Page:George Henry Soule - Recent Developments in Trade Unionism (1921).pdf/14

 ions were prevented from activity by the fact that the government had forbidden strikes, and had attached heavy penalties to fomenting or calling strikes. Nevertheless many grievances arose in the separate shops. The shop stewards began to go directly to the employers with these grievances.

The structure of many of the unions also prevented them from caring for these local grievances. A craft union of machinists, for instance, would not cover all the workmen in a single shop, but one of its locals might extend over a whole city, including machinists in a number of different shops. Such a local could not act easily in individual shops. A form of shop organization was necessary. Therefore the shop stewards of the various unions in a given shop would get together and form a shop committee, representing all the workmen in that establishment in their dealings with a single employer. Sometimes unofficial stewards were elected for this purpose.

The next move was for the shop committees in a given city or district to affiliate with each other, and in one or more cases strikes were conducted by such a group of committees. The movement gave a strong impetus to the tendency toward industrial unionism, and some of its leaders believed that it would result in a new type of unionism, which would be more revolutionary than the old. The movement has now died down, however, since in most cases the shop committees have been incor-