66

INDUSTRIES

BY Wм. M. LEISERSON

Chairman, Board of Arbitration, Men's Clothing Industry, New York

1. THE GOAL OF TRADE UNIONISM

The goal of trade unionism," wrote Professor John R. Commons fifteen years ago, "is the trade agreement. This implies the equal organization of employers and the settlement of a wage scale and conditions of work through conferences of representatives. The trade agreement must be distinguished from 'arbitration,' which, properly speaking, is the reference of disputes to an umpire. Far from being a simple solution of that kind, it is a form of constitutional government, with its legislative, executive and judicial branches, its common law and statute law, its penalties and sanctions."

Ten or twelve years later, Professor Robert F. Hoxie, whose untimely death cut short some very fruitful studies of trade unionism, wrote in quite a different strain:

"There are in the United States today hundreds of union organizations, each practically independent or sovereign, and each with its own. and often peculiar aims, policies, demands, methods, attitudes, and internal regulations. Nor is there any visible or tangible bond, however tenuous, that unites these organizations into a single whole.... "Thus the scope and character of union ideals and methods have been as broad and diverse as the conscious common needs and conditions of the groups of workers entering into the organization. Some unions have confined themselves to attempts to deal directly with their immediate employers and their immediate conditions of work and pay; others have emphasized mutual aid and education; still others have enlarged their field of action to include all employers and all conditions-economic, legal, and social....

"In short, there is unionism and unionism. But, looking at matters concretely, and realistically, there is no single thing that can be taken as unionism per se.'

دوو

Here we have two of our leading students of labor organizations differing completely regarding the fundamental nature of the subject matter with which they have to deal. One assumes that there is such a thing as unionism and that its goal is the trade 'Commons, J. R.: Trade Unionism and Labor Problems, Introduction, p. vii. "Hoxie, Robert F., Trade Unionism in the United States, Ch. II, pp. 33, 35, 36, 37.

agreement. The other says there is no single thing that can be taken as unionism, but that there are distinct types of unions with different goals.

Hoxie proceeded to classify the different types. He mentions the structural forms that have long been recognized, i.e., craft union, industrial union, trades union or trades assembly, and the labor union. But he goes further and distinguishes four functional types of unionism which he names "business unionism,” "friendly or uplift unionism," "revolutionary unionism," and "predatory unionism."

Commons does not seem to have elaborated his view of the unity of unionism with its single goal, and in the new edition of his Trade Unionism and Labor Problems, published this year, he has omitted the statement quoted at the beginning of this paper. However, in his History of Labor in the United States, published in 1918, we find repeated reiteration of the idea that the goal of trade unionism is the trade agreement.

"The ideal of the trade agreement was the main achievement of the nineties. It led the way from an industrial system which alternately was either despotism or anarchy to a constitutional form of government in industry".

"At present the trade agreement is one of the most generally accepted principles in the American labor movement. It is professed by the 'pure and simple' trade unionists and by the great majority of their socialist opponents. Those who reject it are a very small minority composed principally of the sympathizers with the Industrial Workers of the World.”

These divergent views of Professors Commons and Hoxie have been quoted at some length because they represent the main trends of opinion among American students of labor organizations. And we believe that the fruitfulness of future researches in the labor field will depend quite largely on clearing up this difference of opinion. Either the two views will have to be reconciled, or one of them must be proved erroneous. The two views are not even clearly distinguished, and some writers unconsciously change from one to the other, with natural confusion to their conclusions. Clear thinking requires that we shall know whether there is a unity in the labor organizations that we study, whether there is a normal trade unionism with a more or less conscious goal, or whether there is a multitude of unionisms with distinct 'Commons, J. R.: History of Labor in the United States. Vol. II, pp. 519 and 527.