Unions - Mutual Aid Through Collective Bargaining

I was struck the other day, how the guild system that Freemasonry is built upon, was the seed and roots of the Union Movement. The first Brotherhood I joined was the Teamsters.

Fruit Never Falls Far from the Tree

While various historical threads combine in the history of Freemasonry, it is clear that at the core of the fraternity’s history and tradition was its function as the stonemasons’ guild. In other words, as an organization of operative stonemasons - as opposed to modern, speculative Freemasons – it was for the most part a trade union or craft guild that regulated the industry and protected its members and the public from encroachment by the "uninitiated" or "un-apprenticed." In operative Masonry,

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Freemasonry