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recognition of another union, and so on.
At this point the row between the AF of L and the CIO became very difficult to cope with, because both of them looked for advantage out of these new contracts that were being given out in new areas. When the CIO began to be active, what it began to do was to wade into an area where there hadn't been a previous organization and tried to set up a branch of a union that would be suitable in that particular area. We got a great many organizing strikes. People who aren't accustomed to the labor movement can never grasp the idea that an organizing strike is one of the oldest and best established methods of organizing a union. You get a few members and then you call a strike. You get them all out and that gives you a chance to get hold of them. The die is cast.
So we had a great increase in the number of these strikes and industrial disputes. We had not yet settled down to the habit on the part of the employers of recognizing the union and dealing with them, making contracts. Nor had we gotten a perfectly steady, trustworthy set of unions. They were still in the organizing stage and could not be absolutely relied upon to stick by the spirit of their agreement, even if they stuck by the letter. The result was that we had interruptions of work that were very disturbing and distressing to the army, navy, the
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