Page:William Zebulon Foster - The Bankruptcy of the American Labor Movement (1922).djvu/64

 Rh A large body of sentiment has also been created in favor of affiliation to the Red International of Labor Unions. Hundreds of local unions and dozens of central labor councils have endorsed the proposition. The Detroit and Seattle central bodies have sent delegates to Moscow, and District No. 26, United Mine Workers, has voted to affiliate. In the prevailing strike of railroad shopmen and miners the League has also taken an active part, its speakers encouraging and assisting the workers everywhere. In the Miners' Union the League is particularly effective. At present it is putting up progressive tickets, with excellent chances for victory, in many districts and sub-districts which have been used for years as pawns by the corrupt international administrations. A great service was the League's checking of the outburst of dual union sentiment that developed through the brutal expulsion of Alexander Howat and the Kansas District. A year before such an outrage would have surely split the Miners' Union. But as it was, the League, through its constant hammering against secessionism, had been able to drive home to the rebels some understanding of the disaster of dualism, and aided by the splendid, common-sense attitude of Howat, was able to prevent them from organizing breakaway movements. At least two districts were held in the U. M. W. A. directly through the League's efforts and serious splits were avoided in many more. This work of solidarity was a great achievement for the League and the labor movement at large. It probably saved the whole coal miners’ organization; for had a bad break occurred over the Howat case, and it would have done so without the League’s influence, the union never could have weathered the great storm then about to descend upon it, the national general strike of 1922.

But the issue with which the League has scored its greatest success is that of industrial unionism through amalgamation. This movement to combine all the craft unions into a series of industrial organizations it as present sweeping the country like a prairie fire. The workers realize that the death knell of craft unionism has sounded and that the way to a higher form of organization lies through amalgamation. Men and organizations, who a year ago were entirely untouched by industrial union ideas, are now lining up for the project enthusiastically and in wholesale fashion. The "old guard" of the trade union bureaucracy are alarmed as never before in their experience.

The amalgamation movement proper got under way in the latter part of March, 1922, when the Chicago Federation of Labor adopted