Page:William Zebulon Foster - The Railroaders' Next Step, Amalgamation (1922).djvu/19

Rh taking place in the old trade unions. Hence, before we can hope to successfully outline a rational program for further strengthening railroad unionism, we must examine in detail what has resulted from the radicals' conscious striving for industrial unionism and the conservatives' unconscious drift in the same general direction and profit from the lessons both tendencies have to teach us. Let us first consider what has been accomplished by dual unionism:

The railroad craft unions were in their infancy when the dual unionists began to set afloat their all-inclusive industrial unions. And they have followed their separatist policy vigorously for a generation, even up till the present day. During this long period they have launched manv such organizations, all of which have gone down to deteat. Let us glance briefly at the most striking examples:

The first important attempt to disregard the trade unions and to form a general union of railroaders occurred in 1877, when R. H. Ammon, in Pittsburgh, founded an organization to include engineers, firemen, conductors, trainmen and yardmen. The companies were slashing wages right and left, and the new union was designed to stop them. But it soon collapsed because of internal difficulties Shortly afterward, however, the deep discontent of the men blazed forth spontaneously in one of the greatest and most violent railroad strikes in history, that of July-August, 1877.

But a far more serious and extensive effort was the one made by the Knights of Labor not long afterward. This famous organization was frankly revolutionary and aimed to combine the whole working class into one union. It was formed in 1869, but for the first dozen years of its life it led an anaemic existence. In the middle '80's, however, it caught the imagination of the masses and raged across the country like a prairie fire. Hundreds of thousands were