[36]Wealth of Nations, bk. i. ch. x. p. 59 of McCulloch’s edition, 1863. In an operative’s description, dated 1809, of the gatherings of the Paisley weavers, we see the Trade Union in the making. “The Paisley operatives are of a free, communicative disposition. They are fond to inform one another in anything respecting trade, and in order to receive information in a collective capacity they have, for a long course of years, associated in a friendly manner in societies denominated clubs.... When met the first hour is devoted to reading the daily newspapers out aloud.... At nine o’clock the chairman calls silence; then the report of trade is heard. The chairman reports first what he knows or what he has heard of such a manufacturing house or houses, as wishing to engage operatives for such fabric or fabrics; likewise the price, the number of the yarn, etc. Then each reports as he is seated; so in the period of an hour not only the state of the trade is known, but any difference that has taken place between manufacturers and operatives” (An Answer to Mr. Carlile’s Sketches of Paisley, by William Taylor, Paisley, 1809, pp. 15-17).
[37]See Dunning’s account of the origin of the Consolidated Society of Bookbinders in 1779-80, in the Social Science Association’s Report on Trade Societies, 1860, p. 93; also Workers on their Industries, edited by F. W. Galton, 1895; Women in the Printing Trades, edited by J. R. MacDonald, 1904, p. 30.
[38]Articles of Agreement made and confirmed by a Society of Taylors, begun March 25, 1760 (London, 1812). In 1790 Francis Place joined the Breeches Makers’ Benefit Society “for the support of the members when sick and their burial when dead”—its real object being to support the members “in a strike for wages” (Life of Francis Place, by Professor Graham Wallas, new edition, 1918). Local friendly societies giving sick pay and providing for funeral expenses had sprung up all over England during the eighteenth century. Towards its close their number seems to have rapidly increased until, in some parts at any rate, every village ale-house became a centre for one or more of these humble and spontaneous organisations. The rules of upwards of a hundred of these societies, dating between 1750 and 1820, and all centred round Newcastle-on-Tyne, are preserved in the British Museum. At Nottingham, in 1794, fifty-six of these clubs joined in the annual procession (Nottingham Journal, June 14, 1794). So long as they were composed indiscriminately of men of all trades, it is probable that no distinctively Trade Union action could arise from their meetings. But in some cases, for various reasons, such as high contributions, migratory habits, or the danger of the calling, the sick and burial club was confined to men of a particular trade. This kind of friendly society frequently became a Trade Union. Some societies of this type can trace their existence for nearly a century and a half. The Glasgow coopers, for instance, have had a local trade friendly society, confined to journeymen coopers, ever since 1752. The London Sailmakers Burial Society dates from 1740. The Newcastle shoemakers established a similar society as early as 1719 (Observations upon the Report from the Select Committee of the House of Commons on the laws respecting Friendly Societies, by the Rev. J. T. Becher, Prebendary of Southwell, 1826). On the occurrence of any dispute with the employers their funds, as this contemporary observer in another pamphlet deplores, “have also too frequently been converted into engines of abuse by paying weekly sums to artisans out of work, and have thereby encouraged combinations among workmen not less injurious to the misguided members than to the Public Weal” (Observations on the Rise and Progress of Friendly Societies, 1824, p. 55). Similar friendly societies among workmen of particular trades appear to have existed in the Netherlands in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, where they perhaps bridged the gap between the mediæval fraternities and the modern Trade Unions (see review in the English Historical Review, October 1918, of P. J. Blok’s Geschiedenes einer Hollandischen Stad).
[39]Schanz (Gesellenverbände, p. 25) follows Brentano (p. 94) in attributing the formation of journeymen’s fraternities in the Middle Ages mainly to a desire to provide for the wandering craftsmen. The connection between the “Herbergen” or “Schenken,” designed to find lodging and employment, with the journeymen’s associations was certainly close. (See Dr. Bruno Schoenlank’s article in 1894, quoted in Sir William Ashley’s Surveys: Historic and Economic, 1900.) It may be suggested that the contrast between the absence or scanty existence of such fraternities in England and their spread in Germany is, perhaps, to be ascribed in some measure to the fact that English journeymen seem never to have adopted the German custom of “Wanderjahre,” or regular habit of spending, on completing their apprenticeship, a few years in travelling about the country to complete their training. When the local privileges of the old gilds had fallen somewhat into abeyance, the restrictions of the successive Settlement Acts must in England, to some extent, have checked the mobility of labour. But, from the beginning of the eighteenth century at any rate, we find it customary for journeymen of certain trades—it is to be noticed that these are relatively new trades in England—to “tramp” from town to town in search of work, and the description, subsequently quoted, of the organisations of the woolcombers and worsted weavers in 1741, shows that the relief of these travelling journeymen was a prominent object of the early unions. The hatters in the middle of the eighteenth century had a regular arrangement for such relief. The compositors at the very beginning of the nineteenth century had already covered the country with a network of local clubs, the chief function of which appears to have been the facilitation of this wandering in search of work. And the calico-printers had a systematic way of issuing a ticket which entitled the tramp to collect from each journeyman, in any “print-field” that he visited, at first a voluntary contribution, and latterly a fixed relief of a halfpenny per head in England, and a penny per head in Scotland (Minutes of evidence taken before the Committee to whom the petition of the several journeymen Calico-printers and others working in that trade, etc., was referred, July 4, 1804, and the Report from that Committee, July 17, 1806).
[40]J. M. Ludlow, in article in Macmillan’s Magazine, February 1861.
[41]Work and the Workman, by Dr. J. K. Ingram (Address to the Trades Union Congress at Dublin, 1880).
[42]Benjamin Franklin mentions the “chapel” and its regulations in 1725. A copy, dated 1734, of the Rules and Orders to be observed by the Members of this Chapel: by Compositors, by Pressmen, by Both, is preserved in the Place MSS. 27799—88.
[43]This petition (in the British Museum) is printed in Brentano’s Gilds and Trade Unions, p. 97. Benjamin Franklin, who worked in London printing offices in 1725, makes no mention of Trade Unionism. The Stationers’ Company continued, so far as the City of London was concerned, to regulate apprenticeship; and we see it, in 1775, taking steps to prevent employers having an undue number. Regulations agreed to by the employers and the compositors, as to the rates of pay for different kinds of work, can be traced back to 1785, at least. A copy of the rules of “The Phœnix, or Society of Compositors” meeting at “The Hole in the Wall” tavern, Fleet Street, shows that this organisation was “instituted March 12th, 1792.” In 1798 five members of the “Pressmen’s Friendly Society” were indicted for conspiracy in meeting for the purpose of restricting the number of apprentices (they sought to limit them to three for seven presses). Although the secretary to the “Society of Master Printers” had requested these men to attend the meeting, in order to get settled the pending dispute, they were convicted and sentenced to two years’ imprisonment (Conflicts of Capital and Labour, by George Howell, 1890, p. 92).
[44]For this interesting case we are indebted to Professor George Unwin’s researches in the records of the Feltmakers’ Company, whose “Court Book” contains the record. See Industrial Organisation in the 16th and 17th Centuries, by George Unwin, 1904; “A Seventeenth-Century Trade Union,” by the same, in Economic Journal, 1910, pp. 394-403; the chapter “Mediæval Journeymen’s Clubs” in Sir William Ashley’s Surveys, Historic and Economic, 1900.
[45]House of Commons Journals, vol. xxxvi.; 8 Eliz. c. 11; 1 James I. c. 14; and 17 George III. c. 55; Place MSS. 27799—68; Committee on Artisans and Machinery, 1824; Industrial Democracy, p. 11; “A Seventeenth Century Trade Union,” by Professor George Unwin, in Economic Journal, 1910, pp. 394-403; Conflicts of Capital and Labour, by G. Howell, 1890, p. 83. The organisation evidently continued in existence, at least in its local form; but the existing national “Journeymen Hatters’ Trade Union of Great Britain and Ireland” claims to date only from 1798. In 1806 the Macclesfield hatters were indicted for conspiracy in striking for higher wages, and sentenced to twelve months’ imprisonment. Particulars of this organisation will be found in The Trial of W. Davenport ... Hatters of Macclesfield for a Conspiracy against their Masters ... by Thomas Mulineaux, 1806.