to labor initiated by the Democratic House of Representatives and let the workers draw their own conclusions.  The corner stone of the Federation’s legislative program, the legal exemption of trade unions from the operation of anti-trust legislation and from court interference in disputes by means of injunctions, was yet to be laid.  By inference, therefore, the election of a Democratic administration was the logical means to that end.

At last, with the election of Woodrow Wilson as President and of a Democratic Congress in 1912, the political friends of the Federation controlled all branches of government.  William B. Wilson was given the place of Secretary of Labor.  Hereafter, for at least seven years, the Federation was an “insider” in the national government.  The road now seemed clear to the attainment by trade unions of freedom from court interference in struggles against employers—­a judicial laissez-faire.  The political program initiated in 1906 seemed to be bearing fruit.

The drift into politics, since 1906, has differed essentially from that of earlier periods.  It has been a movement coming from “on top,” not from the masses of the laborers themselves.  Hard times and defeats in strikes have not very prominently figured.  Instead of a movement led by local unions and by city centrals as had been the case practically in all preceding political attempts, the Executive Council of the American Federation of Labor now became the directing force.  The rank and file seem to have been much less stirred than the leaders; for the member who held no union office felt less intensely the menace from injunctions than the officials who might face a prison sentence for contempt of court.  Probably for this reason the “delivery” of the labor vote by the Federation has ever been so largely problematical.  That the Federation leaders were able to force the desired concessions from one of the political parties by holding out a quid pro quo of such an uncertain value is at once a tribute to their political sagacity as well as a mark of the instability of the general political alignment in the country.

FOOTNOTES: 

[44] The bricklayers became affiliated in 1917.

[45] “The Growth of Labor Organizations in the United States, 1897-1914,” in Quarterly Journal of Economics, Aug., 1916, p. 780.

[46] “The Extent of Trade Unionism,” in Annals of American Academy of Political Science, Vol. 69, p. 118.

[47] Ibid.

[48] “The Extent of Trade Unionism,” in Annals of American Academy of Political Science, Vol. 69, p. 118.

[49] The “federal labor unions” (mixed unions) and the directly affiliated local trade unions (in trades in which a national union does not yet exist) are forms of organization which the Federation designed for bringing in the more miscellaneous classes of labor.  The membership in these has seldom reached over 100,000.