For the same reason it was barred from recognition
of the American Federation of Labor. The date of the real birth of craft
industrialism on a national scale, was therefore deferred to 1903, when
a Structural Building Trades' Alliance was founded. The formation of the
Alliance marks an event of supreme importance, not only because it
united for the first time for common action all the important national
unions in the building industry, but especially because it promulgated a
new principle which, if generally adopted, was apparently destined to
revolutionize the structure of American labor organizations. The
Alliance purported to be a federation of the "basic" trades in the
industry, and in reality it did represent an _entente_ of the big and
aggressive unions. The latter were moved to federate not only for the
purpose of forcing the struggle against the employers, but also of
expanding at the expense of the "non-basic" or weak unions, besides
seeking to annihilate the last vestiges of the International Building
Trades' Council. The Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, probably the
most aggressive union in the American Federation of Labor, was the
leader in this movement.
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