[230] Cf. supra, pp. [105-106].
[231] Howell, Conflicts of Capital etc., p. 494.
[232] The story of the rise of Trades Unions has been told with much detail by Mr G. Howell in his Conflicts of Capital and Labour, and by Dr Brentano in the last portion of his Essay on Gilds.
[233] It is to be hoped that the development of the “New Unionism” will not frustrate this hope.
[234] Mr John Burns has recently been urging on Trades Unions the advisability of surrendering this feature, so that the funds may the more completely be devoted to militant purposes.
[235] By Henry Lytton Bulwer, M.P., in a letter to the Handloom weavers when they petitioned for the creation of gilds of trade.
[236] Foxwell, Irregularity of Employment, p. 72.
[237] “There is of late a partial revival of good workmanship in many trades ... but it will require years of toil to recover our lost ground in the markets of the world.” G. Howell, Conflicts of Capital etc., p. 225. Prof. Foxwell points out that “the master cutlers of Sheffield have done something in [the] direction lately of exposing and punishing falsification” etc., Irregularity of Employment etc., p. 80 and note. Mr E. J. Poynter notices that “the firm of which Mr William Morris is the head, of which indeed he is the sole member, started the idea, now well understood, that the only possible means of producing work which shall be satisfactory from every side is to return to the principles on which all works of art and art-manufacture were executed, not only in the Middle Ages, but at all epochs up to the beginning of this century.” Ten Lectures on Art, p. 274.
[238] This paper was written for the Shropshire Archæological and Natural History Society, and was printed in substance in their Transactions, 2nd Series, Vol. III., Part ii., p. 253.