Grant County, New Mexico
Grant County is a county located in the U. S. state of New Mexico. As of the 2010 census, the population was 29,514, its county seat is Silver City. The county was founded in 1868 and named for Ulysses S. Grant, 18th President of the United States. Grant County comprises the Silver NM, Micropolitan Statistical Area. According to the U. S. Census Bureau, the county has a total area of 3,968 square miles, of which 3,962 square miles is land and 5.9 square miles is water. Catron County - north Sierra County - east Luna County - southeast Hidalgo County - south Greenlee County, Arizona - west Gila National Forest As of the 2000 census, there were 31,002 people, 12,146 households, 8,514 families residing in the county; the population density was 8 people per square mile. There were 14,066 housing units at an average density of 4 per square mile; the racial makeup of the county was 75.67% White, 0.52% Black or African American, 1.35% Native American, 0.29% Asian, 0.03% Pacific Islander, 19.02% from other races, 3.11% from two or more races.
48.79% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race. There were 12,146 households out of which 31.30% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 52.70% were married couples living together, 12.90% had a female householder with no husband present, 29.90% were non-families. 25.70% of all households were made up of individuals and 10.70% had someone living alone, 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.50 and the average family size was 3.01. In the county, the population was spread out with 26.20% under the age of 18, 8.50% from 18 to 24, 23.70% from 25 to 44, 25.10% from 45 to 64, 16.50% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 39 years. For every 100 females there were 95.10 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 91.30 males. The median income for a household in the county was $29,134, the median income for a family was $34,231. Males had a median income of $31,126 versus $19,627 for females; the per capita income for the county was $14,597.
About 15.10% of families and 18.70% of the population were below the poverty line, including 25.90% of those under age 18 and 9.50% of those age 65 or over. As of the 2010 census, there were 29,514 people, 12,586 households, 7,941 families residing in the county; the population density was 7.4 inhabitants per square mile. There were 14,693 housing units at an average density of 3.7 per square mile. The racial makeup of the county was 84.9% white, 1.4% American Indian, 0.9% black or African American, 0.4% Asian, 0.1% Pacific islander, 9.6% from other races, 2.8% from two or more races. Those of Hispanic or Latino origin made up 48.3% of the population. In terms of ancestry, 11.9% were English, 11.8% were German, 10.4% were Irish, 2.9% were American. Of the 12,586 households, 26.9% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 45.3% were married couples living together, 12.6% had a female householder with no husband present, 36.9% were non-families, 30.9% of all households were made up of individuals.
The average household size was 2.30 and the average family size was 2.86. The median age was 45.9 years. The median income for a household in the county was $36,591 and the median income for a family was $44,360. Males had a median income of $38,731 versus $27,161 for females; the per capita income for the county was $21,164. About 11.7% of families and 14.8% of the population were below the poverty line, including 23.8% of those under age 18 and 5.2% of those age 65 or over. Bayard Hurley Silver City Santa Clara Dwyer Fort Bayard Mangas Springs Mimbres Valley Mule Creek Redrock Riverside Separ Sherman National Register of Historic Places listings in Grant County, New Mexico
Herbert Biberman
Herbert J. Biberman was an American screenwriter and film director, he was one of the Hollywood Ten and directed Salt of the Earth, a film released in the United States, about a zinc miners' strike in Grant County, New Mexico. His membership in the Directors Guild of America was posthumously restored in 1997. Biberman was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Joseph and Eva Biberman and was the brother of American artist, Edward Biberman. Biberman's pre-blacklist career included writing such films as King of Chinatown, When Tomorrow Comes, Action in Arabia, The Master Race, which he directed, New Orleans, as well as directing such films as One Way Ticket and Meet Nero Wolfe, he married actress Gale Sondergaard in 1930. Biberman died from bone cancer in 1971 in New York City. Though he would become pro-war after Germany invaded the Soviet Union, during the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, his outspoken opposition to U. S. Lend-Lease to the United Kingdom was so intense, the FBI suspected Biberman of being a Nazi.
In 1947, the Congressional House Committee on Un-American Activities began its investigation into the film industry, Biberman became one of ten Hollywood writers and directors cited for contempt of Congress when they refused to answer questions about their Communist Party USA affiliation. Biberman and the others were imprisoned for Biberman for six months. Edward Dmytryk cooperated with the House committee, but Biberman and the others were blacklisted by the Hollywood studios. Biberman worked independently after his release from jail; the result was Salt of a fictionalized account of the Grant County miners' strike. The screenplay was by Michael Wilson and it was produced by Paul Jarrico, neither members of the Ten but they were both blacklisted. Salt of the Earth has been deemed "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. One of the Hollywood Ten, a 2000 film chronicling his blacklisting and the making of Salt of the Earth from Biberman's point of view, starred Jeff Goldblum as Biberman and Greta Scacchi as his wife, the actress Gale Sondergaard.
The film's closing credits noted Biberman had never been removed from the old blacklist formally, that Sondergaard had not found work in Hollywood until shortly before her husband's death. Biberman's membership in the Director's Guild of America, stripped in 1950, was restored in 1997. Herbert Biberman's filmography is recorded at the Internet Movie Database. Herbert J. Biberman on IMDb. Herbert Biberman at the Internet Broadway Database Herbert Biberman at Internet Off-Broadway Database Review in TV Guide of biopic, "One of the Hollywood Ten."
Hollywood blacklist
The Hollywood blacklist was the popular term for what was in actuality a broader entertainment industry blacklist put in effect in the mid 20th century in the United States during the early part of the Cold War. The blacklist involved the practice of denying employment to entertainment industry professionals believed to be or to have been Communists or sympathizers. Not just actors, but screenwriters, directors and other American entertainment professionals were barred from work by the studios; this was done on the basis of their membership, alleged membership in, or just sympathy with the Communist Party USA, or on the basis of their refusal to assist congressional investigations into the party's activities. During the period of its strictest enforcement, from the late 1940s through to the late 1950s, the blacklist was made explicit or verifiable, but it and directly damaged or ended the careers and income of scores of individuals working in the film industry; the first systematic Hollywood blacklist was instituted on November 25, 1947, the day after ten writers and directors were cited for contempt of Congress for refusing to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee.
These personalities were subpoenaed to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee in October. The contempt citation included a criminal charge, which led to a publicized trial and an eventual conviction with a maximum of one year in jail in addition to a $1,000 fine; the Congressional action prompted a group of studio executives, acting under the aegis of the Association of Motion Picture Producers, to fire the artists – the so-called Hollywood Ten – and made what has become known as the Waldorf Statement. It was announced via a news release after the major producers met at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel and it included a condemnation of the personalities involved ostracizing those named from the industry; these producers instituted a compulsory oaths of loyalty from among its employees with the threat of a blacklist. On June 22, 1950, a pamphlet entitled Red Channels was published. Focused on the field of broadcasting, it identified 151 entertainment industry professionals in the context of "Red Fascists and their sympathizers".
Soon, most of those named, along with a host of other artists, were barred from employment in most of the entertainment field. The blacklist lasted until 1960, when Dalton Trumbo, a Communist Party member from 1943 to 1948 and member of the Hollywood Ten, was credited as the screenwriter of the successful film Exodus, publicly acknowledged by actor Kirk Douglas for writing the screenplay for the movie Spartacus. A number of those blacklisted, were still barred from work in their professions for years afterward; the Hollywood blacklist was rooted in events of the 1930s and the early 1940s, encompassing the height of the Great Depression and World War II. Two major film industry strikes during the 1930s increased tensions between the Hollywood producers and the unions the Screen Writers Guild; the American Communist Party lost substantial support after the Moscow show trials of 1936–1938 and the German–Soviet Nonaggression Pact of 1939. The U. S. government began turning its attention to the possible links between Hollywood and the party during this period.
Under then-chairman Martin Dies, Jr. the House Un-American Activities Committee released a report in 1938 claiming that communism was pervasive in Hollywood. Two years Dies took testimony from a former Communist Party member, John L. Leech, who named forty-two movie industry professionals as Communists. After Leech repeated his charges in supposed confidence to a Los Angeles grand jury, many of the names were reported in the press, including those of stars Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, Katharine Hepburn, Melvyn Douglas and Fredric March, among other well-known Hollywood figures. Dies said he would "clear" all those who co-operated by meeting with him in what he called "executive session". Within two weeks of the grand jury leak, all those on the list except for actress Jean Muir had met with the HUAC chairman. Dies "cleared" everyone except actor Lionel Stander, fired by the movie studio, Republic Pictures, where he was contracted. In 1941, producer Walt Disney took out an ad in Variety, the industry trade magazine, declaring his conviction that "Communist agitation" was behind a cartoonists and animators' strike.
According to historians Larry Ceplair and Steven Englund, "In actuality, the strike had resulted from Disney's overbearing paternalism, high-handedness, insensitivity." Inspired by Disney, California State Senator Jack Tenney, chairman of the state legislature's Joint Fact-Finding Committee on Un-American Activities, launched an investigation of "Reds in movies". The probe fell flat, was mocked in several Variety headlines; the subsequent wartime alliance between the United States and the Soviet Union brought the American Communist Party newfound credibility. During the war, membership in the party reached a peak of 50,000; as World War II drew to a close, perceptions changed again, with communism becoming a focus of American fears and hatred. In 1945, Gerald L. K. Smith, founder of the neofascist America First Party, began giving speeches in Los Angeles assailing the "alien minded Russian Jews in Hollywood". Mississippi congressman John E. Rankin, a member of HUAC, held a press conference to declare that "one of the most dangerous plots instigated for the overthrow of this Government has its headquarters in Hollywood... the greatest hotbed of subversive activities in the United States".
Rankin promised, "We're on the trail of the tarantula now". Reports of Soviet repression in Eastern and Central Europe in the war's aftermath added more fuel t
Texarkana metropolitan area
The Texarkana metropolitan statistical area, as defined by the United States Office of Management and Budget, is a two-county region anchored by the twin cities of Texarkana and Texarkana, encompassing the surrounding communities in Bowie County and Miller County, Arkansas. As of the 2016 census, the MSA had a population of 150,098. Texarkana is a subset of the broader Ark-La-Tex region. Texarkana was founded in 1873 on the junction of two railroads; the name is a portmanteau of TEXas, ARKansas, nearby LouisiANA. One tradition tells of a Red River steamboat named The Texarkana, c. 1860. Another story mentions a storekeeper named Swindle in Red Land, Louisiana who concocted a drink called "Texarkana Bitters". A third account states that a railroad surveyor, coined the name. Local lore suggests that, before Texas's annexation by the US, lawlessness ruled in the area that at times was claimed by various nations. In 1876, Texas, was granted a charter under an act of the Texas legislature, a Texarkana, post office operated from 1886 to 1892.
Congressman Morris Sheppard secured a postal order changing the name to "Texarkana, Arkansas-Texas". The Texarkana metropolitan area was first defined in 1960. Known as the Texarkana, TX–Texarkana, AR Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area, it consisted of Bowie County and Miller County, Arkansas. In 1963, the area was renamed the Texarkana, TX–AR Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area, only to return to its original name in 1971. Little River County, was added to the SMSA in 1973. In 1983, the official name was shortened to the Texarkana, TX–Texarkana, AR Metropolitan Statistical Area, still in use; that same year, Little River County was removed from the MSA. The two-county MSA had a population of 137,486 in 2000; as of the census of 2000, there were 137,486 people, 72,695 households, 55,524 families residing within the MSA. The racial makeup of the MSA was 53.5% White, 43.3% African American, 0.6% Native American, 0.4% Asian, <0.1% Pacific Islander, 0.9% from other races, 1.2% from two or more races.
Hispanic or Latino of any race were 3.6% of the population. The median income for a household in the MSA was $31,976, the median income for a family was $38,887. Males had a median income of $32,482 versus $21,408 for females; the per capita income for the MSA was $16,901. Texarkana began as a railroad and lumber center, developed in the 20th century as a regional agricultural processing, retail and service center. Red River Army Depot and Lone Star Army Ammunition Plant were the largest regional employers from the 1940s through the 1970s. Paper mills near Ashdown and Atlanta, as well as other industrial facilities, brought new jobs to the area in the 1970s. Today the Texarkana area is a diversified economy whose pattern of employment categorized by industry is similar to the entire state of Arkansas. Texarkana consists of two separate municipal designations: Texarkana, the county seat of Miller County, Arkansas Texarkana, located in Bowie County, TexasState Line Avenue follows the Texas-Arkansas state line throughout much of Texarkana.
The two "sides" of Texarkana are separate only from a political standpoint. Thousands of locals live in one state and work in the other. Owing to its divided political nature, Texarkana has two sets of city officials. Texarkana is located at the intersection of Interstate 30 and Interstate 49, it is situated halfway between Dallas and Little Rock, Arkansas. Texarkana Regional Airport is located inside the northeastern city limits and is included in the National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems for 2011–2015, which categorized it as a primary commercial service airport; the airport covers an area of 964 acres at an elevation of 390 feet above mean sea level and it has two runways with asphalt surfaces: Runway 4/22 is 6,601 by 144 feet Runway 13/31 is 5,200 by 100 feet Major routes in Texarkana include: Interstate 30 Interstate 49 U. S. Route 59 U. S. Route 67 U. S. Route 71 U. S. Route 82 Loop As of October 2015, new interchanges had been completed at the junctions of I-30/US 59, I-30/I-49. Interstate 49 had been extended south to Shreveport with its northern extension planned into Kansas City along the U.
S. Route 71 corridor. Multiple projects were under construction to relieve the strain on local roadways, including continuous access roads and the expansion of area highways and bridges. Rail service in Texarkana is provided by: Amtrak's Texas Eagle, which stops at Texarkana Union Station Kansas City Southern Railway Texas Northeastern Railroad Union Pacific Railroad Notable historical buildings in Texarkana include the post office and federal building that straddle the state line, the Ace of Clubs House, The Perot Theater, Texarkana Regional Museum; the Aces of Clubs House is shaped like a club on a playing card and inspired by a winning poker hand. The Texarkana Symphony Orchestra was established in 2005, providing the community with several professional concerts of classical music every year. In 2007, the Texarkana Youth Symphony Orchestra was established, presenting spring and winter concerts. Texarkana College, a community college whose origins date to 1927, enrolls more than four thousand annually.
In 1971, East Texas State University began offering classes at the campus, an institution that became Texas A&M University–Texarkana. Texas A&M University-Texarkana has constructed a large campus at Bringle Lake. His
Mexican Americans
Mexican Americans are Americans of full or partial Mexican descent. As of July 2016, Mexican Americans made up 11.2% of the United States' population, as 36.3 million U. S. residents identified as being of partial Mexican ancestry. As of July 2016, Mexican Americans comprised 63.2% of all Latinos in Americans in the United States. Many Mexican Americans reside in the American Southwest; as of 2016, Mexicans make up 53% of total percent population of Latin foreign-born. Mexicans are the largest foreign-born population, accounting for 25% of the total foreign-born population, as of 2017; the United States is home to the second-largest Mexican community in the world, second only to Mexico itself, comprising more than 24% of the entire Mexican-origin population of the world. Mexican American families of indigenous heritage have been in the country for at least 15,000 years, mestizo Mexican American history spans more than 400 years, since the 1598 founding of Spanish New Mexico. Spanish subjects of New Spain in the Southwest included New Mexican Hispanos and Pueblo Indians and Genizaros, Tejanos and Mission Indians have existed since the area was part of New Spain.
The majority of these primarily Hispanophone populations adopted English as their first language as part of their overall Americanization. Ten percent of the current Mexican-American population are descended from the early colonial settlers who became U. S. citizens in 1848 via the Treaty of Guadelupe Hidalgo which ended the Mexican–American War. Although most of the original Mexican American population were deemed white citizens by the treaty, they have faced and continue to face discrimination in the form of Anti-Mexican sentiment and Hispanophobia rooted in the idea that Mexicans were "too Indian" to be citizens. Despite assurances to the contrary, the property rights of Mexican citizens were not honored by the U. S. in accordance with modifications to and interpretations of the Treaty. Continuous large-scale migration after the 1910 Mexican Revolution, added to this original population. During the Great Depression, Mexican Americans were scapegoated and subjected to an ethnic cleansing campaign of mass deportation which affected an estimated 500,000 to two million people.
In violation of immigration law, the federal government allowed state and local governments to unilaterally deport citizens without due process. An estimated 85% of those ethnically cleansed were United States citizens, with 60% being birthright citizens; the remaining population became more homogenous and politically active during the New Deal — which excluded Mexican Americans — and World War II era, which brought about the guest-worker Bracero Program. The 1965 Delano grape strike, sparked by Filipino American farmworkers, became an intersectional struggle when labor leaders and voting rights and civil rights activists Dolores Huerta, founder of the National Farm Workers Association, her co-leader César Chávez united with the strikers to form the United Farm Workers. Huerta's slogan "Sí, se puede", was popularized by Chávez's fast and became a rallying cry for the Chicano Movement, or Mexican American civil rights movement; the Chicano movement aimed for a variety of civil rights reforms, was inspired by the civil rights movement.
The Chicano walkouts of antiwar students is traditionally seen as the start of the more radical phase of the Chicano movement. Immigration from Mexico increased in the 1980s and 1990s, peaking in the mid-2000s. In 2008, "Sí, se puede" was adopted as the 2008 campaign slogan of Barack Obama, whose election and reelection as the first African American president underlined the growing importance of the Mexican American vote; the Great Recession led to a severe loss in Mexican American wealth, immigration from Mexico decreased. The failure of presidents of both parties to properly enact immigration reform in the United States led to an increased polarization of how to handle an diverse population as Mexican Americans spread out from traditional centers in the Southwest and Chicago. In 2015, the United States admitted 157,227 Mexican immigrants, as of November 2016, 1.31 million Mexicans were on the waiting list to immigrate to the United States through legal means. In 1900, there were more than 500,000 Hispanics of Mexican descent living in New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado and Texas.
Most were Mexican Americans of Spanish descent and other Hispanicized European settlers who settled in the Southwest during Spanish colonial times, as well as local and Mexican Indians. As early as 1813, some of the Tejanos who colonized Texas in the Spanish Colonial Period established a government in Texas that desired independence from Spanish-ruled Mexico. In those days, there was no concept of identity as Mexican. Many Mexicans were more loyal to their states/provinces than to their country as a whole, a colony of Spain; this was true in frontier regions such as Zacatecas, Yucatán, New Mexico, etc. As shown by the writings of colonial Tejanos such as Antonio Menchaca, the Texas Revolution was a colonial Tejano cause. Mexico encouraged immigration from the United States to settle east Texas and, by 1831, English-speaking settlers outnumbered Tejanos ten to one in the re
Communism
In political and social sciences, communism is the philosophical, social and economic ideology and movement whose ultimate goal is the establishment of the communist society, a socioeconomic order structured upon the common ownership of the means of production and the absence of social classes and the state. Communism includes a variety of schools of thought, which broadly include Marxism and anarchism, as well as the political ideologies grouped around both. All of these share the analysis that the current order of society stems from its economic system, capitalism; the two classes are the working class—who must work to survive and who make up the majority within society—and the capitalist class—a minority who derives profit from employing the working class through private ownership of the means of production. The revolution will put the working class in power and in turn establish social ownership of the means of production, which according to this analysis is the primary element in the transformation of society towards communism.
Critics of communism can be divided into those concerning themselves with the practical aspects of 20th century communist states and those concerning themselves with communist principles and theory. Marxism-Leninism and democratic socialism were the two dominant forms of socialism in the 20th century; the term "communism" was first coined and defined in its modern definition by the French philosopher and writer Victor d'Hupay. In his 1777 book Projet de communauté philosophe, d'Hupay pushes the philosophy of the Enlightenment to principles which he lived up to during most of his life in his bastide of Fuveau; this book can be seen as the cornerstone of communist philosophy as d'Hupay defines this lifestyle as a "commune" and advises to "share all economic and material products between inhabitants of the commune, so that all may benefit from everybody's work". According to Richard Pipes, the idea of a classless, egalitarian society first emerged in Ancient Greece; the 5th-century Mazdak movement in Persia has been described as "communistic" for challenging the enormous privileges of the noble classes and the clergy, for criticizing the institution of private property and for striving to create an egalitarian society.
At one time or another, various small communist communities existed under the inspiration of Scripture. For example, in the medieval Christian Church some monastic communities and religious orders shared their land and their other property. Communist thought has been traced back to the works of the 16th-century English writer Thomas More. In his treatise Utopia, More portrayed a society based on common ownership of property, whose rulers administered it through the application of reason. In the 17th century, communist thought surfaced again in England, where a Puritan religious group known as the "Diggers" advocated the abolition of private ownership of land. In his 1895 Cromwell and Communism, Eduard Bernstein argued that several groups during the English Civil War espoused clear communistic, agrarian ideals and that Oliver Cromwell's attitude towards these groups was at best ambivalent and hostile. Criticism of the idea of private property continued into the Age of Enlightenment of the 18th century through such thinkers as Jean Jacques Rousseau in France.
Following the upheaval of the French Revolution communism emerged as a political doctrine. In the early 19th century, various social reformers founded communities based on common ownership. However, unlike many previous communist communities they replaced the religious emphasis with a rational and philanthropic basis. Notable among them were Robert Owen, who founded New Harmony in Indiana, as well as Charles Fourier, whose followers organized other settlements in the United States such as Brook Farm. In its modern form, communism grew out of the socialist movement in 19th-century Europe; as the Industrial Revolution advanced, socialist critics blamed capitalism for the misery of the proletariat—a new class of urban factory workers who labored under often-hazardous conditions. Foremost among these critics were his associate Friedrich Engels. In 1848, Marx and Engels offered a new definition of communism and popularized the term in their famous pamphlet The Communist Manifesto; the 1917 October Revolution in Russia set the conditions for the rise to state power of Vladimir Lenin's Bolsheviks, the first time any avowedly communist party reached that position.
The revolution transferred power to the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, in which the Bolsheviks had a majority. The event generated a great deal of theoretical debate within the Marxist movement. Marx predicted that socialism and communism would be built upon foundations laid by the most advanced capitalist development. However, Russia was one of the poorest countries in Europe with an enormous illiterate peasantry and a minority of industrial workers. Marx had explicitly stated; the moderate Mensheviks opposed Lenin's Bolshevik plan for socialist revolution before capitalism was more developed. The Bolsheviks' successful rise to power was based upon the slogans such as "Peace and land" which tapp
Trade union
A trade union called a labour union or labor union, is an association of workers in a particular trade, industry, or company created for the purpose of securing improvement in pay, working conditions or social and political status through collective bargaining and working conditions through the increased bargaining power wielded by creation of a monopoly of the workers. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with employers; the most common purpose of these associations or unions is "maintaining or improving the conditions of their employment". This may include the negotiation of wages, work rules, complaint procedures, rules governing hiring and promotion of workers, workplace safety and policies. Unions may organize a particular section of skilled workers, a cross-section of workers from various trades, or attempt to organize all workers within a particular industry; the agreements negotiated by a union are binding on the rank and file members and the employer and in some cases on other non-member workers.
Trade unions traditionally have a constitution which details the governance of their bargaining unit and have governance at various levels of government depending on the industry that binds them to their negotiations and functioning. Originating in Great Britain, trade unions became popular in many countries during the Industrial Revolution. Trade unions may be composed of individual workers, past workers, apprentices or the unemployed. Trade union density, or the percentage of workers belonging to a trade union, is highest in the Nordic countries. Since the publication of the History of Trade Unionism by Sidney and Beatrice Webb, the predominant historical view is that a trade union "is a continuous association on wage earners for the purpose of maintaining or improving the conditions of their employment." Karl Marx described trade unions thus: "The value of labour-power constitutes the conscious and explicit foundation of the trade unions, whose importance for the working class can scarcely be overestimated.
The trade unions aim at nothing less than to prevent the reduction of wages below the level, traditionally maintained in the various branches of industry. That is to say, they wish to prevent the price of labour-power from falling below its value". A modern definition by the Australian Bureau of Statistics states that a trade union is "an organization consisting predominantly of employees, the principal activities of which include the negotiation of rates of pay and conditions of employment for its members."Yet historian R. A. Leeson, in United we Stand, said: Two conflicting views of the trade-union movement strove for ascendancy in the nineteenth century: one the defensive-restrictive guild-craft tradition passed down through journeymen's clubs and friendly societies... the other the aggressive-expansionist drive to unite all'labouring men and women' for a'different order of things'. Recent historical research by Bob James in Craft, Trade or Mystery puts forward the view that trade unions are part of a broader movement of benefit societies, which includes medieval guilds, Oddfellows, friendly societies, other fraternal organizations.
The 18th century economist Adam Smith noted the imbalance in the rights of workers in regards to owners. In The Wealth of Nations, Book I, chapter 8, Smith wrote: We hear, it has been said, of the combination of masters, though of those of workmen, but whoever imagines, upon this account, that masters combine, is as ignorant of the world as of the subject. Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labor above their actual rate When workers combine, masters... never cease to call aloud for the assistance of the civil magistrate, the rigorous execution of those laws which have been enacted with so much severity against the combination of servants and journeymen. As Smith noted, unions were illegal for many years in most countries, although Smith argued that it should remain illegal to fix wages or prices by employees or employers. There were severe penalties for including execution. Despite this, unions were formed and began to acquire political power resulting in a body of labour law that not only legalized organizing efforts, but codified the relationship between employers and those employees organized into unions.
The origins of trade unions can be traced back to 18th century Britain, where the rapid expansion of industrial society taking place drew women, rural workers and immigrants into the work force in large numbers and in new roles. They encountered a large hostility in their early existence from employers and government groups; this pool of unskilled and semi-skilled labour spontaneously organized in fits and starts throughout its beginnings, would be an important arena for the development of trade unions. Trade unions have sometimes been seen as successors to the guilds of medieval Europe, though the relationship between the two is disputed, as the masters of the guilds employed workers who were not allowed to organize. Trade unions and collective bargaining were outlawed from no than the middle of the 14th century when the Ordinance of Labourers was enacted in the Kingdom of England but their way of thinking was the one that endured dur
