Note 67 — CHAPTER 8 PARTIAL RECOGNITION AND NEW DIFFICULTIES, 1898-1914

Professor Barnett attributes the failure of these agreements chiefly to faulty agreement machinery. The working rules, he points out, are rules made by the national union and therefore can be changed by the national union only. At the same time the agreements were national only in so far as they provided for national conciliation machinery; the fixing of wages was left to local bodies. Consequently, the national employers' associations lacked the power to offer the unions an indispensable quid pro quo in higher wages for a compromise on working rules. ("National and District Systems of Collective Bargaining in the United States," in Quarterly Journal of Economics, May, 1912, pp. 425 ff.)