Page:William Zebulon Foster - The Railroaders' Next Step, Amalgamation (1922).djvu/34

Rh "'It would only be a question of years until the operating men became members of the system federation. That would place the company at the mercy of a compact body of labor to enforce its demands by tying up the system at all points. It would mean taking the control out of the hands of the board of directors and placing it in the hands of organized labor. That's why I am opposed to the system federation plan of organization.'"

Nominally the strike was lost, the workers being compelled to go back to work without either their unions or a settlement. But practically a large measure of victory was achieved, because the company paid so dearly for its victory that other companies hesitated to go into similar struggles; with the result that the shopmen's federations thereafter were quite generally recognized wherever the crafts had any strength of organization. The big strike definitely established the system federation movement. It also resulted in making the Railway Employes' Department the best department in the A. F. of L., by bringing about the amalgamation of the original half-dead department with the Federation of Federations, an organization called into being to unite all the system federations.

As in the case of the transportation unions, the divisional type of organization developed among the shop unions side by side with the system federations. The first divisional movement of shop men took place in Division No. 3 in 1916. Twelve Southern railroads were involved. In Division No. 1 an effort was made along similar lines shortly after; but the unions, not yet recovered from the big strike on the Harriman Lines-Illinois Central system, were unable to win their point. The companies blocked them, and compelled them to continue along with the old method of one craft or one system federation at a time, as the case might be.

At this stage of the shop unions' development the war