It is with the cost and labour of
these early steps that the students of the problem of present poverty
must concern themselves.
Sec. 3. Trade Unionism. Ability of Workers to combine. Trade Unionism is a
more hopeful remedy. Large bodies of workers have by this means helped
to raise themselves from a condition of industrial weakness to one of
industrial strength. Why should not close combination among workers in
low-paid and sweating industries be attended with like results? Why
should not the men and women working in "sweating" trades combine, and
insist upon higher wages, shorter hours, more regular employment, and
better sanitary conditions? Well, it may be regarded as an axiom in
practical economies, that any concerted action, however weak and
desultory, has its value. Union is always strength. An employer who can
easily resist any number of individual claims for higher wages by his
power to replace each worker by an outsider, can less easily resist the
united pressure of a large body of his workmen, because the
inconvenience of replacing them all at once by a body of outsiders, is
far greater than the added difficulty of replacing each of them at
separate intervals of time. This is the basis of the power of concerted
action among workers. But the measure of this power depends in the main
upon two considerations.
First comes the degree of effectiveness in combination. The prime
requisites for effective combination are a spirit of comradeship and
mutual trust, knowledge and self-restraint in the disposition of united
force.
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