"Report from William Z. Foster in Chicago to A. Lozovsky in Moscow, November 7, 1924." This is an interesting report from the leading figure in the Workers Party of America in 1924, recent Presidential candidate and majority factional leader William Z. Foster, to the head of the Red International of Labor Unions, A. Lozovsky, in Moscow. Foster reports on the changed conditions which the WPA faced in the aftermath of the 1924 electoral debacle. The Trade Union Educational League, trade union arm of the WPA which Foster headed, was now isolated from active elements in the American working class, due in the first place to an active assault on TUEL members in the unions on the part of the conservative trade union bureaucracy. However, Foster notes, "this tendency toward isolation was greatly increased by the Farmer-Labor split in Chicago, which separated large numbers of sympathizers from the League. But the worst blow of all came with the development of the LaFollette movement. This cut off many of the most valuable sympathizing elements we had in the unions." He added that the WPA's main slogan, "For a Farmer-Labor Party" was a "dead slogan" that was due to be abandoned, except for the fact that the WPA was "divided on this question, the Ruthenberg minority still clinging to the idea of propagating the Farmer-Labor Party slogan, in face of the fact that there is no mass movement for it." TUEL was in a weakened position, the circulation of its official organ had plummeted to 5,000 copies a month, and in Nov. 1924 the magazine was combined as an economy measure, along with The Liberator and Soviet Russia Pictorial to establish a new offical organ of the WPA called The Workers Monthly. TUEL was conducting electoral politics within several unions, including the Miners', Carpenters', Machinists', and the smaller Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel, and Tin Workers, but only in the last-mentioned was any limited degree of success possible, Foster declared. He additionally noted that "the securing of the backing of our own members still remains one of the greatest problems of the League," since "our foreign born workers have very little understanding about working in the trade unions."

 

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