he Federation in the earlier period revolved around the organization of
the skilled laborers. In England the great dockers' strike of 1889 and
in America the lurid flare of the I.W.W. activities forced the labor
aristocrat to abandon his pharisaic attitude and to take an interest in
the welfare of the unskilled. The future will test the stability of the
Federation, for it is among the unskilled that radical and revolutionary
movements find their first recruits.

A further change in the internal policy of the Federation is indicated
by the present tendency towards amalgamating the various allied trades
into one union. For instance, the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and
the Amalgamated Wood Workers' Association, composed largely of furniture
makers and machine wood workers, combined a few years ago and then
proceeded to absorb the Wooden Box Makers, and the Wood Workers in the
shipbuilding industry. The general secretary of the new amalgamation
said that the organization looked "forward with pleasurable
anticipations to the day when it can truly be said that all men of
the wood-working craft on this continent hold allegiance to the United
Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America." A similar unification
has taken place in the lumbering industry. When the shingle weavers
formed an international union some fifteen years ago, they limited the
membership "to the men employed in skilled departments of the shingle
trade." In 1912 the American Federation of Labor sanctioned a plan for
including in one organization all the workers in the lumber industry,
both skilled and unskilled. This is a far cry from the minute trade
autocracy taught by the orthodox unionist thirty years ago.

Today the Federation of Labor is one of the most imposing organizations
in the social system of America. It reaches the workers in every trade.
Every contributor to the physical necessities of our materialistic
civilization has felt the far-reaching influence of confederated
power. A sense of its strength pervades the Federation. Like a healthy,
self-conscious giant, it stalks apace among our national organizations.
Through its cautious yet pronounced policy, through its seeking after
definite results and excluding all economic vagaries, it bids fair to
overcome the disputes that disturb it from within and the onslaughts of
Socialism and of Bolshevism that threaten it from without.

CHAPTER VI. THE TRADE UNION

The trade union * forms t