That this meeting acknowledges the right of workmen to give or
withhold their labour, and asserts the equal rights of masters to give
or withhold employment; and that, when workmen unite to impose terms
upon their employers, the latter must either submit to that dictation,
or resist it by a similar union.
That experience at Leeds, Manchester, Sheffield, Huddersfield,
Wakefield, Leicester and Liverpool, has proved that the principles of
the Trades' Union are injurious to the interests of the masters, by
putting a stop to their several trades; to the commerce of the country,
by the suspension of work and consequent inability to execute domestic
or foreign orders; and ultimately to the members themselves. That to
regulate the price and hours of labour; to abolish piece-work and to
substitute day-work in lieu of it (thus placing the industrious and
skilful upon the same level with the idle and unskilful workmen): to
dictate to the masters whom they shall or shall not employ, and the
number of apprentices or learners they shall be allowed to take; and in
case of disobedience to the mandate of the Union, to withdraw his
work-people simultaneously from the service of the party disobeying,
and prevent any other workmen from entering his employ; are notoriously
the objects and practice of the Trades' Union.
That these objects have not only been unequivocally displayed by acts in the towns above referred to, and by similar proceedings in other places, but are avowed and advocated in the "Pioneer, or Trades' Union Magazine".
That the members of the Union are bound by a secret oath, and their admission is accompanied by mystical ceremonies, calculated and designed to impose upon and overawe the minds of credulous and unsuspecting men, and render them the unconscious slaves and ready tools of their more crafty leaders.
That the Derby Branch of the Trades' Union is yet in its infancy, but that its principles and objects are identical with those exhibited in other towns; and some of its members have not hesitated to declare that they are only waiting until the increase of its members and the augmentation of its funds shall enable it to act with more decisive effect.
That, as great numbers of the workmen in Derby have joined the Trades' Union, with a view to control their employers, and for the purposes which the latter believe to be destructive to their interests and utterly subversive of that free agency from which the Unionists claim for themselves those employers are compelled by necessity to unite in their own defence and do now resolve, unanimously,
That each of them will immediately cease to employ every man who is a member of the Trades' Union, and will not receive or take back into his service any man who continues to be a member of that Union, or of any other Union having similar objects.
That this resolution is adopted on the deliberate conviction that a prompt and vigorous, and persevering resistance to the Trades' Union is absolutely necessary, to protect the just rights of the masters, to preserve the commerce of the country, and to secure the true interests of the workers themselves.
Thomas Bridgett & Co
Ralph Frost
Boden & Morley
J & CS Peet
Wright & Baker
William Frost
William Taylor
Joseph Gascoyne
John Johnson
Thomas Cooper
S J Wright
William Mosedale
Joseph Hall
Richard McConnell
Robert Ward
Ed. Falconer
Joseph Cooper & Son
Thos. Tunaley, Jun.
John Adin