Page:William Zebulon Foster - The Railroaders' Next Step, Amalgamation (1922).djvu/53

Rh Employees' Department. This system unit would probably be adopted, and the industrial union convention would be made up of representatives of the system organizations, either upon the basis of one delegate from each department of each system amalgamation; or, what is more likely and practical, three or four delegates from each system amalgamation, selected by general election and without regard to their respective departments. This would at once insure a democratic and representative convention and keep its size within reason. It is instructive to note that the big National Union of Railwaymen of Great Britain limits its annual conventions to eighty delegates, elected at large from the various districts into which the organization is divided. The antiquated system of local union representation is not recognized.

The foregoing propositions have been written around the thought of the whole sixteen unions making a concerted move for amalgamation—for that is what should happen. The proposed industrial union should contain all the crafts, as the situation demands complete solidarity all along the line. Each of the organizations, no matter what its special conditions, has at once much to contribute to such a combination and much to gain from it. The amalgamation can never be thoroughly effective until all the railroad unions, large and small, strong and weak, become part of it.

But in view of the fact that the unions are afflicted with large reactionary elements, who block every progressive movement, we have to consider the possibility that all of the organizations will not move for amalgamation simultaneously. It is very probable that amalgamation, like federation, will being to show itself first in two or more streams among the closest related trades. In such an event, say, where several unions desired to amalgamate, they could do so exactly along the general principles