wages as would be a fair remuneration for the workmen ".1 It threw the workmen once more into the toils of the common law as to conspiracy, and limited any workmen's combination to raise wages to those present at the meeting at which the decision was come to. "All meetings or agreements whatever for the purpose of affecting the wages or hours of work of persons not present at the meeting, or parties to the agreement, were conspiracies. So were all agreements for controlling a master in the management of his business, in the persons he employed, or the machinery which he should use. So also were all agreements not to work in the company of any given person, or to persuade other persons to leave their employment, or not to engage themselves. In fact, there was scarcely an act performed by any workman as a member of a trade union which was not an act of conspiracy and a misdemeanor."'2 One would imagine that the framers of this Act agreed with Sir Archibald Alison, that " worse than plague, pestilence, and famine, combinations among workmen were the greatest social evil which, in a manufacturing or mining community, afflicts society "3

In the Report of the Commission on Trades Unions of 1867, the position of the Unions under this legislation is clearly laid down. "With regard to the legality of Trades Unions as at present constituted, we are advised and believe that prior to the Act 5 George IV, c. 95, any such concerted proceeding on the part of the workmen as a strike, would have been an unlawful combination punishable at common law by fine and imprisonment; and that a union or association of workmen for raising funds to support the men engaged in such a strike, would have been an unlawful association. The Act 5 George IV, c. 95, which exempted from punishment the parties to such a combination when not attended with violence, was itself repealed by the Act 6 George IV, c. 199. This Act had a much more limited operation than the Act which it repealed. It did not go further than to exempt from punishment, either by statute or at common law, persons meeting together for consulting upon and determining the rate of wages which the persons present at the meeting or any of them should demand for their 1 "Conflicts of Capital and Labor." P. 129.

2 Id. Pp. 133, 134.

"History of Europe," by Sir A. Alison, xx, 26.

work, or the hours during which they should work; and it contained a similar limited exemption with respect to persons entering into an agreement for the same pupose. With this limited exception it left the common law in force as before. No trades union, so far as our observation has extended, has attempted to give to the combination a wholly legal character by confining the application of its funds in support of men on strike to the limits within which alone combinations are legalised by the Act 6, Geo. IV, c. 129. Unions contemplate generally the application of their funds to the support of men engaged in a strike for the purpose of enforcing some decision come to by the union in what they deem to be the interests of trade. Many such strikes would therefore be unlawful combinations at common law, and would not be relieved by the statute."

The legal position of Trades Unions was thus eminently unsatisfactory, and agitation for legal recognition still went on. It was intensified by the persecution of those who were endeavoring to unite the workers. In 1834, six Dorchester laborers were sentenced to seven years' transportation, nominally for administering unlawful oaths, really for advocating association. George Howell says:

"This conviction was so manifestly unjust and the sentence so outrageously cruel, that some of the ablest, certainly the most independent, men of that day condemned both in no measured terms; and they demanded the remission of the sentence on these six poor men, and their immediate liberation. An immense demonstration took place in the Copenhagen Fields, on Monday, March 21st, 1834, attended, it is said, by about 400,000 persons: a procession between six and seven miles in length, consisting of nearly 50,000 workmen, proceeded to the official residence of Lord Melbourne for the purpose of presenting a petition with over 266,000 signatures, on behalf of the six convicted peasants. After a good deal of opposition on the part of the Whig ministry of the day, backed as it was by the major portion of the manufacturing classes, and after much delay, the men were 'pardoned', and ordered to be liberated."

Among the cottonspinners, during these years of trouble, the principle of organisation was rapidly making way. In 1829, there was a great strike at Manchester against a percentage reduction in wages as the number of spindles managed by one spinner increased. A spinner could manage 300 spindles, if he had four little children to help him as

piecers, i.e. to piece together any threads broken in the spinning. It was found that many more spindles might be added to a machine, if the number of piecers was increased, and that a man could, at least for a time, work a machine carrying 1,000 spindles. The spinner was paid per lb. of twist produced, and the manufacturers objected to pay the full rate, as the machine was made to carry more spindles, although as the number of spindles increased the work grew more and more exhausting. They accordingly claimed to deduct from the wages earned a percentage as the number of spindles increased; and against this imposition the men struck, starved for six months, and went in beaten. In Glasgow a similar battle was fought in 1837, and after a four months struggle, ended in similar fashion. Undaunted, the men met failure with attempts at wider organisation, and enrolled over 100,000 spinners in England, Scotland and Ireland, in one association, in lieu of having a Union for each town-a step in the right direction, although not yet to be successful. A "National Association for the Protection of Labor ", with a newspaper, The Voice of the People, was also started, with a view to federating all trades, but this also perished, born out of due time.1

On January 11th, 1838, five Glasgow cotton spinners were sentenced to seven years transportation for conspiracy and illegal combination; and once more the scandal of a great judicial iniquity forced the House of Commons into action. A Select Committee was ordered to enquire into the 6 Geo. IV, c. 129, and into trade unions and combinations in general, and took evidence plentifully, after the fashion of such committees. They found there was much combination and little, though some, violence; at Glasgow picketing was extensively employed, one man was murdered, one woman had vitriol thrown on her, and there were two attempts at incendiarism. The Committee of the Union had been tried on the charge of instigating these crimes, but a verdict of "not proven " had been returned. The Glasgow masters thought the Union promoted intemperance, and that the men lost in drink and in Union contributions as much as they gained in wage through it,

1See on all this Mr. Godfrey Lushington's abstract of the Evidence given before the Commission of 1838, prepared for the Social Science Association, 1860.

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a view by no means endorsed by the men. In Ireland, also, deeds of violence occurred; but the Committee notes that they had steadily decreased in number since the repeal of the Combination Laws, and that the effect of this repeal upon the conduct of strikes had been in general beneficial". The Committee further stated that 66 as a class, unionists were pronounced by the majority of masters to be more highly skilled operatives and more respectable men than others in the trade", and that "unionists, as a rule, were in the receipt of higher wages than non-unionists "." 1

From this period (1838) onwards to 1871, so far as Parliament was concerned, little improvement was made in the legal position of Trade Unions. Strikes were mostly accompanied by prosecutions of workmen; the law of conspiracy was used against them; being illegal associations, their funds were unprotected and their treasurers might swindle at will. In 1847 and 1848, prosecutions for conspiracy occurred, in one of which a man named Drury was sentenced at Sheffield, with some others, to ten years transportation; but the conviction was quashed, presumably on error. Very many other prosecutions kept the Unions always in a state of unrest, but they were only nerved thereby to fresh efforts. The "National Association of United Trades", founded in 1845, with its newspaper, The Labour League, had a vigorous life of fifteen years; and in 1850-1 the various branches of the engineering trade consolidated themselves into the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, now one of the largest and strongest labor organisations in the world. But the difficulties under which all this progress was made are well exemplified by a decision of Lord Chief Justice Cockburn in 1866, in the case of Hornby v. Close, in which a fraudulent official who had plundered a union was able to escape from punishmont. In 1867, the "leaders of the tailors' strike were declared guilty of conspiracy' for having combined to organise a system of pickets, who confined themselves to informing the workmen that such and such a shop was under strike. . . . The reasons given for this decision increased its importance. The common law of England declares every engagement opposed to the

....

1 See report of G. Lushington.

common weal' null and void: and the decisions of the Courts have settled that all combinations, either of masters or workmen, with the view of controlling the labor-market, are in restraint of trade and 'opposed to the common weal'."1

During these years of trial Parliament was liberal with Committees, if not with legislation. In 1856, in 1860, in 1865 and '66, Committees sat enquiring into the laws. The only mouse of legislation from this mountain of Committee-sitting, was the Masters and Servants Act of 1867, which abolished inequalities of penalty for breach of contract inflicted respectively on masters and men, and abolished some of the Georgian legislation.

As is too often the case in England, it was outrage that finally determined Parliament to action; and the struggle that ended in the conclusive victory of the Unions was initiated by what are known as the Sheffield outrages As George Howell well puts it, "Men who know that they are criminals by the mere object which they have in view, care little for the additional criminality involved in the means they adopt;" and in this sentence lies the real explanation of the outrages in Sheffield, Manchester, and Nottingham. Trade Unions were illegal associations, and, branded by the law, they became indifferent to the law. They were unable to bridle their wilder members, unable to enforce discipline, or effectively punish traitors. They saw their own mates helping the masters to make life harder and bitterer to the workers they were banded together to redeem : what wonder that sometimes righteous anger led to unrighteous violence, and that men used their physical strength to coerce renegades and paralyse oppression as against the legal persecution to which they were subjected?

In Sheffield, the chief theatre of the outrages, all the circumstances lent themselves to violence. Historically the cutlery trades, unhealthy and life-shortening, have been given to rough personal arguments, arguments ad hominem in a literal sense. The following verse from a song written during the strike of 1787 against a master who insisted on the "extortionate practice" of having

"The Trades Unions of England." By the Comte de Paris. Pp. 27, 29, 30, ed. 1869.