Page:Jay Fox - Amalgamation (1923).pdf/37

 Rh visioned, narrow-minded, self-centered unionism, as our present system.

With the advent of departmentalized industrial unionism will come many advantages. One will be the end of the dual union scourge. Once industrial unionism is established all the workers, regardless of their other differences, will gravitate to the powerful organizations. Likewise great financial economies will be made. The amount of money and time wasted through the duplication of offices, officials, journals, conventions, etc., in our craft unions is appalling, Let us consider the metal industry as an example. In that great industrial division there are 24 International Unions, maintaining 24 expensive headquarters, with 24 high-salaried presidents, and 24 high-salaried secretaries to adorn them. They publish 24 costly journals, and have 24 international executive boards that keep the industry going 24 ways and getting nowhere. They have 24 sets of organizers and their combined work totals less than 10% of the total workers in the industry. They hold 24 separate conventions, each one of which costs the workers large sums of money. They have thousands of duplicate sets of local officers, business agents, etc., at a tremendous cost. When these 24 unions are amalgamated all this wasteful duplication will be abolished by the introduction of an efficient system of modern management. There will be but one headquarters, one set of officers, one journal, and one convention. Where chaos and wastefulness now exist, then there will be order and economy. By combining their plants the masters of industry cut out such foolish wastefulness many years ago. It is high time that Labor did the same.

But above all, departmentalized industrial unionism will give the workers the power they now so badly need. The enormous strength that the industrial unions will have is the big idea behind amalgamation. At present the 24 metal trades unions, for example, are weak and impotent through their hopeless division. But once they unite and make a general assault on the "open shop" employers, headed by the Steel Trust, they will be invincible. The same will be true of the unions in the other industries. The capitalists rule not so much because they are strong as because we are weak. When Labor learns to rise above its petty craft point of view and to draw itself into great industrial batallions, then the domination of the exploiters will be doomed.