Page:Jay Fox - Amalgamation (1923).pdf/18

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T this stage in the evolution of industry the strake of a single union has no more chance of success than did the strike of a single workman twenty-five years ago. Organization is subject to the same evolutionary process as ail other social institutions, and organizations of labor are no exception to the general rule, although there is a philosophy to the effect that it is. Capitalism, as we have seen, has evolved from its primitive stage of craftism into gigantic industrial combinations. Labor unionism must follow or it will be wiped out. It must consolidate it ranks ever more firmly through a steady process of amalgamation.

For many years it was the fate of the American labor movement not to recognize this fact. The militants held almost universally that the old unions were static and incapable of evolution. They believed that they had to set up new unions to replace the old ones. The new ones were, of course, modeled on the most advanced industrial lines. Everything was provided for that would be necessary in the march of Labor to the goal of its ultimate destiny. The best economic thought was consulted in the drafting of charts for such organizations; every detail was worked out on scientific lines. Nothing was lacking on paper to make them complete in every respect. But the program failed nevertheless.

The Socialist Trades and Labor Alliance was the first union of this character ever set up. It struggled along for ten years, never having more than a handful of members, and it was absorbed into the amalgamation that composed the I. W. W. in 1905. The Alliance attacked the old unions viciously. It had an able leader who possessed a vitriolic tongue that he did not spare, but to no effect. The scientific industrial union was let severely alone by the workers. In spite of this failure another attempt on a larger scale was made in Chicago in By that time the "new union" idea had gained intense popularity amongst revolutionists, who had come to look upon the old unions as only fit food for the fishes. They regarded these bodies as hopelessly lost, so deeply were the antiquated craft unions immersed