[524]See, for instance, the report of the 1876 Congress, p. 30; that of the 1882 Congress, p. 37; that of the 1883 Congress, p. 41; and History of the British Trades Union Congress, by W. J. Davis, vol. i., 1910.
[525]In this connection may be mentioned the extensive agitation promoted by Samuel Plimsoll for further legislation to prevent the loss of life at sea. At the 1873 Trades Union Congress Plimsoll distributed copies of his book, Our Merchant Seamen, and enlisted, during the next three years, practically the whole political force of the Trade Union Movement in support of his Merchant Shipping Acts Amendment Bill. The “Plimsoll and Seamen’s Fund Committee,” of which George Howell became secretary, received large financial help from the Unions, the South Yorkshire Miners’ Association voting, in 1873, a levy of a shilling per member, and contributing over £1000. The Parliamentary Committee gave Plimsoll’s Bill a place in their programme for the General Election of 1874, and this Trade Union support contributed largely to Plimsoll’s success in passing a temporary Act in 1875, and permanent legislation in 1876, against the combined efforts of a strong Conservative Government and the shipowners on both sides of the House. (See Labour Legislation, Labour Movements, and Labour Leaders, by G. Howell, 1902.)
[526]Congress Reports, 1882 and 1883.
[527]Parliamentary Committee’s Report, September 17, 1877.
[528]That extending to factory scales and measures the provisions of the Weights and Measures Act relating to inspection, etc.
[529]The appointment was first offered to Broadhurst, who elected to continue his work as Secretary of the Parliamentary Committee, and who suggested Prior (Henry Broadhurst, the Story of his Life, by himself, 1901).
[530]Ibid. p. 136.
[531]It may be mentioned that the Trades Union Congress, which at first had welcomed addresses from the middle and upper class friends of Trade Unionism, was, between 1881 and 1883, gradually restricted to Trade Unionists. At the Nottingham Congress in 1883, where Frederic Harrison read a paper on the “History of Trade Unionism,” and Henry Crompton one on the “Codification of the Law,” when Frederic Harrison proposed to take part in the discussion on the Land Question, he was not permitted to do so; and this rule has since been rigidly adhered to. At the Aberdeen Congress of 1884 Lord Rosebery was allowed to deliver an address on the “Federalism of the Trades Union Congress,” but this was the last time that any one has been invited to read a paper.
[532]Times leader on the Congress of Belfast, September 11, 1893, which deplores the remarkable “subservience to Mr. John Burns and his friends” manifested by the Congress—a subservience marked by the election of Mr. Burns for the Parliamentary Committee at the head of the poll, and by the adoption of a programme which included the nationalisation of the land and other means of production and distribution.
[533]The following description of the rise of the “New Unionism” of 1889 is based on minutes and reports of Trade Union organisations, the files of Justice, the Labour Elector, the Trade Unionist, the Cotton Factory Times, the Workman’s Times, and other working-class journals. The documentary evidence has been elucidated and supplemented by the reminiscences of most of the principal actors in the movement, and by the personal recollections of the authors themselves, one of whom, as a member of the Fabian Society, observed the transformation from the Socialist side, whilst the other, as a disciple of Herbert Spencer and a colleague of Charles Booth, was investigating the contemporary changes from an Individualist standpoint.