earliest uses, perhaps the first use, of the term by Parliament
was in the statute of 1436 forbidding guilds and trading
companies from adopting by-laws "in restraint of trade," and
forbidding practices in price manipulations "for their own profit
and to the common hurt of the people." This doctrine thus early
invoked, and repeatedly reasserted against combinations of
traders and masters, was incorporated in the general statute of
1800 which declared all combinations of journeymen illegal. But
in spite of legal doctrines, of innumerable laws and court
decisions, strikes and combinations multiplied, and devices were
found for evading statutory wages.

In 1824 an act of Parliament removed the general prohibition of
combinations and accorded to workingmen the right to bargain
collectively. Three men were responsible for this noteworthy
reform, each one a new type in British politics. The first was
Francis Place, a tailor who had taken active part in various
strikes. He was secretary of the London Corresponding Society, a
powerful labor union, which in 1795 had twenty branches in
London. Most of the officers of this organization were at one
time or another arrested, and some were kept in prison three
years without a trial. Place, schooled in such experience, became
a radical politician of great influence, a friend of Bentham,
Owen, and the elder Mill. The second type of new reformer was
represented by Joseph Hume, a physician who had accumulated
wealth in the India Service, who had returned home to enter
public life, and who was converted from Toryism to Radicalism by
a careful study of financial, political, and industrial problems.
A great number of reform laws can be traced directly to his
incredible activity during his thirty years in Parliament. The