duced many strong leaders
of American unions and saved them from defection to other interests.
Aggressive and uncompromising in a perpetual fight for the strongest
possible position and power of trade unions, but always strong for
collective agreements with the opposing employers, he displays the
business tactics of organized labor. At the head of an organization
which denies itself power over its constituent unions, he has brought
and held together the most widely divergent and often antagonistic
unions, while permitting each to develop and even to change its
character to fit the changing industrial conditions.

The dismal failure of the strike against the tenement house system in
cigar making brought home to both Strasser and Gompers the weakness of
the plan of organization of their union as well as that of American
trade unions in general. They consequently resolved to rebuild their
union upon the pattern of the British unions, although they firmly
intended that it should remain a militant organization. The change
involved, first, complete authority over the local unions in the hands
of the international officers; second, an increase in the membership
dues for the purpose of building up a large fund; and, third, the
adoption of a far-reaching benefit system in order to assure stability
to the organization. This was accomplished at the convention held in
August, 1879. This convention simultaneously adopted the British idea of
the "equalization of funds," which gave the international officers the
power to order a well-to-do local union to transfer a portion of its
funds to another local union in financial straits. With the various
modifications of the feature of "equalization of funds," the system of
government in the Cigar Makers' International Union was later used as a
model by the other national and international trade unions.

As Strasser and men of his ilk grew more and more absorbed in the
practical problems of the everyday struggle of the wage-earners for
better conditions of employment, the socialistic portion of their
original philosophy kept receding further and further into the
background until they arrived at pure trade unionism. But their trade
unionism differed vastly from the "native" American trade unionism of
their time, which still hankered for the haven of producers'
cooperation. The philosophy which these new leaders developed might be
termed a philosophy of pure wage-consciousness. It signified a