e societies have been from time to time started in East
London, but their career has been neither long nor brilliant. They have
often had a semi-philanthropic basis, and have been well-meant but
hopeless attempts to supersede 'sweating' by co-operation. None now
working are of sufficient importance to be mentioned."[29]

The place which productive and distributive co-operation is destined to
occupy in the history of the industrial freedom and elevation of the
masses doubtless will be of the first importance. To look forward to a
time when the workers of the community may be grouped in co-operative
bodies, either competing with one another, or related by some bond which
shall minimize the friction of competition, while not impairing the
freedom and integrity of each several group, is not perhaps a wild
utopian vision. To students of English industrial history the transition
to such a state will not appear more marked than the transition through
which industry passed under the Industrial Revolution to the present
capitalist system. But the recognition of this possible future does not
justify us in suggesting productive co-operation as a present remedy for
the poverty of low-skilled city workers. These latter must rise several
steps on the industrial and moral ladder before they are brought within
the reach of the co-operative remedy. It is with the cost and labour of
these early steps that the students of the problem of present poverty
must concern themselves.

Sec. 3. Trade Unionism. Ability of Workers to combine. Trade Unionism is a
more hopeful remedy. Large bodies of workers have by this means helped
to raise themselves from a condition of industrial weakness to one of
industrial strength. Why should not close combination among workers in
low-paid and sweating industries be attended with like results? Why
should not the men and women working in "sweating" trades combine, and
insist upon higher wages, shorter hours, more regular employment, and
better sanitary conditions? Well, it may be regarded as an axiom in
practical economies, that any concerted action, however weak and
desultory, has its value. Union is always strength. An employer who can
easily resist any number of individual claims for higher wages by his
power to replace each worker by an outsider, can less easily resist the
united pressure of a large body of his workmen, because the
inconvenience of replacing them all at once by a body of outsiders, is
far