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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - Footnotes - Chapter 18
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1298 An American Dilemma
of the newly organized industrial workers against the attempts of the crafts to take
them over.*
^ On this matter we may quote Paul H. Norgren:
“From its very beginning, the Federation has professed adherence to the principle of
racial equality. Time and again it has ‘resolved,* and its leaders have reaffirmed that it
knows no color bar, and that ‘the workers must unite and organize* irrespective of race
or creed.
“For a few years immediately after its formation, the leaders of the Federation
apparently made an attempt to enforce this principle. Thus th^ Executive Council, in
an early publication, states that ‘a union that [draws the color line] cannot be admitted
into affiliation with this body.* (Quoted by Spero and Harris, of, cit,, p. 88.) However,
the dictates of expediency and the desire for increased membership soon gained the
upper hand, with the result that in 1895 the International Association of Machinists, a
strictly Negro-excluding body, was admitted as a full-fledged affiliate.
“. . . there is no way of knowing whether the Federation will in the future attempt
... to bring an end to racial discrimination by its constituent unions. The present
writer, for one, is extremely skeptical as to the possibilities. There was some hope in
this direction in earlier years, when several large industrial unions, including the
United Mine Workers, and the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, were still affiliated with
the Federation. But after the expulsion of these unions in 1937, the craft union leaders
came into virtually complete control of the Federation. . . .
“It is, in fact, abundantly clear even to the casual student of the labor movement in
this country, that one of the principal functions of the American Federation of Labor,
as it exists today, is to provide a centralized source of pious propaganda through which
the craft unions which control it can issue frequent public reassurances of their firm
adherence to the principles of democracy, equality, and unity among the laboring
masses, while at the same time they continue with impunity to practice exclusionism and
restriction of job opportunities in their own particular fields. . . . The ^control make-up*
of the Federation is well adapted to this Jekyll-Hyde role. The Executive Council
—
which makes all the important decisions concerning policy—is made up principally of
the heads of the craft unions which, in one way or another, practice racial discrimina-
tion.” (Paul H. Norgren and Associates, “Negro Labor and Its Problems,** unpublished
manuscript, prepared for this study [1940], pp. 303-308, fassim,)
Making a survey of the Negro-excluding unions within and without the Federation,
Norgren says:
“No less than twenty American trade unions explicitly exclude Negroes from mem-
bership, either by constitutional provision or in their rituals. Only eleven of these,
however, are of any appreciable importance from the standpoint of barring Negroes
from jobs. . . . The eleven larger unions include the Boilermakers, the Machinists, the
Commercial Telegraphers, the Railroad Telegraphers, the Railway Mail Clerks, the
Railway Clerks and Freight Handlers, the Switchmen, the Fireme’n and Enginemen,
the Trainmen, the Conductors, and the Locomotive Engineers. ... In addition, five
unions^—the Electricians, the Plumbers and Steamfitters, the Bridge and Structural
Iron Workers, the Granite Cutters, and the Flint Glass Workers—exclude Negroes
by tacit agreement.** {Ibid,, pp. 300-301.)
* Sec, for instance, J. Raymond Walsh, C,I,0, Industrial Unionism in Action (1937),
pp. 28-47*
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