ABSTRACT
In many cases wages depend directly on the competition for employment on the part of workpeople and the demand of employers for labour. There are throughout the community many different industries and professions, each demanding certain qualifications on the part of those who would engage in them. Trades’ unionists will learn to their cost, if they give an opportunity for the lesson, that they can legitimately command only those who have voluntarily become members of their association. ‘The history of combination among the working classes has, until a very recent period, been a sad history of misdirected effort, of strength put forth only in violence and disorder, and of the virtues of brotherhood lost in tyrannical suppression of all individual freedom. Models for the imitation of trades’ unions are afforded in certain professional and commercial associations now existing. Members of medical halls, of Law Societies and of stock exchanges join these bodies of their own choice.
