STRIKE STRATEGY
of industries. Such a situation as that in the railroad shop mechanics' strike of 1922 when nine of the sixteen railroad craft unions stayed at work and helped to break the strike of the seven which struck, is a crime against the working class.
In the competitive state of industry the workers can and do use the craft strike effectively, at least so far as the skilled trades are concerned. But with the concentration of capital, the centralization of industry, and the elimination of skill, craft strikes become obsolete, even to protect the interests of the skilled workers. The question of organization by industry, which is emphasized by the growing demand of the unskilled unorganized for labor unions, becomes a burning necessity for skilled as well as unskilled. In American industry the craft strike is almost obsolete. It has been rendered doubly out of date by the tremendous enriching and strengthening of the employers through the development of American imperialism.
In the clothing trades, which are still competitive, and in localized trades such as building and printing, where the fact that all or most of the work has to be done on the spot gives the unions a special advantage, the craft strike still lingers and has some effect. But even in these industries it is fast becoming useless. In the big, highly organized industries it is almost a thing of the past.
The modern, effective type of strike is the national industrial strike. Even the conservative trade union leaders are forced to recognize this at least partially and they adopt some sort of an industrial organizational front by patching up various types of federation. Recent examples of national industrial strikes are those of the steel workers in 1919, the coal miners in 1920 and 1922, and the packing house workers in 1921. Many of the railroad strikes and wage movements show the same tendency.
Such wide struggles supersede the narrow, localized
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