of the one trade, or a
state or a city federation of local unions of many trades, bears the
same relation to the component single unions as does the union itself
to the individual workers; so we find that all these various and often
changing expressions of the trade-union principle are accepted and
approved of today.

Even more significant are other groupings which may be observed
forming among the rank and file of the union men and women themselves.

Sometimes these groups combine with the full approval of the union
leaders, local and international. Sometimes they are more in the
nature of an insurgent body, either desiring greater liberty of
self-government for themselves, or questioning the methods of the
organization's leaders, and desiring to introduce freer, more
democratic and more modern methods into the management of the parent
organization. This may take the form of a district council, and in at
least one noteworthy instance, the employes of one large corporation
send their representatives to a joint board, for purposes of
collective bargaining.

The railway unions within the American Federation of Labor, one of the
largest and most powerful bodies of union men in the United States
feel the need of some method of grouping which shall link together
the men's locals and the internationals into which the locals
are combined. This is seen in the demand made by the men for the
acknowledgment by the railways of the "system federation." The reason
some of the more radical men were not found supporting the proposal
was not that they objected to a broader form of organization,
but because they considered the particular plan outlined as too
complicated to be effective.

There is one problem pressing for decisive solution before very long,
and it concerns equally organized labor, governments and public bodies
and the community as a whole. That is, the relations that are to
exist between governing bodies in their function as employer, and the
workers employed by them. So far all parties to this momentous bargain
are content to drift, instead of thinking out the principles upon
which a peaceful and permanent solution can be found for a condition
of affairs, new with this generation, and planning in concert such
arrangements as shall insure even-handed justice to all three parties.

It is true that governments have always been employers of servants,
ever since the days when they ceased to be masters of slaves, but
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