The railway unions within the American Federation of Labor, one of the largest and most powerful bodies of union men in the United States feel the need of some method of grouping which shall link together the men’s locals and the internationals into which the locals are combined.  This is seen in the demand made by the men for the acknowledgment by the railways of the “system federation.”  The reason some of the more radical men were not found supporting the proposal was not that they objected to a broader form of organization, but because they considered the particular plan outlined as too complicated to be effective.

There is one problem pressing for decisive solution before very long, and it concerns equally organized labor, governments and public bodies and the community as a whole.  That is, the relations that are to exist between governing bodies in their function as employer, and the workers employed by them.  So far all parties to this momentous bargain are content to drift, instead of thinking out the principles upon which a peaceful and permanent solution can be found for a condition of affairs, new with this generation, and planning in concert such arrangements as shall insure even-handed justice to all three parties.

It is true that governments have always been employers of servants, ever since the days when they ceased to be masters of slaves, but till now only on a limited scale.  But even on this limited scale no entirely satisfactory scheme of civil-service administration has anywhere been worked out.  Of late years more and more have the autocratic powers of public bodies as employers been considerably clipped, but on the other hand, the ironclad rules which make change of occupation, whether for promotion or otherwise, necessary discipline and even deserved dismissal, so difficult to bring about, have prejudiced the outside community whom they serve against the just claims of an industrious and faithful body of men and women.  And the very last of these just claims, which either governing bodies or communities are willing to grant, is liberty to give collective expression to their common desires.

The question cannot be burked much longer.  Every year sees public bodies, in the United States as everywhere else, entering upon new fields of activity.  In this country, municipal bodies, state governments, and even the Federal Government, are in this way perpetually increasing the number of those directly in their employ.  The establishment of the parcel post alone must have added considerably to the total of the employes in the Postal Department.  It cannot be very many years before some of the leading monopolies, such as the telegraph and the telephone, will pass over to national management, with again an enormous increase in the number of employes.  Schools are already under public control, and one city after another is taking up, if not manufacture or production, at least distribution as in the case of water, lighting, ice, milk or coal.