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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 January 2014
That the state might owe its poor and unemployed a helping hand to emigrate to wherever there were jobs found common enough expression in the first half of the nineteenth century. In the 1820s and 1830s there were the conflicting schemes of Wilmot-Horton and E. G. Wakefield. Carlyle advocated in 1843 a state emigration service to provide a bridge to the colonies, and Irish troubles periodically provided a source of speculation about the usefulness of state emigration as a solution to agricultural distress. For Tories it could be a conservative measure to diminish at a stroke economic distress and the social disruption it bred, while some Liberals viewed it as a necessary rationalization of the labor market and supported it in the same spirit, and with the same arguments, as the Cheap Trains Act. Organized labor itself had had recourse on occasion to the emigration of members both as a restrictive guild practice and a militant trade dispute tactic.
The extent to which trade unions continued to favor emigration benefits after mid-century has been a subject of some dispute. There is also the question of trade union attitudes toward schemes of state emigration — distrusted by many in the early Victorian period as transportation of the poor. It is the purpose of this paper to demonstrate a strong continued interest in an emigration solution by many trade unions well into the 1880s, and that after mid-century much of organized labor turned from emphasis on emigration benefits provided by the union to acceptance of and agitation for a state program of emigration assistance funded by the national exchequer.
1. For Wilmot-Horton see Johnston, H. J. M., British Emigration Policy, 1815-1830 (Oxford, 1972)Google Scholar; for Wakefield, see Mills, R. C., The Colonization of Australia (1829-1842): The Wakefield Experiment in Empire Building (London, 1915)Google Scholar. Radical attitudes toward colonies in general are treated in Winch, Donald, Political Economy and the Colonies (Cambridge, Mass., 1965)Google Scholar. Carlyle, Thomas, Past and Present (1st ed., 1843; London, 1909), pp. 273–74Google Scholar.
2. , Beatrice and Webb, Sidney, The History of Trade Unionism (London, 1927 ed.), pp. 202n, 203Google Scholar, claimed that, while emigration benefits lingered on in a few unions, it was between 1850 and 1860 that “emigration found most favour as an integral part of Trade Union policy.” Erickson, Charlotte, “The Encouragement of Emigration by British Trade Unions, 1850-1900,” Population Studies, 3 (1949), 248–73Google Scholar, has shown that in fact many unions retained emigration benefits (or adopted them) through the 1880s, while Clements, R. V., “Trade Unions and Emigration, 1840-1880,” Population Studies, 9 (1955), 167–80Google Scholar, attacked the Webbs' assumption that the adoption of emigration benefits is an example of their acceptance of classical economic dogma. Clements also believed that the actual number of unions with active emigration programs was small and relatively few men were assisted. More recently, Horn, Pamela, “Agricultural Trade Unionism and Emigration, 1872-1881,” Historical Journal, 15 (March, 1972), 87–102CrossRefGoogle Scholar, has drawn attention to the agricultural organizations largely ignored in this debate, and has shown that there was a close working relationship between emigration agents and Joseph Arch's National Agricultural Labourers' Union in the 1870s.
3. Arnold, R. Arthur, The History of the Cotton Famine (London, 1864), pp. 367–68Google Scholar; Times, March 31, 1863; 3 Hansard, 170:814–15, (April 27, 1863)Google Scholar. Also see Henderson, William O., The Lancashire Cotton Famine, 1861-1865 (Manchester, 1934)Google Scholar.
4. The Union Relief Act of 1862 and a Union Chargeability Act in 1865.
5. Henderson, , Lancashire Cotton Famine, pp. 117–18Google Scholar.
6. In fact the opening of the American West by railroads in the 1870s and 1880s meant that there was considerable pressure until late in the century exerted on trade union leaders by emigration agents and land speculators from the United States and Canada to secure cooperation in various emigration schemes. See, for instance, Horn, , “Agricultural Trade Unionism and Emigration,” Hist. Jo., 15, 93–95Google Scholar.
7. The Beehive, Dec. 20, 1862.
8. Times, Jan. 1, 1870.
9. The Beehive, Feb. 22, 1868.
10. Young, Frederick, “Emigration,” dated Dec. 29, 1869Google Scholar, in “Speeches and Notices, 1870,” at the Royal Commonwealth Society Library; Times, Dec. 23, 1869, and Jan. 1, 1870.
11. See the papers given, and the discussions which followed, at a conference on Colonial Questions, July 19-21, 1871, organized by members of the National Emigration League and the Royal Colonial Institute (in Discussions on Colonial Questions [London, 1872]Google Scholar). A list of the council, officers, and vice-presidents of the League may be found in a “Prospectus of the National Colonial and Emigration League” in the Manchester Papers, Box 20A, Huntingdonshire Record Office.
12. See his pamphlet, State-Directed Emigration (Manchester, 1883)Google Scholar. I have been able to discover nothing about Boyd before 1877 or after he left the movement in 1884.
13. Justice, April 12, 1884 (“The Emigration Fraud”); also see The Echo, Sept. 1, 1883, for a letter to the editor by Boyd refuting allegations.
14. Reginald Brabazon, later (1887) 12th Earl of Meath, was heir to an Irish earldom who used his fortune to advance a number of social reforms of the kind associated with the Earl of Shaftesbury.
15. Beginning in 1873, with the Hospital Saturday Fund. This work involved him for the first time in contact with working men and public speaking from platforms. He was sensitive to the difficulties such movements faced in attracting “real working men” and their leaders rather than the extremists and cranks who presented themselves at meetings, and attempted to solve this problem by widely publicized meetings and “a genuine election” of working class committeemen. Earl of Meath, Memories of the Nineteenth Century (London, 1923), pp. 204–5Google Scholar.
16. Times, Aug. 4, 1879; Oct. 2. Cotton operatives failed in a long strike in 1878 to prevent wage cuts (Times, Sept. 23, 1879). Clements, , “Trade Unions and Emigration,” Pop. Stud. 9, 173Google Scholar. The cost of emigrating varied considerably, of course, with the destination. Steamships replaced sail by the 1860s for most emigrant passages. They were more expensive but safer, quicker, and vastly more convenient. By the 1880s transportation to Canada (slightly higher for the United States) was about £5 for an adult. The trip to Australia cost about £16 or more, but this was frequently subsidized by the colonial government. New Zealand, to which the Kent laborers emigrated in 1879, paid for most of the cost of transportation. There were, of course, other expenses — transportation to the port of embarkation and perhaps lodging there, and on the other side money was needed to get inland and find work.
17. Among the labor leaders who supported the emigration resolutions at the Workmen's Conference on October 13, 1883, were Thomas Ashton of the Oldham Cotton Spinners, Allen Gee of the Huddersfield Weavers' and Spinners' Association, James Mawdsley of the Manchester Cotton Spinners, J. Ambler of the Hull Trades Council, W. Beech of the Oldham Trades Council, W. A. Coote of the London Compositors, Dyke of the Cab-Drivers' Cooperative, J. Judge of the Leeds Trade Council and the Leeds Boot and Shoe Rivetters, J. C. Laird of the Newcastle Trades Council, Luke of the London Paper Stainers, Edward Memmott of the Sheffield Trades Council, Noon of the London Trades Council and the Ladies' Bootmakers, W. H. Patterson of the Durham Miners, John Potter of the Maid-stone Trades Council, W. H. Rowland of the London Cab-Drivers Association, T. Smith of the London Trades Council and the Cab Drivers, and Edward Woods of the Ironworkers' Friendly Society. Times, Nov. 15, 1883.
18. See, for example, the scheme presented to the Colonial Office in February of 1886. P.P. 1886 (C. 4751).
19. Membership lists for the National Association for Promoting State Colonization may be found in its publication, The State Directed Colonization Series, I and II (London, 1886)Google Scholar. For some of the founding members (1883) see accounts of the Mile End meeting of June 6, particularly the Canadian Gazette, June 14, 1883, 224–5Google Scholar. Some of the members who joined after 1886 can be found in LordMonkswell, , State Colonization (London, n.d. [1888?])Google Scholar. In 1886 there-were 289 members of the Association's council. Of these, 245 can be placed into rough occupational categories: labor (91), clergy (34), none, i.e. gentlemen without known professional occupations (22), landlord (20), trade and manufacturing (15), finance (13), military (13), literary (10), career politicians and office holders (8), legal (8), administrative (4), academic (4), publishing (2), and medical (1). The executive and finance committees exhibit the following distribution: labor (6), clergy (7), none (2), land (1), military (2), finance (3), literary (3), and legal (1), with four who were unidentifiable. The vice-presidents and patrons, as might be expected, were without labor representation, and heavily weighted toward land, Church, and no occupation.
20. Clegg, H. A., Fox, A., and Thompson, A. F., A History of British Trade Unions Since 1889, I (Oxford, 1964)Google Scholar, estimate trade union strength at 750,000 in 1888.
21. Until the early 1870s the Colonial Land and Emigration Commissioners (the commission was terminated in 1878) published a yearly informational handbook, but it was too expensive to have been widely used.
22. Erickson, , “The Encouragement of Emigration,” Pop. Stud. 3, 250Google Scholar.
23. But the “new unionist” secretary of the Sheffield File Cutters, Stuart Uttley, was an advocate of state emigration, while John Burnett of the Engineers and Labour Correspondent at the Board of Trade, no socialist certainly, was firmly opposed to the emigration of working men. The Engineers dropped emigration benefits in 1885. See Burnett's testimony before the Select Committee on Colonization (P.P. 1889 [274], X, Report of the Colonization Committee, 91-104).
24. Erickson, , “The Encouragement of Emigration,” Pop. Stud. 3, 263Google Scholar.
25. Clements, “Trade Unions and Emigration,” ibid., 9, 175; Clegg et al., British Trade Unions, p. 6.
26. Erickson, , “The Encouragement of Emigration,” Pop. Stud. 3, 265Google Scholar, lists 15 unions which adopted emigration grants in their rules after 1850. Five of these did so after 1880: the Boilermakers, Tin Plate Workers, Journeymen Machine, Engine and Iron Grinders, and the United Operative Spindle and Flyer Makers.
27. P.P. 1889, Report of the Colonization Committee, 92.
28. Logan, Harold A., the History of Trade-Union Organizations in Canada (Chicago, 1928), pp. 11-12, 38, 61, 67nGoogle Scholar; Hayden, Albert A., “New South Wales Immigration Policy, 1856-1900,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 61, Pt. 5, n.s. (1971)Google Scholar.
29. Cotton spinners, iron shipbuilders, flint glass makers, agricultural laborers, London compositors, lithographic printers, Northumberland miners, and possibly others had emigration benefits in the 1880s, though it is difficult to ascertain the extent to which they were used.
30. The cotton spinners had paid out over £2,000 in emigration benefits from 1879 to 1889 — mostly in 1879 and 1885-86, after the unsuccessful strikes of those years. P.P. 1889, Report of the Colonization Committee, 92.
31. The State-Directed Colonization Series, II (London, 1886), 122Google Scholar.
32. Clegg, et al., British Trade Unions, 1Google Scholar; the Webbs, , Trade Unionism, pp. 746–47Google Scholar. There were about 120,000 engaged in textile work in 1888. Somewhat more than 10 percent were organized in the A.A.O.C.S.
33. Clegg, et al., British Trade Unions, 30Google Scholar.
34. Ibid., 12. The Ironfounders spent £4,712 in emigration benefits from 1877 to 1889, more than any other of the emigrating unions mentioned by Burnett in his testimony. P.P. 1889, Report of the Colonization Committee, 92.
35. Knight ruled his organization with a firm hand and expert staff. He was a leader of the old school of the pre-1889 establishment, but made a stand for a fixed standard of wages and was an advocate of trade federation — establishing in 1890 a Federation of the Engineering and Shipbuilding Trades of the United Kingdom. He had been a member of the T.U.C. Parliamentary Committee until 1883. See the Webbs, Trade Unionism, and Clegg et al., British Trade Unions.
36. The State-Directed Colonization Series, II, 121. The Glasgow shipwrights did not join the Association, but did signify their approval of its goals, as did the trades councils of Glasgow and Edinburgh.
37. Ibid., 124.
38. The National Association of Nut and Bolt Makers (Darlton, Cumberland), the Operative Plumbers' Association (Liverpool), and the Steam Engine Makers' Society (Manchester), though not Association members, sent their approval of the goals of the movement to the colonization conference in 1886.
39. Fox, Alan, A History of the National Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives, 1874-1957 (Oxford, 1958), p. 18Google Scholar.
40. The Colliery Enginemen's Association (Durham) sent approval to the 1886 conference, but did not join.
41. Clegg et al., British Trade Unions, 1.
42. P.P. 1889, Report of the Colonization Committees, 92.
43. Storm-Clark, Christopher, “The Miners, 1870-1970: A Tejt Case for Oral History,” Victorian Studies, XV, No. 1 (Sept., 1971), 52–3Google Scholar.
44. The Journeymen Brassfounders Association signified their approval in 1886.
45. The London Compositors spent £5,001 (1867-1889) on emigration benefits. P.P. 1889, Report of the Colonization Committee, 92.
46. Coote was an unsuccessful candidate (Lib-Lab) for North Camberwell in 1883. He later helped organize the Municipal Employees Union. By the mid 1880s he was becoming increasingly pre-occupied with the largely middle class movement for the suppression of prostitution and the white slave traffic, and was secretary of the National Vigilance Committee.
47. Webb, S. and Webb, B., Trade Unionism, p. 492Google Scholar.
48. Clegg, et al., British Trade Unions, 128Google Scholar; Webb, S. and Webb, B., Trade Unionism, p. 438Google Scholar.
49. The State-Directed Colonization Series, II, 126.
50. Simmons, Alfred, Words of Warning to Agricultural Labourers and Other Workingmen (Cobden Club Leaflet, No. 26, 1885), pp. 1–2Google Scholar.
51. Arnold, Rollo, “The ‘Revolt of the Field’ in Kent 1872-1879,” Past and Present, No. 64 (August, 1974), 71–95Google Scholar.
52. Horn, Pamela, Joseph Arch (Kineton, 1971), pp. 104, 109Google Scholar.
53. Clegg, et al., British Trade Unions, 45Google Scholar.
54. Ibid., 37.
55. Anonymous [George Kenneth Tate], London Trades Council, 1860-1950, A History (London, 1950), p. 58Google Scholar. The London Trades Council voted Nov. 9, 1883 to oppose emigration of the unemployed.
56. Clegg, et al., British Trades Unions, 40Google Scholar.
57. Robert Knight, 1875-1883; G. D. Kelley, 1871-72, 1883-84, 1887-88. 1890-92; Stuart Urtley, 1890-?; and James Mawdsley, 1882-83, 1884-90, 1891-97.
58. Between 1875 and 1885 the Parliamentary Committee of the T.U.C. avoided stormy issues, and concentrated on codification of criminal law, reform of the jury system, the assimilation of the county and borough franchise, extension of the hours of polling, etc. Manhood suffrage, and some of Chamberlain's more radical reforms were defeated at T.U.C. (Webb, S. and Webb, B., Trade Unionism, pp. 358–68Google Scholar).
59. Robert Knight of the Boilermakers, in his annual report for 1886, quoted by Clegg, et al., British Trade Unions, 54Google Scholar.
60. James Mawdsley at the International Trade Union Congress of 1886, (Paris), quoted by Webb, S. and Webb, B., Trade Unionism, p. 379Google Scholar.
61. C.O. 384/153 (nos. 1701 and 2423). The story of the National Association's negotiations with the government can be traced in the papers of the Emigration section of the Colonial Office (C.O. 384) between 1883 and 1889.
62. Much of this activity was duly reported in the Times. Also see State-Directed Colonization Series, I and II.
63. Earl of Meath, “State Colonization,” Time, 18 (May, 1888), 543–55Google Scholar; LordMonkswell, , “State Colonization,” Fortnightly Review, 43 (Jan.-June, 1888), 391Google Scholar; C.O. 384/170 (no. 9802).
64. P.P. 1890-1 [152], XI, Report of the Colonization Committee.
65. Mitchell, B. R. and Deane, Phyllis, Abstract of British Historical Statistics (Cambridge, 1962), p. 50Google Scholar.
66. Sir Robert Herbert to Lord Granville, Feb. 27, 1886. C.O. 384/162 (no. 2722).