At the same time the relatively unprivileged position of these trades makes them keenly alive to the danger from below, from the unskilled whom the employer may break into their jobs in case of strikes.  They therefore favor taking the unskilled into the organization.  Their industrialism is consequently caused perhaps more by their own trade consideration than by an altruistic desire to uplift the unskilled, although they realize that the organization of the unskilled is required by the broader interests of the wage-earning class.  However, their long experience in matters of organization teaches them that the “one big union” would be a poor medium.  Their accumulated experience likewise has a moderating influence on their economic activity, and they are consequently among the strongest supporters inside the American Federation of Labor of the trade agreement.  Nevertheless, opportunistic though they are in the industrial field, their position is not sufficiently raised above the unskilled to make them satisfied with the wage system.  Hence, they are mostly controlled by socialists and are strongly in favor of political action through the Socialist party.  This form of industrialism may consequently be called “socialist industrialism.”  In the annual conventions of the Federation, industrialists are practically synonymous with socialists.

The best examples of the “middle stratum” industrialism are the unions in the garment industries.  Enthusiastic admirers have proclaimed them the harbingers of a “new unionism” in America.  One would indeed be narrow to withhold praise from organizations and leaders who in spite of a most chaotic situation in their industry have succeeded so brilliantly where many looked only for failure.  Looking at the matter, however, from the wider standpoint of labor history, the contribution of this so-called “new unionism” resides chiefly, first, in that it has rationalized and developed industrial government by collective bargaining and trade agreements as no other unionism, and second, in that it has applied a spirit of broadminded all-inclusiveness to all workers in the industry.  To put it in another way, its merit is in that it has made supreme use of the highest practical acquisition of the American Federation of Labor—­namely, the trade agreement—­while reinterpreting and applying the latter in a spirit of a broader labor solidarity than the “old unionism” of the Federation.  As such the clothing workers point the way to the rest of the labor movement.

The first successful application of the “new unionism” in the clothing trades was in 1910 by the workers on cloaks and suits in the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union of America, a constituent union of the American Federation of Labor.  They established machinery of conciliation from the shop to the industry, which in spite of many tempests and serious crises, will probably live on indefinitely.  Perhaps the greatest achievement to their credit is that they have jointly with the employers, through a Joint Board of Sanitary Control, wrought a revolution in the hygienic conditions in the shops.