The Americans

by Hugo Münsterberg

The oldest trades-union in America is the International Typographical Union, which began in 1850. It is to be noticed at once that the distinction between national and international trades-unions is a wholly superficial one, for in the hundreds of so-called international unions there has been no effort to stretch out across the ocean. “International” means only that citizens of Canada and, in a few cases, of Mexico are admitted to membership. It has been the experience of other countries, too, that the printing trades were the first to organize. In America the hatmakers followed in 1854, the iron founders in 1859, and the number of organized trades increased rapidly during the sixties and seventies. The special representation of local interests soon demanded, on the one hand, the division of the larger societies into local groups, and, on the other, the affiliation of the larger societies having somewhat similar interests. Thus it has come about that each locality has its local union, and these unions are affiliated in state organizations for purposes of state legislation and completely unified in national or international organizations. On the other hand, the unions belonging to different trades are pledged locally and nationally to mutual support. But here it is no longer a question, as with the Knights of Labour, of the mixing up of diverse interests, but of systematic mutual aid on practical lines.

The largest union of this sort is the American Federation of Labour, which began its existence in Pittsburg in 1881, and has organized a veritable labour republic. The Federation took warning at the outset from the sad fate of previous federations, and resolved to play no part in politics, but to devote itself exclusively to industrial questions. It recognized the industrial autonomy and the special character of each affiliating trades-union, but hoped to gain definite results by co-operation. They first demanded an eight-hour day and aimed to forbid the employment of children under fourteen years of age, to prevent the competition of prison labour and the importation of contract labour; they asked for a change in laws relating to the responsibility of factory owners and for the organization of societies, for the establishment of government bureaus for labour statistics, and much else of a similar sort. At first the Federation had bitter quarrels with the Knights of Labour, and perhaps even as bitter a one with socialistic visionaries in its own ranks. But a firm and healthy basis was soon established, and since the Federation assisted in every way the formation of local, provincial, and state organizations, the parts grew with the help of the whole and the whole with the help of the parts. To-day the Federation includes 111 international trades-unions with 29 state organizations, 542 central organizations for cities, and also 1,850 local unions which are outside of any national or international organizations. The interests of this Federation are represented by 250 weekly and monthly papers. The head office is naturally Washington, where the federal government has its seat. Gompers is its indefatigable president. Outside of this Federation are all the trades-unions of railway employees and several unions of masons and stonecutters. The railway employees have always held aloof; their union dates from 1893, and is said to comprise 200,000 men.

The trades-unions are not open to every one; each member has to pay his initiation fees and make contributions to the local union, and through it to the general organization. Many of the trades-unions even require an examination for entrance; thus the conditions for admission into the union of electrical workers are so difficult that membership is recognized among the employers themselves as the surest evidence of a working-man’s competence. Every member is further pledged to attend the regular meetings of the local branch, and in order that these local societies may not be too unwieldy, they are generally divided into districts when the number of members becomes too great to admit of all meeting together. The cigarmakers of the City of New York, for example, have a trades-union of 6,000 members, which is divided into ten smaller bodies. Every single society in the country has its own officials. If the work of the official takes all his time, he receives a salary equal to the regular pay for work in his trade. The small organizations send delegates to the state and national federations; and wherever these provincial or federal affiliations represent different trades, each of these trades has its own representative, and all decisions are made with that technical formality which the American masters so well. In accordance with this parliamentary rigour, every member is absolutely pledged to comply with the decisions of the delegates. Any one who refuses to obey when a strike is ordered thereby loses all his rights.

The rights enjoyed by the members of the trades-unions are in fact considerable. Firstly, the local union is a club and an employment agency, and especially in large cities these two functions are very important for the American working-man. Then there are the arrangements for insurance and aid. Thus the general union of cigarmakers of the country, which combines 414 local unions having a total membership of 34,000 men, has given in the last twenty years $838,000 for the support of strikes, $1,453,000 for aid to ill members, $794,000 for the families of deceased members, $735,000 for travelling expenses, and $917,000 for unemployed members; and most of the large unions could show similar figures. Yet these are the lesser advantages. The really decisive thing is the concessions which have been won in the economic fight, and which could never have been gotten by the working-men individually. Nevertheless, to-day not a few men hold off from the unions and get rid of paying their dues, because they know that whatever organized labour can achieve, will also help those who stay outside.

The main contention of these trades-unions refers to legislation and wages, and no small part of their work goes in fighting for their own existence—that is, in fighting for the recognition of the union labourer as opposed to the non-union man—a factor which doubtless is becoming more and more important in the industrial disputes. Many a strike has not had wages or short hours of labour or the like in view, but has aimed solely to force the employers officially to recognize the trades-unions, to make contracts with the union delegates rather than with individual men, and to exclude all non-union labourers.

The newly introduced contention for the union label is in the same class. The labels were first used in San Francisco, where it was aimed to exclude the Chinese workmen from competition with Americans. Now the labels are used all over the country. Every box of cigars, every brick, hat, or piano made in factories which employ union labour, bears the copyrighted device which assures the purchasing public that the wares were made under approved social and political conditions. The absence of the label is supposed to be a warning; but for the population of ten millions who are connected with labour unions, it is more than a warning; it is an invitation to boycott, and this is undoubtedly felt as a considerable pressure by manufacturers. The more the factories are thus compelled to concede to the unions, and the more inducements the unions thus offer to prospective members, and the faster therefore these come in, the more power the unions acquire. So the label has become to-day a most effective weapon of the unions.

But this is only the means to an end. We must consider these ends themselves, and first of all labour legislation. Most striking and yet historically necessary is the diversity in the statutes of different states, which was formerly very great but is gradually diminishing. The New England states, and especially Massachusetts, have gone first, and still not so fast as public opinion has often desired. In the thirties there were many lively fights for the legislative regulation of the working hours in factories, and yet even the ten hours a day for women was not established until much later; on the other hand, the employment of children in factories was legislated on at that time, and in this direction the movement progressed more rapidly.

A considerable step was taken in 1869, when Massachusetts established at the expense of the state a bureau for labour statistics, the first in the world; this was required to work up every year a report on all phases of the labour question—economic, industrial, social, hygienic, educational, and political. One state after another imitated this statistical bureau, and especially it led to the establishment of the Department of Labour at Washington, which has already had a world-wide influence. During the seventies there followed strict laws for the supervision of factories, for precautionary measures, and hygienic improvements. Most of the other states came after, but none departed widely from the example of Massachusetts, which was also the first state to make repeated reductions in the working-day. Here it followed the example of the federal government. To be sure, the reduction of the working-day among federal employees was first merely a political catering to the labour vote, but the Federation kept to the point and the separate states followed. Twenty-nine states now prescribe eight hours as the day for all public employees and the federal government does the same.

The legislative changes in the judicial sphere have been also of importance for trades-unions. According to Old English law at the beginning of the nineteenth century, it was conspiracy for workmen to unite for the purposes which the trades-unions to-day hold before themselves. This doctrine of conspiracy, which to be sure from the beginning depended largely on the arbitrary interpretation of the judges, has been weakened from time to time through the century, and has finally given away to legal conceptions which put no obstacles in the way of the peaceful alliance of working-men for the purpose of obtaining better conditions of labour. They especially regard the strike as lawful so long as violence is not resorted to. Nearly all states have now passed laws which so narrow the old conception of criminal conspiracy that it no longer stands in the way of trades-unions. Other legal provisions concern the company stores. In some mining districts far removed from public shops, the company store may still be found, where the company buys the articles needed by its employees and sells these things to them at a high price. But nearly every state has legally done away with this system; it was, indeed, one of the earliest demands of the trades-unions.

There have been great improvements too in legislation relating to the responsibility of employees. The Anglo-Saxon law makes an employer responsible for injury suffered by the workmen by reason of his work, but not responsible if the injuries are due to the carelessness of a fellow-workman. The penalty fell then on the one who had neglected his duty. It was said that the workman on taking up his duties must have known what the dangers were. But the more complicated the conditions of labour have become, the more the security of any individual has depended on a great many fellow-labourers who could not be identified, so that the old law became meaningless. Therefore, the pressure of trades-unions has in the last half century steadily altered and improved the law in this respect. American state law to-day virtually recognizes the responsibility of the employer for every accident, even when due to the carelessness of some other labourer than the one injured.