FOOTNOTES:
[308]Between 1850 and 1874 there was (except, perhaps, during the American Civil War) no falling off in the value of our export trade comparable to the serious declines of 1826, 1829, 1837, 1842, and 1848. We do not pretend to account for this difference, but may remind the reader of the coincident increase in the production of gold, the influence of Free Trade and railways, and, as the bimetallists would tell us, the currency arrangements which were brought to an end in 1873.
[309]This was an elaborate national organisation with 60 branches, grouped under five District Boards. But it enrolled only 4320 members, and broke up in 1847, after numerous local strikes. In June 1849 most of the provincial branches joined in the Typographical Association, from which for some time the strong Manchester and Birmingham societies stood aloof; whilst the London men formed the London Society of Compositors.
[310]The Colliers’ Guide, showing the Necessity of the Colliers Uniting to Protect their Labour from the Iron Hand of Oppression, etc., by J. B. Thompson (Bishop Wearmouth, 1843); and see many reports in the Northern Star, from 1843 to 1848; The Miners of Northumberland and Durham, by Richard Fynes, 1873; A Great Labour Leader[Thomas Burt], by Aaron Watson, 1908, pp. 19-23.
[311]Northern Star for 1843-4; Fynes’ Miners of Northumberland and Durham, 1873, chap. viii.; Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844, by Friedrich Engels, 1892, pp. 253-9.
[312]William Prowting Roberts, the youngest son of the Rev. Thomas Roberts, of Chelmsford, was born in 1806, and became a solicitor at Manchester. He was an enthusiastic Chartist, and friend of Fergus O’Connor, to whose Land Bank he acted as legal adviser. From 1843 onwards his name appears in nearly all the legal business of the Trade Unions. The collapse of 1848 somewhat damaged his reputation, but he continued to be frequently retained for many years. In 1867 he organised the defence of Allen, Larking, and O’Brien, the Irish “Manchester Martyrs,” who were hanged for the rescue of Fenian prisoners and the murder of a policeman. In later years Roberts retired to a country house in the neighbourhood of “O’Connorville,” near Rickmansworth, the scene of one of O’Connor’s colonies, where he died on September 7, 1871. A pamphlet on the Trade Union Bill of 1871 is the only publication of his that we have discovered, but he appears also to have edited a report of the engineers’ trial in 1847, and reports of some other legal proceedings.
[313]Flint Glass Makers’ Magazine, October 1851. The years 1847-8 had witnessed many strikingly vindictive prosecutions of Trade Unionists. Besides the case of the engineers, to which we shall refer hereafter, twenty-one stonemasons of London were indicted in 1848 for conspiracy, but, after repeated postponements, the prosecuting employer failed to proceed with the case. The Sheffield razor-grinders stood in greater jeopardy. John Drury, and three other members of their society, were tried and sentenced to ten years’ transportation at the instance of the Sheffield Manufacturers’ Protection Association on the random accusations of two dissolute convicts that they had incited them to destroy machinery. This monstrous perversion of justice aroused the greatest indignation. Public meetings were held by the National Association of United Trades. The indictment was quashed on a technical point, but a new one was immediately preferred against the defendants. The local feeling was, however, so great that they were finally, after a year’s suspense, released on their own recognisances (July 12, 1849). A Sheffield Trade Unionist declared that “the tyranny of the employers had been so great,” in perverting the local administration of the law, “that the men laid their grievances before the Government. Sir George Grey ordered an inquiry.... Twenty cases of parties who had been convicted by the magistrates were brought before a Board of Inquiry, seventeen of which were quashed” (Stonemasons’ Fortnightly Circular, November 23, 1848).
[314]Bill No. 58 of 1844, introduced by William Miles, M.P. (Hansard, vols. 73 and 74.)
[315]Potters’ Examiner, April 13, 1844.
[316]Hansard, vols. 73 and 74. The Bill was lost by 54 to 97 (May 1, 1844); see Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844, by Friedrich Engels, 1892, pp. 283-4.
[317]The Miners of Northumberland and Durham, by Richard Fynes, 1873, chap. ix.; The British Coal Trade, by H. Stanley Jevons, 1915, pp. 448-51.
[318]Rules and Regulations of the Association of United Trades for the Protection of Industry(London, August 2, 1845). There is, as far as we know, only one copy of these rules in existence, but full particulars of its establishment and working are to be found in the Northern Star, which it used for a time as its official organ.
[319]Thomas Slingsby Duncombe was the aristocratic demagogue of the period. An accomplished man of the world, with the habits of a dandy, he nevertheless devoted himself with remarkable assiduity not only to the Parliamentary business of the Chartists and Trade Unionists, but also to the dry details of the committee work of the association of which he became president. The Life and Correspondence of Duncombe, which his son published in 1868, describes him almost exclusively as a fashionable man of the world and House of Commons politician, and entirely ignores his more solid work for Trade Unionism during the years 1845-8.
[320]In this document we may perhaps trace the hand of T. J. Dunning, one of the ablest Trade Unionists of his time. Born in 1799, he became Secretary of the Consolidated Society of Bookbinders in 1843. In 1845 he joined the National Association of United Trades, but left that body after a few years. The Bookbinders’ Circular, which he started in 1850, was, during the rest of his life, largely written by himself, and contains many well-reasoned articles on Trade Union matters. In 1858 Dunning joined the celebrated Committee of Inquiry into Trade Societies which was appointed by the Social Science Association. He contributed a history of his own society to the Report, and frequently took part in the subsequent annual congresses. His chief literary production is the essay entitled, Trades Unions and Strikes; their philosophy and intention(1860, 50 pp.), which he wrote for the prize instituted by his own Union for the best defence of the workmen’s organisation. This essay, which no publisher would accept, and which was printed by his society, remains, perhaps—apart from George Howell’s historical researches in Conflicts of Capital and Labour, and Labour Legislation, Labour Movements and Labour Leaders—the best presentation of the Trade Union case which any manual worker has produced. He died in harness on the 23rd of December 1873.
[321]Report of London Committee of Trades Delegates to the National Conference of Trades Delegates, Easter, 1845; preserved in the archives of the Friendly Society of Operative Stonemasons.
[322]Stonemasons’ Fortnightly Circular, May 14, 1846.
[323]Minutes of delegate meetings of the “Operative Cotton-spinners, Self-acting Minders, Twiners, and Rovers,” held every other Sunday. See July 20, August 3, and December 14, 1845.
[324]Times, November 16, 1846.
[325]The tinplate-workers of Wolverhampton had been endeavouring, ever since they joined the Association in 1845, to obtain a uniform list of piecework rates. By the influence of the National Association, such a list was agreed to during 1849 by all the employers except two. One of these treated the men with exceptional duplicity. Having, as he thought, adequately prepared himself; he threw off the mask in July 1850, and flatly refused to continue the negotiations. The fierce industrial and legal conflict which ensued attracted general attention. Many of the strikers were imprisoned for breach of contract; and the struggle culminated in the prosecution of three members of the committee of the National Association, together with several of the local Unionists, for conspiracy to molest and intimidate the employer by inducing men to leave his employment. Owing to legal quibbles, raised first on behalf of the Crown, and then on behalf of the defendants, the case was tried no fewer than three times, the final judgment not being delivered until November 1851, when five of the prisoners were sentenced to three months’, and one to one month’s imprisonment. See R. v. Rowlands, 5 Cox C. C. p, 436; also Appendix A to The Law relating to Trade Unions, by Sir William Erie, 1869.
[326]Duncombe formally resigned the presidency in 1852. In 1856 its secretary, Thomas Winters, gave evidence in favour of conciliation before the Select Committee on Masters and Operatives (Equitable Councils, etc.). He stated that the membership then numbered between 5,000 and 6,000, and that the central committee consisted of three salaried members, who gave up their whole time to the work. A subsequent secretary (E. Humphries) appeared before a similar committee four years later, his evidence showing that the association, though it was still in existence, had taken no part in any of the important labour struggles of the past seven or eight years. Mr. George Howell incidentally puts the date of its dissolution at 1860 or 1861 (see his article “Trades Union Congresses and Social legislation” in Contemporary Review for September 1889).
[327]English Stonemasons’ Fortnightly Circular, December 25, 1845.
[328]The Potters’ Examiner, started December 1843, was converted, in July 1848, into the Potters’ Examiner and Emigrants’ Advocate, published at Liverpool and concerned chiefly with emigration. It ceased to appear soon after 1851.
[329]See especially the articles on “Wages of Labour and Trade Societies” in the second, third, and fourth numbers (December 1850 to February 1851), in which he assumes that the general level of wages is irresistibly determined by Supply and Demand, but that Trade Unionism, in providing out-of-work pay, enables the individual workman to resist exceptional tyranny or exaction.
[330]This journal contains a mass of useful information relating to the trade, special reports of the Trades Union Congresses, and well-written articles on industrial and economic problems. It is marked throughout by moderation of tone and fairness of argument. Unfortunately, so far as we know, it is not preserved in any public library, and we were indebted to Mr. Haddleton, Secretary to the Birmingham Trades Council, who, in 1893, possessed a complete set, for our acquaintance with its contents.
[331]Opening Address to the Glass Makers of England, Ireland, and Scotland, No. 1.
[332]Report of London Compositors’ Committee on Amalgamation, 1834; Annual Report, February 2, 1835.
[333]Address of Delegate Meeting to the Members of the Friendly Society of Ironmoulders of England, Ireland, and Wales, September 26, 1846.
[334]Fortnightly Circular, December 25, 1845.
[335]Ibid., June 1849.
[336]January 1855.
[337]Letter on “The Evil Consequences of Strikes,” in Flint Glass Makers’ Magazine, July 1850. The suggested alternative—the Strike in Detail—is discussed in our Industrial Democracy.
[338]Address of the Delegate Meeting to the Members of the Friendly Society of Ironmoulders, 1846.
[339]“Emigration as a Means to an End,” Flint Glass Makers’ Magazine, August 1854; address of Executive, September 1857.
[340]“Thus if in a depression you have fifty men out of work they will receive £1,015 in a year, and at the same time be used as a whip by the employers to bring your wages down; by sending them to Australia at £20 per head you save £15, and send them to plenty instead of starvation at home; you keep your own wages good by the simple act of clearing the surplus labour out of the market” (Farewell Address of the Secretary, Flint Glass Makers’ Magazine, August, 1854). “Remove the surplus labour and oppression itself will soon be a thing of the past” (Ibid.).
[341]Emigration Funds begin to appear in Trade Union Reports about 1843 (see the Potters’ Examiner). For thirty years the accounts of the larger societies include, off and on, considerable appropriations for the emigration of members. The tabular statement of expenditure published in the Ironmoulders’ Annual Report shows, for instance, that £4,712 was spent in this way between 1855 and 1874. In the Amalgamated Carpenters an Emigration Benefit lingered until 1886, when it was finally abolished by the General Council; the members resident in the United States and Colonies strongly objecting to this use of the funds. But it was between 1850 and 1860 that emigration found most favour as an integral part of Trade Union policy. The Trade Unions of the United States and the Australian Colonies addressed vigorous protests to the officials of the English societies (see, for example, the Stonemasons’ Fortnightly Circular, June 1856), a fact which co-operated with the dying away of the “gold rush,” and the change of Trade Union opinion, to cause the abandonment of the policy, until it was revived in 1872 for a decade or so, by the Agricultural Labourers’ Unions.
[342]Flint Glass Makers’ Magazine, September 1857.
[343]During these years the Executive Committees of the larger societies were waging war on the “liquor allowance.” In the reports and financial statements of the Unions for the first half of the century, drink was one of the largest items of expenditure, express provision being made by the rules for the refreshment of the officers and members at all meetings. The rules of the London Society of Woolstaplers (1813) state that “the President shall be accommodated with his own choice of liquors, wine only excepted.” The Friendly Society of Ironmoulders (1809) ordains that the Marshal shall distribute the beer round the meeting impartially, members being forbidden to drink out of turn “except the officers at the table or a member on his first coming to the town.” Even as late as 1837 the rules of the Steam-Engine Makers’ Society direct one-third of the weekly contribution to be spent in the refreshment of the members, a provision which drops out in the revision of 1846. In that year the Delegate Meeting of the Ironmoulders prohibited drinking and smoking at its own sittings, and followed up this self-denying ordinance by altering the rules of the society so as to change the allowance of beer at branch meetings to its equivalent in money. “We believe,” they remark in their address to the members, “the business of the society would be much better done were there no liquor allowance. Interruption, confusion, and scenes of violence and disorder are often the characteristic of meetings where order, calmness, and impartiality should prevail.” By 1860 most of the larger societies had abolished all allowance for liquor, and some had even prohibited its consumption during business meetings. It is to be remembered that the Unions had, at first, no other meeting place than the club-room freely placed at their disposal by the publican, and that their payment for drink was of the nature of rent. Meanwhile the Compositors and Bookbinders were removing their headquarters from public-houses to offices of their own, and the Steam-Engine Makers were allowing branches to hire rooms for meetings so as to avoid temptation. In 1850 the Ironmoulders report that some publicans were refusing to lend rooms for meetings, owing to the growth of Temperance.
[344]It was the strength of their organisation in London in 1799, as we have seen, that led to the employers’ petition to the House of Commons, out of which sprang the Combination Acts of 1799 and 1800. See also the evidence given by Galloway and other employers before the 1824 Select Committee on Artisans and Machinery; also incidental references in the Life of Sir William Fairbairn, 1877, and other works. We have been unable to discover any documents of engineering societies prior to 1822. Sir William Fairbairn, in the preface to his Mills and Mill-work, 1861, attributes the supersession of the millwright to the changes consequent on the introduction of the steam-engine.
[345]William Newton was born at Congleton in 1822, his father, who had once occupied a superior position, being then a journeyman machinist. The boy went to work in engine shops at the age of fourteen, joined the Hanley Branch of the Journeymen Steam-Engine Makers’ Society in 1842, soon afterwards moving to London (where he worked in the same shop as Henry James, afterwards Lord James of Hereford, then an engineer pupil, and later noted for his knowledge of Trade Unionism), and rose to be foreman. After his dismissal in 1848 for his Trade Union activity he took a public-house at Ratcliffe, and devoted himself largely to the promotion of the amalgamation of the engineering societies. In 1852 he became, for a short period, secretary to a small insurance company. At the General Election of 1852 he became a candidate for the Tower Hamlets. He was opposed by both the great political parties, but the show of hands at the hustings was in his favour. At the poll he was unsuccessful, receiving, however, 1,095 votes. In 1860 he was presented with a testimonial (including a sum of £300) from his A.S.E. fellow-members. In later years he became the proprietor of a prosperous local newspaper and was elected by the Stepney Vestry as its chairman and also as its representative on the Metropolitan Board of Works. He became one of the leading members of that body, on which he served from 1862 to 1876, filling the important office of deputy chairman to the Parliamentary, Fire Brigade, and other influential committees. In 1868 he again contested the Tower Hamlets against both Liberals and Conservatives, receiving 2,890 votes; and in 1875 he unsuccessfully fought a bye-election at Ipswich. He died March 9, 1876, when his funeral, in which the Metropolitan Board of Works took part, assumed a public character.
[346]This journal is preserved in the Manchester Public Library (341, P. 37). It was a well-written 16 pp. 8vo, issued, at first fortnightly and afterwards monthly, at 2d. No. 1 is dated July 4, 1840.
[347]Minutes of delegate meeting at Manchester, May 12, 1845. An admirable account of this society, founded on documents no longer extant, is given in an article by Professor Brentano in the North British Review, October 1870, entitled “The Growth of a Trades Union,” For some other particulars see the Jubilee Souvenir History of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, 1901.
[348]Executive Circular, 1846, cited in proceedings in R. v. Selsby. Two full accounts of the trial were published, viz. a Verbatim Report of the Trial for Conspiracy in R. v. Selsby and others(Liverpool, 1847, 66 pp.), published under the “authority of the Executive of the Steam-Engine Makers’ Society,” and a Narrative, etc., of the Trial, R. v. Selsby(London, 1847, 68 pp.). Both are preserved in the Manchester Public Library, P. 2198. The legal report is in Cox’s Crown Cases, vol. v. p. 496, etc. Contemporary Trade Union reports contain many references to the proceedings. It was noticed as an instance of the animus of the prosecution that the indictment contained 4914 counts, and measured fifty-seven yards in length. W. P. Roberts organised the defence, which cost the Union £1800. The firm in whose works the dispute arose became bankrupt within a few years. See the Jubilee Souvenir History of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, 1901.
[349]The Trades Advocate and Herald of Progress was an 8 pp. quarto weekly, price 1d., No. 1 being dated June 1850. The volume from June to December 1850 is preserved in the Manchester Public Library (401 E, 18). An able article by John Burnett in the Newcastle Weekly Chronicle, July 3, 1875, gives a vivid picture of the struggle for amalgamation.
[350]This was pointed out in Professor Brentano’s article in the North British Review, already quoted.
[351]The organ of the Executive Council was the Operative, a well-written weekly journal, which was set on foot by Newton in January 1851. The price was at first 1½d., and afterwards 1d. per number. The issues from the beginning down to July 1852, probably all that were published, are preserved in the British Museum (P. P. 1424, a.m.). Newton acted as editor, and contributed nearly all the articles relating to the engineers and Trade Unions generally.
[352]The largest and most powerful of the other Unions in 1851 were those of the Ironfounders and the Stonemasons, which numbered between four and five thousand members each. It must be remembered that the previous ephemeral associations of the cotton-spinners and miners, which often for a time counted their tens of thousands of members, were exclusively strike organisations, with contributions of 1d. or 2d. per week only. The huge associations of 1830-34 had usually no regular subscription at all, and depended on irregularly paid levies. A trade society which, like the Amalgamated Engineers, could count on a regular income of £500 a week was without precedent.
[353]See the resolutions of the Birmingham Delegate Meeting of the Iron Trades, September 28, 1850, in the Trades Union Advocate, November 1850.
[354]It was resolved: “That we are prepared to assist the workmen at Messrs. Platt to the utmost of our power, but cannot consent to the men leaving their situations, because they may not at present be able to obtain the working of the machines.” The best account of the struggle is to be found in the Jubilee Souvenir History of the A.S.E.(1901), pp. 34-41.
[355]Lord Goderich, afterwards the Marquis of Ripon, gave the Executive a cheque for £500 to enable the strike pay to be kept up on a temporary emergency; one of many generous efforts, during a long lifetime, to assist the wage-earning class.
[356]Executive Circular of April 26, 1852, in Operative, May 1, 1852. A number of the men refused to sign, and many emigrated. E. Vansittart Neale advanced £1030 to members for this purpose, the whole of which was repaid by the borrowers.
[357]Among the abundant literature on this great struggle may be mentioned the Account, by Thomas (afterwards Judge) Hughes, in the Report on Trade Societies, by the Social Science Association, 1860; J. M. Ludlow’s lectures, entitled The Master Engineers and their Workmen, 1852; a pamphlet, May I not do what I will with my own? by E. Vansittart Neale; Jubilee Souvenir History of the A.S.E., 1901; and the evidence given by William Newton (for the men) and Sidney Smith (for the employers) before the Select Committee on Masters and Operatives (Equitable Councils, etc.) in 1856. The employers’ manifestoes will be found in the Times from December 1851 to April 1852; the men’s documents and reports of their meetings in the Operative(edited by Newton), and in the Northern Star, then at its last gasp.
[358]It ended the struggle with £700 in hand. Its membership at the end of 1852 had fallen from 11,829 to 9737, but even then it had a balance in hand of £5382, and within three years the members had increased to 12,553, and the accumulated funds to the unprecedented total of £35,695. And unlike all previous trade societies, its record from 1852 down to the present time has been one of continued growth and prosperity, the membership at the end of 1919 being 320,000, with accumulated funds not far short of three million pounds, being greater in aggregate amount than the possessions of any other Trade Union organisation of this or any other country.
[359]Preface to Rules of the Journeymen Steam-Engine, Machine Makers, and Millwrights’ Friendly Society, edition of 1845.
[360]This plan of “equalisation” is, so far as we know, peculiar to Trade Unions, though we understand from Dr. Baernreither’s English Associations of Working Men, pp. 283-84, that a few branches of some of the Friendly Societies adopted a somewhat similar system. Its origin is unknown to us, but the device is traditionally ascribed to the Journeymen Steam-Engine and Machine Makers and Millwrights’ Society, established in 1826. It was also in early use by the Steam-Engine Makers’ Society, established in 1824. Until the Trade Union Act of 1871 it had a positive use. Depending, as Trade Unions were obliged to do, upon the integrity of their officers, there were great advantages in the wide distribution of the funds and the local responsibility of each branch for the safe keeping of its share.
[361]That is to say, local differences in the cost of living have always been taken into account.
[362]Such protests were frequent in the evidence before the Royal Commission of 1867-68, and form the staple of the innumerable criticisms on Trade Unionism between 1852 and 1879. A good vindication of the Trade Union position is contained in Professor Beesly’s article in the Fortnightly Review, 1867, which was republished as a pamphlet, The Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners, 1867, 20 pp.
[363]The unique collection of these circulars, containing not only statistical and other information of the society, but also frequent references to the building trades and the general movement, was generously placed at our disposal for the purpose of this work, and we have found it of the utmost value.
[364]See, for instance, the evidence of Mault, Questions 3980 in Second Report and 4086 in Third Report.
[365]Report of Special Committee, 1869.
[366]The National Association of United Trades continued, as we have already seen, in nominal existence until 1860 or 1861, but after 1852 it sank to a membership of a few thousands, and played practically no part in the Trade Union world.
[367]Times, June to December 1853.
[368]A more detailed account of these developments will be found in The Co-operative Movement in Great Britain(1891; second edition, 1893), by Beatrice Potter (Mrs. Sidney Webb); Co-operative Production, by Benjamin Jones, 1894; and in the Report of the Fabian Research Department on Co-operative Production, published as a supplement to The New Statesman, February 14, 1914.
[369]Address of the Executive Council of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers to their Fellow-Workmen, 1855.
[370]See The Strikes, their Extent, Evils, and Remedy, being a Description of the General Movement of the Mass of the Building Operatives throughout the United Kingdom, by Vindex (1853), 56 pp. One consequence of this renewed outburst of strikes was the appointment in 1858 by the newly formed National Association for the Promotion of Social Science of a Committee to inquire into trade societies and disputes. This inquiry, conducted by able and zealous investigators, resulted in 1860 in the publication of a volume which contains the best collection of Trade Union material and the most impartial account of Trade Union action that has ever been issued. As a source of history and economic illustration this Report on Trade Societies and Strikes(1860, 651 pp.) is far superior to the Parliamentary Blue Books of 1824, 1825, 1838, and 1867-68. Among the contributors were Godfrey Lushington (afterwards Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department), J. M. Ludlow (afterwards Registrar of Friendly Societies), Thomas (afterwards Judge) Hughes, Q.C., Mr. G. Shaw-Lefevre (afterwards Lord Eversley), F. D. Longe, and Frank Hill. The Committee was presided over by the late Sir James Kay-Shuttleworth, and amongst its other members may be mentioned W. E. Forster, Henry Fawcett, R. H. Hutton, Rev. F. D. Maurice, Dr. William Farr, and one Trade Union secretary, T. J. Dunning, of the London Bookbinders.
[371]See the account of it in Labour Legislation, Labour Movements, and Labour Leaders, by G. Howell, 1902.
[372]Prof. E. S. Beesly, Fortnightly Review, 1867.