Again, take a factory, such as a cotton mill. The one firm, before
marketing its product, will have employed in its preparation and
final disposal till it reaches the consumer, groups engaged in very
different occupations, spinners, weavers, porters, stenographers,
salesmen, and so on. The industry which furnished employment to
one, or at most, to two groups, has been cut up into a hundred
subdivisions, but the workers have still many interests in common, and
they need to cling together or suffer from all the disadvantages of
unorganized or semi-organized occupations.
The first unions were naturally craft unions. The men working in the
same shop, and at the same processes got together, and said: "We who
do this work must get to know the fellows in the other shops; we must
just stick together, make common demands and support one another."
As industry became more highly specialized, there slipped in,
especially during the last fifty years or so, a disintegrating
tendency. The workers in what had been one occupation, found
themselves now practicing but a small fraction of what had been their
trade.
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