But one significant cause of the tension, and the subsequent struggle for power in the NLU was the fact that a significant number of workers hadn't yet comprehended the changed nature of the industrialized system, in which corporations were not only beginning to create their own powerful combinations, they were able to rely upon their close relationship with the state to enforce their requirements upon the labor force. The workers were still thinking in terms of "the simple master-workman relationship" of a previous era. They hadn't yet developed a "mature sense of class consciousness."