The failure of the Combination Laws to suppress the somewhat dictatorial Trade Unionism of the skilled handicraftsmen, and their efficacy in preventing the growth of permanent Unions among other sections of the workers, is explained by class distinctions, now passed away or greatly modified, which prevailed at the beginning of the present century. To-day, when we speak of “the aristocracy of labour” we include under that heading the organised miners and factory operatives of the North on the same superior footing as the skilled handicraftsman. In 1800 they were at opposite extremes of the social scale in the wage-earning class, the weaver and the miner being then further removed from the handicraftsman than the docker or general labourer is from the Lancashire cotton-spinner or Northumberland hewer of to-day. The skilled artisans formed, at any rate in London, an intermediate class between the shopkeeper and the great mass of unorganised labourers or operatives in the new machine industries. The substantial fees demanded all through the eighteenth century for apprenticeship to the “crafts” had secured to the members and their eldest sons a virtual monopoly.[147] Even after the repeal of the laws requiring a formal apprenticeship some time had to elapse before the supply of this class of handicraftsmen overtook the growing demand. Thus we gather from the surviving records that these trades have never been more completely organised in London than between 1800 and 1820.[148] We find the London hatters, coopers, curriers, compositors, millwrights, and shipwrights maintaining earnings which, upon their own showing, amounted to the comparatively large sum of thirty to fifty shillings per week. At the same period the Lancashire weaver or the Leicester hosier, in full competition with steam-power and its accompaniment of female and child labour, could, even when fully employed, earn barely ten shillings. We see this difference in the Standard of Life reflected in the characters of the combinations formed by the two classes.