rs attained trade agreements in
all the large men's clothing centers. The American Federation of Labor,
however, in spite of this union's success, has persistently refused to
admit it to affiliation, on account of its original secessionist origin
from a chartered international union.

The unions of the clothing workers have demonstrated how immigrants (the
majority in the industry are Russian and Polish Jews and Italians) may
be successfully organized on the basis of a broad minded industrialism.
On the issue of industrialism in the American Federation of Labor the
last word has not yet been said. It appears, though, that the matter is
being solved slowly but surely by a silent "counter-reformation" by the
old leaders. For industrialism, or the adjustment of union structure to
meet the employer with ranks closed on the front of an entire industry,
is not altogether new even in the most conservative portion of the
Federation, although it has never been called by that name.

Long before industrialism entered the national arena as the economic
creed of socialists, the unions of the skilled had begun to evolve an
industrialism of their own. This species may properly be termed craft
industrialism, as it sought merely to unite on an efficient basis the
fighting strength of the unions of the skilled trades by devising a
method for speedy solution of jurisdictional disputes between
overlapping unions and by reducing the sympathetic strike to a science.
The movement first manifested itself in the early eighties in the form
of local building trades' councils, which especially devoted themselves
to sympathetic strikes. This local industrialism grew, after a fashion,
to national dimensions in the form of the International Building Trades'
Council organized in St. Louis in 1897. The latter proved, however,
ineffective, since, having for its basic unit the local building trades'
council, it inevitably came into conflict with the national unions in
the building trades. For the same reason it was barred from recognition
of the American Federation of Labor. The date of the real birth of craft
industrialism on a national scale, was therefore deferred to 1903, when
a Structural Building Trades' Alliance was founded. The formation of the
Alliance marks an event of supreme importance, not only because it
united for the first time for common action all the important national
unions in the building industry, but especially because it promulga