[341] Emigration Funds begin to appear in Trade Union Reports about 1843 (see the _Potters’ Examiner_). For thirty years the accounts of the larger societies include, off and on, considerable appropriations for the emigration of members. The tabular statement of expenditure published in the Ironmoulders’ Annual Report shows, for instance, that £4,712 was spent in this way between 1855 and 1874. In the Amalgamated Carpenters an Emigration Benefit lingered until 1886, when it was finally abolished by the General Council; the members resident in the United States and Colonies strongly objecting to this use of the funds. But it was between 1850 and 1860 that emigration found most favour as an integral part of Trade Union policy. The Trade Unions of the United States and the Australian Colonies addressed vigorous protests to the officials of the English societies (see, for example, the _Stonemasons’ Fortnightly Circular_, June 1856), a fact which co-operated with the dying away of the “gold rush,” and the change of Trade Union opinion, to cause the abandonment of the policy, until it was revived in 1872 for a decade or so, by the Agricultural Labourers’ Unions. [342] _Flint Glass Makers’ Magazine_, September 1857. [343] During these years the Executive Committees of the larger societies were waging war on the “liquor allowance.” In the reports and financial statements of the Unions for the first half of the century, drink was one of the largest items of expenditure, express provision being made by the rules for the refreshment of the officers and members at all meetings. The rules of the London Society of Woolstaplers (1813) state that “the President shall be accommodated with his own choice of liquors, wine only excepted.” The Friendly Society of Ironmoulders (1809) ordains that the Marshal shall distribute the beer round the meeting impartially, members being forbidden to drink out of turn “except the officers at the table or a member on his first coming to the town.” Even as late as 1837 the rules of the Steam-Engine Makers’ Society direct one-third of the weekly contribution to be spent in the refreshment of the members, a provision which drops out in the revision of 1846. In that year the Delegate Meeting of the Ironmoulders prohibited drinking and smoking at its own sittings, and followed up this self-denying ordinance by altering the rules of the society so as to change the allowance of beer at branch meetings to its equivalent in money. “We believe,” they remark in their address to the members, “the business of the society would be much better done were there no liquor allowance. Interruption, confusion, and scenes of violence and disorder are often the characteristic of meetings where order, calmness, and impartiality should prevail.” By 1860 most of the larger societies had abolished all allowance for liquor, and some had even prohibited its consumption during business meetings. It is to be remembered that