Note 685 — Chapter X · (continued 2)

It must be remembered that the conditions of the manual worker’s life dealt with by the Trade Unions up to 1894 included a wide range of material circumstances and moral considerations. Besides the maintenance of standard rates and methods of remuneration, the reduction of the normal day, and payment for overtime, we find among the objects of Trade Unions, as reported to the Commission, the prevention of stoppages from wages; the maintenance of the apprenticeship system and the keeping out of the trade all who are not qualified; the abolition of the character note; the prevention of victimisation; the provision of legal assistance to members in respect of compensation for accidents; the establishment of an agency through which employers may obtain efficient men; watching over the proceedings of local boards and law courts; the enforcement of the Factory Acts and other protective legislative enactments; the improvement of dietary scales and house and shop accommodation where workers have to live in; the collection and circulation of information on trade matters; the establishment of benefit funds for unemployment, disputes, sickness, accidents and death; the assistance of members anxious to migrate or emigrate; the establishment of “that reciprocal confidence which is so essential between workmen and masters,” and the promotion of arbitration and conciliation; the regulation of output; the promotion of friendly intercourse with workers of other countries; the assistance of other trades in times of difficulty; and political action—the support of Parliamentary and Municipal Labour candidates, of Trades Councils, of the Trades Union Congress, and of Labour newspapers. Some Unions decide to promote co-operative enterprise, “to secure the legal recognition of the natural rights of labourers to the produce of their toil,” whilst others promote the “moral, social, intellectual and professional advancement” of the working class. “Trade Societies,” state the rules of the Associated Shipwrights, “must be maintained as the guard of workmen against capitalists until some higher effort of productive co-operation has been inaugurated which shall secure to workers a more equitable share of the product of labour.”