THE CLOTHWORKERS' COMPANY. THE CLOTHWORKERS' COMPANY.
THERE is nothing like the concrete and particular for bringing home to the mind that which is lost in the abstract and general. The City Companies are always complaining of misrepresentation in gross, and broad, and sweeping statements. That we may be no longer, if we ever were, open to that reproach, we propose to take one of the Companies by itself, and see how it came by its charter and its money, and how it used or abused them. Any Company would do. It is a case of ex uno disce mimes. We thought of taking the Mercers', as the richest of all, the senior Company, and that which is adorned by that great legal luminary, the Lord Chancellor. But, on the whole, that example might be too shocking. All the Companies are not as bad as the Mercers', as close in their constitution, or as lucrative in hard cash to their members. In default of any special reason for choosing any other Company, as a member of the Clothworkers' has chosen to take-up the cudgels on behalf of himself and all other Liverymen of the City of London—past, present, and to be—we concluded to take the Clothworkers'. They are the latest-born of the " great" Companies in their present form, and rank as junior on the list. In point of wealth, they are neither the richest nor the poorest, standing, indeed, about midway. Their income is in round figures £50,000. They have spent part• of it in quite recent years in an exceptionally useful manner. They are not a particularly close body, as these bodies go. They are, take them altogether, a fair, rather-above-the-average specimen of a great Com pany. The "Master Wardens and Commonalty of Freemen of the Art or Mystery of Clothworkers of the City of London," date from the reign of Henry VIII, A.D. 1527, when the two more ancient Companies of " Fullers" and " Sheermen" were united and reincorporated as the " Fraternity or Guild of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary of the Clothworkers of London." These Clothworkers were originally persons engaged in the trade whose name they bore. As such, they were given a right of search for bad materials, to " ensure that the cloth put up for sale was true cloth of true texture and full weight." They were also to be arbitrators in disputes between members of the trade ; were a benefit-society and burial-club for poor members, and a dining-club. It is to be noted that for all these purposes those carrying on the trade of clothworkers were the subjects or objects of the incorporation of the Company. So late as Charles L's reign one of their charters declares that " All persons as well native as foreign " (i.e., Londoners or not) " who then used, or should thereafter use, the mystery of Fullers, or Sheermen, or Clothworkers within the City or suburbs " (the Company was, therefore, intended for greater as well as lesser London), "should be one body politic and corporate." Clearly, therefore, it was as a Trades' Union, with all the subsidiary attributes which those bodies had then as they have now, that the Clothworkers were incorporated. But, says the Company, already in 1560, of the Master and four Wardens of the Company only one was a clothworker. The obvious reflection is,—such were the evil effects of incorporation when accompanied by the mischievous right of patrimony,—that is, of giving the children the rights possessed by their fathers without any regard to the duties they performed or the fitness of things. But because a public grant was abused, is that any reason for asserting that it was not a public grant ; or that the body which exists by virtue of it is not a public body If already in Queen Elizabeth's time, hardly more than a generation after their incorporation, the members had ceased to be clothworkers, that only meant that the Company had pro tam° already ceased to fulfil the object of its creation. But its right of search had not then fallen into abeyance. It was not till 1754, it seems, that the Company ceased to appoint searchers, who were to do for cloth what Inspectors and Public Analysts are expected• to do now for food. The inference to be drawn is not that since 1754 the Company has existed as a body of absolute owners without duties, but that at least as early as 1754 the Clothworkers' charter ought to have been forfeited. It was then rare to find a clothworker a worker in cloth, and the Company had ceased to perform the duties, whether commercial or social, which it was instituted to perform, for its social rites were, like its commercial rules, to be for the benefit of Clothworkers. The Company, however, seems to think that because it never has been attacked, that is conclusive proof that it could not rightly have been attacked, and ought not to be attacked now. But cui &ono the attack ? The Crown, which alone could have—as in the quo warrento case—any interest in enforcing a forfeiture of the charters, found it more profitable to be bribed to renew them. Moreover, in times when everything tended to become hereditary, from the Crown or an earldom down to the Parliamentary and Municipal Franchise ; or later, could be bought for gold, from Church livings to the City of London Common-Crier's-Second-Young-Man-ship, traditions arose under which it was not likely that any one would think of assaulting, or could have greatly hoped to be successful if he had assaulted, rights claimed to arise by inheritance or by purchase. Besides, not only would the event of the battle have been doubtful, but the spoils at that time were not nearly so well worth fighting for. The great rise in value of the property of the Companies has taken place in the last hundred years, owing to the growth of London. A further accession, perhaps even a larger part of the accession, is due to the cessation of Trusts which had become obsolete, or the growth of the value of the estate out of all proportion to the income which the founder had expected out of it, and which alone he had dealt with. The title-deeds have never been produced or examined by any outsider. But there is evidence, in regard to the charities upon which the Charity Commissioners have reported, that a large " unearned increment " has accrued to the Clothworkers' Company. For instance, James Finch, by will in 1508, gave to the Company premises in Hey Wharf Lane, " Upon Trust, that the Master and Wardens should find and sustain yearly a Doctor or Bachelor of Divinity to read divinity in Whittington College three days a week," and that they "should pay yearly to the said reader of divinity for his salary, to be had of the issues and profits of the said premises, £10." In 1879, the Company still paid only £10 to the reader in divinity. Meanwhile, the premises out of which the £10 is paid, are let for £230 a year. Ten pounds was the full rental value, or close on it, at the time of the gift, and no one can doubt that the Testator intended the reader to have the benefit of the full value. But, unfortunately, he did not say so, and so the Company is now able to return the premises as "acquired in their corporate right, free of trust, charitable, or otherwise ;" and gets £220 a year to spend in living as they feel disposed, while the lecturer whom the land was intended to support, gets his paltry pittance of £10. Can any one, without prejudice in favour of the Company, contend that they have any moral claim, whatever may be the case as to their legal claim, on this property In some instances of this kind, the Attorney-General made the Company disgorge, and enforced the Trusts. But still, the Company had got their benefit for a century or more, and in many they have not disgorged. But whether the bulk of the corporate property was or was not derived from moral or legal breaches of trust, there is no doubt that it is held by a corporation which has not for a hundred and fifty years fulfilled, or pretended to fulfil,—which refused and continues to refuse to fulfil, and which denies that it ought to fulfil, —any duties to the public, or to that portion of the public whose name it bears, and for whose benefit it was created. It would require very strong evidence that the money which it enjoys is spent in the best of all possible ways, before the public—the effective voting public of to-day—would acquiesce in its continued existence. How do they spend their £50,000 a year I In .the first place, the outgoings, including insurance, propertytax, estate expenses, law charges, interest, and a rebate of half the amount of the mortgage-money due on the Irish estate (sold in 1872) amounted to something over £6,000. Then oome salaries, stated at £3,070. Of these, some ought to be apportioned for the benefit of the members of the Company, as clerk, beadle, assistant beadle, and porter all perform very important functions in regard to the entertainments. As a limited estimate, apportion ten per cent. of the salaries for this purpose, or £300. Now for the greatest and noblest items of expenditure, that on the Company's own members. These are—Hall, £3,035 16s. ; Livery Hall entertainments, £8,742 ; or, including the apportioned salaries, but not including anything for insurance and the other items above mentioned, £12,000, for the "creature comforts" of the Company. It is true, as we have been reminded, that princes, peers, and editors are admitted to share in these comforts on occasion ; but it may be questioned whether even the princes, peers, and editors who have been so fortunate as to be admitted would, if polled on the fatal "day after," of which Pindar sings, vote for the expenditure of £12,000 on their entertainment. Besides, these august beings bear a very small proportion, after all, to the one hundred and fifty Liverymen and their private friends who have the pleasure of gazing at them, and, what is more, eating in their company ; and all the entertainments are not thus thrown open. But some of the •Company get even more solid satisfaction than turtle-soup and the company of peers, princes, and editors. Of one hundred and fifty Liverymen, fortyfour 4constitute the Court. In 1880 they divided £3,523, or something over £80 a year each. Of this, the Master gets £315 during his year of office, the Wardens £105, and the rest are said to average seventy to eighty guineas. Use average duration of the office of member of the Court is stated at twenty years, so that an annuity of !AO a year for twenty years is not a bad return for an investment of £200, the utmost required of a Liveryman even coming in by purchase. Even to he a common freeman oaree woman (for women are still admitted to the lower grades) is not amiss. £5,781 was spent in charity on poor members of the Company and their families in 1880. Of this amount, £1,250 went in pensions to Liverymen and their widows and children ; the rest to the free men and women and their families. The sums spent on the latter exclude a dinner on St. Thomas's Dv, but include a sovereign a-piece as dessert to that dinner. besides this, same, which the returns do not ascertain, are spent on the education of members' children. At Sutton Valance School. a certain number ,(in 1860 six) of Clothworkers' boys were educated and boarded free. The Company have also bought, And confine to members' families, ten presentations at the Middle-Class School, Finsbury, for boys, and ten presentations at the North London and Camden Schools for girls, including education, books, dapboard, railway-pass, &c. They make grants "not exceeding half the total annual cost of education at schools, colleges, &c., to be selected by the parents." Besides this, there are three junior and three senior scholarships after leaving school of £30 and £50 a year, each confined to free men or women's children. There are also exhibitions amounting to £570 a year, tenable at Oxford and Cambridge, for children selected by the Committee of the Court on grounds of poverty and desert. In all, £1,930, and probably more, appears to be spent on education, chiefly perhaps the education of members' families. The total spent directly or indirectly on the members they sum-up at £23,200 a year, of which £12,000 is for "creature comforts," £3,750 in hard cash, and the reet in charity and education. But we have been told the members contribute more than they get. In 1880 members contributed £642.
Of the rest of the expenditure, £7,000 is under Charitable Trusts. Of the corporate income £2,500, less than sums already reckoned as part of the education given to members' families, goes in Scholarships and Exhibitions, of which £600 is devoted to the education of girls ; £5,000 in subscriptions and donations to asylums, hospitals, &c. The best and biggest payments of all were £6,000 in aid of Technical Education. In this respect the Company has become reawakened to a sense of its origin and its duties in relation to clothworking. It has voted in ten years £32,000 for buildings in connection with the cloth centres at Leeds, Bradford, and Huddersfield, and £10,000 to the City and Guilds of London Institute, besides annual subscriptions. This, no doubt, is an excellent work, and no money could be better spent. All the same, Londoners may fairly complain that moneys raised from them and intended for them are spent in Yorkshire, Glasgow, Bristol, and elsewhere. Nor will even £11,000 a year spent in charity and education go far to justify the continued existence of a body which has no longer any raison d'être, and which spends the larger part of its vast available income on its omnium gatherunz of members, and in providing snug berths for those who can get interest with it.
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