§ 5. Statistics of labor organizations. The ratio of or ganized workers to the population is estimated' to be highest in the United Kingdom, being 7 per cent; it is next highest in the German Empire, being nearly 6 per cent; whereas in the United States it is but 2.3 per cent. This difference is largely due to the much greater relative impor tance of agriculture in the United States.
The total membership of trade-unions in the United States and Canada was estimated (in 1910) to have been about 2,200,000, of which only about 100,000 were in Canada. This was 5.5 per cent of all persons (38,130,000) gainfully em ployed, or 6.8 per cent of male employees and 9 per cent of female employees. Organization was very weak (less than 1 per cent) among the workers in a group of industries occu pying nearly one half of all workers, including agriculture, the hand trades, oil and natural gas, salt, and rubber facto ries. Organization was not of large extent (1 to 10 per cent) in other groups of industries occupying more than one fourth of all workers, including those engaged in producing quarried stone, food-stuffs, iron, and steel, metal, paper and pulp, sta tionary engineers, in public, professional, and domestic serv ice, and in clerical work. Organization was of much greater strength, including 10 per cent or more of the workers, in the remaining industries and occupations.
If deduction be made of the employing and salaried classes, about 7.7 per cent of all persons occupied were organized. If, further, deduction be made of agricultural, clerical, pub licly employed, commercial, and domestic workers, about 16 8 In the Federation in 1921 were 111 national and international unions, representing 34,000 local unions, 46 state branches, 801 city centrals, and 823 local trade and federated labor-unions.
4 These and the following figures were compiled before the World War; no revised estimates are as yet available.
per cent of the remaining 13,760,000 persons were organized (of women 3.7 per cent). Among the occupations most highly organized are those of railway conductors (87 per cent) and engineers (74 per cent). In the building trades about 16 per cent were organized, of granite-cutters 69 per cent, masons 39 per cent, plasterers 32 per cent, carpenters 21 per cent, and painters 17 per cent. Similar striking differences appear among the occupations in the printing in dustry; of stereotypes 90 per cent were organized and of compositors only 35 per cent. These figures point to inherent
differences in the conditions favoring organization. Even in the same craft a high degree of organization may be found in the cities and little or none in the smaller towns (e. g., in the case of the printing and building trades in § 6. Collective bargaining. The fundamental policy of trade-unions is the substitution, for the individual wage bar gain, of collective bargaining between the delegated repre sentatives of the workingmen and the employer, or group of employers, or their representatives. The wage-earners bar gaining collectively may be those of a single establishment, or of a group of establishments in the same locality, or of a wider territory, even national in extent. Accordingly, they are represented in the negotiations by trade-union officials with narrower or wider jurisdiction. Employers in some cases had tacit understandings with one another before labor ers were organized. But in many cases the individual em ployer was at a marked disadvantage after the organization of his employees. The result has been the rapid spread of em ployers' organizations, so that, in industries where laborers are highly organized, two-sided collective bargaining has be come more and more usual.
A large part of the effort of trade-unions is directed toward insuring the use of collective bargaining. This is the pur pose of many of their demands, even of some that hardly ap p See Quarterly Journal of Economics, May, 1916, article by L. Wol man.
pear to have any such consideration. Collective bargaining virtually necessitates the use of the "standard rate," since only with reference to some standard rate, a market price for labor, is it possible for a wage contract to be made by labor officials for a group of men. The standard rate may be a piece price or a time price, and in many cases the unions strive to secure the latter as more convenient for their pur poses. The standard time rate usually is but a minimum, and many of the more skillful workers receive wages above the minimum. But the standard minimum tends to become also the maximum in many cases, the more so when the union has succeeded in enforcing a pretty high standard rate.