In the strongest Unions the central
control is absolute in reference to the more important objects of union,
the pressure for higher wages, shorter hours, and other industrial
advantages, or the resistance of attempts to impose reductions of wages,
&c.
3. Along with the movement towards a national organization of the
workers in a trade, or in some cases prior to it, is the growth of
combined action between allied industries, that is to say, trades which
are closely related in work and interests. In the building trades, for
example, bricklayers, masons, carpenters, plasterers, plumbers, painters
and decorators, find that their respective trade interests meet, and are
interwoven at a score of different points. The sympathetic action thus
set up is beginning to find its way to the establishment of closer co-
operation between the Unions of these several trades. The different
industries engaged in river-side work are rapidly forming into closer
union. So also the various mining classes, the railway workers, civil
servants, are moving gradually but surely towards a recognition of
common interests, and of the advantage of close common action.
4. The fact of the innumerable delicate but important relations which
subsist among classes of workers, whose work appears on the surface but
distantly related, is leading to Trade Councils representative of all
the Trade Unions in a district. In the midland counties and in London
these general Trade Councils are engaged in the gigantic task of welding
into some single unity the complex conflicting interests of large bodies
of workmen.
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