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The PRESIDENT said:

"Among the gentlemen present with us today, who have come from a great distance, is our associate Mr. DAVID CASARES, A.M., of Merida de Yucatan, Federal Inspector of the railroads in that state, and a Commissioner of Public Construction. I will ask Mr. Casares to address the

Society."

Mr. CASARES read a paper entitled, "Yucatan and its Water Supply."

"The Jackson-Van Buren Papers" was the subject of a paper by Prof. WILLIAM MACDONALD of Brown University.

Mr. EDWARD H. THOMPSON, United States Consul to Yucatan, presented the next paper, entitled: "A Page from American History."

On motion of Dr. S. A. GREEN, it was voted that the papers which have been read be presented to the Committee of Publication, and that the thanks of the Society be extended to the authors, and especially to the two gentlemen from Yucatan.

The meeting was dissolved at two o'clock. The members present repaired to the house of President SALISBURY, where lunch was served.

Attest:

CHARLES A. CHASE,
Recording Secretary.

LABOR ORGANIZATIONS IN ANCIENT, MEDIEVAL AND MODERN TIMES.

BY CARROLL D. WRIGHT.

Ar the kind suggestion of President Salisbury, I present a brief paper on Labor Organizations in Ancient, Mediæval and Modern Times.

I do not propose to discuss such organizations in detail, but principally to show the difference in character at different times, and also wherein they were similar. Unfortunately the history of such organizations in ancient times is exceedingly meagre. It was not the habit of writers to make much mention of the interests of labor or how the lower orders earned their living or conducted their affairs. It was quite natural perhaps when historians were recording the events of administration, of wars or of great racial changes, to omit the consideration of what then seemed the lesser affairs of life, but a great deal has been unearthed by modern archæologists from inscriptions on slabs and monuments, which throws some light upon this subject of labor organizations and which helps us to understand the slow development of the workingman through the ages. The slabs containing the inscriptions have been lying without observation, some on their original sites, others in museums. However, they have been recorded, catalogued and numbered; but their importance has been little understood or little considered. This, in connection with the lack of interest on such subjects, accounts in a way for the meagre history.

Mr. C. Osborne Ward, for a long time an associate of mine in the Department of Labor at Washington, worked

many years in translating old accounts in Greek and Latin, in studying inscriptions and their translations, his devotion resulting in the publication of a history of the ancient working people.

We all understand the modern labor organization, or think we do. We certainly understand that it exists, but it exists in various forms, chiefly as the trade union, which is a society of working people usually pursuing the same occupation, the society being organized for the purpose of mutual help in providing for sick and death benefits and sometimes out-of-work benefits; but chiefly it is organized to resist the attempts to reduce wages and to insist upon higher wages, fewer hours of labor and improved conditions of shop work. The Unions sometimes have insurance features attached to them and for many years have paid out large sums of money in this way. They attempt to regulate the business in which the members are engaged. Until quite recently the trade union, consisting of workers in one craft, cared nothing for the interests or welfare of the workers in other crafts, but now, through the sympathetic strike, one trade union is quite likely to take part in the conflicts between the members of another union in an entirely different occupation and their employers.

Other labor organizations are broader, more philosophical, like the Knights of Labor, an organization dating from 1869. This body not only strives for the usual purposes of trades unions, but goes beyond by its endeavors to unify wage-earners without regard to the trades followed. The proposed aim of this body is to secure the fullest enjoyment of wealth which they claim is created by workers. These two types are characteristic of all labor organizations. The one primarily is selfish, looking to the interest of its own craft, the other is broader, more philosophical, looking to the interests of all crafts. It is not strange that the first succeeds and the latter practically fails. Perhaps in another state of society the broader basis will win.

Until a very few years ago modern trades unions were supposed to be the direct outcome of the guilds of the middle ages. All writers, or nearly all, took this view, and undertook to account for the origin of modern organizations by tracing the development of the medieval guilds to modern times. It is now seen that these modern unions are not direct descendants of the craft-guilds of the middle ages, and there is no evidence that they are such descendants; all the historical proof seems to be the other

way.

Perhaps the earliest writer to make this distinction was Brentano, in his Guilds and Trades Unions, where he says: "These guilds were not unions of laborers in the present sense of the word, but persons who, with the help of some stock, carried on their craft on their own account." It is probably nearer the truth to conclude that through the varying and ephemeral organizations of wage-earners and journeymen which existed 300 or 400 years ago, and which were composed solely of wage earners, these modern unions have taken their roots. Yet this direct connection does not have historical confirmation, for such associations were condemned by the law and there was too close a resemblance between them and the guild system which preceded. The best that can be said is that there was a class of employees in England who neither strove to become masters, nor were in condition to seek controlling influence, who first started the trade union idea.

The 18th century saw a persistent development of the capitalist employer and a decreased ability on the part of the worker to own and control the material and tools of his especial trade. Perhaps it was the factory system as much as any other element that developed the modern trade union because while, before the inauguration of the factory system, the workingmen and their employers lived and worked in very close personal relationship, under the factory system this relationship was lost in large degree.

The employer, instead of having his journeymen and apprentices around him and feeding them at his own table, became the employer of hundreds, and now of thousands, thus severing that close personal relation of the olden time.

Trades unions sought to take the place through their organizations of that relationship, to protect their members against what they considered the encroachments of capital, to look after the welfare of members in various ways, and through organization to be in a position to resist or enforce demands. True it is that these organizations have become powerful, and in this country alone constitute at least ten or twelve per cent of the wage-earners of the country, and they number now probably two million members. This proportion of the total is a little larger in this country than in England or on the Continent.

The whole history of the development of trades unions is interesting as an economic and social study and they are exercising a great influence in the conduct of modern industry. In a nutshell, the modern labor organization of whatever character is composed of wage-earners only. The members pay dues and receive such benefits as may

accrue.

The medieval guild was an entirely different affair. It may have sprung from some form of ancient organization, but in its more essential elements it did not. Mediæval conditions originated in German conditions, adapted, however, and moulded by the Roman civilization, but wherever the Germanic element exercised any influence, whether in Germany, England, France, Italy or Spain, the tribes of Germany that carried that influence found some sort of a labor union and in some sense inherited them. Notwithstanding this the guild of medieval days was more thoroughly German than Roman, for the Roman guilds were made up more essentially of slaves, as we shall see, while the guilds of the middle ages found their membership among the free men, but in their composition they were not what

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