rdwainers; yet these demands
involve the same fundamental issues regarding hours, wages, and
the closed shop. Most unions, when all persiflage is set aside, are
primarily organized for business--the business of looking after their
own interests. Their treasury is a war chest rather than an insurance
fund. As a benevolent organization, the American union is far behind the
British union with its highly developed Friendly Societies.

The establishment of a standard rate of wages is perhaps, as the United
States Industrial Commission reported in 1901, "the primary object of
trade union policy." The most promising method of adjusting the wage
contract is by the collective trade agreement. The mechanism of the
union has made possible collective bargaining, and in numerous trades
wages and other conditions are now adjusted by this method. One of the
earliest of these agreements was effected by the Iron Molders' Union
in 1891 and has been annually renewed. The coal operatives, too, for a
number of years have signed a wage agreement with their miners, and
the many local difficulties and differences have been ingeniously and
successfully met. The great railroads have, likewise, for many
years made periodical contracts with the railway Brotherhoods. The
glove-makers, cigar-makers, and, in many localities, workers in the
building trades and on street-railway systems have the advantage of
similar collective agreements. In 1900 the American Newspaper Publishers
Association and the International Typographical Union, after many
years of stubborn fighting merged their numerous differences in a
trade contract to be in effect for one year. This experiment proved so
successful that the agreement has since then been renewed for five year
periods. In 1915 a bitter strike of the garment makers in New York City
was ended by a "protocol." The principle of collective agreement has
become so prevalent that the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor believes
that it "is being accepted with increasing favor by both employers and
employees," and John Mitchell, speaking from wide experience and an
intimate knowledge of conditions, says that "the hope of future peace in
the industrial world lies in the trade agreement." These agreements
are growing in complexity, and today they embrace not only questions of
wages and hours but also methods for adjusting all the differences which
may arise between the parties to the bargain.

The very success of collective bar