Page:Engines and men- the history of the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen. A survey of organisation of railways and railway locomotive men (IA enginesmenhistor00rayniala).pdf/66



N this and the succeeding chapter we shall trace together the years 1880 to 1885—years of slow progress, of foundation building, and of endurance in the buffeting of storms. The rule-books were no sooner out and the Society launched than hostile criticism about sectionalism made itself felt. An ample Protection Fund was a big and courageous thing to bid for, and a lively controversy at once arose in the "Gazette," and other service journals, about the "danger" and the "evil" of such a Society. Then, too, the Tay Bridge disaster of December, 1879, loomed large, and there were other ominous signs in the railway world. When the Great Western men decided to "resist to the utmost" the proposed reduction of wages and increase of hours, five of them wrote an assurance at once that they didn't mean it, they certainly did not mean a strike, nor membership with the new Society which promoted a Protection Fund. A statement was issued in "The Railway Service Gazette" by the committee of the proposed Locomotive Enginemen and Firemen's National Union, which gave point to this controversy, and excited the interest of footplate workers. As it is almost the earliest public intimation of the coming of the new spirit, I reproduce it here in full:—