improve workers' living conditions. He also advocated a de-centralized trade union federation structure. Many of the later anarcho-syndicalists including Rudolf Rocker agree with this notion. Hans Manfred Bock, on the other hand, sees no evidence for Hillmann's influence on the FVdG. From 1878 to 1890, the Anti-Socialist Laws forbade all socialist trade unions. Only small local organizations, which communicated via intermediaries such as stewards, who worked illegally or semi-legally, survived. This form of organization was easier to protect against state repression. After the laws were sunset in 1890, the General Commission of the Trade Unions of Germany was founded on November 17 at a conference in Berlin to centralize the socialist labor movement. In 1892, the Trade Union Congress of Halberstadt was held to organize the many local unions under the committee. The localists, 31,000 of whom were represented at the congress, wanted to retain many of the changes that had been adopted during the repressive period. For example, they opposed separate organizations for political and economic matters, such as the party and the trade union. They especially wanted to keep their grassroots democratic structures. They also advocated local trade unions being networked by delegates rather than ruled centrally, and were wary of bureaucratic structures. The localists' proposals were rejected at the Halberstadt congress, so they refused to join the centralized trade unions, which became known as the Free Trade Unions. They did not renounce social democracy, but rather considered themselves to be an avant-garde within the social democratic movement in Germany. The localists' main stronghold was in Berlin, although localist unions existed in the rest of the Empire as well. Masons, carpenters, and some metal-working professions—especially those requiring a higher degree of qualification like coppersmiths or gold and silver workers—were represented in large numbers. By 1891, there were at least 20,000 metal workers in localist trade unions, just as many as in the centralized German Metal Workers' Union. Founding At a congress in 1897 in Halle, the localists founded a national organization of their own, the Representatives' Centralization of Germany (Vertrauensmänner-Zentralisation Deutschlands). The congress was originally supposed to take place a year earlier, but a lack of interest forced it to be postponed. There were 37 delegates at the congress representing 6,803 union members. Nearly two-thirds of the delegates came from Berlin or Halle. Almost half the delegates worked in the construction industry, while 14 delegates came from highly