Note 577 — Chapter VIII

During the whole course of the nineteenth century the Government failed to ascertain, with any approach to accuracy, how numerous the Trade Unionists were. Until the appointment of Mr. John Burnett as Labour Correspondent of the Board of Trade in 1886, no attempt was made to collect, officially, any information about Trade Unionism. The five annual volumes published by Mr. Burnett between 1886 and 1891 contained a fund of information on Trade Union statistics, and the returns became year by year more complete. The report for 1891 gave particulars of 431 Unions with 1,109,014 members, whilst that for 1892 covered a slightly larger total. But, restricted as he was to societies making returns in the precise form required, Mr. Burnett was unable to get at many existing Unions, whilst a considerable deduction had to be made from his total for members counted both in district organisations and in federations. The Chief Registrar of Friendly Societies gave particulars, in his Report for 1892 (House of Commons Paper, 146—II. of March 28, 1893), of 1,063,000 members in 442 registered Trade Unions alone, after deducting organisations which are not Trade Unions, and many duplicate entries. A large number of societies, such as the Northern Counties Amalgamated Weavers’ Association, many of the Miners’ Unions, the English and Scottish Typographical Associations, the United Kingdom Society of Coachmakers, the Flint Glass Makers, the Yorkshire Glass Bottle Makers, and others were then (as most of them still are) unregistered. Thus our own statistics revealed a 50 per cent greater Trade Union membership than the Government figures. It is difficult to state with exactness the number of separate organisations included, as this must depend upon the manner in which federal bodies are regarded. These exhibit almost infinite variations in character, from the mere “centre of communication” maintained by the thirty-two completely independent local societies of Coopers, to the rigid unity of the forty district organisations which make up the Amalgamated Association of Operative Cotton-spinners. The number of independent societies may be reckoned at either 930 or at anything up to 1750, according to the view taken of federal Unions and federations. We put it approximately at 1100.