Trade Unions

　　1　Some scholars have associated trade unions with the medieval craft guilds(中世紀的行會), but there are important differences between the two. The guild members were master crafts-men who owned capital and often employed workers, Unions are known as associations of workers with similar skills.

　　2　In the past, individual workers had no control over the conditions of their working, lives; political and economic power was concentrated in the hands of wealthy business owners. Workers found, however, that there was strength in uniting. From their earliest years, union objectives have been higher wages and improved working conditions.

　　3　Employers resisted, of course. They made great efforts to stop union organizing its activities. Union members were fired, workers were forced to sign contracts in which they promised not to join a union, and companies hired strikebreakers (破壞罷工者) and even gunmen to frighten organizers.

　　4　One of the earliest successful labor organizations in the United States was the Knights of labor, founded in l869. The Knights, which included both skilled and unskilled workers, attempted to organize all workers into one great union. After it successfully struck the Wabash railroad owned by Jay Gould in l885, its popularity and power grew dramatically. In l886 the Knights had 700,000 members.

　　5　The decline of the Knights of labor, however, came quickly. The strike against Gould was gradually broken, and the Knights' radical positions on social issues cost them public support. In the end, a lack of unity as well as the rapid inflow of unskilled immigrants weakened the union's economic power, and the organization came to an end.

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