Foremost in this little group--which we shall hereafter call the Junta--were the general secretaries of the two amalgamated societies of Engineers and Carpenters, William Allan and Robert Applegarth, whose success in building up these powerful organisations had given them great influence in Trade Union councils. Bound to these in close personal friendship were Daniel Guile, the general secretary of the old and important national society of Ironfounders, Edwin Coulson, general secretary of the “London Order” of Bricklayers, and George Odger, a prominent member of a small union of highly skilled makers of ladies’ shoes, and an influential leader of London working-class Radicalism. William Allan was the originator of the “New Unionism” of his time.[373] We have already described how, with the aid of William Newton, he had gathered up the scattered fragments of organisation in the engineering trade, and had adapted the elaborate constitution and financial system of an old-established society to the needs of a great national amalgamation. In long hours of patient labour in the office he had built up an extremely methodical, if somewhat cumbrous, system of financial checks and trade reports, by which the exact position of each of his tens of thousands of members was at all times recorded in his official pigeonholes. The permanence of his system is the best testimony to its worth. Even to-day the Engineers’ head office retains throughout the impress of Allan’s tireless and methodical industry. Excessive caution, red-tape precision, an almost miserly solicitude for the increase of the society’s funds, were among Allan’s defects. But at a time when working men “agitators” were universally credited with looseness in money matters and incapacity for strenuous and regular mental effort, these defects, however equivocal may have been their ultimate effect on the policy and development of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, produced a favourable impression on the public. Allan, moreover, though not a brilliant speaker, or a man of wide general interests, was a keen working-class politician, whose temper and judgement could always be depended on. And he has left behind him the tradition, not only of absolute integrity and abnormal industry, but also of a singular freedom from personal vanity or ambition.