[315]Potters’ Examiner, April 13, 1844.
[316]Hansard, vols. 73 and 74. The Bill was lost by 54 to 97 (May 1, 1844); see Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844, by Friedrich Engels, 1892, pp. 283-4.
[317]The Miners of Northumberland and Durham, by Richard Fynes, 1873, chap. ix.; The British Coal Trade, by H. Stanley Jevons, 1915, pp. 448-51.
[318]Rules and Regulations of the Association of United Trades for the Protection of Industry(London, August 2, 1845). There is, as far as we know, only one copy of these rules in existence, but full particulars of its establishment and working are to be found in the Northern Star, which it used for a time as its official organ.
[319]Thomas Slingsby Duncombe was the aristocratic demagogue of the period. An accomplished man of the world, with the habits of a dandy, he nevertheless devoted himself with remarkable assiduity not only to the Parliamentary business of the Chartists and Trade Unionists, but also to the dry details of the committee work of the association of which he became president. The Life and Correspondence of Duncombe, which his son published in 1868, describes him almost exclusively as a fashionable man of the world and House of Commons politician, and entirely ignores his more solid work for Trade Unionism during the years 1845-8.
[320]In this document we may perhaps trace the hand of T. J. Dunning, one of the ablest Trade Unionists of his time. Born in 1799, he became Secretary of the Consolidated Society of Bookbinders in 1843. In 1845 he joined the National Association of United Trades, but left that body after a few years. The Bookbinders’ Circular, which he started in 1850, was, during the rest of his life, largely written by himself, and contains many well-reasoned articles on Trade Union matters. In 1858 Dunning joined the celebrated Committee of Inquiry into Trade Societies which was appointed by the Social Science Association. He contributed a history of his own society to the Report, and frequently took part in the subsequent annual congresses. His chief literary production is the essay entitled, Trades Unions and Strikes; their philosophy and intention(1860, 50 pp.), which he wrote for the prize instituted by his own Union for the best defence of the workmen’s organisation. This essay, which no publisher would accept, and which was printed by his society, remains, perhaps—apart from George Howell’s historical researches in Conflicts of Capital and Labour, and Labour Legislation, Labour Movements and Labour Leaders—the best presentation of the Trade Union case which any manual worker has produced. He died in harness on the 23rd of December 1873.
[321]Report of London Committee of Trades Delegates to the National Conference of Trades Delegates, Easter, 1845; preserved in the archives of the Friendly Society of Operative Stonemasons.
[322]Stonemasons’ Fortnightly Circular, May 14, 1846.
[323]Minutes of delegate meetings of the “Operative Cotton-spinners, Self-acting Minders, Twiners, and Rovers,” held every other Sunday. See July 20, August 3, and December 14, 1845.
[324]Times, November 16, 1846.