Whilst Newton was bringing the London societies into line, the Lancashire engineers were moving in the same direction. Already in 1839 a “committee of the engineering trades” at Bolton urged upon their comrades the establishment of “one concentrated union”; and in the following year, through the energy of Alexander Hutchinson, the secretary of the Friendly United Smiths of Great Britain and Ireland, a United Trades Association was set on foot in Lancashire, to comprise the “Five Trades of Mechanism, viz. Mechanics, Smiths, Moulders, Engineers, and Millwrights.” The objects of this association were ably represented and promoted by its organ, the _Trades Journal_, established to extend and “improve Trades Unions generally in Great Britain and Ireland,”[346] The attempt proved, however, premature, and it was not until the year 1844 that the Bolton men, under the leadership of John Rowlinson, succeeded in establishing a permanent “Protection Society,” composed of delegates from the Societies of Smiths, Millwrights, Ironmoulders, Engineers, and Boilermakers. Inspirited by the success of the Bolton society, which successfully maintained a nine months’ strike (costing it £9,000) against the “Quittance Paper” (character note, or leaving certificate) which the employers eventually agreed to abandon, joint committees of engineering operatives were formed between 1844 and 1850 in all the principal Lancashire centres. These were repeatedly addressed by Rowlinson and Hutchinson, and the ground was prepared for a systematic attempt at national amalgamation.