CHAPTER III 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 " repre-
sented the New Unionism, and the trade club, or Trade
Union, as we have called it, the Old. The distinction be-
tween 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 combina-
tion of different trades. " The Trades Union," the bug-
bear 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 dis-
tinguished from Trade Union must be carefully borne, in
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H4 The Revolutionary Period
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. x
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 " Phil-
anthropic 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 the first-named town. A meeting of workmen of various trades, rleld 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 com-
1 In a manuscript essay on the different forms of association, entitled
" Trades Unions condemned, Trade Clubs justified," Place gives us the
distinction between the two. " A trade society," he says, " that is, a
club consisting of the journeymen in any one trade which does not form
part of a union of several trades, which does not appoint delegates to
meet other delegates, is a very different thing from a Trades Union, even
though it may call itself a union. Trades Unions are those in which
several trades, or portions of several trades, in the same line of business
or in different callings, are confederated by means of delegates." Place
often refers to this distinction between the Trade Clubs, which were, according to his view, " very valuable institutions," and the " Trades Unions," or " associations of several or many trades in one combination,' which he regarded as " very mischievous associations." William Lovett, too, watching the same transformation, makes, in a letter published in the Poor Man's Guardian of August 30, 1834, exactly the same distinction.