Afl Labor Unions
During the late 1800s and early 1900s labor unions were very different like the AFL was a labor union that only for the benefit of skilled workers and used negotiation as a tactic to achieve goals as oppose to the IWW which represented women, blacks, and all white unskilled workers who used violent tactics to achieve their goals this unable them to unite. Not only was tactics unable unions to come together nut also views of the position that workers held in American Society. The IWW held a socialists point of view while the AFL held a anti-socialist and only wanted what would be possible and reasonable.
A tactic that the IWW and the Knights of Labor try to used was to unite everyone into a single union the AFL was one of the unions who was being recruited to unite with the IWW to improve their position in American Society but their tactic was ineffective since the AFL stayed as a separate union because they did not believed in anything the IWW and the Knight of Labor supported. Gompers makes it clear in his Seventy Years of Life and Labor ” Two movements were inherently different.”(Doc D). One of the reasons that there was unsuccessful was that the leader of the AFL Samuel Gompers who did not believe that the IWW believes which was founded form Eugene V. Debs were possible. Samuel Gompers makes it very clear that IWWs believe are irrational in his speech in a AFL Convention in 1903. He says “I declare it you, I am only variance with your doctrines, but your philosophy. Economically, you are unsound, socially you are wrong, industrially, you are am impossibility.” Gompers makes it very clear that what their asking is impossible to achieve. The IWW is asking for equality to all when everyone knows that this country was founded upon inequality. Even if equality is achieve the countrys economy would collapsed because there would be no money to keep this country running. The United States was founded by entrepreneurs who invested money to create companies. If everyone becomes equal there would be no one to invest money thus ruining the economy. The economy can survive if the state provides money for investment but since our country was founded by entrepreneurs it would be able to adapt quick enough to survive. Another reason that the AFL was uncertain of uniting with the IWW was there different techniques they used to make their demands heard. The IWW used violent tactics like strikes to get there points of view across while the AFL used more peaceful tactics like negotiating to get what they demanded and come to a agreement between workers and owners. Not only that but the AFL believe that if something is wrong it must be changed by electing a person from within to represent the AFL union in government. In 1897 in a AFL convention it said “that we may elect men from our own ranks to make to make new laws and administer them”(Doc M). The IWW had a different