e same agreement. This circumstance has been sometimes decisive of the
degree of centralized authority in the various trade unions. It has also
tended to govern the attitude of particular trade unions towards the
application of the principle of standardization without variation or
modification.[103] The history of trade unionism is full of instances of
organizations which have striven in vain to maintain uniform
standardized wage rates throughout imperfectly organized areas.[104]
Even when wage disputes have been settled by public agency, the usual
procedure in the past has been to make the area covered by the agreement
entirely dependent upon the area of dispute.[105]

For all of that there has been in recent years a steady drift towards an
extension of the area of standardization. In various industries careful
thought has been given to the possibility of standardization on a
national scale, though at present very few unions enforce such a
scale.[106] On the railroads there are at present nation-wide wage
scales. In Great Britain, to-day this is one of the most vexed of
questions. Indeed Great Britain just has gone through a great coal
strike in which it was one of the two great issues. The miners asked
that "a levy be made upon each colliery company on every ton of coal
raised to the surface to be used for ensuring the payment of wages
agreed upon in a national wages settlement." The miners argue, and
correctly, that district settlements would give unequal reward to men
doing precisely the same work, and called upon for the same
service.[107]

8.--The introduction of standardization into crafts or industries in
which a variety of wage rates for substantially the same tasks exist
gives rise to one other difficult problem. That is the determination of
the level of standardization for each occupation.

It will be argued, at a later point, that under any economic system in
which labor organization is an accepted part of the economic structure,
the wage levels established in different industries or occupations will
have to be brought into relation with each other.[108] If that is so,
the level of standardization of any industry or occupation would be
determined in accordance with these principles, after they had been in
operation for some time. As a matter of fact, however, under any policy
of wage settlement, the enforcement of standardization will be something
of an independent and prior process--prior, that is, to t