officials were asleep at the switch when it came to taking care of these grievances. But the wiser thing to have done, rather than to call the unauthorized strike, was to fight out the matter within the confines of the old unions. Had this been done there can be no doubt but that with the tremendous spirit of unrest and resentment prevailing, the leaders would have been spurred into action. Had a strike become necessary, it could have been widespread and official, and it would have surely resulted in a victory, so favorable were economic conditions. Undoubtedly the most wholesome effects would have been produced upon the unions. But no, impatiently the men first went out on the unauthorized strike and then into the new, dual unions. The results, easily to be foreseen, were the loss of the strike; the blacklisting of thousands of first-class union men out of the railroad service; the general weakening of the old unions; the strengthening of the conservative bureaucracies in these organizations, and the affliction of the railroad industry with one more dual union to create disharmony and division.
At present there are five dual industrial unions on the railroads: The I. W. W., W. I. I. U., A. F. of R. W., O. B. U., and U. A. of R .E. All of them advocate the solidarity of labor, and at the same time all are waging war upon each other, as well as upon the craft unions. Their combined membership is only a fraction of the total number of railroaders organized.
Such are the results of the dual industrial union program after more than thirty years of effort on the part of thousands of active and earnest militants. Could a showing be more disappointing? It amounts to a failure complete in both theory and practice. Not only have the dualists failed to rally the masses to their program, but they have also failed to grasp the principles of solidarity. The spectacle of five dual industrial unions in one industry, all conceived in the name of solidarity, is tragically ridiculous. But that is the logical result of deserting the old unions and setting
