es
since 1885, are full, trustworthy, and valuable.

CHAPTER X

THE EXTENSION OF VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATION

Trade Unions, Trusts, And Cooeperation

*78. The Rise of Trade Unions.*--One of the most manifest effects of the
introduction of the factory system was the intensification of the
distinction between employers and employees. When a large number of
laborers were gathered together in one establishment, all in a similar
position one to the other and with common interests as to wages, hours
of labor, and other conditions of their work, the fact that they were
one homogeneous class could hardly escape their recognition. Since
these common interests were in so many respects opposed to those of
their employers, the advantages of combination to obtain added
strength in the settlement of disputed questions was equally evident.
As the Statute of Apprentices was no longer in force, and freedom of
contract had taken its place, a dispute between an employer and a
single employee would result in the discharge of the latter. If the
dispute was between the employer and his whole body of employees, each
one of the latter would be in a vastly stronger position, and there
would be something like equality in the two sides of the contest.

Under the old gild conditions, when each man rose successively from
apprentice to journeyman, and from journeyman to employer, when the
relations between the employing master and his journeymen and
apprentices were very close, and the advantages of the gild were
participated in by all grades of the producing body, organizations of
the employed against the employers could hardly exist. It has been
seen that the growth of separate combinations was one of the
indications of a breaking down of the gild system. Even in the later
times, when establishments were still small and scattered, when the
government required that engagements should be made for long periods,
and that none should work in an industry except those who had been
apprenticed to it, and when rates of wages and hours of labor were
supposed to be settled by law, the opposition between the interests of
employers and employees was not very strongly marked. The occasion or
opportunity for union amongst the workmen in most trades still hardly
existed. Unions had been formed, it is true, during the first half of
the eighteenth century and spasmodically in still earlier times. These
were, however, mostly in trades where the employers mad