State Opposition. The government set its face against all such activities. This was partly due to the influence of vested interests, but it was also based on a definite principle. The regulation of hours and wages was the business of the state; therefore trade unions were encroaching on the province of the government. Various laws were passed against the early unions. In 1721 the tailors' union was placed under a ban; in 1726 a very elaborate law forbade “all contracts, covenants, or agreements, clubs, and societies of woollen workers" for regulating their wages or for lessening their usual hours of work. Persons joining such unions were liable to three months' imprisonment, and anyone who threatened, abused, or assaulted an employer, or tried to destroy his property for refusing compliance with union claims, was to be transported for seven years to America. In the same year the Privy Council advised the weavers of Wiltshire and Somerset not to attempt to help themselves by unlawful combinations, but always "to lay their grievances in a regular way before His Majesty, who would be always willing to grant them relief suitable to the justice of their case.

This promise was kept for a time, but when the new machines began to enter industry, and workmen appealed to the government to check the growth of the factory system by enforcing the old laws regulating apprenticeship, wages, and the amassing of machinery, Parliament refused, and soon repealed the acts referred to. This laissez-faire attitude drove the wage-earners to self-defence, and during the last ten years of the 18th century many unions sprang up, in order to safeguard workers against the effects of the new machines, and, if possible, to forbid their introduction.

Such unlawful activity must be checked, and this the government endeavoured to do by the Combination Laws of 1799 and 1800. These acts contained no new principle; they simply made universal the many laws already passed forbidding unionism in certain trades. Henceforth any combination of workmen to raise wages, reduce hours, organize a strike, restrain an employer from employing whomsoever he should think fit, or restrain any man from taking any job he wished, was illegal. To give a semblance of justice to the acts, employers were forbidden to combine to reduce wages or increase hours, and any dispute which arose about wages, etc., was to be submitted to arbitration.

For a quarter of a century unionism lay under this ban. The part forbidding employers' unions was not enforced, but workmen were frequently brought into court. In 1810 eight Sheffield workers were imprisoned for three months for having met "for the purpose of unlawfully supporting and carrying on a certain combination to obtain an advance of wages.'' Two years later 40,000 Glasgow weavers came out on strike, remained out for three weeks, and were then driven back by the arrest and imprisonment of the strike committee. But unionism was too necessary a weapon to be broken by any legislative effort, and it flourished in spite of parliament. In Yorkshire a union of cloth-finishers was so strong that employers dare not defy it. It forbade the employment of non-unionists ("snakes'' was the name for them), fixed a maximum age for apprentices, and influenced wages and labour conditions by threatened or actual strikes. Elsewhere similar organizations existed; sometimes they were cloaked as friendly societies, at other times they worked in secret. In fact, the chief result of the Combination Laws was to drive unionism underground, and make it a conspiracy. As a Select Committee in 1824 admitted, the laws had not merely been ineffective in preventing unions either of employers or

employees, but had had a tendency to produce mutual irritation and distrust, to give a violent character to unions, and render them highly dangerous to the peace of the community.

The Acts Repealed. This Committee of 1824 was largely the result of skilful engineering by Francis Place, a London ex-tailor, who for ten years had endeavoured to demonstrate the futility of the anti-union laws. Place worked in alliance with Hume and other politicians, and managed in 1824 to get a committee appointed to inquire into the laws prohibiting the export of machinery, the emigration of artisans, and the formation of unions. Parliament thought the last item the least important, but Hume and Place soon made it the chief, and by "packing" the committee with friendly members, by marshalling the men's case with consummate skill, and by keeping out all damaging evidence, Place managed to secure a report highly favourable to unionism. The result of this wire-pulling was the repeal of the Combination Laws in 1824, and the removal of the legal ban on trade societies, but violence, threats, and intimidation of employers or “loyal”’ employees were still punishable by imprisonment.

This act was the signal for a vigorous outburst of union organization, followed by numerous strikes or rumours of strikes. The employing class sprang to arms, and a second select committee was appointed to reconsider the whole position. This time Place and Hume were not masters of the situation, and the report was much less favourable. A new act (1825) was passed, which whilst admitting that organizations of labour were not illegal, expressly forbade all use of violence, threats, intimidation, or force. The stress of the act was on the words "molest, 99 66 obstruct, ""'intimidation,'' 'violence," and such words could be translated in many ways by a court of law. Still, unions were not illegal. The question now was-To what extent were they and their actions legal? This question was not answered for fifty years.

Experiments and Failures. The twenty years following 1825 saw the rise and fall of many ambitious unions. Some were purely local or craft bodies, but the chief organizations were general and national in scope, and often revolutionary in aim. Owen, whose influence was then very strong, looked forward to the establishment of one union for each industry, these unions then being federated in a national organization. The ultimate aim was to be practically syndicalism; a general strike was to drive out the employer and transfer the ownership and management of industry into the hands of the workers. Pending this final step, the general strike was to be used to win any desired concessions, as for instance the eight-hour day. Under the influence of these ideas several big unions were formed. One of the first of these was the National Association for the Protection of Labour (1830-2), a federation of about 150 sectional unions. Then came Owen's great scheme, the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union (1834), which within a few months had a membership of half a million. All sorts and conditions of wage-earners-male and female, skilled and unskilled, agricultural and industrial—were enrolled. As in most unions at this time, its local lodge meetings were carried on with elaborate rites and ceremonies. The meeting rooms were draped in black, with battle axes, swords, and skeletons as furniture. Masks and surplices were sometimes worn, new members came in blindfolded, oaths of secrecy were administered, prayers and responses recited. Sectional strikes soon began; in March, 1834, a gasworkers' "turnout'' plunged Westminster into darkness, and in the following

month a general strike was declared to secure an eight-hour day. Then the whole movement collapsed like a house of cards. A similar fate attended other efforts, and anyone looking back in 1840 at the experience of the preceding decade might with justification have said that unionism was doomed to failure.

Causes of Early Failure. The general non-success of unionism up to 1850 can be ascribed to three chief causes. (1) The defective organization of the unions, the lack of good leaders, and the difficulty of getting uniform tactics or solidarity in disputes. The big unions were too unwieldy and their leaders lacked the necessary ability or character. When a strike occurred there were no adequate funds, and when one or two kinds of workers had obtained concessions they resumed work, leaving the rest to fight on alone. (2) The opposition of the economists, the politicians, and the law. Economic thought was under the sway of the wages fund theory, which declared that there was only a fixed fund available for wages. Therefore no amount of union agitation could increase that fund or get higher wages for one set of workers without reducing the amount available for others. One economist, Senior of Oxford, went further, and recommended to the government, in a confidential report, that all attempts to get men into unions and all peaceful picketing should be punished by imprisonment; if this drastic remedy failed, then let the funds of the unions "deposited in savings banks or otherwise'' be confiscated. Without going so far, the government certainly encouraged the persecution of unions wherever possible. The act of 1825 was constructed so as to make almost any activity other than meetings illegal, and in at least one instance--the Dorchester Labourers' case-an old forgotten law was raked up for want of a better weapon. In the village of Tolpuddle, in Dorsetshire, wages had been forced down from 10/- to 7/- per week. Half a dozen labourers therefore determined to form a branch of the Grand National, and purchased the usual figure of "Death painted six feet high,'' before which the cath of initiation was to be taken. The farmers at once took action, the labourers were arrested, and under an act, passed at the time of the sailors' mutiny in 1797 prohibiting the administering of secret oaths, were packed off, after a very scanty trial, to "Botany Bay" for seven years (March, 1834). This outrage was approved by the government, but popular opinion became so agitated that in 1836 the remainder of the sentence was remitted, and in 1838 the men were allowed to return. The case led to the stoppage of such flagrant prosecutions on the one hand, and to the abandonment by the unions of their "masonic mummery.''

(3) The most persistent opposition came from the employers, many of whom refused to employ unionists. Employees and those who sought work were called upon to sign a declaration, popularly termed "The Document, stating that they were not, and would not become, members of any trade society. Recognition was refused, and employers insisted on making wages contracts with their workmen individually.

Confronted by such strong opposition, the big trades unions fell one by one, and the revolutionary ideas of Owen were discredited. Here and there, however, craft unions managed to survive, narrow in scope, cautious in policy-business unions essentially. It was from them that the next move came. The new phase, the new spirit, the new model were embodied in the first really successful union, the Amalgamated Society of Engineers.

The A.S.E. The A.S.E. is important not merely because it was the first successful organization, but also because its form and methods became a model from which most subsequent unions took their shape and character. It was the result of a fusion of local or sectional unions, and took in societies of engineers, machinists, millwrights, smiths, and pattern makers already existing in different parts of the kingdom; it was a kindred craft union of skilled men. It started in 1851 with 10,500 members, and during the next few years, under cautious leaders, evolved a satisfactory shape and methods, of which the following were the chief points. (1) Membership was limited to those who were skilled and properly trained engineers. The union was for a few allied crafts only, and in view of the failures of the earlier omnibus unions, it seemed a wise policy to adopt this plan of "minding one's own business.'' (2) A proper constitution was shaped, which kept control in the hands of the central executive. Branches were to be subject in all important matters, especially finance, to the decisions of headquarters. This provision prevented any branch from beginning a strike without the consent of the central executive. Such consent was given only when negotiations had failed, and when some big principle was at stake. (3) A set of permanent officials was provided, who became specialists in their business, collecting information, keeping proper records, and endeavouring to settle disputes peacefully whenever possible. The secretary spent most of his time striving to secure benefits by conciliation rather than by industrial warfare. (4) The union became a friendly society as well as a trade organization. This was done partly to secure registration as a friendly society, and also to bind members permanently to their union. If the A.S.E. had offered only industrial benefits many of its members would have deserted it whenever concessions had been gained from employers; there would be no more concessions for many years, so why pay subscriptions to the union when nothing could be expected in return for a long time? But if membership meant provision against sickness, unemployment, and old age, etc., men would not lightly desert the society. (5) The A.S.E. insisted on full publicity. There must be no secret society methods, but by newspapers and periodical journals the public was to be told what was being done. Let people know that the union was a peaceful concern, that it had no revolutionary aims to further, that its finances were sound; then the middle-class distrust of unionism would quickly disappear.

Such was the "New Model." It worked well in the A.S.E., the membership of which increased steadily from 10,500 in 1857 to 139,000 in 1912, and to nearly 350,000 in 1920. Many other trades organized on similar lines, with friendly society and dispute benefits allied. Of the two branches the former absorbed the greater part of the funds. Between 1851 and 1890 the fourteen largest unions paid out in benefits of all sorts nearly £8,000,000. Of this, only £463,000 was strike pay. The other items were:

Thus strike pay absorbed only 6 per cent. of the benefits paid during that period. The rest went in friendly society work or in tiding over periods of unemployment.

Legal Worries and Triumphs. Unionism now seemed to be on the right track; its leaders were sound and cautious, its constitution worked smoothly. Its tactics during the fifties and sixties were on the whole so peaceful that public opinion began to discard some of its distrust and suspicion. But in 1866 a series of outrages occurred in Sheffield and Manchester; in the former city cutlery makers refused to work alongside non-unionists, and the policy of "rattening''—i.e., interfering with a worker's tools-culminated in the explosion of a can of gunpowder in the house of a man who refused to join a strike. This outrage, coming on top of many smaller ones, and following a period of unrest, caused all the old antagonism to flare up once more, and a searching inquiry into union aims and methods was demanded. The unions themselves joined in this demand, not merely because they wished to demonstrate the peaceful character of their work, but also because they desired to know their exact legal position. The act of 1825 had declared that trade societies were not illegal; but were they legal? Had they any legal personality such as would be recognized in a court of law, or were they to be regarded as non-existent because their actions might be regarded as being in restraint of trade? By 1867 most unions had accumulated large funds, and since the bulk of this money was for friendly society work, unions had been allowed to register as friendly societies, thus gaining a legal status. This position had been recognized by Mr. Gladstone and by politicians generally, and the unions felt that their funds were secure. The security was shattered by a legal decision in 1867. The boilermakers sued a branch treasurer who had appropriated £24 of the funds in his charge, but the local magistrate declared that the trade union had no local status, and could not sue the offender. This decision was upheld by the Lord Chief Justice, and the unions, realizing that the verdict placed their funds at the mercy of any dishonest official, joined in the demand for a thorough inquiry into their whole position. A royal commission was appointed, on which unionism had two stalwart friends in Frederic Harrison and Thomas Hughes (author of "Tom Brown's School Days' and a leading co-operator and Christian Socialist). Thanks to these men, the unionists secured a fair hearing, and even the majority report of the commission was compelled to admit that unionism was not as black as it was painted. Hughes and Harrison in a minority report defended the unions with great vigour; they showed that very few acts of violence had taken place, and that these had occurred mostly in unorganized industries; they emphasized the value of the friendly society work, and pointed out that many unions of employers acted in restraint of trade" far more than unions of workmen. They therefore made certain important suggestions, which were embodied in acts of 1867, 1871, 1875, and 1876. By these acts trade unions were allowed to register, in the same way as friendly societies, thus gaining the right to purchase, hold, and safeguard property. The right to strike was admitted, as was peaceful picketing and other trade union methods. Nothing done by a combination of workmen was to be illegal unless the action was illegal if committed by one workman. Finally, though registered bodies, unions were not regarded as corporations, and hence their funds could not be