FOOTNOTES:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mr. and Mrs. Hammond have now traced fairly full accounts of the proceedings, elucidating the scanty references in the Journals of the House of Commons and House of Lords for 1799-1800 by quotations from the Parliamentary Register, the Senator, The Times, London Chronicle, True Briton, and Morning Post. See The Town Labourer, 1917, ch. vii. pp. 111-42; also Cunningham, Growth, etc., 1903, pp. 732-7.

[118]Times, January 7, 1800; Labour Legislation, Labour Movements, and Labour Leaders, by George Howell, 1902, p. 23.

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

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

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

[122]Sheffield Iris, March 23, 1814.

[123]Place MSS. 27798—7. The Act of 1800 was scathingly denounced by Cobbett in the Political Register, August 30, 1823.

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

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

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

[127]Advertisements in Nottingham Journal, 1794-1810.

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

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

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

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

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

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

[134]Place MSS. 27798—8; Times, November 9, 1810.

[135]Report in Manchester Exchange Herald, preserved in Place MSS. 27799—156.

[136]Bookfinishers’ Friendly Circular, 1845-51, pp. 5, 21.

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

[138]R. v. Hammond and Webb, 2 Esp. 719; see the Morning Chronicle report, preserved in Place MSS. 27799—29.

[139]Star, November 26, 1799.

[140]R. v. Connell and others, Times, July 10, 1819.

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

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

Tailors,with360 members,and£740
Braziers,with664 members,and1768
Masons,with693 members,and1852
Scissorsmiths,with550 members,and1309
Filesmiths,with260 members,and600
United Silversmiths,with240 members,and299
Cutlers,with65 members,and450
Grinders,with283 members
Sheffield Iris, 1851.

[143]A Few Remarks, etc., p. 86.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[151]Place MSS. 27800—195.

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

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

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

[155]Ibid.

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

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

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

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

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

May29,1810Paid ye Brushmakers£1500
Lent ye Brushmakers1000
Paid ye Friziers2000
June26,1810Paid ye Silversmiths1000
Expenses to Pipemakers0410
July24,1810Paid ye Braziers10100
Paid ye Bookbinders1000
Paid ye Curriers1000
Aug.21,1810Lent ye Bit and Spurmakers500
Lent ye Scalemakers500
Paid ye Leathergrounders500
Oct.26,1810Paid ye Tinplate Workers3000
Dec.11,1810Lent ye Ropemakers1000
May30,1811Received of Scale Beam-makers500
June25,1811Expenses with Papermakers0126
July20,1812Lent ye Sadlers1000
Oct.12,1812Paid to Millwrights5000
Dec.7,1812Borrowed from the Musical Instrument-makers200

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

[162]See report in the Manchester Exchange Herald, about 1818, preserved in Place MSS. 27799—156.

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

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

[165]The Stocking Makers’ Monitor, January 1818; A few Remarks on the State of the Law, etc., by White and Henson, p. 88; An Appeal to the Public on the subject of the Framework-Knitters’ Fund, by the Rev. Robert Hall (Leicester, 1819); Cobbett’s Weekly Register, vol. xxxix.; A Reply to the Principal Objections advanced by Cobbett and Others, by the Rev. Robert Hall (Leicester, 1821); Digest of Evidence before the Committee on Artizans and Machinery, by George White, 1824.

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

[167]Times, August 5, 1819.

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

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

[170]Place MSS. 27798—8, 12, etc.; Times, November 9, 1810; The Tailoring Trade, by F. W. Galton, 1896, pp. 110-11.

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

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

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

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

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

[176]Place MSS. 27798—30.

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

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

[179]Place MSS. 27798—22.

[180]Ibid. 27798—23.

[181]Place MS. 27798—22.

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

[183]Letter in the Manchester Gazette, preserved in the Place MSS. 27801—214.

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

[185]Sheffield Iris, April 2, 1825.

[186]Sheffield Mercury, October 8, 1825; see the Manchester Guardian for August 1824 to a similar effect.

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

[188]The Annual Register for 1825 gives a fuller report of Huskisson’s speech than Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates. Further particulars are supplied in George White’s Abstract of the Act repealing the Laws against Combinations of Workmen(1824); in Place’s Observations on Mr. Huskisson’s Speech on the Law relating to Combinations of Workmen, by F. P. (1825, 32 pp.); in Wallas’s Life of Francis Place, revised edition, 1918, ch. viii.; in Hammond’s The Town Labourer, ch. vii.; and in Howell’s Labour Legislation, Labour Movements, and Labour Leaders, pp. 51-7.

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

[190]Place MSS. 27803—299.

[191]Ibid. 27803—212.

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

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

[194]June 25, 1825. Ibid. 27798—57.

[195]Sheffield Iris, September 27, 1825.

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

[197]Manchester Guardian, August 7, 1824; see also On Combinations of Trades(1830).

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

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

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

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

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

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

[204]Home Office Papers, 40—20, 21, etc.; Annual Register, 1826, pp. 63, 70, 111, 128; Walpole’s History of England, vol. ii. p. 141.

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

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