Excerpt from The Labor Contract From Individual to Collective Bargaining, Vol. 2 The present study of the labor contract is tentative in nature. Certain preliminary chapters are here presented as an introduction to a larger study of collective bargaining which the writer intends to complete from the mass of material collected on present conditions in the United States. The period sketched in the present study lies between the close of the 18th and the beginning of the 20th century. This period marks the transition from individual to organized industry in the United States and it is this transition with which these preliminary chapters are especially concerned. The facts presented are culled from data secured largely through personal contact with employers and workmen. The work of investigating actual conditions of industry, of interviewing employers and workmen, and of attending the meetings of their various organizations and associations was carried on mainly in Chicago supplemented by work in New York city and in certain smaller centers. The documentary material has been culled from a variety of sources the most fruitful being the records kept in the central administrative offices of some of the stronger unions. The courtesies extended by some of the national and international presidents and secretaries enabled the writer to secure a large amount of evidence from unpublished sources. Certain employers' associations having "labor commissioners" also extended many courtesies in the way of furnishing documentary material bearing on their various methods of bargaining with employees. Yet all the evidence secured through documents is of secondary importance compared to the insight which gradually breaks upon one from daily contact with the persons actively engaged in industry. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.