consolidation goes on constantly. Already many large industrial unions have been constructed from the old craft organizations. The best-known of them is the famous Metal Workers' Union, with 1,700,000 members. Gradually the entire labor movement is being developed into one organization.[1] In Belgium the original welter of craft unions has been hammered together into about a dozen industrial organizations, and plans are now being carried through to unite all these into one body. In Australia the largest unions in the country have declared for a complete amalgamation of all the workers' labor organizations into a single departmentalized union to represent the whole working class. In Norway there is now a committee at work devising ways and means to reorganize the entire craft union movement into a series of industrial unions, all of which shall be locked together.
So it goes all over the world except in the United States; everywhere else the workers are making rapid progress in the necessary work of transforming their primitive craft unions into moden industrial organizations. But here we are still floundering in the mud of craft unionism, and progressing at only a snail's pace. Disregarding the rapid consolidation of the employers and their wonderful increase in strength, American Labor plods along with the 19th century condition of from 10 to 15 autonomous craft unions in each industry,[2] and considers such a primitive state of unorganization as the acme of trade union accomplishment. There is hardly a breath of progress anywhere. Though our movement is threatened with extinction because of its lack of solidarity and centralization, the man who proposes a sensible plan of amalgamation is harassed and persecuted by the highest officials as a fanatic and a disruptor. At its Cincinnati, 1922, Convention, the A. F. of L. repudiated the principle of amalgamation and endorsed the Scranton declaration of 21 years ago, which was written before the great modern capitalist combinations were
- ↑ In Germany the General Federation of German Trade Unions (Socialist), comprising about two-thirds of the whole labor movement, has 8,000,000 members. These are combined into 49 national unions. On the other hand, the A. F. of L., with fewer than 3,000,000 members, is split up into no less than 117 national organizations. The average membership of the unions in the German Federation is approximately 163,000, while that of the A. F. of L. unions is less than 24,000. This illustrates the much greater consolidation and concentration of trade unions in Germany than in the United States.
- ↑ The one exception is in the case of the United Mine Workers of America, which, at least so far as its structure is concerned, will compare favorably with any coal miners' union in the world.
