[Pg i]

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

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

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

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

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

SIDNEY AND BEATRICE WEBB.

41 Grosvenor Road,
Westminster,
January 1920.

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

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

That history of the general movement, to which we have confined ourselves here, will be found to be part of the political history of England. In spite of all the pleas of modern historians for less history of the actions of governments, and more descriptions of the manners and customs of the governed, it remains true that history, however it may relieve and enliven itself with descriptions of the manners and morals of the people, must, if it is to be history at all, follow the course of continuous organisations. The [Pg 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 movement. And, since 1867 at least, wherever the ideals have left their mark on Trade Unionism, Trade Unionism has left its mark on politics. We shall be able to show that some of those overthrows of our party governments which have caused most surprise in the middle and upper classes, and for which the most far-fetched reasons have been given by them and their journalists and historians after the event, carry their explanation on the surface for any one who knows what the Trade Unionists of the period were thinking. Such demonstrations, however, will be purely incidental, as we have written throughout of Trade Unionism for its own sake, and not for that of the innumerable sidelights which it throws on party politics.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SIDNEY AND BEATRICE WEBB.

41 Grosvenor Road,
Westminster,
April 1894.

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A Trade Union, as we understand the term, is a continuous association of wage-earners for the purpose of maintaining or improving the conditions of their working lives.[3] This form of association has, as we shall see, existed in England for over two centuries, and cannot be supposed to have sprung at once fully developed into existence. But although we shall briefly discuss the institutions which have sometimes been described as the forerunners of Trade Unionism, our narrative will commence only from the latter part of the seventeenth century, before which date we have been unable to discover the existence in the British Isles of anything falling within our definition. Moreover, although it is suggested that analogous associations may have existed during the Middle Ages in various parts of the Continent of Europe, we have no reason to suppose that such institutions [Pg 2] exercised any influence whatever upon the rise and development of the Trade Union Movement in this country. We feel ourselves, therefore, warranted, as we are indeed compelled, to limit our history exclusively to the Trade Unions of the United Kingdom.

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

When, however, we pass from the annals of slavery or serfdom to those of the nominally free citizenship of the mediæval town, we are on more debatable ground. We make no pretence to a thorough knowledge of English town-life in the Middle Ages. But it is clear that there were at times, alongside of the independent master craftsmen, a number of hired journeymen and labourers, who are known to have occasionally combined against their rulers and governors. These combinations are stated sometimes to have lasted for months, and even for years. As early as 1383 we find the Corporation of the City of London prohibiting all “congregations, covins, and conspiracies of workmen.” In 1387 the serving-men of the London cordwainers, [Pg 3] in rebellion against the “overseers of the trade,”[4] are reported to be aiming at making a permanent fraternity. Nine years later the serving-men of the saddlers, “called yeomen,” assert that they have had a fraternity of their own, “time out of mind,” with a livery and appointed governors. The masters declared, however, that the association was only thirteen years old, and that its object was to raise wages.[5] In 1417 the tailors’ “serving men and journeymen” in London have to be forbidden to dwell apart from their masters as they hold assemblies and have formed a kind of association.[6] Nor were these fraternities confined to London. In 1538 the Bishop of Ely reports to Cromwell that twenty-one journeymen shoemakers of Wisbech have assembled on a hill without the town, and sent three of their number to summon all the master shoemakers to meet them, in order to insist upon an advance in their wages, threatening that “there shall none come into the town to serve for that wages within a twelve month and a day, but we woll have an harme or a legge of hym, except they woll take an othe as we have doon.”[7]

These instances derived from the very fragmentary materials as yet printed, suggest that a more complete examination of the unpublished archives might possibly disclose a whole series of journeymen fraternities, and enable us to determine the exact constitution of these associations. It is, for instance, by no means clear whether the instances cited were strikes against employers, or revolts against the authority of the gild. Our impression is that the case of the Wisbech shoemakers, and possibly some of [Pg 4] the others, represent the embryo stage of a Trade Union. Supposing, therefore, that further investigation were to prove that such ephemeral combinations by hired journeymen against their employers did actually pass into durable associations of like character, we should be constrained to begin our history with the fourteenth or fifteenth century. But, after detailed consideration of every published instance of a journeyman’s fraternity in England, we are fully convinced that there is as yet no evidence of the existence of any such durable and independent combination of wage-earners against their employers during the Middle Ages.

There are certain other cases in which associations during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, which are sometimes assumed to have been composed of journeymen,[8] maintained [Pg 5] a continuous existence. But in all these cases, so far as we have been able to investigate them, the “Bachelors’ Company,” presumed to be a journeymen’s fraternity, formed a subordinate department of the masters’ gild, by the rulers of which it was governed. It will be obvious that associations in which the employers dispensed the funds and appointed the officers can bear no analogy to modern Trade Unions. Moreover, these “yeoman” organisations or [Pg 6] “Bachelors’ Companies” do not appear to have long survived the sixteenth century.

The explanation of the tardy growth of stable independent combination among hired journeymen is, we believe, to be found in the prospects of economic advancement which the skilled handicraftsman still possessed. We do not wish to suggest the existence of any Golden Age in which each skilled workman was his own master, and the wage system was unknown. The earliest records of English town history imply the presence of hired journeymen, who were not always contented with their wages. But the apprenticed journeyman in the skilled handicrafts belonged, until comparatively modern times, to the same social grade as his employer, and was indeed usually the son of a master in the same or an analogous trade. So long as industry was carried on mainly by small masters, each employing but one or two journeymen, the period of any energetic man’s service as a hired wage-earner cannot normally have exceeded a few years, and the industrious apprentice might reasonably hope, if not always to marry his master’s daughter, at any rate to set up in business for himself. Any incipient organisation would always be losing its oldest and most capable members, and would of necessity be confined, like the Coventry journeymen’s Gild of St. George, to “the young people,”[9] or like the ephemeral fraternity of journeymen tailors of 1415-17, to “a race at once youthful and unstable,”[10] from whose inexperienced ranks it would be hard to draw a supply of good Trade Union leaders. We are therefore able to understand how it is that, whilst industrial oppression belongs to all ages, it is not until the changing conditions of industry had reduced to an infinitesimal chance the journeyman’s prospect of becoming himself a master, that we find the passage of ephemeral combinations into permanent trade societies. This inference is supported by [Pg 7] the experience of an analogous case in the Lancashire of to-day. The “piecers,” who assist at the “mules,” are employed and paid by the operative cotton-spinners under whom they work. The “big piecer” is often an adult man, quite as skilled as the spinner himself, from whom, however, he receives very inferior wages. But although the cotton operatives display a remarkable aptitude for Trade Unionism, attempts to form an independent organisation among the piecers have invariably failed. The energetic and competent piecer is always looking forward to becoming a spinner, interested rather in reducing than in raising piecers’ wages. The leaders of any incipient movement among the piecers have necessarily fallen away from it on becoming themselves employers of the class from which they have been promoted. But though the Lancashire piecers have always failed to form an independent Trade Union, they are not without their associations, in the constitution of which we may find some hint of the relation between the gild of the master craftsmen and the Bachelors’ Company or other subordinate association in which journeymen may possibly have been included. The spinners have, for their own purposes, brigaded the piecers into piecers’ associations. These associations, membership of which is usually compulsory, form a subordinate part of the spinners’ Trade Union, the officers of which fix and collect the contributions, draw up the rules, dispense the funds, and in every way manage the affairs, without in the slightest degree consulting the piecers themselves. It is not difficult to understand that the master craftsmen who formed the court of a mediæval gild might, in a similar way, have found it convenient to brigade the journeymen or other inferior members of the trade into a subordinate fraternity, for which they fixed the quarterly dues, appointed the “wardens” or “wardens’ substitutes,” administered the funds, and in every way controlled the affairs, without admitting the journeymen to any voice in the proceedings.[11]

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If further proof were needed that it was the prospect of economic advancement that hindered the formation of permanent combinations among the hired journeymen of the Middle Ages, we might adduce the fact that certain classes of skilled manual workers, who had no chance of becoming employers, do appear to have succeeded in establishing long-lived combinations which had to be put down by law. The masons, for instance, had long had their “yearly congregations and confederacies made in their general chapiters assembled,” which were expressly prohibited by Act of Parliament in 1425.[12] And the tilers of Worcester are ordered by the Corporation in 1467 to “sett no parliament amonge them.”[13] It appears probable, indeed, that the masons, wandering over the country from one job to another, were united, not in any local gild, but in a trade fraternity of national extent. Such an association may, if further researches throw light upon its constitution and working, not improbably be found to possess some points of resemblance to the Friendly Society of Operative Stonemasons of the present day, which was established in 1832. But, unlike the operative in the modern building trades, the mason of the Middle Ages served, not a master entrepreneur, but the customer himself, who provided the materials, supervised the work, and engaged, at specified daily rates, both the skilled mechanics and their labourers or apprentices.[14] In contrast with the handicraftsmen of the towns, the masons, tilers, etc. remained, from the completion of their apprenticeship to the end of their working lives, in one and the same economic position, a position which appears to have been intermediate between those of the master craftsman and the journeyman of the other trades. Like the jobbing carpenter of the country village of to-day, they were independent producers, each controlling the processes of his [Pg 9] own craft, and dealing directly with the customer. But unlike the typical master craftsman of the handicraft trades they sold nothing but labour, and their own labour only, at regulated customary rates, and were unconcerned, therefore, with the making of profit, whether upon the purchase and sale of materials or upon the hiring of subordinate workers.[15] The stability of their combinations was accordingly not prevented by those influences which, as we have suggested, proved fatal in England to the corresponding attempts of the hired journeymen of the handicrafts.

But if the example of the building trades in the Middle Ages supports our inference as to the cause of the tardy growth of combination among the journeymen in other trades, the “yearly congregations and confederacies” of the masons might themselves demand our attention as instances of early Trade Unionism. Of the constitution, function, or ultimate development of these mediæval associations in the building trades we know unfortunately next to nothing.[16] It is remarkable that there is, so far as we are aware, no trace of their existence in Great Britain later than the fifteenth century. During the eighteenth century there is, as we shall see, no lack of information as to combinations of workmen in nearly every other skilled trade. The employers appear to have been perpetually running to Parliament to complain of the misdeeds of their workmen. But of combinations in the building trades we have found scarcely a trace until the very end of that century. If, therefore, adhering strictly to the letter of our definition, we accepted the masons’ confederacy as a Trade Union, we should be compelled to regard the building trades as presenting the unique instance of an industry which had [Pg 10] a period of Trade Unionism in the fifteenth century, then passed for several centuries into a condition in which Trade Unionism was impossible, and finally changed once more to a state in which Trade Unions flourished. Our own impression is however that the “congregations and confederacies” of the masons are more justly to be considered the embryonic stage of a gild of master craftsmen than of a Trade Union. There appears to us to be a subtle distinction between the economic position of workers who hire themselves out to the individual consumer direct, and those who, like the typical Trade Unionist of to-day, serve an employer who stands between them and the actual consumers, and who hires their labour in order to make out of it such a profit as will provide him with his interest on capital and “wages of management.” We suggest that, with the growing elaboration of domestic architecture, the superior craftsmen tended more and more to become employers, and any organisations of such craftsmen to pass insensibly into the ordinary type of masters’ gild.[17] Under such a system of industry the journeymen would possess the same prospects of economic advancement that hindered the growth of stable combinations in the ordinary handicrafts, and in this fact may lie the explanation of the striking absence of evidence of any Trade Unionism in the building trades right down to the eighteenth century.[18] When, however, [Pg 11] the capitalist builder or contractor began to supersede the master mason, master plasterer, etc., and this class of small entrepreneurs had again to give place to a hierarchy of hired workers, Trade Unions, in the modern sense, began, as we shall see, to arise. “Just as we found the small master in the sixteenth century struggling to adapt and appropriate the traditions of the superseded handicraft organisation, so we shall find the journeyman at the close of the seventeenth century [in some trades and at the close of the eighteenth century in others] endeavouring to build up a new status out of the ruins of the small master.”[19]

We have dwelt at some length upon these ephemeral associations of wage-earners and on the journeymen fraternities of the Middle Ages, because it might plausibly be argued that they were in some sense the predecessors of the Trade Union. But strangely enough it is not in these institutions that the origin of Trade Unionism has usually been sought. For the predecessor of the modern Trade [Pg 12] Union, men have turned, not to the mediæval associations of the wage-earners, but to those of their employers—that is to say, the Craft Gilds.[20] The outward resemblance of the Trade Union to the Craft Gild had long attracted the attention, both of the friends and the enemies of Trade Unionism; but it was the publication in 1870 of Professor Brentano’s brilliant study on the “Origin of Trades Unions” that gave form to the popular idea.[21] Without in the least implying that any connection could be traced between the mediæval gild and the modern Trade Union, Dr. Brentano suggested that the one was in so far the successor of the other, that both institutions had arisen “under the breaking up of an old system, and among the men suffering from this disorganisation, in order that they might maintain independence and order.”[22] And when George Howell [Pg 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.[23] We are therefore under the obligation of digressing to examine the relation between the mediæval gild and the modern Trade Union. If it could be shown that the Trade Unions were, in any way, the descendants of the old gilds, it would clearly be the origin of the latter that we should have to trace.

The supposed descent in this country of the Trade Unions from the mediæval Craft Gilds rests, as far as we have been able to discover, upon no evidence whatsoever. The historical proof is all the other way. In London, for instance, more than one Trade Union has preserved an unbroken existence from the eighteenth century. The Craft Gilds still exist in the City Companies, and at no point in their history do we find the slightest evidence of the branching off from them of independent journeymen’s societies. By the eighteenth century the London journeymen had in nearly all cases lost whatever participation they may possibly once have possessed in the Companies, [Pg 14] which had for the most part already ceased to have any connection with the trades of which they bore the names.[24] It is sometimes suggested that the London Companies have had an exceptional history, and that in towns in which the gilds underwent a more normal development they may have given rise to the modern trade society. So far as Great Britain is concerned we have satisfied ourselves that this suggestion rests on no better foundation than the other. Neither in Bristol nor in Preston, neither in Newcastle nor in Glasgow, have we been able to trace the slightest connection between the slowly dying gilds and the upstarting Trade Unions. At Sheffield J. M. Ludlow, basing himself on an account by Frank Hill, once expressly declared[25] that direct affiliation could be proved. Diligent inquiry into the character and history of the still flourishing Cutlers’ Company demonstrates that this exclusively masters’ association at no time originated or engendered any of the numerous Trade Unions with which Sheffield abounds. There remains the case of Dublin, where some of the older unions themselves claim descent from the gilds. Here, too, careful search reveals, not only the absence of any affiliation or direct descent, but also the impossibility of any organic connection between the exclusively Protestant gilds which were not abolished until 1842, and the mainly Roman Catholic Trade Unions which attained their greatest influence many years before.[26] We assert, indeed, with some confidence, that in no case did any Trade Union in the United Kingdom arise, either directly or indirectly, by descent, from a Craft Gild.

[Pg 15]

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

For the purpose of this comparison it will be unnecessary for us to discuss the rival theories of historians as to the nature and origin of the Craft Gilds. We may agree, on the one hand, with Dr. Brentano[27] in maintaining that the free craftsmen associated in order to stop the deterioration of their condition and encroachments on their earnings, and to protect themselves against “the abuse of power on the part of the lords of the town, who tried to reduce the free to the dependence of the unfree.” On the other hand, we may believe with Dr. Cunningham[28] that the Craft Gilds were “called into being, not out of antagonism to existing authorities, but as new institutions, to which special parts of their own duties were delegated by the burgh officers or the local Gild Merchant,” as a kind of “police system,” in fact, by which the community controlled the local industries in the interest of the consumer. Or again, we may accept the middle view advanced by Sir William Ashley,[29] that the gilds were self-governing bodies of craftsmen, initiating their own trade regulations, the magistrates or town council having a real, if somewhat vague, authority to sanction or veto these ordinances for the good of the citizens. Each of these three views is supported by numerous instances, and to determine which theory represents the rule and which the exception would involve a statistical knowledge of Craft Gilds for which [Pg 16] the material has not yet been collected. It will be evident that, if Dr. Cunningham’s theory of the Craft Gild is the correct one, there can be no essential resemblance between these semi-municipal bodies and the Trade Unions of to-day. Dr. Brentano, however, produces ample evidence that, in some cases at any rate, the gilds acted, not with any view to the protection of the consumer, but, like the Trade Unions, for the furtherance of the interests of their own members—that is, of one class of producers. Accepting for the moment the view that the Craft Gild, like the Trade Union, or the Employers’ Association, belonged to the genus of “associations of producers,” let us examine briefly how far the gild was similar to modern combinations of wage-earners.

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

On the other hand, to regard the typical Craft Gild as the predecessor of the modern Employers’ Association or capitalist syndicate would, in our opinion, be as great a mistake as to believe, with George Howell, that it was the “early prototype” of the Trade Union. Dr. Brentano himself laid stress on the fact, afterwards brought into special prominence by Dr. Cunningham, that the Craft Gild was looked upon as the representative of the interests, not of any one class alone, but of the three distinct and somewhat antagonistic elements of modern society, the capitalist entrepreneur, the manual worker, and the consumer at large. We do not need to discuss the soundness of the mediæval lack of faith in unfettered competition as a guarantee of the genuineness and good quality of wares. Nor are we concerned with their assumption of the identity of interest between all classes of the community. It seemed a matter of course to the statesman, no less than to the public, that the leading master craftsmen of the town should be entrusted with the power and the duty of seeing that neither themselves nor their competitors were permitted to lower the standard of production. “The [Pg 18] Fundamental Ground,” says the petition of the Carpenters’ Company in 1681, “of Incorporating Handicraft Trades and Manual Occupations into distinct Companies was to the end that all Persons using such Trades should be brought into one Uniform Government and Corrected and Regulated by Expert and Skilful Governors, under certain Rules and Ordinances appointed to that purpose.”[31] The leading men of the gild became, in effect, officers of the municipality, charged with the protection of the public from adulteration and fraud. When, therefore, we remember that the Craft Gild was assumed to represent, not only all the grades of producers in a particular industry, but also the consumers of the product, and the community at large, the impossibility of finding, in modern society, any single inheritor of its multifarious functions will become apparent. The powers and duties of the mediæval gild have, in fact, been broken up and dispersed. The friendly society and [Pg 19] the Trade Union, the capitalist syndicate and the employers’ association, the factory inspector and the Poor Law relieving officer, the School Attendance officer, and the municipal officers who look after adulteration and inspect our weights and measures—all these persons and institutions might, with equal justice, be put forward as the successors of the Craft Gild.[32]

Although there is an essential difference in the composition of the two organisations, the popular theory of their resemblance is easily accounted for. First, there are the picturesque likenesses which Dr. Brentano discovered—the regulations for admission, the box with its three locks, the common meal, the titles of the officers, and so forth. But these are to be found in all kinds of association in England. The Trade Union organisations share them with the local friendly societies, or sick clubs, which have existed all over England for the last two centuries. Whether these features were originally derived from the Craft Gilds or not, it is practically certain that the early Trade Unions took them, in the vast majority of cases, not from the traditions of any fifteenth-century organisation, but from the existing little friendly societies around them. In some cases the parentage of these forms and ceremonies might be ascribed with as much justice to the mystic rites of the Freemasons as to the ordinances of the Craft Gilds. The fantastic ritual peculiar to the Trade Unionism of 1829-34, which we shall describe in a subsequent chapter, was, as we shall see, taken from the ceremonies of the Friendly Society of Oddfellows. But we are informed that it bears traces of being an illiterate copy of a masonic ritual. In our own times the “Free [Pg 20] Colliers of Scotland,” an early attempt at a national miners’ union, were organised into “Lodges” under a “Grand Master,” with much of the terminology and some of the characteristic forms of Freemasonry. No one would, however, assert any essential resemblance between the village sick club and the trade society, still less between Freemasonry and Trade Unionism. The only common feature between all these is the spirit of association, clothing itself in more or less similar picturesque forms.

But other resemblances between the gild and the union brought out by Dr. Brentano are more to the point. The fundamental purpose of the Trade Union is the protection of the Standard of Life—that is to say, the organised resistance to any innovation likely to tend to the degradation of the wage-earners as a class. That some social organisation for the protection of the Standard of Life was necessary was a leading principle of the Craft Gild, as it was, in fact, of the whole mediæval order. “Our forefathers,” wrote the Emperor Sigismund in 1434, “have not been fools. The crafts have been devised for this purpose: that everybody by them should earn his daily bread, and nobody shall interfere with the craft of another. By this the world gets rid of its misery, and every one may find his livelihood.”[33] But in this respect the Trade Union does not so much resemble the Craft Gild, as reassert what was once the accepted principle of mediæval society, of which the gild policy was only one manifestation. We do not wish, in our historical survey of the Trade Union Movement, to enter into the far-reaching controversy as to the political validity either of the mediæval theory of the compulsory [Pg 21] maintenance of the Standard of Life, or of such analogous modern expedients as Collective Bargaining on the one hand, or Factory Legislation on the other. Nor do we wish to imply that the mediæval theory was at any time so effectively and so sincerely carried out as really to secure to every manual worker a comfortable maintenance. We are concerned only with the historical fact that, as we shall see, the artisans of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries sought to perpetuate those legal or customary regulations of their trade which, as they believed, protected their own interests. When these regulations fell into disuse the workers combined to secure their enforcement. When legal redress was denied, the operatives, in many instances, took the matter into their own hands, and endeavoured to maintain, by Trade Union regulations, what had once been prescribed by law. In this respect, and practically in this respect only, do we find any trace of the gild in the Trade Union.

Let us now turn from the hypothetical origin of Trade Unionism to the recorded facts. We have failed to discover in the manuscript records of companies or municipal corporations, in the innumerable trade pamphlets and broadsheets of the time, or in the Journals of the House of Commons, any evidence of the existence, prior to the latter half of the seventeenth century,[34] or indeed much before [Pg 22] the very close of that century, of continuous associations of wage-earners for maintaining or improving the conditions of their working lives. And when we remember that during the latter decades of the seventeenth century the employers of labour, and especially the industrial “companies” or corporations, memorialised the House of Commons on every conceivable grievance which affected their particular trade, the absence of all complaints of workmen’s combinations suggests to us that few, if any, such combinations existed.[35] We do, however, discover in the latter half of the seventeenth century various traces of sporadic combinations and associations, some of which appear to have maintained in obscurity a continuous existence. In the early years of the eighteenth century we find isolated complaints of combinations “lately entered into” by the skilled workers in certain trades. As the century progresses we watch the gradual multiplication of these complaints, met by counter-accusations presented by organised bodies of workmen. From the middle of the century the Journals of the House of Commons abound in petitions and counter-petitions revealing the existence of journeymen’s associations in most of the skilled trades. And finally, we may infer the wide extension of the movement from the steady multiplication of the Acts against combinations in particular industries, and their culmination in the comprehensive statute of 1799 forbidding all combinations whatsoever.

If we examine the evidence of the rise of combinations in particular trades, we see the Trade Union springing, [Pg 23] not from any particular institution, but from every opportunity for the meeting together of wage-earners of the same occupation. Adam Smith remarked that “people of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”[36] And there is actual evidence of the rise of one of the oldest of the existing Trade Unions out of a gathering of the journeymen “to take a social pint of porter together.”[37] More often it is a tumultuous strike, out of which grows a permanent organisation. Elsewhere, as we shall see, the workers meet to petition the House of Commons, and reassemble from time to time to carry on their agitation for the enactment of some new regulation, or the enforcement of an existing law. In other instances we shall find the journeymen of a particular trade frequenting certain public-houses, at which they hear of situations vacant, and the “house of call” becomes thus the nucleus of an organisation. Or we watch the journeymen in a particular trade declaring that “it has been an ancient custom in the kingdom of Great Britain for divers Artists to meet together and [Pg 24] unite themselves in societies to promote Amity and true Christian Charity,” and establishing a sick and funeral club, which invariably proceeds to discuss the rates of wages offered by the employers, and insensibly passes into a Trade Union with friendly benefits.[38] And if the trade is one in which the journeymen frequently travel in search of work, we note the slow elaboration of systematic arrangements for the relief of these “tramps” by their fellow-workers in each town through which they pass, and the [Pg 25] inevitable passage of this far-extending tramping society into a national Trade Union.[39]

All these, however, are but opportunities for the meeting of journeymen of the same trade. They do not explain the establishment of continuous organisations of the wage-earners in the seventeenth and eighteenth rather than in the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries. The essential cause of the growth of durable associations of wage-earners must lie in something peculiar to the later centuries. This fundamental condition of Trade Unionism we discover in the economic revolution through which certain industries were passing. In all cases in which Trade Unions arose, [Pg 26] the great bulk of the workers had ceased to be independent producers, themselves controlling the processes, and owning the materials and the product of their labour, and had passed into the condition of lifelong wage-earners, possessing neither the instruments of production nor the commodity in its finished state. “From the moment that to establish a given business more capital is required than a journeyman can easily accumulate within a few years, gild mastership—the mastership of the masterpiece—becomes little more than a name.... Skill alone is valueless, and is soon compelled to hire itself out to capital.... Now begins the opposition of interest between employers and employed, now the latter begin to group themselves together; now rises the trade society.”[40] Or, to express this Industrial Revolution in more abstract terms, we may say, in the words of Dr. Ingram, that “the whole modern organisation of labour in its advanced forms rests on a fundamental fact which has spontaneously and increasingly developed itself—namely, the definite separation between the functions of the capitalist and the workman, or, in other words, between the direction of industrial operations and their execution in detail.”[41]

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

[Pg 27]

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

The “chapel” may possibly be nearly as old as the introduction of printing into this country.[42] We have no evidence as to the date at which the “chapels” of different printing offices entered into communication with each other in London, so as to form a Trade Union. But already in 1666 we have The Case and Proposals of the Free Journeymen Printers in and about London, in which they complain of the multiplication of apprentices and the prevalence of “turnovers”—grievances which vexed every compositors’ Trade Union throughout the nineteenth century.[43] Whether the “Free Journeymen Printers” managed to continue in existence as a Trade Union is uncertain. We have found no actual evidence of any other combination among compositors [Pg 28] than the “chapel” earlier than the eighteenth century.

One of the earliest proven cases of continuous association among journeymen is that of the hatters (or feltmakers), whose combination—now the Journeymen Hatters’ Trade Union of Great Britain and Ireland—may perhaps claim to trace its ancestry from 1667, the very year in which the Feltmakers’ Company, consisting of their employers, obtained a charter from Charles II. Within a few months the journeymen in the various London workshops—each of which had apparently a workshop organisation somewhat resembling the printers’ “chapel”—had combined to present a petition to the Court of Aldermen against the Master, Wardens and Assistants of the Company. The Court of Aldermen decided that, in order “that the journeymen may not by combination or otherwise excessively at their pleasure raise their wages,” a piecework list is to be annually settled and presented for enactment by the Court of Aldermen. The journeymen seem to have co-operated with the employers in presenting this list, and in preventing the employment of non-freemen. The rates fixed did not, however, always satisfy the journeymen, especially when the employers were successful in getting them lowered; and in 1696 we read of a deputation appearing before the Court to declare that they had resolved among themselves not to accept any less wages than they had formerly received, and to ask for a revision of the order. They had, according to the masters’ statement, not confined themselves to peaceful resolutions, but had made an example of a journeyman who had remained at work at the reduced rates. “They stirred up the apprentices to seize upon him as he was working, to tie him in a wheelbarrow, and in a tumultuous and riotous manner to drive him through all the considerable places in London and Southwark.” It was alleged that the men were organised in “clubs,” which “raised several sums of money for the abetting and supporting such of them who should desert their masters’ service.” In 1697 [Pg 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 certificate from his previous employer. Successive prosecutions of journeymen took place for refusing to work at the lawful rates, but the workmen seem to have had good legal advice, and to have defended themselves with skill. On one occasion they pleaded guilty, and promised amendment and the abandonment of their combination, whereupon the prosecution was withdrawn. On another occasion they got the case removed by writ of certiorari from the Lord Mayor’s session to the Assizes, where Lord Chief Justice Holt referred the dispute to arbitration. The award of June 1699 was a virtual victory for the journeymen, after a three years’ struggle, as it gave them an increase of rates, with a stoppage of all legal proceedings.[44] That the London Trade Clubs of the journeymen hatters, or at any rate their several workshop organisations, maintained a continuous existence we need not doubt; though we do not hear of them again until 1771, when they seem to have established a national federation of the local trade clubs existing in more than a dozen provincial towns with those of Southwark and the West End of London, very largely for the purpose of maintaining and enforcing the statutory limitation of apprentices. In 1775 this federation appears to have been strong enough, not only to obtain increased rates of wages, but also the exclusive employment of “clubmen.” There were “congresses” of the hatters in 1772, 1775, and 1777, held in London for the adoption of “bye-laws” for the whole trade; but we believe that these “congresses” were attended by delegates from the workshops in and near London only. [Pg 30] It is clear that similar organisations existed in the other towns in which the trade was carried on. The members who were unemployed “tramped” from town to town, and regulations for their relief were framed. A weekly contribution of 2d. appears to have been paid by each member. The employers successfully petitioned Parliament in 1777 for a repeal of the old limitation of apprentices and a renewed prohibition of combination.[45]

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

[Pg 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.”[48] The “accustomed tailor,” or working craftsman, making up the customer’s own cloth, objected to “taylers being sales-men,” paying high rents for shops in fashionable neighbourhoods, giving long credit to their aristocratic clients, and each employing, in his own workshops, dozens or even scores of journeymen, who were recruited from the houses of call in times of pressure, and ruthlessly turned adrift when the season was over. And although it remained possible in the reign of King William the Third, as it still is in that of King George the Fifth, to start business in a back street as an independent master tailor with no more capital or skill than the average journeyman could command, yet the making of the fine clothes worn by the Court and the gentry demanded, then as now, a capital and a skill which put this extensive and lucrative trade altogether out of the reach of the thousands of journeymen whom it employed. Thus we find that at the very beginning of the eighteenth century the typical journeyman tailor in London and Westminster had become a lifelong wage-earner. It is not surprising, therefore, that one of the earliest instances of permanent Trade Unionism that we have been able to discover occurs in this trade. The master tailors in 1720 complain to Parliament that “the Journeymen Taylors in and about the Cities of London and Westminster, to the number of seven thousand and upwards, have lately entered into a combination to raise their wages and leave off working an hour sooner than they used to do; and for the better carrying on their design have subscribed their respective names in books prepared for that purpose, at the several houses of call or resort (being publick-houses in and about [Pg 32] London and Westminster) which they use; and collect several considerable sums of money to defend any prosecutions against them.”[49] Parliament listened to the masters’ complaint, and passed the Act 7, Geo. I. st. 1, c. 13, restraining both the giving and the taking of wages in excess of a stated maximum, all combinations being prohibited. From that time forth the journeymen tailors of London and Westminster have remained in effective though sometimes informal combination, the organisation centring round the fifteen or twenty “houses of call,” being the public-houses to which it was customary for the workmen to resort, and at which the employers sought any additional men whom they wished to engage. In 1744 the Privy Council was set in motion against their refusal to obey the Act of 1720.[50] In 1750-51 they invoked the assistance of the Middlesex Justices, and obtained an order requiring the masters to pay certain rates. In 1767 further legislation was, in spite of their eloquent protests, obtained against them.[51] In 1810 a master declared before a Select Committee that their combination had existed for over a century.[52]

An equally early instance of permanent trade combination is the woollen manufacture of the West of England. [Pg 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, Gloucestershire, and Devon, who during the sixteenth century had “mightily increased in fame and riches, their houses frequented like kings’ courts,”[53] provided and owned the material of the industry throughout the whole manufacturing process, but employed a separate class of operatives at each stage. Buying the wool at one of the market towns, the capitalist clothier gave this to one set of hand-workers to be carded and spun into yarn in the village households. The yarn was passed on to another set—the handloom weavers—to be made into cloth in their cottages. The cloth was then “fulled” at the capitalist’s own mill (usually a water-mill) and again given out to be “dressed” by a new set of hand-workers, after which it was ready to be packed in the warehouse, and dispatched to Bristol or London for shipment or sale. In this case, as in that of the tailors, the operatives still retained the ownership of the tools of their particular processes, but it was practically impossible for them to acquire either the capital or the commercial knowledge necessary for the success of so highly organised an industry, and we accordingly find them entering into extensive combinations from the closing years of the seventeenth century. Already in 1675 the journeymen clothworkers of London combined to petition the Court of the Clothworkers’ Company against the engagement of workmen from the country. In 1682 we hear of them taking advantage of an extensive shipping order to refuse, [Pg 34] in concert, to work under 12s. per week. But it is not clear whether any lasting association then resulted.[54] In the West of England the ephemeral revolts of the early part of the seventeenth century seem to have developed into lasting combinations by the end of that century. We hear of them at Tiverton as early as 1700.[55] In 1717 the Journals of the House of Commons contain evidence of the existence of a widespread combination of the woollen-workers in Devonshire and Somerset. The Mayor and Corporation of Bradninch complain “that for some years past the woolcombers and weavers in those parts have been confederating how to incorporate themselves into a club: and have to the number of some thousands in this county, in a very riotous and tumultuous manner, exacted tribute from many.”[56] The House of Commons apparently thought the evil could be met by Royal Authority and requested the King to issue a Proclamation. Accordingly on February 4, 1718, a Royal Proclamation was issued against these “lawless clubs and societies which had illegally presumed to use a common seal, and to act as Bodies Corporate, by making and unlawfully conspiring to execute certain By-laws or Orders, whereby they pretend to determine who had a right to the Trade, what and how many Apprentices and Journeymen each man should keep at once, together with the prices of all their manufactures, and the manner and materials of which they should be wrought.”[57] This kingly fulmination, which was read at the Royal Exchange, failed to effect its purpose, for the Journals of the House of Commons for 1723 and 1725 contain frequent complaints of the continuance of the combinations,[58] which are constantly heard [Pg 35] of throughout the whole of the eighteenth century, dying away only on the supersession of the male by the female weaver at the beginning of the nineteenth century, not to be effectively revived until the beginning of the twentieth.

This early development of trade combinations in the West of England stands in striking contrast with their absence in the same industry where pursued, as in Yorkshire, on the so-called “Domestic System.” The Yorkshire weaver was a small master craftsman of the old type, himself buying and owning the raw material, and once or twice a week selling his cloth in the markets of Leeds or Wakefield, to which, we are told by Defoe in 1724, “few clothiers bring more than one piece.” “Almost at every house,” he writes of the country near Halifax, “there was a Tenter, and almost on every Tenter a piece of cloth, or kersey, or shalloon, ... at every considerable house was a manufactory; ... then, as every clothier must keep a horse, perhaps two, to fetch and carry for the use of his manufacture, viz., to fetch home his wool and his provisions from the market, to carry his yarn to the spinners, his manufacture to the fulling mill, and when finished, to the market to be sold, and the like; so every manufacturer generally keeps a cow or two or more, for his family, and this employs the two or three or four pieces of enclosed land about his house, for they scarce sow corn enough for their cocks and hens.”[59] Not until the Yorkshire cloth [Pg 36] dealers began, about 1794, to establish factories on a large scale do we find any Trade Unions, and then journeymen and small masters struggled with one accord to resist the new form of capitalist industry which was beginning to deprive them of their control over the product of their labour.

The worsted industry appears everywhere to have been carried on rather like the woollen manufactures of the West of England than the same industry in Yorkshire. The woolcomber frequently owned the inexpensive hand-combs and pots with which he worked. But the woolcombers, like the weavers of the West of England, formed but one of several classes of workers for whose employment both capital and commercial knowledge was indispensable. We hear, already in 1674, of an attempt by the Leicester woolcombers to “form a company,”[60] though with what success we know not. In 1741 it was remarked that the woolcombers had “for a number of years past erected themselves into a sort of corporation (though without a charter); their first pretence was to take care of their poor brethren that should fall sick, or be out of work; and this was done by meeting once or twice a week, and each of them contributing 2d. or 3d. towards the box to make a bank, and when they became a little formidable they gave laws to their masters, as also to themselves—viz., That no man should comb wool under 2s. per dozen; that no master should employ any comber that was not of their club: if he did they agreed one and all not to work for him; and if he had employed twenty they all of them turned out, and oftentimes were not satisfied with that, but would abuse the honest man that would labour, and in [Pg 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.”[61] The surviving members of the Old Amicable Society of Woolstaplers retain a tradition of local trade clubs dating from the very beginning of the eighteenth century, and of their forming a federal union in 1785. Old members of the United Journeymen Curriers’ Society have seen circulars and tramping cards, showing that a similar tramping federation existed in their trade from the middle of the century.[62]

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

[Pg 38]

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

The development of the industrial organisation of the [Pg 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 prevalent relaxation in the customary restrictions as to apprentices, we find this system largely replaced by something very like the present order of things, in which the typical Sheffield operative works with material given out by the manufacturer, upon wheels rented either from the latter or from a landlord supplying power. It is no mere coincidence that in the year 1790 the Sheffield employers found themselves obliged to take concerted action against the “scissor-grinders and other workmen who have entered into unlawful combinations to raise the price of labour.”[65]

The shipwrights of Liverpool, and probably those of other shipbuilding ports, were combined in trade benefit clubs early in the eighteenth century. At Liverpool, where this society had very successfully maintained the customary limitation of apprentices, the members were all freemen of the municipal corporation, and as such entitled to the Parliamentary franchise. As a result the shipwrights’ organisation became intensely political, by which was meant chiefly the negotiation of the sale of its members’ votes. At the election of 1790, when Whigs and Tories compromised in order to avoid the expense of a contest, it was the Shipwrights’ Society, then at the zenith of its power, which insisted on forcing a contest by nominating its own candidate, and, in the end, actually put him at the head of the poll. The society, which had a contribution in 1824 of fifteen pence per month, and had built almshouses for its old members, is reputed to have been at one [Pg 40] time so powerful that any employer who refused to obey its rules found his business absolutely brought to a standstill. [66]

But the cardinal example of the conception of Trade Unionism with the divorce of the worker from the instruments of production is seen in the rapid rise of trade combinations on the introduction of the factory system. We have already noticed that Trade Unions in Yorkshire began with the erection of factories and the use of power. When, in 1794, the clothiers of the West Riding failed to prevent the Leeds merchants from establishing large factories, “wherein it is intended to employ a great number of persons now working at their own homes,” the journeymen took the matter into their own hands, and founded “the Clothiers’ Community,” or “Brief Institution,” professedly to gather “briefs” or levies for the relief of the sick, and to carry on a Parliamentary agitation for hampering the factory owners by a legal limitation of apprentices. “It appears,” reports the Parliamentary Committee of 1806, “that there has existed for some time an institution or society among the woollen manufacturers, consisting chiefly of clothworkers. In each of the principal manufacturing towns there appears to be a society, composed of deputies chosen from the several shops of workmen, from each of which town societies one or more deputies are chosen to form what is called the central committee, which meets, as occasion requires, at some place suitable to the local convenience of all parties. The powers of the central committee appear to pervade the whole institution; and any determination or measure which it may adopt may be communicated with ease throughout the whole body of manufacturers. Every workman, on his becoming a member of the society, receives a certain card or ticket, on which is an emblematical engraving—the [Pg 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, otherwise than in solitude, who should refuse to submit to the obligations and rules of the society.”[67] The transformation of cotton-spinning into a factory industry, which may be said to have taken place round about the year 1780, was equally accompanied by the growth of Trade Unionism. The so-called benefit clubs of the Oldham operatives, which we know to have existed from 1792, and those of Stockport, of which we hear in 1796, were the forerunners of that network of spinners’ societies throughout the northern counties and Scotland which rose into notoriety in the great strikes of the next thirty years.[68]

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

The positive proofs of this historical dependence of Trade Unionism upon the divorce of the worker from the [Pg 42] ownership of the means of production are complemented by the absence of any permanent trade combinations in industries in which the divorce had not taken place. The degradation of the Standard of Life of the skilled manual worker on the break-up of the mediæval system occurred in all sorts of trades, whether the operative retained his ownership of the means of production or not, but Trade Unionism followed only where the change took the form of a divorce between capital and labour. The Corporation of Pinmakers of London are found petitioning Parliament towards the end of the seventeenth century or beginning of the eighteenth, as follows:

“This company consists for the most part of poor and indigent people, who have neither credit nor mony to purchase wyre of the merchant at the best hand, but are forced for want thereof to buy only small parcels of the second or third buyer as they have occasion to use it, and to sell off the pins they make of the same from week to week, as soon as they are made, for ready money to feed themselves, their wives and children, whom they are constrained to imploy to go up and down every Saturday night from shop to shop to offer their pins to sale, otherwise cannot have money to buy bread. And these are daily so exceedingly multiplyed and encreased by reason of the unlimited number of apprentices that some few covetous-minded members of the company (who have considerable stocks) do constantly imploy and keep.... The persons that buy the pins from the maker to sell again to other retailing shopkeepers, taking advantage of this necessity of the poor workmen (who are always forced to sell for ready mony, or otherwise cannot subsist), have by degrees so beaten down the price of pins that the workman is not able to live of his work, ... and betake themselves to be porters, tankard bearers, and other day labourers, ... and many of their children do daily become parish charges.” [69] [Pg 43] And the glovers complain at the same period that “they are generally so poor that they are supplied with leather upon credit, not being able to pay for that or their work-folk’s wages till they have sold the gloves.” [70]

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

We do not contend that the divorce supplies, in itself, a complete explanation of the origin of Trade Unions. At all times in the history of English industry there have existed large classes of workers as much debarred from becoming the directors of their own industry as the eighteenth-century tailor or woolcomber, or as the modern cotton-spinner or miner. Besides the semi-servile workers on the land or in the mines, it is certain that there were in the towns a considerable class of unskilled labourers, excluded, through lack of apprenticeship, from any participation in the gild.[72] By the eighteenth century, at any rate, [Pg 44] the numbers of this class must have been largely swollen, by the increased demand for common labour involved in the growth of the transport trade, the extensive building operations, etc. But it is not among the farm servants, miners, or general labourers, ill-paid and ill-treated as these often were, that the early Trade Unions arose. We do not even hear of ephemeral combinations among them, and only very occasionally of transient strikes.[73] The formation of independent associations to resist the will of employers requires the possession of a certain degree of personal independence and strength of character. Thus we find the earliest Trade Unions arising among journeymen whose skill and Standard of Life had been for centuries encouraged and protected by legal or customary regulations as to apprenticeship, and by the limitation of their numbers which the high premiums and other conditions must have involved. It is often assumed that Trade Unionism arose as a protest against intolerable industrial oppression. This was not so. The first half of the eighteenth century was certainly not a period of exceptional distress. For fifty years from 1710 there was an almost constant succession of good harvests, the price of wheat remaining unusually low. The tailors of London and Westminster united, at the very beginning of the eighteenth century, not to resist any reduction of their customary earnings, but to wring from their employers better wages and shorter hours of labour. The few survivors of the hand woolcombers still cherish the tradition of the eighteenth century, when they styled themselves “gentlemen woolcombers,” refused to [Pg 45] drink with other operatives, and were strong enough, as we have seen, to give “laws to their masters.”[74] The very superior millwrights, whose exclusive trade clubs preceded any general organisation of the engineering trade, had for “their everyday garb” a “long frock coat and tall hat.”[75] And the curriers, hatters, woolstaplers, shipwrights, brush-makers, basketmakers, and calico-printers, who furnish prominent instances of eighteenth-century Trade Unionism, all earned relatively high wages, and long maintained a very effectual resistance to the encroachments of their employers.

It appears to us from these facts that Trade Unionism would have been a feature of English industry, even without the steam-engine and the factory system. Whether the association of superior workmen which arose in the early part of the century would, in such an event, ever have developed into a Trade Union Movement is another matter. The typical “trade club” of the town artisan of this time was an isolated “ring” of highly skilled journeymen, who were even more decisively marked off from the mass of the manual workers than from the small class of capitalist employers. The customary enforcement of the apprenticeship prescribed by the Elizabethan statutes, and the high premiums often exacted from parents not belonging to the trade, long maintained a virtual monopoly of the better-paid handicrafts in the hands of an almost hereditary caste of “tradesmen” in whose ranks the employers themselves had for the most part served their apprenticeship. Enjoying, as they did, this legal or customary protection, they found their trade clubs of use mainly for the provision of friendly benefits, and for “higgling” with their masters for better terms. We find little trace among such trade clubs of that sense of solidarity between the manual workers [Pg 46] of different trades which afterwards became so marked a feature of the Trade Union Movement. Their occasional disputes with their employers resembled rather family differences than conflicts between distinct social classes. They exhibit more tendency to “stand in” with their masters against the community, or to back them against rivals or interlopers, than to join their fellow-workers of other trades in an attack upon the capitalist class. In short, we have industrial society still divided vertically trade by trade, instead of horizontally between employers and wage-earners. This latter cleavage it is which has transformed the Trade Unionism of petty groups of skilled workmen into the modern Trade Union Movement. [76]

The pioneers of the Trade Union Movement were not the trade clubs of the town artisans, but the extensive combinations of the West of England woollen-workers and the Midland framework knitters. It was these associations that initiated what afterwards became the common purpose of nearly all eighteenth-century combinations—the appeal to the Government and the House of Commons to save the wage-earners from the new policy of buying labour, like the raw material of manufacture, in the cheapest [Pg 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 policy was brought home by the repeal of the regulations which protected his trade against an influx of pauper labour. His defence was to ask for the enforcement of the law relating to apprenticeship.[77] This would not have helped the operative in the staple textile industries. To him the new order took the form of constantly declining piecework rates. What he demanded, therefore, was the fixing of the “convenient proportion of wages” contemplated by Elizabethan legislation. But, whether craftsmen or factory operatives, the wage-earners turned, for the maintenance of their Standard of Life, to that protection by the law upon which they had been taught to rely. So long as each section of workers believed in the intention of the governing class to protect their trade from the results of unrestricted competition no community of interest arose. It was a change of industrial policy on the part of the Government that brought all trades into line, and for the first time produced what can properly be called a Trade Union Movement. In order, therefore, to make this movement fully intelligible, we must now retrace our steps, and follow the political history of industry in the eighteenth century.

[Pg 48]

The dominant industrial policy of the sixteenth century was the establishment of some regulating authority to perform, for the trade of the time, the services formerly rendered by the Craft Gilds. When, for instance, in the middle of the century the weavers found their customary earnings dwindling, they managed so far to combine as to make their voice heard at Westminster. In 1555 we find them complaining “that the rich and wealthy clothiers do many ways oppress them” by putting unapprenticed men to work on the capitalists’ own looms, by letting out looms at rents, and “some also by giving much less wages and hire for the weaving and workmanship of clothes than in times past they did.”[78] To the Parliament of these days it seemed right and natural that the oppressed wage-earners should turn to the legislature to protect them against the cutting down of their earnings by the competing capitalists. The statutes of 1552 and 1555 forbid the use of the gig-mill, restrict the number of looms that one person may own to two in towns and one in the country, and absolutely prohibit the letting-out of looms for hire or rent. In 1563, indeed, Parliament expressly charged itself with securing to all wage-earners a “convenient” livelihood. The old laws fixing a maximum wage could not, in face of the enormous rise of prices, be put in force “without the great grief and burden of the poor labourer and hired man.” Circumstances were changing too fast for any rigid rule. But by the celebrated “Statute of Apprentices” the statesmen of the time contrived arrangements which would, as they hoped, “yield unto the hired person, both in the time of scarcity and in the time of plenty, a convenient proportion of wages.” Every year the justices of each locality were to meet, “and calling unto them such discreet and grave persons ... as they shall think meet, and conferring together respecting the plenty or scarcity of the [Pg 49] time,” were to fix the wages of practically every kind of labour,[79] their decisions being enforceable by heavy penalties. Stringent regulations as to the necessity of apprenticeship, the length of its term, and the number of apprentices to be taken by each employer, received the confirmation of law. The typical ordinances of the mediæval gild were, in fact, enacted in minute detail in a comprehensive general statute applying to the greater part of the industry of the period.

We need not discuss the very debatable question whether this celebrated law was or was not advantageous to the labouring folk of the time, or whether and to what extent its provisions were actually put in force.[80] But codifying and enacting as it did the fundamental principles of the mediæval social order, we can scarcely be surprised that its adoption by Parliament confirmed the working man in the once universal belief in the essential justice and good policy securing by appropriate legislation “the getting of a competent livelihood” by all those concerned in industry.[81] Exactly the same view prevailed at the beginning of the eighteenth century. We again find the newly established associations of the operatives appealing to the King, to the House of Commons, or to Quarter Sessions against the beating down of their wages by their employers. For the first half of the century the governing classes continued to act on the assumption that the industrious mechanic had a right to the customary earnings of his trade. Thus in 1726 the weavers of Wilts and Somerset combine to petition [Pg 50] the King against the harshness and fraud of their employers the clothiers, with the result that a Committee of the Privy Council investigates their grievances, and draws up “Articles of Agreement” for the settlement of the matters in dispute,[82] admonishing the weavers “for the future” not to attempt to help themselves by unlawful combinations, but always “to lay their grievances in a regular way before His Majesty, who would be always ready to grant them relief suitable to the justice of their case.”[83] More often the operatives appealed to the House of Commons. In 1719 the “broad and narrow weavers” of Stroud and places round, petitioned Parliament to put down the tyrannical capitalist clothiers by enforcing the “Act touching Weavers” of 1555.[84] In 1728 the Gloucestershire operatives appealed to the local justices of the peace, and induced them, in spite of protests from the master clothiers, and apparently for the first time, to fix a liberal scale of wages for the weavers of the country.[85] Twenty years later the operatives obtained from Parliament a special prohibition of truck.[86] Finally, in 1756 they persuaded the House of Commons to pass an Act[87] providing for the fixing of piecework prices by the justices, in order that the practice of cutting down rates and underselling might be stopped. “A Table or Scheme for Rates of Wages” was accordingly settled at Quarter Sessions, November 6, 1756, with which the operatives were fairly contented.[88]

The next few years saw a revolutionary change in the industrial policy of the legislature which must have utterly [Pg 51] bewildered the operatives. Within a generation the House of Commons exchanged its policy of mediæval protection for one of “Administrative Nihilism.” The Woollen Cloth Weavers’ Act of 1756 had not been one year in force when Parliament was assailed by numerous petitions and counter petitions. The employers declared that the rates fixed by the justices were, in face of the growing competition of Yorkshire, absolutely impracticable. The operatives, on the other hand, asked that the Act might be strengthened in their favour. The clothiers asserted the advantages of freedom of contract and unrestrained competition. The weavers received the support of the landowners and gentry in claiming the maintenance by law of their customary earnings. The perplexed House of Commons wavered between the two. At first a Bill was ordered to be drawn strengthening the existing law; but ultimately the clothiers were held to have proved their case.[89] The Act of 1756 was, in 1757, unconditionally repealed; and Parliament was now heading straight for laisser-faire.

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

The change of policy had already affected another trade. The London Framework Knitters’ Company, which had been incorporated in 1663 for the express purpose of regulating the trade, found itself during the first half of the eighteenth century in continual conflict with recalcitrant masters who set its bye-laws at defiance. This long struggle, in which the journeymen took vigorous action in support of [Pg 52] the Company, was brought to an end in 1753 by an exhaustive Parliamentary inquiry. The bye-laws of the Company, upon the enforcement of which the journeymen had rested all their hopes, were solemnly declared to be “injurious and vexatious to the manufacturers,” whilst the Company’s authority was pronounced to be “hurtful to the trade.”[91] The total abandonment of all legal regulation of the trade led, after numerous transitory revolts, to the establishment in 1778 of “The Stocking Makers’ Association for the Mutual Protection in the Midland Counties of England,” having for its objects the limitation of apprentices, and the enactment of a fixed rate of wages. Dr. Brentano has summarised the various attempts made by the operatives during the next two years to secure the protection of the legislature.[92] Through the influence of their Union a sympathetic member was returned for the borough of Nottingham. Investigation by a committee brought to light a degree of “sweating” scarcely paralleled even by the worst modern instances. A Bill for the fixing of wages had actually passed its second reading when the employers, whipping up all their friends in the House, defeated it on the third reading—a rebuff to the workmen which led to serious riots at Nottingham, and thrust the unfortunate framework knitters back into despairing poverty.[93]

By this time the town craftsmen were also beginning to be menaced by the revolutionary proposals of their employers. The hatters, for example, whose early combination we have already mentioned, had hitherto been protected by the strict limitation of the number of apprentices prescribed by the Acts of 1566 and 1603, and enforced by the Feltmakers’ Company. We gather from the employers’ complaints that the journeymen’s organisation, which by [Pg 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 travelling up and down the kingdom in search of employ.” But the House was impressed with the evidence and arguments of the large employers, and their Bill passed into law.[94]

The action of the House of Commons on occasions like these was not as yet influenced by any conscious theory of freedom of contract. What happened was that, as each trade in turn felt the effect of the new capitalist competition, the journeymen, and often also the smaller employers, would petition for redress, usually demanding the prohibition of the new machines, the enforcement of a seven years’ apprenticeship, or the maintenance of the old limitation of the number of boys to be taught by each employer. The House would as a rule appoint a Committee to investigate the complaint, with the full intention of redressing the alleged grievance. But the large employers would produce before that Committee an overwhelming array of evidence proving that without the new machinery the growing export trade must be arrested; that the new processes could be learnt in a few months instead of seven years; and that the restriction of the old master craftsmen to two or three apprentices apiece was out of the question with the new buyers of labour on a large scale. Confronted with such a [Pg 54] case as this for the masters even the most sympathetic committee seldom found it possible to endorse the proposals of the artisans. In fact, these proposals were impossible. The artisans had a grievance—perhaps the worst that any class can have—the degradation of their standard of livelihood by circumstances which enormously increased the productivity of their labour. But they mistook the remedy; and Parliament, though it saw the mistake, could devise nothing better. Common sense forced the Government to take the easy and obvious step of abolishing the mediæval regulations which industry had outgrown. But the problem of protecting the workers’ Standard of Life under the new conditions was neither easy nor obvious, and it remained unsolved until the nineteenth century discovered the expedients of Collective Bargaining and Factory Legislation, developing, in the twentieth century, into the fixing by law of a Minimum Wage. In the meantime the workers were left to shift for themselves, the attitude of Parliament towards them being for the first years one of pure perplexity, quite untouched by the doctrine of freedom of contract.

That the House of Commons remained innocent of any general theory against legislative interference long after it had begun the work of sweeping away the mediæval regulations is proved by the famous case of the Spitalfields silk-weavers, in which the old policy of industrial regulation was reverted to. In 1765 the Spitalfields weavers protested that they were without employment, owing to the importation of foreign silk. Assembling in crowds, they marched in processions to Westminster, headed by bands and banners, and demanded the prohibition of the import of the foreign product. Riots occurred sufficiently serious to induce Parliament to pass an Act in the terms desired;[95] but this experiment in Protection failed to maintain wages, and the riots were renewed in 1769. Finally Sir John Fielding, the well-known London police magistrate, suggested to the [Pg 55] London silkweavers that they should secure their earnings by an Act.[96] Under the pressure of another outbreak of rioting in 1773, Parliament adopted this proposal, and empowered the justices to fix the rates of wages and to enforce their maintenance. The effect of this enactment upon the men’s combination is significant. “A great man” had told the weavers, as one of them relates, that the governing class “made laws, and we, the people, must make legs to them.”[97] The ephemeral combination to obtain the Act became accordingly a permanent union to enforce it. From this time forth we hear no more of strikes or riots among the Spitalfields weavers. Instead, we see arising a permanent machinery, designated the “Union,” for the representation, before the justices, of both masters and men, upon whose evidence the complicated lists of piecework rates are periodically settled. Clearly the Parliaments which passed the Spitalfields Acts of 1765 and 1773 had no conception of the political philosophy of Adam Smith, whose Wealth of Nations, afterwards to be accepted as the English gospel of freedom of contract and “natural liberty,” was published in 1776. At the same time, so exceptional had such acts become, that when Adam Smith’s masterpiece came into the hands of the statesmen of the time, it must have seemed not so much a novel view of industrial economics as the explicit generalisation of practical conclusions to which experience had already repeatedly driven them.

Towards the end of the century the governing classes, who had found in the new industrial policy a source of enormous pecuniary profit, eagerly seized on the new economic theory as an intellectual and moral justification of that policy. The abandonment of the operatives by the law, previously resorted to under pressure of circumstances, and, as we gather, not without some remorse, was now carried out on principle, with unflinching determination. [Pg 56] When the handloom-weavers, earning little more than a third of the livelihood they had gained ten years before, and unable to realise that the factory system would be deliberately allowed to ruin them, made themselves heard in the House of Commons in 1808, a Committee reported against their proposal to fix a minimum rate of wages on the ground that it was “wholly inadmissible in principle, incapable of being reduced to practice by any means which can possibly be devised, and, if practicable, would be productive of the most fatal consequences”; and “that the proposition relative to the limiting the number of apprentices is also entirely inadmissible, and would, if adopted by the House, be attended with the greatest injustice to the manufacturer as well as to the labourer.”[98] Here we have laisser-faire fully established in Parliament as an authoritative industrial doctrine of political economy, able to overcome the great bulk of the evidence given before this Committee, which was decidedly in favour of the minimum wage. The House of Commons had no lack of opportunities for educating itself on the question. The special misery caused by bad harvests and the prolonged war between 1793 and 1815[99] brought a rush of appeals, especially from the newly established associations of cotton operatives. In the early years of the present century petition after petition poured in from Lancashire and Glasgow, showing that the rates for weaving had steadily declined, and reiterating the old demands for a legally fixed scale of piecework rates and the limitation of apprentices. In 1795, and again in 1800, and once more in 1808, Bills fixing a minimum rate were introduced into the House of Commons, sometimes meeting with considerable favour. The report of the Committee of 1808, which took voluminous evidence on the subject, has already been quoted. Petitions from the calico-printers for a legal [Pg 57] limitation of the number of apprentices, although warmly supported by the Select Committee to which they were referred, met with the same fate. Sheridan, indeed, was not convinced, and brought in a Bill proposing, among other things, to limit the number of apprentices. But Sir Robert Peel (the elder), whose own factories swarmed with boys, opposed it in the name of industrial freedom, and carried the House of Commons with him.[100]

Meanwhile the despairing operatives, baffled in their attempts to procure fresh legislation, turned for aid to the existing law. Unrepealed statutes still enabled the justices in some trades to fix the rate of wages, limited in others the number of apprentices; in others, again, prohibited certain kinds of machinery, and forbade any but apprenticed men to exercise the trade. So completely had these statutes fallen into disuse that their very existence was in many instances unknown to the artisans. The West of England weavers, however, combined with those of Yorkshire in 1802 to employ an attorney, who took proceedings against employers for infringing the old laws. The result was that Parliament hastily passed an Act suspending these statutes, in order to put a stop to the prosecutions.[101]“At a numerous meeting of the cordwainers of the City of New Sarum in 1784,” says an old circular that we have seen, “it was unanimously resolved ... that a subscription be entered into for putting the law in force against infringements on the Trade,” but apparently without result.[102] The Edinburgh [Pg 58] compositors were more successful; on being refused an advance of wages, to correspond with the rise in the cost of living, they presented, February 28, 1804, a memorial to the Court of Session, and obtained the celebrated “Interlocutor” of 1805, which fixed a scale of piecework prices for the Edinburgh printing trade.[103] But the chief event of this campaign for the enforcement of the old laws began in Glasgow. The cotton-weavers of that city, after four or five years of Parliamentary agitation for additional legislation, resorted to the law empowering the justices to fix the rates of wages. After an unsuccessful attempt to fix a standard rate by agreement with a committee of employers, the men’s association which now extended throughout the whole of the cotton-weaving districts in the United Kingdom commenced legal proceedings at the Lanarkshire Quarter Sessions. The employers in 1812 disputed the competence of the magistrates, and appealed to the Court of Sessions at Edinburgh. The Court held that the magistrates were competent to fix a scale of wages, and a table of piecework rates was accordingly drawn up. The employers immediately withdrew from the proceedings; but the operatives were nevertheless compelled, at great expense, to produce witnesses to testify to every one of the numerous rates proposed. After one hundred and thirty witnesses had been heard, the magistrates at length declared the rates to be reasonable, but made no actual order enforcing them. The employers, with few exceptions, refused to accept the table, which it had cost the operatives £3000 to obtain. The result was the most extensive strike the trade has ever known. From Carlisle to Aberdeen every loom stopped, forty thousand weavers ceasing work almost simultaneously. After three weeks’ strike the employers [Pg 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 combination, of which the authorities, in that revolutionary period, were very jealous on purely political grounds. The five leaders were sentenced to terms of imprisonment varying from four to eighteen months; and this blow broke up the combination, defeated the strike, and put an end to the struggles of the operatives against the progressive degradation of their wages.[104]

The London artisans, though they were not put down by prosecution and imprisonment, met with no greater success than their Glasgow brethren. Between 1810 and 1812 a number of trade societies combined to engage the services of a solicitor, who prosecuted masters for employing “illegal men,” that is to say, men who had not by apprenticeship gained a right to follow the trade. The original “case” which the journeymen curriers submitted to counsel in 1810 (fee two guineas), with a view to putting in force the Statute of Apprentices, was in our possession, together with the somewhat hesitating opinion of the legal adviser.[105] In a few cases proceedings were even taken against employers for having set up in trades to which they had not themselves served their time. Convictions were obtained in some instances; but no costs were allowed to the prosecutors, who were, on the other hand, condemned to pay heavy costs when they failed. Lord Ellenborough, moreover, held on appeal that new trades, such as those of engineer and lockmaker, were not included within the Elizabethan Act. In 1811 certain journeymen millers of Kent petitioned the justices to fix a rate of wages under the Elizabethan Act. When the justices refused to hear the petition a writ of [Pg 60] mandamus was applied for. Lord Ellenborough granted the writ to compel them to hear the petition, but said they were to exercise their own discretion as to whether they would fix any rate. The justices, on this hint, declined to fix the wages.[106] It soon became apparent that legal proceedings under these obsolete statutes were, in face of the adverse bias of the courts, as futile as they were costly. There was nothing for it then but either to abandon the line of attack or to petition Parliament to make effective the still unrepealed laws. This they accordingly did, with the unexpected result that the “pernicious” law empowering justices to fix wages was in 1813 peremptorily repealed. [107]

The law thus swept away was but one section of the great Elizabethan statute, and its repeal left the other clauses untouched. A Select Committee had already, in 1811, reported that “no interference of the legislature with the freedom of trade, or with the perfect liberty of every individual to dispose of his time and of his labour in the way and on the terms which he may judge most conducive to his own interest, can take place without violating general principles of the first importance to the prosperity and happiness of the community; without establishing the most pernicious precedent, or even without aggravating, after a very short time, the pressure of the general distress, and imposing obstacles against that distress being ever removed.” The repeal of the wages clauses of the statute made this emphatic declaration of the new doctrine law as far as the fixing of wages was concerned; but there remained the apprenticeship clauses. Petitions for the enforcement of these, and their extension to the new trades, kept pouring in. They were finally referred to a large and influential committee which included Canning, Huskisson, Sir Robert Peel, and Sir James Graham among its members. The witnesses examined were strongly in [Pg 61] favour of the retention of the laws, with amendments bringing them up to date. The chairman (George Rose) was apparently converted to the view of the operatives by the evidence. The committee, which had undoubtedly been appointed to formulate the complete abolition of the apprenticeship clauses, found itself unable to fulfil its virtual mandate. Not venturing, in the teeth of the manufacturers and economists, to recommend the House to comply with the operatives’ demands, it got out of the difficulty by making no recommendation at all. Hundreds of petitions in favour of the laws continued to pour in from all parts of the country, 300,000 signatures being for retention against 2000 for repeal, masters often joining in the journeymen’s prayer. A public meeting of the “Master Manufacturers and Tradesmen of the Cities of London and Westminster,” at the Freemasons’ Tavern, passed resolutions strongly supporting the amendment and enforcement of the existing law. On the other hand, a committee on which the master engineers Maudsley and Galloway were prominent members, argued forcibly in favour of freedom and against “the monstrous and alarming but misguided association.” In 1814 Mr. Serjeant Onslow, who had not served on the committee of the previous session, introduced a Bill to repeal the whole apprenticeship law. The “Masters and Journeymen of Westminster” were heard by counsel against this measure, but the House had made up its mind in favour of the manufacturers, and by the Act of 54 Geo. III. c. 96 swept away the apprenticeship clauses of the statute, and with them practically the last remnant of that legislative protection of the Standard of Life which survived from the Middle Ages.[108] The triumphant manufacturers presented Serjeant Onslow with several pieces of plate for his championship of commercial liberty. [109]

[Pg 62]

So thoroughly had the new doctrine by this time driven out the very recollection of the old ideals from the mind of the governing class that it was now the operatives who were regarded as innovators, and we are hardly surprised to find another committee gravely declaring that “the right of every man to employ the capital he inherits, or has acquired, according to his own discretion, without molestation or obstruction, so long as he does not infringe on the rights or property of others, is one of those privileges which the free and happy constitution of this country has long accustomed every Briton to consider as his birthright.”[110] But it must be added that the governing class was by no means impartial in the application of its new doctrine. Mediæval regulation acted not only in restriction of free competition in the labour market to the pecuniary loss of the employers, but also in restriction of free contract to the loss of the employees, who could only obtain the best terms for their labour by collective instead of individual bargaining. Consequently the operatives, if they had clearly understood the situation, would have been as anxious [Pg 63] to abolish the laws against combination as to maintain those fixing wages and limiting apprenticeship; just as the capitalists, better informed, were no less resolute in maintaining the anti-combination laws than in repealing the others. We shall presently see how slow the workers were to realise this, in spite of the fact that the laws against combinations of workmen were maintained in force, and even increased in severity. Strikes, and any organised resistance to the employers’ demands, were put down with a high hand. The first twenty years of the nineteenth century witnessed a legal persecution of Trade Unionists as rebels and revolutionists. This persecution, thwarting the healthy growth of the Unions, and driving their members into violence and sedition, but finally leading to the repeal of the Combination Laws and the birth of the modern Trade Union Movement, will be the subject of the next chapter.

THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE
[1799-1825]

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

[Pg 65]

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

Thus one of the earliest types of combination among journeymen—the society to enforce the law—seems always to have been tacitly accepted as permissible. Although it is probable that such associations came technically within the definitions of combination and conspiracy, whether under the common law or the early statutes, we know of no case in which they were indicted as illegal. We have already described, for instance, how, in 1726, the woollen weavers of Wiltshire and Somersetshire openly combined to present a petition to the King in Council against their masters, the broad clothiers. The Privy Council, far from deeming the action of the weavers illegal, considered and dealt with their complaint. And when the employers persisted in disobeying the law, we have seen how, in 1756, the [Pg 66] Fraternity of Woollen Clothweavers petitioned the House of Commons to make more effectual the power of the justices to fix wages, and obtained a new Act of Parliament in accordance with their desires. The almost perpetual combinations of the framework knitters between 1710 and 1800 were never made the subject of legal proceedings. The combinations of the London silkweavers obtained a virtual sanction by the Spitalfields Acts, under which the delegates of the workmen’s organisations regularly appeared before the justices, who fixed and revised the piecework prices. Even in 1808, after the stringency of the law against combinations had been greatly increased, the Glasgow and Lancashire cotton-weavers were permitted openly to combine for the purpose of seeking a legal fixing of wages, with the results already described. Nor was it only the combination to obtain a legally fixed rate of wages that was left unmolested by the law. Combinations to put in force the sections of the Statute of Apprentices (5 Eliz. c. 4), or other prohibitions of the employment of “illegal workmen,” occurred at intervals down to 1813. In 1749 a club of journeymen painters of the City of London proceeded against a master painter for employing a non-freeman; and the proceedings led, in 1750, to a conference of thirty journeymen and thirty masters with the City Corporation, at which the regulations were altered.[112] No one seems to have questioned the legality of the 1811-13 outburst of combinations to prosecute masters who had not served an apprenticeship, or who were employing unapprenticed workmen. One reason, doubtless, for the immunity of combinations to enforce the law was that they included employers and sympathisers of all ranks. For instance, the combinations in 1811-13 to enforce the apprenticeship laws comprised both masters and journeymen, who were equally aggrieved [Pg 67] by the competition of the new capitalist and his “hirelings.”[113] The Yorkshire Clothiers’ Community, or “Brief Institution,” to which reference has already been made, included, in some of its ramifications, the “domestic” master manufacturers, who fought side by side with the journeymen against the new factory system.

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

It is some proof of the novelty of the workmen’s combinations in the early part of the eighteenth century, that neither the employers nor the authorities thought at first of resorting to the very sufficient powers of the existing law against them. When, in 1720, the master tailors of London [Pg 68] found themselves confronted with an organised body of journeymen claiming to make a collective bargain, seriously “in restraint of trade,” they turned, not to the law courts, but to Parliament for protection, and obtained, as we have seen, the Act “for regulating the Journeymen Tailors within the bills of mortality” (7 Geo. I. st. 1, c. 13, amended by 8 Geo. III. c. 17).[114] Similarly, when the clothiers of the West of England began between 1717 and 1725 to be inconvenienced by the “riotous and tumultuous clubs and societies” of woolcombers and weavers, who made bye-laws and maintained a Standard Rate,[115] they did not put in force the existing law, but successfully petitioned Parliament for the Act “to prevent unlawful combinations of workmen employed in the Woollen Manufactures” (12 Geo. I. c. 34). Indeed, prior to the general Acts of 1799 and 1800 against all combinations of journeymen, Parliament was, from the beginning of the eighteenth century, perpetually enacting statutes forbidding combinations in particular trades.[116]

In the English statutes this prohibition of combination was, as we have seen, only a secondary feature, incidental to the main purpose of the law. The case is different with regard to the early Irish Acts, the terms of which point to a much sharper cleavage between masters and men, due, perhaps, to difference of religion and race. The very first statute against combinations which was passed by the Irish Parliament, the Act of 1729 (3 Geo. II. c. 14), contained no provisions protecting the wage-earner, and prohibited combinations [Pg 69] in all trades whatsoever. The Act of 1743 (17 Geo. II. c. 8), called forth by the failure of the previous prohibition, equally confined itself to drastic penal measures, including the punishment of the keepers of the public-houses which were used for meetings. But in later years the English practice seems to have been followed; for the laws of 1758 (31 Geo. II. c. 17), 1763 (3 Geo. III. 34, sec. 23), 1771 (11 and 12 Geo. III. c. 18, sec. 40, and c. 33), and 1779 (19 and 20 Geo. III. c. 19, c. 24, and c. 36) provide for the fixing of wages, and contain other regulations of industry, amongst which the prohibition of combinations comes as a matter of course.

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

The grounds for this drastic measure appear to have been found in the marked increase of Trade Unionism among workers of various kinds. The operatives’ combinations were regarded as being in the nature of mutiny against their employers and masters; destructive of the “discipline” necessary to the expansion of trade; and interfering with the right of the employer to “do what he liked with his own.” The immediate occasion was a petition from London engineering employers, complaining of an alarming strike of the millwrights. This led to a Bill suppressing combination in the engineering trade, which was passed by the House of Commons, in spite of the protests of Sir Francis Burdett and Benjamin Hobhouse. The measure was, however, dropped in the House of Lords in favour of a more comprehensive Bill, applicable to all trades, which Whitbread had suggested. This was introduced on June 17, 1799, by William Pitt himself, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, who referred [Pg 70] to the alarming growth of combination, not merely in the Metropolis but also in the north of England. Subsequent stages of the Bill were moved by George Rose, another member of the Administration; and the measure was hurried through all its stages in both Houses with great rapidity, receiving the Royal Assent only twenty-four days after its introduction into the House of Commons. There was therefore little opportunity for any effective demonstration against its provisions, but the Journeymen Calico-printers’ Society of London petitioned against the measure, and instructed counsel to put forward their objections. They represented that, although the Bill professed merely “to prevent unlawful combinations,” it created “new crimes of so indefinite a nature that no one journeyman or workman will be safe in holding any conversation with another on the subject of his trade or employment.” Only a few other petitions were presented, and, though Benjamin Hobhouse opposed it in the Commons and Lord Holland in the Lords, the Bill passed unaltered into law. [117]

But the struggle was not yet over. The employers were not satisfied with the 1799 Act; and The Times announced in January 1800 that “one of the first Acts of the Imperial Parliament [of the United Kingdom] will be for the prevention [Pg 71] of conspiracies among journeymen tradesmen to raise their wages. All benefit clubs and societies are to be immediately suppressed.”[118] On the other hand, the trade clubs in all parts of the country poured in petitions of protest; and the Whig and Tory members for Liverpool, General Tarleton and Colonel Gascoyne, among whose constituents were the strongly combined shipwrights, who were freemen and Parliamentary electors, united to bring in an amending Bill. This was supported in a series of brilliant speeches by Sheridan, whose attempts to reduce to a minimum the mischief of the 1799 Act were strenuously resisted by Pitt and the Law Officers of the Crown. The petitions were considered by a Committee, which recommended certain amendments. Two justices were substituted for one as the tribunal; no justice engaged in the same trade as the defendant could act; the qualifying words “wilfully and maliciously” were introduced in the description of the offences. A clause protecting trade friendly societies was proposed but eventually rejected. A particularly odious feature of the 1799 Act, under which defendants were required to give evidence against themselves under severe penalties for refusal, was left unaltered. A series of interesting clauses providing for the reference of wage disputes to arbitration—copied from the contemporary Act relating to the cotton trade[119]—aroused great opposition, as tending “to fix wages” and as involving the recognition of the Trade Union representative, but they were finally adopted; without, so far as we are aware, ever being put in force. [120]

The general Combination Act of 1800 was not merely the codification of existing laws, or their extension from [Pg 72] particular trades to the whole field of industry. It represented a new and momentous departure. Hitherto the central or local authority had acted as a court of appeal on all questions affecting the work and wages of the citizen. If the master and journeyman failed to agree as to what constituted a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work, the higgling of the market was peremptorily superseded by the authoritative determination, presumably on grounds of social expediency, of the standard of remuneration. Probably the actual fixing of wages by justices of the peace fell very rapidly into disuse as regards the majority of industries, although formal orders are found in the minutes of Quarter Sessions during the first quarter of the nineteenth century, and deep traces of the practice long survived in the customary rates of hiring. Towards the end of the eighteenth century, at any rate, free bargaining between the capitalist and his workmen became practically the sole method of fixing wages. Then it was that the gross injustice of prohibiting combinations of journeymen became apparent. “A single master,” said Lord Jeffrey, “was at liberty at any time to turn off the whole of his workmen at once—100 or 1000 in number—if they would not accept of the wages he chose to offer. But it was made an offence for the whole of the workmen to leave that master at once if he refused to give the wages they chose to require.”[121] What was even more oppressive in practice was the employers’ use of the threat of prosecution to prevent even the beginnings of resistance among the workmen to any reduction of wages or worsening of conditions.

It is true that the law forbade combinations of employers as well as combinations of journeymen. Even if it had been impartially carried out, there would still have remained the inequality due to the fact that, in the new system of industry, a single employer was himself equivalent to a [Pg 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 preceding year, with a penalty of £100 for each contravention of this illegal agreement.[122] During the whole epoch of repression, whilst thousands of journeymen suffered for the crime of combination, there is no case on record in which an employer was punished for the same offence.

To the ordinary politician a combination of employers and a combination of workmen seemed in no way comparable. The former was, at most, an industrial misdemeanour: the latter was in all cases a political crime. Under the shadow of the French Revolution, the English governing classes regarded all associations of the common people with the utmost alarm. In this general terror lest insubordination should develop into rebellion were merged both the capitalist’s objection to high wages and the politician’s dislike of Democratic institutions. The Combination Laws, as Francis Place tells us, “were considered as absolutely necessary to prevent ruinous extortions of workmen, which, if not thus restrained, would destroy the whole of the Trade, Manufactures, Commerce, and Agriculture of the nation.... This led to the conclusion that the workmen were the most unprincipled of mankind. Hence the continued ill-will, suspicion, and in almost every possible way the bad conduct of workmen and their employers towards one another. So thoroughly was this false notion entertained that whenever men were prosecuted to conviction [Pg 74] for having combined to regulate their wages or the hours of working, however heavy the sentence passed on them was, and however rigorously it was inflicted, not the slightest feeling of compassion was manifested by anybody for the unfortunate sufferers. Justice was entirely out of the question: they could seldom obtain a hearing before a magistrate, never without impatience or insult; and never could they calculate on even an approximation to a rational conclusion.... Could an accurate account be given of proceedings, of hearings before magistrates, trials at sessions and in the Court of King’s Bench, the gross injustice, the foul invective, and terrible punishments inflicted would not, after a few years have passed away, be credited on any but the best evidence.” [123]

It must not, however, be supposed that every combination was made the subject of prosecution, or that the Trade Union leader of the period passed his whole life in gaol. Owing to the extremely inefficient organisation of the English police, and the absence of any public prosecutor, a combination was usually let alone until some employer was sufficiently inconvenienced by its operations to be willing himself to set the law in motion. In many cases we find employers apparently accepting or conniving at their men’s combinations.[124] The master printers in London not only recognised the very ancient institution of the “chapel,” but evidently found it convenient, at any rate from 1785 onwards, to receive and consider proposals from the journeymen as an organised body. In 1804 we even hear of a joint committee consisting of an equal number of masters and journeymen, authorised by their respective bodies to frame regulations for the future payment of labour, and resulting in the elaborate “scale” of 1805, signed by both masters and men.[125] The London coopers had a recognised organisation [Pg 75] in 1813, in which year a list of prices was agreed upon by representatives of the masters and men. This list was revised in 1816 and 1819, without any one thinking of a prosecution.[126] The Trade Union was openly reformed in 1821 as the Philanthropic Society of Coopers. The London brushmakers in 1805 had “A List of Prices agreed upon between the Masters and Journeymen,” which is still extant. The framework knitters, and also the tailors of the various villages in Nottinghamshire, were, from 1794 to 1810, in the habit of freely meeting together, both masters and men, “to consider of matters relative to the trade,” the conferences being convened by public advertisement.[127] The minute books of the local Trade Union of the carpenters of Preston for the years 1807 to 1824 chronicle an apparently unconcealed and unmolested existence, in correspondence with other carpenters’ societies throughout Lancashire. The accounts contain no items for the expense of defending their officers against prosecutions, whereas there are several payments for advertisements and public meetings, and, be it added, a very large expenditure in beer. And there is a lively tradition among the aged block printers of Glasgow that, in their fathers’ time, when their very active Trade Union exacted a fee of seven guineas from each new apprentice, this money was always straightway drunk by the men of the print-field, the employer taking his seat at the head of the table, and no work being done by any one until the fund was exhausted. The calico-printers’ organisation appears, at the early part of the nineteenth century, to have been one of the strongest and most complete of the Unions. In an impressive pamphlet of 1815 the men are thus appealed to by the employers: “We have by turns conceded what we ought all manfully to have resisted, and you, elated with success, have been led on from one extravagant demand to another, till the burden is become too intolerable to be borne. You fix the number of our [Pg 76] apprentices, and oftentimes even the number of our journeymen. You dismiss certain proportions of our hands, and will not allow others to come in their stead. You stop all Surface Machines, and go the length even to destroy the rollers before our face. You restrict the Cylinder Machine, and even dictate the kind of pattern it is to print. You refuse, on urgent occasions, to work by candlelight, and even compel our apprentices to do the same. You dismiss our overlookers when they don’t suit you; and force obnoxious servants into our employ. Lastly, you set all subordination and good order at defiance, and instead of showing deference and respect to your employers, treat them with personal insult and contempt.”[128] Notwithstanding all this, no systematic attempt appears to have been made to put down the calico-printers’ combination, and only one or two isolated prosecutions can be traced. In Dublin, too, the cabinetmakers in the early part of the present century were combined in a strong union called the Samaritan Society, exclusively for trade purposes; “but though illegal, the employers do not seem to have looked upon it with any great aversion; and when on one occasion the chief constable had the men attending a meeting arrested, the employers came forward to bail them. Indeed, they professed that their object, though primarily to defend their own interests against the masters, was also to defend the interests of the masters against unprincipled journeymen. Many of the masters on receiving the bill of a journeyman were in the habit of sending it to the trades’ society committee to be taxed, after which the word Committee was stamped upon it. One case was mentioned, when between two and three pounds were knocked off a bill of about eight pounds by the trade committee.” [Pg 77][129] And both in London and Edinburgh the journeymen openly published, without fear of prosecution, elaborate printed lists of piecework prices, compiled sometimes by a committee of the men’s Trade Union, sometimes by a joint committee of employers and employed.[130]“The London Cabinetmakers’ Union Book of Prices,” of which editions were published in 1811 and 1824, was a costly and elaborate work, with many plates, published “by a Committee of Masters and Journeymen ... to prevent those litigations which have too frequently existed in the trade.” Various supplements and “index keys” to this work were published; and other similar lists exist. So lax was the administration of the law that George White, the energetic clerk to Hume’s Committee, asserted that the Act of 1800 had “been in general a dead letter upon those artisans upon whom it was intended to have an effect—namely, the shoemakers, printers, papermakers, shipbuilders, tailors, etc., who have had their regular societies and houses of call, as though no such Act was in existence; and in fact it would be almost impossible for many of those trades to be carried on without such societies, who are in general sick and travelling relief societies; and the roads and parishes would be much pestered with these travelling trades, who travel from want of employment, were it not for their societies who relieve what they call tramps.” [131]

But although clubs of journeymen might be allowed to take, like the London bookbinders, “a social pint of porter together,” and even, in times of industrial peace, to provide for their tramps and perform all the functions of a Trade Union, the employers had always the power of [Pg 78] meeting any demands by a prosecution. Even those trades in which we have discovered evidence of the unmolested existence of combinations furnish examples of the rigorous application of the law. In 1819 we read of numerous prosecutions of cabinetmakers, hatters, ironfounders, and other journeymen, nominally for leaving their work unfinished, but really for the crime of combination.[132] In 1798 five journeymen printers were indicted at the Old Bailey for conspiracy. The employers had sent for the men’s leaders to discuss their proposals, when, as it was complained, “the five defendants came, clothed as delegates, representing themselves as the head of a Parliament as we may call it.” The men were in fact members of a trade friendly society of pressmen “held at the Crown, near St. Dunstan’s Church, Fleet Street,” which, as the prosecuting counsel declared, “from its appearance certainly bore no reproachable mark upon it. It was called a friendly society, but by means of some wicked men among them this society degenerated into a most abominable meeting for the purpose of a conspiracy; those of the trade who did not join their society were summoned, and even the apprentices, and were told unless they conformed to the practices of these journeymen, when they came out of their times they should not be employed.” Notwithstanding the fact that the employers had themselves recognised and negotiated with the society, the Recorder sentenced all the defendants to two years’ imprisonment. [133]

Twelve years later it was the brutality of another prosecution of the compositors that impressed Francis Place with the necessity of an alteration in the law. “The cruel persecutions,” he writes, “of the Journeymen Printers employed in The Times newspaper in 1810 were carried to an almost incredible extent. The judge who tried and [Pg 79] sentenced some of them was the Common Sergeant of London, Sir John Sylvester, commonly known by the cognomen of ‘Bloody Black Jack.’... No judge took more pains than did this judge on the unfortunate printers, to make it appear that their offence was one of great enormity, to beat down and alarm the really respectable men who had fallen into his clutches, and on whom he inflicted scandalously severe sentences.”[134] Nor did prosecution always depend on the caprice of an employer. In December 1817 the Bolton constables, accidentally getting to know that ten delegates of the calico-printers from the various districts of the kingdom were to meet on New Year’s Day, arranged to arrest the whole body and seize all their papers. The ten delegates suffered three months’ imprisonment, although no dispute with their employers was in progress.[135] But the main use of the law to the employers was to checkmate strikes, and ward off demands for better conditions of labour. Already, in 1786, the law of conspiracy had been strained to convict, and punish with two years’ imprisonment, the five London bookbinders who were leading a strike to reduce hours from twelve to eleven.[136] When, at the Aberdeen Master Tailors’ Gild, in 1797, “it was represented to the trade that their journeymen had entered into an illegal combination for the purpose of raising their wages,” the masters unanimously “agreed not to give any additional wages to their servants,” and backed up this resolution of their own combination by getting twelve journeymen prosecuted and fined for the crime of combining.[137] In 1799 the success of the London shoemakers in picketing obnoxious employers led to the prosecution of two of them, which was made the means of inducing the men to consent to dissolve their society, then [Pg 80] seven years old, and return to work at once.[138] Two other shoemakers of York were convicted in the same year for the crime of “combining to raise the price of their labour in making shoes, and refusing to make shoes under a certain price,” and counsel said that “in every great town in the North combinations of this sort existed.”[139] The coach-makers’ strike of 1819 was similarly stopped, and the “Benevolent Society of Coachmakers” broken up by the conviction of the general secretary and twenty other members, who were, upon this condition, released on their own recognisances.[140] In 1819 some calico-engravers in the service of a Manchester firm protested against the undue multiplication of apprentices by their employers, and enforced their protest by declining to work. For this “conspiracy” they were fined and imprisoned.[141] And though the master cutlers were allowed, with impunity, to subscribe to the Sheffield Mercantile and Manufacturing Union, which fixed the rates of wages, and brought pressure to bear on recalcitrant employers, the numerous trade clubs of the operatives were not left unmolested. In 1816 seven scissor-grinders were sentenced to three months’ imprisonment for belonging to what they called the “Misfortune Club,” which paid out-of-work benefit, and sought to maintain the customary rates. [142]

[Pg 81]

But it was in the new textile industries that the weight of the Combination Laws was chiefly felt. White and Henson describe the Act of 1800 as being in these trades “a tremendous millstone round the neck of the local artisan, which has depressed and debased him to the earth: every act which he has attempted, every measure that he has devised to keep up or raise his wages, he has been told was illegal: the whole force of the civil power and influence of the district has been exerted against him because he was acting illegally: the magistrates, acting, as they believed, in unison with the views of the legislature, to check and keep down wages and combination, regarded, in almost every instance, every attempt on the part of the artisan to ameliorate his situation or support his station in society as a species of sedition and resistance of the Government: every committee or active man among them was regarded as a turbulent, dangerous instigator, whom it was necessary to watch and crush if possible.”[143] To cite one only of the instances, it was given in evidence before Hume’s Committee that in 1818 certain Bolton millowners suggested to the operative weavers that they should concert together to leave the employment of those who paid below the current rate. Acting on this hint a meeting of forty delegates took place, at which it was resolved to ask for the advance agreed to by the good employers. A fortnight later the president and the two secretaries were arrested, convicted of conspiracy, and imprisoned for one and two years respectively, although their employers gave evidence on the prisoners’ behalf to the effect that they had themselves requested the men to attend the meeting, and had approved the resolutions passed.[144] In the following year fifteen cotton-spinners of Manchester, who had met “to receive contributions to bury their dead,” under “Articles” sanctioned by Quarter Sessions in 1795, were seized in the committee-room by the police, and committed to trial for conspiracy, bail being [Pg 82] refused. After three or four months’ imprisonment they were brought to trial, the whole local bar—seven in number—being briefed against them. Collections were made in London and elsewhere (including the town of Lynn in Norfolk) for their defence. The enrolment of their club as a friendly society availed little. It was urged in court that “all societies, whether benefit societies or otherwise, were only cloaks for the people of England to conspire against the State,” and most of the defendants were sentenced to varying terms of imprisonment. [145]

But the Scottish Weavers’ Strike of 1812, described in the preceding chapter, is the most striking case of all. In the previous year certain cotton-spinners had been convicted of combination and imprisoned, the judge observing that there was a clear remedy in law, as the magistrates had full power and authority to fix rates of wages or settle disputes. In 1812 many of the employers refused to accept the rates which the justices had declared as fair for weaving; and all the weavers at the forty thousand looms between Aberdeen and Carlisle struck to enforce the justices’ rates. The employers had already made overtures through the sheriff of the county for a satisfactory settlement when the Government arrested the central committee of five, who were directing the proceedings. These men were sentenced to periods of imprisonment varying from four to eighteen months; the strike failed, and the association broke up.[146] The student of the newspapers between 1800 and 1824 will find abundant record of judicial barbarities, of which the cases cited above may be taken as samples. No statistics exist as to the frequency of the prosecutions or the severity of the sentences; but it is easy to understand, from such reports as are available, the sullen resentment which the working class suffered under these laws. Their repeal was [Pg 83] a necessary preliminary to the growth among the most oppressed sections of the workers of any real power of protecting themselves, by Trade Union effort, against the degradation of their Standard of Life.

The failure of the Combination Laws to suppress the somewhat dictatorial Trade Unionism of the skilled handicraftsmen, and their efficacy in preventing the growth of permanent Unions among other sections of the workers, is explained by class distinctions, now passed away or greatly modified, which prevailed at the beginning of the present century. To-day, when we speak of “the aristocracy of labour” we include under that heading the organised miners and factory operatives of the North on the same superior footing as the skilled handicraftsman. In 1800 they were at opposite extremes of the social scale in the wage-earning class, the weaver and the miner being then further removed from the handicraftsman than the docker or general labourer is from the Lancashire cotton-spinner or Northumberland hewer of to-day. The skilled artisans formed, at any rate in London, an intermediate class between the shopkeeper and the great mass of unorganised labourers or operatives in the new machine industries. The substantial fees demanded all through the eighteenth century for apprenticeship to the “crafts” had secured to the members and their eldest sons a virtual monopoly.[147] Even after the repeal of the laws requiring a formal apprenticeship some time had to elapse before the supply of this class of handicraftsmen overtook the growing demand. Thus we gather from the surviving records that these trades have never been more completely organised in London than between 1800 and 1820.[148] We find the London hatters, [Pg 84] coopers, curriers, compositors, millwrights, and shipwrights maintaining earnings which, upon their own showing, amounted to the comparatively large sum of thirty to fifty shillings per week. At the same period the Lancashire weaver or the Leicester hosier, in full competition with steam-power and its accompaniment of female and child labour, could, even when fully employed, earn barely ten shillings. We see this difference in the Standard of Life reflected in the characters of the combinations formed by the two classes.

In the skilled handicrafts, long accustomed to corporate government, we find, even under repressive laws, no unlawful oaths, seditious emblems, or other common paraphernalia of secret societies. The London Brushmakers, whose Union apparently dates from the early part of the eighteenth century, expressly insisted “that no person shall be admitted a member who is not well affected to his present Majesty and the Protestant Succession, and in good health and of a respectable character.” But this loyalty was not inconsistent with their subscribing to the funds of the 1831 agitation for the Reform Bill.[149] The prevailing tone of the superior workmen down to 1848 was, in fact, strongly Radical; and their leaders took a prominent part in all the working-class politics of the time. From their ranks came such organisers as Place, Lovett, and Gast.[150] But wherever [Pg 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 discipline more rigid and the treatment of non-unionists more arbitrary. Place describes how “in these societies there are some few individuals who possess the confidence of their fellows, and when any matter relating to the trade has [Pg 86] been talked over, either at the club or in a separate room, or in a workshop or a yard, and the matter has become notorious, these men are expected to direct what shall be done, and they do direct—simply by a hint. On this the men act; and one and all support those who may be thrown out of work or otherwise inconvenienced. If matters were to be discussed as gentlemen seem to suppose they must be, no resolution would ever be come to. The influence of the men alluded to would soon cease if the law were repealed. It is the law and the law alone which causes the confidence of the men to be given to their leaders. Those who direct are not known to the body, and not one man in twenty, perhaps, knows the person of any one who directs. It is a rule among them to ask no questions, and another rule among them who know most, either to give no answer if questioned, or an answer to mislead.” [151]

In the new machine industries, on the other hand, the repeated reductions of wages, the rapid alterations of processes, and the substitution of women and children for adult male workers, had gradually reduced the workers to a condition of miserable poverty. The reports of Parliamentary committees, from 1800 onward, contain a dreary record of the steady degradation of the Standard of Life in the textile industries. “The sufferings of persons employed in the cotton manufacture,” Place writes of this period, “were beyond credibility: they were drawn into combinations, betrayed, prosecuted, convicted, sentenced, and monstrously severe punishments inflicted on them: they were reduced to and kept in the most wretched state of existence.”[152] Their employers, instead of being, as in the older handicrafts, little more than master workmen, recognising [Pg 87] the customary Standard of Life of their journeymen, were often capitalist entrepreneurs, devoting their whole energies to the commercial side of the business, and leaving their managers to buy labour in the market at the cheapest possible rate. This labour was recruited from all localities and many different occupations. It was brigaded and controlled by despotic laws, enforced by numerous fines and disciplinary deductions. Cases of gross tyranny and heartless cruelty are not wanting. Without a common standard, a common tradition, or mutual confidence, the workers in the new mills were helpless against their masters. Their ephemeral combinations and frequent strikes were, as a rule, only passionate struggles to maintain a bare subsistence wage. In place of the steady organised resistance to encroachments maintained by the handicraftsmen, we watch, in the machine industries, the alternation of outbursts of machine-breaking and outrages, with intervals of abject submission and reckless competition with each other for employment. In the conduct of such organisation as there was, repressive laws had, with the operatives as with the London artisans, the effect of throwing great power into the hands of a few men. These leaders were implicitly obeyed in times of industrial conflict, but the repeated defeats which they were unable to avert prevented that growth of confidence which is indispensable for permanent organisation.[153] Both leaders and rank and file, too, were largely implicated in political seditions, and were the victims of spies and Ministerial emissaries of all sorts. All these circumstances led to the prevalence among them of fearful oaths, mystic initiation rites, and other manifestations of a sensationalism which was sometimes puerile and sometimes criminal.

The most notorious of these “seditions,” about which little is really known, was the “Luddite” upheaval of 1811-12, when riotous mobs of manual workers, acting [Pg 88] under some sort of organisation, went about destroying textile machinery and sometimes wrecking factories. To what extent this had any direct connection with the Trade Union Movement seems to us, pending more penetrating investigation of the unpublished evidence, somewhat uncertain. That the operatives very generally sympathised with the most violent protest against the displacement of hand labour by machinery, and the extreme distress which it was causing, is clear. The Luddite movement apparently began among the Framework-knitters, who had long been organised in local clubs, with some rudimentary federal bond; and the whole direction of the Luddites was often ascribed, as by the Mayor of Leicester in 1812, to “the Committee of Framework-knitters, who have as complete an organisation of the whole body as you could have of a regiment.”[154] But money was collected from men of other trades, notably bricklayers, masons, spinners, weavers, and colliers, as well as from the soldiers in some of the regiments stationed at provincial centres; and such evidence as we have found points rather to a widespread secret oath-bound conspiracy, not of the men of any one trade, but of wage-earners of all kinds. We find an informer stating (June 22, 1812), with what truth we know not, “that the Union extends from London to Nottingham, and from thence to Manchester and Carlisle. Small towns lying between the principal places are not yet organised, such as Garstang and Burton. Only some of the trades have taken the first oath. He says there is a second oath taken by suspicious persons.”[155] On the other hand, it looks as if the various local Trade Clubs were made use of, in some cases informally, as agents or branches of the conspiracy.

General Maitland, writing from Buxton (June 22, 1812) to the Home Secretary, says that, in his opinion, “the whole of this business ... originated in those constant efforts [Pg 89] made by these associations for many years past to keep up the price of the manufacturers’ wages; that finding their efforts for this unavailing, both from the circumstances of the trade and the high price of provisions, they in a moment of irritation, for which it is but just to say they had considerable ground from the real state of distress in which they were placed ... began to think of effecting that by force which they had ever been trying to do by other means; and that in this state the oath was introduced.... I believe the whole to be, certainly a most mischievous, but undefined and indistinct attempt to be in a state of preparation to do that by force which they had not succeeded in carrying into effect as they usually did by other means.” The whole episode has been too much ignored, even by social historians; and “Byron’s famous speech and Charlotte Brontë’s more famous novel give to most people their idea of the misery of the time, and of its cause, the displacement of hand labour by machinery.” [156]

The coal-miners were in many respects even worse off than the hosiery workers and the cotton weavers. In Scotland they had been but lately freed from actual serfdom, the final act of emancipation not having been passed until 1799. In Monmouthshire and South Wales the oppression of the “tommy shops” of the small employers was extreme. In the North of England the “yearly bond,” the truck [Pg 90] system, and the arbitrary fines kept the underground workers in complete subjection. The result is seen in the turbulence of their frequent “sticks” or strikes, during which troops were often required to quell their violence. The great strike of 1810 was carried on by an oath-bound confederacy recruited by the practice of “brothering,” “so named because the members of the union bound themselves by a most solemn oath to obey the orders of the brotherhood, under the penalty of being stabbed through the heart or of having their bowels ripped up.”[157]

Notwithstanding these differences between various classes of workers, the growing sense of solidarity among the whole body of wage-earners rises into special prominence during this period of tyranny and repression. The trades in which it was usual for men to tramp from place to place in search of employment had long possessed, as we have seen, some kind of loose federal organisation extending throughout the country. In spite of the law of 1797 forbidding the existence of “corresponding societies,” the various federal organisations of Curriers, Hatters, Calico-printers, Woolcombers, Woolstaplers, and other handicraftsmen kept up constant correspondence on trade matters, and raised money for common trade purposes. In some cases there existed an elaborate national organisation, with geographical districts and annual delegate meetings; like that of the Calico-printers who were arrested by the Bolton constables in 1818. The rules of the Papermakers,[158] which certainly date from 1803, provide for the division of England into five districts, with detailed arrangements for [Pg 91] representation and collective action. This national organisation was, notwithstanding repressive laws, occasionally very effective. We need cite only one instance, furnished by the Liverpool Ropemakers in 1823. When a certain firm attempted to put labourers to the work, the local society of ropespinners informed it that this was “contrary to the regulations of the trade,” and withdrew all their members. The employers, failing to get men in Liverpool, sent to Hull and Newcastle, but found that the Ropespinners’ Society had already apprised the local trade clubs at those towns. The firm then imported “blacklegs” from Glasgow, who were met on arrival by the local unionists, inveigled to a “trade club-house,” and alternately threatened and cajoled out of their engagements. Finally the head of the firm went to London to purchase yarn; but the London workmen, finding that the yarn was for a “struck shop,” refused to complete the order. The last resource of the employers was an indictment at the Sessions for combination, but a Liverpool jury, in the teeth of the evidence and the judge’s summing up, gave a verdict of acquittal. [159]

This solidarity was not confined to the members of a particular trade. The masters are always complaining that one trade supports another, and old account books of Trade Unions for this period abound with entries of sums contributed in aid of disputes in other trades, either in the same town or elsewhere. Thus the small society of London Goldbeaters, during the three years 1810-12, lent or gave substantial sums, amounting in all to £200, to fourteen other trades.[160] The Home Secretary was informed in 1823 that [Pg 92] a combination of cotton-spinners at Bolton, whose books had been seized, had received donations, not only from twenty-eight cotton-spinners’ committees in as many Lancashire towns, but also from fourteen other trades, from coal-miners to butchers.[161] A picturesque illustration of this brotherly help in need occurs in the account of an appeal to the Pontefract Quarter Sessions by certain Sheffield cutlers against their conviction for combination: “The appellants were in court, but hour after hour passed, and no counsel moved the case. The reason was a want of funds for the purpose. At last, whilst in court, a remittance from the clubs in Manchester, to the amount of one hundred pounds, arrived, and then the counsel was fee’d, and the case, which, but for the arrival of the money from this town, must have dropped in that stage, was proceeded with.”[162] And although the day of Trades Councils had not yet come, it was a common thing for the various trade societies of a particular town to unite in sending witnesses to Parliamentary Committees, preparing petitions to the House of Commons and paying counsel to support their case, engaging solicitors to prosecute offending employers, and collecting subscriptions for strikes.[163] This tendency to form joint [Pg 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 legislative protection of the Standard of Life, and the complete divorce of the worker from the instruments of production, the wage-earners in the various industrial centres became indeed ever more conscious of the widening of the old separate trade disputes into “the class war” which has characterised the past century.

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

The movement for a repeal of the Combination Laws began in a period of industrial dislocation and severe political repression. The economic results of the long war, culminating in the comparatively low prices of the peace for most manufactured products, though not for wheat, led in 1816 to an almost universal reduction of wages throughout the country. In open defiance of the law the masters, in many instances, deliberately combined in agreements to pay lower rates. This agreement was not confined to the employers in a particular trade, who may have been confronted by organised bodies of journeymen, but extended, in some cases, to all employers of labour in a particular locality. The landowners and farmers of Tiverton, for instance, at a “numerous and respectable meeting at the Town Hall” in 1816, resolved “that, in consequence of the low price of provisions,” not more than certain specified wages should be given to smiths, carpenters, [Pg 94] masons, thatchers, or masons’ labourers.[164] The Compositors, Coopers, Shoemakers, Carpenters, and many other trades record serious reductions of wages at this period. In these cases the masters justified their action on the ground that, owing to the fall of prices, the Standard of Life of the journeymen would not be depressed. But in the great staple industries there ensued a cutting competition between employers to secure orders in a falling market, their method being to undersell each other by beating down wages below subsistence level—an operation often aided by the practice, then common, of supplementing insufficient earnings out of the Poor Rate. This produced such ruinous results that local protests were soon made. At Leicester the authorities decided to maintain the men’s “Statement Price” by agreeing to wholly support out of a voluntary fund those who could not get work at the full rates. This was bitterly resented by the neighbouring employers, who seriously contemplated indicting the lord-lieutenant, mayor, alder-men, clergy, and other subscribers for criminal conspiracy to keep up wages.[165] And in 1820 a public meeting of the ratepayers of Sheffield protested against the “evil of parish pay to supplement earnings,” and recommended employers to revert to the uniform price list which the men had gained in 1810.[166] Finally we have the employers themselves publicly denouncing the ruinous extent to which the cutting of wages had been carried. A declaration dated June 16, 1819, and signed by fourteen Lancashire manufacturers, [Pg 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 calico-printing firms append an emphatic approval of the protest, and state “that the system of paying such extremely low wages for manufacturing labour is injurious to the trade at large.”[167] At Coventry the ribbon manufacturers combined with the Weavers’ Provident Union to maintain a general adherence to the agreed list of prices, and in 1819 subscribed together no less than £16,000 to cover the cost of proceedings with this object. This combination formed the subject of an indictment at Warwick Assizes, which put an end to the association, the remaining funds being handed over to the local “Streets Commissioners” for paving the city. These protests and struggles of the better employers were in vain. Rates were reduced and strikes occurred all over the country, and were met, not by redress or sympathy, but by an outburst of prosecutions and sentences of more than the usual ferocity. The common law and ancient statutes were ruthlessly used to supplement the Combination Acts, often by strained constructions. The Scotch judges in particular, as an eminent Scotch jurist declared to the Parliamentary Committee in 1824, applied the criminal procedure of Scotland to cases of simple combination, from 1813-19, in a way that he, on becoming Lord Advocate, refused to countenance.[168] The workers, on attempting some spasmodic preparations for organised political agitation, were further coerced, in 1819, by the infamous “Six Acts,” which at one blow suppressed practically all public meetings, enabled the magistrate to search for arms, subjected all working-class publications to the crushing stamp duty, and rendered more stringent the law relating to seditious libels. The whole system of repression which had characterised the [Pg 96] statesmanship of the Regency culminated at this period in a tyranny not exceeded by any of the monarchs of the “Holy Alliance.” The effect of this tyranny was actually to shield the Combination Laws by turning the more energetic and enlightened working-class leaders away from all specific reforms to a thorough revolution of the whole system of Parliamentary representation. Hence there was no popular movement whatever for the repeal of the Combination Laws. If we were writing the history of the English working class instead of that of the Trade Union Movement, we should find in William Cobbett or “Orator” Hunt, in Samuel Bamford or William Lovett, a truer representative of the current aspirations of the English artisan at this time than in the man who now came unexpectedly on the scene to devise and carry into effect the Trade Union Emancipation of 1824.

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

It was in watching the effect of the Combination Laws in his own trade that Place became converted to their repeal. The special laws of 1720 and 1767, fixing the wages of journeymen tailors, as well as the general law of 1800 against all combinations, had failed to regulate wages, to prevent strikes, or to hinder those masters who wished in times of pressure to engage skilled men, from offering the bribe of high piecework rates, or even time wages in excess of the legal limit. Place gave evidence as a master tailor before the Select Committee of the House of Commons which inquired into the subject in 1810; and it was chiefly his weighty testimony in favour of freedom of contract that averted the fresh legal restrictions which a combination of employers was then openly promoting.[170] This experience of the practical freedom of employers to combine intensified Place’s sense of the injustice of denying a like freedom to the journeymen, whilst the brutal prosecution [Pg 98] of the compositors of the Times in the same year brought home to his mind the severity of the law. Four years later (1814), as he himself tells us, he “began to work seriously to procure a repeal of the laws against combinations of workmen, but for a long time made no visible progress.” The employers were firmly convinced that combinations of wage-earners would succeed in securing a great rise of wages, to the serious detriment of profits. Far from contemplating a repeal of the Act of 1800, they were in 1814 and 1816 pestering the Home Secretary for legislation of greater stringency as the only safeguard for their “freedom of enterprise.”[171] The politicians were equally certain that Trade Union action would raise prices, and thus undermine the foreign trade upon which the prosperity and international influence of England depended. The working men themselves afforded in the first instance no assistance. Those who had suffered legal prosecution were hopeless of redress from an unreformed Parliament, and offered no support. One trade, the Spitalfields silk-weavers, supported the Government because they enjoyed what they deemed to be the advantage of legal protection from the lowering of wages by competition.[172] Others were suspicious of the intervention of one who was himself an employer, and who had not yet gained recognition as a friend to labour. But Place was undismayed by hostility and indifference. Knowing that with an English public the strength of his cause would lie, not in any abstract [Pg 99] reasoning or appeal to natural rights, but in an enumeration of actual cases of injustice, he made a point of obtaining the particulars of every trade dispute. He intervened, as he says, in every strike, sometimes as a mediator, sometimes as an ally of the journeymen. He opened up a voluminous correspondence with Trade Unions throughout the kingdom, and wrote innumerable letters to the newspapers. In 1818 he secured a useful medium in the Gorgon,[173] a little working-class political newspaper, started by one Wade, a woolcomber, and subsidised by Bentham and Place himself. This gained him his two most important disciples, eventually the chief instruments of his work, J. R. McCulloch and Joseph Hume. McCulloch, afterwards to gain fame as an economist, was at that time the editor of the Scotsman, perhaps the most important of the provincial newspapers. A powerful article based on Place’s facts which he contributed to the Edinburgh Review in 1823 secured many converts; and his constant advocacy gave Place’s idea a weight and notoriety which it had hitherto lacked. Joseph Hume was an even more important ally. His acknowledged position in the House of Commons as one of the leaders of the growing party of Philosophic Radicalism gained for the repeal movement a steadily increasing support with advanced members of Parliament. Among a certain section in the House the desirability of freedom of combination began to be discussed; presently it was considered practicable; and soon many came to regard it as an inevitable outcome of their political creed. In 1822 Place thought the time ripe for action; and Hume accordingly gave notice of his intention to bring in a Bill to repeal all the laws against combinations.

Place’s manuscripts and letters contain a graphic account of the wire-pullings and manipulations of the next two years.[174] In these contemporary pictures of the inner [Pg 100] workings of the Parliamentary system we watch Hume cajoling Huskisson and Peel into granting him a Select Committee, staving off the less tactful proposals of a rival M.P.,[175] and finally, in February 1824, packing the Committee of Inquiry at length appointed. Hume, with some art, had included in his motion three distinct subjects—the emigration of artisans, the exportation of machinery and combinations of workmen, all of which were forbidden by law. To Place and Hume the repeal of the Combination Laws was the main object; but Huskisson and his colleagues regarded the Committee as primarily charged with an inquiry into the possibility of encouraging the rising manufacture of machinery, which was seriously hampered by the prohibition of sales to foreign countries. Huskisson tried to induce Hume to omit from the Committee’s reference all mention of the Combination Laws, evidently regarding them as only a minor and unimportant part of the inquiry. But Place and Hume were now masters of the situation; and for the next few months they devoted their whole time to the management of the Committee. At first no one seems to have had any idea that its proceedings were going [Pg 101] to be of any moment; and no trouble was taken by the Ministry with regard to its composition. “It was with difficulty,” writes Place, “that Mr. Hume could obtain the names of twenty-one members to compose the Committee; but when it had sat three days, and had become both popular and amusing, members contrived to be put upon it; and at length it consisted of forty-eight members.”[176] Hume, who was appointed chairman, appears to have taken into his own hands the entire management of the proceedings. A circular explaining the objects of the inquiry was sent to the mayor or other public officer of forty provincial towns, and appeared in the principal local newspapers. Public meetings were held at Stockport and other towns to depute witnesses to attend the Committee.[177] Meanwhile Place, who had by this time acquired the confidence of the chief leaders of the working class, secured the attendance of artisan witnesses from all parts of the kingdom. Read in the light of Place’s private records and daily correspondence with Hume, the proceedings of this “Committee on Artisans and Machinery” reveal an almost perfect example of political manipulation. Although no hostile witness was denied a hearing, it was evidently arranged that the employers who were favourable to repeal should be examined first, and that the preponderance of evidence should be on their side. And whilst those interests which would have been antagonistic to the repeal were neither professionally represented nor deliberately organised, the men’s case was marshalled with admirable skill by Place, and fully brought out by Hume’s examination. Thus the one acted as the Trade Unionists’ Parliamentary solicitor, and the other as their unpaid counsel. [178]

[Pg 102]

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

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

From Westminster Hall we are transported, by these private notes for Hume’s use, all now preserved in the British Museum, into the back parlour of the Charing Cross shop, where the London and provincial artisan witnesses came for their instructions. “The workmen,” as Place tells us, “were not easily managed. It required great care and pains not to shock their prejudices so as [Pg 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 everything with them most carefully, to arrange and prepare everything, and so completely did these things occupy my time that for more than three months I had hardly any rest.” [181]

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

Place and Hume had, however, been rather too clever. Whilst the governing classes were quite unconscious that any important alteration of law or policy had taken place, the unlooked-for success of Place’s agitation produced, as Nassau Senior describes, “a great moral effect” in all the industrial centres. “It confirmed in the minds of the [Pg 104] operatives the conviction of the justice of their cause, tardily and reluctantly, but at last fully, conceded by the Legislature. That which was morally right in 1824 must have been so, they would reason, for fifty years before.... They conceived that they had extorted from the Legislature an admission that their masters must always be their rivals, and had hitherto been their oppressors, and that combinations to raise wages, and shorten the time or diminish the severity of labour, were not only innocent, but meritorious.”[184] Trade Societies accordingly sprang into existence or emerged into aggressive publicity on all sides. A period of trade inflation, together with a rapid rise in the price of provisions, favoured a general increase of wages. For the next six months the newspapers are full of strikes and rumours of strikes. Serious disturbances occurred at Glasgow, where the employers had been exceptionally oppressive, where the cotton operatives committed several outrages, and where a general lock-out took place. The cotton-spinners were once more striking in the Manchester district. The shipping trade of the North-East Coast was temporarily paralysed by a strong combination of the seamen on the Tyne and Wear, who refused to sail except with Unionist seamen and Unionist officers. The Dublin trades, then the best organised in the kingdom, ruthlessly enforced their bye-laws for the regulation of their respective industries, and formed a joint committee, the so-called “Board of Green Cloth,” whose dictates became the terror of the employers. The Sheffield operatives have to be warned that, if they persist in demanding double the former wages for only three days a week work, the whole industry of the town will be ruined.[185] The London shipwrights insisted on what their employers considered the preposterous demand for a “book of rates” for piecework. The London coopers demanded a revision of their wages, which led to a long-sustained [Pg 105] conflict. In fact, as a provincial newspaper remarked a little later, “it is no longer a particular class of journeymen at some single point that have been induced to commence a strike for an advance of wages, but almost the whole body of the mechanics in the kingdom are combined in the general resolution to impose terms on their employers.” [186]

The opening of the session of 1825 found the employers throughout the country thoroughly aroused. Hume and Place had in vain preached moderation, and warned the Unions of the danger of a reaction. The great shipowning and shipbuilding interest, which had throughout the century preserved intact its reputation for unswerving hostility to Trade Unionism, had possession of the ear of Huskisson, then President of the Board of Trade and member for Liverpool. Early in the session he moved for a committee of inquiry into the conduct of the workmen and the effect of the recent Act, which, he complained, had been smuggled through the House without his attention having been called to the fact that it went far beyond the mere repeal of the special statutes against combinations.[187] This time the composition of the committee was not left to chance, or to Hume’s manipulation. The members were, as Place complains, selected almost exclusively from the Ministerial benches, twelve out of the thirty being placemen, and many being representatives of rotten boroughs. Huskisson, [Pg 106][188] Peel, and the Attorney-General themselves took part in its proceedings; Wallace, the Master of the Mint, was made chairman, and Hume alone represented the workmen. Huskisson regarded the Committee as merely a formal preliminary to the introduction of the Bill which the shipping interest had drafted,[189] under which Trade Unions, and even Friendly Societies, would have been impossible. For the inner history of this Committee we have to rely on Place’s voluminous memoranda, and Hume’s brief notes to him. According to these, the original intention was to call only a few employers as witnesses, to exclude all testimony on the other side, and promptly to report in favour of the repressive measure already prepared. Place, himself an expert in such tactics, met them by again supplying Hume daily with detailed information which enabled him to cross-examine the masters and expose their exaggerations. And, if Place’s account of the animus of the Committee and the Ministers against himself be somewhat highly coloured, we have ample evidence of the success with which he guided the alarmed Trade Unions to take effectual action in their own defence. His friend John Gast, secretary to the London Shipwrights, called for two delegates from each trade in the metropolis, and formed a committee which kept up a persistent agitation against any re-enactment of the Combination Laws. Similar committees were formed at Manchester and Glasgow by the cotton operatives, at Sheffield by the cutlers, and at Newcastle by the seamen and shipwrights. Petitions, the draft of which appears in Place’s manuscripts, poured in to the Select Committee and to both Houses. If we are to believe Place, the passages leading to the committee-room were carefully kept thronged by crowds of workmen insisting on being examined to rebut the accusations of the employers, and waylaying individual members to whom they explained their grievances. All this [Pg 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. [190] The net result of the inquiry was, on the whole, satisfactory. The Select Committee found themselves compelled to hear a certain number of workmen witnesses, who testified to the good results of the Act of the previous year. The ship-owners’ Bill was abandoned, and the House of Commons was recommended to pass a measure which nominally re-established the general common-law prohibition of combinations, but specifically excepted from prosecution associations for the purpose of regulating wages or hours of labour. The master shipbuilders were furious at this virtual defeat. The handbill is still extant which they distributed at the doors of the House of Commons on the day of the second reading of the emasculated Bill.[191] They declared that its provisions were quite insufficient to save their industry from destruction. If Trade Unions were to be allowed to exist at all, they demanded that these bodies should be compelled to render full accounts of their expenditure to the justices in Quarter Sessions, and that any diversion of monies raised for friendly society purposes should be severely punished. They pleaded, moreover, that at any rate all federal or combined action among trade clubs should be prohibited. Place and Hume, on the other hand, were afraid, and subsequent events proved with what good grounds, that the narrow limits of the trade combinations allowed by the Bill, and still more the vague terms “molest” and “obstruct,” which it contained, would be used as weapons against Trade Unionism. The Government, however, held to the draft of the Committee. [Pg 108] The shipbuilders secured nothing. Hume induced Ministers to give way on some verbal points, and took three divisions in vain protest against the measure. Place carried on the agitation to the House of Lords, where Lord Rosslyn extracted the concession of a right of appeal to Quarter Sessions, which was afterwards to prove of some practical value.

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

It is a suggestive feature of this, as of other great reforms, that the men whose faith in its principle, and whose indefatigable industry and resolution carried it through, were the only ones who proved altogether mistaken as to its practical consequences. If we read the lesson of the century aright, the manufacturer was not wholly wrong when he protested that liberty of combination must make the workers the ultimate authority in industry, although his narrow fear as to the driving away of capital and commercial skill and the reduction of the nation to a dead level of anarchic pauperism were entirely contradicted by subsequent developments. And the workman, to whom liberty to combine opened up vistas of indefinite advancement of [Pg 109] his class at the expense of his oppressors, was, we now see, looking rightly forward, though he, too, greatly miscalculated the distance before him, and overlooked many arduous stages of the journey. But what is to be said of the forecasts of Place and the Philosophic Radicals? “Combinations,” writes Place to Sir Francis Burdett in 1825, “will soon cease to exist. Men have been kept together for long periods only by the oppressions of the laws; these being repealed, combinations will lose the matter which cements them into masses, and they will fall to pieces. All will be as orderly as even a Quaker could desire.... He knows nothing of the working people who can suppose that, when left at liberty to act for themselves without being driven into permanent associations by the oppression of the laws, they will continue to contribute money for distant and doubtful experiments, for uncertain and precarious benefits. If let alone, combinations—excepting now and then, and for particular purposes under peculiar circumstances—will cease to exist.” [194]

It is pleasant to feel that Place was right in regarding the repeal as beneficial and worthy of his best efforts in its support; but in every less general respect he and his allies were as wrong as it was possible for them to be. The first disappointment, however, came to the workmen. Over and over again they had found their demands for higher wages parried only by the employers’ resort to the law, and they now saw the way clear before them for an organised attack upon their masters’ profits. Trades which had not yet enjoyed permanent combinations began to organise in the expectation of raising their wages to the level of those of their more fortunate brethren. The Sheffield shop-assistants combined to petition for early closing.[195] The cotton-weavers of Lancashire met in delegate meeting at Manchester in August 1824 to establish a permanent organisation to prevent reductions in prices and to secure [Pg 110] a uniform wage, the notice stating that it was by their secret combinations that the tailors, joiners, and spinners had succeeded in keeping up wages.[196] In the same month the Manchester dyers turned out for an advance, and paraded the streets, which they had placarded with their proposals.[197] The Glasgow calender-men struck for a regular twelve hours’ day, and carried their point. The success of the shipwrights on the north-east coast[198] induced the London shipwrights to convert their “Committee for conducting the Business in the North” into the “Shipwrights’ Provident Union of the Port of London,” which existed continuously until its absorption in the twentieth century by the national society dominating the trade.

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

[Pg 111]

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

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

During the greater part of the following year all Lancashire was convulsed by incessant strikes of coal-miners and textile workers against the repeated reductions of wages to [Pg 112] which the employers resorted—strikes which were marred by serious disorder, the destruction of many hundreds of looms, and severe repression by the troops. [204]

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

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

THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD
[1829-1842]

So far we have been mainly concerned with societies formed in particular trades, nearly always confined to particular localities, and known as institutions, associations, trade clubs, trade societies, unions, and union societies. We have by anticipation applied the term Trade Union to them in its modern sense; but in no case that we have discovered did they call themselves so. It is in the leading articles of the newspapers of 1830-4 that we first come upon references to some great Power of Darkness vaguely described as “the Trades Union.” We find, moreover, that there was in that day, as there has been repeatedly since, an Old Unionism and a New Unionism, and that “the Trades Union” represented the New Unionism, and the trade club, or Trade Union, as we have called it, the Old. The distinction between a Trade Union and a Trades Union is exactly that which the names imply. A Trade Union is a combination of the members of one trade; a Trades Union is a combination of different trades. “The Trades Union,” the bugbear of the Times in 1834, means the ideal at which the Trades Unionists aimed: that is, a complete union of all the workers in the country in a single national Trades Union. The peculiar significance of Trades Union as distinguished from Trade Union must be carefully borne in [Pg 114] mind throughout this chapter, as it has passed out of use and occurs now only as a literary blunder. Our present unions of workers in different though related trades are usually called Amalgamations or Federations. But both Amalgamations and Federations, being definitely limited to similar or related and interdependent trades, are in idea essentially Trade Unions. The distinctive connotation of the term Trades Union was the ideal of complete solidarity of all wage-workers in “One Big Union”—that is to say, a single “universal” organisation. It is the attempt, on the part of the Trade Union leaders, to form not only national societies of particular trades, but also to include all manual workers in one comprehensive organisation, that constitutes the New Unionism of 1829-34. [207]

We are not altogether without information as to the genesis of the idea. The first attempt at a General Trades Union of which we have any record is that of the “Philanthropic Society” or “Philanthropic Hercules” of 1818. This we hear of almost simultaneously in Manchester, the Potteries and London, though it seems to have originated in first-named town. A meeting of workmen of various trades, held at Manchester in August 1818, convinced of the impotence of isolated Trade Clubs, sought to establish a society on a federal basis, each constituent trade raising its own funds and separately moving for advances or resisting reductions; but pledged first to consult the committee [Pg 115] and the other trades, and promised the support of all, both in approved trade movements and in case of legal prosecution or oppression. A committee of eleven was to be chosen by ballot, one-third retiring monthly by rotation; and was to be assisted by a similar local organisation in each town.[208] How far the “General Union,” as the “Philanthropic Society” seems also to have been called, got under way in Lancashire or Staffordshire remains uncertain; but in London the idea was taken up by one of the ablest Trade Unionists of the time—the shipwright John Gast, whom we have already mentioned as an ally of Francis Place, who became president and called upon “the general body of mechanics” to subscribe a penny per week to a central fund for the defence of their common interests. [209]

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

What was aimed at is clear enough. It was being recommended to the workmen by some of their intellectual advisers. An able pamphlet of 1827 tells them that “Against the competition of the underpaid of surrounding trades, the ready remedy is a central union of all the general [Pg 116] unions of all the trades of the country. The remuneration of all the different branches of artisans and mechanics in the country might then be fixed at those rates which would leave such an equalised remuneration to all as would take away any temptation from those in one branch to transfer their skill in order to undersell the labour of the well-remunerated in another branch: the Central Union fund being always ready to assist the unemployed in any particular branch, when their own local and general funds were exhausted; provided always their claims to support were by the Central Union deemed to be just.” [211]

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

The Cotton-spinners’ trade clubs of Lancashire date apparently from 1792, and they spread, within a generation, to thirty or forty towns, remaining always strictly local organisations. In the early years of the nineteenth century attempts had been made by the Glasgow Spinners to unite the Lancashire and Scottish organisations in a national association; but these attempts had not resulted in more than temporary alliances in particular emergencies. The rapid improvement of spinning machinery, and the enterprise of the Lancashire millowners, were, at the date of the repeal of the Combination Laws, shifting the centre [Pg 117] of the trade from Glasgow to Manchester; and it was the Lancashire Cotton-spinners who now took the lead in trade matters. The failure of a disastrous six months’ strike in 1829 at Hyde, near Manchester, led to the conviction that no local Union could succeed against a combination of employers; and the spinners’ societies of England, Scotland, and Ireland were therefore invited to send delegates to a conference to be held at Ramsay, in the Isle of Man, in the month of December 1829.

This delegate meeting, of which there is an excellent report,[212] lasted for nearly a week. The proceedings were of a remarkably temperate character, the discussions turning chiefly on the relative advantages of one supreme executive to be established at Manchester, and three co-equal national executives for England, Scotland, and Ireland. No secrecy was attempted. John Doherty,[213] secretary and leader of [Pg 118] the Manchester Cotton-spinners, advocated a central executive; while Thomas Foster (a man of independent means who attended the conference at his own expense) favoured a scheme of home rule. Eventually a “Grand General Union of the United Kingdom” was established, subject to an annual delegate meeting and three national committees. The union was to include all male spinners and piecers, the women and girls being urged to form separate organisations, which were to receive all the aid of the whole confederation in supporting them to obtain “men’s prices.” The union was to promote local action for a further legislative restriction of the hours of labour, to apply to all persons under 21 years of age. Its income consisted of a contribution of a penny per week per member, to be levied in addition to the contribution to the local society. Doherty was general secretary, and Foster and a certain Patrick McGowan were appointed to organise the spinners throughout the United Kingdom.

The Boroughreeve and Constables of Manchester, on May 26, 1830, wrote in alarm to Sir Robert Peel: “The combination of workmen, long acknowledged a great evil, and one most difficult to counteract, has recently assumed so formidable and systematic a shape in this district that we feel it our duty to lay before you some of its most alarming features.... A committee of delegates from the operative spinners of the three Kingdoms have established an annual assembly in the Isle of Man to direct the proceedings of the general body towards their employers, the orders for which they promulgate to their respective districts and subcommittees. To these orders the most implicit deference [Pg 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 impolitic, they have employed it in detail, against particular individuals or districts, who, attacked thus singly, are frequently compelled to submit to their terms rather than to the ruin which would ensue to many by allowing their machinery (in which their whole capital is invested) to stand idle.” [214]

Whether this Cotton-spinners’ Federation, as we should call it, became really representative of the three kingdoms does not appear. A second general delegate meeting was held at Manchester in December 1830, which intervened in the great spinners’ strike then in progress at Ashton-under-Lyne. At this conference the constitution of 1829 was re-enacted with some alterations. The three national executives were apparently replaced by an executive council of three members elected by the Manchester Society, to be reinforced at its monthly meetings by two delegates chosen in turn by each of the neighbouring districts. A general delegate meeting seems also to have been held, attended by one delegate from each of the couple of scores of towns in which there were local clubs.[215] Foster was appointed general secretary; and a committee was ordered to draw up a general list of prices, for which purpose one member in each mill was directed to send up a copy of the list by which he was paid. Although another delegate meeting of this “Grand General Union” was fixed for Whit Monday 1831 at Liverpool, no further record of its existence can be traced. It is probable that the attempt to include Scotland and Ireland proved a failure, and that the union had dwindled [Pg 120] into a federation of Lancashire societies, mainly preoccupied in securing a legislative restriction of the hours of labour. [216]

But the National Union of Cotton-spinners prepared the way for the more ambitious project of the Trades Union. Doherty, who seems to have resigned his official connection with the Cotton-spinners’ Union, conceived the idea of a National Association, not of one trade alone, but of all classes of wage-earners. Already in May 1829 we find him, as Secretary of the Manchester Cotton-spinners, writing to acknowledge a gift of ten pounds from the Liverpool Sailmakers, and expressing “a hope that our joint efforts may eventually lead to a Grand General Union of all trades throughout the United Kingdom.”[217] At his instigation a meeting of delegates from twenty organised trades was held at Manchester in February 1830, which ended in the establishment, five months later, of the National Association for the Protection of Labour. The express object of this society was to resist reductions, but not to strike for advances. In an eloquent address to working men of all trades, the new Association appealed to them to unite for their own protection and in order to maintain “the harmony of society” which is destroyed by their subjection. How is it, the Association asks, that whilst everything else increases—knowledge, wealth, civil and religious liberty, churches, madhouses, and prisons—the circumstances of the working man become ever worse? “He, the sole producer of food and raiment, is, it appears, destined to sink whilst others rise.” To prevent this evil [Pg 121] the Association is formed.[218] Its constitution appears to have been largely borrowed from that of the contemporary Cotton-spinners, which it resembled in being a combination, not of directly enlisted individuals, but of existing separate societies, each of which paid an entrance fee of a pound, together with a shilling for each of its members, and contributed at the rate of a penny per week per head of its membership. Doherty was the first secretary, and the Association appears very soon to have enrolled about 150 separate Unions, mostly in Lancashire, Cheshire, Derby, Nottingham, and Leicester. The trades which joined were mainly connected with the various textile industries—the cotton-spinners, hosiery-workers, calico-printers, and silk-weavers taking a leading part. The Association also included numerous societies of mechanics, moulders, black-smiths, and many miscellaneous trades. The building trades were scarcely represented—a fact to be accounted for by the contemporary existence of the Builders’ Union hereafter described. The list[219] of the receipts of the Association for the first nine months of its existence includes payments amounting to £1866, a sum which indicates a membership of between 10,000 and 20,000, spread over the five counties already mentioned. A vigorous propaganda was carried on throughout the northern and midland counties by its officials, who succeeded in establishing a weekly paper, the United Trades Co-operative Journal, which was presently brought to an end by the intervention of the Commissioners of Stamps, who insisted on each number bearing a fourpenny stamp.[220] Undeterred by this failure, the committee undertook the more serious task of starting a sevenpenny stamped weekly, and requested Francis Place [Pg 122] to become the treasurer of an accumulated fund. “The subscription,” writes Place to John Cam Hobhouse, December 5, 1830, “extends from Birmingham to the Clyde; the committee sits at Manchester; and the money collected amounts to about £3000, and will, they tell me, shortly be as much as £5000, with which sum, when raised, they propose to commence a weekly newspaper to be called the Voice of the People.” Accordingly in January 1831 appeared the first number of what proved to be an excellent weekly journal, the object of which was declared to be “to unite the productive classes of the community in one common bond of union.” Besides full weekly reports of the committee meetings of the National Association at Manchester and Nottingham, this newspaper, ably edited by John Doherty, gave great attention to Radical politics, including the Repeal of the Union with Ireland, and the progress of revolution on the Continent. [221]

From the reports published in the Voice of the People we gather that the first important action of the Association was in connection with the almost continuous strikes of the cotton-spinners at Ashton-under-Lyne, which flamed up into a sustained conflict on a large scale, during which Ashton, a young millowner, was murdered by some unknown person in the winter of 1830-31, in resistance to a new list of prices arbitrarily imposed by the Association of Master Spinners in Ashton, Dukinfield, and Stalybridge.[222] Considerable sums were raised by way of levy for the support of the strike, the Nottingham trades subscribing liberally. But the Association soon experienced a check. In February 1831 a new secretary decamped with £100. This led a delegate meeting at Nottingham, in April 1831, to decree that each Union should retain in hand the money contributed by its own members. But the usual failings of unions of various trades quickly showed themselves. [Pg 123] The refusal of the Lancashire branches to support the great Nottingham strike which immediately ensued led to the defection of the Nottingham members. Nevertheless the Association was spreading over new ground. We hear of delegates from Lancashire inducing thousands of colliers in Derbyshire to join, whilst other trades, and even the agricultural labourers, were talking about it.[223] At the end of April a delegate meeting at Bolton, representing nine thousand coalminers of Staffordshire, Yorkshire, Cheshire, and Wales, resolved to join. The Belfast trades applied for affiliation. In Leeds nine thousand members were enrolled, chiefly among the woollen-workers. Missionaries were sent to organise the Staffordshire potters; and a National Potters’ Union, extending throughout the country, was established and affiliated. All this activity lends a certain credibility to the assertion, made in various quarters, that the Association numbered one hundred thousand members, and that the Voice of the People, published at 7d. weekly, enjoyed the then enormous circulation of thirty thousand.

Here at last we have substance given to the formidable idea of “the Trades Union.” It was soon worked up by the newspapers to a pitch at which it alarmed the employers, dismally excited the imaginations of the middle class, and compelled the attention of the Government. But there was no cause for apprehension. Lack of funds made the Association little more than a name. Practically no trade action is reported in such numbers of its organ as are still extant. The business of the Manchester Committee seems to have been confined to the promotion of the “Short Time Bill.” On April 23, 1831, at the general meeting of the Association, then designated the Lancashire Trades Unions, it was resolved to prepare petitions in favour of extending this measure to all trades and all classes of workers. Active support was given in the meantime to Mr. Sadler’s Factory Bill. Towards the end of the year we suddenly lose all [Pg 124] trace of the National Association for the Protection of Labour, as far as Manchester is concerned. “After it had extended about a hundred miles round this town,” writes a working-class newspaper of 1832, “a fatality came upon it that almost threatened its extinction.... But though it declined in Manchester it spread and flourished in other places; and we rejoice to say that the resolute example set by Yorkshire and other places is likely once more to revive the drooping energies of those trades who had the honour of originating and establishing the Association.” [224]

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

The place of the National Association was soon filled by other contemporary general trade societies, of which the first and most important was the Builders’ Union, or [Pg 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 know, the solitary example, prior to the present century, in the history of those trades of a federal union embracing all classes of building operatives, and purporting to extend over the whole country. [226]

The Grand Rules of the Builders’ Union set forth an elaborate constitution in which it was attempted to combine a local and trade autonomy of separate lodges with a centralised authority for defensive and aggressive purposes. The rules inform us that “the object of this society shall be to advance and equalise the price of labour in every branch of the trade we admit into this society.” Each lodge shall be “governed by its own password and sign, masons to themselves, and joiners to themselves, and so on;” and it is ordered that “no lodge be opened by any [Pg 126] other lodge that is not the same trade of that lodge that, opens them, that masons open masons, and joiners open joiners, and so on;” moreover, “no other member [is] to visit a lodge that is not the same trade unless he is particularly requested.” Each trade had its own bye-laws; but these were subject to the general rules adopted at an annual delegate meeting. This annual conference of the “Grand Lodge Delegates,” better known as the “Builders’ Parliament,” consisted of one representative of each lodge, and was the supreme legislative authority, altering rules, deciding on general questions of policy, and electing the president and other officials. The local lodges, though directly represented at the annual meetings, had had apparently little connection in the interim with the seat of government. The society was divided into geographical districts, the lodges in each district sending delegates to quarterly district meetings, which elected a grand master, deputy grand master, and corresponding secretary for the district, and decided which should be the “divisional lodge,” or district executive centre. These divisional lodges or provincial centres were, according to the rules, to serve in turn as the grand lodge or executive centre for the whole society. Whether the members of the general committee were chosen by the general lodge or by the whole society is not clear; but they formed, with the president and general corresponding secretary, the national executive. The expenses of this executive and of the annual delegate meeting were levied on the whole society, each lodge sending monthly returns of its members and a summary of its finances to the general secretary. The main business of the national executive was to determine the trade policy of the Associations, and to grant or withhold permission to strike. As no mention is made of friendly benefits, we may conclude that the Builders’ Union, like most of the national or general Unions of this militant time, confined itself exclusively to defending its members against their employers.

[Pg 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 that of the Glasgow Cotton-spinners and the Northumberland Miners. The custom survived the repeal; and admission to the Builders’ Union involved a lengthy ceremony conducted by the officers of the lodge—the “outside and inside tylers,” the “warden,” the “president,” “secretary,” and “principal conductor”—and taken part in by the candidates and the members of the lodge. Besides the opening prayer, and religious hymns sung at intervals, these “initiation parts” consisted of questions and responses by the dramatis personæ in quaint doggerel, and were brought to a close by the new members taking a solemn oath of loyalty and secrecy. Officers clothed in surplices, inner chambers into which the candidates were admitted blindfolded, a skeleton, drawn sword, battle-axes, and other mystic “properties” enhanced the sensational solemnity of this fantastic performance.[227] Ceremonies of this kind, including [Pg 128] what were described to the Home Office as “oaths of a most execrable nature,”[228] were adopted by all the national and general Unions of the time: thus we find items for “washing surplices” appearing in the accounts of various lodges of contemporary societies. Although in the majority of cases the ritual was no doubt as harmless as that of the Freemasons or the Oddfellows, yet the excitement and sensation of the proceedings may have predisposed lightheaded fanatical members, in times of industrial conflict, to violent acts in the interest of the Association. At all events, the references to its mock terrors in the capitalist press seem to have effectually scared the governing classes.

The first years of the Builders’ Union, apparently, were devoted to organisation. During 1832 it rapidly spread through the Lancashire and Midland towns; and at the beginning of the following year a combined attack was made upon the Liverpool employers. The ostensible grievance of the men was the interference of the “contractor,” who, supplanting the master mason, master carpenter, etc., undertook the management of all building operations. A placard issued by the Liverpool Painters announces that they have joined “the General Union of the Artisans employed in the process of building,” in order to put down “that baneful, unjust, and ruinous system [Pg 129] of monopolising the hard-earned profits of another man’s business, called ‘contracting,’” Naturally, the little masters were not friendly to the contracting system; and most of them agreed with the men’s demand that its introduction should be resisted. Encouraged by this support, the several branches of the building trade in Liverpool simultaneously sent in identical claims for a uniform rate of wages for each class of operatives, a limitation of apprentices, the prohibition of machinery and piecework, and other requirements special to each branch of the trade. These demands were communicated to the employers in letters couched in dictatorial and even insulting terms, and were coupled with a claim to be paid wages for any time they might lose by striking to enforce their orders. “We consider,” said one of these letters, “that as you have not treated our rules with that deference you ought to have done, we consider you highly culpable and deserving of being severely chastised.” And “further,” says another, “that each and every one in such strike shall be paid by you the sum of four shillings per day for every day you refuse to comply.” [229]

[Pg 130]

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

In the very heat of the battle (September 1833) the Builders’ Union held its annual delegate meeting at Manchester. It lasted six days; cost, it is said, over £3000; and was attended by two hundred and seventy delegates, representing thirty thousand operatives. This session of the “Builders’ Parliament” attracted universal attention. Robert Owen addressed the Conference at great length, confiding to it his “great secret” “that labour is the source of all wealth,” and that wealth can be retained in the hands of the producers by a universal compact among the productive classes. It was decided, perhaps under his influence, to build central offices at Birmingham, which should also serve as an educational establishment. The design for this “Builders’ Gild Hall,” as it was termed, was made by Hansom, an architect who, as an enthusiastic disciple of Owen, threw himself heartily into the strike [Pg 131] that was proceeding also in this town. It included, on paper, a lecture-hall and various schoolrooms for the children of members. The foundation-stone was laid with great ceremony on December 5, 1833, when the Birmingham trades marched in procession to the site, and enthusiastic speeches were made. [231]

We learn from the Pioneer, or Trades Union Magazine (an unstamped penny weekly newspaper published at first at Birmingham, at that time the organ of the Builders’ Union[232]), the ardent faith and the vast pretensions of these New Unionists. “A union founded on right and just principles,” wrote the editor in the first number, “is all that is now required to put poverty and the fear of it for ever out of society.” “The vaunted power of capital will now be put to the test: we shall soon discover its worthlessness when deprived of your labour. Labour prolific of wealth will readily command the purchase of the soil; and at a very early period we shall find the idle possessor compelled to ask of you to release him from his worthless holding.” Elaborate plans were propounded for the undertaking of all the building of the country by a Grand National Gild of Builders: each lodge to elect a foreman; and the foremen to elect a general superintendent. The disappointment of these high hopes was rude and rapid. The Lancashire societies demurred to the centralisation which had been voted by the delegate meeting in September at the instigation of the Midland societies. Two great strikes at Liverpool and Manchester ended towards the close of the year in total failure. The Builders’ Gild Hall was abandoned;[233] and the Pioneer moved to London, where it became the organ of another body, the Grand National Consolidated [Pg 132] Trades Union, with which the south country and metropolitan branches of the building trade had already preferred to affiliate themselves. Nevertheless the Builders’ Union retained its hold upon the northern counties during the early months of 1834, and held another “parliament” at Birmingham in April, at which Scotch and Irish representatives were present. [234]

The aggressive activity and rapid growth of the Builders’ Union during 1832-33 had been only a part of a general upheaval in labour organisation. The Cotton-spinners had recovered from the failure of the Ashton strike (1830-31) by the autumn of 1833, when we find Doherty prosecuting with his usual vigour the agitation for an eight hours day which had been set on foot by his Society for National Regeneration. “The plan is,” writes J. Fielden (M.P. for Oldham) to William Cobbett, “that about the 1st March next, the day the said Bill (now Act) limits the time of work for children under eleven years of age to eight hours a day, those above that age, both grown persons and adults, should insist on eight hours a day being the maximum of time for them to labour; and their present weekly wages for sixty-nine hours a week to be the minimum weekly wages for forty-eight hours a week after that time”; and he proceeds to explain that the Cotton-spinners had adopted this idea of securing shorter hours by a strike rather than by legislation on Lord Althorpe’s suggestion that they should “make a short-time bill for themselves.”[235] Fielden and Robert Owen served, with Doherty, on the committee of this society, which included a few employers. The Lancashire textile trades followed the lead of the Cotton-spinners, and prepared for a “universal” [Pg 133] strike. Meanwhile their Yorkshire brethren were already engaged in an embittered struggle with their employers. The Leeds Clothiers’ Union, established about 1831, and apparently one of the constituent societies of the National Association for the Protection of Labour, bore a striking resemblance to the Builders’ Union, not only in ceremonial and constitution, but also in its policy and history.[236] In the spring of 1833 it made a series of attacks on particular establishments with the double aim of forcing all the workers to join the Union and of obtaining a uniform scale of prices. These demands were met with the usual weapon. The employers entered into what was called “the Manufacturers’ Bond,” by which they bound themselves under penalty to refuse employment to all members of the Union. The men indignantly refused to abandon the society; and a lock-out ensued which lasted some months, and was the occasion of repeated leading articles in the Times. [237]

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

How far these and other societies were joined together in any federal body is not clear. The panic-stricken references in the capitalist press to “the Trades Union,” and the vague mention in working-class newspapers of the affiliation of particular societies to larger organisations, [Pg 134] lead us to believe that during the year 1833 there was more than one attempt to form a “General Union of All Trades.” The Owenite newspapers, towards the end of 1833, are full of references to the formation of a “General Union of the Productive Classes.” What manner of association Owen himself contemplated may be learnt from his speech to the Congress of Owenite Societies in London on the 6th of October. “I will now give you,” said he, “a short outline of the great changes which are in contemplation, and which shall come suddenly upon society like a thief in the night.... It is intended that national arrangements shall be formed to include all the working classes in the great organisation, and that each department shall become acquainted with what is going on in other departments; that all individual competition is to cease; that all manufactures are to be carried on by National Companies.... All trades shall first form Associations of lodges to consist of a convenient number for carrying on the business: ... all individuals of the specific craft shall become members.”[239] Immediately after this we find in existence a “Grand National Consolidated Trades Union,” in the establishment and extraordinary growth of which the project of “the Trades Union” may be said to have culminated. This organisation seems to have actually started in January 1834. Owen was its chief recruiter and propagandist. During the next few months his activity was incessant; and lodges were affiliated all over the country. Innumerable local trade clubs were [Pg 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 “miscellaneous lodges” in places where the numbers were small, and even for “female miscellaneous lodges.” Each lodge retained its own funds, levies being made throughout the whole order for strike purposes. The Conference urged each lodge to provide sick, funeral, and superannuation benefits for its own members; and proposals were adopted to lease land on which to employ “turn-outs,” and to set up co-operative workshops. The initiation rites and solemn oath, common to all the Unions of the period, were apparently adopted.

Nothing in the annals of Unionism in this country at all approached the rapidity of the growth which ensued.[240] Within a few weeks the Union appears to have been joined by at least half a million members, including tens of thousands of farm labourers and women. This must have been in great measure due to the fact that, as no discoverable regular contribution was exacted for central expenses, the affiliation or absorption of existing organisations was very easy. Still, the extension of new lodges in previously unorganised trades and districts was enormous. Numerous missionary delegates, duly equipped with all the paraphernalia required for the mystic initiation rites, perambulated the country; and a positive mania for Trade Unionism set in. In December 1833 we are told that “scarcely a branch of trade exists in the West of [Pg 136] Scotland that is not now in a state of Union.”[241] The Times reports that two delegates who went to Hull enrolled in one evening a thousand men of various trades.[242] At Exeter the two delegates were seized by the police, and found to be furnished with “two wooden axes, two large cutlasses, two masks, and two white garments or robes, a large figure of Death with the dart and hourglass, a Bible and Testament.”[243] Shop-assistants on the one hand, and journeymen chimney-sweeps on the other, were swept into the vortex. The cabinetmakers of Belfast insisted on joining “the Trades Union, or Friendly Society, which had for its object the unity of all cabinetmakers in the three kingdoms.”[244] We hear of “Ploughmen’s Unions” as far off as Perthshire,[245] and of a “Shearman’s Union” at Dundee. And the then rural character of the Metropolitan suburbs is quaintly brought home to us by the announcement of a union of the “agricultural and other labourers” of Kensington, Walham Green, Fulham, and Hammersmith. Nor were the women neglected. The “Grand Lodge of Operative Bonnet Makers” vies in activity with the miscellaneous “Grand Lodge of the Women of Great Britain and Ireland”; and the “Lodge of Female Tailors” asks indignantly whether the “Tailors’ Order” is really going to prohibit women from making waistcoats. Whether the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union was responsible for the lodges of “Female Gardeners” and “Ancient Virgins,” who afterwards distinguished themselves in the riotous demand for an eight hours day at Oldham,[246] is not clear.

How the business of this colossal federation was actually [Pg 137] managed we do not know.[247] Some kind of executive committee sat in London, with four paid officers. The need for statesmanlike administration was certainly great. The avowed policy of the federation was to inaugurate a general expropriatory strike of all wage-earners throughout the country, not “to condition with the master-producers of wealth and knowledge for some paltry advance in the artificial money price in exchange for their labour, health, liberty, natural enjoyment, and life; but to ensure to every one the best cultivation of all their faculties and the most advantageous exercise of all their powers.” But from the very beginning of its career it found itself incessantly involved in sectional disputes for small advances of wages and reduction of hours. The mere joining of “the Trades Union” was often made the occasion of the dismissal by the employers of all those who would not sign the “document” abjuring all combinations. Thus the accession of the Leicester Hosiers in November 1833 led to a disastrous dispute, in which over 1300 men had to be supported. In Glasgow a serious strike broke out among the building trades at a time when the Calico-printers, Engineers, and Cabinetmakers were already struggling with their employers. The most costly conflict, however, which the Grand National found on its hands during the winter was that which raged at Derby, where fifteen hundred men, women, and children had been locked out by their employers for refusing to abandon the Union. The “Derby turn-outs” were at first supported, like their fellow-victims elsewhere, by contributions sent from the trade organisations in various parts of the kingdom; but it soon became evident that without systematic aid they [Pg 138] would be compelled to give way. A levy of a shilling per member was accordingly decreed by the Grand National Executive in February 1834. Arrangements were made for obtaining premises and machinery upon which to set a few of the strikers to work on their own account. The struggle ended, after four months, in the complete triumph of the employers, and the return of the operatives to work.

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

To understand such a barbarous sentence we must picture to ourselves the effect on the minds of the Government and the propertied classes of the menacing ideal of “the Trades Union,” brought home by the aggressive policy of the Unions during the last four years. Already in 1830 the formation of national and General Unions had excited the attention of the Government. “When we first came into office in November last,” writes Lord Melbourne, the Whig Home Secretary, to Sir Herbert Taylor, “the [Pg 139] Unions of trades in the North of England and in other parts of the country for the purpose of raising wages, etc., and the General Union for the same purpose, were pointed out to me by Sir Robert Peel [the outgoing Tory Home Secretary] in a conversation I had with him upon the then state of the country, as the most formidable difficulty and danger with which we had to contend; and it struck me as well as the rest of His Majesty’s servants in the same light.” [249]

To advise the Cabinet in this difficulty Lord Melbourne called in Nassau Senior, who had just completed his first term of five years as Professor of Political Economy at Oxford, and directed him to prepare, in conjunction with a legal expert named Tomlinson, a report on the situation and a plan of remedial legislation. This document throws light both on the state of mind and on the practical judgement of the trusted economist. The two commissioners appear to have made no inquiries among workmen, and to have accepted implicitly every statement, including hearsay gossip, offered by employers. The evidence thus collected naturally led to a very unfavourable conclusion. It produced, as the commissioners recite, “upon our minds the conviction that if the innocent and laborious workman and his family are to be left without protection against the cowardly ferocity by which he is now assailed; if the manufacturer is to employ his capital and the mechanist or chemist his ingenuity, only under the dictation of his short-sighted and rapacious workmen, or his equally ignorant and avaricious rivals; if a few agitators are to be allowed to command a strike which first paralyses the industry of the peculiar class of workpeople over whom they tyrannise, [Pg 140] and then extends itself in an increasing circle over the many thousands and tens of thousands to whose labour the assistance of that peculiar class of workpeople is essential;—that if all this is to be unpunished, and to be almost sanctioned by the repeal of the laws by which it was formerly punishable;—it is in vain to hope that we shall long retain the industry, the skill, or the capital on which our manufacturing superiority, and with that superiority our power and almost our existence as a nation, depends.” They accordingly conclude with a series of astounding proposals for the amendment of the law. The Act of 1825 could not conveniently be openly repealed; but its mischievous results were to be counteracted by drastic legislation. They recommend that a law should be passed clearly reciting the common law prohibitions of conspiracy and restraint of trade. The law should go on to forbid, under severe penalties, “all attempts or solicitations, combinations, subscriptions, and solicitations to combinations” to threaten masters, to persuade blacklegs, or even simply to ask workmen to join the Union.[250] Picketing, however peaceful, was to be comprehensively forbidden and ruthlessly punished. Employers or their assistants were to be authorised themselves to arrest men without summons or warrant, and hale them before any justice of the peace. The encouragement of combinations by masters was to be punished by heavy pecuniary penalties, to be recovered by any common informer. “This,” say the commissioners, “is as much as we should recommend in the first instance. But if it should be proved that the evil of the combination system cannot be subdued at a less price, ... we must recommend the experiment of confiscation,”—confiscation, that is, of the “funds subscribed for purposes of combination and deposited in Savings Banks or otherwise.” [251]

[Pg 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 considered much ourselves,” writes Lord Melbourne,[252]“and we consulted much with others as to whether the arrangements of these unions, their meetings, their communications, [Pg 142] or their pecuniary funds could be reached or in any way prevented by any new legal provisions; but it appeared upon the whole impossible to do anything effectual unless we proposed such measures as would have been a serious infringement upon the constitutional liberties of the country, and to which it would have been impossible to have obtained the consent of Parliament.”

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

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

With the authorities in this temper, their alarm at the growth of the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union may be imagined. A new legal weapon was soon discovered. At the time of the mutiny at the Nore in 1797 an Act had been passed (37 Geo. III. c. 123) severely penalising the administering of an oath by an unlawful society. In 1819, when political sedition was rife, a measure prohibiting unlawful oaths had formed one of the notorious “Six Acts.” In neither case were trade combinations aimed at, though [Pg 144] Lord Ellenborough, in an isolated prosecution in 1802,[260] had held that an oath administered by a committee of journeymen shearmen in Wiltshire came within the terms of the earlier statute. It does not seem to have occurred to any one to put the law in force against Trade Unions until the oath-bound confederacy of the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union began to make headway even in the rural villages of the South of England.

The story of the trial and transportation of the Dorchester labourers is the best-known episode of early Trade Union history.[261] The agricultural labourers of the southern counties, oppressed by the tacit combinations of the farmers and by the operation of the Corn Laws, as well as exceptionally demoralised by the Old Poor Law, had long been in a state of sullen despair. The specially hard times of 1829 had resulted in outbursts of machine-breaking, rick-burning, and hunger riots, which had been put down in 1830 by the movement of troops through the disturbed districts, and the appointment of a Special Commission of Assize to try over 1000 prisoners, several of whom were hung and hundreds transported. The whole wage-earning population of these rural districts was effectually cowed.[262] With the improvement of trade a general movement for higher [Pg 145] wages seems to have been set on foot. In 1832 we find the Duke of Wellington, as Lord-Lieutenant of Hampshire, reporting to Lord Melbourne that more than half the labourers in his county were contributing a penny per week to a network of local societies affiliated, as he thought, to some National Union. “The labourers said that they had received directions from the Union not to take less than ten shillings, and that the Union would stand by them.”[263] These societies, whatever may have been their constitution, had apparently the effect of raising wages not only in Hampshire, but also in the neighbouring counties. In the village of Tolpuddle, in Dorsetshire, as George Loveless tells us, an agreement was made between the farmers and the men, in the presence of the village parson, that the wages should be those paid in other districts. This involved a rise to ten shillings a week. In the following year the farmers repented of their decision, and successively reduced wages shilling by shilling until they were paying only seven shillings a week. In this strait the men made inquiries about “the Trades Union,” and two delegates from the Grand National visited the village. Upon their information the Lovelesses established “the Friendly Society of Agricultural Labourers,” having its “Grand Lodge” at Tolpuddle. For this village club the elaborate ritual and code of rules of one of the national orders of the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union were adopted. No secrecy seems to have been observed, for John Loveless openly ordered of the village painter a figure of “Death painted six feet high for a society of his own,”[264] with which to perform the initiation rites. The farmers took alarm, and induced the local magistrates, on February 21, 1834, to issue placards warning the labourers that any one joining [Pg 146] the Union would be sentenced to seven years’ transportation. This was no idle threat. Within three days of the publication of the notice the Lovelesses and four other members were arrested and lodged in gaol.

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

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

The Grand National Consolidated Trades Union proved to have a wider influence than the Government expected. [Pg 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.[267] The demonstration, in point of numbers, was undoubtedly a success. We learn, for instance, that the tailors alone paraded from 5000 to 7000 strong, and the master builders [Pg 148] subsequently complained that their works had been entirely suspended through their men’s participation. Over a quarter of a million signatures had been obtained to the petition, and, even on the admission of the Times, 30,000 persons took part in the procession, representing a proportion of the London of that time equivalent to 100,000 to-day. [268]

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

The Dorchester conviction had the effect of causing the oath to be ostensibly dropped out of Trade Union ceremonies, although in particular trades and districts [Pg 149] it lingered a few years longer.[271] At their “parliament” in April 1834 the Builders’ Union formally abolished the oath. The Grand National quickly adopted the same course; and the Leeds and other Unions followed suit. But the judge’s sentence was of no avail to check the aggressive policy of the Unions. Immediately after the excitement of the procession had subsided, one of the most important branches of the Grand National precipitated a serious conflict with its employers. The London tailors, hitherto divided among themselves, formed in December 1833 the “First Grand Lodge of Operative Tailors,” and resolved to demand a shortening of the hours of labour. The state of mind of the men is significantly shown by the language of their peremptory notice to the masters. “In order,” they write, “to stay the ruinous effects which a destructive commercial competition has so long been inflicting on the trade, they have resolved to introduce certain new regulations of labour into the trade, which regulations they intend shall come into force on Monday next.” A general strike ensued, in which 20,000 persons are said to have been thrown out of work, the whole burden of their maintenance being cast on the Grand National funds. A levy of eighteenpence per member throughout the country was made in May 1834, which caused some dissatisfaction; and the proceeds were insufficient to prevent the tailors’ strike pay falling to four shillings a week. The result was [Pg 150] that the men gradually returned to work on the employers’ terms. [272]

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

An even more serious blow was the lock-out of the London building trades in July 1834. These trades in London had joined the Grand Consolidated rather than the Builders’ Union; and in the summer of 1834 an act of petty tyranny on the part of a single firm brought about a general conflict. The workmen employed by Messrs. Cubitt had resolved not to drink any beer supplied by Combe, Delafield & Co., in retaliation for the refusal of that firm to employ Trade Unionists. Messrs. Cubitt thereupon refused to allow any other beer to be drunk on their premises, and locked out their workmen. The employers throughout London, angered by the Union’s resistance to sub-contract and piecework, embraced this opportunity to insist that all their employees should sign the hated “document.” The heads of the Government [Pg 151] departments in which building operatives were employed placed themselves in line with private employers by making the same demands.[275] The struggle dragged on until November 1834, when the document seems to have been tacitly withdrawn, and the men returned to work, accepting the employers’ terms on the other points at issue.[276] We learn from the correspondence of the Stonemasons’ Society that this defeat—for such it virtually was—completely broke up the organisation in the London building trade. What was happening to the Builders’ Union during these months is not clear. The federal organisation apparently broke up at about this time; and the several trades fell back upon their local clubs and national societies.

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

The Oldham operatives did indeed in April 1834 make [Pg 152] an unpremeditated attempt to secure eight hours. It happened that the local constables broke up a Trade Union meeting. A rescue took place, followed by an attack on an obnoxious mill, and the shooting of one of the rioters by a “Knobstick.” The affray provoked the Oldham working class into a spasm of insurrection. The workers in all trades, both male and female, ceased work, and held huge meetings on the Moor, where they were addressed by Doherty and others from Manchester, and demanded the eight hours day. Within a week the excitement subsided, and work was resumed. [277]

By the end of the summer it was obvious that the ambitious projects of the Grand National Consolidated and other “Trades Unions” had ended in invariable and complete failure. In spite of the rising prosperity of trade, the strikes for better conditions of labour had been uniformly unsuccessful. In July 1834 the federal organisations all over the country were breaking up. The great association of half a million members had been completely routed by the employers’ vigorous presentation of the “document.” Of the actual dissolution of the organisation we have no contemporary record, but the impression which it made on the more sober Trade Unionists may be gathered from the following description, which appeared in a working-class journal seven years afterwards. “We were present,” says the editor of the Trades Journal, “at many of the meetings of the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union, and have a distinct recollection of the excitement that prevailed in them—of the apparent determination to carry out its principles in opposition to every obstacle—of the enthusiasm exhibited by some of the speakers—of the noisy approbation of the meeting—the loud cries of ‘hear hear,’ ‘bravo,’ ‘hurra,’ ‘union for ever,’ etc. It was the [Pg 153] opinion of many at that time that little real benefit would be effected by this union, as their proceedings were indicative, not of a calm and dispassionate investigation of the causes of existing evils, but of an over-excited state of mind which would speedily evaporate, and leave them in the same condition as before. The event proved that this opinion was not ill-founded. A little mole-hill obstructed their onward progress; and rather than commence the labour of removing so puny an obstacle, they chose to turn back, each taking his own path, regardless of the safety or the interests of his neighbour. It was painful to see the deep mortification of the generals and leaders of this quickly inflated army, when left deserted and alone upon the field.” [278]

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

The records of the rise and fall of the “New Unionism” of 1830-4 leave us conscious of a vast enlargement in the ideas of the workers, without any corresponding alteration in their tactics in the field. In council they are idealists, dreaming of a new heaven and a new earth; humanitarians, educationalists, socialists, moralists: in battle they are still the struggling, half-emancipated serfs of 1825, armed only with the rude weapons of the strike and boycott; sometimes [Pg 154] feared and hated by the propertied classes; sometimes merely despised; always oppressed, and miserably poor. We find, too, that they are actually less successful with the old weapons now that they wield them with new and wider ideas. They get beaten in a rising market instead of, as hitherto, only in a falling one. And we shall soon see that they did not recover their lost advantage until they again concentrated their efforts on narrower and more manageable aims. But we have first to inquire how they came by the new ideas.

In the bad times which followed the peace of 1815 the writings of Cobbett had attained an extraordinary influence and authority over the whole of that generation of working men. His trenchant denunciation of the governing classes, and his incessant appeals to the wage-earners to assert their right to the whole administration of affairs, were inspired by the political tyranny of the anti-Jacobin reaction, the high prices and heavy taxes, and the apparent creation by “the Funding System” of an upstart class of non-producers living on the interest of the huge debt contracted by the nation during the war—evils the least of which was enough to stimulate an eager politician like Cobbett to the utmost exercise of his unrivalled power of invective. But the working classes were suffering, in addition, from a calamity which no mere politician of that time grasped, in the effects of the new machine and factory industry, which was blindly crushing out the old methods by the mere brute force of competition instead of replacing it with due order and adjustment to the human interests involved. This phenomenon was beyond the comprehension of its victims. Each of them knew what was happening to himself as an individual; but only one man—a manufacturer—seems to have understood what was happening to the entire industry of the country. This man was Robert Owen. To him, therefore, political Democracy, which was all-in-all to Cobbett and his readers, appeared quite secondary to industrial Democracy, or the co-operative ownership and control of industry answerable to the economic co-operation [Pg 155] in all industrial processes which had been brought about by machinery and factory organisation, and which had removed manufacture irrevocably from the separate firesides of independent individual producers. With Cobbett and his followers the first thing to be done was to pass a great Reform Bill, behind which, in their minds, lay only a vague conception of social change. Owen and his more enthusiastic disciples, on the other hand, were persuaded that a universal voluntary association of workers for productive purposes on his principles would render the political organisation of society of comparatively trivial account.

The disillusionment of the newly emancipated Trade Clubs in the collapse of 1825 left the working-class organisations prepared for these wider gospels. Social reform was in the air. “Concerning the misery and degradation of the bulk of the people of England,” writes a contemporary observer, “men of every order, as well as every party, unite and speak continually; farmers, parish officers, clergymen, magistrates, judges on the bench, members on either side of both Houses of Parliament, the King in his addresses to the nation, moralists, statesmen, philosophers; and finally the poor creatures themselves, whose complaints are loud and incessant.”[279] Cobbett and the Reformers had the first turn. The chief political organisation of the working classes during the Reform Bill agitation began as a trade club. In 1831 a few carpenters met at their house of call in Argyle Street, Oxford Street, to form a “Metropolitan Trades Union,” which was to include all trades, and to undertake, besides its Trade Union functions, a vague scheme of co-operative production and a political agitation for the franchise.[280] But under the influence of [Pg 156] William Lovett the last object soon thrust aside all the rest. The purely Trade Union aims were dropped; the Owenite aspirations sank into the background; and under the title of the “National Union of the Working Classes” the humble carpenters’ society expanded into a national organisation for obtaining Manhood Suffrage. As such it occupies, during the political turmoil of 1831-2, by far the largest place in the history of working-class organisation, and was largely implicated in the agitation and disturbances connected with the Reform Bill. [281]

The Reform Bill came and passed, but no Manhood Suffrage. The effect of this disappointment at the hands of the most advanced political party in the country is thus described by Francis Place, now become an outside observer of the Trade Union Movement. “The year (1833) ended leaving the (National) Union (of the Working Classes) in a state of much depression. The nonsensical doctrines preached by Robert Owen and others respecting communities and goods in common; abundance of everything man ought to desire, and all for four hours’ labour out of every twenty-four; the right of every man to his share of the earth in common, and his right to whatever his hands had been employed upon; the power of masters under the present system to give just what wages they pleased; the right of the labourer to such wages as would maintain him and his in comfort for eight or ten hours’ labour; the right of every man who was unemployed to employment and to such an amount of wages as have been indicated—and other matters of a similar kind which were continually inculcated by the working men’s political unions, by many small knots of persons, printed in small pamphlets and handbills which were sold twelve for a penny and distributed to a great extent—had pushed politics aside ... among the working people. These pamphlets were written almost wholly by men of talent and of some standing in the world, [Pg 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 considerable advance in wages all round, but employment for every one, man and woman, who needed it, at short hours. This notion induced them to form themselves into Trades Unions in a manner and to an extent never before known.” [282]

This jumble of ordinary Trade Union aims and communist aspirations, described from the hostile point of view of a fanatical Malthusian and staunch believer in the “Wage Fund,” probably fairly represents the character of the Owenite propaganda. It made an ineradicable impression on the working-class leaders of that generation, and inspired the great surge of solidarity which rendered possible the gigantic enlistments of the Grand National, with its unprecedented regiments of agricultural labourers and women. Its enlargement of consciousness of the working class was no doubt a good in itself which no mistakes in practical policy could wholly cancel.[283] But Owen did [Pg 158] mischief as well as good; and as both the evil and the good live after him—for nothing that Owen did can yet be said to be interred with his bones—it is necessary to examine his Trade Union doctrine in some detail. He was at his best when, as the experienced captain of industry, he denounced with fervent emphasis that lowering of the Standard of Life which was the result of the creed of universal competition. It was to combat this that he advocated Factory Legislation, and promoted combinations “to fix a maximum time and a minimum wages”; and it was by thus attempting to secure the workers’ Standard of Life by legislation and Trade Union action that he gained the influential support, not only of philanthropists, but also of certain high-minded manufacturers, with whose aid he formed in December 1833 the “Society for National Regeneration,”[284] to which we have already referred. The most definite proposal of this society, the shortening of the hours of labour to eight per day, was what led to that suggestion of Fielden’s on which the Lancashire cotton operatives acted in their abortive general strike for an eight hours day. It also produced the long series of “Short Time Committees” in the textile towns whose persistent agitation eventually secured the passing of the Ten Hours Bill, itself only an instalment of our great Factory Code. History has emphatically justified Owen on this side of his labour policy.

But there was a Utopian side to it which acted more [Pg 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 abolished and ownership socialised by organising voluntary associations to supersede both the millowners and the State. He had tried the experiment in America with the famous community of New Harmony, and its failure had for the time thoroughly disgusted him with communities. But his disgust was not disillusion, for its only practical effect was to set him to repeat the experiment with the Trade Unions. Under his teaching the Trade Unionists came to believe that it was possible, by a universal non-political compact of the wage-earners, apparently through a universal expropriatory strike, to raise wages and shorten the hours of labour “to an extent,” as Place puts it, “which, at no very distant time, would give them the whole proceeds of their labour.” The function of the brain-worker as the director of industry was disregarded, possibly because in the cotton industry (in which Owen had made a fortune) it plays but an insignificant part in the actual productive processes, and is mainly concerned with that pursuit of cheap markets to buy in and dear markets to sell in which formed no part of the Utopian commonwealth at which “the Trades Union” aimed. The existing capitalists and managers were therefore considered as usurpers to be as soon as possible superseded [Pg 160] by the elected representatives of voluntary and sectional associations of producers, in which it seems to have been assumed all the brain-working technicians would be included. The modern Socialist proposal to substitute the officials of the Municipality or State was unthinkable at a period when all local governing bodies were notoriously inefficient and corrupt and Parliament practically an oligarchy. Under the system proposed by Owen the instruments of production were to become the property, not of the whole community, but of the particular set of workers who used them. “There is no other alternative,” he said, “than National Companies for each trade.... Thus all those trades which relate to clothing shall form a company—such as tailors, shoemakers, hatters, milliners, and mantua-makers; and all the different manufacturers [i.e. operatives] shall be arranged in a similar way; communications shall pass from the various departments to the Grand National establishment in London.” In fact, the Trade Unions were to be transformed into “national companies” to carry on all the manufactures.[285] The Agricultural Union was to take possession of the land, the Miners’ Union of the mines, the Textile Unions of the factories. Each trade was to be carried on by its particular Trade Union, centralised in one “Grand Lodge.”

Of all Owen’s attempts to reduce his Socialism to practice this was certainly the very worst. For his short-lived communities there was at least this excuse: that within their own area they were to be perfectly homogeneous little Communist States. There were to be no conflicting sections; and profit-making and competition were to be effectually eliminated. But in “the Trades Union,” as he conceived it, the mere combination of all the workmen in a trade as co-operative producers no more abolished commercial competition than a combination of [Pg 161] all the employers in it as a Joint Stock Company. In effect his Grand Lodges would have been simply the head offices of huge Joint Stock Companies owning the entire means of production in their industry, and subject to no control by the community as a whole. They would therefore have been in a position at any moment to close their ranks and admit fresh generations of workers only as employees at competitive wages instead of as shareholders, thus creating at one stroke a new capitalist class and a new proletariat. Further, the improvident shareholders would soon have begun to sell their shares in order to spend their capital, and thus to drop with their children into the new proletariat; whilst the enterprising and capable shareholders would equally have sold their shares to buy into other and momentarily more profitable trades. Thus there would have been not only a capitalist class and proletariat, but a speculative stock market. Finally there would have come a competitive struggle between the Joint Stock Unions to supplant one another in the various departments of industry. Thus the shipwrights, making wooden ships, would have found the boilermakers competing for their business by making iron ships, and would have had either to succumb or to transform their wooden ship capital into iron ship capital and enter into competition with the boilermakers as commercial rivals in the same trade. This difficulty was staring Owen in the face when he entered the Trade Union Movement; for the trades, then as now, were in continual perplexity as to the exact boundaries between them; for example, the minute-books of the newly formed Joiners’ Society in Glasgow (whose secretary was a leading Owenite) show that its great difficulty was the demarcation of its trade against the cabinetmaker and the engineer-patternmaker, each of whom claimed certain technical operations as proper to himself alone. In short, the Socialism of Owen led him to propose a practical scheme which was not even socialistic, and which, if it could possibly have been carried out, would have simply arbitrarily redistributed the capital of the [Pg 162] country without altering or superseding the capitalist system in the least.

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

One question, and that the most immediately important of all, was never seriously faced: How was the transfer of the industries from the capitalists to the Unions to be effected in the teeth of a hostile and well-armed Government? The answer must have been that the overwhelming numbers of “the Trades Union” would render conflict impossible. His enthusiastic disciple, William Benbow, successively a shoemaker, bookseller, and coffee-house keeper, invented the instrument of the General Strike—a sacred [Pg 164] “holiday month” prepared for and participated in by the entire wage-earning class, the mere “passive resistance” of which would, without violence or conflict, bring down all existing institutions. Whether this was in Owen’s mind in 1834, as it was, in 1839, avowedly in those of the Chartists, is uncertain.[287] At all events, Owen, like the early Christians, habitually spoke as if the Day of Judgment of the existing order of society was at hand. The next six months, in his view, were always going to see the “New Moral World” really established. The change from the capitalist system to a complete organisation of industry under voluntary associations of producers was to “come suddenly upon society like a thief in the night.” “One year,” comments his disciple, “may disorganise the whole fabric of the old world, and transfer, by a sudden spring, the whole political government of the country from the master to the servant.”[288] It is impossible not to regret that the first introduction of the English Trade Unionist to Socialism should have been effected by a foredoomed scheme which violated every economic principle of Collectivism, and left the indispensable political preliminaries to pure chance.

It was under the influence of these large plans and confident hopes that the Trade Unions were emboldened to adopt the haughty attitude and contemptuous language towards the masters which provoked Manchester and Liverpool employers to meet the challenge of the Builders’ Union by “the Document.” The “intolerable tyranny” of the Unions, so much harped on by contemporary writers, represents, to a large extent, nothing more than the rather [Pg 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 with an equally unreasonable determination by the governing classes to keep the working men in a state not merely of subjection, but of abject submission. The continued exclusion of the workmen from the franchise made constitutional action on their side impossible. The employers, on the other hand, used their political and magisterial power against the men without scruple, inciting a willing Government to attack the workmen’s combinations by every possible perversion of the law, and partiality in its administration. Regarding absolute control over the conduct of their workpeople as a sine qua non of industrial organisation, even the genuine philanthropists among them insisted on despotic authority in the factory or workshop. Against the abuse of this authority there was practically no guarantee. On the other side it can be shown that large sections of the wage-earners were not only moderate in their demands, but submissive in their behaviour. As a rule, wherever we find exceptional aggression and violence on the part of the operatives, we discover exceptional tyranny on the side of the employers. To give an example or two, the continual outrages which disgrace the annals of Glasgow Trade Unionism for the first forty years of this century are accounted for by the reports of the various Parliamentary Inquiries which mark out the Glasgow millowners as extraordinarily autocratic in their views and tyrannous in their conduct. [Pg 166] Again, the aggressive conduct of certain sections of the building trades is frequently complained of in the capitalist press between 1830-40. But the agreements which the large contractors of that time required “all those to sign who enter into their employ,” printed copies of which are still extant, show that the demands of the employers were intolerably arbitrary.[289] Then there is the case of the miners of Great Britain, who were in very ill repute for riotous proceedings from 1837-44. The provocation they received may be judged from a manifesto issued by Lord Londonderry in his dual capacity as mine-owner and Lord-Lieutenant of Durham County during the great strike of the miners in 1844 for fairer terms of hiring. He not only superintends, as Lord-Lieutenant, the wholesale eviction of the strikers from their homes, and their supersession by Irishmen specially imported from his Irish estates, but he peremptorily orders the resident traders in “his town of Seaham,” on pain of forfeiting his custom and protection, to refuse to supply provisions to the workmen engaged in what he deems “an unjust and senseless warfare against their proprietors and masters.”[290] The same intolerance [Pg 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. Combinations and strikes on the part of the “lower orders” were regarded as futile and disorderly attempts to escape from their natural position of social subservience. In short, the majority of employers, even in this time of negro emancipation, seem to have been unconsciously acting upon the dictum subsequently attributed to J. C. Calhoun, the defender of American slavery, that “the true solution of the contest of all time between labour and capital is that capital should own the labourer whether white or black.”

The closing scene of Owen’s first and last attempt at “the Trades Union” shows how ephemeral had been his participation in the real life of the Trade Union Movement. In August 1834 he called together one of his usual miscellaneous congresses, consisting of delegates from all kinds of Owenite societies, with a few from the Grand National and other Trade Unions. At this congress the “Grand National Consolidated Trades Union,” which was to have brought to its feet Government, landlords, and employers, was formally converted into the “British and Foreign Consolidated Association of Industry, Humanity, and Knowledge,” having for its aim the establishment of a “New Moral World” by the reconciliation of all classes. Beyond one or two small and futile experiments in co-operative production, it had attempted nothing to realise Owen’s Utopia. Its whole powers had been spent, seemingly with his own consent, in a series of aggressive strikes. For all that, Owen’s meteoric appearance in the Trade Union World left a deep impression on the movement. The minute-books and other contemporary records of the Trade Unions of the next decade abound in Owenite [Pg 168] phraseology, such as the classification of Society into the “idle” and the “industrious” classes, the latter apparently meaning—and being certainly understood to mean—only the manual workers. More important is the persistence of the idea that the Trade Unions, as Associations of Producers, should recover control of the instruments of production. From this time forth innumerable attempts were made, by one Trade Union or another, to employ its own members in Productive Co-operation. A long series of industrial disasters, culminating in the great losses of 1874, has, even now, scarcely eradicated the last remnant of this Joint Stock Individualism from the idealists of the Trade Union Movement; or taught them to distinguish accurately between it and the demonstrably successful Co-operative Production of the Associations of Consumers which constitute the Co-operative Movement of to-day. Outside the organised ranks his effect upon general working-class opinion was, as Place remarks, enormous, as we could abundantly show were we here concerned with the “Union Shops,” “Equitable Labour Exchanges,” and industrial communities which may be considered the most direct result of the Owenite propaganda, or with the fortunes of the innumerable co-operative associations of producers, whose delegates formed the backbone of the Owenite congresses of these years. [291]

The Trade Union Movement was not absolutely left for dead when Owen quitted the field. The skilled mechanics of the printing and engineering trades had, as we shall presently see, held aloof from the general movement, and their trade clubs were unaffected either by the Owenite boom or its subsequent collapse. In some other trades the inflation of 1830-4 spread itself over a few more years. The Potters’ Union went on increasing in strength, and in 1835 gained a notable victory over the employers, when a “Green Book of Prices” was agreed to, which long remained famous [Pg 169] in the trade. Renewed demands led to the formation by the employers of a Chamber of Commerce to resist the men’s aggression. The “yearly bond” was rigidly insisted upon, and a great strike ensued, which ended in 1837 in the complete collapse of the Union.[292] In 1836 the Scottish compositors formed the General Typographical Association of Scotland, which for a few years exercised an effective control over the trade. The same year saw a notable strike by the Preston Cotton-spinners, from which is dated the general adoption of the self-acting mule.[293] But the most permanent effect is seen in the building trades. The national Unions of Plumbers and Carpenters have preserved an unbroken existence down to the present day,[294] whilst the Friendly Society of Operative Stonemasons remained for nearly another half century one of the most powerful of English Unions. The fortnightly circulars of the English Stonemasons reveal, for a few years, not only a vigorous life and quick growth, but also many successful short strikes to secure Working Rules and to maintain Time Wages. The Scottish Stonemasons are referred to as being even more active and influential in trade regulation, and as having included practically all the Scottish masons. There is evidence, too, of informal federal action between the National Unions of Stonemasons, Carpenters, and Bricklayers. Unfortunately the absence of such modern machinery of organisation as Trades Councils, Trade Union Congresses, [Pg 170] and standing joint committees prevented the scattered sectional organisations from forming any general movement. This state of things was broken into during the year 1837 by the sensational strikes in Glasgow, the prolonged legal prosecution and severe punishment of their leaders, and the appointment of a Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry into the results of the repeal of the Combination Laws.

We do not propose to enter here into the details of the famous trial of the five Glasgow cotton-spinners for conspiracy, violent intimidation, and for the murder of fellow-workers. But it is one of the “leading cases” of Trade Union history, and the manifestations of feeling which it provoked show to the depths the state of mind of the working classes.[295] The evidence given in court, and repeated before the Select Committee of 1838, leaves no reasonable doubt that the Cotton-Spinners’ Union in its corporate capacity had initiated a reign of terror extending over twenty years, and that some of the incriminated members had been personally guilty not of instigation alone, but of actual violence, if not of murder. In spite of this, the whole body of working-class opinion was on their side, and the [Pg 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.[296] Their unjust treatment whilst awaiting trial, and still more their sentence to transportation, enlisted the sympathy of the Parliamentary Radicals, and Wakley, the member for Finsbury, did not hesitate to bring their case before the House of Commons as one of legal persecution and injustice.

At this time the trade societies of Dublin and Cork had caused serious complaint by attempting to establish, and not without violence, an effective monopoly in certain skilled industries. Their action had been reproved by Daniel O’Connell, whom they, in their turn, had repudiated and denounced. O’Connell defeated Wakley’s friendly motion for an inquiry into the cotton-spinners’ case by a serious indictment of Trade Unionism. By a clever analysis of the rules of the Irish societies, which he made out to be purely obstructive and selfish, he condemned, in a speech of great power, all attempts on the part of trade combinations to regulate the conditions of labour. The well-established methods of modern Trade Unionism, such as the maintenance of a minimum rate, received from him the same condemnation as the unsocial and oppressive [Pg 172] monopolies for which the Irish trades had long been notorious. The Government met this speech by granting a Select Committee under Sir Henry Parnell to inquire into the whole question; and Trade Unionism accordingly found itself once more on its defence as a permanent element in social organisation. The case of the Glasgow cotton-spinners and the appointment of this Parliamentary Committee for the moment revived the sentiment of solidarity in the Trade Union world. A joint committee of the Glasgow trades was formed to collect subscriptions for the defence of the prisoners; and communications for this purpose were made to all the known Trade Unions. Considerable funds were subscribed, as the trial was repeatedly postponed at great expense to the prisoners; and when at last, in January, 1838, they were convicted and sentenced, a combined agitation for some mitigation of their punishment was begun. By this time it had become known that some kind of inquiry into Trade Unionism was in contemplation. The Unions at once set their house in order. The Stonemasons, who had already given up the administration of oaths, resolved, for greater security against illegal practices, “that all forms of regalia, initiation, and passwords be dispensed with and entirely abolished.”[297] The Dublin Plasterers formally suspended their exclusive rules, and deferred the issue of a new edition until after the inquiry.[298] In Glasgow, the chief seat of the disorder, many societies—among others, the local Carpenters—deliberately burned their minute-books and archives for the past year. The London societies appointed a committee, “The London Trades Combination Committee,” to conduct the Unionist case in the Parliamentary inquiry. Lovett, then well known as a Radical politician, became secretary, and issued a stirring address to the Trade Unions throughout the country, asking for subscriptions and evidence. [Pg 173][299] But the Parliamentary Committee proved both perfunctory and inconclusive. The Government, which had conceded it merely to rid itself of the importunity of Wakley on the one hand and O’Connell on the other, had evidently no intention of taking any action on the subject; and the Committee, always thinly attended, made no attempt at a general inquiry, and confined itself practically to Dublin and Glasgow. O’Connell got the opportunity he desired of demonstrating, through selected witnesses, the violent and exclusive spirit which animated the Irish Unions. With regard to Glasgow, the chief witness was Sheriff, afterwards Sir Archibald, Alison, whose vigorous action had quelled the cotton-spinners in that city. It was scarcely necessary to call witnesses on behalf of the Unions; but John Doherty, then become a master-printer and bookseller, was allowed to describe the Manchester spinners’ organisation and the ill-fated associations of 1829-31. The inquiry resulted in nothing but the presentation to the House of two volumes of evidence, without even so much as a report. It seems to have been expected that the Committee would be reappointed to complete its task; but when the next session came the matter was quietly dropped. [300]

The temporary fillip given by the cotton-spinners’ trial and the Parliamentary Committee did not stop the steady decline of Trade Unionism throughout the country. Trade, which had been on the wane since 1836, grew suddenly worse. The decade closed with three of the leanest years ever known; and widespread distress prevailed. The membership of the surviving Trade Unions rapidly decreased. The English Stonemasons, perhaps the strongest [Pg 174] of the contemporary societies, reduced themselves, in 1841, temporarily, to absolute bankruptcy by their disastrous strike against an obnoxious foreman on the rebuilding of the Houses of Parliament. The Scottish Stonemasons’ Society, of equal or greater strength, collapsed at about the same time, from causes not known to us. The Glasgow trades had been completely disorganised by the disasters of 1837. The Lancashire textile operatives showed no sign of life; whilst such growing societies as the Ironfounders, the Journeymen Steam-Engine Makers and Millwrights, and the Boilermakers were crippled by the heavy drafts made upon their funds by unemployed members. The state of mind of the working classes was no more propitious than the state of trade. Fierce discontent and sullen anger are the characteristics of this period. Hatred of the New Poor Law, of the iniquitous taxes on food, of the general oppression by the dominant classes, blazes out in the Trade Union records of the time. The agitation for the “Six Points,” set on foot by Lovett and others in the Working Men’s Association of 1836, became the centre of working-class aspiration. The Northern Star, started at the end of 1837, rapidly distanced all other provincial journals in circulation. The lecturers of the Anti-Corn Law League increased the popular discontent, even when their own particular panacea failed to find acceptance. A general despair of constitutional reform led to the growing supremacy of the “Physical Force” section of the Chartists, and to the insurrectionism of 1839-42.

The political developments of these years are outside the scope of this work. The Chartist Movement plays the most important part in working-class annals from 1837 to 1842, and does not quit the stage until 1848. Made respectable by sincerity, devotion, and even heroism in the rank and file, it was disgraced by the fustian of many of its orators and the political and economic quackery of its pretentious and incompetent leaders whose jealousies and intrigues, by successively excluding all the nobler [Pg 175] elements, finally brought it to nought. An adequate history of it would be of extreme value to our young Democracy.[301] Here it is only necessary to say that whilst the Chartist Movement commanded the support of the vast majority of the manual-working wage-earners, outside the ranks of those who were deeply religious, there is no reason to believe that the Trade Unions at any time became part and parcel of the Movement, as they had, during 1833-4, of the Owenite agitation, though some of their members furnished the most ardent supporters of the Charter. Individual trades, such as the shoemakers, seem to have been thoroughly permeated with Chartism, and were always attempting to rally other trade societies to the cause. The angry strikes of 1842 in Lancashire and the Midlands, fostered, as some said, by the Anti-Corn Law League, were “captured” by the Chartists, and almost converted into political rebellions. The delegate meeting of the Lancashire and Yorkshire trade clubs, which was conducting the “general strike” then in progress “for the wages of 1840,” resolved in August 1842 to recommend all wage-earners “to cease work until the Charter becomes the law of the land.”[302] For a few weeks, indeed, it looked as if the Trade Union Movement, such as it was, would become merged in the political current. But the manifest absurdity of persuading starving men to remain on strike until the whole political machinery of the country had been altered, must have quickly become apparent to the shrewder Trade Unionists. When Chartist [Pg 176] meetings at Sheffield were calling for a “general strike” to obtain the Charter, the secretaries of seven local Unions wrote to the newspapers explaining that their trades had nothing to do with the meetings or the resolutions.[303] It must be remembered in this connection that the number of Trade Unionists was, in these years, relatively small—probably not so great as a hundred thousand in the whole kingdom—so that they could not have formed any appreciable proportion of the two, three or four million adherents that the Chartist leaders were in the habit of claiming. And it may be doubted whether in any case a Trade Union itself, as distinguished from particular members who happened to be delegates, made any formal profession of adherence to Chartism. In the contemporary Trade Union records that are still extant, such as those of the Bookbinders, Compositors, Ironfounders, Cotton-spinners, Steam-engine makers, and Stonemasons, there are no traces of Chartist resolutions; although denunciations of the “Notorious New Poor Law oppression” abound in the Fortnightly Circular of the Stonemasons;[304] whilst the Ironfounders, Compositors, and Cotton-spinners pass resolutions in favour of Free Trade. A partial explanation of this reticence on the more exciting topic of the Charter is doubtless to be found in the frequently adopted rule excluding politics and religion from Trade Union discussions—a rule which was, in 1842, protested against by an enthusiastic Chartist delegate from the Bookbinders at the Manchester Conference.[305] There must, however, have been something more than mere obedience to the rule in the unwillingness of the trade societies to be mixed up with the Chartist agitation. The rule had not prevented the organised trades of 1831-2

[Pg 177]

from taking a prominent part in the Reform Bill Movement. The banners of the Edinburgh trade clubs were conspicuous in the public demonstration on the rejection of the Bill of 1831. When the House of Lords gave way, the Birmingham Trade Unions themselves organised a triumphal procession, which was discountenanced by the middle class.[306] The records of the London Brushmakers show that they even subscribed from the Union funds to Reform associations. But we never find the trade societies of 1839-42 contributing to Chartist funds, or even collecting money for Chartist victims. The cases of Frost, Williams, and Jones, the Newport rebels of 1839, were least as deserving of the working-class sympathy as those of the Glasgow cotton-spinners. But the Trade Unions showed no inclination to subscribe money or get up petitions in aid of them. “Never,” writes Fergus O’Connor, in 1846, “was there more criminal apathy than that manifested by the trades of Great Britain to the sufferings of those men;” and he adds, “that if one half that was done for the Dorchester labourers or the Glasgow cotton-spinners had been done for Frost, Williams, and Jones, they would long since have been restored.” [307]

Insurrectionism, whether Owenite or Chartist, was, in fact, losing its attraction for the working-class mind. Robert Owen’s economic axioms of the extinction of profit and the elimination of the profit-maker were, during these very years, passing into the new Co-operative Movement, inaugurated in 1844 by the Rochdale Pioneers. The believers in a “new system of society,” to be brought about by universal agreement, were henceforth to be found in the ranks of the commercial-minded Co-operators rather than in those of the militant Trade Unionists. Chartism, meanwhile, had degenerated from Lovett’s high ideal of a complete political democracy to an ignoble scramble for the [Pg 178] ownership of small plots of land. The example of the French Revolution of 1848 fanned the dying embers for a few weeks into a new flame; and many of the London trades swung into the somewhat theatrical fête of April 10, 1848, swelling the procession against which the Duke of Wellington had marshalled the London middle class. But the danger of revolution had passed away. A new generation of workmen was growing up, to whom the worst of the old oppression was unknown, and who had imbibed the economic and political philosophy of the middle-class reformers. Bentham, Ricardo, and Grote were read only by a few; but the activity of such popular educationalists as Lord Brougham and Charles Knight propagated “useful knowledge” to all the members of the Mechanics’ Institutes and the readers of the Penny Magazine. The middle-class ideas of “free enterprise” and “unrestricted competition” which were thus diffused received a great impetus from the extraordinary propaganda of the Anti-Corn Law League, and the general progress of Free Trade. Fergus O’Connor and Bronterre O’Brien struggled in vain against the growing dominance of Cobden and Bright as leaders of working-class opinion. And so we find in the Trade Union records of 1847-8, that vigorous resistance begins to be made to any movement in support of the old ideals. The Steam-Engine Makers’ Society suspended some of their branches for depositing the branch funds in Fergus O’Connor’s Land Bank. When two branches of the Stonemasons’ Society propose the same investment, the others indignantly protest against it as an absurd political speculation. And it is significant that these protests came, not from the cautious elders whose enthusiasm had outlived many failures, but from those who had never shared the old faith. When in 1848 the Yorkshire Woolstaplers proposed to take a farm upon which to set to work their unemployed men, it was the younger members, as we are expressly told, who strenuously but vainly resisted this action, which resulted ruinously for the society.

[Pg 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 “amalgamated” societies of skilled artisans, with their centralised administration, friendly society benefits, and the substitution, wherever possible, of Industrial Diplomacy for the ruder methods of the Class War.

THE NEW SPIRIT AND THE NEW MODEL
[1843-1860]

We have seen the magnificent hopes of 1829-42 ending in bitter disillusionment: we shall now see the Trade Unionists of the next generation largely successful in reaching their more limited aims. Laying aside all projects of Social Revolution, they set themselves resolutely to resist the worst of the legal and industrial oppressions from which they suffered, and slowly built up for this purpose organisations which have become integral parts of the structure of a modern industrial state. This success we attribute mainly to the spread of education among the rank and file, and the more practical counsels which began, after 1842, to influence the Trade Union world. But we must not overlook the effect of economic changes. The period between 1825 and 1848 was remarkable for the frequency and acuteness of its commercial depressions. From 1850 industrial expansion was for many years both greater and steadier than in any previous period.[308] It is no mere coincidence [Pg 181] that these years of prosperity saw the adoption by the Trade Union world of a “New Model” of organisation, under which Trade Unionism obtained a financial strength, a trained staff of salaried officers, and a permanence of membership hitherto unknown.

The predominance of Chartism over Trade Unionism was confined to the bad times of 1837-42. Under the influence of the rapid improvement and comparative prosperity which followed, the Chartist agitation dwindled away; and a marked revival in Trade Unionism took effect in the re-establishment, about 1843, of the Potters’ Union, and of an active Cotton-spinners’ Association, and, in 1845, by the amalgamation of the metropolitan and provincial societies of compositors into the National Typographical Society.[309] The powerful United Flint Glass Makers’ Society (reorganised in 1849 as the Flint Glass Makers’ Friendly Society of Great Britain and Ireland) dates from the same year. Delegate meetings of other trades were held; and national societies of tailors and shoemakers were set on foot. A national conference of curriers in 1845 established a federal union of all the local clubs in the trade. But the most important of the new bodies was the Miners’ Association of Great Britain and Ireland, formed at Wakefield in 1841.[310] Up to this period the miners, held in virtual serfage by the truck system and the custom of yearly hirings, had not got beyond ephemeral strike organisations. Strong county Unions now grew up in [Pg 182] Northumberland and Durham on the one hand, and Lancashire and Yorkshire on the other; and the new body was a federation of these. Under the leadership of Martin Jude, it developed an extraordinary propagandist activity, at one time paying no fewer than fifty-three missionary organisers, who visited every coalpit in the kingdom. The delegate meetings at Manchester and Glasgow in the year 1844 soon came to represent practically the whole of the mining districts of Great Britain; and the membership rose, it is said, to at least 100,000. [311]

A leading feature of this Trade Unionist revival was a dogged resistance to legal oppression. Although the more sensational prosecutions of Trade Union leaders had ceased with the abandonment of unlawful oaths, there was still going on, up and down the kingdom, an almost continuous persecution of the rank and file, by the magistrates’ interpretation of the law relating to masters and servants. The miners, in particular, were hampered by lengthy hirings, during which they were compelled to serve if required, but were not guaranteed employment. Unskilled in legal subtleties, and not yet served by an experienced class of Trade Union secretaries, they were made the victims of a thousand and one quibbles and technicalities. The Northumberland and Durham Miners’ Union grappled with the difficulty in a thoroughly practical spirit. They engaged W. P. Roberts,[312] an able and energetic solicitor, with strong [Pg 183] labour sympathies, to light every case in the local courts. In 1844 the Miners’ Association of Great Britain and Ireland followed this excellent example by appointing Roberts their standing legal adviser at a salary of £1000 a year. When the Durham miners had to relinquish his services at the end of 1844, he was taken over by the newly formed Lancashire Miners’ Union. The “miners’ attorney-general,” as he was called, showed an indefatigable activity in the defence of his clients, and was soon retained in all Trade Union cases. The magistrates throughout the country found themselves for the first time confronted by a pertinacious legal expert, who, far more ingenious than the employers, was not less unscrupulous in taking advantage of every technicality of the law.

In a letter written to the Flint Glass Makers’ Friendly Society in 1851, Roberts himself gives a vivid picture of the difficulties against which the Unions had to contend. After explaining the law, as he understood it, he proceeds as follows: “But it is exceedingly difficult to induce those of the class opposed to you to take this view of things. I do not say this sarcastically, but as a fact learnt by long and observant experience. There are indeed men on the bench who are honest enough, and desirous of doing their duty. But all their tendencies and circumstances are against you. They listen to your opponents, not only often, but cheerfully—so they know more fully the case against you than in your favour. To you they listen too—but in a sort of temper of ‘Prisoner at the Bar, you are entitled to make any statement you think fit, and the Court is bound to hear you; but mind, whatever you say,’ etc. In the one case you observe the hearty smile of goodwill; in the other the derisive sneer, though sometimes with a ghastly sort of kindliness in it. Then there is the knowledge of your overwhelming power when acting unitedly, [Pg 184] and this begets naturally a corresponding desire to resist you at all hazards. And there are hundreds of other considerations all acting the same way—meetings, political councils, intermarriages, hopes from wills, etc. I do not say that all occupants of the bench are thus influenced, nor to the same extent; but it certainly is at the best an uphill game to contend in favour of a working man in a question which admits of any doubt against him. It never happened to me to meet a magistrate who considered that an agreement among masters not to employ any particular ‘troublesome fellow’ was an unlawful act; reverse the case, however, and it immediately becomes a formidable conspiracy, which must be put down by the strong arm of the law, etc.... When I was acting for the Colliers’ Union in the North we resisted every individual act of oppression, even in cases where we were sure of losing; and the result was that in a short time there was no oppression to resist. For it is to be observed that oppression like that we are speaking of—which after all is merely a more genteel and cowardly mode of thieving—shrinks at once from a determined and decided opposition. In the North we should have tried this case, first in the County Court, then at the Assizes, and then perhaps in the Queen’s Bench.” [313]

[Pg 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, servants, and artificers,” which the Government got referred to a committee, by which various extraordinary interpolations were made in what was at first a harmless measure.[314] Not only was any J.P. to be authorised to issue a warrant for the summary arrest of any workman complained of by his employer, but “any misbehaviour concerning such service or employment” was to be punished by two months’ imprisonment, at the discretion of a single justice. It is easy to see what a wide interpretation would have been given by many a justice of the peace to this vague phrase; and Roberts was not slow to point out the danger to his clients. Upon his incitement the delegate meeting of coal-miners at Sheffield set on foot a vigorous agitation against the Bill, which had already slipped through second reading and committee without a division. The Potters’ Union took the matter up with special vigour, and circulated draft petitions throughout the Midlands.[315] A friendly member, Thomas Slingsby Duncombe, obstructed its further progress, and got it postponed until after the Easter recess. Meanwhile petitions poured in upon the astonished House, amounting, it was said, to a total of two hundred, and representing two millions of workmen. When the Bill came on again all the Radicals and the “Young England” Tories were marshalled against it. Sir James Graham in vain protested that the Government meant nothing more than a consolidation of the existing law, and led into the lobby all his colleagues who were present, including Mr. [Pg 186] Gladstone. But the combination on the other side of Duncombe, Wakley, Hume, and Ferrand, with Tories like Lord John Manners, and a few enlightened Whigs such as C. P. Villiers, settled the fate of this attempt on the part of the employers to sharpen the blunted weapon of the law against the hated Trade Unions. [316]

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

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

This new attempt to form a National Federation originated in a suggestion from the “United Trades” of Sheffield, embodied in an able letter written to Duncombe[319] by their secretary, John Drury. Duncombe had become widely [Pg 188] known to the Trade Unionists, not only through his friendship with Fergus O’Connor, and his outspoken support of Chartism in the House of Commons, but also by his successful obstruction and defeat of the Masters and Servants Bill of the previous Session. He appears to have laid Drury’s proposals before the leading men in the London Unions, who agreed to form a committee to report on the scheme, and to summon a conference of Trade Union delegates from all parts of the country. At Easter, 1845, 110 delegates, representing not only the London trades, but also the Lancashire miners and textile operatives, the hosiery and woollen-workers of Yorkshire and the Midlands, and the “United Trades” of Manchester, Sheffield, Norwich, Hull, Bristol, Rochdale, and Yarmouth, met together in London.

The preliminary report made to the Conference by the London Committee of Trade Delegates is practically the first manifestation of that spirit of cautious if somewhat limited statesmanship which characterised the Trade Union leaders of the next thirty years.[320] The Committee, whilst recommending the immediate formation of a national organisation, “to vindicate the rights of labour,” and “to oppose the tyranny of any legislative enactments to coerce [Pg 189] trade societies, or of a similar character to the Masters and Servants Bill of last session, were deeply impressed with the importance of, and beneficial tendency arising from, a good understanding between the employer and the employed; seeing that their interests are mutual, and that neither can injure the other without the wrong perpetrated recoiling upon the party who inflicts it. They would therefore suggest it to be one of the principal objects of this Conference to cultivate a good understanding with the employer, and thereby remove those prejudices which exist against trade combinations, by showing upon all occasions that they only seek by combination to place themselves upon equal terms as disposers of their labour with those who purchase it; to secure themselves from injury, but by no means to inflict it upon others. Although the Committee are anxious that this desirable and important organisation should be carried out to the fullest possible extent, they feel that great caution must be observed in the formation of its laws and regulations, in order that the evils which existed and eventually destroyed the Consolidated Union of 1833 shall be carefully avoided. The Committee conceive it necessary to call the attention of those trades who are comparatively disunited, and whose men are consequently working for different rates of wages, to the great necessity that exists, that those who are receiving the highest wages should use every effort within their power to secure to their fellow-workmen a fair remuneration for their labour; and that every inducement should be held out by the several trade societies to their separated brethren to join them, in order that they may be the better enabled to make common cause in cases of aggression, which would be the certain result if each trade were to form itself into one well-regulated society for their mutual interests.... And, finally, the Committee would earnestly recommend to this Conference, in order that these important points may be considered and dispassionately argued, that no proposition of a political nature, beyond what has been already alluded [Pg 190] to, should be introduced, or occupy its attention; convinced as they are that the only way to carry out these desirable objects satisfactorily, and with a due consideration to the best interests of all those who are concerned, is to consider and dispose of but one question at a time: and, moreover, to keep trade matters and politics as separate and distinct as circumstances will justify.” [321]

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

[Pg 191]

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

The adjourned conference on July 28, 1845, was therefore composed, in the main, of the delegates of the smaller or less organised trades. About fifty delegates took part in the proceedings, which extended over six days. It was [Pg 192] eventually decided to separate the Trade Union from the co-operative aims, and to form two distinct but mutually helpful associations. The “National Association of United Trades for the Protection of Labour” undertook to deal with disputes between masters and men, and look after the interests of labour in the House of Commons. The “National United Trades Association for the Employment of Labour” proposed to raise capital with which to employ men who were on strike under circumstances approved by its twin brother. At the second conference, held at Manchester in June 1846, when 126 delegates, representing, it was said, 40,000 members, were present, the contribution to the Trade Association was fixed at twopence in the pound of weekly earnings; and it was decided that the strike allowance should vary from nine shillings up to fourteen shillings per week, the latter sum being the wages agreed on for men employed in the association’s own workshops. Up to this date no strike had been supported, as it was desired to avoid the premature action which had, it was held, destroyed the Grand National Consolidated Union. A number of paid organisers were engaged. The Association, which hitherto had consisted of woollen and hosiery-workers and of the Midland hardware trades, spread in various new directions. The executive of the Friendly Society of Operative Carpenters and Joiners—the association that had played so important a part in the movement of 1830—issued a manifesto to its members in favour of joining, and the general secretary became an active member of the Executive of the National Association. The Manchester Section of the National Cordwainers’ Society urged all its members and all societies of boot and shoemakers to join. The Potters of Staffordshire, the Miners of Scotland, the new-born National Association of Tailors, as well as the Metropolitan branches of the Boilermakers’ and Masons’ Societies came in. The Association, in fact, became reputed a power in the land, and drew down upon itself the abusive censure of the Times. [Pg 193][324] But in spite of the wise intentions of its founders, it soon began to suffer from the characteristic complaints of general unions. The depression of trade which began in 1845 brought about during the next two years reductions of wages, followed by strikes and turn-outs in almost every branch of industry. The local committees of the National Association, frequently composed of the officials of the trades concerned, promised their members the support of the national funds, and took umbrage when the Executive sitting in London reversed their decisions. Each constituent trade felt that its interests were misunderstood, or its grievances neglected. A prolonged strike of the Manchester building trades in 1846, begun without sanction, failed miserably, the local committee of the National Association declaring that the collapse was due to lack of the financial support which had been promised on behalf of the central body. The coal and iron miners at Holytown in Lanarkshire engaged in a struggle against their employers which excited the sympathy of the Trade Union world, but which ended in failure. An equally severe conflict by the calico-printers at Crayford in Kent met with no better success. The Scottish miners complained that they had been inadequately supported by the association; and the Lancashire miners made this the pretext for continued abstention.

Though Duncombe’s association had discouraged strikes, and acted principally as a mediating body, the employers throughout the country showed themselves uniformly hostile. The “document” which had figured so prominently in 1833-4 reappeared in a slightly altered form. The employers signified their toleration if not their approval of local trade clubs, but condemned with equal acrimony national unions of particular trades, or general unions of all trades. Affecting a sudden concern for the independence of character of their workmen, they insisted that the existence of any kind of central committee, however representative it might be, prevented the men from being free agents, [Pg 194] and exposed them to the arbitrary commands of an irresponsible body. In face of this attitude, the efforts of the National Association to bring about peaceful settlements met with only qualified success. The London Executive, unable to cope with the applications for assistance that poured in daily from all parts of the country, issued strong admonitions against unauthorised strikes, but had eventually to give or withhold support without sufficient knowledge of the local circumstances. Duncombe was principally occupied in drawing up and presenting petitions in favour of the legislative shortening of the hours of labour, and in this direction he rendered valuable assistance to the Lancashire cotton-spinners’ “Short Time Committee,” which secured the Ten Hours Act of 1847. The Central Executive was, indeed, during these years, more a Parliamentary Committee for the whole movement than a federation of Trade Unions. The plan of co-operative workshops, from which so much had been expected, proved entirely futile in the prolonged contests of the staple trades. One flourishing boot workshop was started; and the 1847 conference found, in all, one hundred and twenty-three men at work, the enterprises being confined to those trades carried on by hand labour in a small way. In 1848 it was decided to merge the two associations in one, and to set about raising £50,000 in order to start on a larger scale. But before this could be attempted the association suffered a double reverse from which it never recovered. Duncombe was compelled, by failing health, to withdraw during 1848 from active participation in its work. And at the end of the following year a strike of the Wolverhampton tinplate-workers involved the National Association in a struggle with employers and with the law which drained its funds and destroyed its credit. [325]

[Pg 195]

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

The National Association of United Trades stands, in constitution and objects, half-way between the revolutionary voluntaryism of 1830-4 and the Parliamentary action of 1863-75. It may, in fact, be regarded either as a belated “General Trades Union” of an improved type, or as a premature and imperfect Parliamentary Committee of the Trade Union world. And although the great national Unions of the time took no part in its [Pg 196] proceedings, its moderate and unaggressive policy was only one manifestation of the new spirit which now prevailed in Trade Union councils. We see rising up in the Unions of the better-paid artisans a keen desire to get at the facts of their industrial and social condition. This new feeling for exact knowledge may to some extent be attributed to the increasing share which the printing trades were now beginning to take in the Trade Union Movement. The student of the reports of the larger compositors’ societies, from the very beginning of the century, will be struck, not only by the moderation, but also by the elaborate Parliamentary formality—one might almost say the stateliness of their proceedings. Instead of rhetorical abuse of all employers as “the unproductive classes,” and total abstinence from investigation of the details of disputes, we find the compositors dealing only with concrete instances of hardship, and referring every important question to a “Select Committee” for inquiry and report. In 1848 the London Consolidated Society of Bookbinders, established in 1786, used part of its funds to form a library for the benefit of its members. By 1851 a reading-room furnished with daily and weekly newspapers had been opened. Four years later a similar library was established by the London Society of Compositors. In 1842, the Journeymen Steam-Engine and Machine Makers’ Friendly Society started a Mutual Improvement Class at Manchester. Even the Stonemasons, at that time a rough and somewhat turbulent body, were reached by the new desire for self-improvement. The Glasgow branch of the Scottish United Operative Masons report with pride, in 1845, that they have “formed a class for mutual instruction ... an association for moral, physical, and intellectual improvement” which was setting itself to investigate the question—“Is the present improved condition of machinery beneficial to the working classes, or is it hurtful?”[327] But the most effective outcome of this desire for information was the starting by the Unions [Pg 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.[328] The Journeymen Steam-Engine and Machine Makers’ Friendly Society issued the Mechanics’ Magazine between 1841 and 1847. In November 1850 Dunning persuaded the London Consolidated Society of Bookbinders to publish the Bookbinders’ Trade Circular, in the pages of which he promulgated a theory of Trade Unionism, from which McCulloch himself would scarcely have dissented,[329] and made that humble organ of his society into a monthly magazine of useful information on all matters connected with books and their manufacture. But the best of these trade publications, and the only one which has enjoyed a continuous existence down to the present day, was the Flint Glass Makers’ Magazine, an octavo monthly of ninety-six pages, established at Birmingham in 1850 by the Flint Glass Makers’ Friendly Society,[330] which advocated “the education of every man in our trade, beginning at the oldest and coming down to the youngest.... If you do not wish to stand as you are and suffer more oppression,” it enjoined its readers, “we say to you get knowledge, and in getting knowledge you get [Pg 198] power.... Let us earnestly advise you to educate; get intelligence instead of alcohol—it is sweeter and more lasting.” [331]

With increased acquaintance with industrial conditions came a reaction against the policy of reckless aggression which marked the Owenite inflation. Here again we find the printing trades taking the lead. Already in 1835, when the London Compositors were reorganising their society, the committee went out of their way to denounce the great general Unions. “Unfortunately almost all Trades Unions hitherto formed,” they report to their members, “have relied for success upon extorted oaths and physical force.... The fault and the destruction of all Trades Unions has hitherto been that they have copied the vices which they professed to condemn. While disunited and powerless they have stigmatised their employers as grasping taskmasters; but as soon as they (the workmen) were united and powerful, then they became tyrants in their turn, and unreasonably endeavoured to exact more than the nature of their employment demanded, or than their employers could afford to give. Hence their failure was inevitable.... Let the Compositors of London show the Artisans of England a brighter and better example; and casting away the aid to be derived from cunning and brute strength, let us, when we contend with our opponents, employ only the irresistible weapons of truth and reason.”[332] The disasters of 1837-42 caused this spirit to spread to other trades. From this time forth the minutes and circulars of the larger Unions abound in impressive warnings against aggressive action. “Strikes are prolific,” say the delegates of the Ironmoulders in council assembled; “in certain cases they beget others.... How often have disputes been averted by a few timely words with employers! It [Pg 199] is surely no dishonour to explain to your employer the nature and extent of your grievance.”[333] The Stonemasons’ Central Committee repeatedly caution their members “against the dangerous practice of striking.... Keep from it,” they urge, “as you would from a ferocious animal that you know would destroy you.... Remember what it was that made us so insignificant in 1842.... We implore you, brethren, as you value your own existence, to avoid, in every way possible, those useless strikes. Let us have another year of earnest and attentive organisation; and, if that does not perfect us, we must have another; for it is a knowledge of the disorganised state of working men generally that stimulates the tyrant and the taskmaster to oppress them.”[334] A few years later the Liverpool lodge invites the support of all the members for the proposition “that our society no longer recognise strikes, either as a means to be adopted for improving our condition, or as a scheme to be resorted to in resisting infringements,”[335] and suggests, as an alternative, the formation of an Emigration Fund. The Portsmouth lodge caps this proposal by insisting not only that strikes should cease, but also that the word “strike” be abolished! The Flint Glass Makers’ Magazine, between 1850 and 1855, is full of similar denunciations. “We believe,” writes the editor, “that strikes have been the bane of Trades Unions.”[336] In 1854 the Flint Glass Makers, on the proposition of the Central Committee, abolished the allowance of “strike-money” by a vote of the whole of the members. As an alternative it was often suggested that a bad employer should be defeated by quietly withdrawing the men one by one, as situations could be found for them elsewhere. “As man after man leaves, and no one [comes] to supply their place, then it is that the proud and haughty spirit of the [Pg 200] oppressor is brought down, and he feels the power he cannot see.” [337]

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

[Pg 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 particular class of labour. It seemed an obvious inference that the only means in their power to maintain or improve their condition was to diminish the supply. “All men of experience agree,” affirms the Delegate Meeting of the Ironmoulders in 1847, “that wages are to be best raised by the demand for labour.” Hence we find the denunciations of strikes accompanied by an insistence on the limitation of apprentices, the abolition of overtime, and the provision of an Emigration Fund. The Flint Glass Makers declare that “the scarcity of labour was one of the fundamental principles laid down at our first conference held in Manchester in 1849.” “It is simply a question of supply and demand, and we all know that if we supply a greater quantity of an article than what is actually demanded that the cheapening of that article, whether it be labour or any other commodity, is a natural result.”[339] In this application of the doctrine of Supply and Demand the Flint Glass Makers were joined by the Compositors, Bookbinders, Ironmoulders, Potters, and, as we shall presently see, the Engineers.[340] For the next ten years an Emigration Fund becomes a constant feature of many of the large societies, to be abandoned only when it was discovered that the few thousands of pounds which could be afforded for this purpose produced no visible [Pg 202] effect in diminishing the surplus labour. Moreover, it was the vigorous and energetic member who applied for his passage-money, whilst the chronically unemployed, if he could be persuaded to go at all, frequently reappeared at the clubhouse after a brief trip at the society’s expense. [341]

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

Such was the “New Spirit” which, by 1850, was [Pg 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 official, however industrious and well-meaning, found upon his hands a task for which neither his education nor his temperament had fitted him. The archives of these societies reveal the pathetic struggles of inexperienced workmen to cope with the difficulties presented by the combination of branch management and centralised finance. The disbursement of friendly benefits by branch meetings, the custody and remittance of the funds, the charges for local expenses (including “committee liquor”),[343] the mysteries [Pg 204] of bookkeeping, and the intricacies of audit all demanded a new body of officers specially selected for and exclusively engaged in this work. During these years we watch a shifting of leadership in the Trade Union world from the casual enthusiast and irresponsible agitator to a class of permanent salaried officers expressly chosen from out of the rank and file of Trade Unionists for their superior business capacity. But besides the daily work of administration, the expansion of local societies into organisations of national extent, and the transformation of loose federations into consolidated unions, involved the difficult process of constitution-making. The records of the Ironmoulders and the Stonemasons show with what anxious solicitude successive Delegate Meetings were groping after a set of rules that would work smoothly and efficiently. One Union, however, the Journeymen Steam-Engine and Machine Makers and Millwrights’ Friendly Society, tackled the problems of internal organisation with peculiar ability, and eventually produced, in the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, a “New Model” of the utmost importance to Trade Union history.

To understand the rise of this remarkable society, we must revert to the earlier history of combinations which have hitherto scarcely claimed attention in our account of the general movement. The origin of Trade Unionism in the engineering trades is obscure. We learn that at the close of the last century the then dominant class of millwrights [Pg 205] possessed strong, exclusive, and even tyrannical trade societies, the chief of them being the “London Fellowship,” meeting at the Bell Inn, Old Bailey.[344] The millwrights, who were originally constructors of mill-work of every kind, both wood and iron, were, on the introduction of the steam-engine, gradually superseded by specialised workers in particular sections of their trade. The introduction of what was termed “the engineer’s economy,” that is to say, the parcelling out of the trade of the millwright among distinct classes of workmen, and the substitution of “payment according to merit” for the millwrights’ Standard Rate, completely disorganised the skilled mechanics of the engineering trade. This condition was not materially improved by the establishment, from 1822 onward, of numerous competing Trade Friendly Societies. The Ironmoulders alone concentrated their efforts upon maintaining one national society. The millwrights, smiths, pattern-makers, and other skilled mechanics engaged in engine and machine making had societies in London, Manchester, Newcastle, Bradford, Derby, and other engineering centres. Of these the Steam-Engine Makers (established 1824); the Journeymen Steam-Engine and Machine Makers and Millwrights (established 1826); the Associated Fraternity of Iron Forgers, usually called the “Old Smiths” (established 1830); and the Boilermakers (established 1832) are known to have been organisations of national extent, with branches in all parts of the country, competing, not only with each other, but with the Metropolitan and other local societies of Millwrights, Smiths, Patternmakers, [Pg 206] and General Engineers. This anarchic rivalry prevented any effectual trade action, and tempted employers to give the work to the lowest bidder, and to introduce the worst features of competitive piecework and sub-contract.

We are, therefore, not surprised to find that the engineers’ societies took little part in the great upheaval of 1830-4. But the wave of solidarity which then swept over the labour world seems to have had considerable, though tardy, effect even in this trade. The chief districts affected were London and Lancashire. In 1836 a London joint committee of several of the sectional societies successfully conducted an eight months’ strike for a shortening of the hours of labour to sixty per week, and for extra payment for overtime. Again, in 1844 a joint committee obtained from the London employers a further reduction of hours. Encouraged by these successes, the members of the Metropolitan societies and branches began to discuss the possibility of a national amalgamation. The most prominent personality in this movement was that of William Newton, [Pg 207][345] a leading member of the Journeymen Steam-Engine and Machine Makers and Millwrights’ Friendly Society, the association which afterwards became, as we shall see, the parent of the amalgamation.

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

Whilst Newton was bringing the London societies into line, the Lancashire engineers were moving in the same direction. Already in 1839 a “committee of the engineering trades” at Bolton urged upon their comrades the establishment of “one concentrated union”; and in the following year, through the energy of Alexander Hutchinson, the secretary of the Friendly United Smiths of Great Britain and Ireland, a United Trades Association was set on foot in Lancashire, to comprise the “Five Trades of Mechanism, viz. Mechanics, Smiths, Moulders, Engineers, and Millwrights.” The objects of this association were ably represented [Pg 208] and promoted by its organ, the Trades Journal, established to extend and “improve Trades Unions generally in Great Britain and Ireland,”[346] The attempt proved, however, premature, and it was not until the year 1844 that the Bolton men, under the leadership of John Rowlinson, succeeded in establishing a permanent “Protection Society,” composed of delegates from the Societies of Smiths, Millwrights, Ironmoulders, Engineers, and Boilermakers. Inspirited by the success of the Bolton society, which successfully maintained a nine months’ strike (costing it £9,000) against the “Quittance Paper” (character note, or leaving certificate) which the employers eventually agreed to abandon, joint committees of engineering operatives were formed between 1844 and 1850 in all the principal Lancashire centres. These were repeatedly addressed by Rowlinson and Hutchinson, and the ground was prepared for a systematic attempt at national amalgamation.

The leading part in the amalgamation was taken by the society to which Newton belonged. The Journeymen Steam-Engine and Machine Makers and Millwrights’ Friendly Society, with its headquarters at Manchester, at this time far exceeded any other trade society in membership and wealth. Established in 1826 as the Friendly Union of Mechanics, it had absorbed in 1837 a strong Yorkshire society dating from 1822 (the Mechanics’ Friendly Union Institution), and by 1848 it numbered seven thousand members organised in branches all over the kingdom, and possessed an accumulated reserve fund of £25,000. The silent growth of this Union, the slow perfecting of its constitution by repeated delegate meetings held at intervals during the preceding twenty years, stand in marked contrast with the dramatic advent of the ephemeral organisations of 1830-34. But this task of internal organisation, with its [Pg 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.[347] During the following year accordingly a simultaneous attempt appears to have been made by many of the branches to enforce these rules. This action led, at Belfast, Rochdale, and Newton-le-Willows, to legal proceedings by the employers, and the officers of the society, together with over a score of its members, found themselves in the dock indicted for conspiracy and illegal combination.[348] The trial [Pg 210] of the twenty-six engineers of Newton-le-Willows, and the conviction of nine of them, including Selsby, the General Secretary of the great mechanics’ Union, caused a sensation in the Trade Union world, and tended to draw closer together the rival societies in the engineering trade.

The progressive trade policy of the Journeymen Steam-Engine and Machine Makers’ Society greatly increased the ascendency which its superiority in wealth and numbers gave it over the numerous other trade friendly societies in the engineering trades. William Allan, a young Scotchman, succeeded Selsby in the salaried post of general secretary when the latter obtained a commercial post in 1848. A close friend and ardent disciple of William Newton, he quickly manifested, in the administration of his own society, the capacity and energy which enabled him in future years to play so important a part in the general history of the Labour Movement. The cause of amalgamation was well served by the indefatigable missionary efforts of these two men. The anniversary dinners and friendly social meetings of the joint committees of the societies in the Lancashire iron trades were, as we know from contemporary records, made the occasion of propagandist speeches, and were doubtless used also by these astute organisers to talk over the leading men to agreement with their proposals. The natural jealousy felt by the great provincial centre of Trade Unionism of the interference of the Metropolis in its concerns was allayed by Allan’s suggestion that the Lancashire societies should call a conference of delegates at Warrington in March 1850, for the purpose of consultation and discussion only. At this meeting, which was attended only by the representatives of three of the larger societies (including the Steam-Engine Makers established at Liverpool in 1824, and the Smiths’ Benevolent, Friendly, Sick and [Pg 211] Burial Society, established in 1830), Newton and Allan succeeded in getting through the outlines of their scheme of amalgamation. During the next six months these proposals were the subject of exhaustive discussion at every joint committee and branch meeting. Meanwhile the leaders had established in Manchester a weekly journal for the express purpose of promoting amalgamation, engaging as editor, under a written contract, Dr. John Watts, afterwards well known as one of the ablest advocates of co-operation. This journal, the Trades Advocate and Herald of Progress, stated to be “established by the Iron Trades,” discussed the advantages of union, and incidentally taught the doctrines of Free Trade and Co-operative Production. [349]

Lancashire converted and conciliated, London could now go ahead. Under Newton’s influence the London joint committee summoned a second delegate meeting at Birmingham in September 1850, which was attended by representatives of seven engineering societies. At this conference the scheme of amalgamation was definitely adopted; and the Metropolitan “Central Committee” was charged, as a “Provisional Committee,” to complete the details of the transfer of the old organisation to the new body. The tact and skill with which Allan and Newton carried out their project are conspicuously shown by the way in which the act of union was regarded by all concerned. There is no trace of suspicion on the part of the minor societies that they were taking part in anything but an amalgamation on equal terms. The whole Trade Union world, including the Amalgamated Society of Engineers itself, has retained the tradition that this great organisation was the outcome of a genuine amalgamation of societies of fairly equivalent standing. What happened, [Pg 212] as a matter of fact, was that the society led by Allan and Newton absorbed its rivals.[350] The new body took over, in its entirety, the elaborate constitution, the scheme of benefits (with the addition of Sick Benefit and the adoption of the innovation of an Emigration Benefit of £6), the trade policy, and even the official staff of the Journeymen Steam-Engine and Machine Makers and Millwrights’ Society, which contributed more than three-fourths of the membership with which the amalgamation started, and found itself continued, down to the minutest details, in the rules and regulations of the new association. An important addition was, however, the adoption of a definite trade policy of restricting overtime and preventing piecework; the institution of District Committees charged to carry out that policy; and the establishment of a new Strike Pay of 15s. per week.

The conclusions of the Birmingham delegates were not accepted without demur. Many of the branches in Lancashire and elsewhere objected to the position obtained by the London Committee, and stood aloof from the amalgamation. The Manchester Committee showed signs of jealousy at the transfer of the seat of government to the Metropolis. But the most important defection was that of the rank and file of the members of the Steam-Engine Makers’ Society, an association which stood in membership and funds second only to the Journeymen Steam-Engine Makers and Machine Makers’ Society. Newton and Allan had succeeded in persuading the whole of the Executive to throw in their lot with the amalgamation, but the bulk of the members revolted, and the society maintained a separate existence down to the end of 1919, when it joined the other societies in the creation of the Amalgamated Engineering Union. Even in Newton’s own society, in which the main principles of the amalgamation had been carried by large majorities, a considerable number of the [Pg 213] provincial branches remained hostile. On January 6, 1851, when the Provisional Committee formally assumed office as the Executive Committee of the “Amalgamated Society of Engineers, Machinists, Smiths, Millwrights and Patternmakers,” scarcely 5000 members out of the 10,500 represented at the Birmingham Conference were paying to the amalgamated funds.[351] For some months, indeed, the success of Newton’s ambitious scheme looked doubtful. Though London had rallied to his help, only one small society standing aloof, the provincial branches came in very slowly. It took three months’ persuasion to raise the membership of the amalgamation up to the level of the parent society. Delegate meetings of the Steam-Engine Makers and the Smiths’ Societies decided against amalgamation, though many of their branches broke away and joined the new society. But towards the end of May the tide turned. The remaining branches of the Journeymen Steam-Engine and Machine Makers and Millwrights’ Society held a delegate meeting, at which it was decided no longer to oppose the amalgamation; the Smiths’ Society of London and several other small societies came in; and by October Newton and Allan were at the head of a united society of 11,000 members paying 1s. per week each, the largest and most powerful Union that had ever existed in the engineering trades, and far exceeding in membership, and still more in annual income, any other trade society of the time. [352]

[Pg 214]

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

Meanwhile the London Executive had been consulting the whole of the members on the proposal to abolish systematic overtime and piecework, and had obtained an almost unanimous vote in favour of immediate action. A [Pg 215] manifesto was issued to the employers, in which the Executive announced the intention of the society to put an end to piecework and systematic overtime after December 31, 1851. The employers replied by an imperious declaration in the Times that a strike at any one establishment would be met seven days later by a general lock-out of the whole engineering trade. The men thereupon offered to submit the question to arbitration, a proposal which the employers ignored. On January 1, 1852, the members of the Amalgamated Society refused to work overtime, and on the 10th the masters closed, as they had threatened, every important engineering establishment in Lancashire and the Metropolis.

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

Notwithstanding the subscription of £4000 by the public and £5000 by other trade societies, the funds at the disposal of the Union soon began to run short. The Executive had undertaken to support not only the 3500 of its own members and the 1500 mechanics who were out, [Pg 216] but also the 10,000 labourers who had been made idle. Altogether over £43,000 was dispensed during the six months in out-of-work pay. Early in February the masters opened their workshops. By the middle of March the issue of the struggle was plain, and during April the men resumed work on the employers’ terms. Almost all the masters insisted on the actual signature of the “document” by their men, and most of these, under pressure of imminent destitution, reluctantly submitted, without, however, carrying out their promise by abandoning the Union. Judge Hughes, writing in 1860, describes this act of bad faith by the men as “inexcusable,” but there is much to be said for the view taken by the Amalgamation Executive, who declared that they held themselves “and every man who unwillingly puts his hand to that detestable document which is forced upon us to be as much destitute of that power of choice which should precede a contract as if a pistol were at his head and he had to choose between death and degradation.”[356] A promise extorted under “duress” carries with it little legal and still less moral obligation, and whatever discredit attaches to the transaction must be ascribed at least as much to the masters who made the demand as to the unfortunate victims of the labour war who unwillingly complied with it. [357]

It was the dramatic events of 1852 which made the [Pg 217] establishment of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers a turning-point in the history of the Trade Union Movement. The complete victory gained by the employers did not, as they had hoped, destroy the Engineers’ Union. The membership of the society was, in fact, never seriously shaken.[358] On the other hand, the publicity which it gained in the conflict gave it a position of unrivalled prominence in the Trade Union world. From 1852 to 1889 the elaborate constitution of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers served as the model for all new national trade societies, whilst old organisations found themselves gradually incorporating its leading features. The place occupied in 1830-34 by the cotton-spinners and the builders was, in fact, now taken by the iron trades.

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

[Pg 218]

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

This spirit of exclusiveness has had, as we shall hereafter discern, an equivocal effect, not only on the history of the society itself, but on that of the Trade Union Movement. But the contemporary trade movements either did not observe or failed to realise the tendency of this attempt to retain or reconstruct an aristocracy of skilled workmen. What impressed the working men was not the trade policy which had brought about the defeat of 1852, but the admirably thought-out financial and administrative system, which enabled the Union to combine the functions of a trade protection society with those of a permanent insurance company, and thus attain a financial stability hitherto undreamt of. Time proved that this constitution had its peculiar defects. But for over twenty years no Trade Unionist questioned its excellence, and the minute criticism and heated abuse which it evoked from employers and their advocates seemed only another testimony to its effectiveness. We think it worth while, therefore, at the risk of introducing [Pg 219] tedious detail, to describe the main features of this “New Model.”

In striking contrast with the Cotton-spinners’ and Builders’ Unions of 1830-34, with their exclusively trade purposes, the societies in the engineering trades had, like the trade organisations of the handicraftsmen of the last century, originated as local benefit clubs. The Journeymen Steam-Engine Makers’ Society, for instance, had from the first provided its members with out-of-work pay, a travelling allowance, a funeral benefit, and a lump sum in case of accidental disablement. In 1846 it added to these benefits a small sick allowance, and shortly afterwards an old age pension to superannuated members. The administration of these friendly benefits was from the outset the primary object of the organisation. As the local benefit club expanded into a national society by the migration of its members from town to town, the extreme difficulty of combining local autonomy with a just and economical administration of extensive benefits became apparent. For the society, it must be remembered, was not a federation of independent bodies, each having its own exchequer and contributing to the central fund its determinate quota of the expenses of the central office: it was from the first a single association with a common purse, into which all contributions were paid, and out of which all expenditure, down to the stationery and ink used by a branch secretary, was defrayed. This concentration of funds carried with it the practical advantage of forming a considerable reserve at the disposal of the Executive. But so long as it was combined with local autonomy, it was open to the obvious objection that a branch might dispense benefits to its own members with undue liberality, and thus absorb an unfair amount of the moneys of the whole society. And hence we find that in 1838 an attempt was made to centralise the administration, by transforming the local officials from the servants of the branches into agents of the central authority. The inherent love of self-government of the British artisan [Pg 220] defeated this proposal, which would inevitably have led to local apathy and suspicion, if not to grosser evils. Some other method of harmonising local autonomy with centralised finance had therefore to be invented.

Under the constitution which the Amalgamated Society took over from the Journeymen Steam-Engine and Machine Makers and Millwrights, we find this problem solved with considerable astuteness. The branch elects and controls its own local officers, but acts in all cases within rules which provide explicitly for every detail. Each branch retains its own funds and administers the friendly benefits payable to its own members, including the allowance to men out of work. The financial autonomy of the branch is, however, more apparent than real. No penny must be expended except in accordance with precise rules. The branch retains its own funds, but these are the property of the whole society, and at the end of each year the balances are “equalised” by a complicated system of remittances from branch to branch, ordered by the Central Executive in such a way that each branch starts the year with the same amount of capital per member. The cumbrous plan of annual equalisation is a device adopted in order to maintain the feeling of local self-government under a strictly centralised financial system.[360] From the decision of the branch any member may appeal to the Central Executive Council. The decisions of this Council on all questions of friendly benefits are, however, strictly limited to the interpretation of the existing laws of the society. These rules, which [Pg 221] include in equal detail both the constitutional and the financial code, cannot be altered or modified except by a specially convened meeting of delegates from every district. Careful provision is, moreover, made against the danger of hasty or ill-considered legislation even by this supreme authority. No amendment may be so much as considered without having been circulated to all the branches six weeks prior to the delegate meeting, and having thereupon been discussed and re-discussed by the members at two successive general meetings convened for the purpose. Thus every delegate comes to his legislative duties charged with a direct and even detailed mandate from his constituents. Moreover, it is expressly provided that no friendly benefit shall be abrogated unless the decision of the delegate meeting to that effect is ratified by a majority of two-thirds on a vote of the members of the whole society. As a friendly society, therefore, the Association consists of a number of self-governing branches acting according to the provisions of a detailed code, and amenable, in respect of its interpretation, to a Central Executive.

As a Trade Union, on the contrary, the Association has been from the first a highly centralised body. The great object of the amalgamation was to secure uniformity in trade policy, and to promote the equalisation of what the economists call “real wages”[361] throughout the whole country. With this view the Central Executive has always retained the absolute power of granting or withholding strike pay. No individual can receive strike allowance from his branch except upon an express order of the Executive. Local knowledge, however, is clearly needed for the decision in matters of trade policy, and on the amalgamation “district” committees were established, consisting of the representatives of neighbouring branches. These committees have no concern with the administration of friendly benefits, which, as we have seen, is the business of [Pg 222] each branch. Their function is to guard the local interests of the trade, to watch for encroachments, and to advise the Executive Council in the administration of strike pay. Unlike the branches, they possess no independent authority, and are required to act strictly under the orders of headquarters, to which the minutes of their proceedings are regularly sent for confirmation.

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

In scarcely less marked contrast with the current tradition of Trade Unionism was the publicity which the Amalgamated Engineers from the first courted. Powerful societies, such as the existing Union of Stonemasons, had [Pg 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.[363] At the Royal Commission of 1867-8 the employers’ witnesses bitterly complained of their inability to get copies of this publication and of a similar periodical circular of the Bricklayers’ Society.[364] As late as 1871 we find the liability to publicity adduced by some Unions as an argument against seeking recognition by the law.

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

It is easy to understand the great influence which, during [Pg 224] the next twenty years, this “New Model” exercised upon the Trade Union world. Its most important imitator was the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters, which, as we shall see, arose out of the great London strike of 1859-60. The tailors in 1866 drew together into an amalgamated society, which adopted, almost without alteration, the whole code of the engineers, and in 1869 the London Society of Compositors appointed a special committee to report upon “the constitution and working of the Amalgamated Trades,” with a view to their imitation in the printing industry—an intention which, in spite of the favourable character of the report, was not carried out.[365] Scarcely a trade exists which did not, between 1852 and 1875, either attempt to imitate the whole constitution of the Amalgamated Engineers, or incorporate one or other of its characteristic features.

The five or six years following the collapse of the great lock-out of 1852, though constituting a period of quiet progress in particular societies, are for the historian of the general Trade Union Movement, almost a blank. The severe commercial depression of 1846-49 was succeeded by seven years of steadily expanding trade, which furnished no occasion for general reduction of wages. The reaction against the ambitious projects of the Trade Union of 1834 continued to discourage even federal action;[366] whilst the complete failure of the struggle of the engineers, followed as it was in 1853 by the disastrous strike of the Preston cotton-spinners for a ten per cent advance, by an equally unsuccessful struggle of the Kidderminster carpet-weavers, and by a fierce and futile conflict by the Dowlais ironworkers,[367] increased the disinclination of the Unions to aggressive trade action on a large scale. The disrepute [Pg 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. [368]

The generous enthusiasm with which the “Christian Socialists” had thrown themselves into the Engineers’ struggle, and their obvious devotion to the interests of Labour, gave their schemes of “Self-governing Workshops” a great vogue. Numberless small undertakings were started by operative engineers, cabinetmakers, tailors, bootmakers, and hatters in the Metropolis and in other large industrial centres, and for a few years the Executives and Committees of the various Unions vied with each other in recommending co-operative production to their members. But it soon became apparent that this new form of co-operation was intended, not as an adjunct or a development of the Trade Union, but as an alternative form of industrial organisation. For, unlike the Owenites of 1834, the Christian Socialists had no conception of the substitution of profit-making [Pg 226] enterprise by the whole body of wage-earners, organised either in a self-contained community or in a complete Trades Union. They sought only to replace the individual capitalist by self-governing bodies of profit-making workmen. A certain number of the ardent spirits among the London and north country workmen became the managers and secretaries of these undertakings, and ceased to be energetic members of their respective Unions. “We have found,” say the Engineers’ Executive in their annual report of 1855, “that when a few of our own members have commenced business hitherto they have abandoned the society, and conducted the workshops even worse than other employers.” Fortunately for the Trade Union Movement the uniform commercial failure of these experiments, so long, at any rate, as they retained their original form of the self-governing workshop, soon became obvious to those concerned. The idea of “Co-operative Production” constantly reappears in contemporary Trade Union records, but after the failure of the co-operative establishments of 1848-52 it ceases, for nearly twenty years, to be a question of “practical politics” in the Trade Union world.

In spite of this intellectual diversion the work of Trade Union consolidation was being steadily carried on. The Amalgamated Engineers doubled their numbers in the ten years that followed their strike, and by 1861 their Union had accumulated the unprecedented balance of £73,398. The National Societies of Ironfounders and Stonemasons grew in a similar proportion. A revival of Trade Unionism took place among the textile operatives. The present association of Lancashire cotton-spinners began its career in 1853, whilst the cotton-weavers secured in the same year what has been fitly termed their Magna Charta, the “Blackburn List” of piecework rates. But with the exception of the building trades, Trade Unionism assumed, during these years, a peaceful attitude. The leaders no longer declaimed against “the idle classes,” but sought to justify the Trade Union position with arguments based on [Pg 227] middle-class economics. The contributions of the Amalgamated Engineers are described “as a general voluntary rate in aid of the Poor’s Rate.”[369] The Executive Council cannot doubt that employers will not “regard a society like ours with disfavour. They will begin to understand that it is not intended, nor adapted, to damage their interests, but rather to advance them, by elevating the character of their workmen, and proportionately lessening their own responsibilities.” The project of substituting “Councils of Conciliation” for strikes and lock-outs grew in favour with Trade Union leaders. Hundreds of petitions in favour of their establishment were got up by the National Association of United Trades, then on its last legs. The House of Commons Committees in 1856 and 1860 found the operatives in all trades disposed to support the principle of voluntary submission to arbitration. For a brief period it seemed as if peace was henceforth to prevail over the industrial world.

The era of strikes which set in with the contraction of trade in 1857 proved how fallacious had been these hopes. The building trades, in particular, had remained less affected than the Engineers or the Cotton Operatives by the change of tone. The local branches of the Stonemasons, Bricklayers, and other building trade operatives, often against the wish of their Central Committees, were engaged between 1853 and 1859 in an almost constant succession of little strikes against separate firms, in which the men were generally successful in gaining advances of wages. [Pg 228][370] These years were, moreover, notable for the recognition in the provincial building trades of “working rules,” or signed agreements between employers and workmen (usually between the local Masters’ Associations and the Trade Unions), specifying in minute detail the conditions of the collective bargain. Without doubt the adoption of these rules was a step forward in the direction of industrial peace; but, like international treaties, they were frequently preceded by desperate conflicts in which both sides exhausted their resources, and learnt to respect the strength of the other party. With the depression of trade more important disputes occurred. During 1858 fierce conflicts arose between masters and men in the flint glass industry and in the West Yorkshire coalfield. The introduction of the sewing-machine into the boot and shoemaking villages of Northamptonshire led to a series of angry struggles. But of the great disputes of 1858 to 1861, the builders’ strike in the Metropolis in 1859-60 was by far the most important in its effect upon the Trade Union Movement.

The dispute of 1859 originated in the growing movement for a shortening of the hours of labour.[371] The demand for a Nine Hours Day in the Building Trades was first made by the Liverpool Stonemasons in 1846, and renewed by the London Stonemasons in 1853. In neither case, however, was the claim persisted in. Four years later the movement was revived by the London Carpenters, whose memorial to their employers was met, after a joint [Pg 229] conference, by a decisive refusal. Meanwhile the Stonemasons were seeking to obtain the Saturday half-holiday, which the employers equally refused. This led, in the autumn of 1858, to the formation of a Joint Committee of Carpenters, Masons, and Bricklayers, which, on November 18, 1858, addressed a dignified memorial to the master builders, urging that the hours of labour should be shortened by one per day, and that future building contracts should be accepted on this basis. At first ignored by the employers, this request was eventually refused as decidedly as it had been in 1853 and 1857. The Joint Committee thereupon made a renewed attempt by petitioning four firms selected by ballot. Among these was that of Messrs. Trollope, who promptly dismissed one of the men who had presented the memorial. This action led to an immediate strike against Messrs. Trollope. Within a fortnight every master builder in London employing over fifty men had closed his establishment, and twenty-four thousand men were peremptorily deprived of their employment. The controversy which raged in the columns of contemporary newspapers during this pitched battle between Capital and Labour brought out in strong relief the state of mind of the Metropolitan employers. Uninfluenced by the progress of public opinion, or by the new tone of respect and moderation adopted by Trade Union leaders, the London employers took up the position of their predecessors of 1834. They absolutely refused to recognise the claim of the representatives of the men even to discuss with them the conditions of employment. This attitude was combined with a determined attempt to destroy all combination, the instrument adopted being the well-worn Document. The Central Association of Master Builders resolved, in terms almost identical with its predecessor of 1834, that “no member of this Association shall engage or continue in his employment any contributor to the funds of any Trades Union or Trades Society which practises interference with the regulation of any establishment, the hours or terms of [Pg 230] labour, the contracts or agreements of employers or employed, or the qualification or terms of service.”

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

Such abundant support enabled the men to defeat the employers’ aims, though not to secure their own demands. The Central Association of Master Builders clung desperately to the Document, but failed to obtain an adequate number of men willing to subscribe to its terms. In December 1859 a suggestion was made by Lord St. Leonards that the Document be withdrawn, a lengthy [Pg 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 1860, when the Platonic suggestion of Lord St. Leonards was adopted, and the embittered dispute was brought to an end.

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

The strike had revealed to the London carpenters the complete state of disorganisation into which their industry had fallen. It was they, it is true, who had initiated the Nine Hours Movement in the Metropolis, but the committee which memorialised the employers had represented no body of organised workmen. George Potter, who was the leader of this movement, could draw around him only a group of delegates elected by the men in each shop. There were, indeed, not more than about a thousand carpenters in London who were members of any trade society whatsoever, and these were scattered among numerous tiny benefit clubs. The Friendly Society of Operative Carpenters, which, as we have seen, was a militant branch of the Builders’ Union of 1830-34, had, like the Stonemasons’ Society, maintained a continuous existence. Unlike that society, however, it had kept the old character of a loose federation for trade purposes only, depending for its finances upon occasional levies. Perhaps for this reason it had lost its exclusive hold upon the provinces, and had gained no footing in London. As a competent observer remarks: “At the time of the 1859-60 strikes the masons alone of the building [Pg 232] trades were organised into a single society extending throughout England, and providing not only for trade purposes, but for the ordinary benefits.... The London masons locked out were supported regularly and punctually by their society, and could have continued the struggle for an indefinite time; but the other trades, split up into numerous local societies, were soon reduced to extremities.”[372] The Carpenters’ Committee saw with envy the capacity of the Stonemasons’ Society to provide long-continued strike pay for its members, and were profoundly impressed by the successive donations of £1000 each made by the Amalgamated Engineers. Directly the strike was over, the leading members of the little benefit clubs met together to discuss the formation of a national organisation on the Engineers’ model. William Allan lent them every assistance in adapting the rules of his own society to the carpenters’ trade, and watched over the preliminary proceedings. The new society started on June 4, 1860, with a few hundred members. For the first two years its progress was slow; but in October 1862 it had the good fortune to elect as its general secretary a man whose ability and cautious sagacity promptly raised it to a position of influence in the Trade Union world. Robert Applegarth, secretary of a local Carpenters’ Union at Sheffield, had been quick to perceive the advantages of amalgamation, and had brought his society over with him. Under his administration the new Union advanced by leaps and bounds, and in a few years it stood, in magnitude of financial transactions and accumulated funds, second only to the Amalgamated Society of Engineers itself. Moreover, Applegarth’s capacity brought him at once into that little circle of Trade Union leaders whose activity forms during the next ten years the central point of Trade Union history.

THE JUNTA AND THEIR ALLIES

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

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

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William Allan was the originator of the “New Unionism” of his time.[373] We have already described how, with the aid of William Newton, he had gathered up the scattered fragments of organisation in the engineering trade, and had adapted the elaborate constitution and financial system of an old-established society to the needs of a great national amalgamation. In long hours of patient labour in the office he had built up an extremely methodical, if somewhat cumbrous, system of financial checks and trade reports, by which the exact position of each of his tens of thousands of members was at all times recorded in his official pigeonholes. The permanence of his system is the best testimony to its worth. Even to-day the Engineers’ head office retains throughout the impress of Allan’s tireless and methodical industry. Excessive caution, red-tape precision, an almost miserly solicitude for the increase of the society’s funds, were among Allan’s defects. But at a time when working men “agitators” were universally credited with looseness in money matters and incapacity for strenuous and regular mental effort, these defects, however equivocal may have been their ultimate effect on the policy and development of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, produced a favourable impression on the public. Allan, moreover, though not a brilliant speaker, or a man of wide general interests, was a keen working-class politician, whose temper and judgement could always be depended on. And he has [Pg 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-like in temperament, he instinctively made use of those arguments which were best fitted to overcome the prejudices and disarm the criticisms of middle-class opponents. Nor did he limit himself to justifying the ways of Trade Unionists to the world at large. He made persistent attempts to enlarge the mental horizon of the rank and file of his own movement, opening out to those whose vision had hitherto been limited to the strike and the tap-room, whole vistas of social and political problems in which they as working men were primarily concerned. Hence we find him, during his career as general secretary, a leading member of the famous “International,” [Pg 236][374] and an energetic promoter of the Labour Representation League, the National Education League, and various philanthropic and political associations. Political reformers became eager to secure his adhesion to their projects: he was, for instance, specially invited to attend the important conferences of the National Education League at Birmingham as the special representative of the working classes; and it was owing to his reputation as a social reformer that he was in 1870 selected to sit on the Royal Commission upon the Contagious Diseases Acts, thus becoming the first working man to be styled by his Sovereign “Our Trusty and Well-beloved.” Open-minded, alert, and conciliatory, he formed an ideal representative of the English Labour Movement in the political world. [375]

[Pg 237]

The permanent officials of the Ironfounders and the London Bricklayers were men of less originality than Allan or Applegarth. Guile was a man of attractive personality and winning manner, gifted with a certain rugged eloquence. Coulson is described by an opponent as being “stolid and obstinate,” and again as “bricky and stodgy”; but the expansion, under his influence, of the little London Society of Bricklayers into a powerful Union of national scope, proves him to have possessed administrative ability of no mean order. The special distinction of all four alike was their business capacity, shown by the persistency and success with which they pursued, each in his own trade, the policy originated by Newton and Allan, of basing Trade Union organisation upon an insurance company of national extent. George Odger brought to the Junta quite other qualities than the cautious industry of Allan or the lawyer-like capacity of Applegarth. Of the five men we have mentioned he was the only one who continued to work at his trade, and who retained to the last the full flavour of a working-class leader. An orator of remarkable power, he swayed popular meetings at his will, and was the idol of Metropolitan Radicalism. But he was no mere demagogue. Beneath his brilliant rhetoric and emotional fervour there [Pg 238] lay a large measure of political shrewdness, and he shared with his colleagues the capacity for deliberately concerted action and personal subordination. His dilatory and unbusinesslike habits made him incapable of building up a great organisation. Had he stood alone, he would have added little to the strength of Trade Unionism; as the loyal adherent of the great officials and their popular mouth-piece to the working-class world, Unionist and non-Unionist alike, he gave the movement a wider basis, and attracted into its ranks every ardent reformer belonging to the artisan class. [376]

It is difficult to-day to convey any adequate idea of the extraordinary personal influence exercised by these five men, not only on their immediate associates, but also as interpreters of the Trade Union Movement, upon the public and the governing classes. For the first time in the century [Pg 239] the working-class movement came under the direction, not of middle and upper class sympathisers like Place, Owen, Roberts, O’Connor, or Duncombe, but of genuine workmen specially trained for the position. For the first time, moreover, the leaders of working-class politics stood together in a compact group, united by a close personal friendship, and absolutely free from any trace of that suspiciousness or disloyalty which have so often marred popular movements. They brought to their task, it is true, no consistent economic theory or political philosophy. They subscribed with equal satisfaction to the crude Collectivism of the “International,” and the dogmatic industrial Individualism of the English Radicals. This absence of a definite basis to their political activity accounts, we think, for the drying up of Trade Union politics after their withdrawal. We shall have occasion hereafter to notice other “defects of their qualities,” and the way in which these subsequently stunted the further development of their own movement. But it was largely their very limitations which made them, at this particular crisis, such valuable representatives of the Trade Union Movement. They accepted, with perfect good faith, the economic Individualism of their middle-class opponents, and claimed only that freedom to combine which the more enlightened members of that class were willing to concede to them. Their genuine if somewhat restrained enthusiasm for political and industrial freedom gave them a persistency and determination which no check could discourage. Their understanding of the middle-class point of view, and their appreciation of the practical difficulties of the situation, saved them from being mere demagogues. For the next ten years, when it was all-important to obtain a legal status for trade societies and to obliterate the unfortunate impression created by the Sheffield outrages, their qualities exactly suited the emergency. The possession of good manners, though it may seem a trivial detail, was not the least of their advantages. To perfect self-respect and integrity they added correctness of expression, [Pg 240] habits of personal propriety, and a remarkable freedom from all that savoured of the tap-room. In Allan and Applegarth, Guile, Coulson, and Odger, the traducers of Trade Unionism found themselves confronted with a combination of high personal character, exceptional business capacity, and a large share of that official decorum which the English middle class find so impressive.

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

The distinctive policy of the Junta was the combination of extreme caution in trade matters and energetic agitation for political reforms. It is indeed somewhat doubtful how far Allan and Applegarth, Coulson and Guile shared the popular belief that trade combinations could effect a general rise of wages or resist a general reduction in a falling market. They had more faith in the moral force of great reserve funds, by the aid of which, dispensed in liberal out-of-work donations, one capitalist, or even a [Pg 241] whole group of capitalists, might be effectually prevented from obtaining labour at anything but the standard conditions. Their trade policy was, in fact, restricted to securing for every workman those terms which the best employers were willing voluntarily to grant. For this reason they were constantly accused of apathy by those hotter spirits whose idea of successful Trade Unionism was a series of general strikes for advances or against reductions. The Junta were really looking in another direction for the emancipation of the worker. They believed that a levelling down of all political privileges, and the opening out of educational and social opportunities to all classes of the community, would bring in its train a large measure of economic equality. Under the influence of these leaders the London Unions, and eventually those of the provinces, were drawn into a whole series of political agitations, for the Franchise, for amendment of the Master and Servant law, for new Mines Regulation Acts, for National Education, and finally for the full legalisation of Trade Unions themselves.

Practical difficulties hampered the complete execution of the Junta’s policy. The use of the Trade Union organisation for Parliamentary agitation, on which Macdonald, Applegarth, and Odger based all their expectations of progress, came as a new idea to the Trade Union world. The rank and file of Trade Unionists, still excluded from the franchise, took practically no interest in any social or political reform, and regarded their trade combinations exclusively as means of extorting a rise of wages or of compelling their fellow-workmen to join their clubs. This was especially the case with the provincial organisations, where the officials usually shared the obscurantism of their members. The “Manchester Order” of Bricklayers and the General Union of Carpenters (headquarters, Manchester) were, like the Midland Brickmakers and the Sheffield Cutlers, still wedded to the old ideas of secrecy and coercion, whilst the powerful society of Masons, then centred at Leeds, held aloof from the general movement. But this resistance was [Pg 242] not confined to the older societies, nor to those of any particular locality. All the Unions of that time, even those of the Metropolis, retained a strong traditional repugnance to political action. In many cases the rules expressly forbade all mention of politics in their meetings. And although the societies could be occasionally induced to take joint action of a political character in defence of Trade Unionism itself, not even the great influence of the Junta upon their own Unions sufficed to persuade the members to turn their organisations to account for legislative reform. The Junta turned, therefore, to the newly established Trades Councils and made these the political organs of the Trade Union world.

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

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Like many provincial organisations, the London Trades Council originated in a “Strike Committee.” During the [Pg 244] winter of 1859-60 weekly meetings of delegates from the Metropolitan trades had been held to support the Building Operatives in their resistance to the “document.” “At the termination of that memorable struggle,” states the Second Annual Report of the London Trades Council, “it was felt that something should be done to establish a general trades committee so as to be able on emergency to call the trades together with despatch for the purpose of rendering each other advice or assistance as the circumstances required.”[379] In March 1860 the provisional committee formed with this object issued an “Address” to the trades, which resulted, on July 10, 1860, in the first meeting of the present London Trades Council.

It is interesting to notice that the Council, at the outset, was composed mainly of the representatives of the smaller societies. The Executive Committee elected at its first meeting included no delegates from the engineers, compositors, masons, bricklayers, or ironfounders, who were then the most influential of the London Trade Societies. The first action of the young Council affords a significant indication of the feeling of isolation which led to its formation. In order to facilitate communications with other trade societies throughout the kingdom it resolved to compile a General Trades Union Directory, containing the names and addresses of all Trade Union secretaries. This [Pg 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. [380]

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

Meanwhile war had again broken out between the master builders and their operatives, caused partly by a renewed agitation for the Nine Hours Day, and partly by the employers’ desire to substitute payment by the hour for the previous custom of payment by the day.[381] For the [Pg 246] historian of the general movement the dispute is chiefly important as furnishing the occasion of the first intervention of the talented group of young barristers and literary men who, from this time forth, became the trusted legal experts and political advisers of the leaders of the Trade Union Movement. The workmen had totally failed to make clear their objection to the Hour System, or even to obtain a hearing of their case. Their position was, for the first time, intelligibly explained in two brilliant letters addressed to the newspapers by eight Positivists and Christian Socialists, which did much to bring about the tacit compromise in which the struggle ended. [382]

Of more immediate interest to us is the action taken by the newly formed London Trades Council. Among the building operations suspended by the dispute was the [Pg 247] construction, by a large contractor, of the new Chelsea barracks. The War Department saw no harm in permitting him to engage the sappers of the Royal Engineers to take the place of the men on strike. A similar course had been taken by the Government in strikes of 1825 and 1834. But the Trade Unions were now too powerful to allow of any such interference in their battles. A delegate meeting of the London trades, comprising representatives of fifty industries and fifty thousand operatives, sent a deputation to the War Office. Sir George Cornwall Lewis returned at first an equivocal answer, but the new Trades Council proved the efficacy of Parliamentary agitation by getting questions put to the Minister in the House of Commons, and stirring up enough feeling to compel him to withdraw the troops.

The minute-books of the London Trades Council from 1860 to 1867 present a mirror of the Trade Union history of this period. Odger had the fare gift of making his minutes interesting, and he describes, in his terse but graphic English, all the varied events of the Labour Movement as they were brought before the Council. In 1861-62, for instance, we see the Council trying vainly to settle the difficult problem of “overlap” between the trades of the shipwrights and the iron-shipbuilders; we notice the shadow cast by the Lancashire cotton famine, and we read indignant resolutions condemning the Sheffield outrages of those years. But the special interest of these minutes lies in their unconscious revelation of the way in which the Council became the instrument of the new policy of participation in general politics. Under Odger’s influence the Council took a prominent part in organising the popular welcome to Garibaldi, and in 1862 it held a great meeting in St. James’s Hall in support of the struggle of the Northern States against negro slavery, at which John Bright was the principal speaker. In 1864 the Junta placed itself definitely in opposition to the “Old Unionists,” who objected to all connection between the Government and the [Pg 248] concerns of working men. W. E. Gladstone, who was then Chancellor of the Exchequer, had introduced a Bill enabling the Post Office to sell Government Annuities for small amounts. Against this harmless project George Potter, the leading opponent of the Junta, summoned great public meetings of the London trades, enlisted on his side the Operative Stonemasons and other provincial organisations, and vehemently denounced the Bill as an insidious attempt to divert the savings of working men from their Trade Unions and benefit societies into an exchequer controlled by the governing classes. The London Trades Council sent an influential deputation to Gladstone publicly to disavow the action of Potter, and to welcome the proposal of the Government to utilise the administrative organisation for the advantage of the working class. Of more significance was the alteration of the Council’s policy with regard to political reform. The early members had set themselves against the introduction of politics in any guise whatsoever, and during the years 1861-62 Howell and Odger strove in vain to enlist the Council in the agitation for a new Reform Bill. But in 1866, under the influence of Odger and Applegarth, Allan and Coulson, the Council enthusiastically threw itself into the demonstration in favour of the Reform Bill brought in by the Liberal Government, and took a leading part in the agitation which resulted in the enfranchisement of the town artisan.[383] In the same year the Council agreed to co-operate with the “International” in demanding Democratic Reform from all European Governments.

The widely advertised public action of the London Trades Council excited considerable interest in provincial centres of Trade Unionism. We see the Council in frequent [Pg 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 legislative reform to the London officials. Under the brilliant leadership of Alexander Macdonald, whose work we shall hereafter describe, the force of the coal-miners was being marshalled for Parliamentary agitation; and Macdonald’s friend, Alexander Campbell, was bringing the Glasgow Trades Council round to the new policy. And it was Campbell and Macdonald, working through these organisations, who carried through the most important Trade Union achievement of the next few years, the amendment of the law relating to master and servant.

It is difficult in these days, when equality of treatment before the law has become an axiom, to understand how the flagrant injustice of the old Master and Servant Acts seemed justifiable even to a middle-class Parliament. If an employer broke a contract of service, even wilfully and without excuse, he was liable only to be sued for damages, or, in the case of wages under £10, to be summoned before a court of summary jurisdiction, which could order payment of the amount due. The workman, on the other hand, who wilfully broke his contract of service, either by absenting himself from his employment, or by leaving his work, was liable to be proceeded against for a criminal offence, and punished by three months’ imprisonment. This inequality of treatment was, moreover, aggravated by various other anomalies. It followed by the general law of evidence that, whilst a master sued by a servant could be witness in his own favour, the servant prosecuted by his employer could not give evidence on his own behalf; and it frequently happened that no other evidence than the employer’s could be produced. It was in the power of a single justice of the peace, on an information on oath, to issue a warrant for the summary arrest of the workman, who thus found himself, [Pg 250] when a dispute occurred, suddenly seized, even in his bed,[384] and haled to prison at the discretion of a magistrate, who was in many cases himself an employer of labour. The case was heard before a single justice of the peace, and the hearing might take place at his private house. The only punishment that could be inflicted was imprisonment, the law not allowing the alternative of a fine or the payment of damages. From the decision of the justice, however arbitrary, there was no appeal. Finally, it must be added, the sentence of imprisonment was no discharge for a debt, so that a workman was liable to be imprisoned over and over again for the same breach of contract. [385]

[Pg 251]

Early in 1863 Alexander Campbell[386] brought the Master [Pg 252] and Servant Law under the notice of the Glasgow Trades Council. A Parliamentary Return was obtained showing that the enormous number of 10,339 cases of breach of contract of service came before the courts in a single year. A committee was formed to agitate for the amendment of the law, and communication was opened up, not only with the London leaders, but also with sympathisers in other provincial towns. The Trades Councils of London, Bristol, Sheffield, Nottingham, Newcastle, and Edinburgh were formally invited to unite in a combined movement. In Leeds and elsewhere local Trades Councils were established for the express purpose of forwarding the agitation; and 15,000 copies of a “Memorial of Information intended for the use of such workmen as fall under the provisions of the Statute 4 Geo. IV. c. 34”[387] were circulated to all the leading workmen throughout the country. At the instance of Campbell and Macdonald, the Glasgow Trades Council convened a conference of Trade Union representatives to consider how the object of the agitation could best be secured. This Conference, which was held in London during four days of May 1864, marks an epoch in Trade Union history. For the first time a national meeting of Trade Union delegates was spontaneously convened by a Trade Union organisation to discuss a purely workman’s question, in the presence of working men alone. The number of delegates did not exceed twenty, but these included the leading officials of all the great national and amalgamated Unions. [388]

[Pg 253]

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

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

But whilst the Junta and their allies were, by the capture of the Trades Councils, using the Trade Union organisation for an active political campaign, their steady discouragement of aggressive strikes was bringing down upon them the wrath of the “Old Unionists” of the time. It was one of the principal functions of the London Trades Council to grant “credentials” to trade societies having disputes on hand, recommending them for the support of workmen in other trades. As these credentials were not confined to London disputes, the custom placed the Council under the invidious necessity of either giving its sanction [Pg 254] to, or withholding approval from, practically every important strike in the kingdom—an arrangement which quickly brought the Council into conflict with the more aggressive societies. In two cases especially the divergence of policy raised serious and heated discussions. A building trades strike had broken out in the Midlands at the beginning of 1864, initiated by the old Friendly Society (now styled the General Union) of Operative Carpenters. The men’s action was strongly disapproved by Applegarth and the Executive of the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters. The London Trades Council unhesitatingly took Applegarth’s view, thereby alienating whole sections of the building trades, whose local trade clubs and provincial societies had retained much of the spirit of the Builders’ Union of 1834. But the internal dissension arising from the carpenters’ dispute fell far short of that brought about by the strike of the Staffordshire puddlers. It is unnecessary to go into the details of this angry struggle against a 10 per cent reduction. The conduct of the men in refusing the arbitration offered by the Earl of Lichfield met with the disapproval of the London Trades Council. The hotter spirits were greatly incensed at the Council’s moderation. George Potter, in particular, distinguished himself by addressing excited meetings of the men on strike, advising them to stand firm.

Potter, who figures largely in the newspapers of this time, was in fact endeavouring to work up a formidable opposition to the policy of the Junta. After the building trades disputes of 1859-60, in which he had taken a leading part, he had started the Beehive, a weekly organ of the Trade Union world. Himself a member of a tiny trade club of London carpenters, he was bitterly opposed to Applegarth and the Amalgamated Society, and from 1864 onward we find him at the head of every outbreak of disaffection. An expert in the arts of agitation and of advertisement, Potter occasionally cut a remarkable figure, so that the unwary reader, not of the Beehive only, but also of the Times, might easily believe him to have been the most influential [Pg 255] leader of the working-class movement. As a matter of fact, he at no time represented any genuine trade organisation, the “Working Men’s Association,” of which he was president, being an unimportant society of nondescript persons. However, from 1864 to 1867 we find him calling frequent meetings of delegates of the London trades to denounce the Junta, and their instrument, the London Trades Council. The minutes of the latter body contain abundant evidence of the bitter feelings caused by these attacks, and make clear the essential difference between the two policies. At a special meeting called to condemn Potter’s action, Howell, Allan, Coulson, and Applegarth enlarged upon the evil consequences of irresponsible agitation in trade disputes; and Danter, the outspoken president of the Amalgamated Engineers, emphatically declared that Potter “had become the aider and abettor of strikes. He thought of nothing else; he followed no other business; strikes were his bread-and-cheese; in short, he was a strike-jobber, and he made the Beehive newspaper his instrument for pushing his nose into every unfortunate dispute that sprang up.” [390]

Responsible and cautious leadership of the Trade Union Movement was becoming increasingly necessary. The growth of the great national Unions, alike in wealth and in membership, and the manner in which they subscribed in aid of each other’s battles, had aroused the active enmity of the employers. To counteract the men’s renewed strength, the employers once more banded themselves into powerful associations, and made use of a new weapon. The old expedient of the “document” had, since its failure to break down the Amalgamated Engineers in 1852, and to subdue the building operatives in 1859, fallen somewhat into discredit. It was now reinforced by the general “lock-out” of all the men in a particular industry, even those who accepted the employer’s terms, in order to reduce to subjection the recalcitrant employees of one or [Pg 256] two firms only.[391] The South Yorkshire coal-owners especially distinguished themselves during those years by their frequent use of the “lock-out.” One Yorkshire miner complained in 1866 that he had been “locked out about twenty-four months in six years.”[392] During the year 1865 it seemed as if the lock-outs were about to become a feature of every large industry, the most notable instances being those of the Staffordshire ironworkers, to which we have already alluded, and the shipbuilding operatives on the Clyde. In both these cases large sections of the men were willing to work at the employers’ terms, but were either known to belong to a Union or suspected of contributing to the men on strike. But though this practice of “locking out” created great excitement among working men, it did not achieve the employers’ aim of breaking up the Unions. Nothing but absolute suppression by law appeared open to those who regarded trade combinations as “a poisonous plant” and an “anomalous anachronism,” and who were vainly looking to “the happy period,” both for masters and men, when the questions, “What is the price of a quarter of wheat?” and “What is the price of a workman’s day wage?” shall be settled on the same principles. [393]

Nor were the employers the only people who began to talk once more of putting down Trade Unions by law. The industrial dislocation which the lock-outs, far more than the strikes, produced occasioned widespread loss and public inconvenience. The quarrels of employer and employed came to be vaguely regarded as matters of more than private concern. Unfortunately a handle was given to the enemies of Trade Unionism by the continuance of outrages, committed in the interest of Trade Unions, which began to be widely advertised by the press. Isolated cases of violence [Pg 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 combinations of men sticking at neither violence nor murder to achieve their ends. The “terrorism of Trade Unions” became a nightmare. “On one side,” says a writer who represents the public feeling of the time, “is arrayed the great mass of the talent, knowledge, virtue, and wealth of the country, and, on the other, a number of unscrupulous men, leading a half-idle life, and feeding on the contributions of their dupes, and on a tax levied on such of the intelligent artisans as are forced into their ranks, but who would be only too happy to throw off their thraldom and join the supporters of law and justice, did these but offer them adequate protection.” [394]

The Trade Unions world seems to have been quite unconscious of the gathering storm. In June 1866 138 delegates, representing all the great Unions, and a total membership of about 200,000, met at Sheffield to devise some defence against the constant use of the lock-out. The student of the proceedings of this conference will contrast with wonder the actual conduct of the Trade Union leaders with the denunciations to which these “few unscrupulous men” were at this time exposed. Nothing could be more worthy, even from the middle-class point of view, than the discussions of these representative workmen, who denounced [Pg 258] with equal energy the readiness with which their impetuous followers came out on strike and the arbitrary lock-out of the masters, and whose resolutions express their desire for the establishment of Councils of Conciliation and the general resort to arbitration in industrial disputes.[395] Meanwhile, in order to meet the great federations of employers, they formed “The United Kingdom Alliance of Organised Trades,” to support the members of any trade who should find themselves “locked out” by their employers.[396] Unfortunately the conference utterly failed to decide what constituted a “lock-out,” as distinguished from a strike; and the “Judicial Council” of the Alliance, consisting of one delegate from each of the nine districts into which the kingdom was divided, found itself continually at issue with its constituents as to the disputes to be supported. This friction co-operated with the increasing depression of trade in causing the calls for funds to be very unwillingly responded to; and the Executive Committee, sitting at Sheffield, had seldom any cash at its command. The Alliance lingered on until about the end of 1870, when the defection of its last important Unions brought it absolutely to an end.[397] In [Pg 259] 1866, however, the Alliance was young and hopeful. It received its first blow in October of this year, when it and the Trade Union Conference were forgotten in the sensation produced by the explosion of a can of gunpowder in a workman’s house in New Hereford Street, Sheffield.

This outrage was only one of a class of crimes for which Sheffield was already notorious. But in the state of public irritation against Trade Unionism, which had been growing during the past few years of lock-outs and strikes, the news served to precipitate events. On all sides there arose a cry for a searching investigation into Trade Unionism. The Trade Unions themselves joined in the demand. As no clue to the perpetrators of the last crime could be discovered by the local police, the leaders of the Sheffield trade clubs united with the Town Council and the local Employers’ Association in pressing for a Government inquiry. The London Trades Council and the Executive of the Amalgamated Engineers sent a joint deputation to Sheffield to investigate the case. The deputation discovered no more than the local police had done about the perpetrators of the crime, and therefore innocently reported that there was no evidence of Trade Union complicity; but they accompanied this report by a strong condemnation of “the abominable practice of rattening, which is calculated [Pg 260] to demoralise those who are concerned in it, and to bring disgrace on all trade combinations.”[398] Public meetings of Trade Unionists were held throughout the country, at which the leaders expressed their indignation both at the outrage itself and at the common assumption that it was a usual and necessary incident of Trade Unionism. These meetings invariably concluded with a demand on behalf of the Trade Unionists to be allowed an opportunity of refuting the accusations of the enemies of the movement. Robert Applegarth saw the Home Secretary on the subject, and suggested a Commission of Inquiry. The appointment of a Royal Commission of Inquiry was officially announced in the Queen’s Speech of February 1867. That the Government meant business was proved by the prompt introduction of a Bill empowering the Commission to pursue its investigations by exceptional means. The inquiry was to extend to all outrages during the past ten years, whether in Sheffield or elsewhere. Not only were accomplices in criminal acts promised an indemnity, provided that they [Pg 261] gave evidence, but the same privilege was extended to the actual perpetrators of the crimes. The investigation, moreover, was not restricted to the supposed criminal practices of particular trade clubs, but was to embrace the whole subject of Trade Unionism and its effects.

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

The formation of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, with its large accumulated funds, had renewed the anxiety of the Trade Union officials as to the extent to which a trade society enjoyed the protection of the law. Although the Act of 1825 had made trade societies, as such, no longer unlawful, nothing had been done to give them any legal status, or to enable them to take proceedings as corporate entities. But in 1855 a “Metropolitan Trades Committee” succeeded in getting a clause intended to relate to Trade Unions inserted in the Friendly Societies Act of that year. By the 44th section of this Act it was provided that a society established for any purpose not illegal might, by depositing its rules with the Registrar of Friendly Societies, enjoy the privilege of having disputes among its own members summarily dealt with by the magistrates. Under this provision several of the larger societies had deposited their rules, believing, with the concurrence of the Registrar, that this secured to them the power to proceed summarily against any member who should, in his capacity of secretary or treasurer, detain or make away with the society’s funds.[399] So thoroughly has the legality of their position been accepted [Pg 262] by all concerned, that on the establishment by Gladstone of the Post Office Savings Banks in 1861, he had, at the request of the Trade Union leaders, expressly conceded to the Unions, equally with the Friendly Societies, the privilege of making use of the new banks.

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

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

Trade Unionism was now at bay, assailed on both sides. [Pg 263] It was easy to foresee that the employers and their allies would make a determined attempt to use the Royal Commission and the Sheffield outrages to suppress Trade Unionism by the criminal law. On the other hand, the hard-earned accumulations of the larger societies, by this time amounting to an aggregate of over a quarter of a million sterling, were at the mercy of their whole army of branch secretaries and treasurers, any one of whom might embezzle the funds with impunity.

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

The first action of the Junta was to call to their councils those middle-class allies upon whose assistance and advice they had learned to rely. We have already noticed the adhesion of the “Christian Socialists” to the Amalgamated Engineers in 1852, and the intervention of the Positivists in the Building Trades disputes of 1859-61. Frederic Harrison and E. S. Beesly were now rendering specially valuable services as the apologists for Trade Unionism in the public press. “Tom Hughes” was in Parliament, almost the only spokesman of the men’s whole claim. Henry Crompton was bringing his acute judgement and his detailed experience of the actual working of the law to bear upon the dangers which beset the Unions in the Courts of Justice. Applegarth’s minutes show how frequently all four were ready to spend hours in private conference at the Engineers’ office in Stamford Street, and how unreservedly they, in this [Pg 264] crisis, placed their professional skill at the disposal of the Trade Union leaders. It would be difficult to exaggerate the zeal and patient devotion of these friends of Trade Unionism, or the service which they rendered to the cause in its hour of trial. [401]

It is obvious from the private transactions of the conference that the main object of the Junta was to gain for Trade Unionism that legal status which was necessary alike to the security of the funds and to the recognition of the Trade Union organisation as a constituent part of the State. But the first thing to be done was to defeat the employers in their endeavour to use the Royal Commission as an instrument for suppressing Trade Unionism by direct penal enactment. The Junta had therefore not only to dissociate themselves from the ignorant turbulence of the old-fashioned Unions, but also to prove that the bulk of their own members were enlightened and respectable. It was, moreover, of the utmost importance to persuade the public that the Junta and their friends, not the strike-jobbers or the outrage-mongers, were the authorised and typical representatives of the Trade Union Movement. All this it was necessary to bring out in the inquiry by the Royal Commission before which Trade Unionism was presently to stand on its defence. The composition of the Commission was accordingly a matter of the greatest concern for the Junta. The Government had resolved to select, as Commissioners, not representatives of each view, but persons presumably impartial, with Sir William Erle, who had lately retired from the Lord Chief Justiceship of the Common Pleas, as their chairman. In this arrangement representatives of the employers were to be excluded; and the appointment of working men was not dreamed of. The Commission was to be made up [Pg 265] chiefly from the ranks of high officials, with four members from the two Houses of Parliament, and the chairman of a great industrial undertaking. The active part which Thomas Hughes had taken in the debates secured him a seat on the Commission, though he felt that single-handed he could do little for his friends. All possible pressure was accordingly brought to bear on the Government with a view to the appointment of a Trade Unionist member; but the idea of a working-man Royal Commissioner was inconsistent with official traditions. The utmost that could be obtained was that the workmen and the employers should each suggest a special representative to be added. For the workmen a wise and extremely fortunate choice was made in the person of Frederic Harrison, the Junta obtaining also permission for representative Trade Unionists to be present during the examination of the witnesses. [402]

The actual conduct of the Trade Unionist case was undertaken by Harrison and Hughes, in consultation with Applegarth, whom the Junta deputed to attend the sittings on their behalf. The ground of defence was chosen with considerable shrewdness. The policy of the Junta and their allies was to focus the attention of the Commissioners upon the great trade friendly societies in contradistinction to the innumerable little local trade clubs of the old type. The evidence of Applegarth, who was the first witness examined, did much to dispel the grosser prejudices against the Unions. The General Secretary of the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters was able to show that his society, then standing third in financial magnitude in the Trade Union world, far [Pg 266] from fomenting strikes, was mainly occupied in the work of an insurance company. He was in a position to lay effective stress on the total absence of secrecy or coercion in its proceedings. He disclaimed, on behalf of its members, all objection to machinery, foreign imports, piecework, overtime, or the free employment of apprentices. The fundamental position upon which he entrenched his Trade Unionism was the maintenance, at all hazards, of the Standard Rate of Wages and the Standard Hours of Labour, to be secured by the accumulation of such a fund as would enable every member of the Union effectually to set a reserve-price on his labour. William Allan, who came up on the third day, followed Applegarth’s lead, though with some reservations; and the evidence of these two officers of what were primarily national friendly societies made a marked impression on the Commission.

The employers were not as well served as the men. It is true that they succeeded, in spite of Applegarth’s disclaimers, in persuading the Commission that some of the most powerful Unions strenuously objected to piecework and sub-contract in any form whatsoever, and in some instances even to machinery. In other cases it was proved that attempts were made to enforce a rigid limitation of apprentices. Owing to the energy of the Central Association of Master Builders, the restrictive policy of the older Unions in the building trades was brought well to the front; and this fact accounts, even to-day, for most of the current impression of Trade Unionism among the middle and upper classes. But the employers did not discriminate in their attack. Almost with one accord they objected to the whole principle of Trade Unionism. They reiterated with a curious impenetrability the old argument of the “individual bargain,” and protested against any kind of industrial organisation on the part of their employees. All attempts by the men to claim collectively any share in regulating the conditions of labour were denounced as “unwarrantable encroachments on their rights as employers.” [Pg 267] The number of apprentices, like indeed the whole administration of industry, was claimed as of private concern, the settlement of which “exclusively belongs to the employer himself; a matter in which no other party, much less the operatives, have got anything to do.” And they objected even more to the centrally administered national society with extensive reserve funds than to the isolated local clubs whose spasmodic outbursts they could afford to disregard. But the confusion between the small local bodies with their narrow policy of outrage and violence, and the amalgamated societies with their far-reaching power and accumulated wealth, effective as it had been in alarming the public, proved disastrous to the employers when their case was subjected to the acute cross-examination of Frederic Harrison. The masters, by directing their attack mainly on the great Amalgamated Societies and the newly-formed local Trades Councils, played, in fact, directly into the hands of the Junta. It was easy for Allan and Applegarth to show that the influence of central Executive Councils and the formation of a public opinion among trade societies tended to restrain the more aggressive action of men embittered by a local quarrel. The combination of friendly benefits with trade objects was destined to be hotly attacked twenty years later by the more ardent spirits in the Trade Union world, as leading to inertia and supineness in respect of wages, hours, and conditions of labour. The evidence adduced in 1867-8, read in the light of later events, reveals that this tendency had already begun; and it was impossible for the Commissioners to resist the conclusion that they had, in the Amalgamated Engineers and Carpenters, types of a far less aggressive Trade Unionism than such survivals as the purely trade societies of the brickmakers or the Sheffield industries.

Foiled in this attempt the employers fell back upon an indictment of the Amalgamated Unions considered as friendly societies. The leading actuaries were called to prove that neither the Amalgamated Engineers nor the [Pg 268] Amalgamated Carpenters could possibly meet their accumulating liabilities, and that these must, in a few years, inevitably bring both societies to bankruptcy. The whole of this evidence is a striking instance of the untrustworthiness of expert witnesses off their own ground. Neither Finlaison nor Tucker, who were called as actuaries on behalf of the employers, ever realised that a Trade Union, unlike a Friendly Society, possesses and constantly exercises an unlimited power to raise funds by special levies, or by increased contributions, whenever it may seem good to the majority of the members. But even had the actuarial indictment been completely warranted, it was a mistake in tactics on the part of the employers. The Commissioners found themselves shunted into an inquiry, not into the results of Trade Unionism upon the common weal, but into the arithmetical soundness of the financial arrangements which particular groups of workmen chose to make among themselves.

Meanwhile the primary business of the Commission, the investigation into the Sheffield outrages, had been remitted to special “examiners,” whose local inquiry attracted far less attention than the proceedings of the main body. At first the investigation elicited little that was new; but in June 1867 the country was startled by dramatic confessions on the part of Broadhead and other members of the grinders’ trade clubs, unravelling a series of savage crimes instigated by them, and paid for out of Club funds. For a short time it looked as if all the vague accusations hurled at Trade Unionism at large were about to be justified; but the examiners reported that four-fifths of the societies even of the Sheffield trades were free from outrages, and that these had been most prevalent from 1839 to 1861, and had since declined. The only other place in which the Commissioners thought it necessary to make inquiry into outrages was Manchester, where the Brickmakers’ Union had committed many crimes, but where no complicity on the part of other trades was shown. It was made evident to all candid [Pg 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. [403]

The success with which the case of the Trade Unionists had been presented to the Commission was reflected in a changed attitude on the part of the governing class, a change expressly attributed to the “greater knowledge and wider experience” of Trade Unions which had been gained through the Royal Commission. “True statesmanship,” declared the Times, “will seek neither to augment nor to reduce their influence, but, accepting it as a fact, will give it free scope for legitimate development.”[404] Thus the official report of the Commission, from which the enemies of Trade Unionism had hoped so much, contained no recommendation which would have made the position of any single Union worse than it was before. An inconclusive and somewhat inconsistent document, it argued that trade combination could be of no real economic advantage to the workman, but nevertheless recommended the legalisation of the Unions under certain conditions. Whereas the Act of 1825 had excepted from the common illegality only combinations in respect of wages or hours of labour, the [Pg 270] Commissioners recommended that no combination should henceforth be liable to prosecution for restraint of trade, except those formed “to do acts which involved breach of contract,” and to refuse to work with any particular person. But the privilege of registration, carrying with it the power to obtain legal protection for the society’s funds, was to be conferred only on Unions whose rules were free from certain restrictive clauses, such as the limitation of apprentices or of the use of machinery, and the prohibition of piecework and sub-contract. The employers’ influence on the Commission was further shown in a special refusal of the privilege of registration to societies whose rules authorised the support of the disputes of other trades.

So far the result of the Commission was purely negative. No hostile legislation was even suggested. On the other hand, it was obvious that no Trade Union would accept “legalisation” on the proposed conditions. But Harrison and Hughes had not restricted themselves to casting out all dangerous proposals from the majority report. Their minority report, which was signed also by the Earl of Lichfield, exposed in terse paragraphs the futility of the suggestions made by the majority, and laid down in general terms the principles upon which all future legislation should proceed. It advocated the removal of all special legislation relating to labour contracts, on the principle, first, that no act should be illegal if committed by a workman unless it was equally illegal if committed by any other person; and secondly, that no act by a combination of men should be regarded as criminal if it would not have been criminal in a single person. To this was appended a detailed statement, drafted by Frederic Harrison, in which the character and objects of Trade Unionism, as revealed in the voluminous evidence taken by the Commission, were explained and defended with consummate skill. What was perhaps of even greater service to the Trade Union world was a precise and detailed exposition of the various amendments required to bring the law into accordance with the general principles [Pg 271] referred to. We have here a striking instance of the advantage to a Labour Movement of expert professional advice. The Junta had been demanding the complete legalisation of their Unions in the same manner as ordinary Friendly Societies. They had failed to realise that such a legalisation would have exposed the Amalgamated Society of Engineers to be sued by one of its members who might be excluded for “blacklegging,” or otherwise working contrary to the interests of the trade. The whole efficacy, from a Trade Union point of view, of the amalgamation of trade and friendly benefits would have been destroyed. The bare legalisation would have brought the Trades Unions under the general law, and subjected them to constant and harassing interference by Courts of Justice. They had grown up in despite of the law and the lawyers; which as regards the spirit of the one and the prejudices of the other were, and still are, alien and hostile to the purposes and collective action of the Trades Societies. The danger of any member having power to take legal proceedings, to worry them by litigation and cripple them by legal expenses, or to bring a society within the scope of the insolvency and bankruptcy law, became very apparent. The Junta easily realised, when their advisers explained the position, that mere legalisation would place the most formidable weapon in the hands of unscrupulous employers. To avoid this difficulty Harrison proposed the ingenious plan of bringing the Trade Union under the Friendly Societies Acts, so far as regards the protection of its funds against theft or fraud, whilst retaining to the full the exceptional legal privilege of being incapable of being sued or otherwise proceeded against as a corporate entity. Had a Trade Union official been selected as the sole representative of the Unions on the Commission, such detailed and ingenious amendments of the law would not have been devised and made part of an authoritative official report. The complete charter of Trade Union liberty, which Harrison and his friends had elaborated, became for seven years the political programme of the Trade Unionists. [Pg 272] And it is a part of the curious irony of English party politics that whilst the formation of this programme, and the agitation by which it was pressed on successive Parliaments, were both of them exclusively the work of a group of Radicals it was, as we shall see, a Conservative Cabinet which eventually passed it into law. [405]

The effective though informal leadership of the movement which the Junta had assumed during the sittings of the Royal Commission had not gone entirely unquestioned. Those who are interested in the cross-currents of personal intrigues and jealousies which detract from the force of popular movements can read in the pages of the Beehive full accounts of the machinations of George Potter. The Beehive summoned a Trade Union Conference at St. Martin’s Hall in March 1867, which was attended by over one hundred delegates from provincial societies, Trades Councils, and the minor London clubs.[406] The Junta, perhaps rather unwisely, refused to have anything to do with a meeting held under Potter’s auspices. But many of their provincial allies came up without any suspicion of the sectional character of the conference, and found themselves in the anomalous position of countenancing what was really an attempt to seduce the London Trades from their allegiance [Pg 273] to the Junta and the London Trades Council. The Conference sat for four days, and made, owing to Potter’s energy, no little stir. A committee was appointed to conduct the Trade Union case before the Commission, and Conolly, the President of the Operative Stonemasons, was deputed to attend the sittings. But although special prominence was given by the Beehive to all the proceedings of this committee, we have failed to discover with what it actually concerned itself. An indiscreet speech by Conolly quickly led to his exclusion from the sittings of the Commission; and the management of the Trade Union case remained in the hands of Applegarth and the Junta.

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

Meanwhile a change had come over the political situation. At the outset of the crisis Frederic Harrison had urged upon the Trade Union world the necessity of turning [Pg 274] to the polling booth for redress. “Nothing,” he writes in January, 1867, “will force the governing classes to recognise [the workmen’s] claims and judge them fairly, until they find them wresting into their own hands real political power. Unionists who, till now, have been content with their Unions, and have shrunk from political action, may see the pass to which this abstinence from political movements has brought them.”[409] Within a few months of this advice the Reform Bill of 1867 had enfranchised the working man in the boroughs. The Trade Union leaders were not slow to use the advantage thus given to them. The Junta, under the convenient cloak of the Conference of Amalgamated Trades, issued, in July, 1868, a circular urging upon Trade Unionists the importance of registering their names as electors, and of pressing on every candidate the question in which they were primarily interested. The Trades Councils throughout the country followed suit; and we find the Junta’s electoral tactics adopted even by societies which were traditionally opposed to all political action. The Central Committee of the Stonemasons, for instance, strongly urged their members to vote at the ensuing election only for candidates who would support Trade Union demands. [410]

By the beginning of 1869 Frederic Harrison had drafted a comprehensive Bill, embodying all the legislative proposals of his minority report. This was introduced by Mundella and Hughes, and although its provisions were received with denunciations by the employers,[411] it gained some support among the newly elected members, and was strongly backed up outside the House. The Liberal Government of that day, and nearly all the members of the House of Commons, were still covertly hostile to the very principles [Pg 275] of Trade Unionism, and every attempt was made to burke the measure.[412] But the Junta were determined to make felt their new political power. From every part of the country pressure was put upon members of Parliament. A great demonstration of workmen was held at Exeter Hall, at which Mundella and Hughes declared their intention of forcing the House and the Ministry to vote upon the hated measure. Finding evasion no longer possible, the Government abandoned its attitude of hostility and agreed to a formal second reading, upon the understanding that the Cabinet would next year bring in a Bill of its own. A provisional measure giving temporary protection to Trade Union funds was accordingly hurried through Parliament at the end of the session pending the introduction of a complete Bill.[413] The Junta had gained the first victory of their political campaign.

[Pg 276]

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

The employers vehemently attacked the Government for conceding, as they said, practically all the Trade Union demands.[414] But from the men’s point of view this “complete charter legalising Unions” had a serious drawback. The Bill, as was complained, “while repealing the Combination Laws, substituted another penal law against workmen” as such. A lengthy clause provided that any violent threat or molestation for the purpose of coercing either employers or employed should be severely punished. All the terms of the old Combination Laws, “molest,” “obstruct,” “threaten,” “intimidate,” and so forth, were used [Pg 277] without any definition or limitation, and picketing, moreover, was expressly included in molestation or obstruction by a comprehensive prohibition of “persistently following” any person, or “watching or besetting” the premises in which he was, or the approach to such premises. The Act of 1859, which had expressly legalised peaceful persuasion to join legal combinations, was repealed.[415] It seemed only too probable that the Government measure would make it a criminal offence for two Trade Unionists to stand quietly in the street opposite the works of an employer against whom they had struck, in order to communicate peacefully the fact of the strike to any workmen who might be ignorant of it.

It does not appear that Bruce’s fiercely resented “Third [Pg 278] Clause” was intended to effect any alteration in the law. Its comprehensive prohibition of violence, threats, intimidation, molestation, and obstruction did no more than sum up and codify the various judicial decisions of past years under which the Trade Unionists had suffered. But the law had hitherto been obscure and conflicting; both the statutes and the judicial decisions had proceeded largely from a presumption against the very existence of Trade Unionism which was now passing away; and the workmen and their advisers not unreasonably feared the consequences of an explicit re-enactment of provisions which practically made criminal all the usual methods of trade combination. A recent decision had brought the danger home to the minds of the Trade Union leaders and their legal friends. In July 1867 a great strike had broken out among the London tailors, in which the masters’ shops had been carefully “picketed.”[416] Druitt, Shorrocks, and other officers of the [Pg 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 “molestation” if they gave annoyance only by black looks, or even by their presence in large numbers, without any acts or gestures of violence, and that if two or more persons combined to do anything unpleasant and annoying to another person they were guilty of a common law offence. The Tailors’ officers and committeemen were found guilty merely of organising peaceful picketing, and it became evident that, if the elastic law of conspiracy could thus be brought to bear on Trade Union disputes, practically every incident of strike management might become a crime.[417] Nor did Druitt’s case stand alone. Within the memory of the Junta men had been sent to prison for the simple act of striking, or even for a simple agreement to strike.[418] Indeed, merely giving notice of a projected strike, even in the most courteous and peaceful manner, had frequently been held to be an act of intimidation punishable as a crime.[419] In 1851 the posting up of placards announcing a strike was held to be intimidation of the employers.[420] The Government Bill, far from accepting Frederic Harrison’s proposed repeal of all criminal legislation specially applying to workmen, left these judicial decisions untouched, and, by re-enacting them in [Pg 280] a codified form, proposed even to make their operation more uniform and effectual.

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

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

[Pg 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 legalising part of the Bill, whilst using every effort to throw out the Third Section. A deputation was sent to the Home Secretary. Protest after protest was despatched to the legislators, and the Congress adjourned at half-past four each day, in order, as it was expressly declared, that delegates might “devote the evening to waiting upon Members of Parliament.” But neither the Government nor the House of Commons was disposed to show any favour to Trade Union action in restraint of that “free competition” and individual bargaining which had so long been the creed of the employers. The utmost concession that could be obtained was that the [Pg 282] Bill should be divided into two, so that the law legalising the existence of trade societies might stand by itself, whilst the criminal clauses restraining their action were embodied in a separate “Criminal Law Amendment Bill.” This illusory concession sufficed to detach from the opposition many of those who had at the General Election professed friendship to the Unions. In the main debate Thomas Hughes and A. J. Mundella stood almost alone in pressing the Trade Unionists’ full demands; and though a few other members were inclined to help to some extent, the second reading was agreed to without a division. The other stages were rapidly run through without serious opposition. In the House of Lords the provisions against picketing were made even more stringent, “watching and besetting” by a single individual being made as criminal as “watching and besetting” by a multitude. In this unsatisfactory shape the two Bills passed into law.[422] Trade Societies became, for the first time, legally recognised and fully protected associations; whilst, on the other hand, the legislative prohibition of Trade Union action was expressly reaffirmed, and even increased in stringency.

In the eyes of the Trade Unions this result amounted to a defeat; and the conduct of the Government caused the bitterest resentment.[423] The Secretaries of the Amalgamated Societies, especially Allan and Applegarth, had, indeed, attained the object which they personally had most at heart. The great organisations for mutual succour, which had been built up by their patient sagacity, were now, for the first time, assured of complete legal protection. A number of the larger societies promptly availed themselves of the Trade Union Act, by registering their rules in accordance with its provisions;[424] and in September [Pg 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 Amendment Act, the Government had deliberately struck a blow against the methods of all trade societies at all periods. The growing strength of the organisations of the coalminers and cotton-spinners, and the rapid expansion of Trade Unionism which marked this period of commercial prosperity, had for some time been tending towards the development of the informal meetings of the Junta into a more representative executive. The dissolution of the Conference of Amalgamated Trades left the field open; and the leadership of the Trade Union Movement was assumed by the Parliamentary Committee which had been appointed at the Trades Union Congress in the previous March, and which included all the principal leaders of the chief metropolitan and provincial societies of the time.

The agitation which was immediately begun to secure the repeal of the Criminal Law Amendment Act became during the next four years the most significant feature of the Trade Union world. Throughout all the various struggles of these years the Trade Union leaders kept steadily in view the definite aim of getting rid of a law which they regarded, not only as hampering their efforts for better conditions of employment, but also as an indignity and an insult to the hundreds of thousands of intelligent artisans whom they represented. The whole history of this agitation proves how completely the governing classes were out of touch with the recently enfranchised artisans. The legislation of 1871 was regarded by the Government and the House of Commons as the full and final solution of a long-standing problem. “The judges, however, declared,” [Pg 284] as Henry Crompton points out, “that the only effect of the legislation of 1871 was to make the trade object of the strike not illegal. A strike was perfectly legal; but if the means employed were calculated to coerce the employer they were illegal means, and a combination to do a legal act by illegal means was a criminal conspiracy. In other words, a strike was lawful, but anything done in pursuance of a strike was criminal. Thus the judges tore up the remedial statute, and each fresh decision went further and developed new dangers.”[425] But Gladstone’s Cabinet steadfastly refused, right down to its fall in 1874, even to consider the possibility of altering the Criminal Law Amendment Act. It was in vain that deputation after deputation pointed out that men were being sent to prison under this law for such acts as peacefully accosting a workman in the street. In 1871 seven women were imprisoned in South Wales merely for saying “Bah” to one blackleg. Innumerable convictions took place for the use of bad language. Almost any action taken by Trade Unionists to induce a man not to accept employment at a struck shop resulted, under the new Act, in imprisonment with hard labour. The intolerable injustice of this state of things was made more glaring by the freedom allowed to the employers to make all possible use of “black-lists” and “character notes,” by which obnoxious men were prevented from getting work. No prosecution ever took place for this form of molestation or obstruction. No employer was ever placed in the dock under the law which professedly applied to both parties. In short, boycotting by the employers was freely permitted; boycotting by the men was put down by the police.

The irritation caused by these petty prosecutions was, in December 1872, deepened into anger by the sentence of twelve months’ imprisonment passed upon the London gas-stokers. These men were found guilty of “conspiracy” [Pg 285] to coerce or molest their employers by merely preparing for a simultaneous withdrawal of their labour. The vindictive sentence inflicted by Lord Justice Brett was justified by the governing classes on the ground of the danger to the community which a strike of gas-stokers might involve; and the Home Secretary refused to listen to any appeal on behalf of the men.[426] The Trade Union leaders did not fail to perceive that no legal distinction could, under the law as it then stood, be drawn between a gas-stoker and any other workmen. If preparing for a strike was punishable, under “the elastic and inexplicable law of conspiracy,” by twelve months’ imprisonment, it was obvious that the whole fabric of Trade Unionism might be overthrown by any band of employers who chose to put the law in force. The London Trades Council accordingly summoned a delegate meeting “to consider the critical legal position of all trade societies and their officers consequent upon the recent conviction of the London gas-stokers.” Representation after representation was made to the Government and to members of Parliament; and the movement for the repeal of the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1871 was widened into a determined attempt to get rid of all penal legislation bearing on trade disputes. [427]

Rarely has political agitation been begun in such apparently unpromising circumstances, and carried so rapidly to a triumphant issue. The Liberal administration of these years, like the majority of both parties in the House of Commons, was entirely dominated by the antagonism felt by the manufacturers to any effective collective bargaining on the part of the men. The representations of the Parliamentary Committee found no sympathy either with Henry Bruce or with Robert Lowe, who succeeded him as Home Secretary. Gladstone, as Prime Minister, [Pg 286] refused in 1872 to admit that there was any necessity for further legislation, and utterly declined to take the matter up;[428] and during that session the Parliamentary Committee were unable to find any member willing to introduce a Bill for the repeal of the Criminal Law Amendment Act.

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

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

Under these circumstances it is not surprising that the old idea of Trade Union abstention from politics gave way to a determined attempt at organised political action. Nor were the Trade Unionists content with merely pressing the organised political parties in the House of Commons. The running of independent Labour candidates against both parties alike was a most significant symptom of the new feeling in Labour politics. The Labour Representation League, composed mainly of prominent Trade Unionists, had for some years been endeavouring to secure the election of working men to the House of Commons; and the independent candidatures of George Odger during 1869 and 1870 had provoked considerable feeling.[430] At a bye-election [Pg 288] at Greenwich in 1873, a third candidate was run with working-class support against both the great parties, with the result that Boord, the Conservative, gained the seat. In what spirit this was regarded by the organised workmen and their trusted advisers may be judged from the following leading article which Professor E. S. Beesly wrote for the Beehive, then at the height of its influence: “The result of the Greenwich election is highly satisfactory.... The workman has at length come to the conclusion that the difference between Liberal and Tory is pretty much that between upper and nether millstone. The quality of the two is essentially the same. They are sections of the wealth-possessing class, and on all Parliamentary questions affecting the interests of labour they play into one another’s hands so systematically and imperturbably that one would suppose they thought workmen never read a newspaper or hear a speech.... The last hours of the Session were marked by the failure of two Bills about which workmen cared infinitely more than about all the measures put together for which Mr. Gladstone takes credit since his accession to office—I mean Mr. Harcourt’s Conspiracy Bill and Mr. Mundella’s Nine Hours Bill. As for Mr. Mundella’s Bill for repealing the Criminal Law Amendment Act, it has never [Pg 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. Everything must have a beginning, and workmen have waited so long for justice that seven years of Tory government will seem a trifling addition to the sum total of their endurance if it is a necessary preliminary to an enforcement of their claims.” [431]

The movement for direct electoral action remained without official support from Trade Unions as such until at the 1874 Congress Broadhurst was able to report that the miners, ironworkers, and some other societies had actually voted money for Parliamentary candidatures. At the General Election which ensued no fewer than thirteen “Labour candidates” went to the poll. In most cases both Liberal and Conservative candidates were run against them, with the result that the Conservatives gained the seats.[432] But at Stafford and Morpeth the official Liberals accepted what they were powerless to prevent; and Alexander Macdonald and Thomas Burt, the two leading [Pg 290] officials of the National Union of Miners, became the first “Labour members” of the House of Commons.

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

[Pg 292]

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

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

Meanwhile the astute workmen who led the movement were gradually concentrating their forces upon the only position from which they could hope to be victorious. They had, it must be remembered, no means of imposing their own view upon the community. Even after 1867 their followers formed but a small minority of the electorate, whilst the whole machinery of politics was in the hands of the middle class. Powerless to coerce or even to intimidate the governing classes, they could win only by persuasion. It was, however, hopeless to dream of converting the middle class to the essential principle of Trade Unionism, the compulsory maintenance of the Standard of Life. In the then state of Political Economy the Trade Unionists saw against them, on this point, the whole mass of educated opinion in the country. John Bright, for instance, did but express the common view of the progressive party of that time when he solemnly assured the working man that “combinations, in the long run, must be as injurious to himself as to the employer against whom he is contending.”[436] Lord Shaftesbury, the lifelong advocate of factory legislation, was praying that “the working people may be emancipated from the tightest thraldom they have ever yet endured. All the single despots, and all the aristocracies that ever were or ever will be, are as puffs of wind compared with these tornadoes, the Trade Unions.”[437] The Sheffield and other outrages, the rumours of constant persecution of non-Unionists, the hand-workers’ perpetual objection to [Pg 294] machinery, the restrictions on piecework and apprenticeship—all these real and fancied crimes had created a mass of prejudice against which it was hopeless for the Trade Unionists to struggle.

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

It is clear that the Trade Unionists had the best of the argument. It was manifestly unreasonable for the employers to insist on the principle of non-interference of the State in industry whenever they were pushed by the advocates of factory legislation, and at the same time to clamour for the assistance of the police to put down peaceful and voluntary combinations of their workmen. The capitalists were, in short, committed to the principle of laissez-faire in every phase of industrial life, from “Free Trade in Corn” to the unlimited use of labour of either sex at any age and under any conditions; and what the workmen demanded was only the application of this principle to the wage contract. “The Trade Union question,” writes, in 1869, their chosen representative and most powerful advocate, “is another and the latest example of the truth, that the sphere of legislation is strictly and curiously limited. After legislating about labour for centuries, each change producing its own evils, we have slowly come to see the truth, that we must cease to legislate for it at all. The public mind has been of late conscious of serious embarrassment, and eagerly expecting some legislative solution, some heaven-born discoverer [Pg 295] to arise, with a new Parliamentary nostrum. As usual in such cases, it now turns out that there is no legislative solution at all; and that the true solution requires, as its condition, the removal of the mischievous meddling of the past.”[438] This doctrine “that all men may lawfully agree to work or not to work, to employ or not to employ, on any terms that they think fit,” forms the whole burden of the speeches and petitions of the Trade Union leaders throughout this controversy. “We do not,” say the official representatives of Trade Unionism in their memorial to the Home Secretary in April 1875, “seek to interfere with the free competition of the individual in the exercise of his craft in his own way; but we reserve to ourselves the right either to work for, or to refuse to work for, an employer according to the circumstances of the case, just as the master has the right to discharge a workman, or workmen; and we deny that the individual right is in any way interfered with when it is done in concert.”

The working men had, in fact, picked up the weapon of their opponents and left these without defence. But in so doing the leading Trade Unionists of the time drifted into a position no less inconsistent than that of the employers. When they contended that the Union should be as free to bargain as the individual, they had not the slightest intention of permitting the individual to bargain freely if they could prevent him. Though Allan and Applegarth were able conscientiously to inform the Royal Commission that the members of their societies did not refuse to work with non-society men, they must have been perfectly aware that this convenient fact was only true in those places and at those periods in which society men were not in a sufficiently large majority to do otherwise. The trades to which Henry Broadhurst and George Howell belonged were notorious for the success with which the Unions had maintained their practice of excluding non-society men from their jobs. [Pg 296] The coal-miners of Northumberland and Durham habitually refused to descend the shaft in company with a non-Unionist. [439]

We have shown, in our Industrial Democracy, that this universal aspiration of Trade Unionism—the enforcement of membership—stands, in our opinion, on the same footing as the enforcement of citizenship. But, however this may be, it is evident that the refusal of the Northumberland miners to “ride” with non-society men is, in effect, as coercive on the dissentient minority as the Mines Regulation Act or an Eight Hours Bill. The insistence upon the Englishman’s right to freedom of contract was, in fact, in the mouths of staunch Trade Unionists, perilously near cant; and we find Frederic Harrison himself, when dealing with other legislation, warning them that it would be suicidal for working men to adopt as their own the capitalist cry of “non-interference.”[440] The force of this caution must have [Pg 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 combination is impossible.

It must not be inferred from the above criticism of the theoretic position taken by the men who steered the Trade Union Movement through its great crisis that they were conscious of their inconsistency with regard to State intervention, or that they deliberately set to work to win their case upon false premises. No one can study the history of their leadership without being impressed by their devotion, sagacity, and high personal worth. We must regard their inconsistency as a striking instance of the danger which besets a party formed without any clear idea of the social state at which it is aiming. In the struggle of these years we watch the English Trade Unionists driven from their Utopian aspirations into an inconsistent opportunism, from which they drifted during the next generation into the crude “self-help” of an “aristocracy of labour.” During the whole of this process there was no moment at which the incompatibility of their Individualist and Collectivist views was perceived. Applegarth and Odger, for instance, saw no inconsistency in becoming leading officials of the “International” on a programme drafted by Karl Marx, and at the same time supporting the current Radical demand for a widespread peasant proprietorship. But it was inevitable [Pg 298] that the exclusive insistence upon the Individualist arguments, through which alone the victory of 1875 could be won, should impress the Individualist ideal upon the minds of those who stood round the leaders. Other influences, moreover, promoted the acceptance by the Trade Unionists of the economic shibboleths of the middle class. The failure of the crude experiments of Owen and O’Connor, the striking success of the policy of Free Trade, the growing participation of working men in the Liberal politics of the time, and, above all, the close intimacy which many of them enjoyed with able and fertile thinkers of the middle class, all tended to create a new school of Trade Unionists. In a subsequent chapter we shall describe the results of this intellectual conversion upon the Trade Union Movement. First, however, we must turn to the internal development of these years, which our description of the Parliamentary struggles of 1867-75 has forced us temporarily to ignore. [441]