problem as but a part of a general cultural education, now vied with one another in establishing “labor management” and “labor personnel” courses.  One phase of the “labor personnel” work was a rather wide experimentation with “industrial democracy” plans.  These plans varied in form and content, from simple provision for shop committees for collective dealing, many of which had already been installed during the War under the orders of the War Labor Board, to most elaborate schemes, some modelled upon the Constitution of the United States.  The feature which they all had in common was that they attempted to achieve some sort of collective bargaining outside the channels of the established trade unions.  The trade unionists termed the new fashioned expressions of industrial democracy “company unions.”  This term one may accept as technically correct without necessarily accepting the sinister connotation imputed to it by labor.

The trade unions, too, were benefiting as organizations.  The Amalgamated Clothing Workers’ Union firmly established itself by formal agreement on the men’s clothing “markets” of Chicago, Rochester, Baltimore, and New York.  The membership of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers’ Union rose to 175,000.  Employers in general were complaining of increased labor unrest, a falling off of efficiency in the shop, and looked askance at the rapid march of unionization.  The trade unions, on their part, were aware of their opportunity and eager for a final recognition as an institution in industry.  As yet uncertainty prevailed as to whether enough had survived of the War-time spirit of give and take to make a struggle avoidable, or whether the issue must be solved by a bitter conflict of classes.

A partial showdown came in the autumn of 1919.  Three great events, which came closely together, helped to clear the situation:  The steel strike, the President’s Industrial Conference, and the strike of the soft coal miners.  The great steel strike, prepared and directed by a Committee representing twenty-four national and international unions with William Z. Foster as Secretary and moving spirit, tried in September 1919 to wrest from the owners of the steel mills what the railway shopmen had achieved in 1918 by invitation of the government, namely, “recognition” and the eight-hour day.  Three hundred thousand men went out on strike at the call of the committee.  The industry came to a practical standstill.  But in this case the twenty-four allied unions were not dealing with a government amenable to political pressure, nor with a loosely joined association of employers competing among themselves.  Furthermore, the time had passed when the government had either the will or the power to interfere and order both sides to arbitrate their dispute.  On the contrary, the unions were now dealing unaided with the strongest capitalist aggregation in the world.