orkers often effectively
prevent a common feeling of their interests and assertion of them.
There is an analogy between these conditions and the political
conditions that early led simple democracies to give way to
representative governments. So long as a community is small and men
know each other personally, popular government may exist without
complex machinery, but when numbers become larger, public opinion can
be concentrated and made effective only by delegating the functions to
elected representatives.

Sec. 3. #Functions of labor organizations.# Out of these conditions have
grown the various kinds of labor organizations. Their first object
is to maintain and increase wages. Closely connected with this is
the remedying of various abuses in respect to methods of payment,
measurement of the output, and conditions of work. Almost cooerdinate
with the aim of higher wages of recent years has been that of the
shorter work day. Labor leaders have frequently asserted when the two
demands have been made together, that a reduction of hours is the more
desirable. Better conditions of safety and sanitation in their work
were not the first thought of laborers when they organized. As a
result of habit and ignorance (widely prevalent at that time) they
were remarkably unconcerned about this matter. Reforms in this
direction at the outset had to come largely from sympathetic
observers, the "philanthropists," often described as sentimentalists.
But the modern, more enlightened, labor movement has better ideals
and policies in respect to the safety, sanitation, and decency of the
working places.

Labor organizations have also secondary objects of very great
importance. They are nearly always in some measure mutual-benefit
associations, and provide in varying degrees insurance against
accident, sickness, death, or lack of employment. All unions in a
measure serve their members as employment bureaus, and some make this
am important feature. Through trade-papers, correspondence, traveling
members, and in meetings, information is exchanged regarding
conditions of employment in various parts of the country. Labor
organizations by means of their discussions and through their special
periodicals are a strong educational force in matters political and
economic. The local labor organizations often come to be the center of
the social activities and interests of many of their members, and even
of all the members of their families. The orga