Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Ill WHAT IS A UNION? The argument of the average trade unionist in support of his organization runs something like this: "My craft is my capital; if the capitalist has the right to protect his money capital, I have the right to protect my capital; that is, my craft. My craft is just as much my property as the capitalist's machinery is his property and should be protected equally with the machinery of the capitalist." Addressed to the ordinary1 man in the street, and couched in the language which church, school and forum have made comprehensible by the multitude, it is quite a telling apology for the right of combination, the purposes of trade defense, and has, no doubt, in its time performed marvels in winning converts to the side of trade unionism. It is so flattering. It informs the working class that its members have capital, a statement false on the face of it; again, it misleads the working class by the false premise that its members have rights. The fallacy underlying both false statements is that a member of the working class is an actual member of modern society with an interest in the state, and fully equipped with all the panoply of modern citizenship, and a stake in the community. 99 The futility of such an argument will dawn later upon the mind of the convert to trade unionism. He will find that a craft is a form of "capital" which cannot readily be invested. Also, that he cannot place that form of "capital" in the safe deposit box and wait until there is a demand for it. The painful discovery will be made also, that if his craft is not being exercised, neither is he, the proprietor of the craft, and that long abstention from activity threatens not only the trade but the proprietor of it with extinction. But the trade is the means of life, it is the instrum...