riers, compositors, shipwrights, and other workmen survived all assaults and continued to maintain their organization. Persecution, however, resulted, as it invariably does, in making organization more secret, discipline more rigid, and treatment of outsiders more harsh and arbitrary. In many unions no one knew who were the leaders, and men were expected to strike and did strike as the result of a hint and without a word being spoken. In 1812 forty thousand weavers struck upon a signal because the employers would not abide by the decision of the courts upon the matter of wages; but the leaders of this movement were cast into prison for the crime of combination, and, as a consequence, the strike collapsed.

During the years which followed the Napoleonic Wars, especially from 1816 to 1819, the depression in trade and the consequent fall in wages provoked a large number of strikes, and repressive measures were again carried out with unheard of severity. The attack on workingmen led, as has frequently been the case, to an assault upon the liberties of the people at large. In 1819 the so-called "Six Acts” were passed, which effectually suppressed public meetings, permitted magistrates to search for arms, strengthened the law against seditious libels, and placed an excessive stamp tax upon all publications owned by or friendly to labor organizations. These repressive measures aroused an intense hostility among the working classes, and this bitterness was responsible for many ill-advised strikes and indiscreet acts committed by trade unionists after the repeal of the combination laws.

It was not until 1824 that the law against combinations was repealed. This victory for the working classes was due in large measure to the indefatigable labors and remarkable astuteness of Francis Place, a retired master tailor and one of the most successful political managers of the age. After ten years of work and agitation, he secured the appointment of a Parliamentary committee of inquiry and caused to be introduced a bill repealing the combination laws and legalizing trade unions. Through the astonishing address and skillful manœuvring of Place and his coadjutors, this bill was steered through Parliament without debate and without division. The result was instantaneous, Trade unions, suddenly legalized, sprang up in all

parts of the country, and employers awoke to the fact that almost without their knowledge these organizations had been given the sanction of the law. In the following year, attempts were made to reenact the old combination. laws, but by this time organized labor was aroused, and the efforts of the opponents of trade unionism were fruitless. The unions were freed for all time.

Unfortunately, many of the organizations which sprang up after the repeal of the combination laws, were without experience, and, as a result, unwise and occasionally arrogant. Their growth was greater than their success. Following the legalization of the trade unions there came a serious commercial depression lasting from 1825 to 1829, and, as a consequence, the new unions failed in their efforts to improve materially the conditions of labor. A feeling of discouragement took possession of the working classes, and the commercial depression was marked by apathy on the part of workmen toward the organizations. The factory system extended rapidly throughout the length and breadth of England; the oppression of workingmen continued practically unabated; the strikes of the ill-organized unions were largely unsuccessful, and the revolutionary spirit, then so prevalent in France, crossed the Channel and found its way into England. During the succeeding years the trade unions became imbued with political and revolutionary aspirations, while the trade policy was more and more shoved into the background.

The new spirit of semi-political organization of wage carners manifested itself in the demand for a union of all workmen, irrespective of trades and extending throughout the country. As a result, in 1830, the National Association for the Protection of Labour was organized, its members consisting largely of textile workers, molders, blacksmiths, mechanics, and miscellaneous laborers. Despite a number of defections, this organization spread rapidly among coal miners, potters, wool workers, and others; and within a short time it claimed a membership of one hundred thousand. But the union was inherently weak, incapable of solving the problems with

which it was confronted, and within a few years it had declined and disappeared.

During this period, however, other large organizations were being formed upon more permanent lines. The cotton spinners and textile workers in general, the potters and the members of building trades were rapidly organizing in many parts of the country. The message of these new organizations, composed of men who, for many years, had been repressed, was not always the soft answer that turneth away wrath. “We consider," so runs a proclamation of the Builders' Union to the employers, "that as you have not treated our rules with the deference you ought to have done, we consider you highly culpable and deserving of being severely chastised." The employers were equally arrogant. To all union demands they replied by insisting that the men, before securing work or reentering upon employment, should forswear all present and future allegiance to trade unions. The promise not to join a union was called the "document," and for a quarter of a century the presentation of a document accompanied a number of labor disputes.

Notwithstanding the failure of the National Association for the Protection of Labour, an attempt to form a similar organization was made in 1833; and in the following year the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union came into being. This organization grew as probably no union or federation ever grew before or since. Within a few weeks half a million workers, it was claimed, became enrolled, and a fever for organization spread through all the working class world. Common laborers and farm hands were swept into the union, and store clerks, chimney sweeps, and many grades of unskilled and irregular workers became members. Women, too, were rapidly organized. The central idea of the union was crudely socialistic, it being proposed to secure for the workingmen possession of the means of production, though by other methods than those contemplated by the socialistic parties of to-day. The working class was still. disfranchised, and the government was so corrupt and non-representative that little was to be hoped by workingmen from an extension of its func