Eddy, Arthur Jerome: The new competition: an examination of the conditions underlying the radical change that is taking place in the commercial and industrial world ; the change from a competitive to a cooperative basis (New York [u.a.], 1912)

THE LABOR PROBLEM 285
tions,1 it is integration in the vertical line that is normal
and powerful to the extent of even being a menace to non-
integrated units. To-day labor unions spread over the
country like so many thin strata of slate, the larger they
are the greater the danger of breakage; the lines of cleav-
age are so well marked that many “shrewd” employers
have little trouble in exciting dissensions that split for a
time the superimposed layers, and array union against
union.
Integration is granite in texture; it is the fusing of
each industrial and commercial unit into one homogeneous
whole.
Integration starts normally from within; aggregation
starts usually from without. The outsider, the profes-
sional agitator, has no interest in integrating a plant or a
factory, in welding all its employees, from day laborer to
owner, together in one harmonious body—that sort of
a union makes no place for him.
The outsider finds his opportunity and profitable em-
ployment in associations along horizontal lines, in huge ag-
gregates, each with its corps of officials.
Per contra, the insider, the man who has something at
stake in the success of a given plant, has no interest in
uniting with workmen employed in a competing plant; that
is folly.
As things now are, with labor organized in large ag-
gregates on horizontal lines, a union of plumbers, steam-
fitters, plasterers, carpenters, engineers—of any given trade
—formulates its demands for increased wages; these de-
mands have no relation whatever to the special work or the
needs of the employees of a particular contractor or com-
pany, nor do they take into consideration the ability of a
particular employer to meet the demands.
If the demands are not complied with, strikes are called,
1 See page 263.