Applied economics; a practical exposition of the science of business by Mavor James 1854-

Author:Mavor, James, 1854- [from old catalog]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Economics
Publisher: New York, Alexander Hamilton institute
Published: 1914-03-25T05:00:00+00:00

There are, however, on the continent somewhat analogous bodies. These organizations are rarely purely trade organizations. They have generally as an important reason for existence, the promotion of some political propaganda although they have also certain economic characteristics. Because of their political aspects such organizations have generally, although not invariably, been discouraged and their activities have even been arrested by continental governments.

Soon after acquiring in some measure a legal status, trade imions in Great Britain began to promote the candidacy of some of their own nimaber as members of Parliament, and they began to develop a Parliamentary policy. This policy related chiefly to the .regulation of certain dangerous industries, such as mining, to the factory acts and the like. The trade union movement in the middle of the seventies of the nineteenth centiuy was confined to a few of the leading trades and the union leaders in these trades determined the policy of the movement.

234. Change in trade union control. —The first serious invasion of their position occurred through the admission in 1876 of about a himdred thousand agricultural laborers into the Trade Union Congress. This invasion was followed in 1889 by the similar admission of the dock laborers. The second of these invasions marks a new epoch in Trade Unionism.

The admission of a union composed of casual laborers indicated a great change. The new recruits were represented by a group of remarkable men. Some of them were natural oratory and all of them w^re enthusiastic

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soeialists of one or other of the numerous types of the socialists of that period. The influence of the older type of trade union officials then began to decline. But the full meaning of that decline did not make its appearance until 1911, when what amoimted to a general strike was declared in spite of discountenance of the movement by the trade imion officials. This event was indeed almost as much a strike against them as it was against employers.

Although it was evident that the syndicalist movement (see page 254) which had been developed in France and Italy had had some effect upon British Trade Unionism, the strike passed without any material resort to violence. It meant, however, the practical passing of the control of the labor movement in Great Britain out of the hands of the older group of trade union members of Parliament.

The so-called Labor Party cannot be held as yet to form a homogeneous group; and its influence upon the movement is by no means a dominant factor. The labor movement as a whole is imdoubtedly still largely influenced in Great Britain and to a problematical extent in the United States by the powerful imions of the larger trades—^the engineers, the imions of miners, railway servants and the like, and these in general adhere to the older methods. They have large fimds and are not usually in favor of strikes, excepting as a last resort. Recent legal decisions which have rendered the fimds of the large imions liable to attachment,

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