Page:George Henry Soule - Recent Developments in Trade Unionism (1921).pdf/5



England was the first country in the world to feel the industrial revolution, near the beginning of the nineteenth century, which brought in large factories, machine-production, and the control of manufacturing by owners of capital. The modern labor movement is therefore older in England than in any other country, and trade-unionism there has had a longer experience and more chances to grow big and powerful. The British labor movement is also in many respects more like the American labor movement than is that in any other country. On both these accounts, it is well to begin with a survey of recent tendencies in Great Britain, for experience has taught us that many developments in England have been repeated at some later date on this side of the water.

Thirty years ago the English unions were for the most part exclusive societies of the highly skilled craftsmen, which almost never engaged in general strikes, and laid much stress on insurance and benefit funds. The unskilled day laborers were not organized, and machinery had not yet pro-