It is essential that there should be organization of labor. This is an era of organization. Capital organizes and therefore labor must organize.
Men don't and can't live by exchanging articles, but by producing them. They don't live by trade, but by work. Give up that foolish and vain title of Trades Unions; and take that of laborers Unions.
No king on earth is as safe in his job as a Trade Union official. There is only one thing that can get him sacked; and that is drink. Not even that, as long as he doesn't actually fall down.
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.
The methods by which a trade union can alone act, are necessarily destructive; its organization is necessarily tyrannical.
The most conservative man in the world is the British Trade Unionist when you want to change him.
With all their faults, trade unions have done more for humanity than any other organization of men that ever existed. They have done more for decency, for honesty, for education, for the betterment of the race, for the developing of character in man, than any other association of men.
Without the power of the Industrial Union behind it, Democracy can only enter the State as the victim enters the gullet of the Serpent.