“3. To submit the entire question to two Manchester merchants or agents, two shippers conversant with the Manchester trade, and two bankers, one of each to be selected by the employers and the other by the operatives, with two employers and two operatives, with Lord Derby, the Bishop of Manchester, or any other impartial gentleman, as chairman, or, if necessary, referee.
“4. To split the difference between us, and go to work unconditionally at a reduction of five per cent.
“5. Through the Mayor of Burnley, to go to work three months at a reduction of five per cent, and if trade had not sufficiently improved at that time, to submit to a further reduction.
“6. And lastly, to an unconditional reduction of seven and a half per cent.”
[496]Amalgamated Society of Engineers, etc., Abstract Report of the Council’s Proceedings, 1878-79, p. 18.
[497]See The Strikes of the Past Ten Years, by G. Phillips Bevan (March 1880, Stat. Soc. Journal, vol. xliii. pp. 35-54). We have ascertained that the strikes mentioned in the Times between 1876 and 1889 show the following variations:
| 1876 | 17 |
| 1877 | 23 |
| 1878 | 38 |
| 1879 | 72 |
| 1880 | 46 |
| 1881 | 20 |
| 1882 | 14 |
| 1883 | 26 |
| 1884 | 31 |
| 1885 | 20 |
| 1886 | 24 |
| 1887 | 27 |
| 1888 | 37 |
| 1889 | 111 |
[498]Secret circular from the London Secretary (Sidney Smith) of the Iron Trades Employers’ Association, December 1878; republished in Circular of Amalgamated Society of Engineers, January 3, 1879, and in Report of Executive Council for 1878-79, p. 31.
[499]At Manchester, Bolton, Ramsbottom, Wrexham, Falmouth, Aldershot, etc., the hours were thus lengthened.
[500]To the ordinary reader it may be desirable to explain that the Unions have, in most trades, succeeded in establishing the principle of the payment of higher rates for overtime. But in most cases this is limited to workers paid by time, no extra allowance being given to the man working by the piece.