only for the purpose of forcing the struggle against the employers, but also of expanding at the expense of the "non-basic " or weak unions, besides seeking to annihilate the last vestiges of the International Building Trades Council. The Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, probably the most aggressive union in the American Federation of Labor, was the leader in this movement. From the standpoint of the Federation, the Structural Alliance was at best an extra-legal organisation, as it did not receive the latter's formal sanction, but the Federation could scarcely afford to ignore it as it had ignored the International Building Trades Council. Thus in 1908 the Alliance was legitimatised and made the first "Department of the American Federation of Labor under the name of Building Trades Department, with the settlement of jurisdictional disputes as its main function. It was followed by departments of metal trades, of railway employés, of miners, and by a "label" department. It is not, however, open to much doubt that the Department was not a very successful custodian of the trade autonomy principle, as announced in the well-known "Scranton Declaration" adopted in 1901 at the convention held in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Jurisdictional disputes are caused either by a technical change, which plays havoc with official "jurisdiction" or else by a plain desire on the part of the stronger union to encroach upon the province of the weaker one. When the former was the case and the struggle happened to be between unions of equal strength and influence, it generally terminated in a compromise. When, however, the combatants were two unions of unequal strength, the doctrine of the supremacy of "basic unions" was generally made to prevail in the end. Such was the outcome of the struggle between carpenters and joiners on the one side and the wood workers on the other, and also between the plumbers and steam fitters. In each case it ended in the forced amalgamation of the weaker union with the stronger one, upon the principle that there must be only one union in each basic trade. In the case of the steamfitters, which was settled finally at the convention at Rochester in 1912, the American Federation of Labor gave what might be interpreted as an official sanction of the new doctrine. Notwithstanding these official lapses from the principle of trade autonomy, the socialist industrialists were still compelled to abide by the letter and the spirit of the Scranton declaration. The effect of such a policy on the coming American industrialism may be twofold. It may resemble less closely the brewers' or the miners' unions than the industrial unions of Germany. In the former all who work for the same employer belong to one organisation, but in the latter all who work upon the same kind of material, such as wood, metal, etc., belong together. Or, the future development of the "Department" may enable the strong "basic" unions to undertake concerted action against employers, while each retains its own autonomy. Such, indeed, is the notable "concerted movement" of the railway brotherhoods, which during the past ten years has begun to set a type for craft industrialism. It is not at all unlikely that the strenuous opposition which the four brotherhoods have met on the part of the railways during the concerted movement for the eight-hour day in the summer of 1916, especially in view of the turn toward legislation which this matter took with the passage of the Adamson law, might lead to a more or less permanent affiliation between these hitherto unaffiliated organisations and the American Federation of Labor. |