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Updated: June 3, 2025
He cannot say, 'I am prepared to fight at Neuve Chapelle, but I won't fight at Festubert, and I am not going near the place called "Wipers." He can't say, 'I have been in the trenches ten and a half hours, and the trade-unions won't let me work more than ten hours. He can't say, 'You have not enough men here, and I have been doing the work of two men, and my trade-unions won't allow me to do more than my share. When the house is on fire, questions of procedure and precedence and division of labor disappear.
There were about one hundred and ninety men who had been members of one or other of the Dumas; one hundred representatives of the peasants' Soviets and other peasant organizations; about two hundred and thirty representatives of the Soviets of industrial workers and of soldiers; more than three hundred from co-operatives; about one hundred and eighty from the trade-unions; about one hundred and fifty from municipalities; one hundred and fifty representatives of banks and industrial concerns, and about one hundred and twenty from the Union of Zemstvos and Towns.
Readers of Anatole France will remember his description of the economic wars decreed by the Senate of the great republic, at the end of 'L'Île des Pingouins. It would, indeed, be difficult to prove that the expansion of the United States has differed much, in methods and morals, from that of the European monarchies; and the methods of trade-unions are the methods of pitiless belligerency.
There are, besides, the political associations, whose activity many workers consider as more conducive to general welfare than the trade-unions, limited as they are now in their purposes. Of course the mere fact of belonging to a political body cannot be taken as a manifestation of the mutual-aid tendency.
Ward dwells with keen insight upon the difficulties met with among the trade-unions and labor people, and successfully overcome, and explains in full what they call over there the work of the Dilution Commissioners, which is a wholly new phrase for us, and she gives this clear definition: "Dilution means, of course, that under the sharp analysis of necessity, much engineering work, generally reckoned as 'skilled' work, and reserved to 'skilled' workmen by a number of union regulations, is seen to be capable of solution into various processes, some of which can be sorted out from the others, as within the capacity of the unskilled, or semiskilled worker.
We may mention the agreement entered into between the English and French trade-unions after the Fashoda incident, for the purpose of maintaining peace and for reëstablishing friendly relations between England and France; the policy of the Social-Democratic parties in the French and German Parliaments during the Morocco crisis, and the peaceful declarations which the Socialists in both countries sent each other; the common action of the Austrian and Italian Socialists, gathered at Trieste, with a view to avoiding a conflict between the two powers; the great efforts made by the Socialists of Sweden to prevent an attack on Norway; and lastly, the heroic sacrifices made by the Socialist workers and peasants of Russia and Poland in the struggle against the war demon let loose by the Czar, in their efforts to put an end to their ravages, and at the same time to utilize the crisis for the liberation of the country and its workers.
There has been no such solidifying of interests by trade-unions as in the factory; the individual makes his own contract and stands on his own feet. On the other hand, there is an increasing number of employers who feel their responsibility to those who are in their employ, and, except in the department stores, they are usually associated personally with their employees.
For we must never forget that the economic system of the South to-day which has succeeded the old regime is not the same system as that of the old industrial North, of England, or of France, with their trade-unions, their restrictive laws, their written and unwritten commercial customs, and their long experience.
Trade-unions and the Labor party are no more exempt from this vice than other parties and other sections of society; though they are largely inspired by the hope of a radically better world. They are too often led astray by the immediate object of securing for themselves a large share of material goods.
Shortly after the meeting of the national conventions, a contest began between the powerful Amalgamated Association of Steel and Iron Workers, the strongest of the trade-unions, and the Carnegie Company over a new wage scale introduced in the Homestead mills. The strike began on June 29, 1892, and local authority at once succumbed to the strikers.
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