With the Council meeting held on Tuesday, March 26th, 1872, by the election of Mr Forman as president and Mr Crawford as secretary, and the regular meetings with the employers being recognised, we have the Association fully and solidly established. Before we proceed further it will be in natural order if we take a short glance at the men who were at the head of it. There is no need to enlarge upon them; a bare outline will be sufficient. The first in prominence and force was Mr W. Crawford. When appointed he was outside the county, but owing to his having been secretary of the combined counties he was known to the Durham men as an able and forcible Trades Unionist. When the separation between the two counties took place he was engaged as secretary of the Northumberland Association. This post, says Fynes in his history, he filled "with great ability until June 1865, and made himself a great favourite in Northumberland, but he then left the Association in order to take the secretaryship of the Cowpen Co-operative Store at Blyth." Mr Burt was elected to succeed him. In 1870, when Mr Crawford applied for the position of agent in Durham, he was selected from a number of candidates. It was at this time that the writer had the pleasure of making his acquaintance, and had large opportunities of forming an estimate of his ability. Never had any man more force of character or more executive power. His individuality was very large. He had no love for platform work, and the love for that sphere lessened as he grew older; but he had no superior and few equals in his grasp of, and power to find a solution of, the peculiar difficulties and complications which arise in an occupation like the miners. He was a solver of difficulty and a manager of men, and in every way fitted for the post of secretary of a trades organisation. From his appointment to his death he filled it with a skill few men can command. _N. Wilkinson_, the first treasurer of the Association, had worked at Trimdon Grange as a fireman. At the date of his appointment he was earning a living by tea selling, having lost his employment on account of his Trades Union principles. His first appointment was temporary, and when elected permanently he was living at Coxhoe. As soon as the Union was fairly started he was made treasurer permanently, and so acted till 1882. As a speaker he was of a blunt, straightforward order. As Othello says: "His was a round unvarnished tale and he told it right on." At the commencement, when announced on the bills it was as "Nicky Wilkinson," and no man could be in the least doubt but that when he spoke to them on the Union and its usefulness it was from the heart. As a man in those stern and trying times he was, as those who were his colleagues would testify, a man upon whom they could depend in any testing circumstances.