ABSTRACT
Generally speaking, trade unions flourish when trade is good. An improvement in the state of trade reduces the competition between workers for employment. The desire to make a profit whilst demand conditions are favourable disposes employers to settle trade disputes peacefully. Faced with a strike, employers, middlemen and the community at large are inclined to say ‘Here we are losing our time; we are losing our harvest…. For God’s sake, settle, and pay anything.’1 A trade union which obtains an improvement in the wages and conditions of its members is likely to attract support. Further, as its membership and income increase, it will be able to afford to spend money on its organization, and its bargaining position will be improved. On the other hand, a deterioration in the state of trade increases the competition between workers for employment. Employers are able to enforce reductions in wage-rates, and where these are resisted by organized workers, lock-outs result. These are, almost inevitably settled on the employers’ terms. Under these circumstances, trade unions lose members, their incomes dwindle and their capital is eaten into, even where it is not entirely dissipated in lockout pay and out-of-work benefit. The first half of the nineteenth century saw many unions in various trades founded and prospering during the upswing of a trade cycle only to collapse on the downswing of the same cycle.2
