Page:Robert W. Dunn - American Company Unions.djvu/31

 ened four important brother unions on that road. In fact, the new Railway Labor Act, backed by Atterbury, W. N. Doak, friend and advisor of Bascom Slemp, millionaire open shop coal operator, and W. G. Lee, President of the Steigelmyer Manufacturing Company, a $10,000,000 concern at Seymour, Indiana, (Doak and Lee, strange as it may appear to European readers, are labor officials!) appears to be another scheme to keep the union officials away from thoughts of struggle for better conditions. Having delivered the weaker unions a body blow, Atterbury and his associates will "carry on" as usual with the respectable Big Four brotherhoods while permitting the blessings of open shop company unionism to fall upon the great mass of the "boys" on the line. The labor official Polyannas are reputed to be hopeful that the new legislation will help them to oust the company union from Atterbury's road. However, they have not explained as yet just how this is to be done without a stand-up fight against the company. Without such a fight, organization strength among the shop crafts, clerks, and others be never be regained.

More investigated and discussed than any other plan is the one introduced in 1915–16 in the plants and mines of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company. It is impossible to more than summarize here the thorough studies of these company plans made by the Russel Sage Foundation. The upshot of all the research into the coal mine employee representation reveals the plan as "a beautiful automobile without an engine." The employees, as usual, have no treasury, no separate business agents, no power or control over anything vital. In the last analysis whatever is done is done on company initiative. Trade unions are not recognized. Union meetings