Union lines

“ The system of departmentalized industrial unionism, as above outlined, is not a new and untried theory by any means. Our European brothers, who are far ahead of us in the matter of tactics and organization, have had such industrial unions for many years. For a long time they have been amalgamating their original craft unions into departmentalized bodies, with most satisfactory results. The English railroad workers show us a very fine example in their National Union of Railwaymen. This amalgamated union embraces all classes of railroad workers. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The mechanics and labourers in the railway companies’ engineering and repairing shops, though many of them have always been members of the various engineering and other craft Unions, long remained relatively unorganised. Many of the less skilled were enrolled by the General Railway Workers’ Union in 1889-1913 ”

“ For a whole generation after the establishment of railways no one appears to have thought Trade Unionism any more permissible among their employees than among the soldiers or the police. In 1865 an attempt to establish “The Railway Working Men’s Provident Benefit Society”—which soon became virtually a Trade Union—by Charles Bassett Vincent, a clerk in the Railway Clearing House, was ruthlessly crushed by summary dismissals. ”

“ It is longer than a train of ore jimmies, and broader than a box vestibule. It is a bridge too close to the track for the telltales to sting your face in time to get off a furniture car. Like the ostrich, believing itself hidden with its head stuck in the sand, we feel that if we call them committees of our employes we are not recognizing the union. Is this consistent? We claim, and justly so, that a high principle is involved; that if we recognize the union we practically force every man to join, regardless of his own inclinations and of his freedom as an American citizen. ”

“ Craft union experience told the companies that it was perfectly safe for them to let the shopmen strike if they wished, that the other unions would stand at their posts, and they did. Nine union stayed on their jobs and helped the companies lick the other seven. That's the sort of unionism we have on the railroads; it's the sort we have all along the line throughout all the industries, and it is the sort we will continue to have till we put over the amalgamation project. ”

“ Rise of the Railwaymen 523
of our History has come forcibly to the front. Right down to the end of the nineteenth century, indeed, the railway guards and signalmen, engine-drivers and firemen, shunters and porters, mechanics and labourers though they numbered something like 5 per cent of all the male manual- working wage-earners played hardly any part in the Trade Union Movement. Scattered in small numbers all over the country, and divided among themselves by differences of grade, conditions, and pay, they long seemed incapable of organisation as a vocation. ”

“ The dual unionism has been a product mostly of the more militant and energetic minorities, chiefly radicals, among the railroad workers. These minorities, consciously weighing the factors in hand as best they could and with an intense desire for united action, have for many years advocated the founding of an industrial union to include all railroad men. ”

“ The substitution of a labor division in the Interstate Commerce Commission made up from its membership, to hear and decide disputes relating to wages and working conditions which have failed of adjustment by proper committees created by the railways and their employees, offers a more effective plan. ”

“ The united railroad workers of America, possessed of one organization and one will, would meet in general national convention to work out their common problems. Along with the obsolete craft conventions would go their equally obsolete system of representation. As the industrial union would be a huge organization containing many thousands of local unions, naturally the local union as a basis for convention representation would have to be discontinued. ”

“ It is safe to assume that if the large body of industrial unionists, for all these years, had stayed in the old unions, set up their ideal of industrial unionism there, and then worked for every practical measure making in that direction, we would have had an industrial union of railroad workers by now. ”

“ The railway unions within the American Federation of Labor, one of the largest and most powerful bodies of union men in the United States feel the need of some method of grouping which shall link together the men's locals and the internationals into which the locals are combined. ”

“ The supreme advantages of the amalgamation of all the railroad craft unions into one industrial union would be, of course, the enormous increase in economic power coming from the greater scope of activity, intensified solidarity and clearer vision of the larger body. ”

“ So, to meet this defect, there have been formed all sorts of loose aggregations of unions, and almost every day sees fresh combinations formed to meet new needs as these arise. Within the wide bounds of the American Federation itself exist the state federations, also city federations, which may include the unions in adjoining cities, even though these are in different states, such as the Tri-City Federation, covering Davenport, Iowa, and Moline and Rock Island, Illinois. ”

“ In all the history of organized labor, from the earliest times to the present day, no body of union workingmen ever served in a more humiliating and debasing role than that in which the railway unions appear at this very hour before the American people and the world. ”

“ The two hundred thousand workers in the traffic depart- ment of the railways contributed only 48,000 Trade Union- ists, mostly from such grades as guards and engine-drivers. The large class of tramway and omnibus workers had, after a brief rally, reverted to a state of disorganisation. The great army of warehousemen, porters, and other kinds of city labourers counted only a few hundred Trade Unionists in all the kingdom. ”

“ I quite agree that the question what and how much good labor unions do, is one on which intelligent people may differ; I think that laboring men sometimes attribute to them advantages, as many attribute to combinations of capital disadvantages, that really are due to economic conditions of a far wider and deeper kind; but I could not pronounce it unwarranted if Congress should decide that to foster a strong union was for the best interest, not only of the men, but of the railroads and the country at large.' 208 U.S. at pages 191-192, 28 S.Ct. ”

“ But could a more damning argument be found against federation than our present situation? The employers have declared war to the knife against the unions. And the latter, despite the many federations, are cringing under the blow, unwilling and incapable of helping each other. The railroad owners select one union or group of unions after the other and give them a beating, while the others, safe from attack for the moment, refuse to go to the attacked ones' assistance. ”

“ Of course the system of craft unions gave rise to many jurisdictional disputes, when two or more unions would compete for the allegiance of the same group of workers. One result of these quarrels was a series of amalgamations among the unions concerned. We have a habit of calling the oldline unions craft unions, and yet so many amalgamations have taken place among them in the course of time that there is hardly one of them that is a strictly one-craft union in the old-fashioned sense. ”

“ The unions which have been successful in establishing insurance systems are the seven principal unions of railway employees, viz., the Grand Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, the Order of Railway Conductors, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen, the Order of Railroad Telegraphers, the Switchmen's Union of North America, and the International Brotherhood of Maintenance-of-Way Employees and the National Association of Letter Carriers. ”

“ Mean- while, in view of the rising cost of living, successive war
1 The Presidential Address at the Annual Conference of the Railway Clerks' Association in 1913 had suggested that the representatives of the railway workers should constitute one-third of a National Railway Board a proposal that did not content the larger Union. ”

“ Half a million railwaymen left their work at midnight on the 26th of September, the 4ssociated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen at once joining loyally with the N.U.R.; and very nearly every member of either Union coming out. The men on the Irish railways were directed to remain at work. Never before had there been so nearly a complete stoppage of the railway service from one end of Great Britain to the other. ”

“ The railroad union would in turn become a branch of a great transportation union, and the transportation union would in turn become a division of the "One Big Union," which is to include all workers in all countries of the world. ”

“ Because they may have some skill and look upon it as so much property, some workers in the past have organized into trade unions; that is, a union for each separate trade. This system of unionism is typified by the American Federation of Labor. It is an organization of one separate union for each trade, although trades may be employed in the same factory or industry. ”

“ Section 2, Eleventh (c) provides that for operating employees a union-shop contract can be satisfied by membership in 'any one of the labor organizations, national in scope, organized in accordance with this Act * * *.' At first blush this would appear to confer on employees a blanket right to choose between alternative unions which are, in the abstract, national in scope and organized in accordance with the Act. But when taken in the context of the Railway Labor Act as a whole, it becomes apparent that this language refers to a certain group of unions, a group already constituted. ”

“ Meanwhile the steady growth of national Unions, each with three to five thousand members, ever-increasing friendly benefits, and a weekly contribution per member which sometimes exceeded a shilling, involved a considerable development of Trade Union structure. The little clubs and local societies had been managed, in the main, by men working at their trades, and attending to their secretarial duties in the evening. ”

“ In considering the propriety of the equitable relief granted here, we cannot ignore the judgment of Congress, deliberately expressed in legislation, that where the obstruction of the company union is removed, the meeting of employers and employees at the conference table is a powerful aid to industrial peace. Moreover, the resources of the Railway Labor Act are not exhausted if negotiation fails in the first instance to result in agreement. ”

“ The railroad unions are among the strongest and most aggressive in the country. The total union membership among train operating employees alone in the country is approximately 350,000. The unions are all modeled upon the same general plan. ”

“ These statistics of membership are, however, in many respects misleading. The Congress of 1879 was attended by a much smaller number of delegates than any Congress since 1872, and the number of Unions represented was also the smallest since that date.
[502] “Four years ago,” writes the President of the Bristol Coopers’ Society in 1878, “upwards of 40,000 workmen were in combination in these valleys [South Wales] , and to-day not a single Union is in existence throughout the entire district.” (Paper at Local Conference on the Depression of Trade, Bristol Mercury, February 13, 1878) . ”

“ The resolution runs as follows: “That in view of the success which, in spite of unparalleled difficulties, has attended the working of the railways under State control, this Congress urge the Parliamentary Congress to press the Government to arrange for the complete nationalisation of all the railways, and to place them under a Minister of Railways, who shall be responsible to Parliament, and be assisted by national and local advisory committees, upon which the organised railway workers shall be adequately represented” (Trades Union Congress Annual Report, 1917, p. 345) . ”

“ Under the Combination Laws oaths of secrecy and obedience were customary in the more secret and turbulent Trade Unions, notably that of the Glasgow Cotton-spinners and the Northumberland Miners. The custom survived the repeal; and admission to the Builders' Union involved a lengthy ceremony conducted by the officers of the lodge the " outside and inside tylers," the " warden," the " president," " secretary," and " prin- cipal conductor " and taken part in by the candidates and the members of the lodge. ”

“ Section 2, First, of the Railway Labor Act makes it the duty of carriers and their employees to exert every reasonable effort 'to make and maintain agreements concerning rates of pay, rules, and working conditions, and to settle all disputes, whether arising out of the application of such agreements or otherwise.' [26] Here, the Union's demand was simply for a covenant that no existing jobs may be abolished without its consent. ”

“ Organisation was, between 1904 and 1911, steadily extending in all directions, when the passing of the 'National Insurance Act, which practically compelled every wage-earner to join an " Approved Society " of some kind, led to a dramatic expansion of Trade Union membership, from which the various Unions of general workers, as they now prefer to be styled, obtained their share of advantage. ”