So the industrial union may, or may not, be used with revolutionary intent. Of itself it is nothing to be afraid of.
Practically industrial unionism has between it and success what even the comparatively mild automobile workers refer to as the power of “Czar Gompers and his Grand Dukes.”
Theoretically the A. F. of L. is not opposed to industrial unionism. Any of the crafts may join forces. But practically the A. F. of L. machine prevents it.
“PROLETARIAT OF AMERICA” JUST GOES AND GETS JOB, WORLD INVESTIGATOR FINDS
By Arno Dosch-Fleurot.
Copyright, 1921, by the Press Publishing Co. (The New York World).
At Akron, O., where the rubber industry swelled to enormous proportions in the last few years, business dropped like a skyrocket recently and there were reports of tens of thousands of men thrown out of work. So I went to Akron to see how great were the sufferings of the “proletariat.”
Here, at least, I thought I should find a mass of unskilled labor and a proletarian class consciousness such as I have been in the habit of associating with big industry in Europe.
I found Akron pretty well shut down, but there was no proletariat about. There were no bread lines, no soup kitchens. Still there was no question but that there were some 50,000 fewer men working in the small city than there had been a short time before. Where were they?
They had gone home. They had acquired no stake in Akron. Most of them were from West Virginia. They were migratory workers, and when they were not wanted conveniently disappeared. They went to other towns, other industries, back to the land. Broadly they were a migratory class, but they had no consciousness of class. To-day they were seeking the highest pay in the factories, to-morrow they will be tilling the soil. To a would-be proletarian leader they must be exasperatingly elusive.