Page:Solomon Abramovich Lozovsky - The World's Trade Union Movement (1924).pdf/74

 70 internationals which are politically connected with the Amsterdam International. There are twenty-nine such internationals. All of them were created in the end of the nineteenth century, some earlier and others later. For the sake of common struggle they unite workers of one trade, of one industry. This is, in fact, the idea of every international, but as a matter of fact in the many years of their existence they had not led a very noticeable political life. They are mostly organs for general information, and to be exact, even that information was not well organized.

With the beginning of the war and the fall of the socialist and trade union internationals which followed, these internationals, in fact, ceased to be such. We have noted that at the beginning of war all international organizations, including the workers’ internationals, were split into military-diplomatic coalitions, according to the place where this international happened to be. The socialist international had its headquarters in Brussels and the keys to it were in the hands of Vandervelde; the trade union international had its headquarters in Berlin, at the head of it stood Legien, who was pulling for the Central Empires. The industrial unions were partly in Germany, partly in England and partly in other countries. And, according to the place they were situated, they were inclined to this or that military coalition. In fact, the industrial unions ceased to exist during the war. They began to revive after the war when the Amsterdam International was born.

What do these post-war industrial units represent? If we will take them along vertical lines we will see that they numbered about twenty million members which is in a general way equivalent to the number of these same workers united by the Amsterdam International along horizontal lines, The largest industrial international is the international of the metal workers, It unites almost 3,000,000 members. Then comes the miners' international with 2,500,000, the laborers with 2,300,000, the internationals of agricultural and textile workers numbering about 1,500,000 each. Less than a million members are in the wood workers, building trades and clerks.

These are the biggest international units, but we have also industrial internationals which can hardly be called international organizations, as for instance, the international of barbers, which has 12,000 members; fur workers with 13,000 members; pottery workers with 13,000 members, etc. It is sufficient to state that there are a few internationals even in one industry; the painters have their international, the building trade workers theirs, etc.

We have lithographers, pressmen, book-binders organized separately. In short, by detailed examination of these internationals we will see a purely formal unity, the specific gravity of which is characterized by such number of members as twelve and fifteen thousand all over the