Labor organizations or trades unions came into existence in England. The democratic spirit, the spirit of liberty, the Saxon spirit of independence, which wrested from kings and the nobility all the rights which the common people enjoy, has been doing in the industrial world only what it did in the political world years before.
We may say that trades unions find their prototype in the frith guilds or peace guilds of the Anglo-Saxon. A few words in general about them and their successors and the spirit pervading them, the causes of their existence and decay, will have a bearing on labor organizations, which are like them in "being founded on similar mental faculties and desires and as contemplating similar purposes."
These frith guilds seem to have been associations of neighbors for mutual help and protection. They replaced the older brotherhood of kinsfolk, which had existed among the German races, "by a voluntary association of neighbors for the same purposes of order and self-defense." An isolated existence for a man, even a freeman, was one of danger, especially when the feudal temper of the nobles increased and the Danish incursions broke over England. The ties of kindred had become weakened, and the frith guild took the place of the family. A mutual oath bound the members together, and the monthly guild feast became the substitute for the old gathering round the family hearth. A member could call upon the guild in case of violence or wrong; when charged with crime, the guild answered for him, and when guilty, punished him; when poor, it supported him; and when dead, buried him. When these guilds were located in towns rather than in the country, they inevitably tended in time to combine, and eventually the town passed from a collection of guilds into one large guild, and we have the town guild. The word "town" is used in contradistinction from the word "country," just as we say "town and country," "going to town," and so on. The spirit of independence and freedom, kept alive in our town meetings here, and in our local self-government, has come down to us through those old town guilds and the boroughs of England. It is to the towns of England and not to the country that we owe much of our liberty to-day.
So these guilds in towns, by joining together and making a town guild, became quite strong communities. They made demands upon the crown itself, and took upon themselves the government of the towns where they were located. Their members were the landowners of the town, and the other people who came there to settle, no matter how numerous, had no part in the government. From being democratic in the beginning, as the frith guilds were, the towns became oligarchies.
In the course of time the differences between town and country became more marked. The town guilds began to have less and less to do with agriculture, although at first they were interested in it. The wealth in the town is turned to trade and manufacture, such as there was in those days. So, by the time of the Norman conquest, in 1066, we hear little of town guilds, but in almost every case merchant guilds. The town guild has become a merchant guild, although composed of the same constituency. The commercial spirit has become the ruling spirit of the town.
As time went on and life and property became safer and trade increased, the consequent accumulation of wealth in towns produced important results in the character of these municipal institutions. "In becoming a merchant guild the body of citizens who formed" the government of "the town enlarged their powers of civic legislation by applying them to the control of their internal trade." No longer confining themselves to providing for public order or protection from unjust oppression or dangers from without, they began to legislate for their own immediate advancement and for their own pockets. "It became their especial business to obtain from the crown or from their lords wider commercial privileges, rights of coinage, grants of fairs, and exemptions from tolls; while within the town itself they framed regulations as to the sale and quality of goods, the control of markets, and the recovery of debts." And further, the members of the guild withdrew from the humbler trades to confine themselves to the larger business of commerce or trades requiring large capital, leaving the trades and traffic given up to their poorer neighbors. This ruling class comprised only a part of the inhabitants, only the members of the merchant guild. The great mass of the people, the artisans and the poor, the men without land, the serfs escaped from the country and gaining their freedom in the town, all had no voice in the government whatever. They lived and worked and earned their daily bread practically by permission or at least under the direct control of the merchant guild. From a simple association, the guilds in towns had become the governing body, and a government in the hands of a few at that. From the need of protection on account of individual weakness, the members of the guilds had grown to be in need of repression; and with the demand for repression came the instrument of repression—the craft guild. Against the autocratic power of the merchant guild arose the craft guilds, or associations of workers in the various trades, those trades abandoned by the merchants, and these guilds "soon rose into dangerous rivalry with the original merchant guild of the town."
These craft guilds in the old English towns, in order to attain their objects, considered it necessary to compel the whole body of craftsmen belonging to the trade to join the guild of that craft or trade; and further, that the guild should have legal control over the trade itself—who should be admitted to it, and so forth. "A royal charter was indispensable for these purposes, and over the grant of these charters took place the first struggle with the merchant guild, which had till then solely exercised jurisdiction over trade within the borough." The struggle was a fierce one and long continued, but the spread of the craft guilds went steadily on, and the control of trade passed into their hands. Then the next step—a share in the government of the borough itself—was taken, and the government of the towns passed from an oligarchy into the hands of the middle classes.
The craft guild came into being just as its predecessor had, from the necessity of association for protection, and like it was democratic at first; and, again like it, became in time an oligarchy as narrow as that which it had deposed. The craft guild arose because the artisans and tradesmen had grown to a position where they could recognize the injustice and oppression of the merchant guild, and were strong enough and persistent enough to assert themselves, and as long as the craft guilds were democratic in spirit and were true to the needs for which they were organized they flourished. But with age and success came narrowness and bigotry and opposition to progress. They became monopolies of employment and societies of greedy capitalists, and in England withered away before the growth of the modern vast industrial establishment.
I have ventured to give this general sketch of these guilds because the same spirit and necessities which inspired them brought the trades union into being. The trades union or labor organization was created to protect the laborer and gain for him a better position in life, to raise his standard of living. It is like the old guilds in being subject to the same dangers as they were, and when it proves false to its true objects it will pass away as did the old guilds. It will last only so long as there is a necessity for its existence, as long as it does the work it is born to do. And when it has come to deny freedom, to refuse another's rights, and to repress industry, the seeds of dissolution are already sown.
Trades unions or labor unions arose from the necessity of organization among the laborers or wage-earners if they were to hold their own against the aggregation of capital. The craft guild arose at a time when trading and manufacturing concerns were small, when the interest of both master and workman in a business were alike joined in opposition to the exactions of a superior class—the merchant guild; while the trades union came upon the field to protect the laborer against his employer. Whatever other objects and aims it may have had do not enter into my purposes in this paper. The personal relation which had existed between the master and servant, the employer and his few employees, the manufacturer and his half dozen workmen or apprentices, no longer existed when the workers became scores and hundreds, and the owner of the business was replaced by the manager or superintendent. That personal relation was in some measure a protection for both, but when that disappeared the temptation to gratify owners and stockholders with big dividends became too strong to be overcome. Against organized capital there was absolute need of organized labor, and trades unions and labor unions and such organizations came into existence.