United States or Caribbean Netherlands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
See Sidney and Beatrice Webb, History of Trade-Unionism, London, 1894, pp. 21-38. See in Sidney Webb's work the associations which existed at that time. The London artisans are supposed to have never been better organized than in 1810-20. The National Association for the Protection of Labour included about 150 separate unions, which paid high levies, and had a membership of about 100,000.
I was burning to tell him that he lacked manners, and to assail trade-unionism, but I restrained myself, of course Sometimes the girls and I would discuss the social question or literature, subjects upon which they assured me that I held "naïve" views. But all my efforts to get Anna into a more intimate conversation failed.
The other, calling itself the Union of Foreign Social Democrats, inclined to the trade-unionism programme, and proclaimed the necessity of being guided by political expediency rather than inflexible dogmas.
British trade-unionism, it seems to me, has erred in conceiving labor and capital as both permanent forces, which were to be brought to some equality of strength by the organization of labor. This seems to me too modest an ideal.
Trade-unionism has suggested Christian Endeavor and the Evangelical Alliance; the public school system has developed the International Lesson system in the Sunday School; the political convention has taught the advantages of great religious conferences; the principles of military organization have been utilized in the Salvation Army.
Had they sought to assert their cause through begging, pleading, and compromise, trade-unionism would today be a negligible quantity. The General Strike, the supreme expression of the economic consciousness of the workers, was ridiculed in America but a short time ago. Today every great strike, in order to win, must realize the importance of the solidaric general protest.
The Bill rent the party in twain; but the Ministry had the courage to go to the country with a programme in which the Maxwell Bill held a prominent place. Trade-unionism rallied to their support; the forces both of reaction and of progress fought for them, in strangely mingled ways; and they were returned with a sufficient, though not large, majority.
If I took an occasional look at the socialist Yiddish daily it was chiefly to see what was going on in the Cloak-makers' Union. Otherwise I regarded everything that was written for the East Side with contempt, and "East Side writer" was synonymous with "greenhorn" and "tramp." Worse than that, it was identified in my mind with socialism, anarchism, and trade-unionism.
The period has been marked by a rapid growth of Socialism on the continent and of trade-unionism in Great Britain. Both movements are expressions of an increasing working-class solidarity; both voice the sentiments of internationalism that were sounded so loudly during the revolutionary period of the eighteenth century.
They have often antagonized such other ameliorative methods as profit sharing and government regulation, and have rejected overtures from employers, because these-to quote from a union pamphlet-"remove the scope and field of trade-unionism." They have at times been run in the interests of selfish leaders and seemed chiefly a moneymaking scheme of a few grafters.
Word Of The Day