ABSTRACT
Men who refused to work at the decreed rates could be imprisoned and further punished at the discretion of the Justices, and as 1736 it was the law of the land, and the colliers’ attention forcibly drawn to it in Dumbartonshire, that a collier’s statutory wage was only £1 2s. 6d. per annum. By Section IV of the Combination Act of 1800 a man might even be punished for the offence of merely attending a meeting designed for the purpose of securing a wages increase. No clauses were included in these Acts applying them specifically to Scottish legal conditions; but the judges soon applied them in practice, by deciding that combination was criminal under Scots law. In the boom period of the Franco-Prussian War Trade Unionism ran like a prairie fire through the coalfields of Scotland. In 1834 there was a West of Scotland Calico Printers Union, and a Masters’ Association on a similar geographical basis to counter it.
