STRIKE STRATEGY
the unskilled, by democratization, or by the elimination of corruption, are especially forceful.
For example, just on the eve of the great national strike of the railroad shop mechanics in 1922, the T. U. E. L. raised the demand for amalgamation of all 16 railroad unions. The need for such a consolidation of forces in the face of the bitter attack from the companies was manifest. The tank and file understood it at once. The sentiment for amalgamation swept the ranks of the railroad workers like a prairie fire and it also became a great living issue in the whole labor movement. Only the autocratic control of the unions by the bureaucrats defeated the movement.
Another example, when the 24 unions were embarking upon the big campaign to organize the steel workers in 1918, it was easy to get them to join hands in a gigantic federation and to adopt many measures undoubtedly leading in the direction of an industrial union of metal workers. In such cases the demand for the strengthening of the unions is linked up so closely with the actual struggle that it becomes very powerful. The present struggles in the needle trades, for example, should be utilized to bring about the amalgamation of those unions.
In times of great struggle the real strike strategist will not fail to press home demands upon the bureaucrats for the building of the unions into real fighting bodies. Then these demands have greatest force among the masses, and it is then that the reactionary officials are least able to withstand them.
4—Preliminary Organization.
An important question of strike strategy is that relating to the matter of preliminary organization of the workers in the now unorganized industries before the precipitation of strikes. This raises the problems of how much we
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