Joinery

“ The mahogany cutters have a Guild, which holds itself responsible for the failure of any member to execute work for which he has been paid; it cannot be called a Trade Union, because, so far as I learn, it has no other purpose—except jollification. ”

“ All through those years which are known as the Middle Ages it was the custom for men who belonged to the same trade to form themselves into a society, or guild as it was called, to protect and help one another in their own particular work. Each trade had its own guild, and its own special saint as guardian. ”

“ There's something of the same dismal diminuendo in the evolution of a Master into a Mister.
The very vital importance of the word "Master" is this. A Guild was, very broadly speaking, a Trade Union in which every man was his own employer. That is, a man could not work at any trade unless he would join the league and accept the laws of that trade; but he worked in his own shop with his own tools, and the whole profit went to himself. ”

“ Trade Guilds and the Coming of The New Industry The outstanding factor in the industrial, social, and economic life of the Middle Ages is the trade guild. The real life of any people is not the story of its wars or the record of the doings of its kings and nobles. It is the life of the people themselves. The moment we try to study this aspect of these old times we find that in the towns especially the life of the people centers around their trade guilds. The guild was an organization of all the workmen in any given trade. ”

“ But he must earn his livelihood; and he determined to become a joiner. He fell to work to make a chair, succeeded in the first attempt, and for the rest of his life followed carpentering as his profession. He handled his tools with all the dexterity of a practised workman; his shop was always in order, the tools in their proper position in the rack, or in his hands. The only peculiarity about his instruments was in the foot-rule he used for making his measurements, the lines on which were marked by small pins, of different numbers, to indicate the different feet on the rule. ”

“ In order to gain an idea of a guild, imagine in this country a single association of jewelers to which everyone connected with the jewelry business was forced to belong, whether he were manufacturer or retailer, employer, or employee, the head of his firm or the last new clerk behind the counter. Or, to look at it in another way, imagine a trust controlling the whole industry and a union including all the workmen under a closed-shop system, and then suppose that the trust and the union were one and the same. ”

“ If traders from any given province muster in sufficient numbers at any of the great centres of commerce, they club together and form a guild. A general subscription is first levied, land is bought, and the necessary building is erected. ”

“ Are we not justified in the belief that we shall find them also at the roots of literature?
What is a "clan"? As already observed, we are not to suppose that all clans are exactly alike. Trades-unions and co-operative associations are called by their respective common names, yet even with our abundant means of contemporary information we are content to merge individual differences in our general notions of the one and the other. ”

“ A meeting of all the trade is then called by handbills sent round to the shops, and posted in the men's favourite public-houses. On the eventful night the General Secretary and perhaps another Central officer, come down to the town. They bring a Branch box containing sets of Rules and cards of membership, a full set of cash and other books, a number of business papers, and even a bottle of ink in fact all that is needful to carry on the business of a Lodge. The room will be crammed full of the men in the trade interested in hear- ing what the Society is and what it wants to do. ”

“ We have the family united for the protection of all its members, standing by each other, liable for each other.
2. Next we have the association of neighbours together, of many families, to form guilds of religion and brotherly love and mutual protection.
3. The crafts are found uniting for trade purposes, regulating the production, jealously watching the standards of work, fixing hours of work and prices, excluding foreigners, and importing raw material. These trade unions had no powers other than those obtained by common agreement. ”

“ Organization among the workers in the cotton industry is remarkably thorough. Almost all spinners are members of trade unions, and though the weavers are not so strongly united, the bulk of them are organized. The piecers are admitted as members of piecers’ associations, connected with the Trade Unions.spinners’ associations and controlled by them. Attempts to form independent piecers’ unions have failed. Weavers’ assistants are included in the weavers’ unions, which may be joined in different classes, the benefits connected with which vary with the amounts paid. ”

“ Development of commercial association in the Middle Ages.—In the Middle Ages we find the beginnings of that process of association which can be traced step by step to the formation of the great “trusts” of the present day, and which forms one of the most important features in the development of commerce. To point out the various advantages which arise from the association of laborers and of capitalists would lead us into political economy; and to describe in detail the development of the various forms of association would require an excursion into legal history equally out of place. ”

“ In the same way, a meeting arranged ad hoc between delegates of an employers’ association and a trade union, for the purpose of arranging differences as to the terms on which the members of the association shall employ members of the union is not usually classed as “conciliation,” unless the meeting is held in the presence of an independent chairman or conciliator, or in pursuance of a permanent agreement between the associations laying down the procedure for the settlement of disputes. ”

“ The continental spinners have largely increased, but are developing into huge syndicates, all working on the schappe principle. The three chief syndicates, one each in Italy, France and Switzerland, work very much together, practically ruling the prices for yarns and raw materials. ”

“ The essence of the manifold regulations of the statutes of these three Gilds appears to be the brotherly banding together into close unions between man and man, sometimes even established on and fortified by oath, for the purpose of mutual help and support. This essential characteristic is found in all the Gilds of every age, from those first known to us in detail, to their descendants of the present day, the Trade Unions. ”

“ The other organizations quite generally endorse the principle of a needle trades alliance, or federation. Since the amalgamation movement has grown so strong in the industry the advocates of alliance have the more vigorously put forth their proposition as a substitute. But the great rank and file will have none of it. The needle trades workers wilt probably be the first in this country to actually combine their several unions into one industrial organization. ”

“ Under the Combination Laws oaths of secrecy and obedience were customary in the more secret and turbulent Trade Unions, notably that of the Glasgow Cotton-spinners and the Northumberland Miners. The custom survived the repeal; and admission to the Builders' Union involved a lengthy ceremony conducted by the officers of the lodge the " outside and inside tylers," the " warden," the " president," " secretary," and " prin- cipal conductor " and taken part in by the candidates and the members of the lodge. ”

“ All authorities do not agree as to what constitutes a Union, the following definition having been met with: "Fabrics are union when composed of two materials otherwise than by blending." In the Morley (Yorkshire) trade a "Union" is a cotton warp cloth of boiled and teazled finish superficially resembling Broadcloth.
[96]
Union Yarns.—These yarns, as the name indicates, are the product of combining two or more different materials into a yarn, generally wool and cotton or wool, and any of the many vegetable fibres capable of being spun. ”

“ The various special branches of metal trades have both local and national syndicate organizations for the discussion of their trade problems, and means of voicing the particular needs of their trade, on which a majority sentiment has been expressed. These chamber syndicates are in turn combined into a National Union. ”

“ Circumstances, amongst others the fact that the community to which they attached themselves had already adopted commerce and thus become a guild of merchants, led to the differentiation of industrial functions amongst the new-comers, and thus to the establishment of craft-guilds. ”

“ The Federation of Labor, however, is composed of chapters, or lodges, that are homogeneous, all the men of each lodge being in the same trade.
The definition given is broad enough to include the various degrees of help given and the various methods adopted by trade-unions to accomplish their objects. Trade-unions are mutual-benefit associations: insurance against accident, sickness, death, or lack of employment, forms an important part, and in some cases almost the whole of their work. ”

“ The introduction of a new organ between the primary elements, like the sea between countries, operates, not as a barrier, but as a bond of union. The unity of the group, which consists in the commerce of each member with each other member by some sort of means, must become much more energetic and intimate when assisted by the activity of the mercantile class. ”

“ Each one particular trade or business has its own guild, in which all persons or firms engaged in that trade or business are associated together for mutual protection and aid. It has its own rules and regulations, its funds, and committee of management. The members of the committee are generally elected annually by members of the guild. ”

“ Industrial combinations that consist, not in the approximation or fusion of parts, but in the establishment of common centres of connexion, are exhibited in the Bank clearing-house and the Railway clearing-house. While of yet another genus are those unions which bring into relation the more or less dispersed citizens who are occupied in like ways: as traders are brought by the Exchange and the Stock-Exchange; and as are professional men by institutes, like those of Civil Engineers, Architects, &c. ”

“ Trades-unions have until very lately passed the whole subject by in utter silence. What has been done by workingmen in this country in the line of co-operation has been done outside of the great trade associations, which form the natural instrumentalities for organizing such combination. They offer the mechanism, the mutual knowledge, the preliminary training in habits of combination, which together should form the proper conditions for the development of co-operation. ”

“ As time passed, the master-guilders joined themselves into trade leagues, and became very powerful in controlling commerce so that the evolution of industry passed from the Guild system into that of the Domestic System. ”

“ In order that we may understand the coming together process that has developed these craft unions and the alliances between them, and so* we will have a guide for future progress, it will pay us to review some of the details of the evolution. ”

“ A chain of mutual dependence, too often unrecognized, binds together the members of the human family, whether they belong to the same community or dwell on opposite sides of the earth. The links of this chain are made up of the articles which constitute our daily food, our clothing, homes, fuel, light, our means of communication and transportation, and only by continuous coöperation are they kept together. ”

“ Branches of an industrial local deal with the employer only through the Industrial Union. Thus, while the workers in each branch determine the conditions that directly affect them, they act in concert with all the workers of the industry through the local industrial union. ”

“ The combination or the federation of existing organizations is but the natural response of the workers to the ever-growing complexity of modern industrial life. Ever closer organization on the part of the employers, the welding together of twenty businesses into one corporation, of five corporations into one trust, of all the trusts in the country into one combine, have to be balanced by correspondingly complete organization on the part of the workers. ”

“ A joint-stock company, working with some of its own members and with others as agents, cannot bring to issue the great question whether the existence of the individual family is compatible with the universal family, which the term "Community" signifies. ”

“ So far we have been mainly concerned with societies formed in particular trades, nearly always confined to particular localities, and known as institutions, associations, trade clubs, trade societies, unions, and union societies. We have by anticipation applied the term Trade Union to them in its modern sense ”

“ Whether this were the case or not, it will be obvious to all that in Saxon and Norman England alike, wherever several persons were plying the same trade, there must have existed some sort of organization for mutual protection and for the instruction of others. Throughout the known world from the very earliest periods, workmen of the different classes have always formed their own aggregations and have always associated themselves together for mutual assistance and protection. ”