TABLE No. 11.

Trade and Labor Unions Organized During the Twelve Months Ending September 30, 1915.

The number of new trade and labor unions formed during the period covered by this record was eight, which is one more than was organized during the next preceding twelve months. The occupations in which the workmen concerned were employed are indicated in the official titles assumed by each organization, and their respective locations with date of formation are shown on table which follows.

Three of the unions named on the above table-the "Moulders' Helpers & Crane Workers" of Elizabeth; the "Freight Handlers and Transfer Men's Union," also of Elizabeth, and the "American Federation of Railroad Workers," of Jersey City, were called into existence during the progress of strikes in which their members were respectively engaged. The others were organized independent of any special incentive other than the desire to act together for the mutual interests of the membership.

The most important of these is the Brotherhood of American Silk Workers, which was incorporated at Paterson on December 12, 1914, as a national organization, to membership in which silk workers of the entire country should be eligible. The movement to establish such a union was the direct result of the distressing experiences which the silk trade of New Jersey had gone through in 1913, when practically the entire industry was paralyzed for six months by a strike brought on by a few irresponsible nonresident agitators, acting as the agents of an avowedly revolutionary organization which holds and endeavors to teach, when opportunity offers, that the conflict of interests claimed to exist between capital and labor, and between employer and employe,

are irreconcilable and irrepressible, and that all efforts such as the legitimate trade unions are making to teach a contrary doctrine are simply so many instances of treason to the cause of labor.

The outbreak of this great strike found the upwards of 25,000 wage earners who were rapidly drawn into it without any form of organization through which their sentiments regarding the condition of the industry and their attitude toward the strike into which they were unwillingly drawn could be made known, and the strange spectacle was presented of the mills of Paterson being closed and the army of workers employed in them turned out of doors by a few non-resident professional agitators who were not silk workers, nor, indeed, workers of any kind, and whose sole business was to create the greatest possible amount of friction and hatred between employer and employe, utterly regardless of the consequences to both of such propaganda.

The want of a union which would command the confidence of the silk workers and mill owners alike left the field open for the disturbers and accounted fully for their success in starting the strike and keeping the silk workers out of the mills long enough to sacrifice upwards of $6,000,000 in wages.

A properly organized union of silk workers, directed by silk workers, in the interest of silk workers, would have saved the trade from the disastrous experience forced upon it in 1913, and the army of operatives employed in the industry at present look confidently to the new organization, which will have no affiliation with other unions, for protection against another such visitation in the future.

The new silk workers' union embraces all branches of the industry, including dyeing; strikes are emphatically condemned, and all matters in dispute are to be referred to a board of arbitration composed of ten operatives and five employers; in passing on any disputed matter, however, the voting power of both sides will be equal. The rules of the union provide both sick and death benefits for the members.