During the 20th century the Trade Union Movement has more and more consciously striven to assert the right of the workers lectively, not merely to maintain and defend their standard of life, but also to exercise control of the industry in which they live (consult 'The World of Labour,) by G. D. H. Cole, and 'National Guide,) edited by J. Or age) ; at any rate in so far as concerns the conditions under which they spend their work ing lives.
The English Trade Unions form, with the analogous associations into which the em ployers in the principal trades are now brigaded, elaborate organizations — based, in the best cases, on mutual discussions in joint committees, investigation by neutral accountants and the joint application of principles by the salaried officers of the employers and of the workmen respectively— for Collective Bargaining, the settlement of standard piecework lists, scales of wages, and other general minima of the conditions of employment to be observed throughout the trade; for the application these formal agreements to the varying cir cumstances of particular districts, particular establishments, particular branches of work, and even particular jobs; and also. for the re vision of these general agreements and the settlement by arbitration of the disputes that from time to time inevitably arise. Within each establishment there is often a Workshop Committee or a number of shop elected by all the men employed, negotiating with the management. This elaborate machin ery for determining, irrespective of the will or caprice of individual employers or individual operatives, the minimum conditions on which the whole trade shall work, is most highly organized in the cotton spinning and manu facturing, coal mining and shipbuilding indus tries, together with some smaller trades, such as the brassworkers, lacemakers, and composi tors.
The Trade Unions have, however, further organizations of their own. The local branches in each town are united for mutual support in Trade Councils, of which there are now over 330. These organizations are of little financial strength, and chiefly of moral support. More substantial are the great federations, of which the principal one, the General Federation of Trade Unions, now includes over 140 Trade Unions with 900,000 members, and large ac cumulated funds. This has for its object the mutual support of its constituent unions in in dustrial disputes. Another federal body, the Federation of Engineering and Shipbuilding Trades with 600,000 members (including most of those in the General Federation), has for its principal object, the prevention and settle ment of the disastrous disputes that occasion ally break out between one set of workmen and another as to the °encroachments') by one trade on another, and the proper °demarcation') of their severalpieces of work. A third body, the Miners' Federation, is composed of prac tically all the coal mining Trade Unions, and has, beyond mutual support, principally for its object the obtaining of additional Mines Regu lation Acts, especially the maintenance of the eight-hour law (secured in 1908) and the en forcement of the Coal Mines (minimum wage) Act (secured in 1912). But the Miners' Feder
ation (like some other so-called federations) is more and more becoming a strongly central ized Trade Union, so far as polio and political action is concerned, the federal form being re tained chiefly as a means of securing efficient local organization.
The relative proportion which Trade Union ship members in the United Kingdom bears to the wage-earners as a whole, is often much mis understood. The four millions of Trade Union ists amount to only one in four of the whole. What is, however, obscured by the statement is that the vast mass of the wage-earners belong to occupations in which Trade Unionism does not exist, or exists only in rudimentary form — such, for instance, as the agricultural la borers, the unskilled laborers in urban dis tricts and the domestic servants, or the large numbers who work in one or other form as independent producers, such as the jobbing craftsmen, the tin and copper mines, the home working seamstresses, etc. Women workers, generally, including all the factory population, count only 400,000 Trade Unionists out of some six millions of women industrially employed. A more correct way to estimate the strength of Trade Unionism is to take the proportion of Trade Union membership to the adult males employed at wages in particular industries. In many cases, such as the boilermakers, the cot ton spinners, the lacemakers and the coal miners, it would he found that over whole dis tricts of England every operative actually em ployed was a Trade Unionist. In such indus tries, indeed, Trade Unionism is as universally compulsory as citizenship, and is enforced by as little conscious pressure. It is i taken for granted by every workman, as it s by every employer. The whole industrial organization is adjusted to it, with the result that it becomes as imperceptible as the weight of the atmos phere. On the other hand, there are great in dustries, such as the building and engineering trades, in which, while strong Trade Unions exist, are whole districts in which a majority of the workmen remain outside the unions, not caring to pay the weekly dues; and usually in every town some establishments which employ indifferently both Unionists and non-Unionists. To the economist it is significant that it is pre cisely in those industries in which Trade Umon ism is virtually universal and compulsory— among them being particularly cotton spinning and shipbuilding— that both technical proc esses and the use of machinery have been most advanced, and both industrial efficiency and financial success have been most conspicuous. In contrast stand the "sweated" industries, low grade in quality in their nature, and curiously unstable in their position in the world-market. In these industries neither Trade Unionism nor effective Factory Legislation exists.