We have already pointed out that since the War ended the American labor movement has in the popular mind become linked with radicalism.  The steel strike and the coal miners’ strike in 1919, the revolt against the national leaders and “outlaw” strikes in the printing industry and on the railways in 1920, the advocacy by the organizations of the railway men of the Plumb Plan for nationalization of railways and its repeated endorsement by the conventions of the American Federation of Labor, the resolutions in favor of the nationalization of coal mines passed at the conventions of the United Mine Workers, the “vacation” strike by the anthracite coal miners in defiance of a government wage award, the sympathy expressed for Soviet Russia in a number of unions, notably of the clothing industry, have led many to see, despite the assertions of the leaders of the American Federation of Labor to the contrary, an apparent drift in the labor movement towards radicalism, or even the probability of a radical majority in the Federation in the not distant future.

The most startling shift has been, of course, in the railway men’s organizations, which have changed from a pronounced conservatism to an advocacy of a socialistic plan of railway nationalization under the Plumb Plan.  The Plumb Plan raises the issue of socialism in its American form.  In bare outline the Plan proposes government acquisition of the railroads at a value which excludes rights and privileges not specifically granted to the roads in their charters from the States.  The government would then lease the roads to a private operating corporation governed by a tri-partite board of directors equally representing the consuming public, the managerial employes, and the classified employes.  An automatic economy-sharing scheme was designed to assure efficient service at low rates calculated to yield a fixed return on a value shorn of capitalized privileges.

The purpose of the Plumb Plan is to equalize the opportunities of labor and capital in using economic power to obtain just rewards for services rendered to the public.  In this respect it resembles many of the land reform and other “panaceas” which are scattered through labor history.  Wherein it differs is in making the trade unions the vital and organized representatives of producers’ interests entitled to participate in the direct management of industry.  An ideal of copartnership and self-employment was thus set up, going beyond the boundaries of self-help to which organized labor had limited itself in the eighties.

But it is easy to overestimate the drift in the direction of radicalism.  The Plumb Plan has not yet been made the sine qua non of the American labor program.  Although the American Federation of Labor endorsed the principle of government ownership of the railways at its conventions of 1920 and 1921, President Gompers, who spoke against the Plan, was reelected and again reelected.  And in obeying