Another effect of the growing size of business units is to give the workers less personal acquaintance with each other. When they are unorganized they have less unity, common opin ion, and power than the workers in the old-fashioned shop with its close personal acquaintance and ready interchange of views. In the wilderness of a great modern factory a worker may be unknown in name and interests to the man touching elbows with him. Moreover, in America, differences in nationality and in speech among immigrant workers often effectively prevent a common feeling of their interests and assertion of them. There is an analogy between these conditions and the political conditions that early led simple democracies to give way to representative governments. As long as a community is small and men know each other personally, popular govern ment may exist without 'complex machinery, but when num bers become larger, public opinion can be concentrated and made effective only by delegating the functions to elected representatives.
§ 3. Functions of labor organisations. Out of these con ditions have grown the various kinds of labor organizations. (1) their first object is to maintain and increase wages. (2) Closely connected with this is the remedying of various abuses in respect to methods of payment, measurement of the output, and conditions of work. (3) Almost co ordinate with the aim of higher wages of recent years has been that of the shorter work-day. Labor leaders have frequently asserted, when the two demands have been made together, that a reduction of hours is the more desirable. (4) Better conditions of safety and sanitation in their work were not the first thought of laborers when they organ ized. As a result of habit and ignorance (widely prevalent at that time) they were remarkably unconcerned about this matter. Reforms in this direction at the outset had to come largely from sympathetic observers, the "philanthropists," often described as sentimentalists. But the modern, more en lightened labor movement has better ideals and policies in re spect to the safety, sanitation, and decency of working places.
Labor organizations have also secondary objects of very great importance. (5) They are nearly always in some meas ure mutual-benefit associations, and provide in varying degrees insurance against accident, sickness, death, or lack of employ ment. (6) All unions in a measure serve their members as employment bureaus, and some make this an important fea ture. Through trade papers, correspondence, traveling mem bers, and in meetings, information is exchanged regarding conditions of employment in various parts of the country.
(7) Labor organizations, by means of their discussions and through their special periodicals, are a strong educational force in matters political and economic. (8) The local labor organizations often come to be the venter of the social activi ties and interests of many of their members, and even of all the members of their families. The organizations thus serve the functions of social clubs, of literary societies, and of civic centers for their members.
§ 4. Types of labor organisations. Among the many or ganizations of wage-earners three main types may be distin guished : the labor-union, the trade-union, and the industrial union, though often they are all spoken of as trade-unions or as labor-unions without distinction. In the more special sense, however, a labor-union is one that admits several classes of wage-earners, sometimes even business and professional men, into the same local chapter. The Knights of Labor is the most notable example that America has seen of this type. The national organization was composed of local chapters, to mem bership in which every one was elegible excepting bankers, lawyers, gamblers, and saloon-keepers. Organized as a single local chapter in 1869, it grew very rapidly until itattained its maximum membership of 600,000 in 1886. From this point it rapidly declined in membership, and since 1900, although its organization is still maintained, has been of very little influence.
A trade-union is an organization of wage-earners in the same handicraft or occupation. Unions exist among workers in all the old distinctive handicrafts, such as the printers, stone-cutters, cigar-makers, carpenters, and in many others such as musicians and retail clerks. The local chapters in many cases have been long united in national unions (often international, embracing the United States and Canada).
An industrial union is one that seeks to unite all workers employed in the same class of establishments, regardless of their craft or the kind of work they do. The most notable examples are the United Mine Workers, the Brewery Work ers, and the Industrial Workers of the World.
In 1881 a number of national trade-unions united, for cer tain purposes, to form the American Federation of Labor, with a membership of about a quarter million workers, which has steadily increased since that date. The American Federation of Labor now includes also some important unions of the in dustrial Several strong national trade-unions (the most important being the brotherhoods of railroad employees) are not affiliated with the American Federation of Labor.