What the Committee on the War and the Religious Outlook and the Webbs state in slightly different language explains why the history of constitutional government in industry is fundamentally the history of the rise of the workers through their unions and collective bargaining toward a democratic equality of status with their employers. As soon as the mining communities became sufficiently stable to allow the consciousness of kind to operate, the miners began to organize into small local groups for mutual aid, to care for one another in sickness, to bury one another at death, and to improve their wages and working conditions. But it was not until after the industrial revolution got under full headway during and immediately after the Civil War that they became actively conscious of a community of interest over wide areas. For the structure of modern democratic government in industry as in nations and among nations, depends upon railroads, the postal and telegraph service, and other means of communication. A strong impetus and a definite direction was given to the existing tendency toward organization by the steady infiltration of miners from Great Britain where constitutional government in the coal industry had already made considerable progress and where the miners were firmly organized. The miners held their first national convention in St. Louis, Missouri, in January, 1861. The call had been issued by Daniel Weaver, an English trade-unionist, who after the failure of the Chartist movement had settled in the coal fields of Illinois. "The necessity of an association of miners and of those branches of industry immediately connected with mining operations, having for its object the physical, mental, and social elevation of the miner, has long been felt by the thinking portion of the miners generally," said Weaver in his call. "Union is the great fundamental principle by which every object of importance is to be accomplished. Man is a social being and if left to himself in an isolated condition is one of the weakest of creatures, but when associated with his kind he works wonders.... There is an electric sympathy kindled, the attractive forces inherent in human nature are called into action and a stream of generous emotion binds together and animates the whole.... Our unity is essential to the attainment of our rights and the amelioration of our present condition.... Our safety, our remedy, our protection, our dearest interests, and the social well-being of our families, present and future, depend upon our unity, our duty, and our regard for each other."