SIDNEY WEBB, Esq., LL.B., L.C.C.

1. (Chairman.) You are a barrister-at-Law, and counsel to His Majesty's Commissioners of Works and Public Buildings ?-Yes.

2. During the last few years have you been often appointed as arbitrator or conciliator in trade disputes?_ I have been appointed by the Board of Trade for, I think, twenty to thirty trade disputes in England and Scotland.

3. And in working out those disputes, I suppose, you have had to consider the law relating to, as well as the conditions of, labour ?-That is so, and I have further examined the cases before giving evidence.

4. Of course, you are not here in any way as a representative of the Board of Trade ?-No. I have been suggested by the Board of Trade as a witness, but I must not, in anything I say, be taken to express their view or opinion, or to bind them.

5. Indeed, so far as the Board of Trade is concerned, I take it that they have no side upon these matters ?As a Government Department they take no view; they wish to hold an impartial attitude.

6. Their precise position in appointing an arbitrator, when they have employed one, has always been that of a neutral, I suppose ?-Entirely so.

7. Now, taking the cases in which the law dealing with trade combinations has been most dealt with and commented on in recent years, I suppose they would naturally arrange themselves into various groups, would they not? -Yes, I think so.

8. And shall we take, first, the group which may be represented by the case of the Taff Vale Railway Company against the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants ?That seems to me one of the most important of all the cases, and, I think, it might be a convenient one to take first. Before dealing with it I have some statistics from the Board of Trade of the strength of unions, their number

Mr. G. R. Askwith.

of members and their funds, and the employment that has been made of their funds. Perhaps it might be useful to the Commission to know the factors with which they are dealing from these statistics, if I give a short account of 14 Mar. 1904. them.

9. We may as well take them now as at any other time ? -The tables that have been prepared deal with the numbers and the funds and so on over a decennial period from 1892 to 1902.

10. May I interpose for one moment. I take it that these tables are part of the general stock-in-trade of the Board of Trade ?—Yes.

11. They are not prepared by them ad hoc for this Commission ?-No. At the end of 1902 there were 1.183 Trade Unions. Those trade unions had a total membership of 1,915,506 persons, that was a decrease from the preceding year of 12,446. Of these numbers 69 per cent. are found in the building, mining and quarrying, metal, engineering, shipbuilding, and textile trades. The mining and quarrying trades alone contain 520,000 or 27 per cent. of the total number of trade unionists in the United Kingdom. Then I will put in a table showing the membership of the 100 principal trade unions and of all other unions, with the percentage of increase and decrease compared with the previous year for each of the years from 1892 to 1902. In the period of ten years the membership of the unions has increased by 27 per cent; in the 100 principal unions it has increased nearly 29 per cent., and in the other unions rather more than 23 per cent. Among the unions 139 included women and girls, and the total number of those at the end of the year 1902 was 122,128. In the period of these ten years the funds of the 100 unions have risen from £1,576,280, or 35s. per head of the total membership, to £4,424,596, that is, a rise from 35s. per head to 758. 81d., an increase of 181 per cent. on the aggregate of 1892. The income of the unions in 1902 A