class of wage-earners, the rise of the factory system was the most
pervasive cause of the separation of the worker from the means of
production. For the Webbs, it had

become a commonplace of modern Trade Unionism that only in those
industries in which the worker has ceased to be concerned in the profits
of buying and selling--that inseparable characteristic of the ownership
and management of the means of production--can effective and stable
trade organization be established. ¹⁰

Yet, this explanation raises a problem, for there had always existed
in English industry a large class of unskilled and low-paid workers
virtually debarred from rising to independent craftsmen. The ill-paid
farm laborer, and others of low skill, however, had not been the
pioneers of trade unionism. On the contrary, it was the highly skilled
journeyman who for years had been the object of government pro-
tection who was the first to form labor unions. It was not the worker
who had the lowest bargaining power but the one with the greatest
sense of independence who pioneered the trade union movement.
This was inevitable, for only the worker with a great sense of inde-
pendence was willing to challenge the authority of the employer in
the early days of organization, and it required some threat to existing
customs and standards to initiate organization. Therefore, it was not
the property-less proletariat of Marx but the labor aristocrat who
was the pioneer of trade unionism. The Webbs and Brentano agreed
that a threat to established relations is likely to stimulate organization
of labor in defense of the old conditions or in an effort to establish
a new equilibrium. The Webbs, however, placed emphasis upon the
class nature of a union; that it arose when the possibilities of class
mobility had been reduced and when the worker felt that he had
nothing but his labor to sell. The Webbs' view underlines the special
character of the trade union which, despite many attitudes of the old
gild, was a new type of organization.

What light does the hypothesis of the Webbs throw upon the origin
of the American trade union movement? In the United States, as in
England, trade unions were first organized when class differentiation
had taken place. This differentiation was evidenced by the exclusion
of masters from the union. Unions were pioneered by the printers,
cordwainers, and tailors, at the time highly skilled trades, and only
much later did the unskilled and the factory workers form organiza-
tions of labor. Moreover, the Webbs' emphasis upon the defensive

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