Page:William Zebulon Foster - The Railroaders' Next Step, Amalgamation (1922).djvu/18

Rh Faced by the growing power and limitless greed of the railroad companies, railroad workers have for many years past sensed more and more clearly the need for the greatest possible solidarity among themselves. In the main this urge for united action may be said to have expressed itself in two general ways: (1) utopian dual unionism, (2) natural trade unionism. The dual unionism has been a product mostly of the more militant and energetic minorities, chiefly radicals, among the railroad workers. These minorities, consciously weighing the factors in hand as best they could and with an intense desire for united action, have for many years advocated the founding of an industrial union to include all railroad men. With characteristic impatience they have believed that this could be done only by discarding the old trade unions altogether and starting afresh with a new, theoretically perfect organization. On the other hand, the natural trade unionism is a product of the sluggish, conservative masses. More or less blindly and without plan, the latter have re-acted to the pressure of the companies, first by joining together into the most primitive types of unions, and then, gradually extending and developing them into ever-more wide-spreading and inclusive organizations, as the need for such became apparent. The method of the radical minorities has been largely to leap into industrial unionism, whereas that of the conservative masses is to drift into it gradually.

The question of solidarity is one of paramount interest and importance to railroaders, but there is an appalling confusion and lack of knowledge about the whole matter. A large body of radicals still have a highly unwarranted faith in the dual industrial program, and, together with the conservatives, are very much in ignorance of the true significance of the evolution towards greater solidarity constantly