tion to a
stable organization more and more the emphasis is shifted from wages to
working rules. Unionists have discovered that on the whole wages are the
unstable factor, going up or down, depending on fluctuating business
conditions and cost of living; but that once they have established their
power by making the employer accept their working rules, high wages will
ultimately follow.

These working rules are seldom improvisations of the moment, but, crude
and one-sided as they often are, they are the product of a long labor
experience and have taken many years to be shaped and hammered out.
Since their purpose is protective, they can best be classified with
reference to the particular thing in the workingman's life which they
are designed to protect: the standard of living of the trade group,
health, the security of the worker's job, equal treatment in the shop
and an equal chance with other workmen in promotion, the bargaining
power of the trade group, as a whole, and the safety of the union from
the employer's attempts to undermine it. We shall mention only a few of
these rules by way of illustration. Thus all rules relating to methods
of wage payment, like the prohibition of piece work and of bonus
systems (including those associated with scientific management
systems), are primarily devices to protect the wage earner's rate of pay
against being "nibbled away" by the employer; and in part also to
protect his health against undue exertion. Other rules like the normal
(usually the eight-hour) day with a higher rate for overtime; the rule
demanding a guarantee of continuous employment for a stated time or a
guarantee of minimum earnings, regardless of the quantity of work
available in the shop; again the demand for the sharing of work in slack
times among all employes; and further, when layoffs become necessary,
the demand of recognition by the employer of a right to continuous
employment based on "seniority" in the shop;--all these have for their
common aim chiefly the protection of the job. Another sort of rules,
like the obstruction to the splitting up of trades and the restrictions
on apprenticeship, have in view the protection of the bargaining power
of the craft group--through artificially maintaining an undiminished
demand for skilled labor, as well as through a reduction of the number
of competitors, present and future, for jobs. The protection of the
union against the employer's designs, actual or potential,