ing, and all the time the members of other crafts, each man with a union card in his pocket, have walked every morning past the pickets of the striking craft and gone to work on the building which was so picketed.
A more advanced form of trade organization would combine the crafts on that building and then all the crafts would go out on strike. That result has been achieved and so far progress has been made in certain industries. But the unskilled laborers are unorganized. Therefore, the unskilled swarm upon the task and complete it. With the present development of the machine industry it is quite possible to do this; though of course more expensive to the employers and in many ways not so satisfactory. These drawbacks, however, will gradually disappear in face of the machine industry, the further elimination of craft distinctions and the general progress of technique in production. This last consists in the constant subdivision of mechanical processes and a tendency to the repetition of monotonous acts even more easily and quickly learned by the average man without specialized skill.
Everything then combines to place the unskilled laborer in the strategic position in the labor struggle. He becomes the one vital factor without which no victory in the fight between the laborer and the capitalist can be won. He who has the unskilled laborer has the victory. If the employer is able to call to his aid the legions of the unskilled and unorganized his victory in the struggle is practically assured to begin with. If organized labor on its part can secure the unskilled its triumph becomes an assured fact.
The foregoing is simply explanatory of the statement that industrial unionism of necessity predicates the organization of the unskilled.
The organization of the unskilled in the industrial union at once places that class of labor in control of the situation. It can dislocate an industry whenever it chooses to do so. It can practically dictate the terms on
