... the forces that have contributed to the woman movement have been increasing in scope and intensity. Women's education is no longer inferior to that of men . . . the popular attitude toward women's work has changed completely. . . . This woman movement is a movement for liberty, freedom of action and thought, tending toward a condition when women shall be accorded equal independence and responsibility with men, equal freedom of work and self-expression, equal legal protection and rights.

we should view with apprehension present sentiment in favor of setting up public and political agencies for securing industrial benefits for wage-earning women. These agencies would constitute a restriction upon freedom of action capable of serious abuses. Instead of aiding women in the struggle for industrial betterment and freedom, we should be foisting upon them fetters from which they would have to free themselves in addition to the problems that now confront them, and we should still leave unsolved the problem essential to real freedom-self-discipline, development of individual responsibility and initiative. The industrial problems of women are not isolated, but are inextricably associated with those of men. . . . We cannot encourage too enthusiastically or too fully efforts of women to help themselves, to secure for themselves needed reforms, and to associate themselves in trade unions which protect individual freedom and promote the general wellbeing.1

CHAPTER VI

INDUSTRIAL AND TRADE ORGANIZATION

Forces which make for trade and for industrial organizationCounter criticisms-Past efforts to form industrial unionsOpportunity for choice of form of International A. F. of L. unions-" Autonomy Declaration" of A. F. of L.-Jurisdiction disputes-Building Trades Department: industry divided into trades on the capital side; changes in processes; reduction of sympathetic movements-Metal Trades Department: efforts to amalgamate; substitution of local industrial agreements for trade-Railway Employees Department: the "Federation of Federations "-Department of Mines: sentiment against trade autonomy within the A. F. of L.-Chicago Pressmen's strike-Strike of the Light, Heat, and Power Council of California-A. F. of L. industrial unions: United Mine Workers; Western Federation; Brewery Workers-Industrial contract with capital— Industrial unionism of I. W. W.-Where an industrial and where a trade union functions.

WHEN a wage earner discovers that, as an individual, he is at a disadvantage in selling his labor; and that this disadvantage is the outcome of his own competition with fellow workers for the same jobs, the discovery places him in possession of the remedy, which is combination. The sort of combination which logically follows his discovery is not combination with all wage earners, but with those who are after the same jobs. Such combinations are the trade unions, and such unions are simple business propositions,

especially for those workers who pursue trades or crafts which require some degree of experience and training.

It was in the nature of the situation that the workers who followed a trade which required skill and training would be interested in propositions for the preservation of trade standards, and that workers without special skill would show less concern. As skilled workers can earn more at their own trade than at any other kind of labor, the keeping up of the wage level is to them a matter of life interest. It is true, as a general proposition, that organization by trade, and permanent organization of any sort, has appealed to workers according as they have little or much to gain in the trade they follow.

Trade union combination is so obviously superior to the competition of individuals looking for work that workers, under stress of intense competition, would have combined almost instinctively if their combinations had not met the drastic opposition of those who controlled the distribution of the jobs.

The trade form of organization not only follows the impulse for combination under stress of competition, but it follows individual preferences in the association of men of similar equipment and social standing. All other things being equal, machinists as a group would be more harmonious than a mixed group of machinists and shoe operators: or carpenters would appreciate association with other carpenters more than

association with the various sorts of employees in a department store. The trade union is in this sense an instinctive form of organization, and, as it follows individual preferences, it is the primitive form of the existing labor combinations. Herein lies the strength and the weakness of pure and simple "

trade unionism.

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The industrial union is based on the labor groupings which capital creates for the manufacture and distribution of a commodity or of commodities of a similar character in competition or use.

The indus

trial unionists not only disregard the personal preferences for association, but they set themselves the task of overcoming those preferences and creating in their place new desires for association based on class interests which develop in the struggle for control of industry; for industrial freedom. In this sense the industrial union is the sophisticated form of organization.

The industrial union may provide for the subsidiary association of craft workers who are in direct competition, but these trade groups are auxiliary and incidental to the industrial group of which the trade is a part. While the trade unionist conceives of a job as a thing in itself, the industrial unionist realizes that it is a part of a process. In other words, the unit of organization for labor, as it is for capital, is the industry in which workers, representing possibly several trades, are associated for the manufacture of a product. Some industries are comparatively

simple in their processes, and the membership of an industrial union is therefore not necessarily complex or inclusive of several trades.

Whether an industry is complex or simple in its working force, whatever may be the divisions of the processes, it is capital and not labor which determines and directs it. Capital decides what kind of workers are to be employed and employs them. As capital sees fit it discharges them. It changes the processes and the kinds of workers. As capital regards the whole group with a single eye so would the industrial unionist regard capital. From an organization point of view, labor is weak or strong, in agreement with capital, or in rebellion against it, as it includes every worker which capital has considered of sufficient importance to employ.

The industrial unionist lays stress on the importance of change in the form of organization so that it will correspond to the changes in modern industry. He is apt to assume that an age has arrived in which all industrial processes have reached a maximum state of concentration and simplicity. While this is far from the truth, concentration is a characteristic of modern industry. It is of the first importance to labor organization that new methods of management, no less than new machinery, are creating new trades, and that they are re-creating and destroying old ones. The creation of a new trade or the destruction of an old trade was at one time an event of historic importance;