ABSTRACT
In every developing capitalist country, Trade unionism has come into existence with the growth of Capitalism itself. Wherever the workers are brought under the domination of the wage system in mines and factories employing considerable masses of labour, Trade Unionism develops as the instinctive answer to capitalist exploitation. There were Trade Union movements, of varying strength and character, in all the developed capitalist countries. But in Italy and Germany, and to a considerable extent in Japan, Trade Unionism has been stamped out of existence; and a like fate has befallen it in lesser countries which have come under Fascist domination. For one of the first acts of every Fascist Government is to destroy the Trade Unions, as the basic instrument of working-class independence and democratic action. Considerable wage advances were secured; and American Trade Unionism entered on a period of swift and vigorous growth in marked contrast to its previous inactivity outside a quite small group of trades.
