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us say, the craft organization of industry, where the laborers were at the same time the owners of the means of production. But it differs likewise from slavery in that in the capitalist system the combination of the two groups comes about by free contract in what is known as the wages contract.

The capitalist organization of society is characterized by the race for profit and by a peculiar form of mental activity in individuals which I call "economic rationalism." All economic activities are at bottom directed towards the increase of the money which is put into production, or, in technical language, towards the profitable investment of capital. To this end, all the thoughts of the capitalists or owners of the means of production, or of agents paid by them, are occupied day and night in an almost feverish restlessness in order to bring about the most practical and rational shaping of economic and technical processes.

The social class which stands for the interests of the capitalist system is the bourgeoisie, or middle class. It is made up, in the first place, of capitalist undertakers, and in the second, of a large number of people whose interests are similar to those of the capitalist undertakers. I am thinking of the following elements: (1) All those who are economically independent (or who would like to be so), and are intent on profit-making, and who, moreover, desire a free legal system favorable to profit-making. That would include many shopkeepers, property-owners, agents, stock-jobbers, and so on, and also the more modern of peasant proprietors. (2) All those who are not economically independent, but are associated with the capitalist undertaker in his activities, mostly as his representatives, and who, as a rule, participate in his economic success. That would include paid directors of companies, managers, foremen in large businesses, and people like them.

The class at the opposite pole to this-the one cannot be thought of without the other-I have called the proletariat. In order to get a true conception of this class, we must free ourselves from the picture of a ragged crowd which the term brought to mind before we read Karl Marx. The term "proletariat" is now used in a technical sense to describe that portion of the population which is in the service of capitalist undertakers in return for wages, and elements akin to them.

The free wage-earners form the bulk of this class—all such persons as are employed in capitalist undertakings, leaving out, of course, those mentioned above as belonging to the bourgeoisie because their interests are bound up with the capitalist system.

I have already pointed out that in order to get a true conception of the proletariat we must give up the idea of a ragged crowd. Indeed, the life of the proletarian is not always intolerable. Absolute distress is in no way a special characteristic of the class, though, to be sure, there are within it innumerable instances of want. But few proletarians are as badly off as the Russian peasant, or the Chinese coolie, or the Irish tenant, none of whom belong to the proletariat. Many a wage-earner, even in Europe, earns more than a university teacher, and in America the average income of this class falls not much below the maximum salary of an extraordinary professor in Prussia.

284. The Historical Basis of Trade Unionism2

BY SIDNEY AND BEATRICE WEBB

The Trade Union arose, not from any particular institution, but from every opportunity for the meeting together of wageearners of the same trade. Adam Smith remarked that "people of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices." And there is actual evidence of the rise of one of the oldest Trade Unions out of a gathering of the journeymen "to take a social pint of porter together." More often it is a tumultuous strike out of which grows a permanent organization. Instances are on record in which a number of laborers who have become accustomed to visit public houses have become the nucleus of organization. More than once the journeymen in a particular trade declared that, "It has been an ancient custom in the kingdom of Great Britain for divers Artists to meet together and unite themselves into societies to promote Amity and true Christian Charity," and established a sick and funeral club, which invariably has proceeded to discuss the rate of wages, and insensibly has passed into a trade union with friendly benefits. And if the trade is one in which the members travel the result has been a National Trade Union.

But this does not explain why the continuous organizations of wage-workers came as late as the eighteenth century? The essential cause of this was the revolution in industry which came at this time. When such unions arose, the great mass of the workers had ceased to be independent producers, and had passed into the condition of life-long wage-earners. Such unions came after "the definite separation between the functions of the capitalist and

Adapted from The History of Trade Unionism, 21-37. Published by Longmans, Green. & Co. (1894).

the workman, or between the direction of industrial operations and their execution in detail."

It is often assumed that the divorce of the manual worker from the ownership of his tools resulted from the introduction of machinery and the factory system. Were this true, we should not find Trade Unions earlier than factories. Yet such combinations in England preceded the factory system by half a century, and occurred in trades carried on exclusively by hand labor. Some crafts lent themselves to an advantageous division of labor. Among these there is particularly to be mentioned that of tailoring. Because of the special skill required for tailoring for rich customers, the most proficient tailors were separated from the rest of the journeymen, and became practically a separate social class. This differentiation was promoted by the increasing need of capital for successfully beginning business in the better quarters of the metropolis. By 1700 we find the typical journeyman tailor in London a lifelong wage-worker. It is not surprising, therefore, that one of the earliest instances of permanent Trade Unionism occurred in that trade. Another instance is that of the woolen workers in the West of England. Again, it is not peculiar that in the year 1790 the Sheffield employers found themselves obliged to take concerted action against the "scissors-grinders and other workmen who have entered into unlawful combinations to raise the price of labor." But the cardinal examples of the connection of Trade Unionism with the divorce of the worker from the instruments of production is seen in the rapid rise of trade combinations on the introduction of the factory system.

It is easy to understand how the massing together in factories of regiments of men, all engaged in the same trade, facilitated and promoted the formation of workmen's societies. But the rise of permanent trade combinations is to be ascribed to the definite separation between the functions of the capitalist entrepreneur and the manual worker. It has become a commonplace of Trade Unionism that only in those industries in which the worker has ceased to be concerned in the profits of buying and selling can effective and stable trade organizations be maintained.

285. The Organization of the Ill-paid Classes

BY CHARLES H. COOLEY

It is quite apparent that an organized and intelligent class-consciousness in the hand-working people is one of the primary needs

Adapted from Social Organization, 284-289. Copyright by Charles Scribner's Sons (1909).

of a democratic society. In so far as this part of the people is lacking in a knowledge of its situation and in the practice of orderly self-assertion, a real freedom will also be lacking, and we shall have some kind of subjection in its place; freedom being impossible without group organization. That industrial classes exist cannot be well denied, and existing they ought to be conscious and self-directing.

The most obvious need of class-consciousness is for self-assertion against the pressure of other classes, and this is both most necessary and most difficult with those who lack wealth and the command over organized forces which it implies. In a free society, especially, the Lord helps those who help themselves; and those who are weak in money must be strong in union, and must also exert themselves to make good any deficiency in leadership that comes from ability deserting to more favored classes.

That the dominant power of wealth has an oppressive action, for the most part involuntary, upon the people below, will hardly be denied by any competent student. The industrial progress of our time is accompanied by sufferings that are involved with the progress. These sufferings fall mostly upon the poorer classes, while the rich get a larger share of the increased product which the progress brings.

Labor unions have arisen out of the urgent need of self-defence, not so much against deliberate aggression as against brutal confusion and neglect. The industrial population has been tossed about on the swirl of economic change like so much sawdust on a river, sometimes prosperous, sometimes miserable, never secure, and living largely under degrading, inhuman conditions. Against this state of things the higher class of artisans have made a partly successful struggle through co-operation in associations, which, however, include much less than half of those who might be expected to take advantage of them. That they are an effective means of class self-assertion is evident from the antagonism they have aroused.

Besides their primary function of group-bargaining, unions are performing a variety of services hardly less important to their members and to society. In the way of influencing legislation they have probably done more than all other agencies together to combat child-labor, excessive hours, and other inhuman and degrading kinds of work, also to provide for safeguards against accident, for proper sanitation, for factories and the like. In this field their work is as much defensive as aggressive, since employing interests, on the other side, are constantly influencing legislation and administration to their own advantage.

Their functions as spheres of fellowship and self-development is equally vital and less understood. To have a we-feeling, to live shoulder to shoulder with one's fellows, is the only human life; we all need it to keep us from selfishness, sensuality, and despair, and the hand-worker needs it even more than the rest of us. Usually without pecuniary resources and insecure of his job and his home, he is, in isolation, miserably weak and in a way to be cowed. The union makes him a part of a whole, one of a fellowship. Moreover, the life of labor unions and other class associations, through the training which it gives in democratic organizations and discipline, is perhaps the chief guarantee of the healthy political development of the handworking class. That their members get this training will be evident to anyone who studies their working, and it is not apparent that they would get it in any other way.

In general no sort of persons mean better than hand-laboring men. They are simple, honest people, as a rule, with that bent toward integrity which is fostered by working in wood and iron and often lost in the subtleties of business. Moreover, their experience is such as to develop a sense of the brotherhood of man and a desire to realize it in institutions. Not having enjoyed the artificial support of accumulated property, they have the more reason to know the dependence of each on his fellows. Occasionally outbreaks of violence alarm us and call for prompt enforcement of law, but are not a serious menace to society, because general sentiment and all established interests are against them; while the subtle, respectable, systematic corruption by the rich and powerful threatens the very being of democracy.

The most deplorable fact about labor unions is that they embrace so small a proportion of those who need their benefits. How far into the shifting masses of unskilled labor effective organization can extend only time will show.

286. Types of Unionism*

BY ROBERT F. HOXIE

A penetrating study of the union situation past and present seems to warrant the recognition of functional types quite distinct in their general characteristics. It is true that these functional types do not in practice represent exactly and exclusively the ideals and activities of any particular union organization or group. That is to say, no

'Adapted from "Trade Unionism in the United States: General Character and Types,” in the Journal of Political Economy, XXII, 211–216 (1914).

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