NOTES AND MEMORANDA

A SEVENTEENTH CENTURY TRADE UNION

AMONG existing Trade Unions there is probably none that better represents the older traditions of Unionism than that of the Journeymen Hatters of Great Britain and Ireland. In spite of the changes which this national organisation has inevitably undergone during its century of existence, its original features have to a remarkable extent been preserved. This is the more striking in that the hatting industry has during the same period passed through a revolution in technique. The present members of the "Fair Trade" Union are makers of silk hats, and follow a craft which has scarcely a single process in common with that of their predecessors of a century ago. Feltmaking, which was the hatter's original craft, has been largely taken over by machinery. It is carried on chiefly in the provinces, where new combinations among the workers have arisen, more adapted to the different conditions of employment. The silk hatters have inherited the traditions of the old felt- and beaver-makers, because, although the technical process of their craft is different, the economic conditions under which they work are almost precisely the same. There is practically no machinery, little division of labour, and the silk hat, like the old-fashioned beaver, is an article of fashion consumed by a limited class, which is mainly resident in large cities, or at any rate prefers to make its purchases there. Cheapness is not sought at the expense of style and quality; and consequently the skilled workman, if backed by an efficient combination, can command a high price for his labour. It is the continuity of those conditions which has given the Fair Trade Union so long a lease of life. This is clear from the fact that when the silk hat began to replace the beaver, the Union was able gradually to transfer its control from the old trade to the new. Its members learned the new processes, and little by little the making of felts was left to be undertaken by the perhaps less skilled, certainly less efficiently combined, workers in the provinces.

We need not be surprised to find that a combination of such tenacity has even a longer history than it claims for itself. The Union as a national organisation dates itself from 1798; but it had existed in

London at any rate long before that period. A petition of the master hatmakers of London to the House of Commons in 1777 states that the journeymen have entered into a combination called a Congress, that they pass byelaws, inflict fines, and prevent the increase of apprentices; and one of the masters declared to a committee of the House that he had been compelled, on pain of a strike, to discharge five of his fifty journeymen who had refused to pay the 2d. a week levied by Congress. The power which, according to this and other similar evidence, the men's combination had already acquired, and which, through the trying times of the next half century, it steadily maintained, could scarcely have been of very recent growth. But with the exception of a reference to a strike in the "Annual Register for 1768," there seems to be no published evidence of the Union's previous existence. It occurred to the writer that this want might possibly be supplied by the records of the Feltmakers' Company. Some historic connection between the Union and the Company is suggested by the traditions of the journeymen hatters themselves. Amongst the Place MSS. in the British Museum there is preserved a list of resolutions agreed to by the journeymen during a dispute in 1820. At the head of this document is a curious device, representing a tramping hatter who has just arrived in town, and is receiving the refreshment and relief due to him by the rules of the Union. Around this device are printed several traditional or historic data :-"Hats first invented, 1456; first made in London, 1510. The Feltmakers' Company were first incorporated in London, 1604; and again by charter, 1667. Blanks. first instituted, 1798." The appropriation thus implied of the traditions. of the Company by the Union is exceedingly characteristic of the conservative temper of the journeymen hatters. One cannot read the hatters' evidence before the Royal Commission of 1824 without being struck by the relations of friendliness and mutual respect which had evidently long prevailed between masters and men. The masters admit that the men's claims were generally reasonable, and that disputes had as a rule been settled by compromise. And an appeal made by the men to the masters during the strike of 1820 is clothed in the language of dignified remonstrance. The men repudiate the charge of idleness. and drunkenness more in sorrow than in anger. "For are there not among you those who have toiled in our ranks, who have been raised by prudence above their fellows? .... we cannot suppose that the generality of our masters, from the generous manner in which we have been treated by them, could have engendered such evil against us." Moreover, the shock which the prosecutions for combination instituted by the masters. in the following year occasioned to the feelings of the men, is a strong testimony to a long tradition of mutual tolerance. In spite of the element of antagonism which comes to a head now and then in a dispute, the normal attitude of the men to the masters is one of respect and emulation.

The facts which it is the purpose of this paper to present are taken

mainly from the Book of Ordinances and the Court Books of the Feltmakers' Company, all of them subsequent to the second charter of 1667. A few words of explanation are therefore necessary, relative to the earlier history of the Company, and of the hatting industry in England.

The first two dates already referred to as embodied in the Union's traditions, though certainly not accurate, contain nevertheless an element of historical truth. Felt hats had been made on the Continent, and probably in England too, from the earliest times. But from the beginning of the sixteenth century two great changes combined to put such new life into the industry that it may almost be considered to have made a fresh start at that time. On the one hand the wearing of felts instead of caps became increasingly common; whilst, on the other, the better qualities of felts hitherto imported from abroad began to be made in England; this latter development being greatly assisted, if not entirely caused, by a considerable immigration of skilled workmen from Flanders and Normandy. London thus. became the seat of a new and growing industry, whose interests were likely to conflict, not only with those of the old capping industry, but also with those of the dealers and importers who had hitherto controlled the hat and cap trade. These latter were mostly comprised in the Company of Merchant Haberdashers, which during the fifteenth century had, by a natural process first overshadowed and then absorbed the Hatters' and Cappers' gilds, whose Ordinances we meet with in the fourteenth century. In the cappers' industry division of labour had made great strides; which accounts in a great measure no doubt for the lowering of their status and their dependence upon the capital of merchants like the haberdashers. The new industry was from the first on a better footing. The feltmakers were, it is true, small masters, who sold their products to and even bought their materials from the haberdashers. But their work was more skilled, there was little or no division of labour, and the concentration of their trade in London made combination in their own interests comparatively easy. An Act of 1565, which, professedly in the interests of the old and threatened industry, laid restrictions as to apprenticeship, &c., on the new craft, would equally serve to maintain the status of the latter, and may even have been supported by the feltmakers, with that object. An unauthorised company of feltmakers which petitioned in vain for independence in 1576, continued to struggle against the control of the haberdashers till 1604, when it obtained a charter from James I. As, however, the validity of this charter was not acknowledged by the haberdashers or by the City government, the conflict continued till 1667, when Charles II. granted a new charter, which was duly enrolled by the City.

It is from this point that the records of the Company begin, and from the very first we have clear indications of the combined action of the journeymen. The charter was granted in June, 1667. In October

of the same year a Committee of Aldermen, who had been appointed to consider a petition of the journeymen feltmakers against the master, wardens, and assistants, recommended a number of articles, which were duly inserted in the byelaws of the Company. No member is to employ a foreigner except he be admitted to the Company; and such foreigner is to pay £20 for admittance. Journeymen are to give and receive a month's warning; and they are to make good spoilt work; the damage in case of dispute to be assessed by two masters, one chosen by the journeymen. Finally, "that the journeymen may not by combination or otherwise excessively at their pleasure raise their wages," a piecework list is to be fixed annually and presented to the Court of Aldermen.

In July of the following year the master and wardens were called before the Mayor for neglecting to get their ordinances confirmed by the Judges, when they declared that they were only hindered by want of money to defray the charge. Thereupon the journeymen present offered to contribute 2s. or 2s. 6d. apiece towards this object; and it was ordered that the masters should make a liberal subscription as an example. The ordinances in question, so far as they regulate the industry, do so in the spirit of the medieval gild. While their main aim is to preserve the status of the small master, they incidentally protect that of the journeyman. By strictly limiting the number of apprentices, and by forbidding all indirect employment (i.e., "weighing out stuff to piece-master"), they hinder the development of the "large industry." An ordinance of the same character, which gave rise subsequently to much dispute, forbids the employment of boys (as " sindging boys") after the age of eighteen, unless they are duly apprenticed. It is very likely that these ordinances, which had no doubt been handed down from an earlier date, were already felt to have a cramping influence on the trade. What concerns us most in this connection is the action of the journeymen in getting them enforced. That and the previous appeal to the Court of Aldermen reveal two facts as to the condition of the journeymen; in the first place, that they were capable of successful combination; and in the second, that though excluded from any share in its direction, they had still an interest in the constitution of the Company, and sought to attain their objects by its

means.

The first extant Court Book of the Company, which extends from 1676 to 1682, reveals an important development in this situation. In the earlier years the journeymen still have recourse to the Court for the redress of their grievances. In 1678 six of them appear and charge a certain master with employing foreigners, and refusing work to free men; and in the same year a master is fined for omitting to give a month's warning. But the solidarity of the gild relation is being gradually destroyed by the expansion of the trade. In November, 1680, the journeymen petition against the number of sindging boys, and it is ordered that no person shall have above one at one time.

The dispute, however, continues, and in 1681 the journeymen bring an action at the Surrey Assizes, with what result is not stated.

significant that the countercharge with which the masters meet the action of the journeymen is that of refusing to pay their quarterage. The contributions of the journeymen were doubtless diverted into a common fund to meet their own legal expenses.

The next ten years (for which the feltmakers' records are wanting) witnessed a most important crisis in the industry. The French trade, which had been the most formidable rival of the English, and had succeeded largely in driving it out of the Spanish market, was almost destroyed at a blow by the revocation of the edict of Nantes in 1685; and many of the French hatters came to settle in England. This act of supreme impolicy on the part of Louis XIV. was, of course, of enormous benefit to English commerce; and in no direction was the impetus more felt than by the hat trade. But to the Company the event probably seemed an unmixed evil. Apart from the direct effect of competition, there was an indirect effect of more importance in the present connection. The Frenchmen set up, some of them on a large scale, outside the City, at Wandsworth and Battersea; and there they naturally formed centres of attraction to the country journeymen, who had hitherto been jealously excluded from the benefits of the London trade. What rendered such exclusion practicable was, no doubt, apart from the immobility of labour in those days, the inferior character of the work done by the country feltmakers. But the force that really maintained the exclusion was the combined determination of the London men, using hitherto as its instrument the ordinances of the Company. How great the distance was between the status of the London and that of the country worker is strikingly illustrated by a number of petitions presented to Parliament in 1698 by various Feltmakers' Companies in the North of England, praying that women and maids of inferior quality may be compelled to wear felt hats, and declaring that many poor people whom they had kept at work were become objects of charity. And the Committee of the House of Commons in recommending the adoption of this remedy (only lost by two votes), state that it would set at work 100,000 poor people more than are already employed, and that the greater part of the persons so to be employed are aged men, women, and children, and such as are relievable for charity. After making every allowance for the evident exaggeration of this, it remains clear that the London men had everything to lose by the admittance to competition with them of journeymen accustomed to country conditions. The masters, on the other hand, were sure to find it to their interest as the trade expanded, to draw upon such an abundant source of cheap labour. This motive was, however, balanced by another. As members of the Company, they could not expect to enjoy their monopoly without observing those ordinances which secured the status of the men. They wavered therefore between two possible lines of action: they might either prosecute