Chapter VI: Sectional Developments (1)

[1863-1885]

From 1851 to 1863 all the effective forces in the Trade Union Movement were centred in London. Between 1863 and 1867, as we described in the course of the last chapter, provincial organisations, such as the Glasgow and Sheffield Trades Councils, and provincial leaders such as Alexander Macdonald and John Kane, began to play an important part in the general movement. The dramatic crisis of 1867, and the subsequent political struggle, compelled us to break off our description of the growth of the movement in order to follow the Parliamentary action of the London leaders. But whilst the Junta and their allies were winning their great victories at Westminster, the centre of gravity of the Trade Union world was being insensibly shifted from London to the industrial districts north of the Humber. This was primarily due to the rapid growth of two great provincial organisations, the federations of Coal-miners and Cotton Operatives.

The Miners, now one of the most powerful contingents of the Trade Union forces, were, until 1863, without any effective organisation. The Miners’ Association of Great Britain, which, as we have seen, sprang in 1841-43 into a vigorous existence, collapsed in 1848. An energetic attempt made by Martin Jude to re-establish a National Association in 1850, when a conference was held at Newcastle, was, in consequence of the continued depression in the coal trade, entirely unsuccessful. For the next few years “the fragments of union that existed got less by degrees and more minute till, at the close of 1855, it might be said that union among the miners in the whole country had almost died out.”[442] The revival which took place between 1858 and 1863 was due, in the main, to the persistent work of the able man who became for fifteen years their trusted leader.

Alexander Macdonald, to whose lifelong devotion the miners owe their present position in the Trade Union world, stands, like William Newton, midway between the casual and amateur leaders of the old Trade Unionism and the paid officials of the new type. Himself originally a miner and the son of a miner, the education and independent means which he had acquired enabled him, from 1857 onwards, to apply himself continuously to the miners’ cause. A florid style, and somewhat flashy personality, did him no harm with the rough and uneducated workmen whom he had to marshal. The main source of his effectiveness lay, however, neither in his oratory nor in his powers of organisation, but in his exact appreciation of the particular changes that would remedy the miners’ grievances, and in the tactical skill with which he embodied these changes in legislative form. Like his friends, Allan and Applegarth, he relied almost exclusively on Parliamentary agitation as a means for securing his ends. But whilst the Junta were contenting themselves with securing political freedom for Trade Unionists, Macdonald from the first persistently pressed for the legislative regulation of the conditions of labour. And though, like his London allies, he consorted largely with the middle-class friends of Trade Unionism, and freely utilised their help in the House of Commons, he proved his superior originality and tenacity of mind by never in the slightest degree abandoning the fundamental principle of Trade Unionism--the compulsory maintenance of the workman’s Standard of Life.

“It was in 1856,” said Macdonald on a later occasion, “that I crossed the Border first to advocate a better Mines Act, true weighing, the education of the young, the restriction of the age till twelve years, the reduction of the working hours to eight in every twenty-four, the training of managers, the payment of wages weekly in the current coin of the realm, no truck, and many other useful things too numerous to mention here. Shortly after that, bone began to come to bone, and by 1858 we were in full action for better laws.”[443] The pit clubs and informal committees that pressed these demands upon the legislature became centres of local organisation, with which Macdonald kept up an incessant correspondence. An arbitrary lock-out of several thousand men by the South Yorkshire coal-owners in 1858 welded the miners of that coalfield into a compact district association, and enabled Macdonald, in the same year, to get together a national conference at Ashton-under-Lyne, at which, however, the delegates could claim to represent only four thousand men in union. In 1860, when the Mines Regulation Act was being passed into law, Macdonald was able to score a success in the “checkweigher” clause, to which we shall again refer. Not until the end of 1863, however, can the Miners’ National Union be said to have been effectively established; and the proceedings of the Leeds Conference of that year strike the note of the policy which Macdonald, to the day of his death, never ceased to press upon the miners, and to which the great majority of them have now, after a temporary digression, once more returned.

The Miners’ Conference at Leeds was in many respects a notable gathering. Instead of the formless interchange of talk which had marked the previous conference, Macdonald induced the fifty-one delegates who sat from the 9th to the 14th of November 1863 at the People’s Co-operative Hall to organise their meeting on the model of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, and divide themselves into three sections, on Law, on Grievances, and on Social Organisation, each of which reported to the whole conference.[444] The proceedings of the day were opened with prayer by the “Chaplain to the Conference,” the Rev. Joseph Rayner Stephens, celebrated as the opponent of the New Poor Law and the advocate of factory legislation and Chartism.[445] In the reports of the sections and the numerous resolutions of the conference we find all the points of Macdonald’s programme. The paramount importance of securing the Standard of Life by means of legislative regulation of the conditions of work is embodied in a lengthy series of proposals which have nearly all since been inserted in the detailed code of mining law. In contradistinction to the view which would make wages depend upon prices, the principle of controlling industry in such a way as to prevent encroachments on the workman’s standard maintenance is clearly foreshadowed. “Overtoil,” says the report, “produces over-supply; low prices and low wages follow; bad habits and bad health follow, of course; and then diminished production and profits are inevitable. Reduction of toil, and consequent improved bodily health, increases production in the sense of profit; and limits it so as to avoid overstocking; better wages induce better habits, and economy of working follows.... The evil of overtoil and over-supply upon wages, and upon the labourer, is therefore a fair subject of complaint; and, we submit, as far as these are human by conventional arrangements, are a fair and proper subject of regulation. Regulations must, of course, be twofold. Part can be legislated for by compulsory laws; but the principle (_sic_) must be the subject of voluntary agreement.”[446] The restriction of labour in mines to a maximum of eight hours per day was strongly urged; but at Macdonald’s instance it was astutely resolved not to ask for a legal regulation of the hours of adult men, but to confine the Parliamentary proposal to a Bill for boys. And it is interesting to observe already at this time the beginning of the deep cleavage between the miners of Northumberland and Durham and their fellow-workers elsewhere. The close connection between the legal regulation of the hours of boys and the fixing of the men’s day is brought out by William Crawford; the future leader of the Durham men. The general feeling of the conference was in favour of a drastic legal prohibition of boys being kept in the mine for more than eight hours, but Crawford declared that “an eight hours bill could not be carried out in his district. He wanted the boys to work ten hours a day, and the men six hours.”[447] He therefore proposed a legal Ten Hours Day for the boys. The conference, however, declined to depart from the principle of Eight Hours; and the Bill drafted in this sense was eventually adopted without dissent.

Another reform advocated by Macdonald has had far-reaching though unforeseen effect upon the miners’ organisation. The arbitrary confiscation of the miners’ pay for any tubs or hutches which were declared to be improperly filled had long been a source of extreme irritation. It had become a regular practice of unscrupulous coal-owners to condemn a considerable percentage of the men’s hutches, and thus escape payment for part of the coal hewn. The grievance was aggravated by the absolute dependence of the miner, working underground, upon the honesty and accuracy of the agent of the employer on the surface, who recorded the amount of his work. A demand was accordingly made by the men for permission to have their own representative at the pit-bank, who should check the weight to be paid for. During the year 1859 great contests took place in South Yorkshire, in which, after embittered resistance, the employers in several collieries conceded this boon. A determined attempt was then made by the South Yorkshire Miners’ Union, aided by Macdonald, to insert a clause in the Mines Regulation Bill, making it compulsory to weigh the coal, and to allow a representative of the men to check the weight. A great Parliamentary fight took place on the men’s amendment, with the result that the Act of 1860 empowered the miners of each pit to appoint a checkweigher, but confined their choice to persons actually in employment at the particular mine.[448] This important victory was long rendered nugatory by the evasions of the coal-owners. At Barnsley, for instance, Normansell, appointed checkweigher, was promptly dismissed from employment and refused access to the pit’s mouth. When the employer was fined for this breach of the law he appealed to the Queen’s Bench; and it cost the Union two years of costly litigation to enforce the reinstatement of the men’s agent.[449] The next twenty years are full of attempts by coal-owners to avoid compliance with this law. Where the men could not be persuaded or terrified into forgoing their right to appoint a checkweigher, every device was used to hamper his work. Sometimes he was excluded from close access to the weighing-machine. In other pits the weights were fenced up so that he could not clearly see them. His calculations were hotly disputed, and his interference bitterly resented. The Miners’ Unions, however, steadily fought their way to perfect independence for the checkweigher. The Mines Regulation Act of 1872 slightly strengthened his position. Finally the Act of 1887, confirmed by that of 1911, made clear the right of the men, by a decision of the majority of those employed in any pit, to have, at the expense of the whole pit, a checkweigher with full power to keep an accurate and independent record of each man’s work.

It would be interesting to trace to what extent the special characteristics of the miners’ organisations are due to the influence of this one legislative reform. Its recognition and promotion of collective action by the men has been a direct incitement to combination. The compulsory levy, upon the whole pit, of the cost of maintaining the agent whom a bare majority could decide to appoint has practically found, for each colliery, a branch secretary free of expense to the Union. But the result upon the character of the officials has been even more important. The checkweigher has to be a man of character insensible to the bullying or blandishments of manager or employers. He must be of strictly regular habits, accurate and business-like in mind, and quick at figures. The ranks of the checkweighers serve thus as an admirable recruiting ground from which a practically inexhaustible supply of efficient Trade Union secretaries or labour representatives can be drawn.

The Leeds Conference of 1863 was the first of a series of yearly or half-yearly gatherings of miners’ delegates which did much to consolidate their organisation. The powerful aid brought by Macdonald to the movement for the Master and Servant Act of 1867 has already been described. But between 1864 and 1869 the almost uninterrupted succession of strikes and lock-outs, in one county or another, prevented the National Association from taking a firm hold on the men in the less organised districts. In 1869 a rival federation, called the Amalgamated Association of Miners, was formed by the men of some Lancashire pits, to secure more systematic support of local strikes. This split only increased the number of miners in union, which in a few years reached the unprecedented total of two hundred thousand.

It is easy to understand how much this army of miners, marshalled by an expert Parliamentary tactician, added to the political weight of the Trade Union leaders. Though only partially enfranchised, their influence at the General Election of 1868 was marked; and when, in 1871, the Trades Union Congress appointed a Parliamentary Committee Macdonald became its chairman. Next year he succeeded in getting embodied in the new Mines Regulation Act many of the minor amendments of the law for which he had been pressing; and in 1874 he and his colleague, Thomas Burt, became, as we have seen, the first working-men members of the House of Commons.

Not less important than the somewhat scattered hosts of the Coal-miners was the compact body of the Lancashire Cotton Operatives, who, from 1869 onward, began to be reckoned as an integral part of the Trade Union world. The Lancashire textile workers, who had, in the early part of the century, played such a prominent part in the Trade Union Movement, and whose energetic “Short Time Committees” had, in 1847, obtained the Ten Hours Act, appear to have fallen, during the subsequent years, into a state of disorganisation and disunion. In 1853, it is true, the present Amalgamated Association of Cotton-spinners was established; but this federal Union was weakened, until 1869, by the abstention or lukewarmness of the local organisations of such important districts as Oldham and Bolton. The cotton-weavers were in a somewhat similar condition. The Blackburn Association, established in 1853, was gradually overshadowed by the North-East Lancashire Association, a federation of the local weavers’ societies in the smaller towns, established in 1858. This association, growing out of a secession from the Blackburn organisation, had for its special object the combined support of a skilled calculator of prices, able to defend the operatives’ interests in the constant discussions which arose upon the complicated lists of piecework rates which characterise the English cotton industry.[450]

It is difficult to convey to the general reader any adequate idea of the important effect which these elaborate “Lists” have had upon the Trade Union Movement in Lancashire. The universal satisfaction with, and even preference for, the piecework system among the Lancashire cotton operatives is entirely due to the existence of these definitely fixed and published statements. An even more important result has been the creation of a peculiar type of Trade Union official. For although the lists are elaborately worked out in detail--the Bolton Spinning List, for instance, comprising eighty-five pages closely filled with figures[451]--the intricacy of the calculations is such as to be beyond the comprehension not only of the ordinary operative or manufacturer, but even of the investigating mathematician without a very minute knowledge of the technical detail. Yet the week’s earnings of every one of the tens of thousands of operatives are computed by an exact and often a separate calculation under these lists. And when an alteration of the list is in question, the standard wage of a whole district may depend upon the quickness and accuracy with which the operatives’ negotiator apprehends the precise effect of each projected change in any of the numerous factors in the calculation. It will be obvious that for work of this nature the successful organiser or “born orator” was frequently quite unfit. There grew up, therefore, both among the weavers and the spinners, a system of selection of new secretaries by competitive examination, which has gradually been perfected as the examiners--that is, the existing officials--have themselves become more skilled. The first secretary to undergo this ordeal was Thomas Birtwistle,[452] who in 1861 began his thirty years’ honourable and successful service of the Lancashire Weavers. Within a few years he was reinforced by other officials selected for the same characteristics. From 1871 onwards the counsels of the Trade Union Movement were strengthened by the introduction of “the cotton men,” a body of keen, astute, and alert-minded officials--a combination, in the Trade Union world, of the accountant and the lawyer.

Under such guidance the Lancashire cotton operatives achieved extraordinary success. Their first task was in all districts to obtain and perfect the lists. The rate and method of remuneration being in this way secured, their energy was devoted to improving the other conditions of their labour by means of appropriate legislation. Ever since 1830 the Lancashire operatives, especially the spinners, have strongly supported the legislative regulation of the hours and other conditions of their industry. In 1867 a delegate meeting of the Lancashire textile operatives, under the presidency of the Rev. J. R. Stephens, had resolved “to agitate for such a measure of legislative restriction as shall secure a uniform Eight Hours Bill in factories, exclusive of meal-times, for adults, females, and young persons, and that such Eight Hours Bill have for its foundation a restriction on the moving power.”[453] On the improvement of trade and the revival of Trade Union strength in 1871-72 this policy was again resorted to. The Oldham spinners tried, indeed, in 1871, to secure a “Twelve-o’clock Saturday” by means of a strike. But on the failure of this attempt the delegates of the various local societies, both of spinners and weavers--usually the officials of the trade--met together and established, on the 7th of January 1872, the Factory Acts Reform Association, for the purpose of obtaining such an amendment of the law as would reduce the hours of labour from sixty to fifty-four per week.

The Parliamentary policy of these shrewd tacticians is only another instance of the practical opportunism of the English Trade Unionist. The cotton officials demurred in 1872 to an overt alliance with the Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress, just then engaged in its heated agitation for a repeal of the Criminal Law Amendment Act. “Some members of the Short Time Committee,” states, without resentment, the Congress report, “thought that even co-operation with the Congress Committee would be disastrous rather than useful, ... as Lord Shaftesbury and others declared they would not undertake a measure proposed in the interest of the Trades Unions.”[454] So far as the public and the House of Commons were concerned, the Bill was accordingly, as we are told, “based upon quite other grounds.” Its provisions were ostensibly restricted, like those of the Ten Hours Act, to women and children; and to the support of Trade Union champions such as Thomas Hughes and A. J. Mundella was added that of such philanthropists as Lord Shaftesbury and Samuel Morley. But it is scarcely necessary to say that it was not entirely, or even exclusively, for the sake of the women and children that the skilled leaders of the Lancashire cotton operatives had diverted their “Short Time Movement” from aggressive strikes to Parliamentary agitation. The private minutes of the Factory Acts Reform Association contain no mention of the woes of the women and the children, but reflect throughout the demand of the adult male spinners for a shorter day. And in the circular “to the factory operatives,” calling the original meeting of the association, we find the spinners’ secretary combating the fallacy that “any legislative interference with male adult labour is an economic error,” and demanding “a legislative enactment largely curtailing the hours of factory labour,” in order that his constituents, who were exclusively adult males, might enjoy “the nine hours per day, or fifty-four hours per week, so liberally conceded to other branches of workmen.”[455] It was, however, neither necessary nor expedient to take this line in public. The experience of a generation had taught the Lancashire operatives that any effective limitation of the factory day for women and children could not fail to bring with it an equivalent shortening of the hours of the men who worked with them. And in the state of mind, in 1872, of the House of Commons, and even of the workmen in other trades, it would have proved as impossible as it did in 1847 to secure an avowed restriction of the hours of male adults.

The Short Time Bill was therefore so drafted as to apply in express terms only to women and children, whose sufferings under a ten hours day were made much of on the platform and in the press. The battle, in fact, was, as one of the leading combatants has declared,[456] “fought from behind the women’s petticoats.” But it was a part of the irony of the situation that, as Broadhurst subsequently pointed out,[457] the Bill “encountered great opposition from the female organisations”; and it was, in fact, expressly in the interests of working women that Professor Fawcett, in the session of 1873, moved the rejection of the measure.[458] Even as limited to women and children the proposal encountered a fierce resistance from the factory owners and the capitalists of all industries. The opinion of the House of Commons was averse from any further restriction upon the employers’ freedom. The Ministry of the day lent it no assistance. The Bill, introduced in 1872, and again in 1873, made no progress. At length, in 1873, the Government shelved the question by appointing a Royal Commission to inquire into the working of the Factory Acts. But a General Election was now drawing near; and “a Factory Nine Hours Bill for Women and Children” was incorporated in the Parliamentary programme pressed upon candidates by the whole Trade Union world.[459]

We have already pointed out what an attentive ear the Conservative party was at this time giving to the Trade Union demands. It is therefore not surprising that when Mundella, in the new Parliament, once more introduced his Bill, the Home Secretary, Mr. (afterwards Viscount) Cross, announced that the Government would bring forward a measure of their own. The fact that the Government draft was euphemistically entitled the “Factories (Health of Women, etc.) Bill” did not conciliate the opponents of the shorter factory day which it ensured; but, to the great satisfaction of the spinners, this opposition was unsuccessful; and, if not a nine hours day, at any rate a 56½ hours week became law. This short and successful Parliamentary campaign brought the cotton operatives into closer contact with the London leaders; and from 1875 the Lancashire representatives exercised an important influence in the Trades Union Congress and its Parliamentary Committee. Henceforth detailed amendments of the Factory Acts, and increased efficiency in their administration, become almost standing items in the official Trade Union programme.

An interesting parallelism might be traced between the cotton operatives on the one hand and the coal-miners on the other. To outward seeming no two occupations could be more unlike. Yet without community of interest, without official intercourse, and without any traceable imitation, the organisations of the two trades show striking resemblances to each other in history, in structural development, and in characteristics of policy, method, and aims. Many of these similarities may arise from the remarkable local aggregation in particular districts, which is common to both industries. From this local aggregation spring, perhaps, the possibilities of a strong federation existing without centralised funds, and of a permanent trade society enduring without friendly benefits. A further similarity may be seen in the creation, in each case, of a special class of Trade Union officials, far more numerous in proportion to membership than is usual in the engineering or building trades. But the most noticeable, and perhaps the most important, of these resemblances is the constancy with which both the miners and the cotton operatives have adhered to the legislative protection of the Standard of Life as a leading principle of their Trade Unionism.

Whilst these important divisions of the Trade Union army were aiming at legislative protection, victories in another field were bringing whole sections of Trade Unionists to a different conclusion. The successful Nine Hours Movement of 1871-72--the reduction, by collective bargaining, of the hours of labour in the engineering and building trades--rivalled the legislative triumphs of the miners and the cotton operatives.

Since the great strikes in the London building trades in 1859-61, the movement in favour of a reduction of the hours of labour had been dragging on in various parts of the country. The masons, carpenters, and other building operatives had in many towns, and after more or less conflict, secured what was termed the Nine Hours Day. In 1866 an agitation arose among the engineers of Tyneside for a similar concession; but the sudden depression of trade put an end to the project. In 1870, when the subject was discussed at the Newcastle “Central District Committee” of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, the spirit of caution prevailed, and no action was taken. Suddenly, at the beginning of 1871, the Sunderland men took the matter up, and came out on strike on the 1st of April. After four weeks’ struggle, almost before the engineers elsewhere had realised that there was any chance of success, the local employers gave way, and the Nine Hours Day was won.

It was evident that the Sunderland movement was destined to spread to the other engineering centres in the neighbourhood; and the master engineers of the entire North-Eastern District promptly assembled at Newcastle on April 8 to concert a united resistance to the men’s demands. The operatives had first to form their organisation. Though Newcastle has since become one of the best centres of Trade Unionism, the Amalgamated Society of Engineers could, in 1871, count only five or six hundred members in the town; the Boilermakers, Steam-Engine Makers, and Ironfounders were also weak, and probably two out of three of the men in the engineering trade belonged to no Union whatsoever. A “Nine Hours League,” embracing Unionists and non-Unionists alike, was accordingly formed for the special purpose of the agitation; and this body was fortunate enough to elect as its President John Burnett,[460] a leading member of the local branch of the Amalgamated Society, afterwards to become widely known as the General Secretary of that great organisation. The “Nine Hours League” became, in fact though not in name, a temporary Trade Union, its committee conducting all the negotiations on the men’s behalf, appealing to the Trade Union world for funds for their support, and managing all the details of the conflict that ensued.[461]

The five months’ strike which led up to a signal victory for the men was, in more than one respect, a notable event in Trade Union annals. The success with which several thousands of unorganised workmen, unprovided with any accumulated funds, were marshalled and disciplined, and the ability displayed in the whole management of the dispute, made the name of their leader celebrated throughout the world of labour. The tactical skill and literary force with which the men’s case was presented achieved the unprecedented result of securing for their demands the support of the _Times_[462] and the _Spectator_. Money was subscribed slowly at first, but after three months poured in from all sides. Joseph Cowen, of the _Newcastle Daily Chronicle_, was from the first an ardent supporter of the men, and assisted them in many ways. The employers in all parts of the kingdom took alarm; and a kind of levy of a shilling for each man employed was made upon the engineering firms in aid of the heavy expenses of the Newcastle masters. In spite of the active exertions of the “International,” several hundred foreign workmen were imported; but many of these were subsequently induced to desert.[463] Finally the employers conceded the principal of the men’s demands; and fifty-four hours became the locally recognised week’s time in all the engineering trades.

This widely advertised success, coming at a time of expanding trade, greatly promoted the movement for the Nine Hours Day. From one end of the kingdom to the other, every little Trade Union branch discussed the expediency of sending in notices to the employers. The engineering trades in London, Manchester, and other great centres induced their employers to grant their demands without a strike. The great army of workmen engaged in the shipbuilding yards on the Clyde even bettered this example, securing a fifty-one hours week. The building operatives quickly followed suit. Demands for a diminution of the working day, with an increased rate of pay per hour, were handed in by local officials of the Carpenters, Masons, Bricklayers, Plumbers, and other organisations. In many cases non-society men took the lead in the movement; but it was soon found that the immediate success of the applications depended on the estimate formed by the employers of the men’s financial resources, and their capacity to withhold their labour for a time sufficient to cause embarrassment to business. Wherever the employers were assured of this fact, they usually gave way without a conflict. The successes accordingly did much to create, in the industries in question, a preference for combination and collective bargaining as a means of improving the conditions of labour. The prevalence of systematic overtime, which has since proved so formidable a deduction from the advantages gained by the Nine Hours Movement, was either overlooked by sanguine officials, or covertly welcomed by individual workmen as affording opportunities for working at a higher rate of remuneration.[464] On the other hand, it was a patent fact that the mechanic employed in attending to the machinery of a textile mill was the only member of his trade who was excluded from participation in the shortening of hours enjoyed by his fellow-tradesmen; and that his failure to secure a shorter day was an incidental consequence of the existence of legislative restrictions. Thus, at the very time that the textile operatives and coal-miners were, as we have seen, exhibiting a marked tendency to look more and more to Parliamentary action for the protection of the Standard of Life, the facts, as they presented themselves to the Amalgamated Engineer or Carpenter, were leading the members of these trades to a diametrically opposite conclusion.

But though faith in trade combinations and collective bargaining was strengthened by the success of the Nine Hours Movement, the victories of the men did not increase the prestige of the two great Amalgamated Societies. The growing adhesion of the Junta to the economic views of their middle-class friends was marked by the silent abandonment by Allan, Applegarth, and Guile of all leadership in trade matters. Already in 1865 we find the Executive Council of the Amalgamated Engineers explaining that, although they sympathised with advance movements, they felt unable to either support them by grants or to advise their members to vote a special levy.[465] The “backwardness of the Council of the Engineers” constantly provoked angry criticism. The chief obstacles to advancement were declared to be Danter, the President of the Council, and the General Secretary, whose minds had been narrowed “by the routine of years of service within certain limits.... Never, since it effected amalgamation, has the Society solved one social problem; nor has it now an idea of future progress. Its money is unprofitably and injudiciously invested--even with a miser’s care--while its councils are marked with all the chilly apathy of a worn-out mission.”[466] What proved to be the greatest trade movement since 1852 was undertaken in spite of the official disapproval of the governing body, and was carried to a successful issue without the provision from headquarters of any leadership or control. Though the Nine Hours Strike actually began in Sunderland on April 1, 1871, the London Executive remained silent on the subject until July. Towards the end of that month, when the Newcastle men had been out for seven weeks, a circular was issued inviting the branches to collect voluntary subscriptions for their struggling brethren. Ultimately, in September, the “Contingent Fund,” out of which strike pay is given, was re-established by vote of the branches; and the strike allowance of 5s. per week, over and above the ordinary out-of-work pay, was issued, after fourteen weeks’ struggle, to the small minority of the men on strike who were members of the Society. An emissary was sent to the Continent, at the Society’s expense, to defeat the employers’ attempt to bring over foreign engineers; but with this exception all the expenses of the struggle were defrayed from the subscriptions collected by the Nine Hours League.[467] And if we turn for a moment from the Amalgamated Society of Engineers to the other great trade and friendly societies of the time, it is easy, in the minutes of their Executive Councils and the proceedings of their branches, to watch the same tendency at work. Whether it is the Masons or the Tailors, the Ironfounders or the Carpenters, we see the same abandonment by the Central Executive of any dominant principle of trade policy, the same absence of initiative in trade movements, and the same more or less persistent struggle to check the trade activity of its branches. In the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters, for example, we find, during these years, no attempt by headquarters to “level up” the wages of low-paid districts, or to grapple with the problems of overtime or piecework. We watch, on the contrary, the branches defending themselves before the Executive for their little spurts of local activity, and pleading, in order to wring from a reluctant treasury the concession of strike pay, that they have been dragged into the “Advance Movement” by the more aggressive policy of the “General Union” (the rival trade society of the old type), or by irresponsible “strike-committees” of non-society men.

Time and growth were, in fact, revealing the drawbacks of the constitution with which Newton and Allan had endowed their cherished amalgamation, and which had been so extensively copied by other trades. The difficulties arising from the attempt to unite, in one organisation, men working in the numerous distinct branches of the engineering trade, demanded constant thought and attention. The rapid changes in the industry, especially in connection with the growing use of new machinery, needed to be met by a well-considered flexibility, dictated by full knowledge of the facts, and some largeness of view. To maintain a harmonious yet progressive trade policy in all the hundreds of branches would, of itself, have taxed the skill of a body of experts free from other preoccupations. All these duties were, however, cast upon a single salaried officer,[468] working under a committee of artisans who met in the evening after an exhausting day of physical toil.

The result might have been foreseen. The rapid growth of the society brought with it a huge volume of detailed business. Every grant of accident benefit or superannuation allowance was made by the Executive Council. Every week this body had to decide on scores of separate applications for gifts from the Benevolent Fund. Every time any of the tens of thousands of members failed to get what he wanted from his branch, he appealed to the Executive Council. Every month an extensive trade report had to be issued. Every quarter the branch accounts had to be examined, dissected, and embodied in an elaborate summary, itself absorbing no small amount of labour and thought. The hundreds of branch secretaries and treasurers had to be constantly supervised, checked by special audits, and perpetually admonished for negligent or accidental breaches of the complicated code by which the Society was governed. The Executive Council became, in fact, absorbed in purely “treasury” work, and spent a large part of its time in protecting the funds of the Society from extravagance, laxity of administration, or misappropriation. The quantity of routine soon became enormous; and the whole attention of the General Secretary was given to coping with the mass of details which poured in upon him by every post.

This huge friendly society business brought with it, too, its special bias. Allan grew more and more devoted to the accumulating fund, which was alike the guarantee and the symbol of the success of his organisation. Nothing was important enough to warrant any inroad on this sacred balance. The Engineers’ Central Executive, indeed, practically laid aside the weapon of the strike. “We believe,” said Allan before the Royal Commission in 1867, “that all strikes are a complete waste of money, not only in relation to the workmen, but also to the employers.”[469] The “Contingent Fund,” out of which alone strike pay could be given, was between 1860 and 1872 repeatedly abolished by vote of the members, re-established for a short time, and again abolished. Trade Unionists who remembered the old conflicts viewed with surprise and alarm the spirit which had come over the once active organisation. Even the experienced Dunning, whose moderation had, as we have suggested, dictated the first manifesto in which the new spirit can be traced, was moved to denunciation of Allan’s apathy. “As a Trade Union,” he writes in 1866, “the once powerful Amalgamated Society of Engineers is now as incapable to engage in a strike as the Hearts of Oak, the Foresters, or any other extensive benefit society.... It formerly combined both functions, but now it possesses only one, that of a benefit society, with relief for members when out of work or travelling for employment superadded.... The Amalgamated Engineers, as a trade society, has ceased to exist.”[470]

It would be a mistake to assume that the inertia and supineness of the “Amalgamated” Societies was a necessary result of their accumulated funds or their friendly benefits. The remarkable energy and success of the United Society of Boilermakers and Iron-shipbuilders, established in 1832, and between 1865 and 1875 rapidly increasing in membership and funds, shows that elaborate friendly benefits are not inconsistent with a strong and consistent trade policy. This quite exceptional success is, we believe, due to the fact that the Boilermakers provided an adequate salaried staff to attend to their trade affairs. The “district delegates” who were, between 1873 and 1889, appointed for every important district, are absolutely unconcerned with the administration of friendly benefits, and devote themselves exclusively to the work of Collective Bargaining. Unlike the General Secretaries of the Engineers, Carpenters, Stonemasons, or Ironfounders, who had but one salaried assistant, Robert Knight, the able secretary of the Boilermakers had under his orders an expert professional staff, and was accordingly able, not only to keep both employers and unruly members in check, but also successfully to adapt the Union policy to the changing conditions of the industry. In short, it was not the presence of friendly benefits, but the absence of any such class of professional organisers as exists in the organisations of the Coal-miners, Cotton Operatives, and Boilermakers, that created the deadlock in the administration of the great trade friendly societies.[471]

The direct result of this abnegation of trade leadership was a complete arrest of the tendency to amalgamation, and, in some cases, even a breaking away of sections already within the organisation. The various independent societies, such as the Boilermakers, Steam-Engine Makers, and the Co-operative Smiths, gave up all idea of joining their larger rival. In 1872 the Patternmakers, who had long been discontented at the neglect of their special trade interests, formed an organisation of their own, which has since competed with the Amalgamated for the allegiance of this exceptionally skilled class of engineers. Nor was Allan at all eager to make his organisation co-extensive with the whole engineering industry. The dominant idea of the early years of the amalgamation--the protection of those who had, by regular apprenticeship, acquired “a right to the trade”--excluded many men actually working at one branch or another, whilst the friendly society bias against unprofitable recruits co-operated to restrict the membership to such sections of the engineering industry, and such members of each section, as could earn a minimum time wage fixed for each locality by the District Committee.

This exclusiveness necessarily led to the development of other societies, which accepted those workmen who were not eligible for the larger organisation. The little local clubs of Machine-workers and Metal-planers expanded between 1867 and 1872 into national organisations, and began to claim consideration at the hands of the better paid engineers, on whose heels they were treading. New societies, such as those of the National Society of Amalgamated Brass-workers, the Independent Order of Engineers and Machinists, and the Amalgamated Society of Kitchen Range, Stove Grate, Gas Stoves, Hot Water, Art Metal, and other Smiths and Fitters, sprang into existence during 1872, in avowed protest against the “aristocratic” rule of excluding all workmen who were not receiving a high standard rate. The Associated Blacksmiths of Scotland, which had been formed in 1857 out of a class of smiths which was, at the time, unrecognised in the rules of the Amalgamated, now began steadily to increase in membership. Finally, during the decade various local societies were refused the privilege of amalgamation on the ground that either they included sections of the trade not recognised by the rules, or that the average age of their constituents was such as to make them unprofitable members of a society giving heavy superannuation benefit. To the tendency to create an “aristocracy of labour” was added, therefore, the fastidiousness of an insurance company.

Many causes were thus co-operating to shift the centre of Trade Union influence from London to the provinces. The great trade friendly societies of Engineers, Carpenters, and Ironfounders were losing that lead in Trade Union matters which the political activity of the Junta had acquired for them. The Junta itself was breaking up. Applegarth, in many respects the leader of the group, resigned his secretaryship in 1871, and left the Trade Union Movement. Odger, who lived until 1877, was from 1870 onwards devoting himself more and more to general politics. Allan, long suffering from an incurable disease, died in 1874. Meanwhile provincial Trade Unionism was growing apace. The Amalgamated Society of Engineers, so long pre-eminent in numbers, began to be overshadowed by the federations of Coal-miners and Cotton Operatives. Even in the iron trades it found rivals in the rapidly growing organisations of Boilermakers (Iron-shipbuilders), whose headquarters were at Newcastle, and the Ironworkers centred at Darlington, whilst minor engineering societies were cropping up in all directions in the northern counties. The tendency to abandon London was further shown by the decision of the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters in 1871 to remove their head office to Manchester, a change which had the incidental effect of depriving the London leaders of the counsels of Applegarth’s successor, J. D. Prior, one of the ablest disciples of the Junta.

But although London was losing its hold on the Trade Union Movement, no other town inherited the leadership. Manchester, it is true, attracted to itself the headquarters of many national societies, and contained in these years perhaps the strongest group of Trade Union officials.[472] But there was no such concentration of all the effective forces as had formerly resulted in the Junta. Though Manchester might have furnished the nucleus of a Trade Union Cabinet, Alexander Macdonald was to be found either in Glasgow or London, Robert Knight at Liverpool and afterwards in Newcastle, John Kane at Darlington, the miners’ agents all over the country, whilst Henry Broadhurst (who in 1875 succeeded George Howell as the Secretary of the Parliamentary Committee), John Burnett, the General Secretary of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, and George Shipton, the Secretary of the London Trades Council, naturally remained in the Metropolis. The result of the shifting from London was, accordingly, not the establishment elsewhere of any new executive centre of the Trade Union Movement, but the rise of a sectional spirit, the promotion of sectional interests, and the elaboration of sectional policies on the part of the different trades.

We have attempted in some detail to describe the internal growth of the Trade Union Movement between 1867 and 1875, in order to enable the reader to understand the disheartening collapse which ensued in 1878-79, and the subsequent splitting up of the Trade Union world into the hostile camps once more designated the Old Unionists and the New. But all the unsatisfactory features of 1871-75 were, during these years, submerged by a wave of extraordinary commercial prosperity and Trade Union expansion. The series of Parliamentary successes of 1871-75 produced, as we have seen, a feeling of triumphant elation among the Trade Union leaders. To the little knot of working men who had conducted the struggle for emancipation and recognition, the progress of these years seemed almost beyond belief. In 1867 the officials of the Unions were regarded as pothouse agitators, “unscrupulous men, leading a half idle life, fattening on the contributions of their dupes,” and maintaining, by violence and murder, a system of terrorism which was destructive, not only of the industry of the nation, but also of the prosperity and independence of character of the unfortunate working men who were their victims. The Unionist workman, tramping with his card in search of employment, was regarded by the constable and the magistrate as something between a criminal vagrant and a revolutionist. In 1875 the officials of the great societies found themselves elected to the local School Boards, and even to the House of Commons, pressed by the Government to accept seats on Royal Commissions, and respectfully listened to in the lobby. And these political results were but the signs of an extraordinary expansion of the Trade Union Movement itself. “The year just closed,” says the report of the Parliamentary Committee in January 1874, “has been unparalleled for the rapid growth and development of Trade Unionism. In almost every trade this appears to have been the same; but it is especially remarkable in those branches of industry which have hitherto been but badly organised.” Exact numerical details cannot now be ascertained; but the Trades Union Congress of 1872 claimed to represent only 375,000 organised workmen, whilst that of 1874 included delegates from nearly three times as many societies, representing a nominal total of 1,191,922 members.[473] It is possible that between 1871 and 1875 the number of Trade Unionists was more than doubled.

We see this progress reflected in the minds of the employers. At the end of 1873 we find the newly established National Federation of Associated Employers of Labour declaring that “the voluntary and intermittent efforts of individual employers,” or even employers’ associations confined to a single trade or locality, are helpless against “the extraordinary development--far-reaching, but openly-avowed designs--and elaborate organisation of the Trade Unions.” “Few are aware,” continues this manifesto, “of the extent, compactness of organisation, large resources, and great influence of the Trade Unions.... They have the control of enormous funds, which they expend freely in furtherance of their objects; and the proportion of their earnings which the operatives devote to the service of their leaders is startling.... They have a well-paid and ample staff of leaders, most of them experienced in the conduct of strikes, many of them skilful as organisers, all forming a class apart, a profession, with interests distinct from, though not necessarily antagonistic to, those of the workpeople they lead, but from their very _raison d’être_ hostile to those of the employers and the rest of the community.... They have, through their command of money, the imposing aspect of their organisation, and partly, also, from the mistaken humanitarian aspirations of a certain number of literary men of good standing, a large army of literary talent which is _prompt_ in their service on all occasions of controversy. They have their own press as a field for these exertions. Their writers have free access to some of the leading London journals. They organise frequent public meetings, at which paid speakers inoculate the working classes with their ideas, and urge them to dictate terms to candidates for Parliament. Thus they exercise a pressure upon members of Parliament, and those aspirant to that honour, out of all proportion to their real power, and beyond belief except to those who have had the opportunity of witnessing its effects. They have a standing Parliamentary Committee, and a programme; and active members of Parliament are energetic in their service. They have the attentive ear of the Ministry of the day; and their communications are received with instant and respectful attention. They have a large representation of their own body in London whenever Parliament is likely to be engaged in the discussion of the proposals they have caused to be brought before it. Thus, untrammelled by pecuniary considerations, and specially set apart for this peculiar work, without other clashing occupations, they resemble the staff of a well-organised, well-provisioned army, for which everything that foresight and preoccupation in a given purpose could provide, is at command.”[474] It is not surprising that the Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress, composed, as it was, of the “staff of leaders” referred to, should have had this involuntary tribute to their efficiency reprinted and widely circulated among their constituents.

The student will form a more qualified estimate of the position in 1873-75 than either the elated Trade Unionists or the alarmed employers. In the first place, great as was the numerical expansion of these years, the reader of the preceding chapters will know that it was not without parallel. The outburst of Trade Unionism between 1830 and 1834 was, so far as we can estimate, even greater than that between 1871 and 1875, whilst it was far more rapid in its development. There were, during the nineteenth century, three high tides in the Trade Union history of our country, 1833-34, 1872-74, and 1889-90. In the absence of complete and trustworthy statistics it is difficult to say at which of these dates the sweeping in of members was greatest. But it is easy to discern that the expansion of 1873-74 was marked by features which were both like and unlike those of its predecessor.

Like the outburst of 1833-34, the marked extension of Trade Unionism in 1872 reached even the agricultural labourers. For more than thirty years since the transportation of the Dorchester labourers good times and bad had passed over their heads without resulting in any combined effort to improve their condition. There seems to have been a short-lived combination in Scotland in 1865. We hear of an impulsive strike of some Buckinghamshire labourers in 1867, which spread into Hertfordshire. A more effective Union was formed in Herefordshire in 1871, which pursued a quiet policy of emigration, and enrolled 30,000 subscribers in half a dozen counties. But a more energetic movement now arose. On February 7, 1872, the labourers of certain parishes of Warwickshire met at Wellesbourne to discuss their grievances. At a second meeting, a little later, Joseph Arch, a labourer of Barford, who owned a freehold cottage, and had become known as a Primitive Methodist preacher, made a speech which bore fruit. On the 11th of March two hundred men resolved to strike for higher wages, namely, 16s. per week for a working day from 6 A.M. to 5 P.M. Unlike most strikes this one attracted from the first the favourable notice of the press.[475] Publicity brought immediate funds and sympathisers. On the 29th of March the inaugural meeting of the Warwickshire Agricultural Labourers’ Union was held at Leamington, under the presidency of the Hon. Auberon Herbert, M.P., a donation of one hundred pounds being handed in by a rich friend. Through the eloquence, the revivalist fervour, and the untiring energy of Joseph Arch, the movement spread like wildfire among the rural labourers of the central and eastern counties. The mania for combination which came over the country population during the next few months recalls, indeed, the mushroom growth of the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union of forty years before. Within two months delegates from twenty-six counties met to transform the local society into a National Agricultural Labourers’ Union, organised in district Unions all over the country, with a central committee at Leamington, which, by the end of the year, boasted of a membership of nearly a hundred thousand.[476]