Page:William Zebulon Foster - The Railroaders' Next Step, Amalgamation (1922).djvu/58

Rh The supreme advantages of the amalgamation of all the railroad craft unions into one industrial union would be, of course, the enormous increase in economic power coming from the greater scope of activity, intensified solidarity and clearer vision of the larger body. From a series of detached, semi-organized fragments, incapable of outlining a real general program, or of making a concerted fight for it, the army of the railroad workers would be transformed into a co-ordinated whole, animated by a common purpose for every man in the industry and able to exert united, tremendous strength to achieve it.

But there would be other, special advantages. One of these is the killing of the dual industrial union idea. In Chapter II we have seen something of the ravages caused by this idea; how for over thirty years the old unions have been devitalized by the loss of thousands and thousands of first class militants who have quit them to start new organizations. And unless this splitting off tendency is stopped it may well result, some time or other, in a general smashup of the unions that will set them back for many years. Only the amalgamation of the craft unions into an industrial union can put an end to this standing menace. Once such a combination is brought about then many invaluable militants, now lost to the movement, will devote their great potential strength to the productive work of building up the fused organization.

Amalgamation would also stop the many jurisdictional wars that now sap the strength of the railroad trade unions. Sidney Webb, a well-known English labor writer, once said that trade unions lose 90 per cent of their efficiency because of fighting among themselves. That there is much truth