CHAPTER V 



COLLECTIVE BARGAINING IN THE MARKETING OF WHOLE 



MILK 



Section i. Development of Collective Bargaining 



THE idea of collective bargaining developed as a result 

 of the introduction of the factory system of manufacturing, 

 under which large numbers of laborers came to feel the 

 need for united action in holding their own against the 

 few controlling vast accumulations of capital. Under 

 open competition as it then existed, the individual labor- 

 ing man was an extremely weak bargainer in dealing with 

 a big employer, and the laborer came to have altogether 

 too small a share of the product of his industry. 



Collective bargaining as we know it to-day has been 

 defined as " a process by which the general labor contract 

 is agreed upon by negotiation directly between employer 

 or employers' associations and organized working men." 1 

 In some instances the bargaining is between an employer 

 and his own workmen. In other instances it is between 

 a group of employers and a combination of the working 

 men of all of them, as in the case of the coal mining indus- 

 try. The fundamental principle back of collective bargain- 

 ing is "the substitution of the indispensable group as a 

 bargaining unit for the dispensable individual." 2 



From the first collective bargaining was considered op- 

 posed to the public good and was dealt with accordingly. 



1 Report of Industrial Commission, Vol. XVII, p. 834 (1900). 



2 Carver, T. N., Principles of Political Economy, p. 403 (1919). 



134 



