The History of Trade Unionism: (Revised edition, extended to 1920)Webb, Sidney
History
The History of Trade Unionism: (Revised edition, extended to 1920)
Webb, Sidney
Labor unions -- Great Britain -- History
[39] Schanz (_Gesellenverbände_, p. 25) follows Brentano (p. 94) in
attributing the formation of journeymen’s fraternities in the Middle
Ages mainly to a desire to provide for the wandering craftsmen.
The connection between the “Herbergen” or “Schenken,” designed to
find lodging and employment, with the journeymen’s associations was
certainly close. (See Dr. Bruno Schoenlank’s article in 1894, quoted in
Sir William Ashley’s _Surveys: Historic and Economic_, 1900.) It may be
suggested that the contrast between the absence or scanty existence of
such fraternities in England and their spread in Germany is, perhaps,
to be ascribed in some measure to the fact that English journeymen seem
never to have adopted the German custom of “Wanderjahre,” or regular
habit of spending, on completing their apprenticeship, a few years in
travelling about the country to complete their training. When the local
privileges of the old gilds had fallen somewhat into abeyance, the
restrictions of the successive Settlement Acts must in England, to some
extent, have checked the mobility of labour. But, from the beginning of
the eighteenth century at any rate, we find it customary for journeymen
of certain trades--it is to be noticed that these are relatively new
trades in England--to “tramp” from town to town in search of work,
and the description, subsequently quoted, of the organisations of the
woolcombers and worsted weavers in 1741, shows that the relief of these
travelling journeymen was a prominent object of the early unions.
The hatters in the middle of the eighteenth century had a regular
arrangement for such relief. The compositors at the very beginning
of the nineteenth century had already covered the country with a
network of local clubs, the chief function of which appears to have
been the facilitation of this wandering in search of work. And the
calico-printers had a systematic way of issuing a ticket which entitled
the tramp to collect from each journeyman, in any “print-field” that he
visited, at first a voluntary contribution, and latterly a fixed relief
of a halfpenny per head in England, and a penny per head in Scotland
(_Minutes of evidence taken before the Committee to whom the petition
of the several journeymen Calico-printers and others working in that
trade, etc., was referred_, July 4, 1804, and the _Report_ from that
Committee, July 17, 1806).
[40] J. M. Ludlow, in article in _Macmillan’s Magazine_, February 1861.
[41] _Work and the Workman_, by Dr. J. K. Ingram (Address to the Trades
Union Congress at Dublin, 1880).
[42] Benjamin Franklin mentions the “chapel” and its regulations in
1725. A copy, dated 1734, of the _Rules and Orders to be observed by
the Members of this Chapel: by Compositors, by Pressmen, by Both_, is
preserved in the Place MSS. 27799--88.
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