For years the skilled trades
monopolized the Federation and would not condescend to interest
themselves in their humble brethren. The whole mechanism of the
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.
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