achinists, in their demand for a nine-hour day, affected 500,000 men in
the United States, Mexico, and Canada. In England the membership of
working-class organizations is approximated by Keir Hardie at 2,500,000,
with reserve funds of $18,000,000. There the cooperative movement has a
membership of 1,500,000, and every year turns over in distribution more
than $100,000,000. In France, one-eighth of the whole working class is
unionized. In Belgium the unions are very rich and powerful, and so able
to defy the masters that many of the smaller manufacturers, unable to
resist, "are removing their works to other countries where the workmen's
organizations are not so potential." And in all other countries,
according to the stage of their economic and political development, like
figures obtain. And Europe, today, confesses that her greatest social
problem is the labor problem, and that it is the one most closely
engrossing the attention of her statesmen.

The organization of labor is one of the chief acknowledged factors in the
retrogression of British trade. The workers have become class conscious
as never before. The wrong of one is the wrong of all. They have come
to realize, in a short-sighted way, that their masters' interests are not
their interests. The harder they work, they believe, the more wealth
they create for their masters. Further, the more work they do in one
day, the fewer men will be needed to do the work. So the unions place a
day's stint upon their members, beyond which they are not permitted to
go. In "A Study of Trade Unionism," by Benjamin Taylor in the
"Nineteenth Century" of April, 1898, are furnished some interesting
corroborations. The facts here set forth were collected by the Executive
Board of the Employers' Federation, the documentary proofs of which are
in the hands of the secretaries. In a certain firm the union workmen
made eight ammunition boxes a day. Nor could they be persuaded into
making more. A young Swiss, who could not speak English, was set to
work, and in the first day he made fifty boxes. In the same firm the
skilled union hands filed up the outside handles of one machine-gun a
day. That was their stint. No one was known ever to do more. A
non-union filer came into the shop and did twelve a day. A Manchester
firm found that to plane a large bed-casting took union workmen one
hundred and ninety hours, and non-union workmen one hundred and
thirty-five hours. In an