*83. Employers' Organizations.*--From this point of view there has been a very close analogy between the actions of workingmen and certain recent action among manufacturers and other members of the employing classes. In the first place, employers' associations have been formed from time to time to take common action in resistance to trade unions or for common negotiations with them. As early as 1814 the master cutlers formed, notwithstanding the combination laws, the "Sheffield Mercantile and Manufacturing Union," for the purpose of keeping down piecework wages to their existing rate. In 1851 the "Central Association of Employers of Operative Engineers" was formed to resist the strong union of the "Amalgamated Engineers." They have also had their national bodies, such as the "Iron Trade Employers' Association," active in 1878, and their general federations, such as the "National Federation of Associated Employers of Labor," which was formed in 1873, and included prominent shipbuilders, textile manufacturers, engineers, iron manufacturers, and builders. Many of these organizations, especially the national or district organizations of the employers in single trades, exist for other and more general purposes, but incidentally the representatives of the masters' associations regularly arrange wages and other labor conditions with the representatives of the workingmen's associations. There is, therefore, in these cases no more competition among employers as to what wages they shall pay than among the workmen as to what wages they shall receive. In both cases it is a matter of arrangement between the two associations, each representing its own membership. The liberty both of the individual manufacturer and of the workman ceases in this respect when he joins his association.