Page:Jay Fox - Amalgamation (1923).pdf/16

14 strike. They knew that the shopmen were fighting the fight of all railroad men, that the loss of the strike meant defeat for the men who stayed at work as well as those who struck, that if the companies can lick the shopmen today, tomorrow they will tackle the trainmen. But the men could not get action. They belonged to nine different unions with nine sets of reactionary, capitalistic leaders who don't believe in sympathetic strikes. The sympathetic strike sentiment was stifled and the men were forced to stay on their jobs and knowingly helped to defeat their fellow unionists by cooperating with scabs, virtually becoming scabs themselves. Another case of too many unions and not enough unionism, augmented, by too many leaders and no leadership.

This history of the shopmen's strike tells the whole story of our antiquated craft union movement and illustrates in the clearest possible way its inherent weakness. The railroad workers are organized in every department from the section men to the engineers and office men; thus there was no obstacle to a general walkout in support of the shopmen that could not have been easily overcome had there not been so many unions, each master of its specific job and owing allegiance to no other. Sixteen different kinds of jobs and 16 separate unions to take care of them. Why 16? A railroad. is not organized that way. A railroad has one organization, with one center, one head, and all departments are mere extentions, arms reaching out from that center and always responsive to its commands. That is real organization and by having it a railroad can function properly and concentrate its force at any one point at will. Now suppose a railroad had an organization on every division, each independent of all the others. It doesn't take much thought to see how soon the system would be balled up. Yet that would be only a fraction of the number of organizations the workers have on every railroad. The logic of the situation is clear—fewer and stronger unions are the prime necessity of the hour.

Our unions have practically the same form and use about the same tactics that they started out with at the dawn of industry. It has never occurred to the leaders of Labor that when the foundry, machine and blacksmith shops were combined under one management that these mechanics should also be united in one union. The concentration of the shops made for economy in production and efficiency in management. It reduced competition amongst the bosses; it increased their control over the market; it magnified their power over the workers