Page:George Henry Soule - Recent Developments in Trade Unionism (1921).pdf/21

 The principle of industrial unionism had long been preached in America, but it had not been put into successful practice. Eugene V. Debs had tried to found an industrial union of railway workers, fighting the old Brotherhoods, but his attempt was unsuccessful. The I. W. W. set up a new organization to compete with the entire A. F. of L., but it never gained the allegiance of any large proportion of the workers for long. Many smaller attempts to set up a new labor movement on the industrial principle have been made, but their chief tangible result is propaganda and discussion. Meanwhile the old-line unions were cautiously extending their strength little by little, and the whole trade-union movement was making inroads upon industry.

Of course the system of craft unions gave rise to many jurisdictional disputes, when two or more unions would compete for the allegiance of the same group of workers. One result of these quarrels was a series of amalgamations among the unions concerned. We have a habit of calling the oldline unions craft unions, and yet so many amalgamations have taken place among them in the course of time that there is hardly one of them that is a strictly one-craft union in the old-fashioned sense. To illustrate this point we have only to look at the building trades. The carpenters, joiners and cabinet