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NOTICES OF BOOKS. 61
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
. 1 Trades Appointed Societies By The An...
commerce of tlie country . Tlie inquiry was one which , demanded the utmost partialityand care -was taken in the constitution of the
, Committee , and in their subsequent mode of action , that all parties concerned should be fairly represented . For this end , they drew
up three several lists of questions . The first addressed to secretariesofficersand members of trades' societies ; the second submitted
, , to employers of labor ; and the third , relating * to strikes , to be proposed to employers' associations and trades' societies . These
inquiries embraced—the moral effects of trades' unions ; the class of men belonging to them ; their effect _ujDon the rate of wages ; their
effect upon the character and skill of the workmen ; masters' combinationsand their effects ; the effects of combinations on the
prosperity , of special trades , and the causes and effects of strikes . The questions -were extensively circulated , sub-committees were
appointed , and witnesses examined viva voce ; and so great was the mass . of evidence collected , that the Committee reported at Bradford ,
in 1859 , that they had been unable to analyze and digest it . They were accordingly re-appointed , and after another year of
unremitting attention to the subject , the present Report was presented to the Association at its meeting in Glasgow , in September
last . The definition of trades' unions given in the Report is an
exceedingly fair one : — "A trades' society is a combination of workmen to enable each to secure the conditions most favorable to
labor . " Indeed , the Report has been charged with a leaning to the men ' s side of the question , founded , in all probability , on the
statement contained in the Report , that the co-operation of working-men had been much more frankly given to the Committee than that of
employers . Trades' societies eagerly offered information , and forwarded their rules and other documents , while masters held aloof .
But it seems to us that the frankness of the men in coming forward to meet inquiry into the operations of their societiesspeaks most
, favorably for the nature of these operations . Mr . Thomas Hughes , one of the secretaries of the Committee , remarked in presenting the
Report a _* fc Glasgow : —" Here was a Committee of thirty gentlemen , amongst whom were several influential employers . Two-thirds of
these gentlemen started in the belief that as a rule trades' unions were in the hands of mere demagogues , not working men . But ,
he believed , they were now unanimous in the conclusion that this was not soAs was stated in the Reportthey believed that the
. , leaders of trade societies were generally men who represented the feeling of their class , a . nd also able and proficient workmen , who
reall They y ( lived the Committee by their trade ) were , and at first who almost had little unanimous to do with in their agitations belief .
that trades' unions fostered bad blood and iH-feeling between masters and menbut from the histories of all the strikes he had gone
into , he was of ; opinion that trades' unions tended to stop strikes ,
and not to foster them . The objects of trades' unions are exten-
Notices Of Books. 61
NOTICES OF BOOKS . 61
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), March 1, 1861, page 61, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01031861/page/61/
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