Note 341 — Chapter IV

Emigration Funds begin to appear in Trade Union Reports about 1843 (see the Potters’ Examiner). For thirty years the accounts of the larger societies include, off and on, considerable appropriations for the emigration of members. The tabular statement of expenditure published in the Ironmoulders’ Annual Report shows, for instance, that £4,712 was spent in this way between 1855 and 1874. In the Amalgamated Carpenters an Emigration Benefit lingered until 1886, when it was finally abolished by the General Council; the members resident in the United States and Colonies strongly objecting to this use of the funds. But it was between 1850 and 1860 that emigration found most favour as an integral part of Trade Union policy. The Trade Unions of the United States and the Australian Colonies addressed vigorous protests to the officials of the English societies (see, for example, the Stonemasons’ Fortnightly Circular, June 1856), a fact which co-operated with the dying away of the “gold rush,” and the change of Trade Union opinion, to cause the abandonment of the policy, until it was revived in 1872 for a decade or so, by the Agricultural Labourers’ Unions.