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Of the twenty-three members of the new Council of Labour, twenty represent the Trades Unions of the great industries of the kingdom. Those twenty will unanimously proclaim a general strike, if you should refuse the proposed armistice." "In other words," Mr. Stenson observed drily, "they will scuttle the ship themselves. Do you approve of these tactics?"
There were difficulties indeed attached even to the simplest course, but there would be a difficulty the less if one should forbear to meddle in promiscuous talk with the general, suggestive topic of intimate unions. It is certain that in these days Nick cultivated the practice of forbearances for which he didn't receive, for which perhaps he never would receive, due credit.
Instead of gaining ground by the move, the shingle weavers union lost in membership and subsequently claimed that industrial unionism was a failure in the lumber industry. The industrial depression of 1914-15 found all unions in bad shape. Employers used the army of unemployed as an axe to cut wages. In the spring of 1915 notice of a wage reduction was posted in the Everett shingle mills.
A real organisation of labour in its own sphere of interests and the constitution of responsible trades unions would probably go far to prevent labour from turning for encouragement and support to agitators who have never been workers themselves, who have no personal knowledge of its processes or of its needs, and who exploit its discontent, reasonable or unreasonable, for purposes as disastrous, if fulfilled, to its permanent interests as to those of the employers and of the whole community.
This proposed law is the People's Charter, which in form is purely political, and demands a democratic basis for the House of Commons. Chartism is the compact form of their opposition to the bourgeoisie. In the Unions and turnouts opposition always remained isolated: it was single working-men or sections who fought a single bourgeois.
And it asks the unions to consider whether a victory, gained at the expense of labor-efficiency, will not deprive them of its fruits. Let the unions fight for something they can keep; and let the employers fight for something they will not be sure to lose. The writer is fully aware of the many difficulties attending the practical application of any such policy.
All admit, that the resignation and forbearance of the labouring classes was astonishing, when it is remembered with what rapidity the real famine encompassed them." The number of electoral divisions is, at present, 3,438, embraced within 163 Unions.
Their influence also is far more than in proportion to their numbers, since from their membership are chosen practically all workingmen representatives in Parliament and local governments and in administrative positions. The unions also furnish all the most influential leaders of opinion among the working classes.
The latter, however, passed a significant resolution urging the trade societies to observe a uniform wage policy throughout the country and, should the employers combine to resist it, the unions should make "one general strike." The last convention in 1836 went far beyond preceding conventions in its plans for solidifying the workingmen of the country.
Still another factor forces the French trade unions to rely upon violence, and that is their poverty. The trade-unionists in the Latin countries dislike to pay dues, and the whole organized labor movement as a result lives constantly from hand to mouth. "The fundamental condition which determines the policy of direct action," says Dr.
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