FOOTNOTES:
[442]Address of Alexander Macdonald to the Leeds Conference, 1873. Alexander Macdonald, the son of a sailor, who became a miner in Lanarkshire, was born at Airdrie in 1821, and went to work in the pit at the age of eight. Having an ardent desire for education he prepared himself as best he could for Glasgow University, which he entered in 1846, supporting himself from his savings, and from his work as a miner in the summer. Whilst still at the University he became known as a leader of the miners all over Scotland. In 1850 he became a mine manager, and in 1851 he opened a school at Airdrie, an occupation which he abandoned in 1855 to devote his whole time to agitation on behalf of the miners. On the formation, in 1863, of the National Union of Miners, he was elected president, a position which he retained until his death. Meanwhile he was, by a series of successful commercial speculations, acquiring a modest fortune, which enabled him to devote his whole energies to the promotion of the Parliamentary programme which he had impressed upon the miners. He gave important evidence before the Select Committee of 1865 on the Master and Servant Law. In 1868 he offered himself as a candidate for the Kilmarnock Burghs, but retired to avoid a split. At the General Election of 1874 he was more successful, being returned for Stafford, and thus becoming (with Thomas Burt) the first “Labour Member.” He was shortly afterwards appointed a member of the Royal Commission on the Labour Laws, and eventually presented a minority report of his own on the subject. He died in 1881. A history of the coal-miners which he projected was apparently never written, and, with the exception of numerous presidential addresses and other speeches, and a pamphlet entitled Notes and Annotations on the Coal Mines Regulation Act, 1872(Glasgow, 1872, 50 pp.), we have found nothing from his pen. A eulogistic notice of his life by Lloyd Jones appeared in the Newcastle Chronicle, November 17, 1883, most of which is reprinted in Dr. Baernreither’s English Associations of Working Men, p. 408.
[443]Address to the Miners’ National Conference at Leeds, 1873.
[444]The Conference appointed a sub-committee to compile and publish its proceedings, “a thing,” as the preface explains, “altogether unparalleled in the records of labour.” And indeed the elaborate volume, regularly published by the eminent firm of Longmans in 1864, entitled Transactions and Results of the National Association of Coal, Lime, and Ironstone Miners of Great Britain, held at Leeds, November 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, and 14, 1863, with its 174 pages, its frontispiece representing the pit-brow women, and its motto on the title-page extracted from the writings of W. E. Gladstone, formed a creditable and impressive appeal to the reading public.
[445]For this militant Chartist (1805-79), see Life of Joseph Rayner Stephens, by G. J. Holyoake, 1881.
[446]Transactions and Results of the National Association of Coal, Lime, and Ironstone Miners of Great Britain, held at Leeds, November 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, and 14, 1863, p. 14.
[447]Transactions and Results of the National Association of Coal, Lime, and Ironstone Miners of Great Britain, held at Leeds, November 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, and 14, 1863, p. 17. In Northumberland and Durham the hewers very largely work in two shifts, whilst there used to be only one shift of boys.
[448]Section 29 of Mines Regulation Act of 1860.
[449]Normansell v. Platt. John Normansell, the agent of the South Yorkshire Miners’ Association, stands second only to Macdonald as a leader of the miners between 1863 and 1875. The son of a banksman, he was born at Torkington, Cheshire, in 1830, and left an orphan at an early age. At seven he entered the pit, and when, at the age of nineteen, he married, he was unable to write his own name. Migrating to South Yorkshire, he became a leader in the agitation to secure a checkweigher, which the local coal-owners conceded in 1859. Normansell was elected to the post for his own pit, and rapidly became the leading spirit in the district. After the lock-out of 1864 he was elected secretary to the Union, then counting only two thousand members. Within eight years he had raised its membership to twenty thousand, and built up an elaborate system of friendly benefits. Normansell was the first working-man Town Councillor, having been triumphantly elected at Barnsley, his Union subscribing £1000 to lodge in the bank in his name, in order to enable him to declare himself possessed of the pecuniary qualification at that time required. On his death the amount was voted to his widow. Normansell gave evidence in 1867 before the Select Committee on Coal-mining, and before that on the Master and Servant Law, in 1868 before the Royal Commission on Trade Unions, and in 1873 before that on the Coal Supply.
[450]The best and indeed the only exact account of these cotton lists is that prepared for the Economic Section of the British Association by a committee consisting of Professor Sidgwick, Professor Foxwell, A. H. D. (now Sir Arthur) Acland, Dr. W. Cunningham, and Professor J. E. C. Munro, the report being drawn up by the latter. (On the Regulation of Wages by means of Lists in the Cotton Industry, Manchester, 1887; in two parts—Spinning and Weaving.) See History of Wages in the Cotton Trade during the Past Hundred Years, by G. H. Wood, 1910; A Century of Fine Cotton Spinning, by McConnel & Co., 1906; and Standard Piece Lists and Sliding Scales, by the Labour Department of the Board of Trade, Cd. 144, 1900.
The principles upon which the lists are framed are so complicated that we confess, after prolonged study, to be still perplexed on certain points; and though Professor Munro clears up many difficulties, we are disposed to believe that even he, in some particulars, has not in all cases correctly stated the matter. We have discussed the whole subject in our Industrial Democracy.
[451]Bolton and District Net List of Prices for Spinning Twist, Reeled Yarn or Bastard Twist, and Weft, on Self-actor Mules(Bolton, 1887; 85 pp.).
[452]Birtwistle was, in 1892, at an advanced age, appointed by the Home Secretary an Inspector in the Factory Department, under the “particulars clause” (sec. 24 of the Factory and Workshops Act, 1891), as the only person who could be found competent to understand and interpret the intricacies of the method of remuneration in the weaving trade.
[453]Beehive, February 23, 1867. The circular announcing the resolution is signed by the leading officers of the Cotton-spinners’ and Cotton-weavers’ Unions of the time.
[454]Report of the Parliamentary Committee to the Trades Union Congress, January 1873.
[455]Circular of December 11, 1871, signed on behalf of the preliminary meeting by Thomas Mawdsley—not to be mistaken for James Mawdsley, J.P., a subsequent secretary.
[456]Thomas Ashton, J.P. (died 1919), then secretary of the Oldham Spinners, often made this statement. On the 26th of May 1893 the Cotton Factory Times, the men’s accredited organ, declared, with reference to the Eight Hours Movement, that “now the veil must be lifted, and the agitation carried on under its true colours. Women and children must no longer be made the pretext for securing a reduction of working hours for men.”
[457]Speech at Trades Union Congress, Bristol, 1878.
[458]“From what I have heard,” writes Professor Beesly in the Beehive, May 16, 1874, “I am inclined to think that no single fact had more to do with the defeat of the Liberal Party in Lancashire at the last election than Mr. Fawcett’s speech on the Nine Hours Bill in the late Parliament.”
[459]Report of Trades Union Congress, Sheffield, January 1874.
[460]John Burnett, who was born at Alnwick, Northumberland, in 1842, became, after the Nine Hours Strike, a lecturer for the National Education League, and joined the staff of the Newcastle Chronicle. In 1875, on Allan’s death, he was elected to the General Secretaryship of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers. He was a member of the Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress from 1876 to 1885. In 1886 he was appointed to the newly-created post of Labour Correspondent of the Board of Trade, in which capacity he prepared and issued a series of reports on Trade Unions and Strikes. On the establishment of the Labour Department in 1893 he became Chief Labour Correspondent under the Commissioner for Labour, and was selected to visit the United States to prepare a report on the effects of Jewish immigration. He retired in 1907 and died 1914.
[461]A full account of this conflict is given by John Burnett in his History of the Engineers’ Strike in Newcastle and Gateshead(Newcastle, 1872; 77 pp.). A description by the Executive of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers is given in their “Abstract Report” up to December 31, 1872. The Newcastle Daily Chronicle, from April to October 1871, furnishes a detailed contemporary record. The leading articles and correspondence in the Times of September 1871 are important.
[462]See the Times leader of September 11, 1871. This leader, which pronounced “the conduct of the employers throughout this dispute as imprudent and impolitic,” called forth the bewildered remonstrance of Sir William (afterwards Lord) Armstrong, writing on behalf of “the Associated Employers.” “We were amazed,” writes the great captain of industry, “to see ourselves described in your article as being in a condition of hopeless difficulty; and we really felt that, if the League themselves had possessed the power of inspiring that article, they could scarcely have used words more calculated to serve their purposes than those in which it is expressed. The concurrent appearance in the Spectator of an article exhibiting the same bias adds to our surprise. We had imagined that a determined effort to wrest concessions from employers by sheer force of combination was not a thing which found favour with the more educated and intelligent classes, whose opinions generally find expression in the columns of the Times” (Times September 14, 1871).
[463]Here the “International” was of use. At Burnett’s instigation, Cohn, the Danish secretary in London, proceeded to the Continent to check this immigration, his expenses being paid by the Amalgamated Society of Engineers.
[464]With regard to overtime, Burnett informed us that “it was found impossible to carry a Nine Hours Day pure and simple at the time of the strike of 1871, and that overtime should still be worked as required was insisted upon as a first condition of settlement by the employers.”
[465]Meeting of London pattern-makers to seek advance of wages, Beehive, October 21, 1865.
[466]Letter from “Amalgamator,” Beehive, January 19, 1867.
[467]The rank and file were more sympathetic than the Executive. The machinery for making the collections was mostly furnished by the branches and committees of the Society.
[468]An “Assistant Secretary” was subsequently added, and eventually another. But these assistants were, like the General Secretary himself, recruited from the ranks of the workmen, and however experienced they may have been in trade matters, were necessarily less adapted to the clerical labour demanded of them. The great Trade Friendly Societies of the Stonemasons, Bricklayers, and Ironfounders long continued to have only one assistant secretary, and no clerical staff whatever.
[469]Question 827 in Report of Trade Union Commission (March 26, 1867).
[470]Bookbinders’ Trade Circular, January 1866.
[471]In 1892 the Amalgamated Engineers provided themselves, not only with district delegates, like those of the Boilermakers, but also with a salaried Executive Council. The Amalgamated Society of Carpenters has since started district delegates, and the other national societies gradually followed suit.
[472]Mention should here be made of the Manchester and District Association of Trade Union Officials, an organisation which grew out of a joint committee formed to assist the South Wales miners in their strike of 1875. The frequent meetings, half serious, half social, of this grandly named association, known to the initiated as “the Peculiar People,” served for many years as opportunities for important consultations on Trade Union policy between the leaders of the numerous societies having offices in Manchester. It also had as an object the protection of Trade Union officials against unjust treatment by their own societies (see History of the British Trades Union Congress, by W. J. Davis, vol. i., 1910, p. 89)
[473]Report of the Trades Union Congress, Sheffield, 1874. A table printed in the Appendix to the present volume gives such comparative statistics of Trade Union membership as we have been able to compile.
[474]“Statement as to Formation and Objects of the National Federation of Associated Employers of Labour,” December 11, 1873, reprinted by the Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress. This Federation comprised in its ranks a large proportion of the great “captains of industry” of the time, including such shipbuilders as Laird and Harland & Wolff; such textile manufacturers as Crossley, Brinton, Marshall, Titus Salt, Akroyd, and Brocklehurst; such engineers as Mawdsley, Son & Field, Combe, Barbour & Combe, and Beyer & Peacock; such ironmasters as David Dale and John Menelaus; such builders as Trollope of London and Neill of Manchester, and such representatives of the great industrial peers as Sir James Ramsden, who spoke for the Duke of Devonshire, and Fisher Smith, the agent of the Earl of Dudley.
[475]The immediate publicity given to the agitation was due, in the first place, to the sympathy of J. E. Matthew Vincent, the editor of the Leamington Chronicle, and secondly, to the instinct of the Daily News, which promptly sent Archibald Forbes, its war correspondent, to Warwickshire, and “boomed” the movement in a series of special articles. A contemporary account of the previous career of Joseph Arch is given by the Rev. F. S. Attenborough in his Life of Joseph Arch(Leamington, 1872; 37 pp.). See also The Revolt of the Field, by A. W. Clayden (1874), 234 pp.; and “Zur Geschichte der englischen Arbeiterbewegung im Jahre 1872-1873,” by Dr. Friedrich Kleinwächter in Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik, 1875, and Supplement I. of 1878; “Die jüngste Landarbeiterbewegung in England,” by Lloyd Jones, in Nathusius-Thiel’s Landwirthschaftliche Jahrbücher, 1875; The Romance of Peasant Life, 1872, and The English Peasantry, 1872, by F. G. Heath; The Agricultural Labourer, by F. E. Kettel, 1887; Joseph Arch, the Story of his Life, told by Himself, 1898; A History of the English Agricultural Labourer, by Dr. W. Hasbach, 1908; “The Labourers in Council,” a valuable article in The Congregationalist, 1872; “The Agricultural Labourers’ Union,” in Quarterly Review, 1873; “The Agricultural Labourers’ Union,” by Canon Girdlestone, in Macmillan’s Magazine, vol. xxviii.; “The Agricultural Labourer,” by F. Verinder, in The Church Reformer, 1892; and others in this magazine during 1891-93; Conflicts of Capital and Labour, by G. Howell, 1878 and 1890 editions; Labour Legislation, Labour Movements and Labour Leaders, by the same, 1902; and Village Trade Unions in Two Centuries, by Ernest Selley, 1919.
[476]Other Labourers’ Unions sprang up which refused to be absorbed in the National; and the London Trades Council summoned a conference in March 1873 to promote unity of action. Considerable jealousy was shown of any centralising policy, and eventually a Federal Union of Agricultural and General Labourers was formed by half a dozen of the smaller societies, with an aggregate membership of 50,000.
[477]The Birmingham Trades Council, for instance, issued the following poster:
“Great Lock-out of Agricultural Labourers!
“An Appeal. Is the Labourer worthy of his Hire?
“This question is to all lovers of freedom and peaceful progress, and it is left for them to say whether that spark of life and hope which has been kindled in the breasts of our toiling brothers in the agricultural districts shall be extinguished by the pressure of the present lock-out. The answer is No! and the echo resounds from ten thousand lips. But let us be practical; a little help is of more value than much sympathy; we must not stand to pity, but strive to send relief. The cause of the agricultural labourer is our own; the interests of labour in all its forms are very closely bound up together, and the simple question for each one is, How much can I help, and how soon can I do it? If we stay thinking too long, action may come too late; these men, our brethren, now deeply in adversity, may have fallen victims when our active efforts might have saved them. The strain upon the funds of their Union must be considerable with such a number thrown into unwilling idleness, and that for simply asking that their wages, in these times of dear food, might be increased from 13s. to 14s. per week. Money is no doubt wanted, and it is by that alone the victory can be won. Let us therefore hope that Birmingham will once again come to the rescue, determined to assist these men to a successful resistance of the oppression that is attempted in this lock-out.
“The great high priest and deliverer of this people now seeks our aid. We must not let him appeal to us in vain; his efforts have been too noble in the past, the cause for which he pleads is too full of righteousness, and the issues too great to be passed by in heedless silence. Let us all to work at once. We can all give a little, and each one may encourage his neighbour to follow his example. The conflict may be a severe one. It is for freedom and liberty to unite as we have done. We have reaped some of the advantages of our Unions; we must assist them to establish theirs, and not allow the ray of hope that now shines across the path of our patient but determined fellow-toilers to be darkened by the blind folly of their employers, who, being in a measure slaves to the powers above them, would, if they could, even at their own loss, consign all below them to perpetual bondage. This must not be. We must not allow these men to be robbed of their right to unite, or their future may be less hopeful than their past. Let some one in every manufactory and workshop collect from those disposed to give, and so help to furnish the means to assist these men to withstand the powers brought against them, showing to their would-be oppressors that we have almost learned the need and duty of standing side by side until all our righteous efforts shall be crowned by victory.
“All members of the Birmingham Trades Council are authorised to collect and receive contributions to the fund, and will be pleased to receive assistance from others.
“By order of the Birmingham Trades Council,
“W. Gilliver, Secretary.”
[478]Queen’s Regulations for the Army for 1873, Article 180; the whole correspondence is given in the Report of the London Trades Council, June 1873.
[479]The rival Kent Union, which had become the Kent and Sussex Agricultural and General Labourers’ Union, enrolling all sorts of labourers, claimed in 1889 still to have 10,000 members, with an annual income of £10,000 a year, mostly disbursed in sick and funeral benefits.
[480]See Die Strikes, die Co-operation, die Industrial Partnerships, by Dr. Robert Jannasch (Berlin, 1868; 66 pp.).
[481]Amid the great outburst of feeling in favour of Co-operative Production it is difficult to distinguish in every case between the investments of the funds of the Trade Unions in their corporate capacity, and the subscriptions of individual members under the auspices, and sometimes through the agency, of their trade society. The South Yorkshire Miners’ Association used £30,000 of its funds in the purchase of the Shirland Colliery in 1875, and worked it on account of the Association. In a very short time, however, the constant loss on the working led to the colliery being disposed of, with the total loss of the investment. The Northumberland and Durham Miners in 1873 formed a “Co-operative Mining Company” to buy a colliery, a venture in which the Unions took shares, but which quickly ended in the loss of all the capital. Some of the Newcastle engineers on strike for Nine Hours in 1871 were assisted by sympathisers to start the Ouseburn Engine Works, which came to a disastrous end in 1876. In 1875 the Leicester Hosiery Operatives’ Union, having 2000 members, began manufacturing on its own account, and bought up a small business. In the following year a vote of the members decided against such an investment of the funds, and the Union sold out to a group of individuals under the style of the Leicester Hosiery Society. It became fairly successful, but scarcely a tenth of the shareholders were workers in the concern, and it was eventually merged in the Co-operative Wholesale Society. Innumerable smaller experiments were set on foot during these years by groups of Trade Unionists with more or less assistance from their societies, but the great majority were quickly abandoned as unsuccessful. In a few cases the business established still exists, but in every one of these any connection with Trade Unionism has long since ceased. In later years renewed attempts have been made by a few Unions. Several local branches of the National Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives, for instance, have taken shares in the Leicester Co-operative Boot and Shoe Manufacturing Society. The London Bassdressers, the Staffordshire Potters, the Birmingham Tinplate Workers, and a few other societies have also taken shares in co-operative concerns started in their respective trades. Full particulars will be found in the exhaustive work of Benjamin Jones on Co-operative Production, 1894.
[482]In one other respect the Trade Union expansion of 1872-74 resembled that of 1833-34. Both periods were marked by an attempt to enrol the women wage-earners in the Trade Union ranks. Ephemeral Unions of women workers had been established from time to time, only to collapse after a brief existence. The year 1872 saw the establishment of the oldest durable Union for women only—the Edinburgh Upholsterers’ Sewers’ Society. Two years later Mrs. Paterson, the real pioneer of modern women’s Trade Unions, began her work in this field, and in 1875 several small Unions among London Women Bookbinders, Upholsteresses, Shirt and Collar Makers, and Dressmakers were established, to be followed, in subsequent years, by others among Tailoresses, Laundresses, etc. Mrs. Emma Ann Paterson (née Smith), who was born in 1848, the daughter of a London schoolmaster, served from 1867 to 1873 successively as an Assistant Secretary of the Working Men’s Club and Institute Union and the Women’s Suffrage Association, and married, in 1873, Thomas Paterson, a cabinetmaker. On a visit to the United States she became acquainted with the “Female Umbrella Makers’ Union of New York,” and strove, on her return in 1874, to promulgate the idea of Trade Unionism among women workers in the South of England. After some newspaper articles, she set on foot the Women’s Protective and Provident League (now the Women’s Trade Union League), for the express purpose of promoting Trade Unionism, and established in the same year the National Union of Working Women at Bristol. From 1875 to 1886 she was a constant attendant at the Trades Union Congress, and was several times nominated for a seat on the Parliamentary Committee, at the Hull Congress heading the list of unsuccessful candidates. An appreciative notice of her life and work appeared in the Women’s Union Journal on her death in December 1886; see also Dictionary of National Biography, and Women in the Printing Trades, edited by J. R. MacDonald (1904), pp. 36, 37.
[483]Speech quoted in Capital and Labour; June 16, 1875.
[484]It must be remembered that the words “arbitration” and “conciliation” were at this time very loosely used, often meaning no more than a meeting of employers and Trade Union representatives for argument and discussion. The classic work upon the whole subject is Henry Crompton’s Industrial Conciliation, 1876. It receives detailed examination in the various contributions of Mr. L. L. Price, notably his Industrial Peace(1887) and the supplementary papers entitled “The Relations between Industrial Conciliation and Social Reform,” and “The Position and Prospects of Industrial Conciliation,” published in the Statistical Society’s Journal for June and September 1890 (vol. liii. pp. 290 and 420). For an American summary may be consulted Joseph D. Weeks’ Report on the Practical Working of Arbitration and Conciliation in the Settlement of Differences between Employers and Employees in England (Harrisburg, 1879), and his paper on Labour Differences (New York, 1886). The working of arbitration is well set forth in Strikes and Arbitration, by Sir Rupert Kettle, 1866; in A. J. Mundella’s evidence before the Trade Union Commission, 1868; in his address, Arbitration as a Means of Preventing Strikes(Bradford, 1868; 24 pp.); and in the lecture by Dr. R. Spence Watson entitled “Boards of Arbitration and Conciliation and Sliding Scales,” reported in the Barnsley Chronicle, March 20, 1886. An early account of the Nottingham experience is contained in the paper by E. Renals, “On Arbitration in the Hosiery Trades of the Midland Counties” (Statistical Society’s Journal, December 1867, vol. xxx. p. 548). See also the volume edited by Dr. Brentano, Arbeitseinstellungen und Fortbildung des Arbeitvertrags(Leipzig, 1890), and Zum socialen Frieden, by Dr. von Schulze Gaevernitz (Leipzig, 2 vols., 1892). The whole subject of the relation between Trade Unions and employers is fully dealt with in our Industrial Democracy. For the latest British Official reports on the subject see Cd. 6603, 6952, and 9099.
[485]The course of prices after 1870 demonstrates how disastrously this principle would have operated for the wage-earners had it been universally adopted. Between 1870 and 1894 the Index Number compiled by the Economist, representing the average level of market prices, fell steadily from 2996 to 2082, irrespective of the goodness of trade or the amount of the employers’ profits. Any exact correspondence between wages and the price of the product would exclude the wage-earners, as such, from all share in the advantages of improvements in production, cheapening of carriage, and the fall in the rate of interest, which might otherwise be turned to account in an advance in the workman’s Standard of Life. On the other hand, in an era of rising prices, when these influences are being more than counteracted by currency inflation, increasing difficulty of production, or a world-shortage of supply, an automatic correspondence between money wages and the cost of living would be useful, if it did not lead to the implication that the only ground for an advance in wages was an increase in the cost of living. The workmen have still to contend for a progressive improvement of their Standard of Life whatever happens to profits.
[486]Executive Circular, October 12, 1874.
[487]Ibid., October 21, 1879; as to the Sliding Scales actually adopted, see Appendix II.
[488]Miners’ Watchman and Labour Sentinel, February 9, 1878—a quasi-official organ of the Northern Miners, which was published in London from January to May 1878.
[489]“Should Wages be Regulated by Market Prices?” by Lloyd Jones, Beehive, July 18, 1874; see also his article in the issue for March 14, 1874.
[490]Lloyd Jones, one of the ablest and most loyal friends of Trade Unionism, was born at Bandon, in Ireland, in 1811, the son of a small working master in the trade of fustian-cutting. Himself originally a working fustian-cutter, Lloyd Jones became, like his father, a small master, but eventually abandoned that occupation for journalism. He became an enthusiastic advocate of Co-operation, and in 1850 he joined Thomas Hughes and E. Vansittart Neale in a memorable lecturing tour through Lancashire. A few years later we find him in London, in close touch with the Trade Union leaders, with whom he was on terms of intimate friendship. From the establishment of the Beehive in 1861 he was for eighteen years a frequent contributor, his articles being uniformly distinguished by literary ability, exact knowledge of industrial facts, and shrewd foresight. From 1870 until his death in 1886 he was frequently selected by the various Unions to present their case in Arbitration proceedings. At the General Election of 1885 he stood as candidate for the Chester-le-Street Division of Durham, where he was opposed by both the official Liberals and the Conservatives, and was unsuccessful. In conjunction with J. M. Ludlow, he wrote The Progress of the Working Classes, 1867, and afterwards published The Life, Times, and Labours of Robert Owen, to which a memoir by his son, Mr. W. C. Jones, has since been prefixed.
[491]Beehive, May 16, 1874.
[492]This information we owe to personal friends and colleagues of Macdonald, Thomas Burt, M.P., and Ralph Young, who, as we have seen, differed from him on this point, and also on the allied question of regulation of output according to demand, to be preached by the coal-miners as well as by the colliery companies, which Macdonald, throughout his whole career, persistently advocated. See, for instance, his speech at the local conference on the Depression of Trade, Bristol Mercury, February 13, 1878.
[493]A useful summary of these events is given in Dr. Kleinwächter’s pamphlet, Zur Geschichte der englischen Arbeiterbewegung in den Jahren 1871 und 1874(Jena, 1878; 150 pp.).
[494]Beehive, June 5, 1875.
[495]The operatives’ case is well put in the Weavers’ Manifesto of June 1878:
“Fellow-workers—We are and have been engaged during the past nine weeks in the most memorable struggle between Capital and Labour in the history of the world. One hundred thousand factory workers are waging war with their employers as to the best possible way to remove the glut from an overstocked cloth market, and at the same time reduce the difficulties arising from an insufficient supply of raw cotton. To remedy this state of things the employers propose a reduction of wages to the extent of ten per cent below the rate of wages agreed upon twenty-five years ago. On the other hand, we have contended that a reduction in the rate of wages cannot either remove the glut in the cloth market or assist to tide us over the difficulty arising from the limited supply of raw material. However, this has been the employers’ theory, and at various periods throughout the struggle we have made the following propositions as a basis of settlement of this most calamitous struggle:
“1. A reduction of ten per cent, with four days’ working, or five per cent with five days’ working, until the glut in the cloth market and the difficulties arising from the dearth of cotton had been removed.
“2. To submit the whole question of short time or reduction, or both, to the arbitrement of any one or more impartial gentlemen.
“3. To submit the entire question to two Manchester merchants or agents, two shippers conversant with the Manchester trade, and two bankers, one of each to be selected by the employers and the other by the operatives, with two employers and two operatives, with Lord Derby, the Bishop of Manchester, or any other impartial gentleman, as chairman, or, if necessary, referee.
“4. To split the difference between us, and go to work unconditionally at a reduction of five per cent.
“5. Through the Mayor of Burnley, to go to work three months at a reduction of five per cent, and if trade had not sufficiently improved at that time, to submit to a further reduction.
“6. And lastly, to an unconditional reduction of seven and a half per cent.”
[496]Amalgamated Society of Engineers, etc., Abstract Report of the Council’s Proceedings, 1878-79, p. 18.
[497]See The Strikes of the Past Ten Years, by G. Phillips Bevan (March 1880, Stat. Soc. Journal, vol. xliii. pp. 35-54). We have ascertained that the strikes mentioned in the Times between 1876 and 1889 show the following variations:
| 1876 | 17 |
| 1877 | 23 |
| 1878 | 38 |
| 1879 | 72 |
| 1880 | 46 |
| 1881 | 20 |
| 1882 | 14 |
| 1883 | 26 |
| 1884 | 31 |
| 1885 | 20 |
| 1886 | 24 |
| 1887 | 27 |
| 1888 | 37 |
| 1889 | 111 |
[498]Secret circular from the London Secretary (Sidney Smith) of the Iron Trades Employers’ Association, December 1878; republished in Circular of Amalgamated Society of Engineers, January 3, 1879, and in Report of Executive Council for 1878-79, p. 31.
[499]At Manchester, Bolton, Ramsbottom, Wrexham, Falmouth, Aldershot, etc., the hours were thus lengthened.
[500]To the ordinary reader it may be desirable to explain that the Unions have, in most trades, succeeded in establishing the principle of the payment of higher rates for overtime. But in most cases this is limited to workers paid by time, no extra allowance being given to the man working by the piece.
It will be obvious that if a workman, ostensibly enjoying a Nine Hours Day, is habitually required to work overtime, and is paid only at the normal piecework rate for his work, he obtains no advantage whatever from the nominal fixing of his hours of labour. To many thousands of men in the engineering and building trades the nominal maintenance of the Nine Hours Day meant, in 1878 and succeeding years, no more than this. See for the whole subject of “the Normal Day,” Industrial Democracy, by S. and B. Webb.
[501]The lowest point reached in the statistics of the annual Trades Union Congresses was in 1881, when the delegates claimed to represent little more than a third of the numbers of 1874. These statistics of membership are, however, in many respects misleading. The Congress of 1879 was attended by a much smaller number of delegates than any Congress since 1872, and the number of Unions represented was also the smallest since that date.
[502]“Four years ago,” writes the President of the Bristol Coopers’ Society in 1878, “upwards of 40,000 workmen were in combination in these valleys [South Wales], and to-day not a single Union is in existence throughout the entire district.” (Paper at Local Conference on the Depression of Trade, Bristol Mercury, February 13, 1878).
[503]See the injunctions of the General Secretary, Monthly Report, March 1862; Annual Reports, 1882 and 1888. Robert Knight consistently opposed “violent fluctuations of wages, at one time a starvation pittance, at another exorbitantly high.”
[504]Trade Unionism, New and Old, by George Howell, M.P. (1891), p. 235.
[505]House of Commons Journals, Motion of March 14, 1882: “That in the opinion of this House it is detrimental to the public service, fatal to the efficiency of our war ships, and unjust to the fitters in Her Majesty’s Dockyards, that superintending leading men should be placed in authority over workmen with whose trades they have no practical acquaintance, or that men should be put to execute work for which they are unsuited either by training or experience.” See Henry Broadhurst, the Story of his Life from a Stonemason’s Bench to the Treasury Bench, by himself, 1901.
[506]Evidence of Mr. Chandler, then general secretary of Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners (Labour Commission, 1892, vol. iii. Q. 22,014).
[507]Abstract Report of Amalgamated Engineers, June 30, 1876.
[508]In 1890, however, Robert Knight, who had been throughout the foremost worker for federation, succeeded in establishing a Federation of the Engineering and Shipbuilding Trades of the United Kingdom, described in our Industrial Democracy, from which the Amalgamated Society of Engineers has held aloof. A large part of the work of the Federal Executive consisted, for many years, of adjusting disputes between Union and Union with regard to overlap and apportionment of work. For the whole subject, see our Industrial Democracy, 1897.
[509]When, in 1890, the project of universal federation was revived, the draft rules of 1879 were simply reprinted.
[510]Report of Manchester Congress, 1882; see also History of the British Trades Union Congress, by W. J. Davis, vol. i., 1910.