74 
TRADE UNIONISM 
Federation of Labor of craft and trades unions. Nor do 
these distinct structural types always appear to be quite 
independent in their genesis. This happens in some cases, 
but there seem to be clear cases of developmental transi 
tion. Thus the compound craft union is sometimes a* 
transformation of the craft union by the simple process 
of combination, and the industrial union seems often to 
be the outcome of a simple enlargement of the elements 
in the compound craft union. 
If, then, structural types stood in the same relation 
ship to our problem as functional types, and if, there 
fore, in order to establish the manifold character of 
unionism it were necessary to apply the same criteria to 
them with the same degree of stringency, there is no 
doubt that the case could not be maintained. Here we 
doubtless find the chief explanation for the fact that 
students have yielded so long and so generally to the 
popular assumption that unionism is at bottom one and 
the same thing, that union variants are but adaptations 
of a single norm to changing environment, or at most 
temporary and accidental aberrations from it. 10 This is 
the conviction with which the student of unionism would 
naturally, and indeed almost inevitably, be impressed if 
he entered upon the study primarily from the structural 
standpoint, and placed his emphasis upon structural 
forms and relationships. He would then see unionism be 
ginning in the local craft organization as a response to 
the conditions created by the primitive type of capitalistic 
enterprise or to its corresponding market structure, and 
developing by a gradual transformation through larger 
10 The popular assumption seems to be in itself partly a mat 
ter of blind partisanship, partly a matter of tactical advantage, 
and partly a belief in things hoped for.