ABSTRACT
The experience is closely associated with educational struggle and with college education: half of the labor leaders on national and state levels who were white-collar workers are college men. In the reality of given cases, ideological and business motives are always mixed. It is a question of emphasis; in the trade union world there are men who have practical careers in ideology just as there are men who cultivate ambitious convictions. Between ideological urge and personal business-like ambition in the career-line of a labor leader, it is not at all unlikely that a shift has occurred, in accordance with the decline of the socialist movement in the United States. The majority of the labor leaders began their union career on the local level, as shop stewards and then local officers, or simply as elected local officers. Business had its training courses for salesmen; during the Thirties, labor unions began to develop training schools for organizers.
