STRIKE STRATEGY
instances, there has been too much recourse to the unauthorized, or "outlaw" strike, and, dual unionism.
Sometimes, in especially desperate circumstances and after carefully weighing the situation, the unauthorized mass strike may be used with success, but in American labor experience it has been mostly a failure. In nearly every case where there is sufficient sentiment to call an effective unauthorized strike the same sentiment could be better utilized through the regular union channels to set the organization as such into motion.
A case in point was the so-called outlaw railroad switchmen's strike of 1920, which completely paralyzed the railroads over great sections of the country. There was a tremendous volume of rebellious sentiment behind this ill-fated national struggle. With intelligent left direction the movement could have forced the Brotherhoods officially into action and probably would haye driven numbers of the bureaucrats from power. But the leadership of the "outlaws" was afflicted with utopian dual union illusions and the great movement went down to crushing defeat.
In the coming Spring the left wing will have a severe test of its strategy against the right wing in the Miners' Union. Its task will be to force Lewis to call out all the bituminous miners and then to hold them out till a victorious settlement has been secured. At every step in the struggle it will have to defeat the most ruthless and corrupt bureaucracy in the American labor movement, the John L. Lewis machine.
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