The flint glass makers' Union in the third quarter of the nineteenth century in Britain planned and attempted emigration and co-operative production, together with the restriction of apprenticeship and promotion control, all aimed at creating a permanent scarcity of skilled labour in order to keep wages high. Hence the Webbs used of the Union as an example of a 'New Model' union. Certainly the co-operative production was thought of as 'a means of absorbing the unemployed' among flint glass makers in the early 1850s and was revived in the mid-1860s, but the glass makers thought it too risky and it was not accomplished. An emigration scheme guided by doctorines of orthodox political ecnomy was also discussed in the early 1850s but in the period between 1852 and 1881 only fifty-nine glass makers emigrated. It is therefore misleading to regard the Union as enthusiastic emigrators by citing the policies often described in the Flint Glass Makers Magazine, as the Webbs have done. What the Webbs did not do was to count the actual number of emigrants.