Page:The History of Trade Unionism - Sidney and Beatrice Webb (1920).djvu/25



, as we understand the term, is a continuous association of wage-earners for the purpose of maintaining or improving the conditions of their working lives. This form of association has, as we shall see, existed in England for over two centuries, and cannot be supposed to have sprung at once fully developed into existence. But although we shall briefly discuss the institutions which have sometimes been described as the forerunners of Trade Unionism, our narrative will commence only from the latter part of the seventeenth century, before which date we have been unable to discover the existence in the British Isles of anything falling within our definition. Moreover, although it is suggested that analogous associations may have existed during the Middle Ages in various parts of the Continent of Europe, we have no reason to suppose that such institutions