At the same time the relatively unprivileged position of these trades makes them keenly alive to the danger from below, from the unskilled whom the employer may break into their jobs in case of strikes. They therefore favor taking the unskilled into the organization. Their industrialism is consequently caused perhaps more by their own trade consideration than by an altruistic desire to uplift the unskilled, although they realize that the organization of the unskilled is required by the broader interests of the wage-earning class. However, their long experience in matters of organization teaches them that the "one big union" would be a poor medium. Their accumulated experience likewise has a moderating influence on their economic activity, and they are consequently among the strongest supporters inside the American Federation of Labor of the trade agreement. Nevertheless, opportunistic though they are in the industrial field, their position is not sufficiently raised above the unskilled to make them satisfied with the wage system. Hence, they are mostly controlled by socialists and are strongly in favor of political action through the Socialist party. This form of industrialism may consequently be called "socialist industrialism." In the annual conventions of the Federation, industrialists are practically synonymous with socialists.
The best examples of the "middle stratum" industrialism are the unions in the garment industries. Enthusiastic admirers have proclaimed them the harbingers of a "new unionism" in America. One would indeed be narrow to withhold praise from organizations and leaders who in spite of a most chaotic situation in their industry have succeeded so brilliantly where many looked only for failure. Looking at the matter, however, from the wider standpoint of labor history, the contribution of this so-called "new unionism" resides chiefly, first, in that it has rationalized and developed industrial government by collective bargaining and trade agreements as no other unionism, and second, in that it has applied a spirit of broadminded all-inclusiveness to all workers in the industry. To put it in another way, its merit is in that it has made supreme use of the highest practical acquisition of the American Federation of Labor—namely, the trade agreement—while reinterpreting and applying the latter in a spirit of a broader labor solidarity than the "old unionism" of the Federation. As such the clothing workers point the way to the rest of the labor movement.
The first successful application of the "new unionism" in the clothing trades was in 1910 by the workers on cloaks and suits in the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union of America, a constituent union of the American Federation of Labor. They established machinery of conciliation from the shop to the industry, which in spite of many tempests and serious crises, will probably live on indefinitely. Perhaps the greatest achievement to their credit is that they have jointly with the employers, through a Joint Board of Sanitary Control, wrought a revolution in the hygienic conditions in the shops.
The Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America have won great power in the men's clothing industry, through aggressive but constructive leadership. The nucleus of the union seceded from the United Garment Workers, an A.F. of L. organization, in 1914. The socialistic element within the organization was and still is numerically dominating. But in the practical process of collective bargaining, this union's revolutionary principles have served more as a bond to hold the membership together than as a severe guide in its relations with the employers.[80] As a result, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers attained trade agreements in all the large men's clothing centers. The American Federation of Labor, however, in spite of this union's success, has persistently refused to admit it to affiliation, on account of its original secessionist origin from a chartered international union.
The unions of the clothing workers have demonstrated how immigrants (the majority in the industry are Russian and Polish Jews and Italians) may be successfully organized on the basis of a broad minded industrialism. On the issue of industrialism in the American Federation of Labor the last word has not yet been said. It appears, though, that the matter is being solved slowly but surely by a silent "counter-reformation" by the old leaders. For industrialism, or the adjustment of union structure to meet the employer with ranks closed on the front of an entire industry, is not altogether new even in the most conservative portion of the Federation, although it has never been called by that name.
Long before industrialism entered the national arena as the economic creed of socialists, the unions of the skilled had begun to evolve an industrialism of their own. This species may properly be termed craft industrialism, as it sought merely to unite on an efficient basis the fighting strength of the unions of the skilled trades by devising a method for speedy solution of jurisdictional disputes between overlapping unions and by reducing the sympathetic strike to a science. The movement first manifested itself in the early eighties in the form of local building trades' councils, which especially devoted themselves to sympathetic strikes. This local industrialism grew, after a fashion, to national dimensions in the form of the International Building Trades' Council organized in St. Louis in 1897. The latter proved, however, ineffective, since, having for its basic unit the local building trades' council, it inevitably came into conflict with the national unions in the building trades. For the same reason it was barred from recognition of the American Federation of Labor. The date of the real birth of craft industrialism on a national scale, was therefore deferred to 1903, when a Structural Building Trades' Alliance was founded. The formation of the Alliance marks an event of supreme importance, not only because it united for the first time for common action all the important national unions in the building industry, but especially because it promulgated a new principle which, if generally adopted, was apparently destined to revolutionize the structure of American labor organizations. The Alliance purported to be a federation of the "basic" trades in the industry, and in reality it did represent an entente of the big and aggressive unions. The latter were moved to federate not only for the purpose of forcing the struggle against the employers, but also of expanding at the expense of the "non-basic" or weak unions, besides seeking to annihilate the last vestiges of the International Building Trades' Council. The Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, probably the most aggressive union in the American Federation of Labor, was the leader in this movement. From the standpoint of the Federation, the Structural Alliance was at best an extra-legal organization, as it did not receive the latter's formal sanction, but the Federation could scarcely afford to ignore it as it had ignored the International Building Trades' Council. Thus in 1908 the Alliance was "legitimatized" and made a "Department" of the American Federation of Labor, under the name of the Building Trades' Department, with the settlement of jurisdictional disputes as its main function. It was accompanied by departments of metal trades, of railway employes, of miners, and by a "label" department.
It is not, however, open to much doubt that the Department was not a very successful custodian of the trade autonomy principle. Jurisdictional disputes are caused either by technical changes, which play havoc with official "jurisdiction," or else by a plain desire on the part of the stronger union to encroach upon the province of the weaker one. When the former was the case and the struggle happened to be between unions of equal strength and influence, it generally terminated in a compromise. When, however, the combatants were two unions of unequal strength, the doctrine of the supremacy of the "basic" unions was generally made to prevail in the end. Such was the outcome of the struggle between the carpenters and joiners on the one side and the wood workers on the other and also between the plumbers and steam fitters. In each case it ended in the forced amalgamation of the weaker union with the stronger one, upon the principle that there must be only one union in each "basic" trade. In the case of the steam fitters, which was settled at the convention at Rochester in 1912, the Federation gave what might be interpreted as an official sanction of the new doctrine of one union in a "basic" trade.
Notwithstanding these official lapses from the principle of craft autonomy, the socialist industrialists[81] are still compelled to abide by the letter and the spirit of craft autonomy. The effect of such a policy on the coming American industrialism may be as follows: The future development of the "department" may enable the strong "basic" unions to undertake concerted action against employers, while each retains its own autonomy. Such indeed is the notable "concerted movement" of the railway brotherhoods, which since 1907 has begun to set a type for craft industrialism. It is also probable that the majority of the craft unions will sufficiently depart from a rigid craft standard for membership to include helpers and unskilled workers working alongside the craftsmen.
The clearest outcome of this silent "counter-reformation" in reply to the socialist industrialists is the Railway Employes' Department as it developed during and after the war-time period.[82] It is composed of all the railway men's organizations except the brotherhoods of engineers, firemen, conductors, trainmen, telegraphers, and several minor organizations, which on the whole cooperate with the Department. It also has a place for the unskilled laborers organized in the United Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes and Railroad Shop Laborers. The Railway Employes' Department therefore demonstrates that under craft unionism the unskilled need not be left out in the cold. It also meets the charge that craft unionism renders it easy for the employers to defeat the unions one by one, since this Department has consolidated the constituent crafts into one bargaining and striking union[83] practically as well as could be done by an industrial union. Finally, the Railway Employes' Department has an advantage over an industrial union in that many of its constituent unions, like the machinists', blacksmiths', boiler-makers', sheet metal workers', and electrical workers', have large memberships outside the railway industry, which might by their dues and assessments come to the aid of the railway workers on strike. To be sure, the solidarity of the unions in the Department might be weakened through jurisdictional disputes, which is something to be considered. However, when unions have gone so far as to confederate for joint collective bargaining, that danger will probably never be allowed to become too serious.