This delegate meeting, of which there is an excellent report,[212] lasted for nearly a week. The proceedings were of a remarkably temperate character, the discussions turning chiefly on the relative advantages of one supreme executive to be established at Manchester, and three co-equal national executives for England, Scotland, and Ireland. No secrecy was attempted. John Doherty,[213] secretary and leader of the Manchester Cotton-spinners, advocated a central executive; while Thomas Foster (a man of independent means who attended the conference at his own expense) favoured a scheme of home rule. Eventually a “Grand General Union of the United Kingdom” was established, subject to an annual delegate meeting and three national committees. The union was to include all male spinners and piecers, the women and girls being urged to form separate organisations, which were to receive all the aid of the whole confederation in supporting them to obtain “men’s prices.” The union was to promote local action for a further legislative restriction of the hours of labour, to apply to all persons under 21 years of age. Its income consisted of a contribution of a penny per week per member, to be levied in addition to the contribution to the local society. Doherty was general secretary, and Foster and a certain Patrick McGowan were appointed to organise the spinners throughout the United Kingdom. The Boroughreeve and Constables of Manchester, on May 26, 1830, wrote in alarm to Sir Robert Peel: “The combination of workmen, long acknowledged a great evil, and one most difficult to counteract, has recently assumed so formidable and systematic a shape in this district that we feel it our duty to lay before you some of its most alarming features.... A committee of delegates from the operative spinners of the three Kingdoms have established an annual assembly in the Isle of Man to direct the proceedings of the general body towards their employers, the orders for which they promulgate to their respective districts and subcommittees. To these orders the most implicit deference is shown; and a weekly levy or rent of one penny per head on each operative is cheerfully paid. This produces a large sum, and is a powerful engine, and principally to support those who have turned out against their employers, agreeable to the orders of the committee, at the rate of ten shillings per week for each person. The plan of a general turnout having been found to be impolitic, they have employed it in detail, against particular individuals or districts, who, attacked thus singly, are frequently compelled to submit to their terms rather than to the ruin which would ensue to many by allowing their machinery (in which their whole capital is invested) to stand idle.”[214]