Sheffield Daily Telegraph – Monday 17 April 1893
Mr. Greenwood On The Glass Workers’ Dispute
The second annual demonstration in connection with the Mexborough and District Federated Trades Council was held on Saturday at the South Yorkshire Square, Mexborough, when there was a large concourse of people with bands and banners. Fully 3,000 were present. They included the glass bottle workers of Mexborough, Conisbrough, Swinton, and Kilnhurst, the miners from the Wath Main, Manvers Main, Denaby Main, and Thrybergh Hall collieries, and the potters, stove-grate workers, and printers of the district. Mr. J. J. Baser, president of the Council, occupied the chair, and supporting him were Messrs. A. Greenwood, secretary of the Glass Bottle Workers’ Union; C. Hobson, president of the Sheffield Trades Council; H. Sanders, secretary of the National Stove Grate Workers’ Union; W. Parrott, of the South Yorkshire Miners’ Association; A. Chappell, president of the Barnsley Trades Council; A. F. Bedford, Barnsley; J. Dixon, J. Kerry, C. Redfern, H. and J. Liversidge, H. Barnett, Squires, Hancock, Garfitt, E. Taylor, J. Barron, Goddard, and T. Gravill (secretary to the Council).
The Chairman, in opening, said the Council had 6,000 members affiliated to it, and its object was to unite in the bonds of friendship all classes of industry, and achieve the rights and privileges of the working classes. They had taken part in local elections. In the first three they returned their candidates, but in the fourth, the recent Local Board election at Mexborough, they were defeated. He hoped that at the next election working men would not be led astray by bills sent out without a printer’s name upon them. The glass bottle makers now on strike were affiliated to the Council, which would help to bring them off to victory. If the men were to go in at a reduction it would have a tendency to bring down wages in every industry. He mentioned the Hull dockers’ strike, and said there was a docker amongst them that night who had only been getting 12s. per week.
Mr. Parrott expressed the sympathy of the miners with the glass bottle hands, and said if the employers could see such a meeting they would perceive that they had been knocked out of time. With a little more patience, and keeping themselves within the limits of the law, they would gain victory. Many of the manufacturers were getting tired of the dispute, and were wishing they had never entered it. The glass bottle makers had been second to none in trade union principles, and the whole of the men, when the strike occurred, were members of the Society. In addition to that, they were most loyal when called upon to pay levies, and he heard that they had been called upon to pay as much as 12s. per week in that way, without murmuring. It was a credit to the men, and showed that they were determined not to go down below a living wage. The miners paid levies with great loyalty, but there were few trades unionists who would meet them so manfully as the glass bottle workers had done. He could not understand why the manufacturers should have attacked them in the way they did, and for such a big reduction, because he knew that a firm not far from Barnsley, Dan Rylands’, had paid 10 per cent. dividend ever since it was established, and if that was not a fair dividend he did not know what was. He maintained that they ought to have striven to have paid the wages they were doing until they had come to a considerable amount below 10 per cent. The men were justified in their action, and the masters might as well try to smash the Rock of Gibraltar with snowballs as attempt to smash the men.
He moved:—(1) “That this meeting strongly sympathises with the glass bottle workers in the stand they are now taking, and believes they are fully justified in their present efforts in resisting the attempted reduction of wages. (2) That this meeting believes it to be essentially necessary that the men in order to successfully resist the reduction asked for by the employer should receive the support of all organised workmen, especially so inasmuch that we believe that if the glass workers are defeated, it will have a serious effect on all organised labour. (3) In order to show our brothers that our sympathy is of a practical nature, this meeting strongly urges upon all trades in the district to make a substantial levy for the glass workers, believing they are entitled to the same after 15 weeks’ stand.”
Mr. Redfern seconded, and spoke of the glass bottle manufacturers as “living sumptuously, and wearing purple and fine linen.”
Mr. Sanders supported the resolutions, and urged trades unionists to stand shoulder to shoulder through storm and sunshine. In regard to levies generally, there were trades unionists who made them the ground to leave their unions. As to the glass bottle hands, the amount of support they had got had quite determined them not to give way to the demands of the employers. Whilst trades unionist leaders were frequently taunted with causing disputes between employers and workmen, and with destroying that good feeling which ought to exist between them, this was a case deliberately entered upon by the employers, and there was nothing to do but either to cringe or to fight. The men had denounced the demands of the employers as unjust, and no matter how long the fight might continue the employers would have to lower their colours. He asked that the battle should be recorded as a signal defeat of the masters, and that the sufferings entailed upon men, women, and children should be laid upon the shoulders of the employers. There were times when their feelings went forth with pleasure in acknowledgment of good employers, and he was hopeful that amongst the manufacturers in the glass trade there were at least a few honourable men left. They had been piling up their heaps of gold at the expense of the men, and he hoped that that meeting would send up its voice in support of the men, and in condemnation of the employers. The struggle of the glass blowers was an object lesson for other men. He praised the manliness and courage shown by the glass blowers of the district. The money that had been sent to them had been clean money, and had been given to a fight for principle. He was not one to urge the men forward in an unjust fight, but the fight had, up to now, been an honourable one on both sides. The men had been fighting for themselves.
Mr. Hobson also supported the resolutions. He said these were troublesome times. There were wars and rumours of wars, and the employers of labour were very much harassed and perplexed at the condition of the labourer, and the tactics of the Unionists. They wondered whatever unionists were going to do, and what they were going to be. Mr. Hobson was interrupted in his remarks by a drunken man, and held his hand up in token that he wanted quietness before he went on. The interruptions were persisted in, and the Chairman then appealed to “Billy,” with a threatening finger, and asked him to clear away until he got more sense. Mr. Hobson then proceeded to draw a contrast between the way the employers of labour in Germany and those in England liked to show how it was that Germans could compete with this country, when “Billy’s” voice was again heard. The Chairman shouted that if he did not move, he would be moved. “Billy’s” friends were then heard trying to pacify him. Mr. Hobson then proceeded to refer to the Hull strike, and said he had been down there to assist the dockers. Mr. C. Wilson, the man whom they were fighting, was a poor man 26 years ago, but he and his brother were millionaires to-day. A system which allowed one man to be a millionaire and another to be a pauper could not be right. The pauper was the man who had produced the wealth, but the other man had got it.
Mr. Bedford said Redfern’s had given in that day, and he thought Kilner’s would be next. He prophesied that the glass bottle strike would be over in a few days.
Mr. Greenwood, who was the next speaker, was received with hearty applause. As secretary of the Glass Bottle Workers’ Union he devoted his remarks to the dispute in the trade. He said the men had been locked out because the employers said they could not afford to pay the wages and continue the working regulations of 1892. The workmen, on the contrary, maintained that they could; if they could not, then they ought to do; and if they ought to do, but could not, it was because they had not adopted such means as would have enabled them to do so. For five years past the workmen had been pleading with the manufacturers to unite amongst themselves in order that they should get a fair price for their manufactures. They ought to have a profit; they must have a profit, in order to pay wages; but if they ran prices down to starvation point, then they would not be in a position to pay the workmen for their labour, and they, and not the men, must take the consequences. The men had told the employers that for years past they had been held in subjection, had been screwed down, that their conditions of labour had been oppressive, and instead of their wages improving, and their working conditions improving, as other workmen’s wages and conditions had improved during the past 30 years, the bottle hands’ wages had deteriorated, their conditions had been slavish, and that was a wrong state of things in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The workmen held the employers responsible for the condition of the market, and they said that if there was no profit on their manufactures, and trade was bad, they must blame themselves for wanting a reduction, and not the workmen. If the employers neglected to improve the prices in the market, and trade became slack, they must not expect that the men would submit to a reduction of any kind.
In September, 1891, the manufacturers held a meeting, and there declared that the condition of the market was satisfactory, and they were enabled to make a profit out of their works. They also declared that they would retain the prices of 1891 in 1892, but in five weeks from then they served the workmen with notice of a 3s. reduction. The workmen refused to submit to it, and the employers withdrew it. In 1892, trade having been slack, and the employers having had a bad season in consequence of the unfavourable weather, they came upon the men for the following reductions:—6s. per week on 33s., 6s. on 31s., 6s. on 26s., and 10 per cent. on other wages, and the abolition of four clauses in the working regulations. The workmen served the masters with five counter proposals, intended to improve the workmen’s conditions instead of making them worse, and the employers rejected them. They therefore came out, and had been out 15 weeks. During this time there had been a loss involved in wages and in society funds of over £100,000, and the glass bottle manufacturers in Yorkshire, apart from any others, were responsible for every shilling of the money, and for every pang of hunger, privation, and suffering which had befallen the workmen, their wives, and children. It was far from the workmen to assume a dictatorial and arrogant position. They offered to renew the 1892 rates and conditions for 1893. They did not wish to stop the industry. The employers, however, saw fit to lock the men out during the inclement season, and where was their sense of humanity in doing that? They did not show any feeling for the men, but thought of causing them to comply with their demands. He hoped there was a prospect of settlement, and he would not say anything calculated to hinder it. The men were quite ready to co-operate with the manufacturers in order that they might so conduct their business as to pay good wages. He was prepared, if they could not agree to that, not merely to go through the United Kingdom, but on the Continent and to America to get money for the men to continue the fight. In the past five weeks he had got £5,000, and more was coming in. He appealed to the miners for substantial help, as the bottle hands helped them in that district a few years ago. He hoped, however, for a resumption of work, and that the manufacturers would try to meet foreign competition just as the men met foreign workmen.
The resolutions were then carried unanimously.
Mr. Chappell moved a resolution expressive of sympathy with the Hull dockers in their strike. He said two candidates for Parliament (Messrs. Fleming and Acland) were upon their platform last year, but where were they the other night, when a Labour member rose to move the adjournment of the House in order to discuss affairs at Hull? They had to be careful who they put on municipal bodies. Mr. Holman, who was on the Sheffield Watch Committee, prevented the police of Sheffield being sent to Hull in support of the masters.
Mr. J. Dixon seconded the resolution, which was supported by a docker named Harrison, who said men like Charles Wilson were able to finance the Liberal party, and while they elected such men to represent them in Parliament they could expect nothing else but what had happened.
The resolution was carried, and the meeting then terminated.