Note 148 — Chapter II

To take, for instance, the cabinetmakers and millwrights. When Lovett came to London in 1819 he found that he could not get employment without joining the Union (Life of William Lovett, by himself). The millwrights at the beginning of the century were so strongly organised—this probably led to the engineering employers’ petition in 1799 out of which the Combination Acts sprang—that when Fairbairn (after being actually engaged at Rennie’s works) was refused admission into their society, he was driven to tramp out of London in search of work in a non-union district (Life of Sir William Fairbairn, by himself, 1877, pp. 89, 92). For the last three-quarters of the century a considerable proportion of the cabinetmakers and engineers employed in London have been outside the Trade Union ranks.