expecting from its allies no more than a benevolent neutrality. In other
trades, on the contrary, the national union was supreme in declaring
industrial war and in making peace, and even claimed absolute right to
formulate the civil laws of the trade for times of industrial peace.

The national trade union was, therefore, a response to obvious and
pressing necessity. However slow or imperfect may have been the
adjustment of internal organizations to the conditions of the trade,
still the groove was defined and consequently the amount of possible
floundering largely limited. Not so with the next step, namely the
national federation of trades. In the sixties we saw the national trade
unions join with other local and miscellaneous labor organizations in
the National Labor Union upon a political platform of eight-hours and
greenbackism. In 1873 the same national unions asserted their rejection
of "panaceas" and politics by attempting to create in the National Labor
Congress a federation of trades of a strictly economic character. The
panic and depression nipped that in the bud. When trade unionism revived
in 1879 the national trade unions returned to the idea of a national
federation of labor, but this time they followed the model of the
British Trades Union Congress, the organization which cares for the
legislative interests of British labor. This was the "Federation of
Organized Trades and Labor Unions of the United States and Canada,"
which was set up in 1881.

It is easy to understand why the unions of the early eighties did not
feel the need of a federation on economic lines. The trade unions of
today look to the American Federation of Labor for the discharge of
important economic functions, therefore it is primarily an economic
organization. These functions are the assistance of national trade
unions in organizing their trades, the adjustment of disputes between