[150] John Gast, a shipwright of Deptford, was evidently one of the ablest Trade Unionists of his time. We first hear of him in 1802, when there was a serious strike in London that attracted the attention of the Government (Home Office Papers in Record Office, 65--1, July and August 1802), as the author of a striking pamphlet entitled _A Vindication of the Conduct of the Shipwrights during the late disputes with their Employers_ (1802, 38 pp.). In 1818 he is found advocating the first recorded proposal for a general workmen’s organisation, as distinguished from separate trade clubs--to be described in our next chapter; and his _Articles of the Philanthropic Hercules for the Mutual Support of the Labouring Mechanics_, which were printed in the _Gorgon_, attracted the attention of Francis Place, who described him (Place MSS, 27819--23) as having “long been secretary to the Shipwrights’ Club: he was a steady, respectable man. He had formed several associations of working men, but had been unable to keep up any one of them.” He became one of Place’s most useful allies in the agitation for a repeal of the Combination Laws, and when, in 1825, their re-enactment was threatened, his “committee of trades delegates” was Place’s strongest support. Gast was the leading spirit in the establishment of the _Trades Newspaper_ in July 1825, and became chairman of the committee of management, as well as a frequent contributor. In the same year he was actively engaged in the shipwrights’ struggle for a “Book of Rates,” or definite list of piecework prices, and the energy with which he counteracted the design of the Board of Admiralty, of allowing the London shipbuilders to borrow men from the Portsmouth Navy Yard, contributed mainly to the success of the fight. [151] Place MSS. 27800--195. [152] Place MSS. 27798--11; and _The Town Labourer, 1760-1832_, by J. L. and B. Hammond, 1917. Between 1798-1803 and 1804-16 the piecework wages for handloom cotton weaving were reduced in some cases by 80 per cent at a time of war prices (_Geschichte der englischen Lohnarbeit_, by Gustav Steffen, Stuttgart, 1900, vol. ii. pp. 19-20). See _History of Wages in the Cotton Trade during the Past Hundred Years_, by G. H. Wood, 1910; and Cunningham, _Growth, etc._, 1903, p. 634. [153] See on all these points the evidence given before the Committee on Artisans and Machinery, 1824; especially that of Richmond. [154] Letter to the local Major-General, June 15, 1812, in Home Office Papers, 40--1. [155] _Ibid._