TRADE-UNIONISM. 



1838 there was going on a steady decline of trade-unionism 

 in general. After some years, however, came a &quot; gradual 

 building up of the great amalgamated societies of skilled 

 artisans/ in the course of which trade-unionism &quot; obtained 

 a financial strength, a trained staff of salaried officers, and a 

 permanence of membership hitherto unknown. 



Further particulars do not call for mention. It will suf 

 fice to note the sizes of these organizations. In 1892, among 

 engineering and shipbuilding operatives, there existed 260 

 societies with 287,000 members, formed into various large 

 groups, as the Amalgamated Societies of Engineers, the 

 United Boilermakers, and the societies of ironfounders and 

 shipwrights. Among miners and quarrymen and associated 

 workers, locally or specially combined, there were 347,000 

 unionists, nearly two-thirds of whom were, in 1888, &quot; gath 

 ered into the Miners Federation of Great Britain &quot; an 

 integration of integrations. Referring to the million and a 

 half unionists existing at that date, the authors from whom 

 I have chiefly quoted say: 



&quot;The Trade-Union world is, therefore, in the main, composed of 

 skilled craftsmen working in densely populated districts, where in 

 dustry is conducted on a large scale. About 750,000 of its members 

 one- half of the whole belong to the three staple trades of coalmining, 

 cotton manufacture, and engineering, whilst the labourers and the 

 women workers remain, on the whole, non-unionists.&quot; 



. 828. Since community of interests is the bond of union 

 in these gilds of wage-earners, as it was in the gilds of mer 

 chants and craftsmen centuries ago, the wage-earners have 

 naturally adopted modes of action like those of their pre 

 decessors. As by the old combinations so by the new, there 

 have been joint resistances to things which threatened ma 

 terial evils to their members and joint enforcements of 

 things promising material benefits to them. 



The number of artisans occupied in any one business in 

 an old English town, was restricted by the regulation that 

 no one could carry it on who had not passed through an ap- 



