Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 55.djvu/104

94 injustice and oppression of the merchant guild, and were strong enough and persistent enough to assert themselves, and as long as the craft guilds were democratic in spirit and were true to the needs for which they were organized they flourished. But with age and success came narrowness and bigotry and opposition to progress. They became monopolies of employment and societies of greedy capitalists, and in England withered away before the growth of the modern vast industrial establishment.

I have ventured to give this general sketch of these guilds because the same spirit and necessities which inspired them brought the trades union into being. The trades union or labor organization was created to protect the laborer and gain for him a better position in life, to raise his standard of living. It is like the old guilds in being subject to the same dangers as they were, and when it proves false to its true objects it will pass away as did the old guilds. It will last only so long as there is a necessity for its existence, as long as it does the work it is born to do. And when it has come to deny freedom, to refuse another's rights, and to repress industry, the seeds of dissolution are already sown.

Trades unions or labor unions arose from the necessity of organization among the laborers or wage-earners if they were to hold their own against the aggregation of capital. The craft guild arose at a time when trading and manufacturing concerns were small, when the interest of both master and workman in a business were alike joined in opposition to the exactions of a superior class—the merchant guild; while the trades union came upon the field to protect the laborer against his employer. Whatever other objects and aims it may have had do not enter into my purposes in this paper. The personal relation which had existed between the master and servant, the employer and his few employees, the manufacturer and his half dozen workmen or apprentices, no longer existed when the workers became scores and hundreds, and the owner of the business was replaced by the manager or superintendent. That personal relation was in some measure a protection for both, but when that disappeared the temptation to gratify owners and stockholders with big dividends became too strong to be overcome. Against organized capital there was absolute need of organized labor, and trades unions and labor unions and such organizations came into existence.

There was no possibility of their existence until the laborer had become intellectually and socially capable of organization, and until the divine spirit of discontent drove him to association with his brother worker. During all the years from the time of his serfdom up to the time these organizations began he had been slowly growing in development and gaining something in political position, but it was