most of the English unions were groupings of skilled men, the in-
sistence upon their resemblance to craft gilds is perhaps better
understood.

Moreover, the scarcity consciousness which is a characteristic of
the skilled unions, in the United States as well as elsewhere, shown
in the restrictive rules and the limitation upon admission, is certainly
an attitude found in the gilds. Even where no direct connection exists,
the spirit is not different. However, Brentano neglected the difference
between the "mercantile" attitude of a gildsman and the wage con-
sciousness of a worker. Yet, his emphasis upon the conservative
traditional nature of unions, their insistence upon protecting their job
territory by restrictions upon free entry and technological change,
caught a significant aspect of early trade unionism.

The Webbs, who followed Brentano chronologically, refused to
accept the latter's interpretation of the origin of the labor movement,
although they admired many of his insights. To the Webbs, the origin
of trade unionism depended upon the separation of classes. The
Webbs defined a trade union as "a continuous association of wage
earners for the purpose of maintaining or improving the conditions
of their working lives." ⁶ They, therefore, dated the beginning of
English trade unionism in the latter part of the 17th century with the
appearance of a property-less wage earner. The journeymen's revolts
of earlier times were interpreted largely as movements against the
authority of the gild, and the "bachelors' companies" they find to
have been a subordinate branch of the masters' gild. It was only when
the skilled journeyman found his prospect for advancement into the
ranks of the masters greatly diminished that stable combinations
among the handicraftsmen arose. It was only when "the changing
conditions of industry had reduced to an infinitesimal chance the
journeyman's prospect of himself becoming a master, that we find the
passage of ephemeral combinations into permanent trade societies." ⁷

The basic cause for the origin of trade unions, according to the
Webbs, was "in the separation of classes, or in the separation of the
worker from the means of production. This is itself due to an
economic revolution which took place in certain industries." Unions

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