[273]Leeds Mercury, May 3, 1834.
[274]See the address of the “Grand Master” to the “Operative Cordwainers of the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union,” Crisis, June 28, 1834; also Times, May 2, 1834; Home Office Papers, 40—32.
[275]Times, August 21, 1834.
[276]Statement of the Master Builders of the Metropolis in explanation of the differences between them and the workmen respecting the Trades Unions, 1834. See also Times, July 27 to November 29, 1834.
[277]The Times honoured these events by long descriptive reports from its “own correspondent,” then an unusual practice; see the issues from April 17 to 25, 1834. A good account is also to be found in the Leeds Mercury, April 19 and 26, 1834; see also the History of the Marcroft Family(1889), pp. 1036.
[278]Trades Journal, March 1, 1841; probably written by Alexander Hutchinson, general secretary of the Friendly United Smiths of Great Britain and Ireland.
[279]England and America: a Comparison of the Social and Political State of both Nations, 1833, 2 vols.
[280]Poor Man’s Guardian, March 12, 1831; Place MSS. 27791—246, 272. “There were seven Co-operative Congresses in the years 1830-5 in which the Trade Union and Labour Exchange elements were prominent” (Prof. Foxwell’s Introduction to The Right to the Full Produce of Labour, by Anton Menger, 1899).
[281]See the volumes of the Poor Man’s Guardian, preserved in the British Museum.
[282]Place MSS. 27797—290; see a similar account in the Life of William Lovett, by himself, p. 86. James Mill writes to Lord Brougham on September 3, 1832, as follows: “Nothing can be conceived more mischievous than the doctrines which have been preached to the common people.... The nonsense to which your lordship alludes about the right of the labourer to the whole produce of the country, wages, profits, and rent all included, is the mad nonsense of our friend Hodgskin, which he has published as a system, and propagates with the zeal of perfect fanaticism.... The illicit cheap publications, in which the doctrine of the right of the labouring people, who they say are the only producers, to all that is produced, is very generally preached, ... are superseding the Sunday newspapers and every other channel through which the people might get better information” (Bain’s James Mill, p. 363, 1882). The series of Socialist authors of these years, usually ignored, have been well described by Prof. Foxwell in his Introduction to the English translation of Menger’s Right to the Whole Produce of Labour, 1899; and more fully and philosophically in M. Beer’s History of British Socialism, 1919, vol. i.