of spinners, and weavers-^usually the officials of the trade — ^met together and estabUshed, on the 7th of January 1872, the Factory Acts Reform Association', for the purpose of obtaining such an amendnient of the law as would reduce the hours of labour from sixty to fifty-four per week. The Parliamentary policy of these shrew[d tacticians is only another instance of the practical opportunism of the English , Trade Unionist. The cotton of&cials 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-opefation with the Congress Committee would be disas- trous rather than useful, ... as Lord Shaftesbury and others declared they would not undertake a measure pro- posed in the interest of the Trades Unions." ^ 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 sakepf the women and children that the skilled leaders: of the Lancashire cotton operatives had diverted their " Short Time Movement " from aggressive strikes to Parliamentairy agitation. The private minutes of the Factory Acts Reform Association contain no mention 1 Report of the Parlianjentary Committee to the Trades Union Con- gress, January 1873. " Behind the Women's Petticoats ' ' 311 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 opera- tives," 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 work- men." ^ .• 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 eiven 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 suffer- ings 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,^ " fought from behind the women's petticoats.," But it was a part of the irony of the situation that, as Broadhurst subsequently pointed out,* the Bill " encountered great opposition from ' Circular of December ii, 1871, signed on behalf of the preliminary meeting by Thomas Mawdsley — not to be mistaken for James Mawdsley, . J.P., a subsequent secretary. , . * 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 refer- ence 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." ' Speech at Trades Union Congress, Bristol, 1878. 312 Sectional Developments the female organisations " ; and it was, in fact, expressly in the interests of working women that Professor Fawcett, m the session of 1873, moved the rejection of the measure.^ Even as limited to women and children the proposal en- countered 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 Govern- ment 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. ^ 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 Parhament, 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 concihate the ppponents of the shorter factory day which it ensured ; but, to the great satisfaction of the spinners, this opposition was unsuccess- ful ; and, if not a nine hours day, at any rate a 56^ hours week became law. This short and successful ParHamentary 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. 1 " 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 ParUament," ^ Report of Trades Union Congress, Sheffield, January 1874. Coal and Cotton 313 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 parallehsm 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 unUke. Yet without community of interest, with- out official intercourse, and without any traceable imitation, the organisations of the two trades show striking resem- blances 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 en- during without friendly benefits. A further similarity may be seen in the creation, in each case, of a special class of Trade Union ofiicials, 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 Move- ment 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-^1, 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 3 14 Sectional Developments operatives had in many' towns, and after more or less con- flict, secured what was termed the Nine Hours Day. In 1866 an agitation arose among the engineers of T3nieside 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 Conimittee " of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, the spirit of: caution pirevailed, 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 ist 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-Eastem 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 organisa- tion. 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 be- longed to no Union whatsoever. A " Nine Hotirs League," embracing Unionists and non-Unionists alike, was accord- ingly formed for the special purpose of the agitation ; and this body was fortimate enough to elect as its President John Burnett,^ a leading member of the local branch of * John Burnett, who was born at Alnwick, Northumberland, in 1842, became, after the Nine Hours Strike, a lecturer for the National Educa- tion League, and joined the staff of the Newcastle Chronicle. In 1875, on Allan's death, he. was elected to the General Secretaryship of the Amal- gamated Society of Engineers. He was a member of the Parliamentary Comrilittee of the Trades Union Congress from 1876 to 1885. In 1886 he was appointed to the newty-created post of Labour Correspondent oi 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 The Nine Hours Strike 315 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.^ The five months' strike which led up to a signal victory for the men >yas, 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 dis- pute, made the name of their leader celebrated throughout the world of labour. The tactical skiU 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 ^ and the Spectator. Money was 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. ^ 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 Deceriiber 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. ' 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). 3i6 Sectional Developments ' subscribed slowly at first, but after three months poured in from all sides. Joseph (!;owen, 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 New- castle 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.^ 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 ex- pediency 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 diminu- tion of the working day, with an increased rate of pay per hour, were handed in by local officials of the CarpentersJ Masons, Bricklayers, Plumbers, and other organisations. In many cases non-society men took the lead in the move- ment ; but it was soon fbund 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 labpur for a time sufficient to cause em- barrassment to business. Wherever the employers were ^ 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, The Two Policies 317 assured of this fact, they usually gave way without a con- flict. 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 over- time, 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.^ 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 in- cidental consequence of the existence of legislative restric- tions. 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 aban- donment by Allan, Applegarth, and Guile of all leadership in trade matters. Already in 1865 we find the Executive CouncU of the Amalgamated Engineers explaining that, although they ssonpathised with advance movements, they felt unable to either support them by grants or to advise ^ 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." 3i8 Sectional Developments their members to vote a special levy.^ The " backwardness of the Council of the Engineers " constantly pr-ovoked angry criticism. The chief obstacles to - advancement were de- clared 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 in- vested — even with a miser's care — while its councils are marked with aU the chilly apathy of a worn-out mission." ^ 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 begajn in Sunderland on April i, 1871, the London Executive remained silent on the subject imtil 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-estab- lished 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 nien 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 aJl the expenses of the struggle were defrayed from the subscrip- tions collected by the Nine Hours League.* And if we turn •>• Meeting, of London pattern-makers to seek advance of wages, Bee- hive, October 21, 1865. '. 2 Letter frdnj " Amalgamator," Beehive, January 19, 1867. " The rank and- file were more sympathetic than the Executive. The: machinery for ma;king the collections was mostly furnished by the branches and conllnitt^es. of, the Society, Trade Union Apathy 319 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 tend- ency at work. Whether it is the Masons or the Tailors, the Ironfounders or the Carpenters, we see the same aban- donment by the Central Executive of any dominant prin- ciple of trade policy, the same absence of initiative in trade movements, and the same more or less persistent S'truggle to check, the trade activity of its branches. In thei Amal- , ganiated 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 prob- lems 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 tj^e), or by irresponsible " strike-conamittees " 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 amalgaination, and which had been so extensively copied by other trades. The diffi- culties arising from the attempt to unite, in one organisa- tion, men Votking 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 inacbinery, 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 yeit progressive trade policy in all the hundreds of branches would, of itself, have taxed the skill of a body of experts free from other preoccupa- ' tions. All these duties were, however, cast upon a single., 320 Sectional Developments salaried officer/ 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 superannua- tion allowance was made by the Executive Council. Every week this body had to decide on scores of separate appli- cations 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 CouncU. 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 sum- mary, 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 jlarge part of its time in protecting the funds of the Society from extrava- gance, 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 1 An " Assistant Secretary " was subseque^ntly 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 rio clerical staff whatever. Abandonment of the Strike 321 was important enough to warrant any inroad on this sacred balance. The Engineers' Central Executive, indeed, practi- cally Uid 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." ^ The " Con- tingent Fund," out of which alone strike pay could be given, was between i860 and 1872 repeatedly abolished by vote of the members, re-established for a short time, and again abolished. Trade Unionists who remembered the oM con- flicts viewed with surprise and alarm the spirit which had come over the once active organisation. Even the experi- enced 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 travel- ling for employment superadded. . . . The Amalgamated Engineers, as a trade society, has ceased to exist." ^ It would be a mistake to assume that the inertia and supineness of the " Amalgamated " Societies was a neces- sary 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 Question 827 in Keport of Trade Union Commission (March 26, 1867), ^ Bookbinders' Trade Circular, January 1866. M 322 Sectional Developments for every important district, are absolutely unconcerned with the administration of friendly, benefits, and devote them- selves 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 Boiler- makers 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 adminis- tration of the great trade friendly societies.^ 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 engineer- ing 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 "• 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 Amalgama:ted Society of Carpenters has since started district delegates, and the other national societies gradually followed suit. Exclusiveness 323 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 super- annuation benefit. To the tendency to create an " aristo- cracy 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. 324 Sectional Developments Odger, who lived until 1877, was from 1870 onwards devot- ing himself more and more to general politics. Allan, long suffering from an incurable disease, died in 1874. Mean- while 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-^ 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 ^ Mention should here be made of the Manchester and District Associa- tion of Trade Union OfiScials, 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 of&cials against unjust treatment by their own societies (see History of the British Trades Union Congress, by W. J. Davis, vol. i., 1910, p. 89). Trade Union Expansion 325 over the country, whilst Henry Broadhurst (who in 1875 succeeded George Howell as the Secretary of the Parlia- mentary 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 establish- ment elsewhere of any new ejsecutive 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 dis- heartening collapse which ensued in 1878-79, and the subse- quent 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 beKef. In 1867 the officials of the Unions were regarded as pothouse agita;tors, " 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, 326 Sectional Developments and even to the House of Commons, pressed by the Govern- ment to accept seats on Royal Commissions, and respect- fully listened to in the lobby. And these political results were but the signs of an extraordinary expansion of the Trg,de 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.^ 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 em- ployers. 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 con- fined to a single trade or locaUty, 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 ' 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, What the Employers said 327 apart, a profession, with- interests distinct from, though not necessarily antagonistic to, those of the workpeople they lead, but from their very raison d'Stre hostile to those of the employers and the rest of the community. . . . They have, through their conimand 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 ParUament. 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 Parhamentary Committee, and a pro- gramme ; 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 repre- sentation of their own body in London whenever Parliament is hkely to be engaged in the discussion of the proposals they have caused to be brought before it. Thus, untram- melled by pecuniary considerations, and specially set apart for this pecuUar 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." ^ It is ^ " statement as to Formation and Objects of the National Federation of Associated Employers of Labour," December ii, 1873, reprinted by the Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress. This Federa- tion comprised in its ranks a large proportion of the great " captains of industry " of the time, including such shipbuilders as Laird and Har- land & Wolfif ; 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 328 Sectional Developments 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 inore 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 difficiilt 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 transporta- tion 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 as David Dale and John Menelaus ; such builders as TroUope 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. The Farm Labourer 329 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 nth of March two hundred men resolved to strike for higher wages, namely, i6s. 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.^ 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 immediate publicity given to the agitation was due, in the first place, to the sympathy of J. E. Matthew Vincent, the editor of the Leaming- ton 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 contem- porary 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 Kleinwachter in Jahrbiicher fiXr Nationalokonomie und Statistik, 1875, and Supplement I. of 1878; "Die jiingste Landarbeiter- b^wegung in England," by Lloyd Jones, in Nathusius-Thiel's Landwirth- schaftliche Jahrbiicher, 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 Mac- millan'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; a.nd Village Trade Unions in Two Centuries, by Ernest Selley, 1919. M2 330 'Sectional Developments 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 cotmtry, with a central committee at Leamington, which, by the end of the year, boasted of a membership of nearly a hundred thousand.^ The organised Trade Unions ralUed promptly to the support of the labourers, and contributed largely to their funds. The farmers met the men's demand by a wide- spread lock-out of Unionist labourers, which called forth the support of Trades Councils and individual societies all over the country.^ George Howell, then Secretary of the ^ 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. 2 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 I 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 agri- cultural 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 ajone the victory can t)e wop. Let "S therefore hope' that Bjrminghajn The Revolt of the Field 331 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 out- burst 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 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 advan- tages 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 em- ployers, 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." 332 ' Sectional Developments 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 tjrpified 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 dele- gates 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 Berk- shire, 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 Soldier Strike-breakers 333 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 Radicahsm of the counties we are not here con- cerned. We trace, however, from these months, the appear- ance 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 dis- putes between farmers and their labourers exist.!' ^ 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 ad- vances of from eighteenpence to as much as four shillings per week, met the Union demands and successes by a stohd 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 ^ Queen's Regulations for the Army for i8y3. Article i8o ; the whole confespondence is given in the Report of the London Trades Council, tJune 1873. 334 Sectional Developments 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 ex- penditure by the National Union of £21,365 in strike pay. After this the membership rapidly decUned. 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 destina- tion of the pennies, which he was sending away to the far- off central treasury. Nor was the Union organisation per- fect. Difficulties and delays occurred in rendering aid to threatened branches or victimised men. The clergjmian, 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 every- where 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.^ 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. 1 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 ;£io,ooo a year, mostly disbursed in sick and funeral benefits. Co-operative Production 335 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 ^^^ 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 carrjTing on the whole industry of the country by national associa- tions 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.^ 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 afford- ing to a certain number of its members a chance of escape from the conditions of wage-labour.^ The failure of all 1 See Die Strikes, die Co-operation, die Industrial Partnerships, by Dr. Robert Jannasch (Berlin, 1868 ; 66 pp.). * Amid the great outburst of feeling in favour of Co-operative Produc- tion it is difi&cult to distinguish in every case between the investments of the funds of the Trade Unions in their corporate capacity, and the sub- scriptions of individual members under the auspices, and sometimes through the agency, of their trade society. The South Yorkshire Miners' Association used ;£30,ooo 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 Northum- berland 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 New- castle engineers on strike for Nine Hours in 1871 were assisted by sym- pathisers to start the Ouseburn Engine Works, which came to a disastrous end in 1876. In 1875 the Leicester Hosiery Operatives' Union, having 2QOO members, began manufacturing on its own account, and bought up a small business. In the following year a vote of the members decided 336 Sectional Developments 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 con- vinced the officials of the old-estabUshed 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 stiU 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 moi^.^ 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 unsuc- cessful. In a few cases the business estabUshed 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 W^orkers, 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. * ^ 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 modem 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 {nie Smith), who was born in 1848, the daughter of a London schoolmaster, served from 1867 to 1873 successively as an Arbitration 337 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 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 prompting 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, dhd 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. 338 Sectional Developments engineers simply ignored the proposal. The Select Com- mittees of the House of Commons in 1856 and i860 found the workmen's witnesses strongly in favour of arbitration, but the employers sceptical as to its possibility. Nor did the estabhshment of A. J. Mundella's Hosiery Board at Nottingham in i860, and Sir Rupert Kettle's Joint Com- mittees in the Wolverhampton building, trades in 1864, succeed in converting the employers elsewhere. But be- tween 1869 and 1875 opinion among the captains of industry, to the great satisfaction of the Trade Union leaders, gradu- ally veered round. " Twenty-five years ago," said Alex- ander 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 Northunaberland the men now meet with their employers around the common board. ... In Durhamshire a Board of Arbitration and Concilia- tion 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." ^ 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.* As in the 1 Speech quoted in Capital and Labour, June i6, 1873. 2 It must be remembered that the words " arbitration " and " con- ciliation " 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 Iiidustrial 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. Uii. 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 Joint Boards 33^ 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 capitahsts' profits, and even with every variation of market' prices. ^ At Darhngton, 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 between Employers and Employees in England (Harrisburg, 1879), and his paper on Labour Differences (New York, 1886). The working of arbitra- tion 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 Of&cial reports on the subject see Cd. 6603, 6952, and 9099. ' 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 pro- duction, or a world-shortage of supply, an automatic correspondence be- tween 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. 340 Sectional Developments 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 Northumber- land Miners decided to use the formal expression of the Executive Committee/ " 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 stiU maintaining -that " as an Associa- tion we have always contended that wages should be based on the selling price of coal." ^ In an interesting letter dated February i, 1878, Burt, Nixon, and Young (then the salaried officers of the Northumberland Miners), in describ- ing the negotiations for a Sliding Scale, take occasion to mention that they had agreed with the employers that there should be no Minimum Wage.' And though the practical difficulties involved in the estabhshment 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 main- tenance, 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 shovild be regu- lated 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 1 Executive Circular, October 12, 1874. 2 Ibid., October 21, 1879 ; as to the Sliding Scales actually adopted, see Appendix II. ' 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. Sliding Scales 341 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." ^ "I entirely agree," writes Professor Beesly, " with an admirable article by Mr. Lloyd Jones ^ in a recent number of the Beehive, in which he maintained that colliers should aim at establish- ing 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." * Nor was this view confined to friendly aUies of the Trade 1 " Should Wages be Regulated by Market Prices ? " by Lloyd Jones, Beehive, July i8, 1874 ; see also his article in the issue for March 14, 1874. * Lloyd Jones, one of the ablest and most loyal friends of Trade Union- ism, was bom at Bandon, in Ireland, in 181 1, 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 journaUsm. 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 abiUty, 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 pub- lished The Life, Times, and Labours of Robert Owen, to which a memoir by his son, Mr. W. C. Jones, has since been prefixed. ' Beehive, May 16, 1874. 342 Sectional Developments 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 fluctua- tions of the market. Alexander Macdonald himself, though he approved of Joint Committees, instinctively maintained an attitude of hostility to the innovating principle of a shding scale.^ 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 them- selves 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 indus- tries, those in which the inflation had perhaps been greatest.^ 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 ^ This information we owe to personal friends and colleagues of Mac- donald, 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 regula- tion 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. ^ A useful summary of these events is given in Dr. Kleinwachter's pamphlet, Zur Geschichte der englischen Arbeiterbewegung in den Jahren l8yi und 18^4 {Jena, 1878 ; 150 pp.). The Slump 343 January 1875 a furious conflipt 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." ^ 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 foUowed early in 1877, ^^^ 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 ship- wrights 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 Moncreiff, 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 ipaster builders throughout the country. Large levies were 1 Beehive, June ^, 1875. 344 Sectional Developments raised, and over £2000 collected from other trade societies ; but in March 1878, after eight months' conflict, the rem- nant 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 miU-owners 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 reduc- tion on condition that the mills should only work four da57s a week. A heated controversy ensued, but the mill-owners 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.^ 1 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 Widespread Ruin 345 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 stag- nation 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 ex- torted 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 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 : " I. 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." 346 Sectional Developments 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 indus- try 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 Amalga- mated 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 aU 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."^ The 1 Amalgamated Society of Engineers, etc., Abstract Report of the Council's Proceedings, 1878-79, p. 18. Backwardation 347 years 1878-1880 witnessed, accordingly, a great increase in the number of strikes in nearly aU trades,^ most of which terminated disastrously for the workmen. Sweeping reduc- tions of wages occurred in aU industries. The Northumber- land miners, whose normal day's earnings had been 9s. x^d.. in March 1873, found themselves reduced, in November 1878, to 4s. gd. 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 Qd. and lod. per hour during 1877, dropped by the end of 1878 to 6d. per hour, and found it dif&cult to find employ- ment even at that figure. A still more dangerous encroach- ment 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 prevaihng before the adoption of the nine hours limit." 2 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, ^ See The Strikes of the Past Ten Years, by G. Phillips Bevan (March i88o, Stat. Soc. Journal, vol. xliii. pp. 35-54). We have ascertained that the strikes mentioned in the Times between 1876 and 1889 show the foUow- 24 27 37 III * 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, 1*79, and in Report of Executive Council for 1878-79, p. 31. variations : 1876 . • 17 1881 . . 20 1886 1877 • 23 1882 . ■ 14 1887 1878 . . • 38 1883 . . 26 1888 1879 . . • 72 1884 . ■ 31 1889 1880 . 46 1885 . 20 348 Sectional Developments * 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 fif^y-seven or fifty-nine hours per week ; and only by the most strenuous action was the normal iifty- 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.^ 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.^ 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 Amal- gamated 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 ^ At Manchester, Bolton, Ramsbottom, Wrexham, Falmouth, Alder- shot, etc., the hours were thus lengthened. 2 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 thousande of men in the engineering and building trades the nominal maintenance of the Nine Hours Day meant, in ^878 and succeeding years, no more than this. See for the whole subject of " the Normal Day," Industrial Democracy, by S. and B. Webb. The Losses 349 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 oyer £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 coUapse 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, estab- lished, as we have seen, in 1862-63, survived, after 1879, only in Northumberland, Durham, and Yorkshire. Its younger rival, the Amalgamated Associatioij of Miners, which had, up to 1875, dominated South Wales and the Midlands, broke up and disappeared. The National Amal- gamated Association of Ironworkers, also established in 1862, which in 1873 numbered 35,000 members in all parts 350 Sectional Developments of the country, was reduced in 1879 to 1400 members, confined to a few centres in the North of England.^ In some districts, such as South Wales, Trade Unionism practi- cally ceased to exist. ^ 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 contrac- tion of membership. The political organisation of the move- ment was, moreover, unaffected. The local Trades Councils went on undisturbed. The annual Trades Union Congress cpntinued to meet, and to appoint its standing ParUamentary Committee. In short, though many individual Unions dis- appeared, 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 organisa- tion had become a permanent element in our social structure. We see, therefore, that the work which Allan and Apple- garth had done towards consolidating the Trade Union Movement had not been fruitless. But along with increas- ing consolidation and definiteness of purpose had come an increasing differentiation of policy and interest. Each trade ^ 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 mem- bership 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. 2 " 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). Sectionalism 351 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 iron-workers were accepting the principle that wages must follow prices ; whilst the cotton operatives, and to some extent the boilermakers,^ were making a notable stand for the con- trary 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 suc- cessors of the Junta in the iron and building trades a fixed belief that the really " Scientific Trade Unionism " con- sisted in elaborate friendly benefits and judiciously invested superannuation funds. So long as trade was expanding, and. each pohcy was pursued with success, no antagonism arose between the different sections. The cotton opera- tives 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 ap- plauded the gallant stand made by the cotton operatives against the reductions of 1877-79, whilst the cotton opera- tives 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 Northumber- land coal-miners, through bad times and good, had for half a generation maintained a strong Union with exclusively trade objects. Thus the divergences of poUey, which were ' 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." 352 Sectional Developments destined from 1885 onward to form the battle-ground be- tween what has been once more termed the " Old " Unionism and the " New," did not at first prevent cordial co-opera- tion 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 coal- miners had been driven to protest against the constant reductions brought about by the shding 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 exten- sion 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 con- tradictory and opposed." ^ 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 manufac- turing 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 cer- tain work by the members of another. A modern Atlantic liner, practically a luxuriously-fitted, electric-lighted float- ing 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 re- linquish without a struggle the right to build ships of every ^ Trade Unionism, New andOld.hy George Howell, M.P. (1891), p. 235. Demarcation Disputes 353 kind. The depression of 1879 was severely felt iri the ship- building 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 main- tained of all work connected with angle-iron. The Pattern- makers protested vigorously against the Carpenters presum- ing 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 de- marcation in iron shipbuilding between the work of a ship- wright and that of a boilermaker was a constant source of friction. The disregard pf 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.^ Nor were the disputes confined to the puzzling question of the lines of demarcation between particular trades. In 1877 the re- cently 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 1 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. N 354 Sectional Developments 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 intro- duction 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 ^cieties 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. . . ." ^ We have in our Industrial Democracy analysed the history, character, and extent of this rivalry among com- peting 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 posi- tion of poUtical 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 PlimsoU's agitation for a new Merchant Shipping Act, was broken up in 1880 by the 1 Evidence of Mr. Chandler, then general secretary of Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners (Labour Commission, 1892, vol. iii. Q. 22,014). Failure of Federations 355 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 Amal- gamated Engineers', Boilermakers', Ironf ounders' , and Steam- Engine Makers' Societies to estabhsh 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 mem- bers of the Amalgamated Society and the Steam-Engine Makers' Society on the other, led to the abandonment of the attempt.^ A similar movement initiated by the Boiler- makers in 1881 equally failed to get estabhshed.^ 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 t5rpes into which societies were divided, the wide divergences as to Trade Union pohcy 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 ' Abstract Report of Amalgamated Engineers, June 30, 1876. ^ 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 subj ect, see our Industrial Democracy, 1897. 356 Sectional Developments 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 regula- tion, 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.^ At the Congress of 1882, when the resolu- tion in favour of a universal federation was again proposed, it found Httle 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-spiimers, 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." ^ The foregoing examination of the internal relations of the Trade Union world betAveen 1875 and 1879, though in- complete, demonstrates the extent to which the movement during these years was dominated by a somewhat narrow " particularism." From 1880 to 1885 the various societies ^ When, in 1890, the project of universal federation was revived, the draft rules of 1879 were simply reprinted. 2 Report of Manchester Congress, 1882 ; see also History of the British Trades Union Congress, by W. J. Davis, vol. i., 1910. Universal Sectionalism 357 were absorbed in building up again their membership and balances, which had so seriously suffered during the con- tinued 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 in- dustrial 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. CHAPTER VII THE OLD UNIONISM AND THE NEW [1875-1890] Since 1875 the Trades Union Congress has loomed before the general pubhc with ever-increasing impressiveness as the representative ParUament of the Trade Union world. To the historical student, on the other hand, it has, during the last fifty years, been wanting in significemce 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 accompHshment of that object it became for ten years little more than an annual gathering of Trade Union of&cials, in which they deHvered, with placid unanim- ity, their views on labour legislation and labour poUtics.^ 1 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 estabhshed branches through- out 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 ap- pointment as Factory Inspector, but six years later returned to his former 358 The Trades Union Congress 359 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 descrip- tion 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 iona 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 de- liberate 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 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 Nine- teenth-Century Token Coinage (The Life Story of W. J. Davis, by W. B. Dalley, 1914). 360 The Old Unionism and the New 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 out- side the proper scope of Congress.-^ In short, the knotty problems of Trade Union organisation, the diyergent 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 hmits 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 com- mittee,/ whose influence in the lobby of the House of Commons was directly proportionate to the numbers they were believed to represent. Pubhcity 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 sohdarity 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 ^ 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. The Drawback of Publicity 361 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 com- mittees, 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 Com- positors, which is governed practically by mass meetings, had, for over half a century, known how to combine detailed investigation of complicated questions with Democratic de- cisions on principles of policy, by appointing special com- mittees 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 con- gresses. 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 pohtical 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.^ ^ The Congress, from 1871, annually elected.a Parliamentary Committee ol 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. N2 363 The Old Unionism and the New 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.^ These leaders had moulded their methods and poUcy 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 Con- ference 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 lobbjdng 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. ^ Through 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. 1 Odger died in 1877, Guile in 1883, and Coulson (who had retired many years before) in 1893. * To the counsels of Frederic Harrison, E. S. Beesly, H. Crompton, and A. J. MundeUa was, from 1873, frequently added that of Mr. (afterwards Justice) R. S. Wright, who rendered invaluable service as a draughtsmEin. 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 poUcy and means of action. The policy of the Positivists had been to secure complete Trade Union Politics 363 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 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 inde- pendent of political parties. The divergence came with the advent of the Gladstonians to ofi&ce. 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 BramweU 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 combina- tions, which is binding in England, and has still to be resisted or abolished. The Positivists endeavoured to the utmost of their abiUty 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 be- tween 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." 364 The Old Unionism and the New the same footing as other classes of the community." ^ Its main items were the repeal of the hated Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1871, and the further legaUsation of Trade Unionism. The sweeping triumphs of 1875, and the acceptance by the Conservative Government of the pro- posals 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 exer- tions, carried into effect.^ 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 emplo3niient. The one exception is that, whereas to a stranger the master is liable for the neghgence of any person whom he employs, to his servant he is not Uable for the negUgence 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 neghgence of some other person in the same employment was pre- cluded from recovering that compensation from the common employer which a stranger, to whom the same accident had happened, could claim and enforce.^ If by the error of a signalman a railway train met with an accident, all the 1 Report of Trades Union Congress, Dublin, 1880, p. 15. ^ The working of the Trade Union Act of 187 1 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 Work- men Act were framed by the Lord Chancellor in the same year. ^ 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 i868 did the House of Lords, as the final Court of Appeal, extend it to Scotland, The growth of colossal industrial imdertakings, in which thousands of workmen were, technically, "in common employment," made the occasional harsh- ness of the law still more invidious. Employers' Liability 365 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 em- plojmient," 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' LiabiUty Bills were brought in by thei Trade Union representatives in the House of Com- mons, only to be met by stubborn resistance from the capitalists of both parties. Through the pertinacity of Henry Broadhurst a partial reform ^ 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.^ But the doctrine of " common employ- 1 Act 43 and 44 Vic. c. 52 (1880). ^ 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 ;f7ooo and ;f8ooo. But a large number of cases were comproniised, or settled without Utigation. 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. 366 The Old Unionism and the New ment," 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.^ An Employers' Liability Bill, the last remnant of the demands of the Junta, remained, therefore, from 1872 onward a per- manent item in the Trade Unicfn programme down to 1896. With the exception of this one proposal the Parliament- ary programme of the Trade Union world was framed, in effect, by the New Front Bench. Curiously devoid of interest or reahty, it is important to the poKtical 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 demo- cratisation of the electoral, administrative, and judicial ^ By " contractiag 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 permis- sible (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 ^ further amending BiU 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 thereup6n 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. Law Reform 367 machinery of the State. Another set of reforms had for their end the enabhng of the exceptionally thrifty or excep- tionally industrious man to rise out of the wage-earning class. A third group of proposals aimed at the legal regu- lation of the conditions of particular industries. I 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 pecuhar 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 enthusi- astically 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 httle knot of barristers who had stood by the Unions in their hour of trial. ^ We do not wish to depreciate 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. ^ When the Con- 1 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 recom- menced 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. 2 In the proposed reform of the Jury laws, for instance, the Parlia- mentary Committee for several years did not venture to ask explicitly for 368 The Old Unionism and the New gress 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 Enghsh artisans, amendments in favour of Manhood Suffrage were even as late as 1882 and 1883 rejected by large majorities.^ Nor did the Parhamentary 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 pro- minent Trade Unionists had been converted, as we have already had occasion to point out, to the economic Individ- uaUsm 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 estabhshment 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' 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 (Trides Union Congress Report, 1876, p. 14). "^ 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 0/ the British Trades Union Congress, by W. J. Davis, vol. i., 1910. Particttlarism in Politics 369 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-pajdng district. And we can imagine the dismay with which the leaders of the Nine Hours Move- ment would have discovered that any considerable propor- tion 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 Parhamentary 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 appHcants. 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 pubhc. The men in charge of engines and boilers 370 The Old Unionism and the New 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 Parhamentary Committee to carry out, however inconsistent it might be with the general principles that swayed their minds.^ It is not difficult to understand why, with such a pro- gramme, 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.^ But it was left to Charles Bradlailgh, who had never been a Trade Unionist, to initiate the useful law prohibiting the pa5niient of wages in pubUc-houses, though when it was introduced the Parlia- mentary Committee (observing that it was unnecessary in "■ In this connection may be mentioned the extensive agitation pro- moted 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 secre- tary, 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 £ave 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.) ' Congress Reports, 1882 and 1883. The Parliamentary Committee 371 respect of organised trades) gave it a mild support. Brad- laugh 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 neces- sity.^ 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 consohdating Factory Bill of 1878 they found only four small amendments to propose ; and of these only one was carried.^ The " Sweat- ing 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 sUp virtually out of inspection. Deputation after depu- tation 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 Opera- tives 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 Parlia- mentary Committee to record in this department of social reform. For years Congress had passed emphatic resolu- * Parliamentary Committee's Report, September 17, 1877. ' That extending to factory scales and measures the provisions of the Weights and Measures Act relating to inspection, etc. 372 The Old Unionism and the New '■ tions in favour of the selection of practical working men as Factory Inspectors . Great was the j ubilation at the appoint- ment, 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.^ 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 improvement^. 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' imprisenment, was, IJowell 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 imaltered, but, on the nomination of Henry Broadhurst,^ placed four Trade Union leaders upon the magisterial bench in certain Lancashire boroughs, a precedent since followed by suc- cessive 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 polhng universal. But the desire of successive Congresses for effective labour representation ^ 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, igoi). a Ibid. p. 136. Liberal Trade Unionists 373 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 Parhamentary 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 Cham- berlain'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 poUtics 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 Em- ployers' Liability Act, nothing seems reaUy 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 sub- stance 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 Par- liamentary 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 WilHam 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 sub- stantial tribute annually levied upon the industrial world under the names of rent and interest. And even Chamber- lain's modest and tentative proposals of these years, re- lating to the payment, by the recipients of that tribute, of some contribution by way of " ransom," found no echo in 374 ^^^ ^^ Unionism and the New 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, Hke Gladstone, could not even bring itself to ask for Fre^ 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 pre- ceding chapter, how the Junta had begun to be uncon- sciously 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 develop- ment. 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.^ Laisser-faire, then, was the pohtical 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 impene- trable barrier against SociaJistic projects. Within a decade we find the whole Trade Union world permeated with Collectivist ideas, and, as the Times recorded as early as 1 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 aUowed 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. The New Ferment 375 1893, the Socialist party supreme in the Trades Union Congress.^ 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 in- fluences 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 excep- tional 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 revolu- tionary Utopianism Uke 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.^ If we had to assign to any one event the starting of the new current of thought, we should name the wide cir- culation in Great Britain of Henry George's Progress and Poverty during the years 1880-82. The optimist 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 ^ Times leader on the Congress of Belfast, September ii, 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. " The following description of the rise of the " New Unionism " of 1889 is based on minutes and reports of Trade Union organisations, the files oi Justice, the Labour Elector, the Trade Unionist, the Cotton Factory Times, the Workman's Times, and other working-class journals. The document- ary 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. 376 The Old Unionism and the N-ew 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 CoUectivist 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 Knes of poUtics. 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 incre- ment of urban land values, which he now watches falling into the cofEers 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 genera- tion of quiescence, merged the project of Land Nationalisa- tion 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.^ Whilst Henry George was, almost in his own despite, driving Peasant Proprietorship and Leasehold En- franchisement out of the poUtical 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 1 See Mr. H. M. Hyndman's England for All, 1881. The Advent of the Socialists 377 agitator to point out that amid an enormous increase in wealth production the wages of the average mechanic re- mained scarcely sufficient to bring up his faniily 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 destitu- tion. But it was the Sociahsts who supplied the workman with a plausible explanation of these untoward facts. Through the incessant lecturing of H. M. Hyndman, WiUiam 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 In- dustrial Revolution, with its improvement of mechanical processes, its massing of capital, and the consequent ex- tinction of the small entrepreneur by great industrial estab- lishments. 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, iastead of to the satisfaction of public wants. The economic circumstances of the time supplied the Sociahst 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 378 The Old Unionism and the New 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 fuU 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 enjopng inherited abundance. He sees miles of costly residences, each occupied by fewer people than are crowded James Mawdsley 379 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 Inter- national Trades Union Congress of 1886, James Mawdsley, the cautious leader of the Lancashire cotton-spinners, speak- ing as a member of the Parliamentary Committee on behalf of the British section, described the state of affairs in Eng- land 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 lead- ing 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 Sociahsm ; 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." "^ 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 FUnt 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 * Report of the International Trades Union Congress at Paris, 1886, by Adolphe Smith, 1886. 380 The Old Unionism and the New 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 ? " ^ The discontent was fanned by well-intentioned if some- what 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 Hfe which neither Trade Unionism nor Co- operation could hope to reach. With the middle class the compunction thus excited resulted in elaborate investiga- tions 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 Co.mmittee 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 evU, 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.^ 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 popula- '^ Flint Glass Makers' Magazine, November 1884. " Report of the Industrial Remuneration Conference, 1885. Charles Booth 381 tion of London, the impressive results of which eventually reverberated from one end of the kingdom to the other.^ 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 philan- thropists, 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 sensation- alists 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 mbderate well-being, but typical instances of the average existence of great masses of the population. The " swealter " 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 milUon and a quarter persons fell habitually below his " Poverty Line." Thirty-two per cent of the whole popula- tion of London (in some large districts over 60 per cent) were found to be living in a state of chronic poverty, which pre- cluded 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 ^ 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, ist edition, 2 vols., 1889-91 ; zhd 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. 382 The Old Unionism and the New destitution originated in drink or vice. It was impossible, to use the well-known phrase of Burke, to draw an indict- ment 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 capitaUst 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 miUgnant 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 emplo3rment, 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 tax- payer. 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 con- ditions 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 Sick and Burial Club 383 the workman who was thrown out of employment ; and the spread of education served but to increase his discon- tent with existing social conditions and his ability to under- stand 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.^ As the lean years followed one on another, he saw the benefits reduced, the contribu- tions 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,^ " 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 ^ 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 1883, 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. ^ What a Compulsory Eight Hours Working Day means to the Workers, by Tom Mann (1886), 16 pp. 384 The Old Unionism and the New 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." ^ 1 Mr. Tom Mann, one pf 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 Hows 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 Tjmeside, and then in Lancashire. Returning to London early in 1889, he assisted in establishing the Gasworkers' 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 Secretary- ship 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 poU 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 estabhsh- ment 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 191 1, he became a John Burns 385 " Constituted as it is," writes John Burns in September 1887/ " 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." ^ ' V fervent advocate of Syndicalism ; and then became an organiser for various General Labour Unions. , In 1919 he vi^as elected General Secretary of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, after an exhaustive ballot of its great membership. 1 Article in Justice, September 3, 1887. 5^ 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 foi; 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-Co'mmunard, 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 inipressive 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 Demo- cratic 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 O 386 The Old Unionism and the New 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 httle 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 bar- gaining 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 tjqjes of Trade Unionism, it seemed, had been tried and found wanting. These were the circumstances under which the dis- illusioned working-class politician or Trade Unionist was reached by the lectures and writings of the Socialists, who Trafalgar Square on " Bloody Sunday " (November 13, 1887), in con- junction 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 mem- bers. , 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 Chair- man. 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, wh,en he resigned on the outbreak of war. He retained his seat in Parliament until 1918, when he retired. The Unemployed 387 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 historiqal 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 wquld not only be ensured at all times a competent livehhood, but would themselves control the administration of the surplus wealth of the nation. But in tracing the causes of the New Unionisrn of 1889-90, and the transformation of the Trade Union Movement from an IndividuaUst to a CoUectivist irifluence iii 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 aU London into' a panic, and were followed by a Government prosecution for sedition. Hyndman, Burns, Champion, and Williamg, as the leaders of the Social Demo- cratic 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 Novem- ber 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 pre- 4ecessor, rallied the forces of London artisan Radicalism to those of the Sociahsts. 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 388 The Old Unionism and the New 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 Mid- lands numerous emissaries of the Social Democratic Federa- tion 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 SociaUst 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 corpora- tions with which he had as httle 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 dis- content prevails." ^ 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 ^ Address to Trade tjnionists in Justice, January 24. 1885. Adam Weiler 389 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 Sociahsts 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 Umit the hours of labour.^ 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 ■• 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 com- petition 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. 3go The Old Unionism and the New 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 tKe 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.^ At the Bradford Congress in 1888 the very idea of Peasant Proprietorship had disappeared. The represent- atives of the agricultural labourers now asked only for individual occupation of publicly owned allotments. Ulti- mately 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 regu- lation 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 emplo5Tnent of pubUc 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 tem- porise by promoting an investigation into the amount of overtime worked in Government departments, with the result of demonstrating how completely the practice of 1 History of the British Trades Union Congress, by W. J. Davis, vol. i. P- 133- The Eight Hours Bill 391 systematic overtime had neutralised the Nine Hours victory.^ At the 1887 Congress at Swansea the Pariiamentary Com- mittee 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 Amal- gamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners, had been eon- verted to an Eight Hours Bill.^ 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.^ 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, in- volving, 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 ^ 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. ■ 2 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. ' 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 proceed- ings 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. 392 The Old Unionism and the New 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, there- fore, 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, ^.nd. 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 York- shire Miners' AssociMions 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 estabhshed 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 Discord among the Miners 393 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 York- shire organisations rapidly increased, and new federations were started throughout the Midlands. The Scotch miners, too, had in 1886-87 ^ short outburst of organisation, when a national federation was formed with a membership of 23,000. All these Associations adopted the poKcy of regu- lating the output, and the Scotch miners, in particular, conducted, in 1887, a vigorous agitation in support of the clause hmiting the day's work to eight hours, which two Scottish members endeavoured to insert in the Mines Regu- lation Act of 1887.1 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 hostihty 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.^ During the latter year the combatants withdrew to separate camps. In September 1888 a conference of the representa- tives of non-sliding scale districts was called together in ^ The clause was moved by S. Williamson, Liberal Member for Kil- marnock, and seconded by J. H. C. Hozier, Conservative Member for South Lanarkshire. It received no support fi'om the " Labour Members," and was rejected by 159 to 104. See the Eight Hours Day, by Webb and Cox, 1891, p. 23. " 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 Arbeitsverhdltnisses in den Kohlengruben von Northumberland und Durham, hy Dr. Emil Auerbach (Leipzig, 1890, 268 pp.). O 2 394 ^^^ ^^"^ Unionism and the New Manchester, when arrangements were made for the establish- ment 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 some- what 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 grbwtli aU existing Trade Union organisations. The Socialist advocates of the legal limita- tion of the hours of labomr 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 pohticians of the time, it was incredible that the new ideas should gain any real footing among the skilled artisans. The Parlia- mentary Committee regarded the innovations with much the same feeling as that with which they had met the pro- posals of a little gang which had, in 1882, vainly attempted to foist the principles of fiscal protection upon the Con- gress.^ When Congress insisted on passing a resolution with which the Parliamentary Committee found themselves '^ 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 The Parliamentary Committee 395 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 Pro- prietorship. The Parhamentary 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 de- claring 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 became the paid representatives of the " Fair Trade League," an associa- tion 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 assassina- tion." , Instead of fighting the question of Free Trade versus Protection, the emissaries of the Fair Trade Lfeague 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 yague insinuations of malversation which were scattered broadcast through the Trade Union world. At the Congress of 1 88 1 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 Broad- hurst : the Story of his Life, by himself, 1901 ; History of the British Trades Union Congress, by W. J. Davis, vol. i., 1910. 396 The Old Unionism and the New 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 work- men, that little could be done until these were more on a level " with the skilled workers of England.^ 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 work- men to make any pecuniary sacrifices for their Trade Unions, and the consequent lack of any stable working-class organisa- tions, they had decided to refer the whole question again to the forthcoming Trade Union Congress. When the Con- gress 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. Not- withstanding every precaution, a majority of the repre- sentatives proved to be of Sociahst views, Mrs. Besant, John Burns, Tom Mann, and Keir Hardie appearing among 1 Report to Congress of 1884. This is another instance of the aban- donment of the more generous views of Applegarth and Odger. Lack of Leadership 397 the British delegates. The stiff and unsympathetic atti- tude of the Pariiamentary 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 th^m 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-coUectivist policy which under the name of Pro- gressivism 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 per- force 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. 398 The Old Unionism and the New 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,^ 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. Drummoiid secured the support of the Parlia- mentary Committee in an attempt to induce the Stationery Ofhce 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 circtilar in January 1886, as to the effects of the depression in trade, Mr. Drum- mond 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 pajdng 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,^ for the first time " heckled " as to their Avill- ingness 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 in- ^ 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. " See its Circular of June 1886. The " Fair Wage Clause " 399 duced 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 Fins- bury, 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.^ This new de- parture 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 bujdng in the cheapest market, in favour of the now widespread feeling that public author- ities as large employers of labour, instead of ignoring the condition of their employees, should use their influence to maintain the Standard Rate of Wages arid 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 ^ 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-Uhionist printers upon a new Liberal newspaper about to be established. 400 The Old Unionism and the New that the inevitable criticism on the ParHamentary Committee began by a ; scurrilous attack upon the personal character and conduct of its leaders.^ 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 SociaUsts 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 resolu- tions had been ignored by the Parliamentary Committee. But aU 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 ^ 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-oflficer of the Royal Artillery, who (prosecuted in 1886, as we have seen, with H. M. Hyudman, 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. Bwadhurst' s Victory 401 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.'^ 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 Broad- hurst was triumphi;ng 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 Londoii two or three years before. The priva- tions suffered by the unemployed labourers during the years of depression of trade, and the new spirit of hope- fulness due to the Socialist propaganda, had led to efforts ^ 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. 402 The Old Unionism and the New 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 com- pelled, 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 experi- ence for th^ 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 TiUett, 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.^ * The men employed by two of the gas companies in London, and The London Dockers 403 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 promi- nent London Socialists had journeyed to the dock gates in the early hours of the morning to preach organised revolt to the crowds of casuals strugghng 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 fluc- tuated 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 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-partner- ship." 404 The Old Uhionism and the New 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 mer- chants enabled Cardinal Manning and Sydney (afterwards Lord) Biixton, 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 resiilt. 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 contribu- tion towards the strike subsidy which went far to win the victory ultimately achieved. ^ ^ 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 organisa- tion of the London Docks. Organisation of the Labourers 405 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 Here- fordshire.^ The General Railway Workers' Union, origin- ally 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 Fire- men's Union,2 established in 1887, expanded during 1889 to ^ This movement was much assisted by the " Red Van " campaigns of the English Land Restoration League, 1891-94, which coupled ^and 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. ^ Short-lived and turbulent combinations among seamen have existed at various periods for the past hundred years, notably between I810 and 1825, on the north-east coast, where many sailors' benefit clubs were also estabhshed. In 1851, again, a widespread national organisation of seamen is said to have existed, having twenty-five branches between Peterhead and I.ondon, and numbering 30,000 members. This appears to have been aloose federation of practically autonomous port Unions, which for some years 4o6 The Old Unionism and the New 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 character- istic spirit is aptly expressed by the resolution of the Con- gress of the General Railway Workers' Union on the igth of November 1890 : " That the Union shaU remain a fighting one, and shall not be encumbered with any sick or accident fund." " We have at present," reports the General Secre- tary 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." ^ 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 member- ship. This normal growth now received a great impulse from the sensational events of the Dock strike. Even the' kept up a vigorous agitation against obnoxious clauses in the Merchant Shipping Acts of 1851-54, and fought the sailors' giievauces in the law- courts. In 1879 the existing Korth 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. 1 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. Trade Union Growth 407 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 dechne, 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, Hkewise 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 indivi- dual 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 i^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 u$ocieties 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 signifi- cance 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 com- pact ofhcial party behind the Front Bench, were veering 4o8 The Old Unionism and the New 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 acces- sions to their membership which, as we have already seen, resulted from the general expansion. The process of con- version 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 Com- mittee, had triumphed all along the hne. Within a year the situation had entirely changed. The Stonemasons, Broad- hurst'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 repre- sentative. 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 recom- mendation to vote for the legal limitation of the hours of labour. Both the old-estabhshed 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 Municipahties of this country to do for the workman what H. M. Hyndman 409 Trade Unionism, ' Old ' and ' New,' has proved itself incap- able of doing. Forty-five out of the sixty resolutions were asldng 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." ^ 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 CoUectivist views had hitherto been the Social-Democratic Federation, of which Burns and Mann were active members. Under the domi- nant influence of Mr. H. M. Hyndman, this association adopted the economic basis and political organisation of State Socialism. ' Yet we find, along with these modem 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 aUude to the revival, in 1885, of the old demand for an Eight Hours Bill, a measure regarded on both occasions as a " mere palHative." 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 " unem- ployed " 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 speech delivered by John Burns on the Liverpool Congress, September ii, iS$o (1896, 32 pp.). 410 The Old Unionism and the New particular Trade Unions, in contrast to an organisation including " every trade, skilled and unskilled, of every nationality under the sun." ^ " The real emancipation of labour," says the official manifesto of the Social-Democratic Federation to the Trade Unions of Great Britain in Sep- tember 1884, " can only be effected by the solemn banding together of millions of human beings in a federation as wide as the civilised world." ^ " 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." ? And if the " scientific Socialists " of 1885 were logically pledged to the administration of industry by the officials of the com- munity 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."* 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." ^ " Noble Robert Owen," says Mr. Hyndmanin 1885," seventy years ago perceived ' the utter impossibility of succeeding ^ Justice, November 7, 1885. " Printed in Justice, September 6, 1884. " " The Decay of Trade Unions," by H. M. Hyndman, Justice, June 18, 1887. * " The I'rade Union Congress," by John Burns, Justice, Septeriiber 12, 1885. ^ Justice, July 11, 1885. i8s4 <^«^ / whose cases fall outside the Rules of the Society, and counselKng 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- ddegates, 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 454 The Trade Union World 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 Parhament 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 pubhc-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 fiUed 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 head- quarters 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 hke 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 Secre- tary 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 The Trades Council 455 of apathy. Then follows a still more serious business — a com- plaint 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 propprly 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 pohtician of the old school, talked about wanton extravagance and the woes of the poor ratepayer ; ' and the Council wiU 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 caUing attention : tD the example set by other leading municipahties. The members, new and old aUke, undertake to heckle the retiring Town Coun- cillors who voted against the interests of labour ; and the best 456 The Trade Union World 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 influenti^ 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 dis- posed 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 SociaUst Secretary of a Labour Union submits a resolution calling on the Town Council to open municipal work- shops for the unemployed — & project which is ridiculed by the Conservative compositor (who is acting also as one of the re- porters). During the debate the Chairman, Secretary, and Executive Committeemen he 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 fuUer meeting. For the next few evenings our friend finds all this instructive and %iteresting enough. Before the year is up he has reaUsed 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 Umited 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 opening a New Branch j\^j 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 — Whence 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 work- shop 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 tern. A meeting of aU 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 hear- ing 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 Q3 458 The Trade Union World 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 9pens 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 of&cials 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 gutters 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, persua- sion, 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 feeUng 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 satisfac- torily 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 propor- tion of the trade in the town. The non-Unionists have also been approached as to their wiUingness 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 Organising a Strike 459 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 temporciry 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 Uving 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 hving 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 Com- mittee — 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 Uttle 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 inchned 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 460 The Trade Union World 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 follow- ing Saturday, when their notices have expired, they " pick up " their tools as thfey leave the works and the strike is begun. Then follows a period of inteii^se excitement and hard work for the men's of&cials. 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. AU 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 brother- hood," 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 atonce 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 deUvering 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 A New Trades Council 461 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 wiU 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 abihty. 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 em- braces 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 accompUshed 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 adver- tised. 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 462 The Trade Union World 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 hvelihood 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 poUtician, 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 ofiftcers. 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 : los. 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. A District Delegate 463 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 tdce 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 main- tain, 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. 464 The Trade Union World 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 tern., 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 Usts of candidates are forthwith sent to the branches in sufficient numbers to be distributed to aU 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, Trade Union Membership 465 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 con- stitution 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 wiU actively participate in the administrative and legislative work. Practically the whole of this minority wiU, 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 Secre- tary, 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 succes- sion ; 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 liveUhood on manual labour, they retain to the full the workman's sense of insec?urity, privation, and thwarted aspirations. Their own singleness of purpose, the devotion 466 The Trade Union World 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 ]iands 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.^ Alike in the modem organisation of industry, and in the machinery of Democratic politics, it was, even in 1892, taking every day a position of greater influence and im- portance. Yet if we may judge from the fact that we have not met with a single description of this new governing ' 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-weavaS, 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. The Trade Union Officer 467 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 anta- gonism 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 Hvelihood 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 Ufe. 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 mis- fortune 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 \Jnion. 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 crafts- man 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 travelUng, and frequent waiting about in strange towns, with little choice of resort beyond the public-house. The regular periods of 468 The Trade Union World 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 wiU, 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. More- over, the ordinary member of a Trade Union overlooks the vital importance of skilled and efficient administration. He imagines that the drunkenness and the consequent incom- petency 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 aU directions, and for- going, 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-work- men 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. The Salaried Official 469 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 thought- ful 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 of&ce brings him wider knowledge and larger ideas. To the ordinary Trade Unionist the claim of the workman is thai* 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 employ- ment, any disputes between his members and their employers iocrease 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 com- plaints 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 Uves. 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 abiUty 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 470 The Trade Union World 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 hfe 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 thmk him proud and " stuck-up," over- cautious and even apathetic in trade affairs. His manner to his members, and particularly to the unemployed who caU 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 tail hat and good overcoat, with a smart umbrella, curses not loiid 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. Un- consciously biased by distaste for the hard and unthankful work which a strike entails, he finds himself in smaU 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 out- ward 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 Execu- Out of Harmony 471 tive Committee pledged to oppose him in every way.^ All this time he still fails to understand what has gone wrong, and prob- ably 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 appoint- ment, 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. Never- theless the working man who became a salaried officer had to pick his way with considerable care between the dangers attendant on the rdle of boon companion and those in- separable 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 con- tempt for the luxury and " gentility " of those with whom he \tas 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. ' 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 ; b,u): 50 lon|; as he hangs on he has a safe berth. CHAPTER IX THIRTY years' GROWTH [189O-I92O] 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 ^ of aU the adult male manual-working wage- ^ * Wis 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, httle connection with that in Great Britain, but its progress during the past thirty years has been scarcely less remarkable. The Irish railwaymaj 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 472 The Great Expansion i^'j2> 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 sKghtly. 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 miUion, 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.^ 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 a£&liated 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, Deny, 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 whiph 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 sensa- tional strikes in Dublin in 19 13-14, 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. ' Statistics of aggregate membership in the past are lacking. But we 474 Thirty Years' Growth 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 var5dng 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 miUions 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 in- dustrial disputes that constitute landmarks of Trade Union history as the steps, often statutory or poHtical in character, by which the Movement advances' in public in- fluence 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' com- suggest that after the transient mass enrolments of 1833-34 ^'^.d 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 i860, there were half a million Trade Unionists. We give in an Appendix such past statistics as we have found. The " Cotton Men" 475 binations in the government both of industry and pohtical 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 indus- tries 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 consoUdation 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, under- taking 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 Cardrbom 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 476 Thirty Years' Growth Amalgamated Association of Operative Cotton Spinners, with three-quarters of a miUion 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 Lanca- shire and Cheshire, though its outl3mig 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 main- tained ; but it has not been copied by other trades, and their internecine dissensions have detracted from the in- fluence of their various federations. There has been, in fact, during the whole thirty years, only two or three im- portant incidents . A general strike of cotton-spirmers took place in i8q.s, when all the mills were stopped for no less than twenty weeks. The employers had demanded a re- duction of 10 per cent, whilst the Trade Union urged that the depression should be met by placing all the miUs 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.i 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 • Industrial Democracy, pp. 38, 92, 103, 123, 258, etc. Complex Organisation 477 good times. Provisional arrangements were made, but these did not prevent a strike of seven weeks in IQ08. 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 56^ to 55J hours ; and with this the trade remained contented. Right down to IQ19 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 remain- ing 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 opera- tives ; 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 aU 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 478 Thirty Years' Growth couple of dozen geographical districts in Lancashire and Cheshire. The weavers' " amalgamation," and other sec- tions of the " manufacturing " trade, are further imited 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 Amalga- mated Association of Bleachers and Dyers, on those funda- mental issues on which they are conscious of a common and an equal interest.^ , 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, devot- ^ The Amalgamated Association of Card and Blowing Room Opera- tives 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 Associa- tion 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 CathoUc 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 negbtiating for a merger with the older Amalgamated Socifety 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. Political Slowness 479 ing 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 federa- tions or in the new spirit . They have been slow to take an active part in the poUtical 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 largp 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 uni- formity 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 work- men, who even saw some advantage in the Employers' Association being served by officers thoroughly acquainted with the complicated technicaUties as the operatives saw them. There has, however, latterly been a change of feeUng ; 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.^ ^ 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. 480 Thirty Years' Growth It is felt in some quar-ters 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 impUcitly 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 im- portant 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 woTild deem themselves " advanced " have not yet attained the same level.'^ ^ The workers in the woollen and worsted trades, whose organisation went to pieces early in the nineteenth century on the extensive introduc- tion 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, estabUshed in i88i, 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, 191 7). 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 Amal- gamated 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 member- The Builders 481 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, supphed 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 smaU societies of cabinetmakers, and carpenters, but not yet the older General Union of Carpenters and Joiners, which cotints 15,000 members ; and so, too, has the small but soUd 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 Httle 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 dechne in the trade, the total numbers enumerated in the 1911 census being actually less than in that of 1901, the faU 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 ship of about 150,000, in 35 societies, whicli are grouped in four sections ("Raw Wool," "Managers and Overlookers," "Textile Workers," and " Dyers' Societies "). R 482 Thirty Years' Growth 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 Metropohs was stopped for over six months. Efforts at a settlement in June were rejected on ballot of the opera- tives ; 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 ia nimiber, for the first time joined together. Notwithstanding great differences in numerical strength, the Unions agreed to constitute the Federation Executive of two representa- tives 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 " The " Builders' Parliament " 483 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 estabUshment of " Composite Branches " of individual building trades operatives in locahties 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 Associa- tion 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 unsuccess- ful strikes, has, on the whole, been failing 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 BuUding Trades Unions have, however, shown increased vitaJity; and the position in the negotiating Joint Boards, at vvhich they are now regularly meeting the employers' representa- tives, has considerably improved. The latest achievement of the industry is the establishment, jointly with the em- ployers, of a " Builders' ParUament " — ^largely at the instance of Mr. Malcolm Sparkes — ^which is the most note- worthy example of the " Whitley Councils," to which we shall refer later. 484 Thirty Years' Growth Engineering and the Metal Trades The large and steadily increasing army of operatives in the various processes connected with metals (who are com- bined 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 imskilled 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 remunera- tion 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 i8q7 , 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 intro- The Engineers 485 duce what new methods of working they chose, and whatever new systems of remimeration according to results that they could persuade the several workmen to accept. The Union, to which apparefttly it did not occur to use the methods of publicity on which WiUiam Newton and John Burnett woidd have relied, faUed to make clear its case to the pubhc ; and pubhc opinion was accordingly against the engineering workmen, beheving them to be at the same time obstructive to industrial improvements and unable to formulate condi- tions 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 liabihties for Superannuation Benefit, ended in a virtual victory for the employers. The A.S.E. quickly re- sumed 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.^ 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 quaixels 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 ^ 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, 191 8. 486 Thirty Years' Growth 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 speciaJities 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 work- shops but also from the jobs fonnerly 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 aboHshed by the next delegate meeting (1915.) The method of remuneration has been another bone of contention. Especially since the dis- astrous 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, de- votedly cling. What is to be the Union pohcy with regard to these varieties of piecework and " premium bonus " systems ? FaiUng to discover any device by which (as among the cotton operatives, the boot and shoe makers, and the Birmingham brassworkers) " pasrment by results " can be effectively safeguarded by being subjected to .collec- tive bargaining, the Amalgamated Society of Engineers has wavered, in its decisions and in the policy of its various Rival Unions 487 districts, between {a) refusing to allow any other system than timework ; (6) limiting systems of payment by results to " those shops in which they have already been intro- duced " ; (c) insisting, as a condition of permitting pay- ment by results, on the " Principle of Mutuahty," 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 bargain- ing " 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 com- peting 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 (&) admitted to joint dehbera- tion and action in trade matters with the view to formulat- ing a common poUcy ; 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 ^ are in 1920, with the A.S.E., ^ 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 488 Thirty Years' Growth 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 poUcy, national organisation, and competent leadership. Underlying all these issues, and aggravating all the dis- putes 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' Comihittee," actively promoting their own local, trade poHcies irrespective of the views of the Union as a whole. 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 move- ments. An unusually protracted national strike in 1919, which is likely to end in a compromise, may possibly lead to proposals for closer union. The Shop Steward 489 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 estabUsh- ments, 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 I 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 develop- ment of the shop steward movement was very rapid, par- ticularly 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 arrange- ment of shop conditions. Further, a national organisation of shop stewards was formed, at first mainly for propa- gandist 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 arid by the manage- ments. So far there has been no final settlement. An Ipreement 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.'* ^ * Trade Unionism : a New Model, by R. Page Arnot, 1919 ; and Is R3 490 Thirty Years' Growth 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 Iron- founders 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 ofl&ce of General Secre- tary, 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, to- gether with the great amalgamation of competing Unions brought about at the same tim^, may perhaps open up a new era in engineering Tirade Unionism. In contrast with the failure of Trade Unionism in *he engineering trades either to develop a systematic organisa- tion 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 re- maining local societies in their industry, and closely com- bining with each other in poUcy and other activities, con- cluding, indeed, in the autumn of 1919 an agreement to submit to their respective memberships a proposal for a Trade Unionism played out ? igig, by the same. Some " extremist " thinkers among workmen have put their hopes of achieving the " In- dustrial Democracy " that they desire upon a development, of the Shop Stewards' Movement, which should become, together with a " Works Coihmittee," 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. The Steel Smelters 491 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 aU the changes in their in- dustry, and have known how to maintain a fairly uniform national poHcy. Passing from engineering and shipbuilding to the smelt- ing 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 them- selves with the most efficient office in the Trade Union world, with a real statistical department and a trained staff, in- cluding, 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 492 Thirty Years' Growth of Great Britain, and the National Steel Workers' Associa- tion) were able to go forward in 1917,^ 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 fimctions 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 n 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 wiU presently fall. The Iron and Steel Trades Confedera- tion wiU 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 con- cerned, the London Society of Compositors, the Typographical Association, the Scottish Typographical Association, and the Dublin Typographical Society having, in the aggregate, in- creased their membership by three-fifths and steadily in- creased 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 out- 1 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 Blastfumacemen withheld its adhesion. These may be expected to adhere'in due course.. The Shoemakers 493 side their ranks. The less-skilled workers in the paper- making and printing estabhshments have greatly improved their organisation ; and the National Union of Printing and r Paper Workers and the Operative Printers Assistants' Society T-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 aflBiMated. Boot and Shoemaking Among the other constituents of the Trade Union worlci 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 de- scribed 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 im- portant 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 494 Thirty Years' Growth 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 estabUshed 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, ^nd Miss Susan Lawrence, Mr. Winston Churchill, as Presi- dent of the Board of Tradei, carried through ParHament 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- Women 495 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 aU 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 niunber of new Trade Unions exclusively for women were established in particular sec- tions, such as the interesting httle society of Women Acety- lene Welders. The bulk of the women, however, continued to be organised in Trade Unions admitting both sexes. Besides the various Textile Umons,»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 hke 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 emplojonent is still uncovered. In 1920, though it may be estimated that the total women 496 Thirty Years' Growth membership of Trade Unions is nearly three-quarters of a million, this stiU 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 Feder9,tion of Women Workers ; but in all subsequent pro- ceedings 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 Spedal 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 improve-^: ment 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 tile National Federation of Women^ Workers, receiving over three million votes. On the reconstitution in 1918 of the Labour Party, in which women had always The General Workers 497 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, estabhshed in 1916, now initiates and co-ordinates the action of the principal women's Trade Unions, the Women's Co-operative Guild (which organ- ises 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 beUeve 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, account- ing for no less than 30 per cent of the whole Trade Union membership, and their leaders — ^notably Mr. Cljmes, Mr. Thome, 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 decUned, and some of the weaker ones coUapsed, or became merged in the larger societies. But the Gasworkers' and General Labourers' Union (estabhshed 1889), which changed its name in 1918 to the National Union of General Workers ; and the Dock, Wharf, Riverside and General Workers' Union (estabhshed 1887) maintained themselves in ^existence ; and already in 1907 there were as many as 150,000 organised labourers in half-a-dozen well-estabHshed 498 Thirty Years' Growth societies, The^outburst of Trade Unionism among the farm labourers in 1890 gradually faded away. But in 1906 a new society, the National Agiicultural 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 aU 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 estab- lished 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 iii 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 aU the principal Unions of General Workers. The passing- of the Com 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 Transport 499 Labourers' Union, which had, at the end of 1915, 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 himdred thousand, being about one-third of the total number of men employed in agricultiue 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 imtU, 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 Labotirers' 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 pf General Workers, which includes eleven important general Unions of General Workers, having an aggregate member- ship of over 800,000. This important federation took a 500 Thirty Years' Growth significant step towards unification in "November 1919, in appointing ten District Committees, consisting of two representatives of each of the affiUated 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, hghtermen, dock and wharf labourers, coal-porters and carmen have asserted them- selves 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 (ap£|.rt from that x)f 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, in- cluding 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.^ 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 aU ports and various minor amehorations 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 is. per hour for overtime. The stevedores, the gasworkers, the carmen, ' The London dock labourers found themselves in 191 1, 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 casual dans les ports anglais, by J. Mal^gue, 1913 ; The Liverpool Docks Problem, 1912, and The First Yearns 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. The Dock Strike 501 the coaJ-pprters, 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 tmrest 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 undou'btedly 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 representa- tives 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 under- taken by Sir Albert Rollit, M.P., at the instance of the London Chamber of Commerce, his award eventually con- ceding to the men substantially their, whole claim ; summed up in 8d. per hour for the dockers, with is. per hour for overtime, other trades, and the men at other ports, obtain- ing, in one or other form, analogous- advantages.^ In May 1912 the dispute flared up again in the Thames and Medway, ' History of the London Transport Workers' Strike, by Ben -Tillett igii ,- The Great Strike Movement of igii and its Lessons, by H. W. Lee, 1911 ; The Times for June-August 1911 ; Labour Gazette, 1911-12. 502 Thirty^ Years' Growth when a combined strike and lock-out, in which 80,000 men were involved, stopped the work of the port for six weeks. S3mipathetic 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 aU 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 ^gorous support of the Daily Herald ; of pecuniary help, not only from Australia and the United States, but also from the German Trade tJnions ; 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 some- what 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 ad- vances 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 Shop Assistants 503 The " Black-Coated Proletariat " If Trade Unionism has, in the past thirty years, success- fully 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 falUng not far short of three-quarters of a million. We may note first the army of shop assistants, ware- housemen, and other employees in the distributive trades, wholesale and retail.^ The National Amalgamated Union of Shop Assistants, Warehousemen, and Clerks, estabUshed 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, multipljdng its branches and swelling its num- bers, until it counts now over 100,000 members. Meanwhile ^ The Working Life of Shop Assistants, by Joseph Hallsworth and R. J. Davis, 1913. 504 Thirty Years' Growth the Amalgamated Union of Co-operative Employees (also establislied in 1891) — ^in 1918 adding to its title also " Com- mercial 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 enroUing dl 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 ehgible 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 increas- ing 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 super- annuation 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 tlie National Union of Railwaymen, the Railway Clerks" The Clerks 505 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 Admin- istrative and Supervisory Staff. Since 1913, at least, it has been asserting a claim, as soon as the railways are national- ised, 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 ?r Engineers and Firemen, be accorded its due share of representation. The great army of clerks in commercial of&ces 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 fhe 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.^ There is also a small Irish Clerical Workers' Union, princi- pally in DubUn, resulting from a secession from the National Union. Most remarkable of all has been the formation, during the war, of a Bank Officers' Guild arid 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, punbering , altogether abqut 300,000 men and women in ie United Kingdom, have, during the past thirty years, become strongly and very elaborately organised in many ' A separate Association of Women Clerks and Secretaries, long small in membership, has also risen to 4500 memBers. 5o6 Thirty Years' Growth different societies.^ 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, estabhshed in 1890, has now over 102,000 members, and exercises great influence upon the conditions of employment of the teachers in elementary schools. During thef 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 organisa- tion 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 im- portant is the growing divergence between what are essen- tially Trade Unions of the brain-working professionals and the purely " scientific societies " to which such persons have, until recent yearSj 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 •^ See English Teachers and their Professional Ors;anisations, by Mrs. Sidney Webb, published as supplements to The New Statesman of Sep- tember 25 and October 2, 1915. The Civil Service 507 Union, a vigorous association of medical practitioners; whilst the newly formed Actors' Association, like the National Union of Journalist^, has appHed 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 em- ployees 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 thej 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. AH 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 5o8 Thirty Years' Growth Customs and Excise Federation, the Civil Service Federa- tion, 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 affihated both to the Trades Union Congress and the Labour Party, which can now meet the managing officials of the Post Of&ce on some- thing like equal terms. The employees of the Local Authorities — thirty years ago entirely without organisation — are stiU not so well combined as those of the National Government. A score of different societies, from such grades as school-keepers, pohce and prison officers and asylmn attendants, up to municipal clerks, share the work with the National Union of Corporation Workers and the Municipal Employees' Asso- ciation. 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 lai;ge and powerful body, composed mainly of the clerical and supervisory grades. Trade Unionism in the pubUc service received a great fiUip after 1906, when Mr. Herbert Samuel at the Post Ofi&ce, together with some other Ministers, " recognised " the Unions of their employees, considered their corporate representations, and agreed to meet their ofiicials. It was still further promoted when, in 1912, the Govenunent con- sented to the establishment of an independent Arbitration The Police Union 509 Tribunal for determining the terms of employment in the Ci\dl Service for all grades and sections under £500 a year. Before this tribunal, whose awards were definitively authori- tative, 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 estabUshments, there was established during igig an elaborate series of joint councils (including even the civil departments of the War Office and the Admiralty) for particular branches of estabhshments ; for whole depart- ments, 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.^ ^ 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 191 3 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 partici- pated 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-lljimoured handling by the Prime Minister (who received the Execu- tive 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, pro- motion, and pensions, and conceding, not a Trade Union, but the establish- 510 Thirty Years' Growth The Miners The outstanding feature of the Trade Union world be- tween 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 repre- sentatives 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 " locahsm," their success was not commensurate with their strength. The change came with the growing dissatisfaction with the pohcy 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, pro- duced in the 'eighties an ever-increasuig discontent. In 1881 the miners of Yorkshire merged their two Unions of South and West Yorkshire into the Yorkshire Miners' ment 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 organ- isation. The dismissed policemen were not reinstated, but the Govern- ment informally assisted some of them to obtain other employment. The Rise of the Miners 511 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 ajid Cheshire Miners' Federation, a less well- organised body, presently followed its example. In 1885 a Midland Federation was fornied by a number of smaller local associations for the purpose both of aboHshing 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.^ The aggregate mem- bership 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 Stafford- shire, and the purely nominal Shding Scale Associations which then characterised most of the South Wales coalfield) stiU clung together as the National Union. It was the ' 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 Of&ce ; The British Coal Trade, by H. Stanley Jevons (1915) ; The British Coal Industry, by Gilbert Stone (1919) ; Labour Strife in the South Wales Coalfield, igio-ii, 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) ; -^ 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). 512 Thirty Years' Growth 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 con- structive effort. Its subsequent history is httle 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 de- scribed, 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, ever3nvhere based on the autonomy in local con- cerns 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 aggre- gate membership of which did not reach 200,000 until 1893, and seven years later was stiU 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 mem- bership 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,^ have brought it in 1920 to nearly '900,000. ^ The enginemen, boilermen and firemen, colliery mechanics, cokemen, The Miners' Strike 513 Meanwhile issue was joined by the mine-owners, who insisted everjrwhere 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 carr37ing into law of the Ei^ht Hours Bill, which, mainly owing to the opposition of the leaders of the Northumberland and Dur- ham Miners, was not acconiplished until 1908 ; and their influence in improving the Mines Regulation Act of 1911. Their third success, the outcome of a decade of successful OTganisation and intellectual leadership by Mr. Robert SmiUie, who since 1913 has been aimually 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 inillion miners sus- pended work for more than a nionth, arose out of the failure of the colliery companies to make adequate provision for repeated cases of individual hardship and injustice. The piece-work 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 tmable to get enough coal to produce a subsistence wage ? If he is assigned an " abnormal place " — ^where the seam is thin or crushed 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, thougli they often act in conjunction with these. Their own federations are referred to on p. 550. S 514 Thirty Years' Growth 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 colhery manage- ment 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 wiU 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 com- plained 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," irre- spective of the munber 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 utiiversal adoption of the principle of a prescribed daily niinimum , 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, The Minimum Wage 515 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 pajmient, 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 pay- ment 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 froni the Government and the Legislature was " an extraordinary 5i6 Thirty Years' Growth piece of hastily prepared legislation rushed through Parlia- ment in the shadow of an unprecedented national calamity." i 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 unremimera- tive 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 ftiUy 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 authoris- ing 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 coUiery 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 volun- * The British Coal Trade (by H. Stanley Jevons, 1915), p. 599. The Six Hours Day 517 teered 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 Hving — ^which the Government accorded to them in 1917 and 1918. With the cessation of hostiUties at tke 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 capitahst 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 railwasmien and the transport workers were at the same time in negotiation for improve- ments 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 miUion and a half, and wielding in combination the adult male labour of something like one-sixth of the whole nation. The Govern- ment, which was still, under war powers, directing both the mines and the railways, responded by the offer of 5i8 Thirty Years' Growth a Statutory Commission , under a Judge of the High Court, with practically iinlimited powers of investigation and recommendation ; at the same time giving the Federation publicly to understand that, whilst a strike would be sup- pressed with all the powers of the State, the recommenda- tions 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 pre- sented an Interim Report within that time ; and — ^most revolutionary of all — that the Federation should be allowed to nominate to the ComnxLssion, 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 capitaUsts whom the Government had already chosen as representing the prin- cipal 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 Govern- The Royal Commission 519 ment 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 abstrac- tion, 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 — ^wit^i 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 commimity in Lanarkshire and else- where making a national sensation. Prompt to the appointed day the Commission presented three Reports. The three naine-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 repre- sentatives of the miners presented a long and reasoned justification of the men's case ; arguing that, with a uni- fication of the industry in national ownership, with the adoption in all the mines df 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 practic- able 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 Chair - man of the Commission presented a third report , inter- mediate in its tenour, in which he was joined by the three disinterested capitaUst members, proposing an immediate advance of two shillings per day, or 20 per cent, and an ■ unmediate reduction of one hour per day, with a promise 520 Thirty Years' Growth of a further reduction by an hour in 1920, if the condition of the industry warranted it. With regard to nationalisa- tion, 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 Chair- man'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 hght 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 Nationalisa- tion and the participation of the miners in control. The dramatic feature of the inquiry was the summoning of a succession of peers and othft magnates owning mining royalties to the witness-chair, there to explain to the Com- mission 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 3delded in each case, and what social service the recipients performed for their huge incomes. Much evidence was taken for and against State administra- tion. 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 Com- A Share in Control 521 missioners were unanimous — a momentous decision — ^in recommending that the royalty owners should be at once expropriated in favour of the State. All thirteen Com- missioners 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, sup- ported (in. general terms and subject to additional sugges- tion) 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 repre- sented. The other expropriating Commissioner preferred to vest the mines in a series of District Coal Corporations of capitaHst shareholders, limited as to dividend, and working imder public control, with a restricted participa- tion 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 administra- tion ; though even this capitaHst 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 colUeries 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 S2 522 Thirty Years' Growth exceed lo 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 Notting- hamshire. In the end the Govermnent 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 Govermnent 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 " trustifica- tion," 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 propa- ganda in favour of the NationaKsation of the CoeiI Supply, . the effect of which, industrially and poUticaUy, has yet to become manifest. We have to break off the stoiy in the middle of a critical period. The Railwaymen Another great industry, that of the operating staff of the railway svstem? — scarcely mentioned in the first edition Rise of the Railwaymen 523 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 estabhshed, 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.^ ^ The other railwaymen's Unions are the Belfast and Dublin Loco- motive 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 191 1 the Railway Telegraph Clerks' Association, founded 1897, with 85,000 524 Thirty Years' Growth 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 httle 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 poUcy, mainly as regards the hours of labour . which were indeed scandalous.^ 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 members; the Irish Railway Workers' Trade Union, founded in 1910, tiny and insignificant ; the National Union of Railway Clerks, formed in 1913, a tiny Ipcal body, arising out of the suspension of the Sheffield Branch of the Railway C'erks' 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 intheN.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 Unionisrn on the Railways, its History and Problems, by G. D. H. Cole and R. Page Arnot(i9i7) ; the SoMii;ew»' i?isio>7, published by the Amalga- mated Society of Railway Servants (1910) ; Men and Rails, by Rowland Kenney (19 13) ; 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 Com- mittee of 1892, and the Special Committee of Inquiry of 1911 ; An Intro- duction to Trade Unionism, by G. I}. H. Cole (1918) ; From Engine-cleaner to Privy Councillor [J. H. Thomas], by J. F. Moir Bussy (1917). * Slavery on Scottish Railways (188S) ; The Scottish Railway Strike, by James Mavor (1891), "All Grades Movement " 525 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 ' Amalga- mated Society ' in the Army, where discipUne 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 excite- ment 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 pajmients for overtime, and a uniform advance of 2s. per week for all grades except those 526 Thirty Years' Growth 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 BeU 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.^ 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 im- pulsive strike on the Taff Vale Railway in South Wales, accompanied by extensive and successful picketing, was not countenanced by the Executive, but was eventually en- dorsed 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 of&cers. To the surprise of the lawyers, as well as of the public, the judges held that — in spite of what had seemed the expHtit provisions of the Trade Union Acts of 1871-76 — a Trade Union could be made answerable in damages for all the acts of its ofhcials, central or local, as if it were a corporate body, whUst stiU 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 per- sistent Trade Union pressure, strengthened by the entry into the House of Commons of a reinforced Labour Party, the Trade Disputes Act of IQ06 restored the law to its state prior to the judicial decisions of 1902. The railwaymen could then renew their " AU Grades Movement " which the Companies in January 1907 again dechned to consider, steadfastly refusing any recognition of the men's Trade Unions, and callously denying their 1 The North Eastern Railway Company was so far an exception that, already in 1890, it was willing to receive representations from the Trade Union. Conciliation Boards 527 grievances.^ Ballots of the membership of the Amalga- mated 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 Com- panies to hsten to reason, and persuaded both parties to accept an elaborate scheme of Local and Central Conciliation Boards, composed of equal numbers representing manage- ment 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 recogni- tion of the Trade Unions, but the men's representatives were to be freely elected on each railway by aU 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 railway- men. 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) ' A notable feature was a statistical census of the wages of the rail- waymen, compiled by the Amalg?.mated 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 iiearly aU the 100,000 paid under £1 per week were boys. It took the Board of Trade four years to compile and pubhsh an official wage-census for October 1907, which eventually revealed that 96,000 adult railwaymen were receiving igs. per week or less (Board of Trade Report, February 191 2), an extraordinarily exact confirmation of the much-abused census taken by the Union. See Men and Rails, by Rowland Kenney, 1913. 528 Thirty Years' Growth Firemen were busy in fighting the cases of the various grades through the ConciUation 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 poHcy of obstruction and postpone- ment, delaying the awards, quibbling about their application, and in some cases dehberately evading their terms, notably by inventing new grades to which men could be appointed at lower rates of pay than those prescribed. The " im- partial " chairmen, moreover, differed among themselves in the assumptions on which they proceeded, and some of the awards caused great resentmrait. Meanwhile' the cost of living was steadily rising, and railwaymen as a whole were falling further behind other organised workers. Pro- gress was delayed in igog-io 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 191 1, 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 " imauthorised " railway strikes at Manchester, Liverpool, and some other big towns, and a general demand for a national strike . The Executives of the four principal railwasmien'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 pro- pose 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 Govern- The Railway Strike 529 ment would not hesitate to use the troops to prevent the commerce of the country from being interfered with.^ The Unions refused the illusory offer, and a national strike began, \(?hich, 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 overpoAf^ering 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 blood- shed 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 Parhamentary 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. ^ When the • This intitnation 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 iiational 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. 2 The committee consisted, for the first time, of equal numbers of persons appointed as being representative of employers and workmen 530 Thirty Years' Growth 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 resolv- ing 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 intro- ducing 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, simultane- ously 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^ — the Amalgamated, the General Union, and the 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. Artliur Henderson, M.P., and Mr. John Burnett ; the Chairman was Sir David Harrel, K.C.B., an official of the Irish Government. ' 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 191 8, largely made up of the wrangUng between this society and the National Union of Railwaymen. The N.U.R. 531 United Pointsmen and Signalmen — into a new Trade Union upon a carefully revised basis, under the title of the National Union of Railwavmen. 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 " In- dustrial 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 aU who are employed by any railway undertaking — thus including, not only the engineering and wood-working mechanics in the railway engineering workshops,^ but also * 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 pro- voked the resentment of the craft Unions, which were now paying increased attention to the organisation of men of their crafts in the railway work- shops. 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, boiler- makers, carpenters, and other trades assert that organisation should be 532 Thirty Years' Growth the cooks, waiters, and housemaids at the fifty-five railway hotels ; the sailors and firemen on board the railway com- panies' fleets of steamers , and (though no trouble has actually arisen about them) the compositors, Mthographers, and bookbinders whom the railway printing works employ in the production of tickets, time-tables, of&ce stationery, and advertisement postets ', 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 aU-inclusiveness has, since 1913, brought the National Union of Railwa5mien 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 con- stitutional 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 Aimual 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 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 aU the crafts actually concerned. See Trade Unionism on the Railways, its History and Problems, by G. D. H. Cole and R. Page Arnot, 1917. A New Advance 533 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 dis- cussing 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 baUot 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 pre- vent 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 534 Thirty Years' Growth 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, aUow them a due measure of control and responsibiUty 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 administra- tion." Here we have the first expressions of the desire for participation in the management of the railways.^ From that time forward the demand has become ever more expMcit and determined. Meanwhile, however, the first step was plainly the drastic amendment of the scheme of Concihation Boards ; and proposals were under considera- tion 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 Railwajanen at that date to over 300,000, and its entry into the " Triple AUiance " 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. Mean- while, in view of the rising cost of living, successive war 1 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. The Eight Hours' Day 535 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 Govern- ment under its arrangement for guaranteeing to the share- holders the net revenue of 1913 — amounting altogether to 33s. per week for men, i6s. 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 sjnnpathetic 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 w^e at once begim for a settlement of the outstanding questions. The National Union of Railwajonen, in more friendly conjunction with the Associ- ated 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 recogni- tion, 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 rat^s 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 i, 1919, which the Government, not even consulting the Rail- way 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 neces- sarily involved the amalgamation of the unifonn war bonus with the varjdng basic rate, were dragged out by the Government from February to the end of August, to the 536 Thirty Years' Growth 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 com- panies for aU 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-timp ; 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 ^dew, 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 hs^pothesis. The Government dehberately separated from the mass of rail- waymen 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 The " Definitive " Offer 537 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 i, 1920, every grade was to suffer a reduction oi^ 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 explana- tion was given by the brothers Geddes that what was in- tended was that there should be on January i, 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 no per cent in excess of pre-war prices, and that (as was annoimced only in the Government adver- tisements on the eighth day of the strike) the future " sliding scale," which had never been definitely formulated, would be allowed to work upwards as weU as downwards. Unless the intention of the " definitive " offer was then and there to provoke an indignant strike, why was no hint of , this " poUcy 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, ^om January 538 Thirty Years' Growth 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 consult- ing the operatives ; in order, probably, to fit in with the general capitalist project of a scahng 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 Railwa5nnen 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' Federa- tion or the Transport Workers' Federation, who were the railwa37men'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 discus- sions reveal (a) that the Government showed no inclination to meet the men's case — Sir Eric Geddes peremptorily inter- vening at one point even to prevent a criticism of the " definitive " new scale being adduced ; (6) that the Govern- ment 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 The Great Strike 539 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 pubhc the National Union of Railway- men 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 raUwa3anen 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,^ hastened to announce publicly — ^in signifi- cant 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 unemploy- ment benefit to aU other workers who were stopped as a result of the strike ; and for the enormous extension of the State UnemplojTment Benefit that was expected to be re- quired, arrangements were promulgated under which the 1 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. 540 Thirty Years' Growth « 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 tem- porary employment in handling food supphes, 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 ex- tensive 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 accompUshed 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 trafl&c, 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 hteraUy 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 Railwajni:ien found considerable difficulty in realising from its investments, and in making locally available at a couple of thousand centres, sufficient cash to pay immedi- Co-operative Help 541 ately the half a million pounds of strike pay that was reqtdred ; 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 mar- vellously 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 with- drawing 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 raJlvfa.yTa.ea 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 pro- posals, and the campaign of abuse that the Government organised throughout the press — personally directed by Sir WiUiam Sutherland, one of the Prime Minister's secre- taries — had a great influence in rallying the Trade Union world in support of the railwaymen. 542 Thirty Years' Growth 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 suppUed by a Govern- ment 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 posi- tively 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 Rail- waymen employed its own Publicity Department, utilising for this purpose the Labour Research Department.^ 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.^ Every move of the Government, and every statement that it issued, 1 For an account of this Department see pp. 571-2. ^ 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. The Power of Publicity 543 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 fuU-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 stiU to be the " defini- tive " 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 ofiftcials or representatives of the Miners, the Parhamentary 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 im- petuous action in support of the railwajnnen, 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 railway- men'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 in- 544 Thirty Years' Growth stitute a " Citizen Guard," in order to repel the forces of disorder ; a wild use of a term of bad omen, which was calculated, jf not intended, to bring the " class war " into the streets. It was known that measures of arbitrary con- fiscation of the Union funds were seriously under considera- tion, 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 " four- teen " — 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 pro- vocative 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 railway- men's Executive Council into prolonged and repeated dis- cussions at 10 Downing Street with the Prime Minister and his colleagues.^ 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 rail- waymen in the Albert Hall the terms of settlement . These included an immediate resumption of work without victimisa- tion or recrimination ; payment of the impounded arrears of wages ; " stabilisation " of existing earnings of all rates (except where improved) until September 30, 1920 ; negotia- tions as to " standardisation " and settlement of wage scales to be begun again, and a settlement to be come to before 1 Railway Dispute, igig : Report to the Labour Movement of Great Britain by the Committee appointed at the Caxton Hall Conference (National Transport Workers' Federation). The Settlement 545 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 mem- bers (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 Fire- men, 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 Govern- ment. What is specially significant is that it is recognised that " the public " does not consist merely of the upper and middle, or of the capitaUst and professional classed. Of the four representatives of the public, two are to be nomi- nated, respectively, by the Associated Chambers of Com- merce 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 railwa5nnen'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 Ukely 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, T 546 Thirty Years' Growth 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 Laboiu: 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 estab- lished some authoritative standing CouncUj 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 Consolidation 547 of the local or sectional Unions are to be counted as inde- pendent societies. We estimate, however, that upon any computation the number of financially distinct organisa- tions, which we may put at about iioo, remains approxi- mately 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 quad- rupled. 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.^ , 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 ' British Trade Unionism has often been contrasted, to its disadvan- tage, 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- 548 Thirty Years' Growth 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 move- ment 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 191 1 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 volun- tary 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 sedmed 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 im- mediate advantages in improving the conditions of the wage-contract, as because it was only in this form that The Industrial Union 549 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 here- after 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 af&Kating directly to itself, not only all the district associations, old or new, of coal-hewers and other under- ground 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 qoo.ooo. And though the Miners' Federa- tion is still only a Federation of fully autonomous district associations — some of these, too, being themselves federa- tions 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 em- bodies 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, 550 Thirty Years' Growth 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 engine- men, 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 Coimcil 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 estabHshment of the National Union of Railwayman 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 Railwajmien, 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 re- muneration, 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 Amalgamation 551 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 Shipwrijghts' Association, estabUshed 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 Amalga- mated Furnishing Trades Association has taken over a number of smftU 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 smaU 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 Goldj Silver, and Kindred Trades Society . w;hich in 1913 absorbed several more societies in this industry. In the autumn of 1919, as we have already mentioned, six of the sectiontd 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 Elec- trical Trades Union, and many small and speciaUsed 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 Of6ce Workers, with 90,000 members. Other amalgamations among small 55^ Thirty Years' Growth or local societies took place among the Basket-makers, the Block Printers, the Leather-workers, the Dyers, the various sections in the Pottery Trade, etc. Such amalgamation is greatly obstructed by lega l 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 n«t 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 im- possible. 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 sur- mounted 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 demarca- tion 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 Federation 553 to be weakened by the abstention, except for a few years, of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, which, however, now frequently consents to acft 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.^ 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, hke 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 " In- dustrial 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 Ijffinancially distinct Trade Unions remain, on the whole, as "numerous as ever, the number of separate negotiating 1 See An Introduction to Trade Unionism, by G. D. H. Cole, 1917. T2 554 Thirty Years' Growth 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 1897-9.8, 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.^ By means of a small contribution from a large aggregate membership (is. 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 manage- ment 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 ^f 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, * See the History of the British Trades Union Congress (by W. J. Davis), vol. ii. (1916), p. 156; and the successive ^mmmo/ Reports oi the General Federation of Trade Unions from igoo onward. The General Federation 555 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 pajraients to societies averaging £1500 every week of the year, the Federa- tion 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, ha^ 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 imconnected 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 aU 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 556 Thirty Years' Growth 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 under- taken the task, long ignored its international interests ; but during the Great War increasingly resented the appear- ance of the General Federation as the representative of British Trade Unionism, and especially the almost continuous negotiations between its secretary, Mr. Appleton . and Mr. Gorapers, the Secretary of the American Federation of Labor, and with M. Jouhaux, the Secretarj? of the Confedera- tion Generate du Travail of France, along lines not consistent with those of the Labour Party and the Trades Union Congress. When, in 1918, attempj:s were made to reconstitute the International Federation of Trade Unions, the Parlia- mentary Committee claimed at first to be itself the repre- sentative 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 ^hich 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 poUtical 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 Trades Councils 557 gn finding subjects with different voices, national bodies, when finding these speaking on the samei 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 affihated 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, in- creased 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,^ 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 XL, the Trades Councils were, from its estabUshment 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 geo- graphical 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 pohtics are concerned. 1 Such as those for Kent, Lancashire and Cheshire," North Wales, the South- Western Counties, and Yorkshire. 558 Thirty Years' Growth 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 govern- ing bodies. But they are rigidly excluded from all partici- pation in the government or trade poUcy 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 papng 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,^ 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 " fidl-time " salary, so as to command the whole time of a single salaried official, though the Trades Councils of cities hke 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 ^ 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. Supporters of Trades Councils 559 Unions. The central executives of the national societies j were apt to view with suspicion and jealousy the existence of governing bodies in which they were not directly repre- sented. 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 encourage- ment to the branches to affiliate to the Trades Councils of their localities.^ 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- estabhshed 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 coterip 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 ^ 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 com- pulsory. In many of the principal Unions branch affiliation fees are contributed wholly, or in large proportion, from Central Funds. 560 Thirty Years' Growth 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, what- ever 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 poUtics, 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.^ 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 ^ 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. Trades Union Congress 561 obtain outside speakers ; they af&liate to the Labour Research Department, which has a special " Trades Councils and Local Labour Parties Section " ; they subscribe to the travelling Hbrary 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 govern- ment informatioi;, 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.^ 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 19 19 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 develop- ment oi this federal body, its uses in drawing together the scattered Trade Union forces, and its failure either to help 1 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. 562 Thirty Years' Growth in the solution of the problems of industrial organisation or to give an intellectual lead to the rank and file.^ 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 beeni successively made in its constitution and pro- cedure, not always, as we think, for the better. At the Norwich Congress in 1894 the ParUamentary 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 Chair- man was then John Burns, M.P., decided forthwith to expel all the Trades Councils from the Congress, to make obhgatory the " vote by card " according, not to the number of dele- gates, 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 move- ment that was seeking to make Trade Unionism a political force. Who, exactly, was responsible for this coup d'etat 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 Bums to get them both, and also the ^ The Trades Union Congress has, since 1873, pubUshed 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, igoi. Stagnation in Congress 563 rebellious element from the Trades Councils, which all three disliked, excluded from future Congresses. ^ 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 XL) 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 19 19 would have found very little differ- ence 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 \'isible sign of that persistent sentiment of solidarity which has through- out 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 1 See the significant comments in History of the British Trades Union Congress, by W. J. Davis, vol. ii.j 1916, pp. 102-8. 564 Thirty Years' Growth (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. ^ 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 pubUc 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- ^ 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 qne has been allowed to participate in its proceedings in any capacity except duly elected delegates who have worked at the trade they repre- sent, or are actually salaried officials of afl&Uated Trade Unions. In 1892 and r893 admission was further limited to those societies which contri- buted 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 Con- gress. 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 ;£5oo a year, and the post has nearly always been fiUed by an officer enjoying emoluments for other duties. For the last^ forty years the holder has almost constantly been a member of ParUament, 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 191 7 an Assistant Secretary, were added to the stafi. Congress Business 565 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 \vith 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 resolu- tions 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 sub- committees 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 Com- mittee 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 con- sideration of the delegates. Nor does the Congress receive 566 Thirty Years' Growth much guidance from experienced officials of the old-estab- lished 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 Parlia- mentary Committee, which has hitherto always been governed by mutual " bargaining " for votes.^ 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 re- mainder 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 fimction 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 wiU easily be understood that resolutions of the kind we have described afford but little guidance for practical work. But there is a general understand- ing that the Committee is to watch over the political interests » 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 trans- ferable vote ; and it remains to be seen whether this will upset the "dickering for votes." The Parliamentary Committee 567 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 politiqal machin- ery, 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 in- cidence of taxation, the public provision for education and recreation, and the maintenance of the sick and the aged. We have here an amount of ParUamentary business far in excess of that falling upon the ParUamentary Committee of any ordinary town council or railway company. To examine all biUs, pubUc 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 ofiicials, 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.^ 1 The situation was for. years further complicated by the fact that C. Fenwick, M.P., who in 1890 succeeded Henry Broadhurst in the olfice, was one of the Parliamentary representa'dves of the Durham miners, a majority of whom were not in accordance with the decision of the Congress or. the crucial question of an Eight Hours' BiU. It was in vain that Fenwick, with most engaging candour, explained to each successive 568 Thirty Years' Growth 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 of&ces at 19 Buckingham Street, Strand, in deliberating upon such business as their Secretary brings before them. Preoccupied with the affairs of their socie- ties, and unversed in general poUtics, 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 Secre- tary 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 Parliamentciry 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 ParUamentary Committee, in- stead of covering the extensive field indicated by the resolutions of the Congress, is habitually reduced to the barest minimum. The work annually accompUshed 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 Parliamentaty 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 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 poUcy 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. Lack of Staff 569 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 Pariiament. It is therefore not surprising that there exists in the Trade Union world a growing feeling of irritation against the Parlia- mentary 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 ParUa- mentary 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 ParUamentary 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 ParUamentary 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, Pro- fessor 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 wUl 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 Parlia- 570 Thirty Years' Growth mentary 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 subse- quently 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 poHtical activity of the Trade Unions has since flowed, the Congress and its Parlia- mentary 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 poUtical issues, involving either legislation or a change of Government policy, resolu- tions 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 imited in a distinct political organisation and had not created their own Parhamentary 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 Parlia- mentary 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 Lack of Policy 571 has continued to be neglected. Both the Trades Union Congress and the Pariiamentary Committee have shown the greatest disinchnation to tackle such essentially Trade Union problems as those presented by the existence in the same trade of competing Trade Unions ; ^ by the formation of separate Unions on overlapping and mutually inconsistent bases ; by the growing rivalry between the warring con- ceptions 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 estabhshments 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." ^ 1 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). ^ 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 191 2 the Fabian Research Department, to investigate and supply information upon these and other questions. This organisation has now become the Labour 572 Thirty Years' Growth During the whole of this century, in fact, the ParHa- mentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress, and the Congress itself, have failed to grapple ^th 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 Parhamentary 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 Com- mittee 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 over- shadowed, on the political side, by the rise of the Labour Party, to be described in a subsequent chapter. 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 of&ces at 34 Eccleston Square, London, S.W.i, 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 191 g strike has already been described. A General Staff 573 Towards the end of 1919 the discontent of the Trade Union world with the position and attitude of the Parlia- mentary 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 Parlia- mentary Committee to undertake the work which is required. Indeed, its functions, as they are now defined, are in great 574 Thirty Years' Growth 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, pubUcity, 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 Parlia- mentary 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 : " (i) To substitute for the Parliamentary Committee a The Officers 575 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 in- formation on all questions affecting the worker as producer and consumer by the co-ordination and development of existing agencies. " (6) Legal advice on all questions affecting the collective welfare of the members of working-class organ- isations. " (c) Publicity, including preparation 01 suitable litera- ture dealing with questions affecting the eco- nomic, 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 576 Thirty Years' Growth inadequacy of leadership alike within each Union and in the Movement itself, and by a lack of that unity and per- sistency of purpose which wise leadership alone can give. Hence, in our opinion, the organised workers, whilst steadily advancing, have not secured anything hke the results, either in the industrial or in the pohtical field, that the individual sacrifices and efforts in their cause might have brought about. This deficiency in the brain-work of suc- cessful 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 awai« 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 of&ce, 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 faUing short of the reasonably expected achieve- ments is, we think, due the perpetual see-saw in Trade Union policy : the Trade Unionists of one decade relying principally on pohtical action, to the neglect of the industrial weapon, whilst those of a succeeding decade, temporarily disillusioned with pohtical action, rush wildly into strikes and neglect the ballot-box. This change of feeling is due The Branches 577 each time to the failure of the results to come up to expecta- tion. 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 judge- ment, 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 aU. It probably did not in i860 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 u 578 Thirty Years' Growth 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 Parhament, 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 tFnion 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 fife in investigating the claims of his members to the various benefits, and in upholding, at all hazard of un- popularity, a sound financial system of adequate contribu- tions and moderate benefits. Questions of trade policy interest him principally so far as they tend to swell or The Trade Official 579 laiminish the number of his members in receipt of " Out of Work Pay." He is therefore apt to be more inteht 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 of&cial or moderate party. More influential in Trade Union poHtics is the salaried "of&cer of the other tj^e. The Trade Of&cial. as we have called him, is largely the result of the prevalence, in certain industries, of a complicated system of " Pa5mient 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 of&cers of this type are professionals in the art of Collective Bargaining. They spend their lives in intricate calculations on technical details, and in conducting deHcate negotiations with the employers or their professional agents. It matters httle 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 586 Thirty Years' Growth 1 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 pohtical 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 aU 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 The Labour Organiser 581 j 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 apprentice- ship 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 work- shops would be more rigidly carried out under the Home Office or under the Town Council. It is not surprising, tiierefore, that the Trade Officials are characterised by an intense and somewhat narrow sectionalism. The very know- ledge 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- '.pstablished societies these officers have at no time been always selected from the ranks of the workers whose affairs they administer.! In "revivalist " times the cause of the 1 For instance, Henry Taylor, the coadjutor of Joseph Arch in organ- ising the agricultural labourers in 1872, was a carpenter'; Tom Mann, 582 Thirty Years' Growth unskilled workers attracts, from the ranks of the non- commissioned officers of other industries, men of striking capacity and missionary fervour, such as John Bums 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 com- petent 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 hilnself 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 educa- tion, 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 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. The General Workers 583 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.^ 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 stabiUty, administered by ' The fervent energy of the typical official of the Labour Union of that day was weU 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 RusMn 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-travelUng, if conducive to the enormous success of new journahsm, affords but Uttle 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, unUke the old Unionist leader, he is ever ready for the inter- viewer 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'itat 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, carrjdng on his campaign and enrolling hundreds of recruits by the sheer energy of his confident eloquence." {Weekly Sun, January 28, 1894.) 584 Thirty Years' Growth men as competent as any in the Trade Union world. Their officers, who have greatly increased in number, have elabor- ated 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 arbitra- tion 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 ex- clusively women's Unions, among which the National Federation of Women Workers is the only one of magnitude, have been exceptionally fortunate in attracting and retain- ing 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 Move- ment. It is, indeed, important to note that the accom- plished 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 aU 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 Payment by Results 585 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 is." 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 is. 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 posi- tion 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. u 2 586 Thirty Years' Growth 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 poUtical 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 innumer- able 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 Com- missions. Such a man is perpetually devoting hoiirs 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 Parhament, 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 Method of Selection 587 Trade Union world, whatever their several types,' and whatever the duties to which they are assigned, are, with kisignificant exceptions, all selected in one way, namely by popular election by the wholft 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, takeji 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.^ It is a further difficulty that such training and experience ^^fefc 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 wiU 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, expart at negotiating complicated changes in piece- work lists, may find himself elected as the Union's candidate ^ 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. 588 Thirty Years' Growth 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 super- vision 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, i it is, we think, a matter for surprise that Trade Union officials should have won a well-deserved reputation for knowledge and skill in negotia- tions with employers. But their haphazard selection and inadequate training are not the only difficulties that they have to overcome. Trade Union ofificials 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 emploj^ment 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 Railwayman set a notable ex;ample in raising the salaries of their two principal officers to £1000 a year each. But this is whoUy 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 — " Sweating " of Officials 589 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 im- portance of the work that he performs, the smallness of the salary and the lack of courtesy and amenity accprded 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 feUow-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 correspon(Bng 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 qf 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 multi- plying deputations and committee meetings away from home than to be attending to his duties at the office. He may 590 Thirty Years' Growth 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 Govern- ment 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 underlpng cause — the unwise and mean underpa3mient 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 Dele- gates, Organisers or Investigators — ^it is almost invariable to find them all separately elected by the whole body of members, or what is even more destrxictive 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 j salaried officers of a Trade Union, whatever their designa- ! tions or functions, can usually claim to have the same, I 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 Com- Office Organisation 5gi mittee 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 ofhce is in practice divided up amongst aU 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 guar- antee 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 of&cials, who are elected at different times for different reasons. The members may choose a majority of reactionary Execu- tive 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 choos- ing its own officers has been resented as undemocratic.^ In some Unions the indispensable amount of unity is secured, not without internal friction, by the presence of some domin- ant 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 federa- tions as the Trades Union Congress and the Labour Party. 1 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 poUcy, and officers employed for tasks requiring specialised training (such as the whole of the insurance v^ork 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 speciaUsation of functions and oiEcers should be aimed at in all Unions of magnitude. 592 Thirty Years' Growth 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 pos- sible. 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 unhesitat- ing 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 ca pital city, and no central headquarters even in London. Its salaried officials, on whom it depends for leadership and pohcy, 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, Liver- pool, 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 aU the prin- cipal ports. We have seen how little the Trades Union Congress, meeting once a year for less than a week, suppHes any central organ of consultation or direction. The meet- ing 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 com- munication of each other's irfimediate projects, and the taking of decisions of common interest that the present stage of the Trade Union Movement requires. Probably A Central Institute in Westminster 593 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 meet- ings of national organisations, federations and committees ; and which would make at any rate possible the constant personal communication of all the different headquarters.^ * Such a building was decided on in 191 8-19 by joint and separate conferences of the Trades Union Congress and Labour Party, as a "Memorial oi 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 [189O-I920] 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 ttien, 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 consequeiice of renewed assaults, very firmly consolidated by statute, and the Trade Union claim to participation in all public enquiries, and to nominate members to aU governmental commissions and committees, practically admitted. Trade Union representatives have won an equal entrance to local bodies, from Quarter Sessions and aU 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 594 The Labour Commission 595 is in this light that we regard the Royal Commission on Labour set up by the Conservative Government of i8qi. Its professed purpose was to enquire into the relations between Capital and Labour, with a view to their improve- ment. 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' ex- haustive enquiry, which cost the nation nearly £50,000, the majority of the Commissioners either found it impossible, or deemed it ine^xpedient, 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 Com- mission nearly persuaded their colleagues of the majority to recommend putting Trade Unions compulsorily into the strait -jacket of legal incorporation, involving them in 596 The Place of Trade Unionism in the State 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 pro- posal, which was left to be put forward as a separate report over the names of seven Commissioners. The Labour Minority Report, signed by four ^ 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. ^ 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 I ; 1 William Abraham (South Wales Miners), J. Mawdsley (Cotton- j spinners), Michael Austin, M.P. (Irish Labour), and Tom Mann (Amal- gamated Society of Engineers). ^ 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 legislativa and administrative changes that have taken place. CtvU Actions 597 close of the nineteenth century, when Trade Unionism had by its very success again become unpopular among thei 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. ^ But officers of Trade Unions fourid 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 1 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 Tiabitually 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 magis- trates, right down to 1891, occasionally to regard as a critninal 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 Quartefly 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. 598 The Place of Trade Unionism in the State by their friendly legal advisers, had not realised the import- ance 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 re- inforce 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 wiU be amazed at the flagrant unfairness with which the conception of a " con- spiracy 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.^ 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 " picket- ing " 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 ^ 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, igio, p. 349. " Conspiracy to Injure " 5gg 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 be would not be equally Uable 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.^ 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 per- emptory injunction ; and some things were thus prohibited, even in this country. ' 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, hy A. H. Ruegg and H. Cohen, 1906 ; Report of Royal Commission on Trade Disputes, Cd. 2825, 1906 ; Temperton v. Russell (1893), i Q.B. 715 ; 62 L.T.Q.B. 412 ; 62 L.T. 78 ; 41 W.R. 565. 57. J.P. 676 ; Trollop? and Others v.. The London Building Trades Federation and Others- (1895), 72 L.T. 342 ; II T.L.R. 280 ; Pink v. The Tederation 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), i Ch. 8n ; the same again (1899), i Ch. 255 ; Allen v. Flood (1898), A.C. i; 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. Leathern (1901), A.C. 495; 70L.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 Angleierre, by Morin (Caen, 1907) ; Le Droit d' Association en Angleterre, by H. E. Barrault (Paris, 1908) ; Das engl'.sche Gewerk- vereinsrecht se.t iS-jo, by F. Haneld, 1909. 6oo The Place of Trade Unionism in the State 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 tmiversal 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 Qnion, though admittedly not a corporate body, coulu be sued in a corporate capacity for damages alleged to have been caused by the action of its officers, and that an injiuiction could be issued against it, restraining it and all its officers, not merely from criminal acts, but also from unlawfully, though with- out 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 ; The Taff Vale Case 60 1 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 ParUament 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 Amalga- mated Society of Railway Servants, which had not authorised the Taff Vale strike nor any wrongful acts that were com- mitted 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.^ * TafE 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., 1 90 1 ; 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, Introduc- tion 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 6o2 The Place of Trade Unionism in the State 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 Taif 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 action- registered Union should sue and be sued on its behalf. What the Act of 1871 did was to reheve th6 Trade Union from its character of criminality by reason of its purposes being in restraint of trade, and of its character of illegaUty 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 difiereut 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 Parhament of 1871-76, and the Royal Com- mission 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. Elhs, 1901, A.C. i, 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 (TroUope and Others v. The London Building Trades Federation and Others, 1895, 72 L.T. 342 ; II 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. Trade Unionism disarmed 603 able 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 thfe 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 htigation, 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. ^ ' The number of stoppages througti 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 Beneiit admitted by the General Federation of Trade Unions in 1903, we read that " no less than 130 have 6o4 The Place of Trade Unionism in the State Though it took some time for the Trade Union world to reaUse the peril, the effect on the Movement was profound. Up and down the country every society, great and small, and practically every branch, raUied in defence of its right to exist. The first result was to make the newly-formed Labour Party, which wiU be hereafter described, and which had hitherto hiing fire, into an effective poUtical force. The effect of the Taff Vale judgement was, in i9o;2-3, 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 miUion. As the Dissolution of Parliament approached, the Trade Unions organised a systematic canvass of aU 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 Parliameiit 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 pohticians, twenty-nine were at the head of the poU.^ 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 main- taining it against legal ingenuity, the Trade Unions should been caused by attempts on the part of employers to encroach upon the recognised conditions prevailing in. thfe particular trades" (Fifth Annual Report of the Federation, 1904, p. 11). 1 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). Alternative Remedies 605 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 in- dustrial 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 recogni- tion 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 legahsed ; 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 reason- able 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, ai^d 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 Uiiions had refused to give evidence, because the Commis- sion, which was made up almost entirely of lawyers, in- cluded no Trade Unionist. This Commission, it is believed, was told privately not to report until after the General 6o6 The Place of Trade Unionism in the State 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.^ 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 BiU very much on the Unes 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. ^ The Trade Disputes Act, which remains (1920) the main charter of Trade Unionism , explicitly declares, without any qualification or exception, that no civil action shaU be entertained against a Trade Union in respect of any wrongful act committed by or on behalf of the Union ; an extra- ordinary and unlimited immunity, however great may be the damage caused, and however unwarranted the act, which most lawyers, as weU as all employers, regard as nothing less than monstrous.^ At the same time the Act, 1 Report of Royal Commission on Trade Disputes and Trade Combina- tions, Cd. 2825. 2 6 Edward VII. c. 47. * 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 im- plicitly 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 Trad,e Union in the exercise of its specifically Trade Union functions, or The Trade Disputes Act boy 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 con- templation or furtherance of a trade dispute, (i) 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 I3) an act shall not be actionable merely by reason of its inducing anotljer person to break a contract of employ- ment, 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 perform- ance 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 pohcy thus forced upon ParHament 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 poKcy of insisting on a complete reform of the law, 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 con- sider 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 ofiicials committing illegaUties 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. 6o8 The Place of Trade Unionism in the State 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 Amalgam- ated 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.'^ * A verbatim report of the proceedings (November 1908) in the Court The Osborne Judgement 609 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 A'ct 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 Parha- ment should otherwise determine), (a) that although Parha-l ment has always avoided any express incorporation of Trade 1 Unions, these were all now to be deemed to be corporate' ' bodies, formed under statute, and not unincorporated groups of individual persons ; (6) 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 pajmient of the salaries and election expenses of Members of Parha- 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. Geidart, The Osborne Judgment and After, 1910, and The Present taw of Trade Disputes and Trade Unions, 191 4. See " The Osborne Revolution," by Sidney Webb, in The English Review for January 191 1; and My Case, by W. V. Osborne, 1910. X 6io The Place of Trade Unionism in the State ment, and indeed, any political action whatsoever, not being mentioned as one of these purposes and not being con- sidered by the judges incidental to them, could not lawfully be undertaken by any Trade Union, ^ven 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 aU 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 ; aU 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 Enact- ment ; grave doubt was thrown on the legality of some of the developments of their second way, the Method of Mutual Development of Law ' 6ii 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 Bargain- ing, 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 there- fore at the mercy of all the unstudied ineptitudes of House of Commons phraseologj'. Along with this rigour as to the intention of a statute, the English and American judges i 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 unself- conscious development of doctrine, of which, in Germany, Gierke had been the great inspirer, and Maitland in this country the brilliant exponent.^ Our Englieh law long) Mgidly refused to admit that a corporate entity could arise 1 Political Theories of the Middle Ages, by O. Gierke, with introductioii by F. W. Maitland, 1900 ; see also the works of J. N. Figgis. 6i2 The Place of Trade Unionism in the State 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 " ? ^ 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 bv 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 wiU, in practice even peirpetual 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 httle alterations of procedure and imperceptible changes in legal principles, sometimes by harmless httle dodges and fictions of the Courts themselves, coming near to the practical result of putting every associa- tion which is, in fact, a social entity, however informal in its constitution, and however " spontaneous " in its origin, in the s^lme position of a. persona ficta, for the purpose 1 Firma Burgi, by T. Madox, 1726, pp. 50, 279. Social Entities 613 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-Reforma- tion 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 Parhament. Now this development of legal doctrine to fit the circum- stances of modem social life is, when one comes to think of it, only common sense. If twenty old ladies in the work- house 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 accumu- lating 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 enforce- able 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 ^he law which the Six Judges (namely, the three 6i4 The Place of Trade Unionism in the State members of the Court of Appekl, 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 in- tolerable 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 ex- ceptional powers of a corporation have been conferred upon it ; that as such it is, in a sense, the agent whom the com- munity has entrusted with the execution of these functions, and who cannot therefore (even if all the constituent mem- bers 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 associa- tions, 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 A Miscarriage of Justice 615 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, caimot 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 Umitations of legally created corpora- tions 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 spon- taneously 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 shopld exist. They accordingly found it in an enumeration which Parliament had given in the Act of 1876 of aU the various bodies which were to be entitled to the privileges conferred by the Act — a definition introduced, so a well-informed writer men- 6i6 The Place of Trade Unionism in the State tioned in 1878, for the special advantage of Trade Unions ^ — ^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 ehgible for registration, but also of all the objects and pur- poses that Parliament intended any of those bodies, whether registered or unregistered, to be free at any time to pursue. The result was that aU 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 con- cerned, 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 Parhament 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 fife 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 Parhament had intended, and what Trade Unions actually were, expressly dissented from his colleagues on this point, sajdng 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 ^ Conflicts of Capital and Labour, by G. Howell, ist edition, 1878, 2nd edition, 1890, p. 479. The Definition Clause 617 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 condi- tions 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 com- bination by reason of some one or more of its purposes being in restraint of trade. Now, to the lay mind, this extremely loose enumeration ^ of kinds of societies seems plainly intended to bring within its net, and therefore to admit to the acjyantages 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 classifica- tion by type, not by deUmitation. " It is determined," says WheweU 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." ^ Accordingly the clause 1 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). 2 WheweU, History of Scientific Ideas, vol. ii. p. 120 ; J. S. Mill, System of Logic, vol. ii. p. 276. X 2 6i8 The Place of Trade Unionism in the State 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 Umit the legal freedom, of aU those associa- tions, with all their varied functions, exclusively to the purposes specified in the definition, which were merely re- cited 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 any- thing 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. " Restraint of Trade " 6ig merely for the purpose of including various kinds of associa- tions, statutorily enacted. As a matter of fact, the defini- tion clause in the Act of 1876 was enacted merely to correct in one smaU 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, sup- posing 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 con- strued 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 work- men or employer 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 ? Suc- cessive 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 accord- ingly for a whole generation willingly registered rules pre- 620 The Place of Trade Unionism in the State sented 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 estabUshment 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 Ruskia 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 bargainipg 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 Con- gress 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 uUra, 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 Friendly Benefits ' 621 way logically destructive of their claim that the definition clause itself was one of " exhaustive " enumeration of per- missible 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 conditi-ons 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 condi- tions 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 ex- tensive hfe 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 unemplojntnent 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 622 The Place of Trade Unionism in the State right in declaring that the definition in the Act of 1876 was not meant by ParHament 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 construc- tion 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 con- duct of any trade or business," no action of a Parhamentary 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 How Trade Unions Regulate 623 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 emplo3anent 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, im- posed 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 en- gaging in Parliamentary business, supporting or opposing ParUamentary candidates, and helping members of Parlia- ment favourable to " regulating," and " imposing restrictive conditions " — actions characteristic of Trade Unions for generations — ^were not incidental to these legitimate pur- poses. 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.^ One Trade Union at least, which no one ever dreamt to be illegal, the United Textile Factory Workers' Association, has existed exclu- sively for political action, and had no other functions.^ This kind of Trade Union action is even antecedent in date to any corporate deahng 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 * 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. * It^ustriiU Democracy, pp. 124, 251, 258-60. 624 The Place of Trade Unionism, in the State methods of imposing and enforcing the Common Rules which they sought to get adopted in the conditions of employ- ment. 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 Parhament 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 1 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, pohtic- ally, 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 The Law Lords' Ignorance 625 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 Parhament ; ^ 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 authori- tative, 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 un- conscious 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 mis- carriage of justice was received by the governing class, and the prolonged delay' of a professedly Liberal and Radical ^ A Great Labour Leader [Thomas Burt], by Aaron Watson, 1908. 626 The Place of Trade Unionism in the State 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 increas- ing 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 poUtical field. This is really what the Osborne Judgement pro- hibited. 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 Parhament, 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 pajdng a Member of Parliament who was (as was quite incorrectly assumed) bound by a rule of the pajdng 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 Parlia- The Challenge 627 ment, 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 corpoirate 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 wiU 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 ParUamentary repre- sentation, 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 ^ with some elaboration how dangerous it may become to the » Industrial Democracy, by Sidney and Beatrice Webb, 1897, pp. 838 40, 628 The Place of Trade Unionism in the State strength and authority of a Trade Union ijE 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 I members by espousing the cause of secular education.^ 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 dis- cretion of the Trade Union, any more than that of an individuil 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 Parhamentary 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 meinbers. 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 ad- ministration of every public department. There is not a day passes but something in Parhament 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, ^ For this reason the Trades Union Congress now refuses to entertain any motion on this subject. The Unfairness 629 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 capitahst corporations of one kind or another — ^when, in fact, the number of com- panies of shareholders in railways, banks, insurance com- panies, breweries, ocean telegraphs, shipbuilding yards, shipping companies, steamship Hues, 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 organisa- tions to retain a few dozen of the Members whom the con- stituencies (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 cor- porations are not expressly paid to sit in Parliament. They are at any rate desired by their employers to* sit, and per- mitted 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 Parhament, 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 630 The Place of Trade Unionism in the State 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, whUst railway shareholders may pay their representatives in the way that suits capitaUst 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 Sociahst 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 pajmient 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 com- peting groups of persons) they will entrust with this Trade Union task ; if the Trade Union assimies no responsibility for and exercises no coercion upon its Parhamentsny repre- sentative with regard to issues on which it has not voted, no Trade Unionist's poUtical 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 Parhamentary 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 The Act of igi3 631 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 cripphng 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 pro- ceedings for injunctions against their own Unions, prohibit- ing 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 hberties, to concede the pa3mient 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 632 The Place of Trade Unionism in the $tate 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,^ a ballot of the members was to be held in a prescribed form, and a simple majority of those voting secured ; the pa5mients 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 igi^. ^ 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 " recogni- tion " in such a position as to make effective its claims to better remuneration and shorter hours of labour for the whole body of railwayman. 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 1 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). ' 3 George V. c. 30. Costs of Litigation 633 companies by their silent " regrading " of their staffs) extremely small. ^ A rise of wages to the extent of only a penny per hour for the whole body of railwajonen would have cost the railway companies, in the aggregate, some- thing like five or six million pounds a year. If any such advance was, by means of the TafE 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 Uttle 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 Uke 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 aU 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 1 " 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 Amot, 1917, pp. 21-22). 634 The Place of Trade Unionism in the State 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 picket- ing 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 im- munity 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.^ The Trade Unions, it must be remem- bered, had not asked for these sweeping changes in their position. They had been, in 1900, content with the legisla- tion 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 govern- ment of industry, and effect the necessary fundamental amendment of the law, once more to create for the work- men'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 1 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 Koalisations- rechts 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). The Rise in Status 635 has been accompanied by a still more revolutionary trans- formation 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 Govern- ment, 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 constitu- tion, 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 " — ex- cepting only such as are so exclusively financial or profes- sional 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 in- fluence.^ In 1905 Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman startled * Henry Broadhurst (Friendly Society of Operative Stonemasons) was Under Secretary of State for the Home Department (1885-86) ; and Thomas ^urt (Northumberland Miners' Mutual Confident Society) Parlia- mentary Secretary to the Board of Trade (1892-95). 636 The Place of Trade Unionism in the State 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 Goveriunent 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 b}!- Mr. Asquith's Government, and Parliament sanctioned the rais- ing 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 administra- tion of the State Unemplojmient 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 Une.^ From first to last the whole strength ' For the facts as to Trade Unionism during the war, the most con ■Effects of the War 637 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 pr9paganda of the fraction of the Trade Unionists who were also members of the Sociahst 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 en- gineers, 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 mtmitions 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 dura- tion 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 unprece4ented 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 venient source is tlie Labour Year Booh 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 J-ocal 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, 191 7. 638 The Place of Trade Unionism in the State of the Crown negotiated directly with the authorised repre- sentatives 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 hmitation 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, 1 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 occupa- tions, 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, some- times 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 War Measures 639 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 Govern- ment 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 aU 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 suc- cessively from single men to fathers of famihes, 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 emplojmient ; 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 640 The Place of Trade Unionism in the State of Compulsory Military Service was foreseen and deplored,^ 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 pre- vented ; 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 responsibihty of aU 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 ofiicials, whilst restraining their members and deprecating aU stoppages of production, were able to put up a good fight against the unnecessary and un- reasonable 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 Hving made necessary, and they had constantly to stand their 1 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). The Broken Pledges 641 ground in the innumerable mixed committees and arbitra- tion 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 diffi- cxilties 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 " con- trolled 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 hberal allowances for increased capital and extra exertion by the employers themselves. It wiU hardly be believed that, in flagrant disregard of the specific pledge, within a year this Munitions Levy was abohshed ; and the firms especially benefiting by the workmen's sacrifices were made merely subject, in common with aU 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 em- ployers 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." ^ As the war dragged on, and prices rose, the successive * The Government seems to have hoodwinked the public into believing that 80 per cent of all the excess profits was the same thing as loo per cent of the profits in excess of 20 per cent addition to the pre-war profits. Y 642 The Place of Trade Unionism in the State 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 Uving ; and in 1917 the War Cabinet was actually guilty of a formal instruction to the presumedly impartial central arbitra- tion 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 Agree- ment " 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.^ The solemnly promised " Restora- tion 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 re- instated, 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.^ ^ 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. 2 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 restora- tion 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 en- gineering work of the old type ; and the British employers did not, in fact, set themselves at once to apply " raass 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 Trade Union Conditions 643 The Trade Unionists, in fact, who had at the outset of the war patriotically re frained from bargaining as to the 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, accord- ingly, 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 sldlled 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 employ- ment, but some proportion of them, who had acquired skill, and were members of various Unions admitting semi-skilled workers, found employ- ment 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 skiUed men. In face of the great demand for output, and of the fact that hardly any members of the skilled Unions were un- employed, 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 fte-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 1 not yet surmounted ; and when there comes a slump in business, and I skilled engineers find themselves unemployed, the Government pledge ; will be heard of again. 644 The Place of Trade Unionism in the State 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 Govern- ment returns prove, rise either so quickly or so high as the cost of Uving ; 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 aU its promises, had made no arrangements whatever to prevent unemployment ; and none to reheve the unemployed beyond an entirely improvised and dwindling weekly dole, which (so far as civiKans 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 them- selves, wanted above all things that the nation should win the war ; found it repugnant to make stipulations in the national emergency, and did not reaUse the extent to which they were being tricked and cheated by the officials. But apart frofti this impulsive and unseK-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 The Fillip to Trade Unionism 645 and not lost. We may suggest, perhaps paradoxically, that the very ease with which the War Cabinet suppressed the civil hberties 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 poUtical and economic reaction. Sober and responsible Trade Unionists, who had taken for graitted 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 haK 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 responsibihty in the national cause, gained enormously in social and political status. In practically every branch of pubhc 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 teU the tale in our next chapter of the participation of members of the Parhamentary Labour Party in the Coalition Govern- ments of Mr. Asquith and Mr. Lloyd George. What is here 646 The Place of Trade Unionism in the State 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 reUnquished 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 con- stituted 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 19 19 for the suppression of " profit- eering." In aU 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 Emplo5,'ment 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 organisa- tions 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.^ 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 1 See this noted in the report of the Parliamentary Committee in the Annual Report of the Trades Union Congress, 191 7. The Whitley Councils 647 administration of many matters of interest in each industry throughout the kingdom — the " mouse " which was practi- cally 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. '^ ' The " Whitley Report, " published early in 19 17, when possibilities of industrial and social " reconstruction " were much discussed, made a great stir, which was increased by the definite endorsement of its recom- mendations by the Government, and its energetic promotion of their adop- tion throughout British industry. Whilst significantly abstaining from any suggestion of " profit-sharing, copartnership, or particular systems of wages," the Report emphasised the importance of (a) " adequate organ- isation 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 determina- tion and observance of the conditions under which their work is carried on " ; (ii.) " the settlement of the general principles governing the con- ditions 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, deter- mining differences and " ensuring to the work-people the greatest possible security of earnings and employment " ; (iv.) technical education, in- dustrial research, utiUsation of inventions, and improvement of processes ; (v.) proposed legislation affecting the industry. After two years' propa- gandist effort, it seems (1920) as if the principal industries, such as agri- culture, transport, mining, cotton, engineering, or shipbuilding are unUkely to adopt the scheme ; but two or three score trades have equipped them- selves 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 manu- facture, hosiery, heavy chemicals, furniture-making, bread-baking, match- making, metallic bedstead manufacturing, saw-milling, and vehicle building. The Governnient 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 indus- tries 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 Ukely 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 648 The Place of Trade Unionism in the State When, in 1919, it seemed desirable to make a series of com- prehensive 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' Associa- tions 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 ParUament. 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 S57mpathetic to Labour. In the statutory Coal Industry Commission of the same year, to which reference has aheady 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 — aU royalty owners being excluded — ^the Commission was to be completed. 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. i to 4, of the Ministry of Reconstruction ; the able and well-informed article, " La poUtique de paix sociale en Angleterre," by I O^lie Hal6vy, in Revue d'Mconomie Politique, No. 4 of 1919 ; Recommenda- \ Hon 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. The New Ideas 649 All this constitutional development is at once the recogni- tion 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 pre- dominant 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 main- tenance and progressive improvement, within each separate occupation or craft, of the terms of the bargain made by the wage-earner with the employers, including aUke 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 capitahst 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 stand- point of whether the profit-making employers or the repre- sentatives of the consumers or the citizens offered better conditions of emplojonent to the members of his own organisation. Right down to the end of the nineteenth century this remained the dominant working-class view. y 2 650 The Place of Trade Unionism in the State We find in the proceedings of the Royal Commission on Labour, 1891-94, a striking demonstration of the strictly Umited 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.^ One or two Unions included, among their pubUshed " objects," vague and pious references to the desirabihty of co-operative production ; but the assumption was always that any such co-operative produc- 1 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 jnainten- ance 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 ; watch- ing 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 Uve in ; the collection and circulation of information on trade matters ; the estabUshment 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 Labout 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," Socialisation 651 tion 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 advisabihty of encourag- ing 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 states- men 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 nbt 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 bei brought about until that development on the part of the' public themselves is brought about, and they desire to see 652 The Place of Trade Unionism in the State 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." ^ But Mr. Tom Mann did not stand alone. The Inde- pendent Labour Party, the largest and the most popular of Sociahst societies in the United Kingdom, estabhshed 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 under- takings, 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 com- munal 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.^ 1 Minutes of Evidence, Royal Commission on Labour : " Report of Evidence from Co-operative Societies and Public Officials," 1893, C 7063 — I (Q 2d98, 21 17 — 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 some- thing 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)- " An interesting sideUght 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 grotmd that Trade Unionism had no place in the Socialist State, and that it was needless to trouble about it I Co-operative Production 653 But in spite of the assumption that services and in- dustries 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 work- ing 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 httle 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 trjdng 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 Produc- tion fell back on " Labour Copartnership " — 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 other- wise 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 654 ^^^ Place of Trade Unionism in the State 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 employ- ment, 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 carr3dng 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 immi- grants. 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 tmdesirable 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 Syndicalism 655 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 ex- aggerated 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 hke — allowing for the superior literary power of the French — ^the pamphlets and leaflets of the Owenite Trade Unionism.^ There is the same con- ception 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 rehance, 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 Capitahst System ; but against the limited aims of contemporary Trade Union- ism 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 ^ See, for convenient summaries. Syndicalism in France, by Louis Levine, 1911, and What Syndicalism Means, by S. aind B. Webb, 1912 ; see also Americail Syndicalism, by J. Graham Brooks, 1913. 656 The Place of Trade Unionism in the State Irish Transport and General Workers Union, to which we have ahready 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 mart5n:ed 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 nationahsation and municipal-, isation 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 m 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 pohtical party will be armed with aU the might of our class ; wiU be revolutionary in fact as well as in thought." " Let us be clear," he adds, "as to the function of Industrial Unionism . That fimction is to build up an industrial republic inside the shell of the political State, in order that when that industrial republic is fuUy 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 will be in the hands of representatives of the various industries of the nation ; . . . the workers in the shops" and factories wiU organise themselves into unions, each union comprising aU the workers at a given industry ; . . . said union will demo- cratically control the workshop Hfe of its own industry, The Miners' Next Step 657 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 wiU meet and form the industrial administration; or national government of the country. In short. Social Democracy, as its name implies, is the application to in- dustry, 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 down- ward ; 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." ^ i 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 capitahst world. ^ In 1910 we find Mr. Tom Mann , fresh from organising strikes in AustraUa, 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 SociaUsm and the statutory regulation of the con- ditions of emplo37ment. " The Industrial Syndicahst ," he explains, holds that " to run industry through Parliament, that is by State machinery, will be even more mischievous 1 Socialism made Easy, by James Connolly, 1905, pp. 13, 16-17. » The Miners' Next Step, 1912. 658 The Place of Trade Unionism in the State to the working class than the existing method, for it will assuredly mean that the capitalist class will, through Govern- ment 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. SyndicaUst 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." ^ " 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 maniptUate the machinery of produc- tion in the interest of the capitalist class, and there wiU 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." ^ " Finally, and vitally essential it is," sums up Mr. Tom Mann in 1911, " to show that economic emanci- pation to the Avorking 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 pro- duction shall entirely cease, and the industrial socialist republic will be ushered in, and thus the Social Revolution reaHsed." * 1 The Syndicalist, January 1912. Column entitled, " What we Syn- dicalists are after " (by Tom Mann). 2 The Industrial Syndicalist, March igii. "The Weapon Shaping" (by Tom Mann ; p. 5). ' 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 Industrial Unionism 659 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 constitu- tional proposals. The ideal of taking over the instruments of production appealed to all intelligent workmen as work- men. 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 associ- ated with violent and revolutionary methods, and left no room for the political democracy to which Englishmen are 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 Com- mittee 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 quaUties 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. 66o The Place of Trade Unionism in the State accustomed, or even for the Consumers' Co-operative Move- ment, 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 Sociahsts, who called them- selves 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 repre- sentatives of the citizen-consmners, 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.^ These guilds were to grow out of the existing Trade Unions, gradually made co-exten- sive 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 Sociahsts. 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 develop- * The revival of the Owenite proposal to develop existing Trade Unions into great Associations of Producers for the carr3?ing on of each industry must be attributed perhaps to Mr. A. J. Pent^ (The Restoration of the Gild System, 1906), or to Mr. A. R. Qrage. 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 Umited circulation in the Trade Union world, and the plan proposed was not worked out in detail. The idea was afterwards de- veloped 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 pubHshes 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. A Share in Management 66i ment of the existing Trade Unions into self-organised, self- contained, self-governing industrial democracies, as supply- ing the future method of conducting industries and services. The schemes put forward by the National Union of Rail- waymen, the Miners' Federation of Great Britain, and the Union of Postal Workers differ widely from the revolutionary Syndicahsm 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 Hmit the claim of the manual workers merely to participa- tion 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 Railway- men 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." ^ 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.^ A similar ^ N.U.R. Agenda and Decisions of the Annual General Meeting, June 1914, p. 7. * The resolution runs as follows : " That in view of the success which, in spite of unparalleled difficulties, has attended the working of the rail- ways under State control, this Congress urge the Parhamentary 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)- 662 The Place of Trade Unionism in the State 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 partici- pate in directing the technical improvement of the service for the good of the community.^ The Conference resolved : " That \n 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 Ofhce Insurance System, and the expansion and improvement 'of the Post Of&ce 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 stand- point, and that the report be widely circulated, and propa- ganda work undertaken, so that this development of the Post Office Savings Bank — ^giving a greatly improved trans- mission of moneys system — ^be introduced throughout." ^ 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 wh.ole industry by that department.^ 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 19 19 * imposed on the Minister of * Postal and Telegraph Record, May 22, 1919, p. 237. a Ibid. ' The Nationalisation of Mines Bill (Fabian Tract, No. 171, 1913). * 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 : Direct Action 663 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 constitu- tions, 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 aU matters concerning the hfe 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 pubHc 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 " 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 Njitionalisation 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 th? Min^r?' Federation of Great Britain, July 9, J918, p. 4 ment ; ^ protestuig against its successive breaches of faith to the Trade Unions; demanding the conditions in the forthcoming Treaty of Peace that, as could be already J foreseen, would be necessary to protect the wage-earning class ; standing up for the scandalously iU-used " conscien- tious 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 ' It was, for instance, only the determined private resistance ol the Trade Unionist leaders of the Labour P^rty that compelled the Govern- ment 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 atten- tion of the historian. 692 Political Organisation 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 pubUcly 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 deteilnined 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 main- tained. The need for the formal association of the Labour Party with the Adniinistration was recognised by Mr. Asquith in 1913, when he formed the first Coalition Cabinet, into which he invited the chairman of the Parliamentafj'' 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 (Amal- gamated 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.^ Throughout the whole period of the war all the several ' Subsequently Mr. J. R. Clynes (National Union of General Workars) was appointed Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Food ; and on Lord Rhondda's death he succeeded him as Minister of Fbod. Trade Union Support 693 demands of the Government upon the organised workers, the abrogation of "Trade Union Conditions" in all in- dustries 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 Mihtary 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,^ in spite of the resistance of minorities, including more than " pacifists." The entry of Mr. Henderson into Mr. Asquith's first Coalition Govern- ment, 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 com- bated on grounds of expediency by many of its members who loyally supported the war — equally received the endorse- ment 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 men- tioned), stuck at nothing in its determination to help tjie 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 Alhed 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 success- 1 See the printed reports of Labour Party Conferences and Trades Union Congresses, 1914-19. 6g4 Political Organisation fully achieved^ in February IQ15 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 alhed in arms against the Central Empires.^ 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 theif Government, repeated efforts were made by the Labour Party to encourage this revolt, and for this purpose to obtain the necessary Government facihties for a meetjng, 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 Petrogreld Work- men's and Soldiers' Council actually issued an invitation for 1 working-class " International " at Stockholm ; and the participation of the British Labour Party in this Inter- national 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 Govern- ment 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). Mean- while the proposa;! 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 oif 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 IQ17 approved of participation in such a Congress at Stockholm ; but the French and Italian Governments would not hear of it, ^ Report of the Inter-Allied Socialist and Labour Conference, February 15. 1915- Inter-Allied Conferences 695 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.^ 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 wide- spread 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 IQ18 ,-' and for a second Inter- Allied Conference at the end of the" same month in Londoh, which resulted in a virtually rainanimous agreement upon what should be the terms of peace,^ on a basis already approved on December 28, 1917, by a Joint Conference of the Trades Union Congress and the Labour Party, and widely pubUshed all over the world. The terms thus agreed were, in fact, immediately adopted in outline in a pubUc 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 " IJourteen Points " ' 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 Railwajrmen) to Mr. Roberts as Parliamentary Secretary of the Board of Trade. 2 Memorandum on War Aims (Labour Party), February 1918. 696 Political Organisation on which eventually (but only after another ten months' costly war) the Armistice of November 11, 1918, was. con- cluded. , Profound was the disappointment, and bitter the resentment, of the greater part of the organised Labour Movement or 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.^ ;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 origanisa - tion 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 rebelUous ' It is difi&cult not to be struck witlx 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 acqtiiescence of deliberately inflamed popular electorates, succeeded in embddjdng 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 discrimin*;- tory fiscal barriers to international trade ; (ii.) the administration of ! Colonial possessions exclusively in the interest of the local inhabitants, and on the basis of equahty 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 counixy 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 ideahsm, has shown itself at its best, instead of this department of politics being, as is often ignorantly assumed, altogether beyond its capacity. Labour and the New Social Order 697 strikes that characterised the years 1^11-14. The achieve- ments 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 fentry 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 pro- gress in its difficult task of superimposing, on an otganisa- tion based on national societies, the necessary complementary organisation of its affiUated membership by geographical constituencies. It equipped itself during the war, for the first time, with a far-reaching and well-considered programme hot confined to distinctively " Labour " issues, but covering the whole field of home politics, and even extending to foreign relations,^ The formulation of such a programme, ' The new constitution and enlarged programme whicH the Labour Party adopted at its Conferences of 1917-18, alter six months' consideta- tion and discussion by the constituent organisations, were Uttle 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 Con- ferences \;ta,d 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 prograriime, of Labour and the New Social Order were not such innovations as the news- papers made out and as the pubHc 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 Imembership, largely from th? professional and middlb classes, which was steadUy increased as the unsatisfactory character of the Treaty of JPeace, the continued " militarism " of the Government, and the aggression of a " Protectionist ' capitahsm became manifest. 698 Political Organisation from beginning to end essentially Socialist in character, and including alike ideals of social reconstruction and detailed reforms of immediate practicability, together with the whole- hearted adoption of this programme, after six months' con- sideration by the constituent societies and branches, was a notable achievement, which placed the British Labour Party ahead of those of other countries. Moreover, the formula- tion 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 Unionfsm, the Party came near, between 1914 and 1919, to doubling its aggregate membership. When hostilities ceased, it insisted on resinning the complete independence' of the other pohtical 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 ^ 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 1 Messrs. Barnes, Roberts (who became Minister of Food), Parker, and Wardle. . ' The Election of igi8 699 electorate to nearly treble that of 1910, whilst the new feonstituencies proved to have been so adjusted as greatly to facilitate an increase in the number of miners' representa- tives. When the General Election came, in December igiS, though the Labour Party fought xmder 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 aU 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 iHisuccessful (including, unfortunately, most of its ablest Parliamentarians such as Messrs. Henderson,^ 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 jtoembers 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 Parlia- mentarians, has, under the leadership, of the Right Honour- able W. Adamson (Scottish Miners), made as much of its opportunities as the Labour Party in the country expected and desired. The poUtical 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 aU ^. ^ Mr. Henderson was re-elected to Parliament in 1919 at a bye-election, |;capturing a strong Conservative seat at Widnes (Lancashire). 7,00 Political Organisation I the aggregate British Trade Union membership can stead- fastly 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 organisatioii. The Trades Union Congress itself, after en- gendering, as independent organisations, first the General Federation of Tjrade Uniojis, and then the Labour. Party, has not yet resigned itself to limiting its activities. The General Federation of Trade Unions tnay 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 ttofe' Trades Union Congress which it is now proposed to trans- form into a GeneT;al Council, the Executive Committee of the ^Labour Party, and the members of the House of Commons who forni the Parliamentaxy Labour Party. Unfortunately, , ibetween these three groups there has been some lack of mutual consultation, and aii iijdefiniteness if not a confu- sion of policy which stands in the way of effective leadership.^ This has prevented the bringing to bear upon the political field of the full force, now almost a moiety of the whole r egistered electorate of Great Britain, that the Trade Union world may (including the wives of Trade Unionist electors) fairly claim to include. Fimdamentally, 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 pohlical officers at all equal to those of the Trade Union organisers and Trade Union negotiators in the industrial field. The Labour 1 A " Joint Board " — from which the General Federation of Trade Unions was afterwards excj'ided — 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. The Labour Members 701 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, sb far, not succeeded in obtaining and keeping the services, as Registration. Officers and Election Agents, of an3^hing like so extensive and so competent a staff as either of the other political parties ; and Labour Party candidatures are still fun, occasionally with astonishing success, very largely upon that transient enthusiasm of the crowd upon which experi- enced electioneers wisely decUne 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 represent- atives, 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 nea;rly 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 com- pelled 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 reaUsed 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 1 —such of their officials as secure election to Pariiament ; 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 702 , Political Organisation 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 oihces. 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 life- long training which these candidate? have enjoyed as Branch and District Secretaries, as industrial organisers and nego- tiators, 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 Con- stitution, the knowledge of how to use and how to control the adroit and well-equipped Civil Service, and the abihty 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 hfe 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 effective- ness 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 Cominons that the members of the other parties enjoy — and it wiU be realised how seriously the Parliamentary Labour Party is handicapped by being made up, as it is at present, Local Government 703 almost entirely of men who are compelled also to serve as l 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 hereto- fore 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 wiU 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 ParKamemtary skill and capacity for public ad- ministration 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 them- selves 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 Pariiament and to indus- trial organisation. From 1914 to 1919 local elections were suspended. On their resumption in the latter year, they were energetically contested by the Laboiir Party, all over Great Britain, on its new and definitely Socialist programme, with the unexpected result that, up and down the country. 704 Political Organisation 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 poUtical and industrial position is still precarious, and within a very brief space it may again fiiid itself fighting against a frontal attack upon its very existence. And in face of the common enemy — now united as an autocratic capitalism — Industrial Demo- cracy 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, Democracy 705 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 httle effective use of their opportunities. At least seven-eighths of the nation's accumu- lated wealth, and with it nearly all the effective authority, b stUl in the hands of one-eighth of the popuMion ; and the seven-eighths of the* people find themselves in conse- quence 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 ghowing themselves, if possible, more | frivolous and more insolent in their irrespbnsible consump- • tion, by theniselves 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 fixtfavagant schemes. ; The truth is, of course, that Democracy. Whether political or industrial, is still in its infancy .. The common run of men and yvcfmen, who have only just been enfranchised politically, and are even yet oiily partially organised in- dustrially, 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 ' 2 A yo6 Political Organisation 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 "—r, comes to no more than that they do not find themselves; obtaining the results in their daily hves which they expected, and which they were, as they unclerstood, 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 poUtical or Parhamentary and Muni- cipal 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 hfe 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 interest^ 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 organisatioill j involves the acceptance^ not of a single basis — that of ,th6| undifferentiated human being — ^but of various separate and' distinct bases : man as a producer : man as a consumer ; Associations of Producers 707 jnan 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 Deinocracy . to the exclusion of the other forms. We see to-day upper- : most 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 Demo- cratic organisation can vahdly 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 witli 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 manage- ment of each industry should be placed, not separately in the hands of those engaged in each estabhshment, any more [than in the hands of private capitaUst employers, but in thfe hands of the whole body of persons throughout the com- •munity who are actually co-operating in the work of the Industry, whether by hand or by brain ; this management |)eing shared, by Workshop or Pit Committees, District |ouncils and National Boards, among all these " workers." t::: This conception seems to us too one-sided to be adopted 7o8 Political Organisation 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 manage- ment 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 attem{)ts, in modem industry, to place the entire management of industrial undertakings in the hands of I Associations of Producers has been oi^e of failure. In' marked contrast, the opposite form of Democracy, in which the management has been placed in the hands of Associa- tions of Consumers , has achieved a large and constantly increasing measure of success. We do not refer n;ierely to the ever-growing developrhent 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 ia 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 establishrnents 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 establish- ments by the same kind of mepibers organised as Associa- tions of Producers have not succeeded ? ^ ^ For the successive experiments in Co-operative Production, by Associations of Pnoducers 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 survisy, the supplement to The New Statesman of February 14, 1914, entitled "Co-operative Production and Profit Sharing." Associations of Consumers yog 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. More- over, 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 oppor- tunity 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 ownmg particular' instruments of production or possessing a particular kind of skiU. In short, the control of industries and services by Democracies of Consumers realises the Socialist principle of Iproduction for use and not for exchange, with all its mani- fold 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— l^ssociations of Consumers are not tempted tp close their ranks. This kind of Democracy automatically remains 710 Political Organisation always open to new-comers. On the other hand, Associa- tions of Producers, whether capitahsts, 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 remunera- tion. This kind of Democracy is, therefore, ii;istinctively exclusive, tending always to become, within the community, a privileged body. All this amounts to a solid reason in favour of " nationalisation," " municipaUsation," and the consumers' Co-operative Movement, which is reflected in the continuous and actually accelerating extension of aU of them, not in one country only, but throughout the civiUsed world. ^ But the Democracy based oil 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 comple- mentary 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 CapitaHst environ-, ment 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 Uttie to raise the condition of the manual working class. If, however, the Associations of Consumers were co-extensiv6 ; with the community, they would themselves fix the standard. But there is a more fundamental criticism. The Democracy 1 See Towards Social Democracy ? by Sidney Webb (191 6) ; 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." ; ' ' Government from Above" 711 of Consumers, in Co-operative Society, Municipality or State — ^however wide may be the franchise, however effec- tive may be the Parhamentary 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 manage- ment, 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 Associa- tions 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 estabhshment 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 smaU measure of success, with more triumphs easily within view. Trade Unionism among the manual workers, like Professional Association among the brain-workers,' has emphatically justified itself by its achievements. But Trade Unionism, though it has gone far to protect ihe worker from t5n:anny, has not, as yet, gained for him any 1, 1 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. 712 Political Organisation positive participation in industrial naanagement. To this extent the complaints of the objectors among the manual^' working class are justified. In the perpetual see-saw of ppinion in the Labour world the movement towards Parlia- mentary action and in favour of what we may caU Com- munal 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 dominatioii of Associations of Producers, and the " Direct Action " to which they are prone — against which, in the perpetual see-saw, there wiU 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 move- ment, specially characteristip 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 — ihas been, in this or any other country, any- thing 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 tliat the Trade Unions or Prof essional " Societies will take over the entire management of their industries or services, for which, in our opinion, no Association of Producers can be fitted.^ 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 ^ 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. Vocational Exclusiveness 713 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 ahke in the ancient and modern world, in the castes of India and the Gilds of China, in the mediaeval 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 CapitaUst System — so long as the manual workers are fighting a common enemy in the private owner of land and capital — ^this corporate selfishriess 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 th,at have been established in Great Britain or on the Continent, we find their failure intimately 2 A2 714 Political Organisation connected with the impracticable position of a manager directiag 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 consimier. 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 sec- tions of workers.^ I 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 constuners, but they must be reinforced by the presence of represent- ^ We do not discuss here all the difificnlties 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 inequaUty, 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 stafi. 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, con- sumers, 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. A Complex Solution 715 atives of |;he community organised as citizens, interested in the future as well as the present prosperity of the com- munity. 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 manage- ment between Associations of Producers and that Associa- tion 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 funda- mental 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 com- munity, 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 fi Mimicipality 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 1' 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. 7i6 Political Organisation • 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 specialisa- tions, which must always form small minorities of the whole body. They will find it necessary to make the local organisa- tion 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 Com- mittees and the " Shop Stewards," brought effectively into organic relation with the nationally settled industrial policy .: I At any rate, in industries already passing under the control- of Associations of Consumers, whether by nationahsation or municipalisation, or by the spread of consumers' co-operation, there will be great scope for District Councils and National Boards, as weU as for Advisory and Research Committees representative of different speciahties, in which managers and foremen, technicians and operatives, will jointly supers sede the capitalist Board of Directors. But the managements of each industry is very far from being the whole of the task. In ParUament 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 pohtical 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 pre- dominate over the representatives of the surviving capitalist ' A Warning yiy and landlord parties. Trade Unionists, in the mass, will not only have to continue and extend the loyalty and s^lf- vdevotion 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 seK- 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 partici- pate 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 ijProfessional Associations, and pohtically in the Labour Party, is no mere increase of wages or reduction of hours.^ 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 Ikp of the class of functionless persons who live merely by * '■ 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 type^ 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 aU the economic, ethical, juridical, and social hopes and fears, aims, attitudes, and aspirations of the group. It exptesses 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). yi8 Political Organisation I owning. Profit-making as a pijrsuit, with its sanctification I of the motive of pecuniary self-interest, is the demon that (has to be exoi-cised. 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 Em- ployers for the exploitation of the consumer. " Co-partner- ship," or profit-sharing with individual capitahsts, has been seen through and rejected. But the " co-partnership " of Trade Unions- with Associations of Capitalists — whether, as £1 development of "Whitley Councils" or otherwise — which far-sighted capitahsts 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 under^ mining 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. APPENDICES 719 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 coses, 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 Jrom 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 Bricklayer^' 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 docu- ment, given to the exclusively Protestant incorporation of working masters, which was aboHshed 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 721 722 , Appendix I 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 " buildefs," and to admit Roman Catholic craftsmen. But the Company, which then included scarcely a dozen practis- ing 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 journejnnen 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 oldeir workmen, but no one could explain to us their use. The alliance probably rested on some promise of preference for emplojnnent 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 pam- phlet 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 oj elsewhere, have we found a Trade Union in possession of any Gild documents or reUcs. The absolute impossibiUty of any passage of the Dubhn 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 CathoUcs. The Dublin Companies were, to the last, rigidly confined to Episco- paUan 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 Annexing Antiquity 723 by mandamus. But when inquiry was made in 1838 by the (.Commissioners appointed under the Municipal Corporations Act, only half a dozen Roman CathoUcs 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 w4ge- 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'ConneU 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 aboUtion by the Act of 1840, in much the same condition as those of London, with the added fact of religious exclusiveness, the Dubhn Trade Unions were long before that date at the height of their power. The adoption by the DubUn 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 brick- layers content themselves with repeating the original preface common to the Trade Societies which were formed in the be- ginning of this century, to the effect that " the journeyman bricklayers of the City of DubKn 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 incorpora- tion ("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 abohtion 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 estabhshment as 1458, whilst other printed matter places it at 1490. The DubUn painters 724 Appendix I 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 stea,dily " 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 eUgible for it ; such Grand Lodge to be governed internally by a Grand Master, Deputy Grand Master, and Grand Secretary, and a Committee of l^anagement. 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 aU 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, hving in smaller towns or villages adjacent to it ; and shall be governed internally by a President, 'Vice-President, Secretary, and a Comniittee of Management. ' V. Each District Lodge shall have (if necessary) its Branch ) Lodge or Lodges, nimibered in rotation; such Branch Lodges to be under the control of the District Lodge from which they sprung. VI. An unlimited number oi the above described Lodges shall form and constitute the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union of Great Britain and Ireland. ' ■ 725 726 Appendix II VII. Each District shall have its Central Committee, com- posed 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, trans- mitting 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 aU 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 Govermnent 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. AppKcations for dis- pensations 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. The Grand National 727 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 neces- sitated 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 los. per week each shall be paid to members during a strike or turn out. XVII. AU 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 aU 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 pistrict 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 AuxiHary 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 aU 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 fhe interests of the Union aforesaid. The Auxiliary Lodge shall s be liable to be dissolved according to Article XXII. j. 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. 728 Appendix II 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 othe^ 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 arrange- ments 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 PubUc 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 BaUot, 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^: eUgible, 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 Manage- ment 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 ofte'ner if necessary. Rules 729 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, a,nd 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 meet- ings 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 bq put in force ; and they shall be addressed by Members, during Lodge hours, by their proper titles. < - XXVIII. No subject which does not iinmediately 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 ^nutes of the proceedings, entering the sanie 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 730 Appendix II party a card, by which they may be admitted into the place appointed for the ceremony. i To receive the subscriptions of members, entering the same into a small account book, numbering the Subscribers from No. I, 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 pa3mients, and all levies, into separate small books; all subscriptions and pajnnents 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 SAiretary of each Grand or District Lodge shall balance his books once every fortnight, and tha Managing Committee shall audit them; going over each item of receipt and expendi- ture 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 Of&cers 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 reason- able 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 Rules 731 to be allowed to officers of Branch Lodges, unless by the unanimous consent of their Members. f , 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. I Miscellaneous Articles XXXV. Any Member shall be liable to expulsion from the Lodges for any improper conduct therein ; and shall be excluded frbm 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 inteUigence on the affairs of the Union. XXXVII. Each Lodge shall, as soon as possible, make larrangements for furnishing the means of instituting Libraries or Reading-Rooms, or any other arrangements, affording them every faciUty for meeting together for friendly conversation, mutual instruction, and rational amusement or recreation. " XXXVIII. In all cases, where it be practicable, each Lodge [shall estabhsh within its locality one or more Depots for provisions and articles in general domestic use, in order that its Members may be suppUed with the best of such commodities at little above wholesale prices. XXX'IX. 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 wilUng to subscribe towards it. XL. Each Grand or District Lodge to have the power of 732 , Appendix II 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 member- ship, and that he is not in arrears of subscription for more than one month, uiiless lenity has been granted by order of Committee,^ XLII. That a separa:te Treasurer be appointed for every £20 of the funds collected; and that such Treasurers shall not suffer arty money to be withdrawn from their hands without a written order, signed by at least three of the Managing Comr rhittee and presented by the Secretary, or one of the other officers of the Society XLIII. AU 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 wiU be enabled to , resist the demands of the Unionists, whereas, if no operatives remain out of union, einployers 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 \hsS 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 estabUsh, 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 undu& control oyer 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 Rules 733 and assisting each other in bringing about A Different 'OeIder 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, nlieet their just distinc- tion 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 f amihar 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 giyen was proportionate to the selhng price of ' marked bars.' The puddlers received, as a rule, IS. for each pound of the seUing 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." ^ At the time of the great strike of Staffordshire puddlers, in 1863, 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 DarUngton in 1869 as the " North of England Manufactured Iron Board," soon worked out a formal shding 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-estabUshed ; but its working has, on the whole, commended itself to the repre- 1 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). 734 Sliding Scales 735 sentatives 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 Shding Scales of this nature are in force for the Cleveland and the North Lincolnshire Blast- furnacemen ; the Scottish Iron and the Consett MUlmen ; Brown B'ayley's No. i MiU ; the Scottish Enginemen and Steel Millmen ; the Staffordshire Sheet Trade ; the Midlands Puddling Mills and Forges ; and the South Wales arid Monmouthshire Iron and Steel Trade. Widely different has been the result of the SHding Scale among the coal miners. Its int eduction into this trade dates from 1874, though it was not untU 1879 that its adoption became common. Since then it has been^ abandoned in aU districts, and it is^ energetically repudiated by the Miners' Federation. The poUowing table includes all the SUding Scales in the coal industry known to us. Between 1879 ^'^'^ ^^^^ there were a number of informal SUding 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, May 28, April 13, February 6, March 14, November i, April 14, October li, October 31. 1874 South Staffordshire I. Revised 1877, 1875 South Wales I. ' „ 1880, 1876 Somerset. Ended 1889. 1877 Cannock Chase I. Revised 1879. 1877 Purham I. 1879. 1877 ^outh Staffordshire II. 1882. 1879 Cannock Cliase II. , .. 1882. 1879 Durham II. 1887 1879 Cumberland I. Ended 1881. 36 Appendix III November 3, 1879' Ferndale Colliery I. , (S. Wales). Revised 1881. November 10 , 1879 Bedworth Colliery I. (Warwick). „ 1880. November 15, , 1879 Northumberland I. ., 1883. December 19, 1879 Ocean Colliery I. (S, Wales). „ 1882. January 17, 1880 South Wales II. 1882. January 20, ,1880 West Yorkshire. Ended ? Januaijr 26, 1880 North Wales. i88r. February 14, 1880 Bedworth Colliery II. ? January i, 1881 Ashton and Oldham I. Revised 1882. December 31, 1881 Ferndale CoUiery II. ? Janizary i, 1882 South Stafiorrishire III. Ended 1884. April 29, 1882 Durham III. Revised 1884. June 6, 1882 South Wales III. 1889. Jjine 22, 1882 Cannock Chase, &c. III. Ended 1883. July 18, 1882 Ashton & Oldham II. 1883. August 24, 1882 South Wales (Anthracite). ? September 29; , 1882 Cumberland II. Revised 1884. March g, 1883 Northumberland II. Ended 1886. June 12, 1884 Durham IV. „ 1889. November 28, 1884 Cumberland III. Revised 1886. March 12, 1886 Forest of Dean. Ended 1888 ? April 14, 1886 Altham CoUiery (Northd.). ? February 25, 1887 Cumberland IV. Ended 1888 ? May 24, 1887 Northumberland III. 1887. June, 1887 Lanarkshire. 1889. October, 1888 South Staffordshire IV. ? January 18,"' 1890 South Wales IV. ? September, 1893 Forest of Dean. ? An exposition of the construction and working of Sliding; Scales is contained in IndmfHal Peace, by L. L. Price. Details,- of numerous Scales are given in the report n),ade 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 (Openshaiw, 1886, 20 pp.). Supplementarj^'l information is given in Professor Munro's papers before th^ Manchester Statistical Society, entitled, " SUding 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 Arbitrations 737 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 pubUshed as Appendix V. to the First Report, 1890 (C 6195); 2 B 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 con- venience of reference. " Manchester, April 16, 1868. " Sir — You are requested to lay the following before your Sodety. 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, heg 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 representati'^^^ of Trades Councils, Federations of Trades, and Trade Sodeti^ in general. " The Congress will assume the character of the Annual Meetings of the Social Science Assodatipn, in the transactions of which Society the artisan class is almost excluded ; and papers 738 The First Congress 739 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 Kollowed 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 pubUc piress. It is further decided that the subjects treated upon shall include the following : "I. Trade Unions an absblute 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. " ir. 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 Repre- sentatives 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 whonf they will be respectively represented ; after whiph date all information as to the place of meeting, etc., will be supplied. " It is not imperative that all Societies should prepare papers, tII being anticipated that the subjects will be taken up by those most capable of expounding the principles sought to be main- tained. Several have already adhered to the project, and have pgnified their intention of taking up the subjects Nos. i, 4, 6, and 7. y "The Congress wiU 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, 740 , Appendix IV^ ;, ..i 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 UNITER ' KINGDOM I I 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 Uriionists in 1892. The distribution was, in most cases, made by branches, special festimates 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 edch part of the United Kingdom, with the percentage to population in each case. , County. [P'edfordshire iBerkshire toickinghamshire Cambridgeshire Ifcheshire iCornwall Ihimberland . prbyshire . Jevonshire . I Dorsetshire . Population in 1891., 165,999 268,357 164,442 196,269 707,978 318,583 266,549 432.414 636,225 188,995 Ascertained Trade Unionists in 1892. 553 975 720 2.855 32,000 630 10,280 29,510 6,030 305 Number of Trade Unionists per 100 of populatioa. 0-33 0-36 0-44 1-45 4-52 O-20 3-86 6-82 0-95 o-i6 741 742 Appendix V County, Durham Essex (without West Ham, in- cluded in London). Gloucestershire .... Hampshire (without Isle of Wight, treated separately). Herefordshire Hertfordshire Huntingdonshire Isle of Wight Kent . (without Bromley, included in London). Lancashire Leicestershire .... Lincoln . . . . . London . ■ , • (including Bromley, Croydon, Kingston, Richmond, West Ham and Middlesex). Norfolk Northamptonshire . . . Northnmberland . . . . Nottinghamshire . . . . Oxford Rutland Shropshire Somerset Staffordshire . . . . Sufiolk Surrey (without Croydon, Kingston, and Richmond, included in London). Sussex Warwickshire . . . . Westmoreland . . . . Population in 1891. 1,024,369 396,057 548,886 587.578 "3.346 215.179 50,289 78,672 737.044 3,957.906 379,286 467,281 5.517.583 ' 460,362 308,072 506,030 505.3" 188,220 22,123 254.765 510,076 ,103,452 353.758 275.638 554.542 801,738 66,215 Ascertained Trade Unionists in 1892. 114,810 3.370 26,030 5.665 385 1,125 20 295 12,445 331,535 27,845 9,480 194,083 4,880 12,210 56,815 31,050 1,815 o 3,225 6,595 49,545 14,885 730 2,810 33.600 530 Number of Trade Uniooiste per 100 oE popula^n. A County Census 743 ' County. ! Population in 1891. Ascertained Trade Unionists in iSgz. Number of Trade Unionists per ICO of population. Wiltshire Worcestershire .... Yorkshire, East Riding Yorkshire, North Riding . (with York City). Yorkshire, West Riding . Total, England 255.119 422,530 318,570 435.897 2,464,415 27,226,120 3,680 7-840 23.630 15,215 141,140 1,221,141 1-44 1-86 •7-42 3-49 5-73 4-49 North Wales .... South Wales and Monmouth 451,090 1.325.315 8,820 88,810 1-96 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 Ireland Isle of Man . . ■ . Guernsey 'Jersey I'Aldefney and Sark 4.033-103 4,706,162 55-598 35-339 54.518 2.415 146,925 40,045 75 1,170 40 3-64, 0-85 0-I3 3-31 0-07 o-oo Total, United Kingdom 37,889,660 1,507,026 3-98 APPENDIX THE STATISTICAL PROGRESS It is unfortunately impossible to present any complete statistics;; appointment, in 1886, of John Burnett as Labour Correspondent statistics of the movement ; and the old Unions seldom possess of Ironfounders, it is true, has exact figures since its establish- The following tables may be useful as placing on record such ■ 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 Caxpente^s and Joiners. 9. Typographical Association. 10. London Society of Compositors. 1 1 . Bookbinders' and Machine Rulers' Consolidated Union. 12. United Kingdom Society of Coachmakers. 13. FUnt Glass Makers' Friendly Society. 14. Amicable and Brotherly Society of Machine Printers. 15. Machine, Engiiie, 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. 744 VI OF TRADE UNION MEMBERSHIP of Trade Union membership at different periods. Until the to the Board of Trade, no attempt was made to collect any a conlplete series of their own archives. The Friendly Society nient in 1809. No total figurescan be given with any confidence, comparative figures as we have been able to collect: 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 AmEilgamated 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. 136. Railway Clerks' Association. 37. Amalgamated Tramway and Vehicle Workers. 38. National Union of Dock Labourers. 39. British Steel Sriielters. .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. 745 2 B 2 746 Appendix VI Table showing the Membership of certain Trade Unions at Number ol Society. Year of Establish- ment, 1850. 1855. I860. 1865. 1870. I, 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10, II 12 13 14 15 16. 17- 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23- 24. 25- 26. 27. 28. I85I* 1809 1824 I83I 1832 1832 1848 1827 1849 1848 1835 1834 1849 1841 1844 1857 i860 1861 1862 1863 x866 1832 1865 1832 1866 1853. i860 1869 5,000 4.073 2,068 814 1,771 4,671 340 5.35 603 1,800 420 1.567 500 375 200 24.737 12,553 5.685 1,662 1,381 3.500 8,093 924 1,180 1,288 2,300 340 3,040 897 452 no 20,935 7.973 2,050 2,084 4,146 9,125 1,641 2,228 1,473 2,650 500 4,086 1,355 508 330 30.984 10,604 2,521 3,046 8,621 15,483 4,320 6,986 1,992 2,800 748 4,599 1,606 530 449 43,405 61,084 856 618 95,289 1,815 5,670 4,453 4,441 4,250 ? ? ? ? ? 34.7" 8,994 2,819 2,766 7,261 13.965 1.441 8,008 2.430 3.350 915 5,801 1.776 570 280 95.087 1,590 10,178 3.585 2,461 5.328.;;; 1.457 • 1.537 ;'; 242 . 3,850 ° 4,006 < 10,518 792 1,899 142,530 * Established January 10, 1851. The membership given for 1850 is t Merged in the National Union of Bookbinders and Machine Rulers,- J In 1902 joined with the Operative Cabinet and Chair Makers Association. Comparative Statistics Successive Periods, from 1850 to 1918 inclusive. 747 1875. t88o. 1885. 1890. 1900. 1910, 1918. 44.032 44,692 51,689 67,928 87.672 "0,733 298,782 12,336 11,580 12,376 14,821 18,357 17.990 28,586 3,871 4.134 5,062 5,822 8,566 14,401 27.206 4.346 4.664 5,611 6.198 7,504 7,880 7.961 16,191 17.688 28,212 32.926 47,670 49.393 95.761 24.543 12,610 11.285 12,538 19,419 7.055 4.929 4.832 5,700 6,412 12.740 38,830 23,284 34.441 10,885 4,420 1.734 2,485 7,727 5.653 12.000 3,600 5.350 6.551 9.016 16,179 21,436 11,602 4,200 5,100 6.435 8,910 11,287 12,230 12,940 1,670 1,501 1.788 2.910 4,064 5.027 - t 7.251 4.989 4.560 5,367 6,536 65854 15,118 2,005 1,963 1,985 2,123 ' 2,409 916 775 650 690 740 860 963 983 228 390 258 277 304 433 703 746 140,802 125.339 144,717 184,948 277,616 284,538 551.075 2,113 2,002 2,335 2,300 2.933 \ 2.953 17.238 14.917 17.764- 25,781 31,495 65,012 55.785 > 124,841 6,642 4.673 4,535 4.742 9,808 3.964 3,742 3.2II 2,110 4,236 11,009 6.522 4,110 17.561 10,707 13,128 16,961 23,950 37.361 40,000 I.82I 1,890 2,344 2,162 — 5.241 7.500 1,679 2,232 2,666 5,350 11,186 10,907 13,000 1.965 1.346 1,246 4,298 5.270 — - i 7.350 3,282 1,975 1,725 3.428 1.655 2.950 14.352 12,583 13.969 16,629 13.439 12,143 29,422 14.257 11,834 16,579 18,145 18,384 22,992 24,806 1,120 1,061 1.522 1.899 2,840 2,450 2,800 38,000 30,000 35.000 49,000 80,260 121,805 126.250 5 266,321 227,924 267,907 343.890 546,135 559,316 944.992 that with which the amalgamation started. 1911. of \Scotland to form the National Amalgamated Furnishing Trades 748 Appendix VI Number of Society. year of Establish- ment. 1850. i«55. i860. 1865. 1870, 29. 1872 _^_ 30- . 1872 — 31- 1874 — — — 32. 1872 ■ — 33- 1858 — — ? ? ? 34- 1844 ? ? ? ? ? 35- 1902 — — — ' 36. 1897 '. — . 37- 1889 38. 1889 , ^^ ' — 39- 1886 ■ — ■^- — 40. 1891 — ■ ' 41- 189I V 42. 1891 — — — 43- 1898 — — 44. 1893 — — — 45- 1889 — — 46. 1891 — — 47- 1896 - / * Amalgamated in 191 3 with the United Pointsmen and Signalmen.*' Railwaymen. ■" f In 191 7 the members of the British Steel Smelters were merged in We have suggested that it is doubtful whether, in 1842, there A quarter of a century later George Howell and others could number was reached until the years of good trade that followed"; whether the aggregate of a railUon was again reached until the end of the century were two milUons attained — a number, increased by over fifty per cent. Comparative Statistics 749 l-«". '%■' 1880. 1885. i8go. 1900. 1910. 1918. 5.271 4.633 3.582 7.958 8,675 7,373 25,000 418 824 1,241 2,205 4,604 7,214 10,290 ■-. 4.3" 6,404 10,464 23.459 27,^60 30.197 83.017 13,018 8,589 9,052 26,360 62,023 75.153 -(*) It' 8,000 ■; 276 2,800 8,000 50,000 54,475 88,271 100,400 279 455 2,501 3,769 4.843 23,374 ;, 297,615 251.453 300,701 456,373 707,641 772.367 1.187,673 — — — — 6,248 (1902) 6,685 47.220 — — ■ — 1,550 9.476 66,130 — — . ^- ? 9,214 17,076 40,564 — — — ? 13.388 14.253 45.000 — — • — ? 10,467 17.491 40,ooo(?)t — — — 7,551 22,426 83,000 (1919) — — — 6,733 29,886 87.134 — . — 82 3,166 35,000 — . — ? 2,879 5,016 230,000 — — 3,286 6,182 14,649 — — — ? 21,111 16,017 143,931 — — — 23,180 37.892 65,078 — 940 3,500 14,000 106,629 189,046 911,706 814,270 961,413 2,098,779 and the General Railway Workers' Union to form the National Union of the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation. were as many as 100,000 enrolled and contributing members, talk vaguely of a million members, but we doubt whether this ,1871. In 1878-80 there was a great falling off, and we doubt 1885! In 1892 we recorded a million and a half. Not until doubled by 1915, and in the last four or five years again 750 Appendix VI •St s """' ""i. ^. § « •<* .§ S I « 00. ^: § I i 5^ 13 8 i" §• I- s H 00 t*». 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IH M M HI M C4 coTt-inTi-Ti-coc< ovO\ tN.vo u-)^-o -^con c* in m ««C*««N«NWHIWWMWWWWC4 W « year. N CO «*• invo ^ 00 oto w M co-^mvo t^oo ao w N pOTj-iii'O e^ 0^ Ot 0^ O O^ 0> 0\0\0000000000WMMMWMMW 00 OO 00 00 00 00 \^ 0000 O^O^OtO^OxOlO\OtO^O^OtO^O^O^O^O^O^O^ -ii 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 hsts, 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 Usts of piece-work 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, wh^-e 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. 7S» 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, wliich 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 supphed to the consumers. There is, secondly, the judgement as to the manner in which the production shall take place, the adoptioii of material, the choice of processes, and tiie 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 4nd satisfied by the private enterprise of capitalist profit-makers, keenly interested in securing custom, or by the pubUc service of salaried officials, intent on pleasing associations of consumers (as in the British Co-operative Movement), or 7S* Consumers' Control 753 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 pro- cesses, 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 over- Whelming 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 know- ledge of the directors of industry. But this is subject to one all-important qualification. The permanent bias of the profit- maker, 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 worsen- ing 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- 754 Appendix VIII fifths of the whole. Henee the bias of thie 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 employ- ment. " 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 employ- ment 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 ' ITie Higgling of the Market' we described how, in the elaborsrte division of labour" which characterises the modem 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 practic-- able 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, Producers' Control 755 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 organisa- tion 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 employ- ment. It is always the consumers and the consumers alone, whether they act through profit-making entrepreneurs or through their own salaried ofiicials, who determine how many of each particular grade of workeirs 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 com- munity 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 756 Appendix VIII 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 pre- venting 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 Know- ledge an,d Power in the hands of the numerical majority for the time being, it might easily becdme as injurious a tyranny as any autocracy. An actual study of the spontaneous demo- cracies of Anglo-Saxon workmen, or, as we suggest, of any other democratic institutions, reveals the spUtting up of this dangerous authority into two parts. Whether in poUtical or in industrial democracy, though it is the Qtizen 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 fulfilUng 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 modem municipaUty 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 dwelUng. He no longer educates his own children, or doctors and nurses his own What is Liberty ? 757 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 pro- fessional 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 associa- tion, 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 ani^lysis 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 powe^ 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 Ijis 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 ttiis 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 758 Appendix VIII 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 thatj >vhere 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 pf 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 disciphne as well as the stimulus of opportunity. But however untrammelled power may affect the character of those who possess it, autocracy, aristocra,cy, and plutocracy have aU, from the point of view of the lover of hberty, 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 special- ised 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 speciaisa- :j tion 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 accom- panied 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 Need for Knowledge 759 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 Represenljative — ^in his parish, in his professional association, in his co-operative society, or in the wider poUtical 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 1 particular moment, but of those ' larger expediencies ' on which all successful conduct of social Ufe 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 Kmit the right of every man to use the air, the watetr, 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 brain- worker alike dependent on the rest of the community for the means of subsistence, and subordinates them, even in their own crafts, to the action 9f others. In ,the world of civiHsation and progress, no man can be his own master. But the very fact that, in modem society, the individual thus necessarily loses control over his own Ufe, 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 investiga- 760 Appendix VIII vtions into the larger and perhaps more significant types of democratic organisation." In 1920, after nearly a quarter of a century of further experi- ence and consideration, we should, in some respects, put this differently. The growth, among aU^ classes, and especially amoiig 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 com- pared 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, incident- ally, an important reason for what is called " nationaUsation." 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 administra- ti6n. 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 principaUy 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 Much more Consultation 761 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, aUke 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 deal of the old autocracy in industry and services, once Adeemed to be indispensable, is ceasing to be necessary to effi- ciency, and wiU 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 ^hich already characterise the administration of aU industry on a large scale, whether under private or public ownerslyp, 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 I will come, as a matter of course, a stream of reports from the disinterested outside costing experts, which will carry with them no coercive authoritj', 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 wiU come a stream of financial and merely statistical reports from equally disinterested outside auditors and stdtisticians, 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 peirticular fenterprise, but suggesting, in the light of recent surveys of the 762 Appendix VIII work, how they could be practically applied to its peculiar circiunstances. 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, wDl, 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 wiU 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 i;esponsible, not merely or mainly for satisfying the existing generation of consumers, producers, or citizens, but for safe- guarding the interests of the community as a whole, m the future as well as in the present. There \wll be the reports from the organs of the consumers or users of the particular commodity or service (such as the District Committees representing tele- phone users set up by the Postmaster-General as organs of , criticism dnd suggestion for his telephone administration). Finally there will Ije reports conveying criticisms and suggestions' from committees or councils representing other enterprises, or other sections of producers (whether technicians or mantial 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 wiQ 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 wiU 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 Ukely to be much improved by such consultations — cind 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 aehninistration ; and that it will be for the Professional Associations of the technicians and the Trade Unions of the manual workers to prove them- selves equal to the transformation in their status that this or any other application of Democracy involves. A Future Work 763 But here we must pause. In a future work on the achieve- ments, policy, and immedi^^te controversies of the British Labour and Socialist Movement we shall give the historical and the Ipsychological anal5rsis, in the hght of the experience of the'past lew ddcades, 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 Aclaud, 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 HaU, 666, 669 .^lison. 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' Associa-' tion. See Cabinet Makers Almshouses, provided by the Liver- pool 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 Car- penters, Engineers, Cotton-spin- ners, Cotton-weavers, Boot and Shoemakers, Builders' Labourers, Card and Blowing Room Opera- tives, Metal Planers, Railway Servants, Tailors, Watermen and Lightermen^ Amalgamated Tramway and Vehicle Workers, 744 Amfalgaihations and Federations, 546-554 . . American Federation of Labour, 135, 556 /, Amicable and Brotherly Society of Machine Printers (Cotton arid Calico), 70, 75 Amicable Society of Woolstapl^rs, 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, 1 643 Arch, Joseph, 329, 334, 680, 6B2 Armstrong, Lord, 315 Arnot, R. Page, '489, 511, 524, 532, 633. «62 Ashley, Sir W. J., 4, 5, 13, 15, 29, 5", 735-7 Ashton, murder of, 122 Ashton, Thomas, 311, 356 Ashton-under-Lyne, strikes at, 119, 122 > 7^6 766 Index Ash worth, 169 Asquith, H. H., 528-9, 636, 645, 692 Assindei, G. F., 599 Associated. See Blacksmiths, Car- penters, Engineers, Iron-forgers, Railwaymen, and Shipwrights Associated Society of Locomotivd 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, iErnest,4i4 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, 1 175, 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 Coun- cil of, 280, 329-30, 309 ; trades procession at, 177 Birtwistle, Thomas, 309 Bit and Spur Makers, 92 Blackburn, 307, 697 ; riots at, 344 BlackWm Li^t, the, 226 *' Black-coated proletariat," 503-9 Blacklisting, 284, 598 Blacksmiths, Associated Society of. Scotland. ' See Smiths Blastfumacemen. 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, 30,7 ; 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, I92,' 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, III 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 Index 767 Brass-workers, 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, 23, 39, 47, 52, 209, 212, 339, ;' 677 Brett, Lord Justice, 285 Bricklayers, 125, 169, 223, 226-32, 241, 245, 275, 282, 354, 36s, 407, 428-9, 431-3, 559, 744 Bricklayers' and Plasterers' Com- pany, 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, Human- ity, and Knowledge, 167 British Association of Steel Smelt- , ers. See Steel Smelters JBroadhead, W., 268-9 Broadhurst, Henry, 240, 285, 289; , 295, 3II-I2, 325, 353, 362-3, 365, 370, 372,, 395. 401, 408, 635, 680 Bronte, Charlotte, 89 Brooklands Agreement, 476 Brooks, J. G., 655 .Brougham, Lord, 156, 178 3rushmakers, 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 combina- tions, 8-1 1 ; lock-out in 1833, 150; in i860, 228-32; in 1912, 690 ; nine hours movement in, '312-17 ; statistics of, 407, 428-9, 431-3, 481-3 BuU & Co., 343 CBullinger, 4 -Bijrdett, 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 CaUco-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 CapitaUst, elimination of, 673-6 Card and Blowing Room Operatives, Amalgamated Association of, 435, 475-80. See also Cotton Opera- tives and Textiles Carlisle, cotton-weavers of, 82 Carmarthenshire, coal-miners of, 44 Carmen, 439-40 Carpenters, 18, 75, no, 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 Cartwiight, 36 Census of Trade Unionists, 741-750 Central Institute, 593 Chalmers, G., 62 Chamberlain, Joseph, 370, 373 768 Index 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 Cliartism, 164, 174-8, 649, 653 ' Checkweigher, 302, 304-6, 466, 489 Chester, hatters of, 53 ' Chimney-sweeps, 136 Chinese Labour, 6gi Chippers and Drillers, 548 Chipping Norton case, 332 Christian Socialists, the, 215, 225, 246, 263-4, 7°7-~ 'S'«« "'1^0 Hughes.i Ludlow and Neal^ Churchill, Winston, 494, 501 Cigarmakers, T.XJ. among, 438 " Citizpn Guard," 544 City of Glasgow Bank failure, 345 Ciiol 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, 4J36-7 Clothworkers' Cgmpany, 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 Coa!chmakers, 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 Cokemeh, 434, 512, 549 Cole, G. D. H., 485, 524, 532, 553, 633. 637, 660 Cole, Percy, 491 ColHery Clerks, 513, 549; Engine- men,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, 2or, 205, 361, 389. 398-9, 415. 437-8, 492-3, 606, 666, 071, 744. Se6 also Typographical Conditions of Employment, 754 Confederation GSn^rale de Travail, 655 Conference of Amalgamated Trades^ 263783 Confiscation of funds proposed, 140 Congress, Trades Uriipu, origin of, 280-81; description of, 561-6;' summons to, 738^40 Congreve, Richard, 269 Qpnnolly, T., 248, 273; James, 472-3. 655-7 Conscription, 639-40, 666-7 Consolidated Society of Book- binders, 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, S53 Copper-miners, absence of T.U. among, 434 Index 769 Cordwainers, See Boot and Shoe Operatives Corn Production Act, 475, 498 - Costing experts, 761 - Cotton-spinners, 7, 41, g6, 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 Cpulson, Edward, 233 - 40, 248, . 252, 255, 282, 362 "Coventry, 95 Gowen, Joseph, 316 Cox, Harold, 391, 393 Craft Gilds, 4-21 ; labourers ex- • .eluded from, 43 j^pranmer, Archbishop, 4 ■•jDtawford, Williarn, 296, 303-4, 391 'Crayford, calico-printers of, 193 ; Cremer, Sir W. R., 248, 289, 682 'Criminal Law Amendment Act of i8'7i, 282-3, 290-91, 364 Crompton, Henry, 265, 278, 282, 284, 286, 298, 338, 362, 374. See , Positivists ' Cromwell, combinations reported I 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 oflficers, 507 Cutlers, 73, 80, 92, 108, 241 Cutlers' Company, 39 Daily Citizen, 689 Daily Herald, 502, 542, 689 Dale, David, 328, 359 Danter, 255, 318 Dartmouth, 34 .Davenport, W., 30 Davis, J. E., 251 Davis, R. J., 503 Davis, W. J., 281, 324, 356,, 358-9 (Ufe), 368, 391. 395, 401. 554. 661, 680 Davitt, Michael, 473 , Defoe, Daniel, 35 Delahaye, Victor, 385 De Leon, Daniel, 656 Demarcation disputes, 347, 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 i 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, JLondon 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, 1 17-18, 122, 124 Doll6ans, 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, xiy Dyers, 100, 243, 436, 478, 480, 552 Eastern Counties Labour Federa- 2C 770 Index tion, 405. See also Agricultural Labourers Edinburgh, compositors of, 58 ; trade clubs of, 177 ; Trades Council of,^ 242, 252 ; Uphol- sterers' 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 EUenborough, Lord, 59-60, 144 Ellicott, Dr., Bishop of Gloucester, , 332 ElUs, Sir T. Ratclifie, 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 Emplojmient 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 Erie, Sir William, 195, 264, 279 I 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 Departitient Fabian Society, 375, 399, 414, 561, 642, 662, 680-82, 684 'Factory Acts, 679 I 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 pf 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 FelMn, W., 38, 52, 169 Feltmakers' Compaiiy, 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 , r": 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 Index 771 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, 73, 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, WilUams, and Jones, New- port Chartists, 177 Froude, J. A., 48 Furnishing Trades, 481 Fjmes, Richard, 90, 124, 18,1, 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 Garten Foundation, 648 Qascoyne, Colonel, 71 Gas-stokers, London (1872), 284-5 ; strike of (1834), 138, (1888) 395. See Gas- workers Gast, John, 84-5, 107, in, 115 Gas-workers, 402, 406, 420, 439, 497, 499 Gateshead Trades Council, 561 Geddes, Sir Auckland, S36-7 Geddes, Sir Eric, 53678 Geldart, W. M., 609, 634 General Federation of Trade Unions 554-7. 603-4, 700 General Labourers' National Coun- cil, 499 General Railway Workers' Union, 405-6, 524. 53°- See also Rail- waymen 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., ^48, 262, 284-6, 302, 365 Glasgow, calico-printers of, 75 ; cotton operatives of, 56, 58-9, 89, 170-71; gilds of, 14; labburers' society in, 417 ; stonemasons of, ' 347 ; Trades Council of, 240, 242-3, 252-3, 258, 280 ; Mjiolent 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 Ripen, Mar- quis of Gold, Silver, and Kindred Trades Society, 551 Goldasti, 20 772 Index Goldbeaters, 37, 91 Gompers, Samuel, 556 Gofgon, the, 99 Government of Industry, 752-62 Government of&cials, 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, 183 Grinders, 80, 260 Gross, Dr., 15 ' Grote, George, 178 Guild SociaUsm, 548, 660-1 Guilds. See Craft Gilds Guile, Daniel, 233-40, 238 (life of), 252, 291, 362 Gumey, J. and W. B., 89 Gurney, Russell, 275 Haddleton, 197 Hal6vy, 6lie, 648 Halifax, wooUen-workers of, 35 Hall, Rev. Robert, 94 Halliday, Sir Leonard, 4 Halliday, Thomas, 289 Hallsworth, Joseph, 503 Halsbury, Ixjrd, 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' Com- pany 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 Piatt, 214 Hill, Frank, 14, 228 Hill, Frederic, 257, 272 Hill^s, Richard, 4 Hobnouse, Benjamin, 69, 70 ( Hobhouse, John Cam, 122 Hobson, S. G., 660 Hodge, John, 491, 692, 695 Hodges, Fraiik, 517, 673-5, 715 Hodgskin, T., 162 Holders-up. See Boilermakers 1 Holland, John, 124 ! Holland, Lord, 70 Holyoake, G. J., 302 Holytown, miners of, 193 1 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. i73i 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 Thomajs, 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 Index 77^ 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 Hiiysmans, Camilla, 666, 669, 670 Hyde, spinners' strike at, 117 Hyett,W. H., 11 1 Hjrndman, 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 IndujStrial Remuneration Confer- ence, 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 ^ I Insurance Agents, 440, 5071 Inter-Allied Conferences, 693-6 Interlocutor, 581 International Association of Work- ing-men, 235-6, 248, 297, 316, 379. 396-7, 421, 666, 693-6 '. International Federations of Trade Unions, 555-6 Intimidation, 597 Ireland, laws ia, 68-9 ; Trade Unionism in, 47Z-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 Confedera- tion, 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, 200-263, 205, 213, 226, 233, 245, 261, 319-20, 348-9,' 353, 391, 415, 429-36, 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 B9ard, 734-5 Ironworliers, 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, 616, 615-16, 618, 626 Jeffrey, Lord, 72 Jevons, H. Stanley (the younger), 186, 511, 516 Jewish Uuiotis, 478 Joiners. See Carpenters Jbint Board, 700 Joint Committees. See Arbitration, Whitley Councils Jones, Benjamin, 225, 708 Jones, Daniel, 734 Jones, Lloyd, 243, 298, 329, 340-41 (life), 516 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, 233-98 774 Index Jupp, 1 8 Jury service, 367-8, 372 Justices of the Peace, 372, 594 Kane, John, 240 (hfe of), 273, 2j86, 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-wea,vers 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 Coun- ties, 417, 439 Labour members, characteristics of, 701-2 Labour Party, 604 Labour Representation League, 287-9, 680 Labour Research Department, 225, 542, 561, 75? 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-jffire, 56 Lanarkshire, cotton-weavers of, 58, 170 Lancashire Federation ot 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 LeatherHjorkers, 437, 552 Lee, H. W., 501 Leech, H. J., 293 Leeds, 35 ; clothing trade of, 35, 40, 127 ; Clothiers' Union, 133, 147 L.eeds, 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 Insur- ance Agents Linen Weavers, 436 Linh, 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 Index 775 Liverpool, Trades Guardian Associa- tion of, 243 Lloyd, C. M., 160 Local Government elections, 305, 399. 413; employees, 508; suc- . cesses, 703-4 Local versus Central Administraj t tion, 714 Lock-out, the, 255-6; of agricul- - tural labourers, 332, 334 London and Counties Labour League, 417, 439 London Carpenters' Company, 18 ; city companies of, 14; coal- Jj. porters of, 18; early combina- c tions in the City of, 2, 3 ; frame- work knitters of, 14, 38, 51-2 ; joiners' company of, i8 ; ship- wrights' 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 I 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 Liishington, Sir Godfrey, 228, 246, 264 Lushington, Vernon, 264 'Macarthur, Miss Mary, 494, 496 Macclesfield, hatters of, 30 M^Connel and Co., 308 M'CuUoch, J. R., 23, 99, 197 Macdonald, Alexander, 240, 249, 252, 2;77i- 286, 289, 290, 299,. 30.0 (life of), 301-7, 338, 342, 362, 393 510, 680 MacDonald, J. Ramsay, 23, 337, 529, 666, 669, 684-5, 688, 699 M'Gowan, Patrick, 118, 120 Machine, Engine, and Iron GrJn- ' ders' Society, 744-7 Machine Printers, 744. See also Compositors MacKine 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, 5*58-60, 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' Uni6;i. 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. 59^ Mawdsley, Thomas, 311 Maxwell, William, 598 776 Index May, John, 33 Mayhe-w, 11 Mechanics' Friendly Union Institu- tion, 208 Mechanics' Magazine, the, 197 Medico-Political Union, 506-7 Melbourne, Lord, 13,8-48 Memorandum on War Aim^s, 695 Memorial of Freedom and Peace, 593 Menger, Anton, 155, 157, 162 Mercantile Marine Ofi&ces, Super- intendents 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 ; o^ 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., i8i, . i8'2, 186, 299, 517-18 ; Eight Hours Act, 686 ; Federation, 393-4. 408. 433-4. 510-22, 538, 549-50. 553. 555. 648, 66i, 662-3, 665, 668, 673-5, 685, 715; Mini- mum Wage Act, 687; of Ayr- shire, 68 r ; of Carmarthenshire, 44 ; of Durham, 44, 124, 166, 182-3, 296, 304, 335, 338, 342, 349, 386, 391, 392, 434, 511-I2, 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; lOf Staffordshire, 124, 511; of South Wales, 89, 343, 349, 434, 51 r, 640, 690; of York- shire, 124, 182,228, 230, 256, 301-2, _ 304-5. 335. 338. 349. 370. 392-3, 433. 510-11, 522, 744 ; reorganisa^ tion of, in 1858, 30P-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' Associations 508, • . ' Munitions, Levy, 641 ; Ministry of, 637-43 ; Munitions of War Acts, 637. 643 ; Tribunals, 639, 643, 646 Mtinro, 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 PoUshers;": Cabinetmakers, Upholsterers • ' ' National Amalgamated Sailors' and Firemen's Union. See Sailors ' National Association for. the Pro- tection of Labour, 120-24 Index m '^^ationar Association of Miners, 299- y. 300 •National Associatioii of Operative *! Plasterers. See Plasterers National Association of United Trades for the Protection of ii, Labour, 186-95 ^•National Association of United - Trades, 277 .National Companies, 160 'Na,tional 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, 459-500; 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 Tfanspoirt Workers' Feder- ation, 500-502, 538, 543 National Tj^Jographical Associa- ;• tion, 181, igi ■ iiNationar 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' Associa- tion for the Employment of Labour, 192 Nationalisation, 651 ; of the coal supply, 517-22 ; of Mines Bill, ,662-3; of railways, 534. JSiavvjes, 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, V 153-67; of 1845-52, 195-204; of 1889-90, 414-21 Newcastle, potters of, 133 ; rope- makers of, 91 ; Trades Council, «52 , Newcastle - on - Tyne — engineers' strike at, 315-16; gilds of, 14; shpemakers at, 24 Newton, George, 258 Newton, William, 206-24, 234, 243, 680 Newton -le- Willows, trial of engi- neers of, 209-10 Nine Hours' BiUj 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 j ' 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 knit- ters of, 52 ; Hosiery Board, 338 ;- stookingers of, 62 ; Trades Council, 252, 558 O'Brien, Jj Bronterre, 178 Obstruction, 597 O'Connell, Daniel, 148, 171, 173 O'Connor, Fergus, M.P., 174-5, 177-8, 182, r88. See Northern ' Star Odger, George, 233-98, 238 (life), 243. 245, 247-8, 361-2, 680 778 Index 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 Onsjpw, Serjeant, 61-2 Operative Society of Bricklayers. See Bricklayers Operative, The, 213 Orage, A. R., 660 Osborne Judgement, 608-34, 686 Osborne, Wi 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, Cordwaiiters 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-si Paterson, Mrs., 336-7 (life) Patrimony in apprenticeship, 83 Patternmakers, 205,^353, 430, 488, 351 ; 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 ; legalisa- tion of, 291 Picton,,Sir J. A., 40 Piecers, 435 ; associations of, 7 Piecework Ljsts in cotton industry, 307-9 Pilots, 440 Pinmakers, Corporation of, 42 Pioneer, or Trades Union Magazine, ', The, 131 Pipemakers, 91 Pit Committee, 521 Pitt, WUUam, 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 PlimsoU, S., 354, 370 Ploughmen's Union, Perthshire, 136 Plumbers, 125, 169, 316, 348, 429, 432-3, 481, 744 Podmore, Frank, 130, 160 PoUce Union, 509 Political expenditure, 632 Pollock, Sir F., 597 Poor Man's .Advocate, The, 117, 120 Poor Man's Cuardiani The, 114, 134, 136, 142-3, 155 Porters, 442 Positivists, 246. 262-4. ■S'e« Beesly, Crompton, and Harrison Post Office annuities, 248, 296-71 i employees, 507-8, 539 ; Savings Bank, 262 Index 779 .■ Post Office Tvorjiers, 440, 744 ; I' union of, 508, 661 ; Postal and Telegraph Clerks' Asso- ;,, elation, 507-8, 662 I 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 Wolver- hampton, 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- f, spinners' strike of 1836, 169; -gilds of, 54 Price, Rev. H., 112 trice, L. L., 338, 736 Printers. See Compositors, Press- men, and Typographical , Printing Trades, statistics of, 428, ^>^ 437-8, 744-9 JiPrior, J. D., 240, 324, 362-3, 372 Prison Officers' Federation, 507 Production for use, 709 Professional Association, 711-12 !;Profiteering Act, 675 j;Pidfit-sharing, 403 .Publicity, use of, 222-3 ; Puddlers. See Iron-workers 1 Pugh, Arthur, 491 , Pjircell, A., 560 Qjiarrymen, 433-4 Quittance Paper, 208. Radstock Miners' Association. See J Miners, Somersetshire Kae, Sir William, 95 Railway Clerks' Association, 504-5, 523. 534. 539, 545. 661, 744 Railway 'Telegraph Clerks' Associa-r tidn, 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, 26b 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 condi- tions, 642-3 Restraint of trade, 67, 262, 617 Revolution in Thoug{ht, 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, 1*77, 225 Roebuck, J. A., 148 Rogers, J. E. Thorold, 10, 49, 56 Rollit, Sir Albert, 501 Roman Cathdiic Unions, 4^8 Rofiemakers, 91, 43S Rose, George, 61, 70 Rosebery, Lord, 374 Rosenblatt, F. F., 175 Rosslyn, Lord, 108 Rothefhithe 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 78o Index 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-hbliday, 229 ; Old- ham Spinners' strike for, 310 Saw-grinders, 260 Sawyers, 433 ' ' Scale Beam-makers, 92 Scalemakers, 92 - Schoe^ilauk, Dr. Brunp, 25 Scissdrsmiths, 39, 80 Scott, W., 124 Scottish Farm Servants' Union, 498-9 Scottish National Operative Tailors' Society. See Tailors Scottish Society of Railway Ser- vants, 524-5 Scottish Typographical Association, 181, 423, 437, 482. Spe also Compositors Scottish United Operative Masons,, 196 Seagoing Engineers' Union. See Engineers Seaham, 1^6 iSecondary School Teachers, 506 Secular Education, 628 Self-governing Workshops, 225 Sjelley, 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 Wilt- shire, 144'' Sheet Metal-workers, 431 Sheffield, 94 ; carpenters of, 232, 236 ; conference at, 257 ; cutlery made, 39 ; gilds of, 14 ; Mercan- tile 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 Sheipton Mallet, woollen-workers of, 51 Sherbrooke, Lord, 285 Sheridan, R. B., 57, 71 , Ship Constructors' and Shipwrights' Association, 551. See also Ship- wrights > 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; pi London, 104, no ; 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 ~ i Sigismnnd, 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, 39i. 5 to. 734-7 Slosson, P. W:, 175 Smart, W., 511 Index 781 , Smiliie, 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, 430-31, 487-8, 491, 744 ; early ; clubs of, 46. See Blacksmiths and v; ■ Engineers fiSnowden, 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, 6z ' Somers, Robert, 272 Somerset, clothiers of, 33-5 ; coal- njiners of, 44 ; weavers of, 49, . 51.65; wooUisn-workers of, 33-4, 49. 51 South Metropolitan Gas Company, 403 , South Wales, depression in, 343 ; miners of, ^li, 514, 640, 690, i'_ 692 ; ferment among, 657, 659 ^parkes, Malcolm, 483, 648 , ppitalfields, 37, 54-5, 61, 66, 98, »' H2 .Spyers, T. G., 596 Stabilisation of Wages, 643 .•Stafifordshire, iron-workers 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 ,St?ltistics, 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 Steflfen, 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, G;ilbert, 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-ZO, 343, 347. 348-9, 354. 383, 408, 429, 432-3, 744 ; early combinations among, 8 ; Friendly Society of Operative, 8 ; of Scotland, 174 ; of SheflSeld, 80 Stonemasons' Fortnightly Ciriular, The, 185, 196, 202 Strike, first use of the word, 46 ; " in Detail," 19^-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, Gharles, 277 Summons to the first T.U. Congress, 738-40 Supply -iand 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- 608 782 Index ■ -J Tailoresses, 136 Tailors, 44, 77, 97^ 192, 259, 319; 360, 369, 371. 478, 551. 555. 744.i early combination of, in London, , 3 ; ' First Grand Lodge of Opera- tive, 149 ; of Cambridge, 68 ; of London, 67-8 ; of Nottiflghain, 75 ; of ShefiSeld, 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, 4^28-9, 434-6, 475-80, 744-9 Thomas, J. H., 524, 526, 543-4, 680 Thompson, James, 36 Thompson, 1'. B., 181 Thompson, Colonel Perronet, 148 Thompson, William, 116, 162 Thome, Will, 402, 497, 684 Thomeycroft, G. B., 734 Thornton, W. T., 272 Ticket-collectors, 504 ■Tildsley, John, 175 "tiU^tt, B., 402-3, 406, 414, 501 Times, prosecutioii by tbe, 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," 8,9 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, i ; and the wage-system, i ; legal defini- , tion of, 617 ; , life, 444-71 ; origin of term, 113 Trades Advocate and Herald of Pro- gress, The, 211 Trades Councils, 242-9, 354-5/453-7. 557-61, 685 ; exclusion from Con- gress, 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 \vorkers, 438-40 ; in Ireland, 472-3 Trant, WiUiam, 3 Treasury Agreemenf, 637-8, 642 " Triple Alliance," the, 516, 517 ' ■ TroUope & Sons, 229, 328 Trow, Edward, 735 Truck, 50, 89, 371 Trusts, 675 Tuoter, 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 Com- positors Typographical Society, 692. See also Composi^tors ' , Index 783 unemployed agitation, 385, 387-8 Unemployment benefit, 644, 646 UnemployiHent, failure to prevent, 644 ; prevention of, 696 Union Pilot and Co-operative In- telligencer, The, 124 Union of Post Office Workers, 508, , 551. See also Post Office Em- ■ I ployees United Garment Workers' Trade Union, 551. See also Tailors United Kingdom Alliance of Organised Trades, 258-9 United Signalmen and Points- men, 524, 331 United Textile Factory Operatives' Association, 478 United Textile Factory Workers' Association, 435, 478, 623 United Trades Association, 207 United Trades' Vo-operative Journal, The, 121 United. See Boilermakers, Brass- workers, Bricklayers, Coach- makers, 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 ViUiers, Rt. Hon. C. P., 186 Vincent, Charles Bassett, 523 Vintent, 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 Glouces- tershire, 50 Wage-System, relation of Trade Unions to the, 1 Wages in London in 1669, 21 Waiters' Union, 684 Wakefield, sloth 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, ii 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, 47'7 Waterguard Federation, 507 Watermen, London, 11, 14, 21 Watermen's Protective Society, 11 Watson, Aaron, 181, 296, 511, 623 Watson, R. Spence, 339 Watts, Dr. John, 211 Weavers, an Act touching, 48, 56 ; Paisley, 23 See also Cotton- weavers Webb, J. J., 37 Weelcs, Joseph D., 338 Weiler, Adam, 389-90 Wellington, Duke of, 145 1 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 WilUams, John, 146 Wilhams, J., 387, 400 WilUams, J. E., 526 WilUams, R., 497, 500 WilUamson, 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, Thonias, 195 784 Index Wisbech, shoemakers of, 3 Witanagemot, 20 Wolverh3,mpton, 248, 259 ; Build- ' ing Trades Joint Committee, 308 ; tinplate workers of, 243 ; (strike), 194-5 ; Trades Council, 399 ^ Womfen 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, 49^ Women's Labour League, 497 Women's Protective and Provident League, 336 Women's Wages, 424, 64a 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, 96, 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, Eititiiurgk. OTHER WORKS BY SIDNEY AND BEATRICE WEBB... 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