Page:William Zebulon Foster - The Railroaders' Next Step, Amalgamation (1922).djvu/38

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Sooner or later, the unions in all industries and in every country find themselves at the point where they are based upon industrial rather than craft lines. In arriving at this stage of development they ordinarily pass through a more or less lengthy evolutionary process, marked by three distinct phases, which I shall call: (1) isolation, (2) federation, (3) amalgamation.

In the first, or isolation phase, the several craft groups in a given industry act independently of each other, recognizing few or no interests in common. Eventually, however, grace to their own unfolding intelligence, to the growing power of the employers, to the elimination of skill by machinery, and to various other factors, they awaken to the ineffectiveness of this individualistic method, and begin to set up offensive and defensive alliances with each other. This brings them into the second, or federation phase. And, finally, when by the working of the same factors, they perceive their loose federated form, although a big improvement over the previous system, does not develop their maximum power, they gradually fuse themselves together into a unified body along the lines of their industry. Thus they reach the third, or amalgamation phase.

This is the normal course of labor union development, the natural way of building industrial unions. Dozens of industrial unions in Europe have taken it, and our American trade unions are following suite. In common with other groups of unions in the food, clothing, metal, transport, building, printing, and other industries, the railroad unions are now in the secondary, or federation phase of development. That is the significance of their multitudinous local system, divisional and national alliances, which constitute the most elaborate maze of federation ever