The St. Johns herald., 1892-12-01
Trades Unions and Civilization.

civilization is much misunderstood, and this misunderstanding has re- suited in hostility to the unions. Unions discipline, tram and edu- cate the working classes beyond all other agencies. They turn them from inchoate mobs into drilled bodies. They are far better than armies because they discuss impor- tant questions, spread information among those who most need 1t. set minds to thinking that otherwise would never stir, protect the igno- rant, the weak and the oppressed, and tend to abolish poverty by their constant push for higher wages. To join a trades union always signifies in the workman a willingness to submit to discipline and restraint, to hear questions discussed, to con slider rights and wrongs. The bet ter workmen are more generally unionists than the inferior.
 Society should always support the unions as most beneficial to working classes, and as being a means to their redemption from the poverty and misery about which there is so much outcry. But peo- pie judge adversely to them from their occasional manifestation as seen in the strike. The superficial appearance of the strike is one of violence and disorder, sometimes accompanied by bloodshed and al- most always by the exercise of force of one kind oranother. These strikes falling in the midst of peaceable community like the bomb of an an- archist, produce consternation and terror among the comfortable class es, and therefore excite their ani- mostly. They hate them, and there fore are quickly led to hate the or ganizations under whose auspices they are apt to occur. Therefore they denounce and detest trades unions, which order them. They do not stop to consider the amount of other work which the trades unions must be doing in times when no strikes are on, what a system of discipline, instruction and training the management of such an insti- tntion brings into play, what num- Der of subjects must be discussed, and what a number of intelligent discussions must be held, what financial plans must be matured, what ways and means devised in order to carry any single union along successfully for a length of time. All these things escape the notice of the other classes. They also forget to mark that the labor CTS in their unions have to grapple problems which try the nerve and intelligence of even well-trained men, with undisciplined and nar- rowly instructed minds, and to find the solution of these problems at the risk of their own scanty living if they fail. A candid considera- tion of these facts may lead one to see that trades unions are for their members no child's play of weak and willful disorganizers, no amuse- ment of idle hours, but serious and drastic school of discipline and instruction. Therefore 1t IS that they must be beneficial to the work men because they give the habit of thinking out problems, of discuss ing important matters, of instruct ing themselves in subjects otherwise beyond their scope.
 But thatis by no means the whole story, nor even the main considera- tion. It is undoubtedly something to the State that when taking its citizens for soldiers they benefit by the training and discipline of army drill and social life. but after all the main use of an army is to fight in defense of the common welfare and for public objects. So the main ob- ject of the trades union is not the