Whilst Allan aimed at transforming the “paid agitator” into the trusted officer of a great financial corporation, Robert Applegarth sought to win for the Trade Union organisation a recognised social and political status. Astute and lawyer-like in temperament, he instinctively made use of those arguments which were best fitted to overcome the prejudices and disarm the criticisms of middle-class opponents. Nor did he limit himself to justifying the ways of Trade Unionists to the world at large. He made persistent attempts to enlarge the mental horizon of the rank and file of his own movement, opening out to those whose vision had hitherto been limited to the strike and the tap-room, whole vistas of social and political problems in which they as working men were primarily concerned. Hence we find him, during his career as general secretary, a leading member of the famous “International,”[374] and an energetic promoter of the Labour Representation League, the National Education League, and various philanthropic and political associations. Political reformers became eager to secure his adhesion to their projects: he was, for instance, specially invited to attend the important conferences of the National Education League at Birmingham as the special representative of the working classes; and it was owing to his reputation as a social reformer that he was in 1870 selected to sit on the Royal Commission upon the Contagious Diseases Acts, thus becoming the first working man to be styled by his Sovereign “Our Trusty and Well-beloved.” Open-minded, alert, and conciliatory, he formed an ideal representative of the English Labour Movement in the political world.[375]