Page:William Zebulon Foster - The Railroaders' Next Step, Amalgamation (1922).djvu/21

Rh three weeks had passed the strike was lost. The A. R. U. lingered along until 1897, when it turned itself into a cooperative political organization the Social Democratic Party, forerunner of the present Socialist Party.

The advent of the American Railway Union, as is always the case with dual organizations, did great harm to the railroad craft unions. All of them were weakened and some nearly destroyed. Thousands of their best members quit them to take part in the A. R. U., only to find themselves blacklisted out of the railroad service later on because of the lost strike. The case of Debs himself is a striking example of the damage done. When he resigned his position as General Secretary-Treasurer and editor of the official journal of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen in order to form the A. R. U., he was a great force for progress in the old unions. Had he but stayed with them he would have been a big factor in their future development. But he was lost to them, and that they have suffered much in consequence no unbiased observer will deny. This constant sucking of the best blood out of the craft unions is one of the very worst features of dual industrial unionism.

Hard upon the heels of the American Railway Union came a whole series of dual unions on the railroads, some of them being but parts of general separatist movements, whilst others specialized in railroad workers alone. But all were alike in that they advocated the industrial form of organization and sought to realize it by going outside of the old unions and beginning anew. They are also alike in that none of them succeeded in establishing itself firmly on the railroads.

The first of these dual unions was the Socialist Trades and Labor Alliance, organized in 1895. A general labor organization, it made war upon the whole trade union movement. But it secured little or no hold on the railroads.