TRADE UNIONS. 319 
gained in the eyes of the public and of employers, and even unregistered 
unions have benefited from the greater confidence given to the movement 
as a whole. Up to the end of 1929, 87 unions were registered, with 
183,000 members ; these are a minority of the existing unions. but, in- 
clude the majoritv of the vigorous organisations. 
© Internal Difficulties. 
In recent years trade unionism has bad to face internal difficult- 
ies. For some time efforts have been made by communistsin India and 
from beyond its border to capture the movement. These met with their 
greatest success in Bombay in 1928. The absence of any strong organi- 
sation among the cotton mill workers and a realisation of their weak- 
ness, combined with the encouragement given by the result of a pro- 
longed strike, enabled a few of the communist leaders, by an intense effort 
to capture the imagination of the workers and eventually to sweep over 
50,000 of them into a communist organisation. One effect of these strikes, 
and particularly the last disastrous strike, has been to render difficult the 
development of effective trade union organisation during the next few 
years. The workers, discouraged and depressed, are divided and many 
of them are still imbued with communist beliefs and ideals. These fact- 
ors stand in the way of the creation of an effective organisation with 
which the employers’ association can negotiate. Until this obstacle 
is removed, better understanding and relationship with the workpeople 
is exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, of attainment. At the same 
period renewed political excitement throughout the country led to the 
appearance of leaders whose interests were mainly political. The diver- 
gence of views among the leaders had been increasingly apparent in the 
All-India Trade Union Congress and this culminated in a split at the 
end of 1929. Dissensions regarding communism led to the secession of 
the majority of the unions under their more experienced and responsible 
leaders and the formation by them of the All-India Trade Union Federa- 
tion. The position of the trade union movement as a whole is still 
unstable, and much will depend on its course of development in the next 
few vears. 
Types of Unions, 
A fair assessment of the strength of the movement at the present 
time is difficult, mainly because unions vary so greatly in form and 
character. This will be best realised from a brief review of the main 
types. At the bottom of the scale come those “ unions ” which represent 
little or nothing more than the one or two men (generally drawn from the 
professional classes) who fill the leading offices. A few such unions can 
fairly be described as having had their main evidence of reality in 
notepaper headings. The object is to give a platform and a name to the 
leaders. The members, if not imaginary, are convened on the rare 
occasions when the endorsement of some resolution is required. This 
type of valueless growth, which is more characteristic of Bengal than 
of other provinces and is becoming rare even there, was stimulated 
by the belief that it would assist the leaders to secure nomination in 
the labour interest to local councils or international labour conferences