Page:William Z. Foster, James P. Cannon and Earl Browder - Trade Unions in America.djvu/29

 A. F. of L., held in Chicago in May, 1922, the left wing delegates had presented a resolution for amalgamation as the first necessity to win the shopmen's strike then looming up. They actually convinced a majority of the delegates, but the officialdom coerced enough of them into line to defeat it by a small margin. The necessity for rank and file pressure to force any action from the official machinery of the unions was apparent.

This task was taken up by the Railway Shop Crafts' Legislative Committee, of St. Paul, Minnesota, of which Otto Wangerin was the secretary and leading spirit. This body adopted a comprehensive plan of amalgamation, published it as a leaflet, and sent it out with a ballot to every local union of railroad workers in the United States and Canada.

The "Minnesota Plan," as it is called, was greeted with enthusiasm. The plan was first published in July, 1922. Within a few months more than a thousand local unions had adopted it. The committee then called a conference of delegates from local nuionsunions [sic], to consider ways and means of bringing amalgamation about, and to set up the necessary organizational machinery. This conference met in December, 1922, in Chicago. There were over 400 delegates in attendance, from all over the United States and Canada, from as far south as Birmingham, west to the Pacific coast, and east to the Atlantic. Every union of railroaders was represented. It confirmed the Minnesota Plan, set up an organization known as the International Committee for Amalgamation in the Railroad Industry, and launched a paper, the Within six months the Minnesota Plan had been endorsed by 3,377 local railroad workers' unions in the United States and Canada.

How the bureaucracy damned up this flood of amalgamation sentiment, and defeated the will of the rank and file, is illustrated by the case of the Brotherhood of Railway Carmen. The laws of this union provide for a referendum vote on propositions submitted by five locals in