Trade Societies and Trades' Unions are of modern growth, unless we count the old-style combinations of the masters to prevent their workmen emigrating, or the still more ancient Guilds and Fraternities existing in mediæval times. There are in all, 177 different Trades' Unions in the country (coming under the notice of the Registrar-General), and most of them have branches in this town and neighbourhood. The majority have sick and benefit funds connected with them, and so far should be classed among Friendly, Benevolent, or Philanthropic Societies, but some few are plainly and simply trade associations to keep up prices, to prevent interference with their presumed rights, to repress attacks by the avoidance of superabundant labour, and to generally protect members when wrongfully treated, cheated or choused. Prior to 1834, when some 20,000 persons assembled on Newhall Hill, March 31 to protest against the conviction of Dorset labourers for trades' unionism, few of these societies were locally in existence; but the advent of Free Trade seems to have shown all classes of workers the necessity of protecting their individual interests by means of a system of Protection very similar, though on smaller scale, to that abolished by Sir Robert Peel and his friends. That there was a necessity for such trade societies was clearly shown by the harsh manner in which they were denounced by John Bright at a Town Hall banquet, held April 28, 1875, that gentleman evidently demurring to the anomally of working men being Protectionists of any kind. Foremost among the local unions is the National Society of Amalgamated Brassworkers, originated April 18, 1872 with over 5,000 members now on its books, having in its first eight years subscribed and paid to members out of employ no less than £29,000.—The Builders' Labourers combined in 1861, and pay out yearly over £200 for sick and funeral benefits.—The National Association of Master Builders was organised here on Dec, 18, 1877.—The Butcher's Trade and Benevolent Association, organised in 1877, helps its members in case of need, keeps a sharp look out when new Cattle Markets, &c., are proposed, and provides a jury to help the magistrates in any doubtful case of "scrag-mag," wherein horse-flesh, donkey meat, and other niceties have been tendered to the public as human food.—The "gentlemen" belonging to the fraternity of accountants met on April 20, 1882, to form a local Institute of Chartered Accountants, and their clients know the result by the extra charges of the chartered ones.—The Clerks' Provident Association provides a register for good clerks out of employ for the use of employers who may want them, and, of course, there can be no good clerks out of employ except those who belong to the Association. It was commenced in 1883, from a philanthropic feeling, but must rank among trade societies as much as many others.—The Coal Merchants and Consumers' Association, for regulating the traffic charges, and otherwise protecting the trade (especially the sellers) was organised in 1869.—The Dairymen and Milksellers' Protection Society came into existence April 2, 1884, and is intended to protect the dealers against the encroachments of the Birmingham Dairy Company, and all customers from the cows with wooden udders or iron teats.—The dentists in May, 1883, held the first meeting of the Midland Odentological Society, but it is not expected that the people at large will be entirely protected from toothache earlier than the first centenary of the Society.—The Institution of Mechanical Engineers was formed early in 1847.—The Amalgamated Society of Engineers dates half-a-century back, its 430 branches having collectively about 50,000 members, with a reserve fund of £178,000, though the expenditure in 1883 was £124,000 out of an income of £134,000. Locally, there are three branches, with 765 members, having balances in hand of £2,075; the expenditure in 1883 being £680 to men out of work, £585 to sick members, £390 to the superannuated, £171 for funerals, and £70 in benevolent gifts.—The Birmingham and Midland Counties Grocers' Protection and Benevolent Association, started in 1871, has a long name and covers a considerable area. It was designed to make provision for the wives and families of unfortunate members of the trade when in distress; to defend actions brought against them under the Adulteration Acts; and most especially to protect themselves from the encroachments of the merchants, importers, and manufacturers, who do not always deliver 112 lbs. to the cwt, or keep to sample.—The Licensed Victuallers first clubbed together for protection in 1824, and the Retail Brewers and Dealers in Wine followed suit in 1845, both societies spending considerable sums yearly in relief for decayed members of the trade, the Licensed Victuallers having also a residential Asylum for a number of their aged members or their widows in Bristol Road.—The journeymen printers opened a branch of the Provincial Typographical Association Oct. 12, 1861, though there was a society here previously.— The first local union we find record of was among the knights of the thimble, the tailors striking for an increase in wages in 1833; a branch of the Amalgamated Society of Tailors has lately been organised.—In 1866 a general Trades' Council was formed, which utilises by combined action the powers of the whole in aid of any single society which may stand in need of help.
Trades and Manufactures.—There are no published returns of any kind that have ever been issued by which more than a guess can be made at the real value of the trade of Birmingham, which varies considerably at times. At the present moment (March, 1885) trade is in a very depressed state, and it would hardly be correct to give the exact figures, were it even possible to obtain them, and any statistics that may appear in the following lines must be taken as showing an average based upon several years. Speaking at a council meeting, February 19, 1878, Mr. Alderman Joseph Chamberlain said the best way to ascertain the trade of the town was to take the local bank returns and the railway traffic "in" and "out," so far as the same could be ascertained. The deposits in all the banks that published returns were, at the end of 1877, £10,142,936, as against £10,564,255 in the previous year—a falling off of £421,312, or 4 percent. With regard to bills of exchange held by the banks, the amount was £3,311,744, against £3,605,067 in the previous year—a falling off of £293,323, or 8 per cent. The amount of the advances, however, was £6,041,075, as against £5,570,920 in the previous year—an increase of £470,155, or 8-1/2 percent. With regard to the trade of the town, by the courtesy of the managers of the respective companies, he was able to give the numbers of tons of goods, of coals, and other minerals, the loads of cattle, and the number of passengers. The tons of goods were 973,611, as against 950,042 in 1876—an increase of 23,569 tons, or about 2-1/2 per cent. The tons of coal were 566,535, against 575,904—a falling off of 9,372 tons, or 1-1/2 percent. The other minerals were 119,583 tons, against 100,187—an increase of 19,369, or 19 per cent. The loads of cattle were 22,462 last year, against 19,157 in the previous year—an increase of 3,305 loads, 17 per cent. These were the returns of the "in" and "out" traffic. The number of passengers was 5,787,616 in 1877, against 5,606,331—an increase of 181,285, or about 3-1/4 per cent. So far as the traffic went, as they had been led to expect from the Board of Trade returns, there had been an increase of business, but a decrease of profits; and as to the decrease of profits he had some figures which showed that the profits of trade for the parish of Birmingham fur the year ending April 1, 1877, were £3,989,000; and of the preceeding year £4,292,000—a falling off of £323,000, or a trifle over 8 per cent. These figures of Mr. Chamberlain's may be accepted as representing the present state, the increase in numbers and consequent addition to the traffic "in" being balanced by the lesser quantity of goods sent out, though it is questionable whether the profits of trade now reach £3,000,000 per year. Notwithstanding the adverse times the failures have rather decreased than otherwise, there being 13 bankruptcies and 313 arrangements by composition in 1883 against 14 and 324 respectively in 1882. To get at the number of tradesmen, &c., is almost as difficult as to find out the value of their trade, but a comparison at dates fifty years apart will be interesting as showing the increase that has taken place in that period. A Directory of 1824 gave a list of 141 different trades and the names of 4,980 tradesmen; a similar work published in 1874 made 745 trades, with 33,462 tradesmen. To furnish a list of all the branches of trade now carried on and the numbers engaged therein would fill many pages, but a summary will be found under "Population," and for fuller particulars the reader must go to the Census Tables for 1881, which may be seen at the Reference Library. The variety of articles made in this town is simply incalculable, for the old saying that anything, from a needle to a ship's anchor, could be obtained in Edgbaston Street is really not far from the truth, our manufacturers including the makers of almost everything that human beings require, be it artificial eyes and limbs, ammunition, or armour; beads, buttons, bedsteads, or buckles; cocoa, candlesticks, corkscrews, or coffee-pots; door bolts, dessert forks, dog collars, or dish covers; edge tools, earrings, engines, or eyeglasses; fire irons, fiddle-bows, frying pans, or fishhooks; gold chains, gas fittings, glass toys, or gun barrels; hairpins, harness, handcuffs, or hurdles; ironwork, isinglass, inkstands, or inculators; jewellery, javelins, jews' harps, or baby jumpers; kettles, kitchen ranges, knife boards, or knuckle dusters; lifting-jacks, leg irons, latches, or lanterns; magnets, mangles, medals, or matches; nails, needles, nickel, or nutcrackers; organ pipes, optics, oilcans, or ornaments; pins, pens, pickle forks, pistols, or boarding-pikes; quart cups, quoits, quadrats, or queerosities; rings, rasps, rifles, or railway cars; spades, spectacles, saddlery, or sealing wax; thermometers, thimbles, toothpicks, or treacle taps; umbrellas or upholstery; ventilators, vices, varnish, or vinegar; watches, wheelbarrows, weighing machines or water closets. A Londoner who took stock of our manufactories a little while back, received information that led him to say, a week's work in Birmingham comprises, among its various results, the fabrication of 14,000,000 pens, 6,000 bedsteads, 7,000 guns, 300,000,000 cut nails, 100,000,000 buttons, 1,000 saddles, 5,000,000 copper or bronze coins, 20,000 pairs of spectacles, 6 tons of papier-mache wares, over £20,000 worth of gold and silver jewellery, nearly an equal value of gilt and cheap ornaments, £12,000 worth of electro-plated wares, 4,000 miles of iron and steel wire, 10 tons of pins, 5 tons of hairpins and hooks and eyes, 130,000 gross of wood screws, 500 tons of nuts and screw-bolts and spikes, 50 tons of wrought iron hinges, 350 miles' length of wax for vestas, 40 tons of refined metal, 40 tons of German silver, 1,000 dozen of fenders, 3,500 bellows, 800 tons of brass and copper wares. Several of these items are rather over the mark, but the aggregate only shows about one half a real week's work, as turned out when trade is good.
Agricultural Implements, such as draining tools, digging and manure forks, hay knives, scythes, shovels, spades, &c., as well as mowing machines, garden and farm rollers, ploughs, harrows, &c., are the specialities of some half-dozen firms, the oldest-established being Messrs. Mapplebeck and Lowe, opposite Smithfield Market.
American Traders.—It has been stated that there is not a bona fide American trader residing amongst us, though at one time they were almost as numerous as the Germans now are. Be that as it may, the following statistics, giving the declared value of exports from Birmingham to America during the ten years ending Sept. 30, 1882, (taken from a report made by the American Consul-General in London), show that a vast trade is still being carried on with our friends on the other side of the Atlantic:—Year ending September 30 1873, 7,463,185 dols.; 1874, 5,778,957 dols.; 1875, 4,791,231 dols.; 1876, 3,135,234 dols.; 1877, 2,842,871 dols.; 1878 2,309,513 dols.; 1879, 2,435,271 dols.; 1880, 4,920,433 dols.; 1881, 4,376,611 dols.; 1882, 5,178,118 dols. Total, 43,231,429 dols.
Ammunition.—To manufacture ammunition for guns and pistols so long made here by the scores of thousands would seem but the natural sequence, but though percussion caps were yearly sent from here in millions of grosses, the manufacture of the complete cartridge is a business of later growth. For the invention of gunpowder the world had to thank a monk, and it is no less curious that we owe percussion caps to the scientific genius of another Churchman, the first patent for their construction being taken out by the Rev. Mr. Forsyth in 1807. They were very little thought of for long after Waterloo, and not introduced into "the service" until 1839, several foreign armies being supplied with them before the War Office allowed them to be used by "Tommy Atkins" with his "Brown Bess." A machine for making percussion caps was patented by John Abraham in 1864. The manufacture of such articles at all times involves several dangerous processes, and Birmingham has had to mourn the loss of many of her children through accidents arising therefrom. (See "[Explosions].") The ammunition works of Messrs. Kynoch and Co., at Witton, cover over twenty acres, and gives employment to several hundred persons, the contrariness of human nature being exemplified in the fact that the death-dealing articles are mainly manufactured by females, the future mothers or wives perchance of men to be laid low by the use of such things. The plant is capable of turning out 500,000 cartridges per day, as was done during the Turkish war, and it takes 50 tons of rolled brass, 100 tons of lead, and 20 tons of gunpowder weekly to keep the factory fully going, all kinds of ammunition for rifles and machine guns being made on the premises. Other extensive works are those of the Birmingham Small Arms and Metal Co., at Adderley Park Mills, and the National Arms and Ammunition Co., at Small Heath, and Perry Barr.
Artificial Eyes and Limbs are necessary articles to some members of the genus homo, but the demand, fortunately, is not of such an extensive character as to require many manufacturers; indeed, the only firm in Birmingham that devotes itself entirely to supplying artificial limbs is that of Messrs. Best and Son, Summer Lane, whose specialities in the way of arms and legs are famed in all English and Continental medical circles as wonderful examples of the peculiar mechanism requisite to successfully imitate the motions and powers of natural limbs. There are half-a-dozen makers of "eyes," human and otherwise, the chief being Messrs. Pache and Son, Bristol Street, and Mr. Edward Hooper, Suffolk Street, who hold the almost unique position of being the sole known makers of artificial human eyes anywhere. Few people would imagine it, but it is said that there are at least 1,500 persons in Birmingham who carry glass eyes in their head; while the demand from foreign countries is something enormous, the United States taking the lead as they fain would do in everything. But there is no part of the civilised world, from Spitzbergen to Timbuctoo, where Birmingham made eyes are not to be seen, even the callous "heathen Chinee" buying them in large quantities. Naturalists and taxidermists find here eyes to match those of any creature that has lived and breathed, and "doll's eyes" are made by the ton.
Bedsteads, Metallic.—The making of iron and brass bedsteads, as a staple trade, dates only from the accession of Her Majesty; but, unlike that august personage, they were a long time before they were appreciated as they deserved to be, for, in 1850, there were only four or five manufacturers in the town, and their output did not reach 500 a week. Now, about 1,800 hands are employed in the trade, and the annual value of the work sent out cannot be less than £200,000.
Boilermaking.—The making of iron boilers, gasholders, sugar-boilers, &c., may be dated as a special trade from about 1831, when 30 men and boys were employed thereat, turning out about 150 tons yearly; in 1860, about 200 hands turned out 1,000 tons; in 1880 the workers were roughly estimated at 750 to 800 and the output at 4,500 tons.
Booksellers.—In 1750, there were but three, Aris, Warren, and Wollaston: now the booksellers, publishers, and wholesale stationers are over a hundred, while small shops may be counted to treble the number.
Boots and Shoes are manufactured by about 40 wholesale houses, several doing a great trade, and of retailers and little men there are a dozen gross, not counting cobblers who come with the last. American-made articles were first on sale here in March 1877. Rivetted boots may be said to have originated (in 1840) through the mistake of a local factor's traveller, who booked an order for copper sprigs too extensive for his customer. Another of the firm's commercials suggested the rivetting if iron lasts were used. A Leicester man, in a small way, took up the notion, and made a fortune at it, the real inventor only getting good orders. Ellis's patent boot studs to save the sole, and the Euknemida, or concave-convex fastening springs, are the latest novelties.