There are still in the movement in all countries those of such a conservative type that they look to trade organization as we know it today as practically the sole factor in solving the industrial problem.

In order to fulfill its important functions of protecting the workers, giving to them adequate control over their working conditions, and the power of bargaining for the disposal of their labor power through recognized representatives, trade-union organization must be world-wide.  Organizations of capital are so, or are becoming so, and in order that the workers may bargain upon an equal footing, they must be in an equally strong position.  Now is the first time in the history of the world that such a plan could be even dreamt of.  Rapid means of communication and easy methods of transport have made it possible for machine-controlled industry to attract workers from all over the world to particular centers, and in especial to the United States, and this has taken place without any regard as to where there was the best opening for workers of different occupations or as to what might be the effects upon the standards of living of the workers of artificially fostered migrations, and haphazard distribution of the newcomers.

It is sadly true of the labor movement, as of all other movements for social advance, that it lags behind the movements organized for material success and private profit.  It lags behind because it lacks money, money which would keep more trained workers in the field, which would procure needed information, which would prevent that bitterest of defeats, losing a strike because the strikers could no longer hold out against starvation.  The labor movement lacks money, partly because money is so scarce among the workers; they have no surplus from which to build up the treasury as capital does so readily, and partly because so many of them do not as yet understand that alone they are lost, in organization they have strength.  While they need the labor movement, just as much does the labor movement need them.

More and more, however, are the workers acknowledging their own weakness, at the same time that they remember their own strength.  As they do so, more and more will they adopt capital’s own magnificent methods of organization to overcome capital’s despotism, and be able to stand out on a footing of equality, as man before man.

One tendency, long too much in evidence in the labor movement generally, and one which has still to be guarded against, is to take overmuch satisfaction in the unionizing of certain skilled trades or sections of trades, and to neglect the vast bulk of those already handicapped by want of special skill or training, by sex or by race.  I have heard discussions among labor men which illustrate this.  The platform of the Federation of Labor is explicit, speaking out on this point in no doubtful tone, but there are plenty of labor men, and labor women who make their own particular exceptions to a rule that should know of none.