Note 252 — Chapter III

Lord Melbourne to Sir Herbert Taylor, September 26, 1831 (Papers, chap. v. p. 131). The workmen’s combinations began at this time to attract more serious attention from capable students than they had hitherto received. Two able pamphlets, published anonymously—there is reason to believe at the instance and at the cost of the Whig Government—On Combinations of Trades(1830), and Character, Objects, and Effects of Trades Unions(1834), set forth the constitution and proceedings of the new unions, and criticise their pretensions in a manner which has not since been surpassed. The second of these was by Edward Carlton Tufnell, one of the factory commissioners, and remains perhaps the best statement of the case against Trades Unionism. Tufnell also wrote a pamphlet, entitled Trades Unionism and Strikes(1834; 12mo); and Harriet Martineau one On the Tendency of Strikes and Sticks to produce Low Wages(Durham, 1834; 12mo), neither of which we have seen. A well-informed but hostile article, founded on these materials, appeared in the Edinburgh Review for July 1834. Charles Knight published in the same year a sixpenny pamphlet, Trades Unions and Strikes(1834, 99 pp.), which took the form of a bitter denunciation of the whole movement.