[67] Professor Barnett attributes the failure of these agreements
chiefly to faulty agreement machinery. The working rules, he points out,
are rules made by the national union and therefore can be changed by the
national union only. At the same time the agreements were national only
in so far as they provided for national conciliation machinery; the
fixing of wages was left to local bodies. Consequently, the national
employers' associations lacked the power to offer the unions an
indispensable _quid pro quo_ in higher wages for a compromise on working
rules. ("National and District Systems of Collective Bargaining in the
United States," in _Quarterly Journal of Economics_, May, 1912, pp. 425
ff.)
[68] The following account is taken from Chapter X of the _Steel
Workers_ by John A. Fitch, published by the Russell Sage Foundation.
[69] See above, 133-135.
[70] The opposition of the Steel Corporation to unionism was an
important factor in the disruption of the agreement systems in the
structural iron-erecting industry in 1905 and in the carrying industry
on the Great Lakes in 1908; in each of these industries the Corporation
holds a place of considerable control.
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