to shift the seat of this authority long manifested itself and still lingers in some trades,* the growth of anj official staff, and the necessity of securing accommodation on some durable tenancy, has practically made the head-f quartgrs—stationary, even if the change has not been ex-j pressly recorded in the rules. Thus the Friendly Society of Ironfounders has retained its head office in London since 1 846, and the Friendly Society of Operative Stonemasons since 1883. The United Society of Boilermakers, which long wandered from port to port, has remained in Newcastle since 1880; and finally" settled the question in 1888 by building itself palatial offices on a freehold site.' Here again
^ Rule 12 in the editions of Rules of 1891 and 1894.
' Notably the Plumbers and Irondressers. In 1877 a proposal at the general council of the Operative Bricklayers' Society to convert the executive into a shifting one, changing the headquarters every third year, was only defeated by a casting vote. — Operative Bricklaytrf Society Trade Circular, September 1877.
^ Along with this change has gone the differentiation of national business from that of the branch. The committee work of the larger societies became more than could be undertaken, in addition to the branch management, by men giving only their evenings. We find, therefore, the central executive committee becoming a body distinct from the branch committee, sometimes (as in the United Society of Operative Plumbers) elected by the same constituents, but more usually by the members of all the branches within a convenient radius of the central office. Thus the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters gives the election to the members within twelve miles of the head office—that is, to the thirty-five branches in and near Manchester—and the Friendly Society of Ironfounders to the six branches of the
1 8 Trade Union Structure
^the deeply -rooted desire on the part of Trade Union demo- icrats to secure to each section an equal and identical share «n the government of the society has had to give way before >the necessity of obtaining e fficient ad ministration. In ceasing to be movable the executive committee lost even such , moral influence over the general secretary as was conveyedj^ by an express and recent delegation by the remainder of the society. The salaried official, elected by the votes of all the members, could in fact claim to possess more representative authority than a committee whose functions as an executive depended merely on the accident of the society's offices being built in the town in which the members of the committee happened to be working. In some societies, moreover, the idea of Rotation of Office so far survived that the committee men were elected for a short term and disqualified for re-election. Such inexperienced and casually selected I^^QSEmittees of tired manual workers, meeting only in the evening, usually found themselves incompetent to resist, or even to criticise, any practical proposal that might be brought forward by the permanent trained professional whom they were supposed to direct and control.^
In face of so weak an executive committee the most obvious check upon the predominant power of the salaried officials was the elementary device of a written constitution. The ordinary workman, without either experience or imagina- tion, fondly thought that the executive government of a great national organisation could be reduced to a mechanical obedience to printed rules. Hence the constant elaboration of the rules of the several societies, in the vain endeavor to leave nothing to the discretion of officers or corhmittees. It was an essential part of the faith of these primitive democrats that the difficult and detailed work of drafting and amendindf
London district. In the United Society of Boilennakeis, down to 1897, the twenty lodges in the Tyne district, each in rotation, nominated one of the seven members of which the executive committee is composed.
• The only organisation, outside the Trade Union world, in which the execu- tive committee and the seat of government are changed annually, is, we believe,' the Ancient Order of Foresters, the worldwide federal friendly society.
Primitive Democracy ig
these rules should not be delegated to any partkular person or persons, but should be undertaken by " the body " or " the trade " in general meeting assembled.^
When a society spread from town to town, and a meeting of all the members became impracticable, the " articjes-i^ere settled, as we have mentioned, by a meeting ofSelegates, and any revision was undertaken by the same body. Accordingly, we find, in the early history of such societies as the Iron- founders, Stonemasons, Carpenters, Coachmakers, and Steam- Engine Makers, frequent assemblies of delegates from the different branches, charged with suppTementing or revising the somewhat tentative rules upon which the society had been based. But it would be a serious misconception to take these gatherings for " parliaments," with plenary power to determine the policy to be pursued by the society. The delegates came together only for specific and strictly limitedv purposes. Nor were even these purposes left to be dea^ with at their discretion. In all cases that we know of th6 delegates were bound to decide according to the votes already taken in their respective branches. In many societies the delegate was merely the vehicle by which" " the voices " of the members were mechanically con- veyed. Thus the Friendly Society of Operative Stone- masons, at that time the largest and most powerful Trade
1 This preference of Trade Unionists for making their own rules wall remind the political student that " direct legislation by the people " has an older and wider history with regard to the framing and revising of constitutions than with regard to ordinary legislation. Thus, already in 1779 the citizens of Massa- chusetts insisted on asserting, by popular vote, that a constitution should be fiamed, and equally on deciding that the draft prepared should be adopted. In 1818 the Connecticut constitution included a provision that any particular amendment to it might be submitted to the popular vote. In Europe the first constitution to be submitted to the same ordeal was the French constitution of 1793, which, though adopted by the primary assemblies, never came into force. The practice became usual with regard to the Swiss cantonal constitutions after the French Revolution of 1830, St. Gall leading the way in July 1831. See the elaborate treatise of Charles Borgeaud on The Adoption and Amendment 0/ Constitutions (London, 1895); Bryce's The American Commonwealth (London,
^i)i); and Le Referendum en Suisse hy Simon Deploige (Brussels, 1892), of
which an English translation by C. P. Trevelyan and Lilian Tomn, with additional notes and appendices, will shortly be published by the London School of Economics and Political Science.
20 Trade Union Structure
Union, held annual delegate meetings between 1834 and 1839 foi" the sole purpose of revising its rules. How limited was the power of this assembly may be judged from the following extract from an address of the central executive; " As the delegates are about to meet, the Grand Committee submit to all lodges the following resolutions in reference to the conduct of delegates. It is evident that the duty of delegates is to vote according to the instructions of the majority' of their constituents, therefore they ought not to propose any ^e33ure unl ess r ecommended by the Lodges or Districts they rej3fese§%-^ To effect this we propose the following resolutions : that each Lodge shall furnish their delegates! with written instructions how to vote on each question thq^ diave taken into their consideration, and that no delegate shall vote in opposition to his instructions, and when it Appears by examining the instructions there is a majority for any measure, it shall be passed without discussion." ^ The ^felegate meeting of 1838 agreed with this view. All lodges were to send resolutions for alterations of rules two months before the delegate meeting ; they were to be printed in the Fortnightly Return, and discussed by each lodge ; the delegate was then to be instructed as to the sense of the members by a majority vote ; and only if there was no decided majority on any point was the delegate to have discretion as to his vote. But even this restriction did not satisfy the Stone- masons' idea of democracy. In 1837 the Liverpool Lodge demanded that " all the alterations made in our laws at the grand delegate meeting" shall be communicated to all the lodges " for the consideration of our society before they are printed." ' The central executive mildly deprecated such a course, on the ground
