Page:William Zebulon Foster - The Railroaders' Next Step, Amalgamation (1922).djvu/45

Rh it goes, with the companies defeating us piecemeal, one section after another. Divide and conquer is the eternal motto of the exploiter. And never was it put more effectively into practice than it now is as against the railroad workers.

If we should be forced into a strike, as well we may, how would it go with us then? We are ill-prepared for such a vital struggle. The chances are, if present indications do not lie completely, that only a group of the unions would strike, and the others, with characteristic craft selfishness, would stay at work and thus help defeat the strike. But even if all the sixteen unions should strike together, which is most unlikely indeed, the situation would be critical for us. Chronically divided by their craft character, the organizations would go into the fight with a fraction of possible efficiency. Instead of a homogenuous machine, we would have sixteen autonomous unions, each with its own set of officers and each its own will; sixteen sets of organizers working at cross purposes with each other and creating endless confusion; sixteen different strike relief systems, with the disruptive condition of the richer ones paying high benefits and the poorer ones none; sixteen headquarters scattered all over the country dabbling in the management of the strike and quarreling with each other.

Under such circumstances, inevitable in the present state of our organization, limitless confusion, disharmony, and weakness would result. A properly conducted strike, one that would bring out the real power of the workers and give them better than a desperate chance to win, would be impossible. It would be the steel strike and the Illinois Central-Harriman Lines strike all over again, only this time on a far larger scale. Of course, such a strike might be won. But if victory did come it would be due to the weight and stragetic position of the workers, and not to the skill shown in organization. And the winning would amount to only a fraction of what it would if the workers