Reports of the Industrial Commission...

Among American trade unionists three types of trade union are formally recognized-the local, the national, and the international. The typical local union includes only members who live and work in one town, and its business is done by vote of all the members, meeting in one place. Sometimes there are subordinate organizations, more or less formal, composed of members employed in single establishments. Such are the "chapels" of the printers, which long antedate any more formal organization of the craft. Such are the "shop meetings" of many other trades. It often happens that workers in a place where no local union of their trade exists attach themselves to the nearest, though they may not be able to take part in its ordinary deliberations. Less often, where a few workers of a trade are gathered, they are organized as a branch of a neighboring local union, which thus assumes a complex character. This method is often adopted by the Brewery Workmen.

The national and the international unions represent only a single type, though the formal distinction between them is carefully made in trade-union literature. The typical national union aspires to control all the workers of its trade in the United States. The international union has locals not only in the United States, but also in Canada, and, in a few cases, in Mexico. It sometimes happens that unions which are recognized as national do not in fact have members outside of a limited territory, and perhaps make no effort for more general extension. For instance, the Cotton Mule Spinners, like several other unions in the cotton industry, are confined to New England, excepting a few local unions in New York. The Northern Mineral Mine Workers have apparently no desire to extend beyond the boundaries of Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin.

National and international unions are made up of local unions, which possess more or less complete autonomy, and which join in one way or another in the government of the general body.

In the speech of trade unionists the phrase "local union" is often abbreviated to "local," and this technical usage is frequently employed in the present report. The word “national” is used in this report to include both those unions which call themselves national and those which are distinguished as international.

The great majority of the national trade unions are bound together in the great federal organization, the American Federation of Labor. In one or two instances there are alliances for certain purposes among small numbers of national unions in related trades. The International Typographical Union, the Pressmen, and the Bookbinders have for some years maintained a "tripartite agreement." Efforts have for some time been making to establish an alliance of the national unions in the metal trades.

Scarcely inferior in importance to the Federation of Labor are the local federations or trades councils, which bind together the local unions of particular cities. Almost every important town has its central organization, in which all or most of the local unions of the place meet together by delegates to consider matters of common interest. The local unions of the building trades commonly have federal organizations of their own, called building trades councils, for the consideration of matters of peculiar and common interest to them. Similar local alliances are sometimes formed by unions concerned in other broad departments of industry, such as metal working. The present report is devoted primarily to the organization and policy of the national unions, and touches only incidentally upon these highly important but local phenomena.

TRADE-UNION STATISTICS.

The existing statutes of Great Britain provide an effective method for the collection of trade-union statistics. The registration of trade unions, while not compelled, is induced by being made a condition of valuable privileges, relating especially to the protection of the union funds, and every registered union is required to file annual statements, showing receipts and expenditures, assets and liabilities, and giving separately the amounts expended for each of the several objects of the union. Statistics of membership do not seem to be required by the letter of the act, but they are customarily asked for by the labor department and customarily given by the unions. Moreover, the labor department, being regularly concerned with the collection of trade-union statistics, undertakes to compile statistics of the unions which are not registered; and in this also it seems to be almost completely successful. At the end of 1899, 614 unions, with 1,408,702 members, were registered under the law, and 678, with a membership of 393,816, were not registered, but made reports to the labor department. Over 78 per cent of the membership of unions known to the labor department was, therefore, included in the registered unions.

No such effective machinery for compiling a statistical account of trade unions exists in the United States. A few State bureaus of labor statistics have given some attention to the matter. That of New York has for some years published statistics of the number and membership of unions within its State. That of Indiana published tables of membership, dues, benefits, strikes, etc., in its report for 1893–94, but has published none since. Somewhat full information for Kansas is given in the recent reports of its bureau. The latest report of the Ohio bureau, that for 1900, contains detailed tables of membership, receipts, and expenditures of Ohio unions, as well as wages, hours of labor, strikes, etc. The Ohio report notes, however, that only 43 per cent of the unions reported so simple a matter as their total receipts.

In the absence of some strong statutory inducement, the only hope of obtaining tolerably complete returns is in persistent effort, and the gradual education of the union officers to the desirability of helping. So far as local unions are concerned, their officers are changed so often that the education of them would be a difficult process. But from the national unions, with their comparatively permanent tenure of office, steady pressure might extract tolerably full information.

At the best, the gathering of trade union financial statistics would be more difficult in this country than in Great Britain, because of differences in methods of union organization. A British national union of the normal type puts all the receipts of

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Reports of the Industrial Commission..., Volume 17