illustrious founder. Next, he would consider the progress of their country as to certain leading questions, in which they were interested on behalf of the great body of the people, and as to which they had been able to intervene with decided and beneficial effect. And, lastly, he would extend his view to the general aspect, alike of his own country, and of the world at large, in all that enlivening race of progress upon which both were now surely embarked.
Yellowly's prime rule ever was, that union principles and union action should be unchallengable. Besides being the right thing in itself, this was almost even more for them, as the sure and only highway to that influence and power which ought to be, and which might be, wielded by a section of society so indispensable and numerically so great as theirs. The president then pointed out, in his comparative sketch, the narrow, selfish, and altogether unworthy aspect of many of the union rules and practices, as they stood in the nineteenth century. But as their order had long since emerged from all this mass of inferiority and weakness, there was the less need to sacrifice much time and thought upon it now. Yellowly had especially set his face against every kind and form of union coercion; and, by his persistent efforts in this direction, he had altered the entire union constitution, so as to convert membership into a valued privilege, instead of a coercive inclusion. His effective lever in all his high class reforms was this great representative National Trades Union, which, as his own
