Page:Scott Nearing - World Labor Unity (1926).pdf/8

 These two Internationals overtop all the rest, both as to size and importance. Many European workers, however, belong to the Federation of Christian Trade Unions. Still other workers, with anarchist-syndicalist leanings, are grouped in the International Workingmen's Association. There are, besides, many local unions that have no affiliations with any of these groups.

This is the situation in Europe. Even there little enough real unity exists among the workers.

Outside of the European continent, and, for the most part, outside of these internationals, are the American Federation of Labor, most of the trade unions in South America, the Pan-American Federation of Labor, which includes practically nothing outside of North America, and the trade unions of Asia and Australia.

Edo Fimmen sums up the matter by writing: "For practical purposes, the 'international' organisations are as yet purely European in scope." "The increasingly compact international capitalist alliance is faced by a working class which, both economically and industrially, both nationally and internationally, is disintegrated."  

Up to the time of the World War, international trade union organizations had never been much more than offices for the collection of information and conferences for the exchange of opinion.

The International Workingmen's Association, organized in 1864, had broken the ground for the later and larger associations. The miners formed an international in 1890. There were