dinary, everyday activity. It concerned
itself not with any far-reaching plan for social reorganization, but
with a rising standard of living and an enlarged freedom for the union.
The American equivalent of a government-guaranteed right to employment
and a living wage was the "right to organize." Assure to labor that
right, free the trade unions of court interference in strikes and
boycotts, prevent excessive meddling by the government in industrial
relations--and the stimulated activities of the "legitimate"
organizations of labor, which will result therefrom, will achieve a far
better Reconstruction than a thousand paper programs however beautiful.
So reasoned the leaders of the American Federation of Labor. During the
period of War, they of course gladly accepted directly from the
government the basic eight-hour day and the high wages, which under
other circumstances they could have got only by prolonged and bitter
striking. But even more acceptable than these directly bestowed boons
was the indirect one of the right to organize free from anti-union
discriminations by employers. Having been arrested in its expansion, as
we saw, by anti-union employers and especially "trusts," the American
Federation of Labor took advantage of the War situation to overflow new
territory. Once entrenched and the organization well in hand, it thought
it could look to the future with confidence.

FOOTNOTES:

[84] For the developments which led up to this joint move see above,
182-184.

[85] Congress ignored the last-named recommendation which would have
introduced in the United States the Canadian system of "Compulsory
Investigation."

[86] See below, 283-287.

[87] See below, 238-240.

[88] The unions again lost their hold upon the packing industry in the
autumn of 1921.

CHAPTER 11

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS

The Armistice with Germany came suddenly and unexpectedly. To the
organized workers the news was as welcome as to other citizens. But, had
they looked at the matter from a special trade union standpoint, they
would probably have found a longer duration of the War not entirely
amiss. For coal had been unionized already before the War, the railways
first during the War, but the third basic industry, steel, was not
touched either before or during the War. However, it was precisely in
the steel industry that opposition to unionism has found its chief seat,
not only to unionism in that industry alone but to unionism in