"The Red Trade Union International:
The First World Congress of Revolutionary Unions," by Earl
R. Browder [events of July 3-??, 1921] Pioneer American Communist Earl R. Browder, a
delegate to the 1st World Congress of the Profintern held in
Moscow in the summer of 1921, provides an account of the gathering
for the members of the Workers Party of America. Browder characterizes
the gathering as the "culmination of a long historical development
in the principles and tactics of the international labor movement"
in which the wartime use of European trade unions as recruiting
grounds for the army and post-war period of the trade unions
being instruments of the immediate political situation, in which
the bureaucratic leadership of the unions had blocked the revolutionary
impulses of the rank and file, had given way to a new phase.
"By the spring of 1920 a great movement of revolt against
the reactionary control of the trade unions by the international
organization at Amsterdam was in full swing throughout Europe,"
Browder asserts, adding that "this revolt was spontaneous,
chaotic and unorganized, and without center or directing head.
"The first steps taken to unite all these forces into one
disciplined body were taken in Moscow in July 1920, when the
leaders of the Russian trade unions took advantage of the presence
of many union representatives from England, Italy, France, and
other countries, some of whom were attending the Congress of
the Communist International, and invited them to confer,"
Browder states. Anti-political revolutionary syndicalists chose
to participate in the 1st World Congress of the Profintern in
an attempt to capture it, but this tendency was decidedly in
the minority, Browder notes. Browder promises further commentary
on the specific issues of division in a future article, which
does not appear to have made print in the pages of The Worker.
SEPTEMBER
"W.Z. Foster, Back from Europe,
Pins Faith on Economic Action: Labor Man Slips Quietly Into US
After Months in Russia, Italy, Germany, France, England -- Confident
of Soviets' Success and Leadership of ACW Here." [Sept.
15, 1921] This
article from the pages of the Socialist Party's New York Call
documents the return of William Z. Foster from his extended tour
of Russia, Germany, Italy, England, and France on behalf of the
Federated Press. The friendly writer of this piece indicates
that "There are two things of which Foster remains sincerely
convinced: that the Russian revolution is a success and that
the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America will continue to
be the leader among American labor organizations." Foster
is characterized as "an optimist, confident of the ultimate
victory of the working class in the very near future," despite
his belief that the world was enmeshed in a "trough of reaction,"
with the revolutionary movement stilted across Europe. The Call
writer says that Foster argued that one of the most serious problems
facing the European labor movement was "the lack of restraint
of the younger men." Foster recalled that in Germany and
Italy "the workers were continually called on strike, how
often at intervals of only 2 or 3 days, for Mooney, for Russia,
because some leader had been assaulted, and for hundreds of trifling
incidents in the course of events. The workers have struck time
and again and nothing has happened. They have become tired of
striking." The revolutionary moment had particularly passed
in Germany, in Foster's estimation, where "with 9 million
members in the unions alone and the workers thoroughly conscious
of their political power, the average workman laughs when asked
about the revolution."
JUNE
"Report on the United States
of America: A confidential document prepared for the Comintern,
June 1922." by James P. Cannon
A lengthy and detailed assessment of the economic and poitical
situation in America attributed to WPA man in Moscow James P.
Cannon and dated to June 1922 from content. An extremely revealing
glimpse at party thinking with regard to specific unions (United
Mine Workers, Metal trades, Needle trades, Railway Brotherhoods,
local federations) the role of the Trade Union Educational League,
the position of the party towards the IWW and the Socialist Party,
the Farmer-Labor Party, the Conference for Progressive Political
Action, negro political organization, Russian famine relief,
application of the United Front policy, role of the party press,
position of the CEC towards the Central Caucus faction opposition,
and the relationship between the underground CPA and the "overground"
WPA -- including specifics about the thinking of dissenters on
the Central Executive Committee Ludwig Katterfeld, Alfred Wagenknecht,
and Robert Minor. Cannon speaks of a conscious strategy of the
CEC to shift the "seat of Party authority" from the
underground party (as a directing center of the legal organization)
to the legal organization (with the underground apparatus a sub-division
under the control of the "overground" organization.
This transition is slated to take time, Cannon indicates, as
"the CEC takes the position that the seat of Party authority
can be transferred from the illegal to the legal party only after
the latter has become a Communist Party in the full sense of
the word -- if its program, contents of propaganda, international
affiliation, and name are those of a Communist Party."
"The Crisis on the Railroads,"
by William Z. Foster [June 17, 1922] With TUEL funded for 1922 to the tune of $5,000
by the Comintern via the Communist Party of America, this typeset
news release was produced for the Trade Union Educational League
by the Workers Party Press Service. In it, TUEL head William
Z. Foster weighs in on the economic situation facing common workers
of the rail transportation industry. Foster provides statistics
to demonstrate the miserable financial situation faced by the
Shopmen (repair workers) and Maintenance of Way workers -- pitiful
salaries which were under further attack by railroad ownership
forces. A "lickspittle" Railroad Labor Board, controlled
by the employers, had approved reductions of salary, pushing
many employees off the financial precipice. The solution seems
clear to Foster: "What must be done in this crisis? Strike,
of course, if the Railroad Labor Board tries to make its recent
infamous decision stand up. But not a strike of a few crafts.
Make it a strike of every railroad man in the United States.
Anything short of this would be a crime. The railroad employers
of the country are united. They are determined to crush the unions
and to wipe them off the railroads. The railroad men, therefore,
must stand together in one solid body."
OCTOBER
The Bankruptcy of the American
Labor Movement,
by William Z. Foster [Oct. 1922] Full
text of a pamphlet published by the Trade Union Educational League
as No. 4 in its "Labor Herald Library" series, authored
by the founder and secretary of the TUEL organization, William
Z. Foster. Foster depicts the weak position of American unionism
as a byproduct of the dual unionist tradition of the countries
radical labor militants, who anathmetized the American Federation
of Labor in favor of a series of ineffectual attempts to build
an explicitly radical alternative. This strategy was wrong-headed,
Foster argues, noting the unions congealed in the AF of L were
actually "primitive but genuine attempts of an ignorant
working class to organize and fight the exploiters that are harassing
it." It was the widespread perception among the militants
that the AF of L was a hopelessly conservative, capitalist organization
incapable of development that provided the prime explanation
"why the Socialists did not invade the AF of L, depose the
Gompers regime, and change the whole face of the labor movement
twenty years ago." Foster optimistically adds that "the
new movement, as represented by the Trade Union Educational League,
repudiates the conception, long a dogma of the dual unionists,
that the trade unions are anchored to the principle of craft
unionism and cannot develop into industrial organizations."
This pamphlet includes a useful chapter in which Foster recounts
his previous organizational activities as founder of the Syndicalist
League of North America, the International Trade Union Educational
League, and the TUEL itself.
DECEMBER
"Report on the Labor Union
Situation in the United States and Canada, Dec. 16, 1922,"
by William Z. Foster. A
confidential report from the Comintern Archive, likely intended
to Grigorii Zinoviev and other decision-makers in the Comintern
apparatus. Foster describes the efforts of the Trade Union Educational
League in rather heroic terms, stating that with a paid staff
of 2 and virtually no funding it had "started" the
amalgamation movement, which was "now the sensation of the
American trade unions" and "running like wildfire."
As unions melted away under the fire of the capitalist offensive,
rand and file revolt against "Gompersism" was brewing.
Foster requests an annual appropriation of $25,000 to fund four
full-time field organizers for TUEL and upgrade the official
organ of the organization, The Labor Herald.
"W.Z. Foster Defeats Ranger
Autocrat: Labor Leader Returns to Denver and State Official Who
Deported Him in Violation of Law Resigns." (Miami Valley
Socialist) [event of Dec. 31, 1922] On Dec. 31, 1922, head of the Trade Union Educational
League William Z. Foster made a triumphant return to Denver,
Colorado, delivering a public address in a state from which he
had been illegally kidnapped and deported the previous August.
This report in a Socialist Party weekly notes: "No sooner
had Gen. Pat Hamrock, commanding the Colorado Rangers, kidnapped
Foster from the Oxford Hotel in Denver Aug. 6 [1922], than arrangements
were begun by the American Civil Liberties Union to bill Foster
at a public protest meeting in Denver. Roger N. Baldwin, director
of the union, carried on correspondence with Gov. Shoup, under
whose authority Hamrock held his job, and finally after the November
election, Shoup climbed down. His policies had been overwhelmingly
repudiated by the Colorado voters, who had elected William E.
Sweet, Democrat, as Governor. Sweet had denounced Hamrock's lawless
Rangers."
UNDETERMINED
DATE
"'Militants, Notice!': An
Advertisement for the Trade Union Educational League" (circa
1923). Machine-readable
facsimile of an advertisement appearing on the inside front cover
of an early TUEL pamphlet by William Z, Foster -- almost certainly
written by Foster himself. The ad states that the Trade Union
Educational League is "in no sense a dual union," but
rather is "purely an educational body of militants within
existing mass unions, who are seeking through the application
of modern methods to bring the policies and structure of the
labor movement into harmony with present day economic conditions."
TUEL is called "a system of informal committees throughout
the entire union movement, organized to infuse the mass with
revolutionary understanding and spirit" and basing its work
on the existing union structure rather than upon "starting
rival organizations based upon ideal principles." It is
this tendency of progressive unionists to establish dual union
organizations that is "one of the chief reasons why the
American labor movement is not further advanced," the ad
declares.
MARCH
"An Open Challenge,"
by C.E. Ruthenberg. [March 1923] At the end of February 1923, jury selection for
the first trial resulting from the August 1922 Bridgman, Michigan
raid was begun. The best-known public figure among the defendants,
William Z. Foster, was chosen by the prosecution to first face
the jury. This article by C.E. Ruthenberg, published in the March
1923 issue of The Liberator, marks the beginning of this
trial. Ruthenberg charges that the Palmer Raids of 1919-20 had
as their goal not prosecution for crime but rather destruction
of the radical movement and that the "bugaboo of violence"
alleged of the revolutionary socialist left would be belied by
the evidence presented at the Michigan trials. "No Communist
advocates the use of violence in the class struggle in the United
States today.... No Communist has been convicted of an overt
act of violence in the United States," Ruthenberg notes.
APRIL
"The Trial of William Z.
Foster," by Robert Minor. [April 1923] Labor cartoonist and Communist
Party leader Robert Minor writes here about the start of the
William Z. Foster trial. Foster was charged in conjunction with
the 1922 raid of the CPA's Bridgman, Michigan Convention with
"unlawful assemblage" under the state's Criminal Syndicalism
Law, for which he could have been imprisoned for up to ten years.
Particular attention is paid to the seating of the jury and efforts
of the government -- in conjuction with the Burns Detective Agency
-- to sway public opinion in the case. Minor states that "the
prosecution of Foster is a bald attempt of the Harding Administration
to mould the American labor movement in its own image. Before
the jury was completed the prosecution had deÞnitely outlined
its purpose to eliminate the Trade Union Educational League from
the American Federation of Labor, the imprisonment of Foster
being one of the intended means."
"Getting Together,"
by Eugene V. Debs. [April 1923] Article by the Socialist Party of America's 5-time
Presidential candidate on the trade union situation in America,
published in the monthly magazine of the Trade Union Educational
League. Debs states that recent defeats of major strikes in the
steel, mining, and railroad industries would have been winnable
had they been conducted by unified industrial unions rather than
a multitude of fragmented craft unions -- a form of organization
which Debs believed to be an obsolete relic of individual handicraft
production, utterly unsuited to the large-scale and complex industry
of the modern world. In advancing the end of amalgamation of
existing craft unions into large industrial unions, Debs wholeheartedly
supports the work of the TUEL: "The Trade Union Educational
League, under the direction and inspiration of William Z. Foster,
is in my opinion the one rightly directed movement for the industrial
uniÞcation of the American workers. I thoroughly believe
in its plan and its methods and I feel very conÞdent of
its steady progress and the ultimate achievement of its ends."
MAY
"On Trial in Michigan,"
by William Z. Foster. [May 1923] On April 4, 1923, after 31 hours of deliberation
and 36 ballots, the jury in the William Z. Foster case resulting
from the Aug. 1922 Bridgman Raid was declared deadlocked 6-6
and dismissed, resulting in a mistrial. This is Foster's interesting
personal account of the trial, written in the immediate aftermath
of the proceeding and published in the pages of the monthly TUEL
journal, The Labor Herald. Foster noted that his case
had been rightfully made into a test of Free Speech rights and
that the mistrial represented a major defeat to the forces behind
the case: the federal Department of Justice and the Burns Detective
Agency. Foster asserts that government agent Francis Morrow was
a provocateur who voted repeatedly for maintenance of the underground
party at the Bridgman convention and who lied repeatedly on the
stand in an effort to bolster the government's case for conviction.
AUGUST
"Attempt to Murder Foster!
Gunmen Burst in on Union Meeting and Open Fire on Labor Leader
as He Commenced Speaking at Protest Meeting Against Expulsion
of Garments Unionists by Perlstein," by Jack Johnstone [events
of Aug. 27, 1923] One
of the little-known details about the life of William Z. Foster
is that he survived an attempt against his life by a gunman,
as this news report from the Workers Party's Chicago English
language weekly recounts. Foster was speaking before nearly 2,000
at Carmen's Auditorium in Chicago at a mass meeting called to
protest the expulsion of a number of TUEL activists by the General
Executive Board of the International Ladies' Garment Workers
Union. "Foster had just commenced speaking, when suddenly
the door to the right of the platform was thrown open and 3 shots
fired - all of them at Foster, who owes his life to the fact
that the gunmen were so anxious to cover their faces that it
interfered with their aim. The gunmen came up the fire escape
and went out the same way," Johnstone notes. Johnstone indicates
that this attempt at Foster's life came only after a failed attempt
by ILGWU partisans to disrupt the meeting by steadily heckling
each speaker. The meeting passed a resolution, included here,
condemning the expulsions and urging the GEB of the ILGWU to
reconsider its actions.
SEPTEMBER
"The Yellow Streak in Coal,"
by J. Louis Engdahl. [Sept. 1923] During the first half of the 1920s the most volatile
sector of the American economy was that of coal mining -- a wave
of strikes swept the country. This wave of militacy found reflection
in the United Mine Workers Association, as insurgent leaders
like Alexander Howat of Kansas came to the fore, clashing with
the established leadership of the union, led by John L. Lewis.
This article, published in the Communist Party press in September
1923, details the struggle between the Trade Union Education
League-backed UMWA militants and the leadership of the International
Union. Engdahl characterizes the militants and reflective of
the desires of the rank-and-file and the established leadership
as corrupt and collusionist.
Advertisement Requsting TUEL Members
to Purchase Shares in the Daily Worker Publishing Co. [Sept.
1923] Machine-readable
text of an advertisement in the monthly organ of the Trade Union
Educational League soliciting the purchase of $5 shares of "preferred
stock" in The Workers Publishing Co. A fundraising drive
to raise $100,000 to fund the Daily Worker was hereby announced,
with the paper to be launched by the Workers Party of America
in Chicago on November 7, 1923 -- the 6th anniversary of the
Russian Revolution. While the paper was to be published in Chicago,
funds for shares of stock were to be sent to 799 Broadway in
New York City.
"Police Report that Real
Bullets Were Fired at W.Z. Foster," by Carl Haessler [Sept.
8, 1923] Whether
the gunman that fired three shots at William Z. Foster at an
August 27 TUEL protest meeting was actually trying to kill him
was a matter of some debate in the mainstream press, with the
Right Wing Chicago Tribune twice levying the charge that
the entire incident was a fake planned by Foster and his associates
to garner publicity and support. This article by Carl Haessler
of the Federated Press quotes Detective Sergeant Crowley of the
Chicago police: "From our investigation we have no reason
to believe the Tribune statement that the shooting was
'faked,'" reads Crowley's statement, adding that "we
have not caught the assailant, but are working on the case."
Haessler also cites the unnamed manager of Carmen's Hall: "The
manager of the hall declares that he had noticed a number of
interrupters who were getting ready for more pronounced action
and he spoke to them asking who they were. They told him, he
says, that they were members of the International Ladies' Garment
Workers' Union. He advised them to abandon their tactics and
for a while there was quiet. Then after Foster had begun speaking
a man in the audience near the emergency exit tapped loudly on
the bottom of a seat. Immediately afterwards, the door suddenly
opened, a single gunman fired, masking his face with one arm,
and fled." Haessler states that "The bullet holes were
plainly visible to me. They were evidently made through hasty
pulling of the trigger while the gunman brought the revolver
down forearm to level it at Foster. The first bullet narrowly
missed a huge inverted electric light bowl, of which there were
2 in the line of shots. The second shot wavered a little to the
right of the first, but 6 feet nearer the platform. The last
was in direct line and 10 feet closer to Foster."
MAY
"An Open Letter to William
Z. Foster," by Scott Nearing [May 10, 1924]. This document, first published
in the pages of The Daily Worker, is provocative left
wing critique of the tactics being followed by the Workers Party
of America and its trade union arm, the TUEL. Nearing states
that in contrast to Foster, he did not believe there was a widespread
revolutionary ferment among rank and file American workers which
was being impeded by a reactionary union officialdom. To the
contrary, Nearing states that the rank and file had been lined
up in defense of the capitalist order by "the most complete
system of propaganda, lies, diversions, amusements, excitements,
and thrills that the world has ever produced." Public schools,
newspapers, and movies had been employed with success "to
put their interpretation on events, to suppress information,
or to deliberately misrepresent the facts," in Nearing's
view. Further, those American workers who did tend to believe
in radical change tended to be European immigrants; "the
native born American who believes in fundamental change is the
exception and not the rule." Thus, outside of certain hotbeds
like Butte, Seattle, New York, and Chicago, the revolutionary
movement was miniscule and ineffectual. This perspective of the
ideology of the American working class had important tactical
implications, Nearing strenuously argued: education needed to
be conducted, forces marshalled, decisive tests of strength avoided
until such time that the battle could be actually won. For, Nearing
stated, "an organization cannot stand too many defeats.
Napoleon marched only once into Russia, but that once was enough
to wreck his fortunes. The radical movement in the United States,
following your policies, is marching toward its Moscow. When
your front is sufficiently extended, and you are well cut off
from your reserves, the enemy will annihilate your, as they annihilated
your Steel Strike Organization five years ago." John Pepper
and Foster were following a course "based on Russian experience,
which is quite unfitted to cope with the situation you confront
in the United States, and which you drive your party to ruin
if you pursue it," Nearing warned.
