Page:William Zebulon Foster - The Railroaders' Next Step, Amalgamation (1922).djvu/61

Rh workers would be swamped by each other and especially by the masses of unskilled, and their interests neglected, was exploded long ago. It will not bear investigation. The same reactionary cry was raised when it was urged a few years ago to admit helpers and handymen into some of the unions. But the prophesied dire calamity did not happen, nor would it occur in the proposed amalgamation. All over Europe there are industrial unions of building trades, metal trades, clothing trades, printing trades, railroad trades, etc., and the various groups composing them function freely and effectively. It is a matter of common knowledge that the skilled workers, in American and every other country, are well able to take care of themselves in any kind of a labor organization.

Those who fear the skilled workers being overwhelmed reason from wrong premises. They take it for granted that the latter have a free will choice in the matter, that they can co-operate with the mass or not, just as they see fit. But this is decidedly not the case. With the constantly increasing pressure against them, the skilled workers can no longer prosper going it alone; they are compelled to seek the assistance of each other and of the unskilled. It is a question of compulsion. By force of circumstances the skilled workers are compelled to compose their craft differences and to act with the mass. At first they try to do so by federation; but eventually, because of the imperfections of this type of organization, they are brought to amalgamation. In this way alone can they achieve the power they must have. With the skilled workers' unions, even as with those of the unskilled, the alternative is, "Amalgamation or annihilation."

Another objection (although a shameful one indeed to come from a movement based on the principle of "an injury to one is the concern of all") that is levelled against all projects to affiliate the trades more closely together is the assertion that in a general railroad amalgamation the strongest organized trades would have to pull chestnuts