It was confidently expected by many members of the January conference that there would be an immediate secession of a number of national unions from the American Federation of Labor. But whatever may have been the hopes of the originators of the movement, the constitutional convention proved by its very make-up that this new insurgent labor body could not, at the outset at least, build a new organization out of disaffected parts of an old organization.
It has been seen that not all organizations were present on equal footing. In the first place, no union could have any influence or any active part in the proceedings of the convention unless it sent its delegates with full power to install. The January conference had drawn up certain rules governing representation in the forthcoming convention:
Representation in the convention shall be based upon the number of workers whom the delegate represents. No delegate, however, shall be given representation in the convention on the numerical basis of an organization, unless he has credentials ... authorizing him to install his union as a working part of the proposed economic organization in the industrial department to which it logically belongs.... Lacking this authority, the delegate shall represent himself as an individual.[105]
The delegates to the convention were in this way grouped into two classes: representative delegates, with voting power proportional to the number of members represented, and individual delegates with merely their own vote, and in some cases not representing any union even as uninstructed delegates. This separation of the two hundred and three delegates, according to the character of their credentials, may be shown as follows:
| Delegates | Organizations Represented | Members Represented | Voting Strength | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| With power to install | 70 | 23 | 51,430 | 51,430 | |
| Without power to install | 72 | 20 | 91,500 | 72 | |
| Other "individual" delegates | 61 | — | 61 | 61 | |
| Total | 203 | 43 | 142,991 | 51,563 | [106] |
Including the industrial workers' clubs there were forty-three organizations represented, of which number twenty-three were represented by delegates having full power to install. The above analysis shows that of the 142,991 members presumably represented, nearly two-thirds sent delegates merely to take notes of the proceedings and report back. About one-third, some 51,000, were then prepared to cast their lot with the new undertaking. Also it appears that about one-third of the delegates wielded practically the whole voting power of the assembly.
Moreover, the balance of power within this empowered one-third was most unevenly distributed. Of the 51,000 votes aggregated by those organizations prepared to install, 48,000 votes were distributed among five organizations (these being the only ones with a voting strength of more than 1,000) as follows:
| Organization | Membership | No. of Delegates | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Western Federation of Miners | 27,000 | 5 | |
| American Labor Union | 16,750 | 29 | |
| United Metal Workers | 3,000 | 2 | |
| United Brotherhood of Railway Employees | 2,087 | 19 | |
| Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance | 1,450 | 14 | |
| Total | 50,287 | [107] | 69 |
These were the organizations which were most prominent in the activities of the convention. Among their delegates were a goodly number of the most active promotors of the movement. From them—especially from the Western Federation of Miners—finally came the great bulk of the funds for establishing the new union. It is evident that, numerically speaking, one single organization, the Western Federation of Miners, held the balance of power, and of the remaining votes, three-fourths were in the control of the American Labor Union, these two bodies together outnumbering the others ten to one. The sequel was to show that the numerically weaker organizations exerted an influence quite out of proportion to their numbers, because of the great influence exerted by some of their individual delegates. Their representatives were radicals, representing more or less radical unions.