Page:Emile Vandervelde - Three Aspects of the Russian Revolution - tr. Jean Elmslie Henderson Findlay (1918).djvu/93

 adhesion, without any voluntary action. On the contrary, a worker is only admitted to membership of a Trade Union on his making the request and being elected, and on his agreeing to a determined course of action governed by fixed rules, the observing of a particular discipline; by consenting, in short, to the many responsibilities which this discipline entails, and of which the financial burdens are assuredly the least heavy. In a word, the member of a committee is simply in possession of a right; the member of a Trade Union pursues a definite aim, by constant, regular action, binding him to perform certain duties. The committee represents only the workmen of one factory, to the exclusion of all others. Whoever leaves one factory to go into another passes from the jurisdiction of one committee to that of a neighbouring committee. Even when the committees are federated they have none the less each a separate existence, and all their activities remain conditional to the particular factory for which they act. The Trade Union, on the contrary, groups, or endeavours to group, all the workmen of a collection of professions or