The Compositors
The printing trades have remained, during the past thirty years, curiously stationary so far as Trade Unionism, is concerned, the London Society of Compositors, the Typographical Association, the Scottish Typographical Association, and the Dublin Typographical Society having, in the aggregate, increased their membership by three-fifths and steadily increased their rates of pay and strategic strength against their own employers, but commanding little influence in the Trade Union Movement as a whole, and in many small towns still leaving a considerable portion of the trade outside their ranks. The less-skilled workers in the papermaking and printing establishments have greatly improved their organisation; and the National Union of Printing and Paper Workers and the Operative Printers Assistants’ Society—both of them including women as well as men—have become large and effective Trade Unions. All the societies are united in the powerful Printing and Kindred Trades Federation, to which the National Union of Journalists, now a large society, has recently affiliated.