Trade Union

in economics, an organization of wage earners engaged in the same trade, occupation, or calling. Trade is here used in the mechanical sense, as in a carpenter by trade, the trade of shoemaking, working at a trade, etc. The term has no reference to trade in the mercantile sense, as the oyster trade or holiday trade. On the other hand, wage earners, as clerks, conductors, firemen, and others, not working at a trade, are competent to organize a trade union. Mixed organizations composed of wage earners of different occupations are designated as labor unions. The distinction between a union based on a trade and a union based on labor is logical. Labor leaders regard a labor union rather as a catch-all, desirable only in case there are not enough of a trade to reorganize regular trade unions.

Trade unions are as old as the Temple of Solomon. Organizations of skilled workmen were known to the ancients. Despite the efforts of rulers and employers to prevent trade unions, it may be said they have been and are prevalent to the present day wherever wage earners have been drawn together in large numbers by building, manufacturing, mining, quarrying, and other lines of industry. The French employ the term syndicat. French restrictions were removed in 1884. Since that time the formation of syndicats has proceeded rapidly. The franc, 20 cents, is the usual entrance fee charged a French workman; monthly dues are ordinarily a dime. The French syndicat is a socialistic, a political club. Paris, with a multitude of interests; Lyons, the seat of the silk industry; Marseilles, with its warehouses and shipping; and the cities of the north are syndicat centers. The oldest existing syndicat, the typographical of Paris, dates from 1839. There were, in 1905, 1,006 local syndicats or trade unions, having 781,344 members. The local unions are organized into 153 federations. In point of membership, transportation, metals, mines, quarries, and textile trades, rank in the order named.

The German unions are chiefly socialistic; the tobacco workers organized in 1865, the printers in 1866. The Social Democrats are behind the unions. There were, in 1905, over 20,000 unions with a membership of a million and a third. Church authorities became alarmed lest the socialistic atmosphere of the unions breed contempt for religious duty. In 1894 a movement was started for Christian trade unions. In ten years' time these unions had 300,000 members, Still a third type of union, nonpolitical, non-sectarian, has 100,000 adherents.

Swiss trade-unions have won notable political recognition. A representative elected every three years by a congress of unions is accorded a salaried position in the federal government. His title is workman's secretary.

Italian trade-unionism dates from an organization among the printers of Turin in 1710 and the Pious Institute of Silk and Felt Makers of Turin in 1738. Florence, Rome, Naples, and other cities are Italian labor centers.

English journeymen were wont to form unions in the day of the guilds, but they do not appear to have formed persistent organizations. In 1700 there was complaint that 7,000 London "taylors" had combined to raise wages and leave off working an hour earlier. Parliament promptly forbade any such upstart proceeding, but the organization appears to have held together. In 1719 the Newcastle shoemakers organized; then in 1740 the London sailmakers; in 1752 the Glasgow coopers; in 1794 there were over fifty clubs at Nottingham; in 1750-1820 friendly societies became general in the factory and mining districts. Up to 1824 a combination to ask for higher wages--more bread--was a "conspiracy." In that year the "conspiracy laws" were repealed and the right of labor to associate seemed won, but the lawmakers remodeled old laws or invented new ones. As late as 1834 "seven harmless farm laborers of Dorsetshire were sentenced to seven years' transportation for joining a trade union which had among its initiation ceremonies the taking of an oath." Complete freedom of association was not accorded until 1875. About 1880 trade unions began to take a hand in politics. The elevation of John Burns to Parliament and a seat in the cabinet is one of the results.

American labor agitation is divided into five periods:

1. A formative period reaching to about 1840. The tangible result was a shortening of the day to ten hours.

2. 1840-1865. A period of socialistic attempts to found communities brought to a close by the Civil War. 3. 1865-1878. A period of organization. 4. 1878-1886. A period of gigantic strikes directed by the Knights of Labor. 5. 1886. The American Federation of Labor.

Philadelphia claims the honor of founding modern trade-unionism. A mechanics' union was founded in that city in 1827 and started a newspaper, the Mechanics' Free Press, in 1828. Similar organizations followed at New York, Troy, Albany, and Boston, yet by 1831 all were dead. The movement was reorganized, this time at New York, in 1833. The name, trade union, was imported at this time from Manchester, England, and has been employed continuously. American labor is organized on a non-political plan. Two principles have contended,--one an industrial organization, the other trade organization. The American Railway Union was an industrial organization. It aimed to associate all wage earners connected with railroads, whether they were conductors, brakemen, engineers, firemen, or laborers. It has given way to separate trade organizations of conductors, locomotive engineers, etc. The brewers, mine workers, and longshoremen are still organized on the industrial plan, but tradeunionism prevails in other industries. It has been found that the union between workers engaged in the same task and drawing the same wages is stronger and more wieldy than the larger, looser, and less unified combination of all wage earners in the industry. If now the brakemen desire to present a grievance they do not have to obtain the assent of the conductors. If the quarrymen decide to ask for shorter hours, the stonecutters are quite as apt to lend aid through the stonecutters' union as though they were members of a union that comprised all the trades represented in the stone industry.

The prevalence and strength of tradeunionism may be seen in the following table. Reports are dated 1907-9:

See Burns; John; Strikes; Factory System; Federation Of Labor; Gompers; Pullman; Knights Of Labor