THE REVOLUTIONARY PERIOD
[1829-1842]
So far we have been mainly concerned with societies formed in particular trades, nearly always confined to particular localities, and known as institutions, associations, trade clubs, trade societies, unions, and union societies. We have by anticipation applied the term Trade Union to them in its modern sense; but in no case that we have discovered did they call themselves so. It is in the leading articles of the newspapers of 1830-4 that we first come upon references to some great Power of Darkness vaguely described as “the Trades Union.” We find, moreover, that there was in that day, as there has been repeatedly since, an Old Unionism and a New Unionism, and that “the Trades Union” represented the New Unionism, and the trade club, or Trade Union, as we have called it, the Old. The distinction between a Trade Union and a Trades Union is exactly that which the names imply. A Trade Union is a combination of the members of one trade; a Trades Union is a combination of different trades. “The Trades Union,” the bugbear of the Times in 1834, means the ideal at which the Trades Unionists aimed: that is, a complete union of all the workers in the country in a single national Trades Union. The peculiar significance of Trades Union as distinguished from Trade Union must be carefully borne in mind throughout this chapter, as it has passed out of use and occurs now only as a literary blunder. Our present unions of workers in different though related trades are usually called Amalgamations or Federations. But both Amalgamations and Federations, being definitely limited to similar or related and interdependent trades, are in idea essentially Trade Unions. The distinctive connotation of the term Trades Union was the ideal of complete solidarity of all wage-workers in “One Big Union”—that is to say, a single “universal” organisation. It is the attempt, on the part of the Trade Union leaders, to form not only national societies of particular trades, but also to include all manual workers in one comprehensive organisation, that constitutes the New Unionism of 1829-34. [207]
We are not altogether without information as to the genesis of the idea. The first attempt at a General Trades Union of which we have any record is that of the “Philanthropic Society” or “Philanthropic Hercules” of 1818. This we hear of almost simultaneously in Manchester, the Potteries and London, though it seems to have originated in first-named town. A meeting of workmen of various trades, held at Manchester in August 1818, convinced of the impotence of isolated Trade Clubs, sought to establish a society on a federal basis, each constituent trade raising its own funds and separately moving for advances or resisting reductions; but pledged first to consult the committee and the other trades, and promised the support of all, both in approved trade movements and in case of legal prosecution or oppression. A committee of eleven was to be chosen by ballot, one-third retiring monthly by rotation; and was to be assisted by a similar local organisation in each town.[208] How far the “General Union,” as the “Philanthropic Society” seems also to have been called, got under way in Lancashire or Staffordshire remains uncertain; but in London the idea was taken up by one of the ablest Trade Unionists of the time—the shipwright John Gast, whom we have already mentioned as an ally of Francis Place, who became president and called upon “the general body of mechanics” to subscribe a penny per week to a central fund for the defence of their common interests. [209]
Whether anything came of the attempts at a General Union in 1818-19 we have not discovered, but in all probability the project immediately failed. Seven years later a similar effort met with no greater success. “In 1826,” as we incidentally learn from a subsequent Labour journal,[210] “a Trades Union was formed in Manchester, which extended slightly to some of the surrounding districts, and embraced several trades in each; but it expired before it was so much as known a large majority of the operatives in the neighbourhood.”
What was aimed at is clear enough. It was being recommended to the workmen by some of their intellectual advisers. An able pamphlet of 1827 tells them that “Against the competition of the underpaid of surrounding trades, the ready remedy is a central union of all the general unions of all the trades of the country. The remuneration of all the different branches of artisans and mechanics in the country might then be fixed at those rates which would leave such an equalised remuneration to all as would take away any temptation from those in one branch to transfer their skill in order to undersell the labour of the well-remunerated in another branch: the Central Union fund being always ready to assist the unemployed in any particular branch, when their own local and general funds were exhausted; provided always their claims to support were by the Central Union deemed to be just.” [211]
Experience seems to show that national organisation of particular trades must precede the formation of any General Trades Union; and it was in this way that the project now took form. In 1829 we see renewed attempts at national organisation, in which the Lancashire and Yorkshire textile and building operatives were pioneers. The year 1829, closing the long depression of trade which began in the autumn of 1825, after the repeal of the Combination Laws, witnessed the establishment of important national Unions in both industries, but that of the Cotton-spinners claims precedence in respect of its more rapid development.
The Cotton-spinners’ trade clubs of Lancashire date apparently from 1792, and they spread, within a generation, to thirty or forty towns, remaining always strictly local organisations. In the early years of the nineteenth century attempts had been made by the Glasgow Spinners to unite the Lancashire and Scottish organisations in a national association; but these attempts had not resulted in more than temporary alliances in particular emergencies. The rapid improvement of spinning machinery, and the enterprise of the Lancashire millowners, were, at the date of the repeal of the Combination Laws, shifting the centre of the trade from Glasgow to Manchester; and it was the Lancashire Cotton-spinners who now took the lead in trade matters. The failure of a disastrous six months’ strike in 1829 at Hyde, near Manchester, led to the conviction that no local Union could succeed against a combination of employers; and the spinners’ societies of England, Scotland, and Ireland were therefore invited to send delegates to a conference to be held at Ramsay, in the Isle of Man, in the month of December 1829.
This delegate meeting, of which there is an excellent report,[212] lasted for nearly a week. The proceedings were of a remarkably temperate character, the discussions turning chiefly on the relative advantages of one supreme executive to be established at Manchester, and three co-equal national executives for England, Scotland, and Ireland. No secrecy was attempted. John Doherty,[213] secretary and leader of the Manchester Cotton-spinners, advocated a central executive; while Thomas Foster (a man of independent means who attended the conference at his own expense) favoured a scheme of home rule. Eventually a “Grand General Union of the United Kingdom” was established, subject to an annual delegate meeting and three national committees. The union was to include all male spinners and piecers, the women and girls being urged to form separate organisations, which were to receive all the aid of the whole confederation in supporting them to obtain “men’s prices.” The union was to promote local action for a further legislative restriction of the hours of labour, to apply to all persons under 21 years of age. Its income consisted of a contribution of a penny per week per member, to be levied in addition to the contribution to the local society. Doherty was general secretary, and Foster and a certain Patrick McGowan were appointed to organise the spinners throughout the United Kingdom.
The Boroughreeve and Constables of Manchester, on May 26, 1830, wrote in alarm to Sir Robert Peel: “The combination of workmen, long acknowledged a great evil, and one most difficult to counteract, has recently assumed so formidable and systematic a shape in this district that we feel it our duty to lay before you some of its most alarming features.... A committee of delegates from the operative spinners of the three Kingdoms have established an annual assembly in the Isle of Man to direct the proceedings of the general body towards their employers, the orders for which they promulgate to their respective districts and subcommittees. To these orders the most implicit deference is shown; and a weekly levy or rent of one penny per head on each operative is cheerfully paid. This produces a large sum, and is a powerful engine, and principally to support those who have turned out against their employers, agreeable to the orders of the committee, at the rate of ten shillings per week for each person. The plan of a general turnout having been found to be impolitic, they have employed it in detail, against particular individuals or districts, who, attacked thus singly, are frequently compelled to submit to their terms rather than to the ruin which would ensue to many by allowing their machinery (in which their whole capital is invested) to stand idle.” [214]
Whether this Cotton-spinners’ Federation, as we should call it, became really representative of the three kingdoms does not appear. A second general delegate meeting was held at Manchester in December 1830, which intervened in the great spinners’ strike then in progress at Ashton-under-Lyne. At this conference the constitution of 1829 was re-enacted with some alterations. The three national executives were apparently replaced by an executive council of three members elected by the Manchester Society, to be reinforced at its monthly meetings by two delegates chosen in turn by each of the neighbouring districts. A general delegate meeting seems also to have been held, attended by one delegate from each of the couple of scores of towns in which there were local clubs.[215] Foster was appointed general secretary; and a committee was ordered to draw up a general list of prices, for which purpose one member in each mill was directed to send up a copy of the list by which he was paid. Although another delegate meeting of this “Grand General Union” was fixed for Whit Monday 1831 at Liverpool, no further record of its existence can be traced. It is probable that the attempt to include Scotland and Ireland proved a failure, and that the union had dwindled into a federation of Lancashire societies, mainly preoccupied in securing a legislative restriction of the hours of labour. [216]
But the National Union of Cotton-spinners prepared the way for the more ambitious project of the Trades Union. Doherty, who seems to have resigned his official connection with the Cotton-spinners’ Union, conceived the idea of a National Association, not of one trade alone, but of all classes of wage-earners. Already in May 1829 we find him, as Secretary of the Manchester Cotton-spinners, writing to acknowledge a gift of ten pounds from the Liverpool Sailmakers, and expressing “a hope that our joint efforts may eventually lead to a Grand General Union of all trades throughout the United Kingdom.”[217] At his instigation a meeting of delegates from twenty organised trades was held at Manchester in February 1830, which ended in the establishment, five months later, of the National Association for the Protection of Labour. The express object of this society was to resist reductions, but not to strike for advances. In an eloquent address to working men of all trades, the new Association appealed to them to unite for their own protection and in order to maintain “the harmony of society” which is destroyed by their subjection. How is it, the Association asks, that whilst everything else increases—knowledge, wealth, civil and religious liberty, churches, madhouses, and prisons—the circumstances of the working man become ever worse? “He, the sole producer of food and raiment, is, it appears, destined to sink whilst others rise.” To prevent this evil the Association is formed.[218] Its constitution appears to have been largely borrowed from that of the contemporary Cotton-spinners, which it resembled in being a combination, not of directly enlisted individuals, but of existing separate societies, each of which paid an entrance fee of a pound, together with a shilling for each of its members, and contributed at the rate of a penny per week per head of its membership. Doherty was the first secretary, and the Association appears very soon to have enrolled about 150 separate Unions, mostly in Lancashire, Cheshire, Derby, Nottingham, and Leicester. The trades which joined were mainly connected with the various textile industries—the cotton-spinners, hosiery-workers, calico-printers, and silk-weavers taking a leading part. The Association also included numerous societies of mechanics, moulders, black-smiths, and many miscellaneous trades. The building trades were scarcely represented—a fact to be accounted for by the contemporary existence of the Builders’ Union hereafter described. The list[219] of the receipts of the Association for the first nine months of its existence includes payments amounting to £1866, a sum which indicates a membership of between 10,000 and 20,000, spread over the five counties already mentioned. A vigorous propaganda was carried on throughout the northern and midland counties by its officials, who succeeded in establishing a weekly paper, the United Trades Co-operative Journal, which was presently brought to an end by the intervention of the Commissioners of Stamps, who insisted on each number bearing a fourpenny stamp.[220] Undeterred by this failure, the committee undertook the more serious task of starting a sevenpenny stamped weekly, and requested Francis Place to become the treasurer of an accumulated fund. “The subscription,” writes Place to John Cam Hobhouse, December 5, 1830, “extends from Birmingham to the Clyde; the committee sits at Manchester; and the money collected amounts to about £3000, and will, they tell me, shortly be as much as £5000, with which sum, when raised, they propose to commence a weekly newspaper to be called the Voice of the People.” Accordingly in January 1831 appeared the first number of what proved to be an excellent weekly journal, the object of which was declared to be “to unite the productive classes of the community in one common bond of union.” Besides full weekly reports of the committee meetings of the National Association at Manchester and Nottingham, this newspaper, ably edited by John Doherty, gave great attention to Radical politics, including the Repeal of the Union with Ireland, and the progress of revolution on the Continent. [221]
From the reports published in the Voice of the People we gather that the first important action of the Association was in connection with the almost continuous strikes of the cotton-spinners at Ashton-under-Lyne, which flamed up into a sustained conflict on a large scale, during which Ashton, a young millowner, was murdered by some unknown person in the winter of 1830-31, in resistance to a new list of prices arbitrarily imposed by the Association of Master Spinners in Ashton, Dukinfield, and Stalybridge.[222] Considerable sums were raised by way of levy for the support of the strike, the Nottingham trades subscribing liberally. But the Association soon experienced a check. In February 1831 a new secretary decamped with £100. This led a delegate meeting at Nottingham, in April 1831, to decree that each Union should retain in hand the money contributed by its own members. But the usual failings of unions of various trades quickly showed themselves. The refusal of the Lancashire branches to support the great Nottingham strike which immediately ensued led to the defection of the Nottingham members. Nevertheless the Association was spreading over new ground. We hear of delegates from Lancashire inducing thousands of colliers in Derbyshire to join, whilst other trades, and even the agricultural labourers, were talking about it.[223] At the end of April a delegate meeting at Bolton, representing nine thousand coalminers of Staffordshire, Yorkshire, Cheshire, and Wales, resolved to join. The Belfast trades applied for affiliation. In Leeds nine thousand members were enrolled, chiefly among the woollen-workers. Missionaries were sent to organise the Staffordshire potters; and a National Potters’ Union, extending throughout the country, was established and affiliated. All this activity lends a certain credibility to the assertion, made in various quarters, that the Association numbered one hundred thousand members, and that the Voice of the People, published at 7d. weekly, enjoyed the then enormous circulation of thirty thousand.
Here at last we have substance given to the formidable idea of “the Trades Union.” It was soon worked up by the newspapers to a pitch at which it alarmed the employers, dismally excited the imaginations of the middle class, and compelled the attention of the Government. But there was no cause for apprehension. Lack of funds made the Association little more than a name. Practically no trade action is reported in such numbers of its organ as are still extant. The business of the Manchester Committee seems to have been confined to the promotion of the “Short Time Bill.” On April 23, 1831, at the general meeting of the Association, then designated the Lancashire Trades Unions, it was resolved to prepare petitions in favour of extending this measure to all trades and all classes of workers. Active support was given in the meantime to Mr. Sadler’s Factory Bill. Towards the end of the year we suddenly lose all trace of the National Association for the Protection of Labour, as far as Manchester is concerned. “After it had extended about a hundred miles round this town,” writes a working-class newspaper of 1832, “a fatality came upon it that almost threatened its extinction.... But though it declined in Manchester it spread and flourished in other places; and we rejoice to say that the resolute example set by Yorkshire and other places is likely once more to revive the drooping energies of those trades who had the honour of originating and establishing the Association.” [224]
What the fatality was that extinguished the Association in Manchester is not stated; but Doherty, to whose organising ability its initial success had been due, evidently quarrelled with the executive committee, and the Voice of the People ceased to appear. In its place we find Doherty issuing, from January 1832, the Poor Man’s Advocate, and vainly striving, in face of the “spirit” of “jealousy and faction,” to build up the Yorkshire branches of the Association into a national organisation, with its headquarters in London. After the middle of 1832 we hear no more, either of the Association itself or of Doherty’s more ambitious projects concerning it. [225]
The place of the National Association was soon filled by other contemporary general trade societies, of which the first and most important was the Builders’ Union, or the General Trades Union, as it was sometimes termed. It consisted of the separate organisations of the seven building trades, viz. joiners, masons, bricklayers, plasterers, plumbers, painters, and builders’ labourers, and is, so far as we know, the solitary example, prior to the present century, in the history of those trades of a federal union embracing all classes of building operatives, and purporting to extend over the whole country. [226]
The Grand Rules of the Builders’ Union set forth an elaborate constitution in which it was attempted to combine a local and trade autonomy of separate lodges with a centralised authority for defensive and aggressive purposes. The rules inform us that “the object of this society shall be to advance and equalise the price of labour in every branch of the trade we admit into this society.” Each lodge shall be “governed by its own password and sign, masons to themselves, and joiners to themselves, and so on;” and it is ordered that “no lodge be opened by any other lodge that is not the same trade of that lodge that, opens them, that masons open masons, and joiners open joiners, and so on;” moreover, “no other member [is] to visit a lodge that is not the same trade unless he is particularly requested.” Each trade had its own bye-laws; but these were subject to the general rules adopted at an annual delegate meeting. This annual conference of the “Grand Lodge Delegates,” better known as the “Builders’ Parliament,” consisted of one representative of each lodge, and was the supreme legislative authority, altering rules, deciding on general questions of policy, and electing the president and other officials. The local lodges, though directly represented at the annual meetings, had had apparently little connection in the interim with the seat of government. The society was divided into geographical districts, the lodges in each district sending delegates to quarterly district meetings, which elected a grand master, deputy grand master, and corresponding secretary for the district, and decided which should be the “divisional lodge,” or district executive centre. These divisional lodges or provincial centres were, according to the rules, to serve in turn as the grand lodge or executive centre for the whole society. Whether the members of the general committee were chosen by the general lodge or by the whole society is not clear; but they formed, with the president and general corresponding secretary, the national executive. The expenses of this executive and of the annual delegate meeting were levied on the whole society, each lodge sending monthly returns of its members and a summary of its finances to the general secretary. The main business of the national executive was to determine the trade policy of the Associations, and to grant or withhold permission to strike. As no mention is made of friendly benefits, we may conclude that the Builders’ Union, like most of the national or general Unions of this militant time, confined itself exclusively to defending its members against their employers.
The operative builders did not rest content with an elaborate constitution and code. There was also a ritual. The Stonemasons’ Society has preserved among its records a MS. copy of a “Making Parts Book,” ordered to be used by all lodges of the Builders’ Union on the admission of members. Under the Combination Laws oaths of secrecy and obedience were customary in the more secret and turbulent Trade Unions, notably that of the Glasgow Cotton-spinners and the Northumberland Miners. The custom survived the repeal; and admission to the Builders’ Union involved a lengthy ceremony conducted by the officers of the lodge—the “outside and inside tylers,” the “warden,” the “president,” “secretary,” and “principal conductor”—and taken part in by the candidates and the members of the lodge. Besides the opening prayer, and religious hymns sung at intervals, these “initiation parts” consisted of questions and responses by the dramatis personæ in quaint doggerel, and were brought to a close by the new members taking a solemn oath of loyalty and secrecy. Officers clothed in surplices, inner chambers into which the candidates were admitted blindfolded, a skeleton, drawn sword, battle-axes, and other mystic “properties” enhanced the sensational solemnity of this fantastic performance.[227] Ceremonies of this kind, including what were described to the Home Office as “oaths of a most execrable nature,”[228] were adopted by all the national and general Unions of the time: thus we find items for “washing surplices” appearing in the accounts of various lodges of contemporary societies. Although in the majority of cases the ritual was no doubt as harmless as that of the Freemasons or the Oddfellows, yet the excitement and sensation of the proceedings may have predisposed lightheaded fanatical members, in times of industrial conflict, to violent acts in the interest of the Association. At all events, the references to its mock terrors in the capitalist press seem to have effectually scared the governing classes.
The first years of the Builders’ Union, apparently, were devoted to organisation. During 1832 it rapidly spread through the Lancashire and Midland towns; and at the beginning of the following year a combined attack was made upon the Liverpool employers. The ostensible grievance of the men was the interference of the “contractor,” who, supplanting the master mason, master carpenter, etc., undertook the management of all building operations. A placard issued by the Liverpool Painters announces that they have joined “the General Union of the Artisans employed in the process of building,” in order to put down “that baneful, unjust, and ruinous system of monopolising the hard-earned profits of another man’s business, called ‘contracting,’” Naturally, the little masters were not friendly to the contracting system; and most of them agreed with the men’s demand that its introduction should be resisted. Encouraged by this support, the several branches of the building trade in Liverpool simultaneously sent in identical claims for a uniform rate of wages for each class of operatives, a limitation of apprentices, the prohibition of machinery and piecework, and other requirements special to each branch of the trade. These demands were communicated to the employers in letters couched in dictatorial and even insulting terms, and were coupled with a claim to be paid wages for any time they might lose by striking to enforce their orders. “We consider,” said one of these letters, “that as you have not treated our rules with that deference you ought to have done, we consider you highly culpable and deserving of being severely chastised.” And “further,” says another, “that each and every one in such strike shall be paid by you the sum of four shillings per day for every day you refuse to comply.” [229]
This sort of language brought the employers of all classes into line. At a meeting held in June 1833 they decided not only to refuse all the men’s demands, but to make a deliberate attempt to extinguish the Union. For this purpose they publicly declared that henceforth no man need apply for work unless he was prepared to sign a formal renunciation of the Trades Union and all its works. The insistence on this formal renunciation, henceforth to be famous in Trade Union records as the “presentation of the document,” exasperated the Builders’ Union. The Liverpool demands were repeated in Manchester, where the employers adopted the same tactics as at Liverpool. [230]
In the very heat of the battle (September 1833) the Builders’ Union held its annual delegate meeting at Manchester. It lasted six days; cost, it is said, over £3000; and was attended by two hundred and seventy delegates, representing thirty thousand operatives. This session of the “Builders’ Parliament” attracted universal attention. Robert Owen addressed the Conference at great length, confiding to it his “great secret” “that labour is the source of all wealth,” and that wealth can be retained in the hands of the producers by a universal compact among the productive classes. It was decided, perhaps under his influence, to build central offices at Birmingham, which should also serve as an educational establishment. The design for this “Builders’ Gild Hall,” as it was termed, was made by Hansom, an architect who, as an enthusiastic disciple of Owen, threw himself heartily into the strike that was proceeding also in this town. It included, on paper, a lecture-hall and various schoolrooms for the children of members. The foundation-stone was laid with great ceremony on December 5, 1833, when the Birmingham trades marched in procession to the site, and enthusiastic speeches were made. [231]
We learn from the Pioneer, or Trades Union Magazine (an unstamped penny weekly newspaper published at first at Birmingham, at that time the organ of the Builders’ Union[232]), the ardent faith and the vast pretensions of these New Unionists. “A union founded on right and just principles,” wrote the editor in the first number, “is all that is now required to put poverty and the fear of it for ever out of society.” “The vaunted power of capital will now be put to the test: we shall soon discover its worthlessness when deprived of your labour. Labour prolific of wealth will readily command the purchase of the soil; and at a very early period we shall find the idle possessor compelled to ask of you to release him from his worthless holding.” Elaborate plans were propounded for the undertaking of all the building of the country by a Grand National Gild of Builders: each lodge to elect a foreman; and the foremen to elect a general superintendent. The disappointment of these high hopes was rude and rapid. The Lancashire societies demurred to the centralisation which had been voted by the delegate meeting in September at the instigation of the Midland societies. Two great strikes at Liverpool and Manchester ended towards the close of the year in total failure. The Builders’ Gild Hall was abandoned;[233] and the Pioneer moved to London, where it became the organ of another body, the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union, with which the south country and metropolitan branches of the building trade had already preferred to affiliate themselves. Nevertheless the Builders’ Union retained its hold upon the northern counties during the early months of 1834, and held another “parliament” at Birmingham in April, at which Scotch and Irish representatives were present. [234]
The aggressive activity and rapid growth of the Builders’ Union during 1832-33 had been only a part of a general upheaval in labour organisation. The Cotton-spinners had recovered from the failure of the Ashton strike (1830-31) by the autumn of 1833, when we find Doherty prosecuting with his usual vigour the agitation for an eight hours day which had been set on foot by his Society for National Regeneration. “The plan is,” writes J. Fielden (M.P. for Oldham) to William Cobbett, “that about the 1st March next, the day the said Bill (now Act) limits the time of work for children under eleven years of age to eight hours a day, those above that age, both grown persons and adults, should insist on eight hours a day being the maximum of time for them to labour; and their present weekly wages for sixty-nine hours a week to be the minimum weekly wages for forty-eight hours a week after that time”; and he proceeds to explain that the Cotton-spinners had adopted this idea of securing shorter hours by a strike rather than by legislation on Lord Althorpe’s suggestion that they should “make a short-time bill for themselves.”[235] Fielden and Robert Owen served, with Doherty, on the committee of this society, which included a few employers. The Lancashire textile trades followed the lead of the Cotton-spinners, and prepared for a “universal” strike. Meanwhile their Yorkshire brethren were already engaged in an embittered struggle with their employers. The Leeds Clothiers’ Union, established about 1831, and apparently one of the constituent societies of the National Association for the Protection of Labour, bore a striking resemblance to the Builders’ Union, not only in ceremonial and constitution, but also in its policy and history.[236] In the spring of 1833 it made a series of attacks on particular establishments with the double aim of forcing all the workers to join the Union and of obtaining a uniform scale of prices. These demands were met with the usual weapon. The employers entered into what was called “the Manufacturers’ Bond,” by which they bound themselves under penalty to refuse employment to all members of the Union. The men indignantly refused to abandon the society; and a lock-out ensued which lasted some months, and was the occasion of repeated leading articles in the Times. [237]
The Potters’ Union (also established by Doherty in 1830) numbered, in the autumn of 1833, eight thousand members, of whom six thousand belonged to Staffordshire and the remainder to the lodges at Newcastle-on-Tyne, Derby, Bristol, and Swinton[238]—another instance of the extraordinary growth of Trade Unions during these years.
How far these and other societies were joined together in any federal body is not clear. The panic-stricken references in the capitalist press to “the Trades Union,” and the vague mention in working-class newspapers of the affiliation of particular societies to larger organisations, lead us to believe that during the year 1833 there was more than one attempt to form a “General Union of All Trades.” The Owenite newspapers, towards the end of 1833, are full of references to the formation of a “General Union of the Productive Classes.” What manner of association Owen himself contemplated may be learnt from his speech to the Congress of Owenite Societies in London on the 6th of October. “I will now give you,” said he, “a short outline of the great changes which are in contemplation, and which shall come suddenly upon society like a thief in the night.... It is intended that national arrangements shall be formed to include all the working classes in the great organisation, and that each department shall become acquainted with what is going on in other departments; that all individual competition is to cease; that all manufactures are to be carried on by National Companies.... All trades shall first form Associations of lodges to consist of a convenient number for carrying on the business: ... all individuals of the specific craft shall become members.”[239] Immediately after this we find in existence a “Grand National Consolidated Trades Union,” in the establishment and extraordinary growth of which the project of “the Trades Union” may be said to have culminated. This organisation seems to have actually started in January 1834. Owen was its chief recruiter and propagandist. During the next few months his activity was incessant; and lodges were affiliated all over the country. Innumerable local trade clubs were absorbed. Early in February 1834 a special delegate meeting was held at Owen’s London Institute in Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square, at which it was resolved that the new body should take the form of a federation of separate trade lodges, each lodge to be composed usually of members of one trade, but with provision for “miscellaneous lodges” in places where the numbers were small, and even for “female miscellaneous lodges.” Each lodge retained its own funds, levies being made throughout the whole order for strike purposes. The Conference urged each lodge to provide sick, funeral, and superannuation benefits for its own members; and proposals were adopted to lease land on which to employ “turn-outs,” and to set up co-operative workshops. The initiation rites and solemn oath, common to all the Unions of the period, were apparently adopted.
Nothing in the annals of Unionism in this country at all approached the rapidity of the growth which ensued.[240] Within a few weeks the Union appears to have been joined by at least half a million members, including tens of thousands of farm labourers and women. This must have been in great measure due to the fact that, as no discoverable regular contribution was exacted for central expenses, the affiliation or absorption of existing organisations was very easy. Still, the extension of new lodges in previously unorganised trades and districts was enormous. Numerous missionary delegates, duly equipped with all the paraphernalia required for the mystic initiation rites, perambulated the country; and a positive mania for Trade Unionism set in. In December 1833 we are told that “scarcely a branch of trade exists in the West of Scotland that is not now in a state of Union.”[241] The Times reports that two delegates who went to Hull enrolled in one evening a thousand men of various trades.[242] At Exeter the two delegates were seized by the police, and found to be furnished with “two wooden axes, two large cutlasses, two masks, and two white garments or robes, a large figure of Death with the dart and hourglass, a Bible and Testament.”[243] Shop-assistants on the one hand, and journeymen chimney-sweeps on the other, were swept into the vortex. The cabinetmakers of Belfast insisted on joining “the Trades Union, or Friendly Society, which had for its object the unity of all cabinetmakers in the three kingdoms.”[244] We hear of “Ploughmen’s Unions” as far off as Perthshire,[245] and of a “Shearman’s Union” at Dundee. And the then rural character of the Metropolitan suburbs is quaintly brought home to us by the announcement of a union of the “agricultural and other labourers” of Kensington, Walham Green, Fulham, and Hammersmith. Nor were the women neglected. The “Grand Lodge of Operative Bonnet Makers” vies in activity with the miscellaneous “Grand Lodge of the Women of Great Britain and Ireland”; and the “Lodge of Female Tailors” asks indignantly whether the “Tailors’ Order” is really going to prohibit women from making waistcoats. Whether the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union was responsible for the lodges of “Female Gardeners” and “Ancient Virgins,” who afterwards distinguished themselves in the riotous demand for an eight hours day at Oldham,[246] is not clear.
How the business of this colossal federation was actually managed we do not know.[247] Some kind of executive committee sat in London, with four paid officers. The need for statesmanlike administration was certainly great. The avowed policy of the federation was to inaugurate a general expropriatory strike of all wage-earners throughout the country, not “to condition with the master-producers of wealth and knowledge for some paltry advance in the artificial money price in exchange for their labour, health, liberty, natural enjoyment, and life; but to ensure to every one the best cultivation of all their faculties and the most advantageous exercise of all their powers.” But from the very beginning of its career it found itself incessantly involved in sectional disputes for small advances of wages and reduction of hours. The mere joining of “the Trades Union” was often made the occasion of the dismissal by the employers of all those who would not sign the “document” abjuring all combinations. Thus the accession of the Leicester Hosiers in November 1833 led to a disastrous dispute, in which over 1300 men had to be supported. In Glasgow a serious strike broke out among the building trades at a time when the Calico-printers, Engineers, and Cabinetmakers were already struggling with their employers. The most costly conflict, however, which the Grand National found on its hands during the winter was that which raged at Derby, where fifteen hundred men, women, and children had been locked out by their employers for refusing to abandon the Union. The “Derby turn-outs” were at first supported, like their fellow-victims elsewhere, by contributions sent from the trade organisations in various parts of the kingdom; but it soon became evident that without systematic aid they would be compelled to give way. A levy of a shilling per member was accordingly decreed by the Grand National Executive in February 1834. Arrangements were made for obtaining premises and machinery upon which to set a few of the strikers to work on their own account. The struggle ended, after four months, in the complete triumph of the employers, and the return of the operatives to work.
The “Derby turn-out” was widely advertised by the newspapers, and brought much odium on the Grand National. But the denunciation of “the Trades Union” greatly increased when part of London was laid in darkness by a strike of the gas-stokers. The men employed by the different gas companies in the metropolis had been quietly organising during the winter, with the intention of simultaneously withdrawing from work if their demands were not acceded to. The plot was discovered, and the companies succeeded in replacing their Union workmen by others. But weeks elapsed before the new hands were able completely to perform their work,[248] and early in March 1834 Westminster was for some days in partial darkness. Amid the storm of obloquy caused by these disputes the Grand National suddenly found itself in conflict with the law. The conviction of six Dorchester labourers in March 1834 for the mere act of administering an oath, and their sentence to seven years’ transportation, came like a thunderbolt on the Trade Union world.
To understand such a barbarous sentence we must picture to ourselves the effect on the minds of the Government and the propertied classes of the menacing ideal of “the Trades Union,” brought home by the aggressive policy of the Unions during the last four years. Already in 1830 the formation of national and General Unions had excited the attention of the Government. “When we first came into office in November last,” writes Lord Melbourne, the Whig Home Secretary, to Sir Herbert Taylor, “the Unions of trades in the North of England and in other parts of the country for the purpose of raising wages, etc., and the General Union for the same purpose, were pointed out to me by Sir Robert Peel [the outgoing Tory Home Secretary] in a conversation I had with him upon the then state of the country, as the most formidable difficulty and danger with which we had to contend; and it struck me as well as the rest of His Majesty’s servants in the same light.” [249]
To advise the Cabinet in this difficulty Lord Melbourne called in Nassau Senior, who had just completed his first term of five years as Professor of Political Economy at Oxford, and directed him to prepare, in conjunction with a legal expert named Tomlinson, a report on the situation and a plan of remedial legislation. This document throws light both on the state of mind and on the practical judgement of the trusted economist. The two commissioners appear to have made no inquiries among workmen, and to have accepted implicitly every statement, including hearsay gossip, offered by employers. The evidence thus collected naturally led to a very unfavourable conclusion. It produced, as the commissioners recite, “upon our minds the conviction that if the innocent and laborious workman and his family are to be left without protection against the cowardly ferocity by which he is now assailed; if the manufacturer is to employ his capital and the mechanist or chemist his ingenuity, only under the dictation of his short-sighted and rapacious workmen, or his equally ignorant and avaricious rivals; if a few agitators are to be allowed to command a strike which first paralyses the industry of the peculiar class of workpeople over whom they tyrannise, and then extends itself in an increasing circle over the many thousands and tens of thousands to whose labour the assistance of that peculiar class of workpeople is essential;—that if all this is to be unpunished, and to be almost sanctioned by the repeal of the laws by which it was formerly punishable;—it is in vain to hope that we shall long retain the industry, the skill, or the capital on which our manufacturing superiority, and with that superiority our power and almost our existence as a nation, depends.” They accordingly conclude with a series of astounding proposals for the amendment of the law. The Act of 1825 could not conveniently be openly repealed; but its mischievous results were to be counteracted by drastic legislation. They recommend that a law should be passed clearly reciting the common law prohibitions of conspiracy and restraint of trade. The law should go on to forbid, under severe penalties, “all attempts or solicitations, combinations, subscriptions, and solicitations to combinations” to threaten masters, to persuade blacklegs, or even simply to ask workmen to join the Union.[250] Picketing, however peaceful, was to be comprehensively forbidden and ruthlessly punished. Employers or their assistants were to be authorised themselves to arrest men without summons or warrant, and hale them before any justice of the peace. The encouragement of combinations by masters was to be punished by heavy pecuniary penalties, to be recovered by any common informer. “This,” say the commissioners, “is as much as we should recommend in the first instance. But if it should be proved that the evil of the combination system cannot be subdued at a less price, ... we must recommend the experiment of confiscation,”—confiscation, that is, of the “funds subscribed for purposes of combination and deposited in Savings Banks or otherwise.” [251]
The Whig Government dared not submit either the report or the proposals to a House of Commons pledged to the doctrines of Philosophic Radicalism. “We considered much ourselves,” writes Lord Melbourne,[252]“and we consulted much with others as to whether the arrangements of these unions, their meetings, their communications, or their pecuniary funds could be reached or in any way prevented by any new legal provisions; but it appeared upon the whole impossible to do anything effectual unless we proposed such measures as would have been a serious infringement upon the constitutional liberties of the country, and to which it would have been impossible to have obtained the consent of Parliament.”
The King, however, had been greatly alarmed at the meeting of the “Builders’ Parliament,” and pressed the Cabinet to take strong measures.[253] Rotch, the member for Knaresborough, gave notice in April 1834 of his intention to bring in a Bill designed to make combinations of trades impossible—a measure which would have obtained a large amount of support from the manufacturers.[254] The coal-owners and ship-owners, the ironmasters, had all been pressing the Home Secretary for legislation of this kind.
But although Lord Melbourne’s prudent caution saved the Unions from drastic prohibitory laws, the Government lost no opportunity of showing its hostility to the workmen’s combinations. When in August 1833 the Yorkshire manufacturers presented a memorial on the subject of “the Trades Union,” Lord Melbourne directed the answer to be returned that “he considers it unnecessary to repeat the strong opinion entertained by His Majesty’s Ministers of the criminal character and the evil effects of the unions described in the Memorial,” adding that “no doubt can be entertained that combinations for the purposes enumerated are illegal conspiracies, and liable to be prosecuted as such at common law.”[255] The employers scarcely needed this hint. Although combination for the sole purpose of fixing hours or wages had ceased to be illegal, it was possible to prosecute the workmen upon various other pretexts. Sometimes, as in the case of some Lancashire miners in 1832, the Trade Unionists were indicted for illegal combination for merely writing to their employers that a strike would take place.[256] Sometimes the “molestation or obstruction” prohibited in the Act of 1825 was made to include the mere intimation of the men’s intention to strike against the employment of non-unionists. In a remarkable case at Wolverhampton in August 1835, four potters were imprisoned for intimidation, solely upon evidence by the employers that they had “advanced their prices in consequence of the interference of the defendants, who acted as plenipotentiaries for the men,” without, as was admitted, the use of even the mildest threat.[257] Picketing, even of the most peaceful kind, was frequently severely punished under this head, as four Southwark shoemakers found in 1832 to their cost.[258] More generally the men on strike were proceeded against under the laws relating to masters and servants, as in the case of seventeen tanners at Bermondsey in February 1834, who were sentenced to imprisonment for the offence of leaving their work unfinished. [259]
With the authorities in this temper, their alarm at the growth of the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union may be imagined. A new legal weapon was soon discovered. At the time of the mutiny at the Nore in 1797 an Act had been passed (37 Geo. III. c. 123) severely penalising the administering of an oath by an unlawful society. In 1819, when political sedition was rife, a measure prohibiting unlawful oaths had formed one of the notorious “Six Acts.” In neither case were trade combinations aimed at, though Lord Ellenborough, in an isolated prosecution in 1802,[260] had held that an oath administered by a committee of journeymen shearmen in Wiltshire came within the terms of the earlier statute. It does not seem to have occurred to any one to put the law in force against Trade Unions until the oath-bound confederacy of the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union began to make headway even in the rural villages of the South of England.
The story of the trial and transportation of the Dorchester labourers is the best-known episode of early Trade Union history.[261] The agricultural labourers of the southern counties, oppressed by the tacit combinations of the farmers and by the operation of the Corn Laws, as well as exceptionally demoralised by the Old Poor Law, had long been in a state of sullen despair. The specially hard times of 1829 had resulted in outbursts of machine-breaking, rick-burning, and hunger riots, which had been put down in 1830 by the movement of troops through the disturbed districts, and the appointment of a Special Commission of Assize to try over 1000 prisoners, several of whom were hung and hundreds transported. The whole wage-earning population of these rural districts was effectually cowed.[262] With the improvement of trade a general movement for higher wages seems to have been set on foot. In 1832 we find the Duke of Wellington, as Lord-Lieutenant of Hampshire, reporting to Lord Melbourne that more than half the labourers in his county were contributing a penny per week to a network of local societies affiliated, as he thought, to some National Union. “The labourers said that they had received directions from the Union not to take less than ten shillings, and that the Union would stand by them.”[263] These societies, whatever may have been their constitution, had apparently the effect of raising wages not only in Hampshire, but also in the neighbouring counties. In the village of Tolpuddle, in Dorsetshire, as George Loveless tells us, an agreement was made between the farmers and the men, in the presence of the village parson, that the wages should be those paid in other districts. This involved a rise to ten shillings a week. In the following year the farmers repented of their decision, and successively reduced wages shilling by shilling until they were paying only seven shillings a week. In this strait the men made inquiries about “the Trades Union,” and two delegates from the Grand National visited the village. Upon their information the Lovelesses established “the Friendly Society of Agricultural Labourers,” having its “Grand Lodge” at Tolpuddle. For this village club the elaborate ritual and code of rules of one of the national orders of the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union were adopted. No secrecy seems to have been observed, for John Loveless openly ordered of the village painter a figure of “Death painted six feet high for a society of his own,”[264] with which to perform the initiation rites. The farmers took alarm, and induced the local magistrates, on February 21, 1834, to issue placards warning the labourers that any one joining the Union would be sentenced to seven years’ transportation. This was no idle threat. Within three days of the publication of the notice the Lovelesses and four other members were arrested and lodged in gaol.
The trial of these unfortunate labourers was a scandalous perversion of the law. The Lovelesses and their friends seem to have been simple-minded Methodists, two of them being itinerant preachers. No accusation was made, and no evidence preferred against them, of anything worse than the playing with oaths, which, as we have seen, formed a part of the initiation ceremony of the Grand National and other Unions of the time, with evidently no consciousness of their statutory illegality. Not only were they guiltless of any intimidation or outrage, but they had not even struck or presented any application for higher wages. Yet the judge (John Williams), who had only recently been raised to the bench, charged the grand jury on the case at portentous length, as if the prisoners had committed murder or treason, and inflicted on them, after the briefest of trials, the monstrous sentence of seven years’ transportation.
The action of the Government shows how eagerly the Home Secretary accepted the blunder of an inexperienced judge as part of his policy of repression. Lord Melbourne expressed his opinion that “the law has in this case been most properly applied”;[265] and the sentence, far from exciting criticism in the Whig Cabinet, was carried out with special celerity. The case was tried on March 18, 1834; before the 30th the prisoners were in the hulks; and by the 15th of the next month Lord Howick was able to say in the House of Commons that their ship had already sailed for Botany Bay. [266]
The Grand National Consolidated Trades Union proved to have a wider influence than the Government expected. The whole machinery of the organisation was turned to the preparation of petitions and the holding of public meetings, and a wave of sympathy rallied, for a few weeks, the drooping energies of the members. Cordial relations were established with the five great Unions which remained outside the ranks, for the northern counties were mainly organised by the Builders’ Union, the Leeds, Huddersfield and Bradford District Union, the Clothiers’ Union, the Cotton-spinners’ Union, and the Potters’ Union, which on this occasion sent delegates to London to assist the executive of the Grand National. The agitation culminated in a monster procession of Trade Unionists to the Home Office to present a petition to Lord Melbourne—the first of the great “demonstrations” which have since become a regular part of the machinery of London politics. The proposal to hold this procession had excited the utmost alarm, both in friends and to foes. The Times, with the Parisian events of 1830 still in its memory, wrote leader after leader condemning the project, and Lord Melbourne let it be known that he would refuse to receive any deputation or petition from a procession. Special constables were sworn in, and troops brought into London to prevent a rising. At length the great day arrived (April 21, 1834). Owen and his friends managed the occasion with much skill. In order to avoid interference by the new police, the vacant ground at Copenhagen Fields, on which the processionists assembled, was formally hired from the owner. The trades were regularly marshalled behind thirty-three banners, each man decorated by a red ribbon. At the head of the procession rode, in full canonicals and the scarlet hood of a Doctor of Divinity, the corpulent “chaplain to the Metropolitan Trades Unions,” Dr. Arthur S. Wade.[267] The demonstration, in point of numbers, was undoubtedly a success. We learn, for instance, that the tailors alone paraded from 5000 to 7000 strong, and the master builders subsequently complained that their works had been entirely suspended through their men’s participation. Over a quarter of a million signatures had been obtained to the petition, and, even on the admission of the Times, 30,000 persons took part in the procession, representing a proportion of the London of that time equivalent to 100,000 to-day. [268]
Meanwhile Radicals of all shades hastened to the rescue. A public meeting was held at the Crown and Anchor Tavern at which Roebuck, Colonel Perronet Thompson, and, Daniel O’Connell spoke; and a debate took place in the House of Commons in which the ferocious sentence was strongly attacked by Joseph Hume.[269] But the Government, far from remitting the punishment, refused even to recognise that it was excessive; and the unfortunate labourers were allowed to proceed to their penal exile. [270]
The Dorchester conviction had the effect of causing the oath to be ostensibly dropped out of Trade Union ceremonies, although in particular trades and districts it lingered a few years longer.[271] At their “parliament” in April 1834 the Builders’ Union formally abolished the oath. The Grand National quickly adopted the same course; and the Leeds and other Unions followed suit. But the judge’s sentence was of no avail to check the aggressive policy of the Unions. Immediately after the excitement of the procession had subsided, one of the most important branches of the Grand National precipitated a serious conflict with its employers. The London tailors, hitherto divided among themselves, formed in December 1833 the “First Grand Lodge of Operative Tailors,” and resolved to demand a shortening of the hours of labour. The state of mind of the men is significantly shown by the language of their peremptory notice to the masters. “In order,” they write, “to stay the ruinous effects which a destructive commercial competition has so long been inflicting on the trade, they have resolved to introduce certain new regulations of labour into the trade, which regulations they intend shall come into force on Monday next.” A general strike ensued, in which 20,000 persons are said to have been thrown out of work, the whole burden of their maintenance being cast on the Grand National funds. A levy of eighteenpence per member throughout the country was made in May 1834, which caused some dissatisfaction; and the proceeds were insufficient to prevent the tailors’ strike pay falling to four shillings a week. The result was that the men gradually returned to work on the employers’ terms. [272]
These disasters, together with innumerable smaller strikes in various parts, all of which were unsuccessful, shook the credit of the Grand National. The executive attempted in vain to stem the torrent of strikes by publishing a “Declaration of the Views and Objects of Trades Unions,” in which they deprecated disputes and advocated what would now be called Co-operative Production by Associations of Producers.[273] They gave effect to this declaration by refusing to sanction the London shoemakers’ demand for increased wages, on the ground that a conflict so soon after the tailors’ defeat was inopportune. The result was merely that a general meeting of the London shoemakers voted, by 782 to 506, for secession from the federation, and struck on their own account. [274]
An even more serious blow was the lock-out of the London building trades in July 1834. These trades in London had joined the Grand Consolidated rather than the Builders’ Union; and in the summer of 1834 an act of petty tyranny on the part of a single firm brought about a general conflict. The workmen employed by Messrs. Cubitt had resolved not to drink any beer supplied by Combe, Delafield & Co., in retaliation for the refusal of that firm to employ Trade Unionists. Messrs. Cubitt thereupon refused to allow any other beer to be drunk on their premises, and locked out their workmen. The employers throughout London, angered by the Union’s resistance to sub-contract and piecework, embraced this opportunity to insist that all their employees should sign the hated “document.” The heads of the Government departments in which building operatives were employed placed themselves in line with private employers by making the same demands.[275] The struggle dragged on until November 1834, when the document seems to have been tacitly withdrawn, and the men returned to work, accepting the employers’ terms on the other points at issue.[276] We learn from the correspondence of the Stonemasons’ Society that this defeat—for such it virtually was—completely broke up the organisation in the London building trade. What was happening to the Builders’ Union during these months is not clear. The federal organisation apparently broke up at about this time; and the several trades fell back upon their local clubs and national societies.
Whilst the London builders were thus engaged, similar struggles were going on in the other leading industries. At Leeds, for instance, in May 1834 the masters were again presenting the “document”; and the men, after much resistance and angry denunciation, were compelled to abandon the Clothiers’ Union. The Cotton-spinners, whom we left preparing to carry out Fielden’s idea of a general strike for an eight hours day with undiminished wages for all cotton operatives, resolved to demand the reduction of hours from the 1st of March 1834, the day appointed for the operation of the new Factory Act of 1833 limiting the hours of children to eight per day. The operatives in many mills sent in notices, which were simply ignored by the employers. In this they seem to have estimated the weakness of the men correctly; for the expected general strike was deferred by a delegate meeting until the 2nd of June. That date found the men still unprepared for action, and the strike was further postponed until the 1st of September. After that we hear no more of it.
The Oldham operatives did indeed in April 1834 make an unpremeditated attempt to secure eight hours. It happened that the local constables broke up a Trade Union meeting. A rescue took place, followed by an attack on an obnoxious mill, and the shooting of one of the rioters by a “Knobstick.” The affray provoked the Oldham working class into a spasm of insurrection. The workers in all trades, both male and female, ceased work, and held huge meetings on the Moor, where they were addressed by Doherty and others from Manchester, and demanded the eight hours day. Within a week the excitement subsided, and work was resumed. [277]
By the end of the summer it was obvious that the ambitious projects of the Grand National Consolidated and other “Trades Unions” had ended in invariable and complete failure. In spite of the rising prosperity of trade, the strikes for better conditions of labour had been uniformly unsuccessful. In July 1834 the federal organisations all over the country were breaking up. The great association of half a million members had been completely routed by the employers’ vigorous presentation of the “document.” Of the actual dissolution of the organisation we have no contemporary record, but the impression which it made on the more sober Trade Unionists may be gathered from the following description, which appeared in a working-class journal seven years afterwards. “We were present,” says the editor of the Trades Journal, “at many of the meetings of the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union, and have a distinct recollection of the excitement that prevailed in them—of the apparent determination to carry out its principles in opposition to every obstacle—of the enthusiasm exhibited by some of the speakers—of the noisy approbation of the meeting—the loud cries of ‘hear hear,’ ‘bravo,’ ‘hurra,’ ‘union for ever,’ etc. It was the opinion of many at that time that little real benefit would be effected by this union, as their proceedings were indicative, not of a calm and dispassionate investigation of the causes of existing evils, but of an over-excited state of mind which would speedily evaporate, and leave them in the same condition as before. The event proved that this opinion was not ill-founded. A little mole-hill obstructed their onward progress; and rather than commence the labour of removing so puny an obstacle, they chose to turn back, each taking his own path, regardless of the safety or the interests of his neighbour. It was painful to see the deep mortification of the generals and leaders of this quickly inflated army, when left deserted and alone upon the field.” [278]
A period of general apathy in the Trade Union world ensued. The “London Dorchester Committee” continued with indomitable perseverance to collect subscriptions and present petitions for the return of the six exiled labourers; but “the Trades Union,” together with the ideal from which it sprang, vanished in discredit. The hundreds of thousands of recruits from the new industries or unskilled occupations rapidly reverted to a state of disorganisation. The national “orders” of Tailors and Shoemakers, the extended organisations of Cotton-spinners and Woollen-workers, split up into fragmentary societies. Throughout the country the organised constituents of the Grand National fell back upon their local trade clubs.
The records of the rise and fall of the “New Unionism” of 1830-4 leave us conscious of a vast enlargement in the ideas of the workers, without any corresponding alteration in their tactics in the field. In council they are idealists, dreaming of a new heaven and a new earth; humanitarians, educationalists, socialists, moralists: in battle they are still the struggling, half-emancipated serfs of 1825, armed only with the rude weapons of the strike and boycott; sometimes feared and hated by the propertied classes; sometimes merely despised; always oppressed, and miserably poor. We find, too, that they are actually less successful with the old weapons now that they wield them with new and wider ideas. They get beaten in a rising market instead of, as hitherto, only in a falling one. And we shall soon see that they did not recover their lost advantage until they again concentrated their efforts on narrower and more manageable aims. But we have first to inquire how they came by the new ideas.