The means usually employed by these Unions for attaining their ends are the following:  If one or more employers refuse to pay the wage specified by the Union, a deputation is sent or a petition forwarded (the working-men, you see, know how to recognise the absolute power of the lord of the factory in his little State); if this proves unavailing, the Union commands the employees to stop work, and all hands go home.  This strike is either partial when one or several, or general when all employers in the trade refuse to regulate wages according to the proposals of the Union.  So far go the lawful means of the Union, assuming the strike to take effect after the expiration of the legal notice, which is not always the case.  But these lawful means are very weak when there are workers outside the Union, or when members separate from it for the sake of the momentary advantage offered by the bourgeoisie.  Especially in the case of partial strikes can the manufacturer readily secure recruits from these black sheep (who are known as knobsticks), and render fruitless the efforts of the united workers.  Knobsticks are usually threatened, insulted, beaten, or otherwise maltreated by the members of the Union; intimidated, in short, in every way.  Prosecution follows, and as the law-abiding bourgeoisie has the power in its own hands, the force of the Union is broken almost every time by the first unlawful act, the first judicial procedure against its members.

The history of these Unions is a long series of defeats of the working-men, interrupted by a few isolated victories.  All these efforts naturally cannot alter the economic law according to which wages are determined by the relation between supply and demand in the labour market.  Hence the Unions remain powerless against all great forces which influence this relation.  In a commercial crisis the Union itself must reduce wages or dissolve wholly; and in a time of considerable increase in the demand for labour, it cannot fix the rate of wages higher than would be reached spontaneously by the competition of the capitalists among themselves.  But in dealing with minor, single influences they are powerful.  If the employer had no concentrated, collective opposition to expect, he would in his own interest gradually reduce wages to a lower and lower point; indeed, the battle of competition which he has to wage against his fellow-manufacturers would force him to do so, and wages would soon reach the minimum.  But this competition of the manufacturers among themselves is, under average conditions, somewhat restricted by the opposition of the working-men.