Europe gave to America hundreds of thousands of immigrants as workers who helped to lower wages and break strikes.

The first period of immigration, the so-called "old immigrants," brought great conflicts, because the "old immigrants" came mostly from Western Europe, the Scandinavian countries and Germany, being for the most part tradesmen and industrial workers who easily assimilated with the American working class.

This old immigration did not form a great obstacle for a uniform American working class. But then came a new wave of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe (Russia, Austria, Italy and the Balkans) which led to a conflict between the native and foreign-born workers.

The English, German and Scandinavian tradesmen were Americanized quickly; those tending to agriculture moving West to become farmers instead of remaining in the cities.

With the new immigrants it was different: They were farmers and rural workers settling in industrial centers of the East and becoming factory and mill workers. Peasants and rural workers from Russia, Poland, Hungary, Italy and from Jugoslav lands remained foreigners in the United States as to language and customs. These immigrants, coming from villages, settling in great American cities as industrial workers, represented quite a different stratum from that of the old city aristocracy of workers who were proud of their trade.

The old immigrants were able to read and write; the new were illiterates. The old ones learned English; few of the new ones did. The old ones became citizens of the United States; very few of the new ones did before the war 3The new immigrants occupied in cities closed settlements of their own nationality.

Each new wave of immigrants, bringing millions of foreigners, increases the stream of unorganized workers with a lower standard of living than the real American worker. This has caused a conflict between the native and the foreign worker; between the organized natives and the unorganized foreigners. Friction between the skilled and unskilled labor grew: a social aristocracy originated among the workers. On the top of this social pyramid was the skilled American worker, in the middle appeared the semiskilled working man, and the base was made up out of new immigrants working in mines, steel mills, etc., as a great unskilled mass of workers performing all kinds of heavy, dirty and dangerous work for the lowest pay.

We will not be able to understand the role or the history of the "Knights of Labor," the Western Miners' Union and Industrial Workers of the World 4(I. W. W.) nor we will understand the question of dual unionism, the cancer on the body of American labor movements unless we try to understand and investigate the difference in the structure of the American working class.

This difference is shown by the fact that the skilled American workers' aristocracy joined capitalism as an ally. On the other hand, that explains why every revolutionary workers' party appearing in America was a party of foreign-born workers. That goes for the Socialist as well as for the Labor Parties, simply because the majority of the workers in factories and heavy industries are foreigners who are exploited, ill paid and oppressed.

The three different features: dual unionism, the workers' aristocracy with capitalistic ideology, and the fact that each revolutionary movement is caused by foreigners, show the difference which existed among 5the American working class.

The World War and the years after the war brought a big change in the structure of the American working class. The conflicts, if they did not disappear entirely, are at least smoothed. The differences between skilled and unskilled labor are vanishing. During the war the great demand for labor improved wages of unskilled workers. The standard of living for these workers became better. The wages of skilled workers did not go up in the same proportion, but the standard of living for skilled and unskilled labor was equalized.

Before the war and mostly during the war, the unskilled workers became organized in trade unions. The steel strike in 1919 shows the first big battle of organized foreign workers. They became a new factor in American trade unionism. W. Z. Foster, who was the leader of the steel strike of 1919, says that the foreign workers behaved better during the strike than the Americans.

It was a long road from the unorganized strike breaker to the organized striker for the foreign-born worker in 1919. The same happened in 1922 in the miners strike. The relation between the unskilled foreign laborer and the skilled American worker changed. They are not strikebreakers, but strikers. They struggle shoulder to shoulder. Thus the conflict between the working class of America is disappearing.

The war stopped immigration to America; the working class is not increased from foreign lands. Mass naturalization of foreigners during the war helped to decrease the differences.

All changes made in the past few years in the structure of the working class hold today. This process is not yet finished, but the changes effected a conciliation so that we are able to speak of a solidarity among the whole American working class.

Only the great equalization of the different categories of the American working class made it possible to conduct great strikes in mining, railroad and textile industries, where more than a million persons were in action. Only such an equalization made it possible for the few hundred trade unions to accept the resolution for a general strike.

The amalgamation of the whole American working class in a homogeneous body created the idea for a great American political workers' party, which would represent the interests of the whole American working class.