Then the employers tried what they could do for themselves. They refused to employ unionists. This was no use: they could not get enough non-unionist labor to go on with: and the unionists whom they had to employ refused to work with non-unionists. Then the employers refused to “recognize” the unions, which meant that they refused to negotiate questions of wages with the secretaries of the unions, and insisted on dealing with their employees directly and individually, one at a time. This also failed. Making a separate bargain with each employee is easy enough in the case of a woman engaging a domestic servant or an oldfashioned merchant engaging a clerk or warehouseman; but when men have to be taken on by the hundred, and sometimes by the thousand, separate bargaining is impossible. The big employers who talked about it at first really meant that there was to be no bargaining at all. The men were to come in and just take what they were told were the wages of the firm, and not presume to argue. The moment the formation of the unions enabled the men to bargain, the big employers, to save their own time, had to insist on its being done with a single representative of the men who was experienced in bargaining and qualified to discuss business: that is, with the secretary of the Trade Union; so that all the fuss ended in the unions being not only recognized by the big employers, but looked on as a necessary part of their industry. Finally the unions were legalized; and here, as in the case of the Married Women’s Property Acts, the change from outlawry to legal protection went a little beyond the mark, in its reaction against previous injustice, and gave the Trade Unions privileges and immunities which are not enjoyed by ordinary societies. The employers then found that they also must act together in dealing with the Trade Unions. Accordingly, they formed unions of their own, called Employers’ Federations. The war of Capital with Labor is now a war of Trade Unions with Employers’ Federations. Their battles, or rather blockades, are lock-outs and strikes, lasting, like modern military battles, for months. Though some of the battles are about victimization (that is, discharging an employee for actively advocating Trade Unionism, or refusing to reinstate a prominent striker when the strike is over), all the disputes in which ground is won or lost are about wages or hours of work. You must understand that there are two sorts of wages: time wages and piecework wages. Time wages are paid for the employee’s time by the month, week, day, or hour, no matter how much or how little work may be done during those periods. Piecework wages are paid according to the work done: so much for each piece of work turned out.