Nor was it only in the multiplication of trade societies that the expansion showed itself. A committee of delegates from the London trades meeting during the summer of 1825 set on foot the _Trades Newspaper and Mechanics’ Weekly Journal_, a sevenpenny stamped paper, with the motto, “They helped every one his neighbour, and every one said to his brother, ‘Be of good cheer.’”[200] A vigorous attempt was made to promote Trade Union organisation in all industries, and to bring to bear a body of instructed working-class opinion upon the political situation of the day.[201] The high hopes of which all this exultant activity was the symptom were soon rudely dashed. The year 1825 closed with a financial panic and widespread commercial disaster. The four years that followed were years of contraction and distress. Hundreds of thousands of workmen in all trades lost their employment, and wages were reduced all round. In many manufacturing districts the operatives were kept from starvation only by public subscriptions.[202] Strikes under these circumstances ended invariably in disaster. A notable stand made by the Bradford woolcombers and weavers in 1825 resulted in complete defeat and the break-up of the Union.[203] During the greater part of the following year all Lancashire was convulsed by incessant strikes of coal-miners and textile workers against the repeated reductions of wages to which the employers resorted--strikes which were marred by serious disorder, the destruction of many hundreds of looms, and severe repression by the troops.[204] At Kidderminster, three years later, practically the whole trade of the town was brought to a standstill by the carpet-weavers’ six months’ resistance to a reduction of 17 per cent in their wages[205]--a resistance in which the operatives received the sympathy and support of many who did not belong to their class. In the same year the silk-weavers of London and other towns maintained an embittered resistance to a further cut at wages.[206] The emancipated combinations were no more able to resist reductions than the secret ones had been, and in some instances the workmen again resorted to violence and machine-breaking. For a moment the repeal seemed, after all, to have done nothing but prove the futility of mere sectional combination, and the working men turned back again from Trade Union action to the larger aims and wider character of the Radical and Socialistic agitations of the time, with which, from 1829 to 1842, the Trade Union Movement became inextricably entangled. This is the phase which furnishes the theme of the following chapter. FOOTNOTES: [111] An elaborate account of this legislation will be found in _Labour Legislation, Labour Movements, and Labour Leaders_, by G. Howell, 1902, pp. 21-42.