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 that the amendment and passing of the laws would under those circumstances take up the whole time of the society until the next delegate meeting came round. The request, however, was taken up by other
• Stonemason/ Fortnightly Return, May 1836 (the circular issued fortnightly to all the branches by the executive committee). 2 Ibid. May 1837.
Primitive Democracy 2 1
branches, and by 1844 we find the practice established of making any necessary amendment in the rules by merely submitting the proposal in the Fortnightly Return, and adding! together the votes taken in each lodge meeting. A similarl change took place in such other great societies as the Iron- founders, Steam-Engine Makers, and Coachmakers. The great bulk of the members saw no advantage in incurring the very considerable expense of paying the coach fares of delegates to a central town and maintaining them there at the rate of six shillings a day,^ when the introduction of penny postage made possible the circulation of a fortnightly or monthly circular, through the medium of which their votes on any particular proposition could be quickly and inexpensively collected. The delegate meeting became, in fact, superseded by the Referendum."
By the term Referendum the modern student of political, institutions understands the submission to the votes of the ' whole people of any measure deliberated on by the repre- sentative assembly. Another development of the same prin- ciple is what is called the Initiative, that is to say, the right of a section of the community to insist on its proposals being submitted to the vote of the whole electorate. As a repre-| sentative assembly formed no part of the earlier Trade Union constitutions, both the Referendu m and theljoitiative-took with them the crudest shape. Any new rule or amendment of a rule, any proposed line of policy or particular application^ of it, might be straightway submitted to the votes of all the
In 1838 a large majority of the lodges of the Friendly Society of Operative
Stonemasons voted " that on all measures submitted to the consideration of our Society, the number of members be taken in every Lodge for and against such a measure, and transmitted through the district Lodges to the Seat of Government, and in place of the number of Lodges, the majority of the aggregate members to sanction or reject any measures."—Fortnightly Return, 19th January 1838.
^ It is interesting to find that in at least one Trade Union the introduction of the Referendum is directly ascribed to the circulation in England between 1850 and i860 of translations of pamphlets by Rittinghausen and Victor Consid^rant. It is stated in the Typographical Circular for March 1889, that John Melson, a Liver- pool printer, got the idea