unto itself, with full powers of discipline
over its members and with the power of free action toward the employers
without any interference from the Federation; in other words, its full
autonomy was confirmed. Like the British Empire, the Federation of Labor
was cemented together by ties which were to a much greater extent
spiritual than they were material. Nevertheless, the Federation's
authority was far from being a shadowy one. If it could not order about
the officers of the constituent unions, it could so mobilize the general
labor sentiment in the country on behalf of any of its constituent
bodies that its good will would be sought even by the most powerful
ones. The Federation guaranteed to each union a certain jurisdiction,
generally coextensive with a craft, and protected it against
encroachments by adjoining unions and more especially by rival unions.
The guarantee worked absolutely in the case of the latter, for the
Federation knew no mercy when a rival union attempted to undermine the
strength of an organized union of a craft. The trade unions have learned
from experience with the Knights of Labor that their deadliest enemy
was, after all, not the employers' association but the enemy from within
who introduced confusion in the ranks. They have accordingly developed
such a passion for "regularity," such an intense conviction that there
must be but one union in a given trade that, on occasions, scheming
labor officials have known how to checkmate a justifiable insurgent
movement by a skillful play upon this curious hypertrophy of the feeling
of solidarity. Not only will a rival union never be admitted into the
Federation, but no subordinate body, state or city, may dare to extend
any aid or comfort to a rival union.

The Federation exacted but little from the national and international
unions in exchange for the guarantee of their jurisdiction: A small
annual per capita tax; a willing though a not obligatory support in the
special legislative and industrial campaigns it may undertake; an
adherence to its decisions on general labor policy; an undertaking to
submit to its decision in the case of disputes with other unions, which
however need not in every case be fulfilled; and lastly, an unqualified
acceptance of the principle of "regularity" relative to labor
organization. Obviously, judging from constitutional powers alone, the
Federation was but a weak sort of a government. Yet the weakness was not
the force