Page:Emile Vandervelde - Three Aspects of the Russian Revolution - tr. Jean Elmslie Henderson Findlay (1918).djvu/94

 industries without any distinction between those who work for different employers or in different parts of the country. One of the most striking points of the Trade Unions in all countries is that tendency which leads them towards centralization. The organizations of specialists which were formed at the beginning of the Revolution have been replaced by organizations open to extremely wide categories of workmen in machinery shops—metal workers, wood workers, labourers, transport workers, for instance; in short, local associations are replaced by national organizations. Matters had progressed so far that before the war, in a country as large as Germany, more than two million workmen were grouped into only fifty-three Unions, and of these more than two-thirds belonged to the six largest organizations. The Trade Union has thus the tendency to represent the general interests of the working classes, or at least the many common interests of large bodies of these classes.

For the same reason it avoids excessive claims, extravagances to which the committees are much more exposed. What the Trade Union demands from one employer