various crafts ample representation, function with harmony, order, efficiency, and service as their outstanding features. Since its formation upon the departmental plan in 1913, the N. U. R. has made remarkable progress in combining the railroad workers of Great Britain. Other samples of this type of union are the Transport and General Workers' Union, the Amalgamated Engineers' Union, and the Federation of Building Trades Operatives.
In Germany, industrial unionism has reached a higher degree of development than anywhere else. The Metal Workers' Union is the largest industrial union in the world. It has a membership of 1,800,000, and it covers all branches of the metal industry. It has numerous departments through which all the different trades function and have their being as integral parts of the big whole. The entire departmental system of this giant combination of metal workers operates with smoothness and efficiency. The Metal Workers' Union was constructed by a series of amalgamations of primitive craft unions that once struggled along individually as our own are still doing. In Austria the workers have declared for the combination: of their craft unions into industrial organizations, and in Australia this is now a practical fact. Twelve industrial unions contain about all the workers of Belgium. The Scandinavian workers are re-adjusting their craft unions upon an industrial basis. The work of amalgamation is going on all over the world. Only in America is it lagging.
The American capitalists lead the world for enterprise, daring, and militant progressiveness. The American labor movement leads the world in the opposite directions. It is fully 30 years behind the times in its ideas and organization structure. Its officialdom has persistently remained capitalistic and has tied the labor unions to the chariot of industrial despotism, This bond must be broken and Labor released from the thralldom of capitalist thought by the sturdy militants who are now assembling under the banner of the Trade Union Educational League. The accomplishment of departmentalized industrial unionism through amalgamation is the first and most important step in this great work of emancipation.
