Excerpt from The Standard Rate in American Trade Unions: A Dissertation Submitted to the Board of University Studies of the Johns Hopkins University in Conformity With the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy, 1909The maintenance of standard rates has always been a leading feature of American trade-union wage policies. The unions have from the first sought to attain their pri mary purpose of advancing wages by substituting collect ively established rates of wages for those which their mem bers could obtain by competition in isolated wage bargains. Almost universally their efforts in this direction have taken the form of the establishment and enforcement of standard rates. In the present study the standard rate is considered solely as a device for securing effective union participation in the determination of wage rates by union bargaining or by collective enforcement. The standard rate is regarded as a trade-union device, as a piece of union mechanism, and attention is directed entirely toward questions of form and extent of application, and especially to the manner in which it fulfills its purpose of enabling the union to bring its col lective strength to bear in behalf of the individual member in the settlement of actual wages. The amounts of the vari ous rates maintained by the respective unions, the forms of collective bargaining by which the rate is fixed and the social implications of the standard rate are subjects outside the scope of the present study.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis 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.