(i) Insurance Benefits. The lack of control over the local union which characterizes American nationals, is largely due to their lack of an insurance benefit system. To just what extent insurance is provided by American. unions, it is impossible to say, owing to the absence of data upon this subject from the local unions. But an examination of 96 national unions shows that with a generous interpretation of their activities, 64 pay strike benefits, 48 death or funeral benefits, 22 sick or accident benefits, 5 unemployment benefits, and 2 superannuation benefits, while 22 unions make no provision for any kind of insurance. The railway brotherhoods, the printers, the cigar makers, the carpenters and joiners (the British branch) and one or two other unions have strong and adequate systems which have proved of immense benefit to them. But the average American union pays only a small death benefit of $75 or $100, and an inadequate strike allowance-"usually a bare subsistence wage from $4 to $8 a week"-which is frequently not paid to unmarried workmen or to those who are fortunate enough to have a little bank account. Beyond this, the American union trusts to the device of assessments and to sympathetic assistance in event of strikes.

In Great Britain, mutual insurance has always been one of the most important functions of the trade union, and taking one year with another the British unions of to-day spend more than three times as much upon friendly insurance as upon general administration or even upon strikes and boycotts. In the ten years 1892-1901, for

example, the 100 principal unions of Great Britain expended about $75,000,000 (£15,127,629), of which 20 per cent. went for running and miscellaneous expenses, 19 per cent. for dispute or strike pay, 22 per cent. for unemploy ment benefits, 18 per cent. for sick and accident benefits, 10 per cent. for superannuation benefits, and 11 per cent. for funeral and other benefits. In the year 1901, 89 of the 100 unions paid funeral benefits, 83 dispute benefits, 77 unemployment benefits, 77 sick or accident benefits, and 38 superannuation benefits. It is doubtful whether the benefit system will ever become so general among American unions.

That the trade union can get along without a formal benefit system, is evident from the American experience, but notwithstanding this possibility, the most successful American unions do as a rule employ the system, and the most intelligent leaders are constantly urging the unions to expand this feature of their work. The reasons are evident. Friendly insurance is not only desirable_in itself, but it attracts the best class of workingmen, the most frugal and far-sighted, and keeps them in the union once they have joined. Moreover, it encourages conservatism, and above all else secures the obedience of individual members and constituent unions, for neither an individual nor a union will secede when secession means the sacrifice of a large interest in the insurance funds.

Except in the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, the National Association of Letter Carriers, and possibly one or two other unions, the insurance funds are not

legally or necessarily distinct from the ordinary assets of the union, and they can, consequently, be used for any purpose which the union approves. It is this distinguishing feature of trade union insurance that makes it such a powerful auxiliary. It supplies a large fund which may be used for trade or militant purposes, and it is largely because of their fear that incorporation would interfere with this liberty, that the trade unions are so opposed to incorporation. Of course all this tends to make union insurance bad insurance, as such. After having faithfully paid his assessments for years, a member of a trade union may be expelled from the union for a trifling infraction of rules, or may see the insurance funds dissipated in an ill-advised strike. Nevertheless, the members do not object to this feature of the benefit system. And there is something to be said of union benefits even, as insurance. Owing to the strong loyalty of unionists, and the intimate knowledge which the members of any local have of each other's affairs, trade unions may successfully supply forms of insurance which private companies can not manage. Some of the railroad brotherhoods, for instance, pay full policies (even as much as $4,500) not only upon death, but upon the loss of a hand, a foot, or the eyesight, and upon total disability from Bright's disease, paralysis, and other diseases. The outof-work benefit particularly would seem impossible for any company or association save that composed of the shopmates and associates of the insured.

9. The Incorporation of Labor Organizations: It is

very evident from the preceding discussion that not only the attitude of the labor organization towards friendly insurance, but most of the fundamental principles and policies of organized labor, are determined by the requirements and demands of collective bargaining. Collective action is the soul and spirit of trade unionism, and the most public-spirited men in all walks of life are coming to regard it, not only as inevitable, but as one of the most promising and practicable means of elevating the working classes. But collective bargaining may be carried on in very different ways. When a body of "wage-earners" in secret session adopt common rules respecting wages or hours, and sullenly refuse to accept anything less or different, that is one kind of collective bargaining. When they meet their employers in friendly conference, giving and taking, recognizing the varying needs of industry, and modifying their common rules accordingly, that is another and a vastly better and more elastic kind of collective bargaining. It is the latter kind of collective bargaining-known as the joint conference or joint agreement system-which the disinterested public, represented by the Civic Federation and other agencies of industrial peace, desire so earnestly to introduce and extend.

Up to the present time the greatest obstacle to the extension of the joint conference system has been the class of obstinate employers who refuse to negotiate with the unions. Many of these employers justify their refusal to make agreements on the ground that they have

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no means of holding the organizations to their promises. The ordinary trade union, they say, is an unincorporated association which has no legal standing and can not make enforceable contracts, while contracts made with individual workmen are practically, if not theoretically, unenforceable because the workman ordinarily has no property which can be attached for damages. This statement of facts, it may be said in passing, is perfectly correct. Basing their appeal upon these facts, a number of prominent writers and employers have earnestly urged labor organizations to incorporate, on the grounds that incorporation-with its accompanying power to sue and liability to be sued-would greatly facilitate collective bargaining, and in addition would invest labor organizations with that legal responsibility for their actions which ought to accompany the enormous power which they wield. There is a note of criticism in much of this exhortation, although the writers who urge incorporation are usually friendly to organized labor. "There is to-day," says Mr. Gilman, "a crying social need for more responsibility in labor disputes. Incorporation corresponds to this need. When the trade unions repent of their illogical and immoral unwillingness to become incorporated, and take their right position as corporations in that collective bargaining which is to be more and more the custom of the future, the prospect for industrial peace will be much brighter than it is to-day.""

1N. P. Gilman, Methods of Industrial Peace, p. 197.