PIONEER UNIONIST

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 13, 15 July 1924, Page 7

PIONEER UNIONIST

DEATH OP ROBERT .APPLEGARTH.

(UNITED PRESS ASSOCIATION.—COPYRIGHT.)

(REUTERS TELEGRAM.) ' .'■■ ■ (Received 15th July, 9 a.m.) ; LONDON, 14th July. The trade union pioneer, Eobert Applegarth, is dead, aged ninety. The late Robert App'.egarth, who was bom at Kingston-on-Hull in January, 3834, was the son of a sailor who, in. the course of his voyagings, went to the Arctic in the Terror, as quartermaster. He" had but a scanty education, which, however, he added to by his own efforts in England and in America, and later in, Manchester and Sheffield. He became especially interested in economic and industrial questions, and in the condition of the working men of those days. He was a member of the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners, of j which he was general secretary from 1562 till 1871. Active in political re-I form, and popular educational movements, his influence was recognised by.' hia appointment—the first of a' working man—as a member of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the C. -D. Acts and was a member of many important industrial and other organisations. He was a delegate to the International ConRress at" Basle in 1869. During the ■Franco-Prussian War he represented the "Sheffield Independent," " The Scotsman," and "The New York World " as war corresprnd^nt. . .