A further change in the internal policy of the Federation is
indicated by the present tendency towards amalgamating the
various allied trades into one union. For instance, the United
Brotherhood of Carpenters and the Amalgamated Wood Workers'
Association, composed largely of furniture makers and machine
wood workers, combined a few years ago and then proceeded to
absorb the Wooden Box Makers, and the Wood Workers in the
shipbuilding industry. The general secretary of the new
amalgamation said that the organization looked "forward with
pleasurable anticipations to the day when it can truly be said
that all men of the wood-working craft on this continent hold
allegiance to the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of
America." A similar unification has taken place in the lumbering
industry. When the shingle weavers formed an international union
some fifteen years ago, they limited the membership "to the men
employed in skilled departments of the shingle trade." In 1912
the American Federation of Labor sanctioned a plan for including
in one organization all the workers in the lumber industry, both
skilled and unskilled. This is a far cry from the minute trade
autocracy taught by the orthodox unionist thirty years ago.

Today the Federation of Labor is one of the most imposing
organizations in the social system of America. It reaches the
workers in every trade. Every contributor to the physical
necessities of our materialistic civilization has felt the
far-reaching influence of confederated power. A sense of its
strength pervades the Federation. Like a healthy, self-conscious
giant, it stalks apace among our national organizations. Through
its cautious yet pronounced policy, through its seeking after