Our trade hasn't been together many years: and what drove us together?
The tyranny of our employers.

What has kept us together?
The bitter experience of hard work and little pay, whenever we were out of union.

Those who now direct the trades are old enough to remember when we were all ground down to the dust by the greedy masters; and therefore it is natural, when a grievance arises, we should be inclined to look to those old offenders for redress in the first instance.

Sometimes the masters convince us the fault lies with workmen; and then we trouble the master no more than we are forced to do in order to act upon the offenders.

But, to come to the point: what is your proposal ?" "I beg to be admitted into the union." "What union ?" "Why, of course, the one I have offended, through ignorance.