EMPLOYERS' ASSOCIATIONS. With the growth of labor organizations it is only natural that there should have developed associations of similar na ture and aims among those to whom the labor unions are opposed, the em ployers. Employers', or masters', as sociations, were formed in Great Britain as far back as the beginning of last century, for the purpose of combating the power of the trades unions. For a while both were of the nature of secret organizations, and both sides were equally unscrupulous in the methods they employed in harming each other.
Ir this country the first employers' association was the Stove Founders' Na tional Defense Association, founded in 1868. In 1913 a Congressional Commis sion, appointed to investigate the alleged evil influence of manufacturers' combines in procuring legislation favorable to em ployers, reported the existence of two hundred employers' associations, most of which were frankly arrayed against the labor unions, to combat them by either economic or legislative action. Most im portant of these, in regard to size, scope of activity and general significance, was the National Association of Manufac turers, founded in Cincinnati, O., in 1895. The openly avowed object of this organization is to increase the volume of export trade, by means of disseminating a knowledge of conditions in foreign countries and their needs in the way of commodities of American manufacture; to oppose "harmful" labor legislation and to exert influence in favor of "beneficial" legislation; and to arbitrate labor dis putes. The Association of Manufac
turers is a thoroughly "class conscious" organization, and devotes a great deal of energy, both directly and indirectly, in promoting the interests of manufac turers in general and in fighting the de mands of the labor unions where they extend to the closed shop, minimum wages and, in some cases, recognition through their national organizations. In the famous litigation brought against the American Federation of Labor for its boycott of the Bucks Stove and Range Co., lasting over a period of many years, the Manufacturers' Association was the backbone of the forces opposed to the labor body. Within more recent years, however, and especially since the close of the World War, it has turned its attention more in the direction of radi cal labor organizations, and especially against the I. W. W. The movements of the members of this revolutionary order are closely watched, and reported to those members of the Association threatened by encroachment by agitators for the Red doctrine.