[179]. In America the unions also serve as schools of citizenship. They gather together into their membership men and women of all races and creeds, and they encourage their members to become American citizens.
[180]. The labor union movement began in England because it was there that the Industrial Revolution first brought in the factory system. At the outset the formation of unions was bitterly opposed by the employers and laws were enacted declaring such organizations to be illegal. In the closing years of the eighteenth century any English worker who joined an organization, in order to secure better wages or fewer hours of labor, was liable to be arrested and punished by the courts. In due course the labor organization movement spread to America, where also it encountered strong opposition during the first half of the nineteenth century. Attempts to secure better wages by forming labor associations were held to be conspiracies in restraint of trade and those who openly took part in the organization movement were frequently imprisoned. After 1830, however, the opposition began to grow less intense and by 1870 it had become generally recognized that labor organizations were here to stay. In one state after another they began to receive legal recognition and today the right of the workers to organize for the promotion of their own interests is not denied in any part of the country.
[181]. Most writers use the term “trade union” to include only such labor organizations as are composed of men and women who work in the same trade or occupation; but some employ the term to include all labor organizations whose object is collective action in the interest of their members.
[182]. Although this program does not contain anything that savors of violence, or of arbitrary control of industry by the workers, or of dictatorial methods towards the public it sometimes happens that individual labor organizations or their leaders are guilty of these things. While professing disapproval of violence, the labor leaders have on occasions (though not as a rule) tolerated it. Labor leaders, moreover, in some cases have exacted money from employers under threat of calling men off their jobs; the Brindell case in New York City is a recent illustration. On some notable occasions labor leaders have been convicted and sent to jail for resorting to organized terrorism against employers. All this, however, does not condemn the program of labor organizations as a whole. No body of men, particularly when it numbers several million members, can in fairness be judged by the wrongful acts of a few.
[183]. It should be borne in mind that not everyone who desires to work at a particular trade is entitled to membership in the trade union. He must apply for admission to membership and the initiation fee for membership is often as high as a hundred dollars or more. Moreover, he must satisfy the union that he is properly skilled in the trade, if the trade requires skill. Some unions, commonly called “open unions,” take in practically all who apply; but these unions exist, for the most part, in unskilled trades only.
[184]. In New Zealand, for example. For a time it was looked upon as a great success in that country, but in recent years it has not prevented numerous strikes.
[185]. This was the sequel to a strike on the part of the Kansas coal miners, which threatened to leave the people without fuel for the winter. When the strikers refused to return to work a call was sent out for volunteers and men of all occupations came forward to work in the mines. When the emergency was past the legislature decided that the rights of the public ought to be protected in the future against both employers and workmen.
[186]. These include all industries affecting food, clothing, fuel, and transportation.
[187]. “The children were kept working for fourteen, and even sixteen, hours a day; they were beaten for the slightest mistake or offence; and sometimes they were tortured by the overseers, who would tie them to a beam close over the whirling machines by way of teaching them to hold their feet up, or would rivet irons on their ankles and hips to teach them not to try to run away. Locked in the factory while they worked, and in neighboring barracks while they slept, these pitiful martyrs were as absolutely abandoned by their kind as though they had been adult convicts on the way to Botany Bay, or negro slaves on the middle passage.” G. H. Perris, The Industrial History of Modern England, p. 207.
[188]. Congress has established a Bureau of Child Welfare in the Department of Labor with the duty of encouraging the enactment of laws to protect children.