Page:William Zebulon Foster - The Railroaders' Next Step, Amalgamation (1922).djvu/23

Rh several strikes in their behalf. At the present time it is not a big factor on the railroads.

The Workers' International Industrial Union is an offshoot of the I. W. W. It split off because of internal squabbles in 1908. Like its parent, it is a general dual union. But it has never been able to make a strong showing among railroad workers. It still exists in skeleton form.

Two later attempts to start dual railroad unions were those of the Industrial Railway Union and the Brotherhood of Federated Railway Employes. Both these organizations, bred of internal strife in the old unions, led brief existences in 1915-16 on a few Eastern roads. Neither secured any considerable following.

The American Federation of Railroad Workers occupies a unique position among the many dual industrial unions that have sprung up from time to time on the railroads. While all the others have been radical, it is markedly conservative. It has had a checkered history. Originally it was the International Association of Car Workers, an A. F. of L. union. But as there was a conflict in jurisdiction between it and the Brotherhood Railway Carmen of America, the A. F. of L. ordered the two bodies to amalgamate. The president of the I. A. of C. W. refused point blank to agree to this salutary measure, and surrendered his charter to the A. F. of L. at the Atlanta Convention in 1911.

The organization struggled along for a few years as a craft union, and then, in 1915, it extended its jurisdiction to take in all railroad workers, calling itself thereafter the American Federation of Railroad Workers. Its membership at the present time is estimated to be about 9,000, principally car workers. It has contracts on two or three railroads.