540 INDUSTRIAL INSTITUTIONS. 



the Tyne, Sheffield grinders and London shipwrights, dic 

 tated terms and used violence to enforce them. Actions and 

 reactions in various trades and numerous places made the 

 course of these combinations irregular; so that there came 

 many formations followed by many dissolutions : especially 

 when commercial depression and extensive suspensions of 

 work brought to unionists proofs that they could not settle 

 \vages as they pleased. But combinations of a transitory 

 kind grew into permanent combinations, and by and by the 

 integration of small local groups was followed by the inte 

 gration of these into larger and wider groups. In 1827 the 

 carpenters and joiners formed a national association. &quot; Tem 

 porary alliances in particular emergencies &quot; had, in earlier 

 days, joined the Cotton Spinners Trade Clubs of Lanca 

 shire with those of Glasgow; but in 1829 there came a bind 

 ing together of spinners societies in England, Scotland, and 

 Ireland. Almost simultaneously the various classes of oper 

 atives in the building trades throughout the kingdom com 

 bined. LTp to this time the unions had been trade-unions 

 properly so called ; but now there came the idea of a Trades 

 union a union not of operatives in one trade or in kindred 

 trades, but a national union of operatives in all trades. The 

 avowed plan was to consolidate &quot; the productive classes &quot; : 

 the assumption, still dominant, being that the manual work 

 ers do everything and the mental workers nothing. The 

 first of these schemes, commenced in 1830, quickly failed. 

 In 1834 a second scheme of like nature was initiated by 

 Robert Owen, entitled &quot; The Grand National Consolidated 

 Trades Union,&quot; which in a few weeks enrolled &quot; at least 

 half-a-million members,&quot; and which had for one object 

 &quot; a general strike of all wage-earners.&quot; This great but feebly 

 organized body was soon split up by internal disputes and 

 collapsed; while during the same period various of the 

 minor bodies affiliated to it, as the Potters Union and the 

 unions of tailors and clothiers, dissolved. There ensued a, 

 breaking up of the federal organizations at large, and in 



