The bankruptcy of the American labor movement

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Labor Herald Library
No. 4.

The Bankruptcy of the American
Labor Movement

By Wm. Z. Foster

CHAPTER I.
A State of Bankruptcy

A commonly accepted principle of practical economics is that
in a given country the extent and ripeness of the labor movement
depends directly upon and may be measured by the degree of in-
dustrial development attained in that country. In non-industrial
China, for instance, no one looks for important labor organizations,
but all the world takes as a logical thing the powerful labor move-
ments in highly industrialized Europe. Karl Marx stresses this prin-
ciple, saying: "—combinations (of labor) have not ceased to grow
with the development and growth of modern industry. It is at such
a point now that the degree of development of combination in a
country clearly marks the degree which that country occupies in the
hierarchy of the world market." *

This economic principle holds true quite generally. With almost
unfailing regularity those nations with well developed industrial sys-
tems also have well developed labor movements, and those that are
backward industrially are also backward in working class organiza-
tion. The one glaring exception to the rule is the United States.
Here we have the extraordinary situation of the world's most highly
developed industrial system on the one hand, and the most backward
labor movement of any important country on the other. The United
States stands first in the world market, but, in apparent contradic-
tion to Marx, this could never be deduced by a study of its primitive
working class organization. The whole situation is a great paradox.

Before indicating the cause of this paradox and pointing the way

'Poverty of Philosophy, P. 156.

2 BANKRUPTCY OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT

out of it, it will be well for us to demonstrate the extreme undevelop-
ment of the American labor movement by considering a few of its
principal phases:

Intellectual Blindness

A prime requisite for carrying on Labor's fight successfully
against the exploiters is a clear understanding of just what that fight
is about. Otherwise practical programs and effective tactics are out
of the question. American Labor, aside from the weak revolutionary
groups, is particularly lacking in this vital respect. It has not yet
opened its eyes to the true meaning of the labor struggle, nor is it
trying to do so. It is intellectually blind.

In all other important countries, particularly in Europe, Organized
Labor has awakened to the revolutionary character of the working
class movement. It has come to acquire a revolutionary point of
view regarding private property, the State, the wage system, the
class struggle, and capitalist society generally. It knows that the
wrestlings between the workers and the capitalists are but so many
incidents of a revolutionary struggle in which either side seizes from
the other all that it has the power and intelligence to take. With
eyes that have been opened, Labor abroad is conscious of its revolu-
tionary mission, and it is striving constantly, despite a thousand ti-
midities and mistakes, towards the only way to solve the labor prob-
lem, towards the abolition of the capitalist system and the establish-
ment of a proletarian regime.

But American Labor is still asleep, drugged into insensibility by
bourgeois propaganda. It is the only important labor movement in
the world not yet aware of the revolutionary character of the fight
that it is carrying on; it is the only one which has not declared for
some sort of a socialist society as its ultimate goal. And the worst
of it is that it is making no effort toward such an awakening.
European Labor studies present day society deeply and draws funda-
mentally revolutionary conclusions therefrom, but American Labor
takes capitalist economics and morals for granted. An earnest study
of social institutions by a typical American labor leader would be a
world curiosity.

In this philosophical backwardness, in this positive refusal to
see capitalism in its true light, originate most of the evils from which
our labor movement is now suffering. American Labor has no social
vision, no real understanding of what it is trying to accomplish. A

BANKRUPTCY OF I 111'. LABOR MOVEMENT 3

few years ago its leaders used to tell us they were striving for "a
fair day's pay for a fair day's work," but since that nonsensical con-
ception has been exploded they dodge the issue altogether. Conse-
quently the movement just drifts along aimlessly and planlessly,
fighting for petty immediate demands, most of which are founded
upon false bourgeois premises, and which lead the workers into a
swamp of defeat. American Labor, because of its ignorance of its
true goal, is short-sighted and crassly materialistic. It knows nothing
of that wonderful spirit of sacrifice and idealism which is always
born of the workers' hope for a new day. Mr. Gompers and the others
who justify this condition of ignorance and fight relentlessly against
every attempt to enlighten the workers about capitalist society and
to get them to formulate real working class intellectual conceptions,
are as generals of an army who have neither a plan of strategy nor
a knowledge of the enemy they have to contend with. It is our
calamity and discredit that one has to come to America to find the
sad spectacle of a great labor movement which has not yet freed it-
self intellectually from the bonds of capitalism, and which is still per-
sisting in the foolish and hopeless task of patching up the wage
system.

Our Political In fancy

No less primitive is American Labor's conception of political
action. In this respect also we stand in a class by ourselves, at the
foot of the list. In all important foreign countries the labor move-
ments have come to understand that they must carry on the class
war in the political as well as the industrial field. With them it is
no longer a debatable question as to whether or not the workers
should organize politically on class lines. Such organization is so
well understood as to be taken for granted as a self-evident neces-
sity. The only matter at issue is whether their political parties
should be Labor, Socialist, Syndicalist*, or Communist in make-up.
Only in the United States is the labor movement so altogether raw
and undeveloped that it still has this fundamental lesson to learn.
This is the one modern country where the mass of organized workers
have no political party of their own, and where they continue to tail
along in the train of the capitalist parties, pursuing the program of

•Although differing radically from the other groups in their political concq
the Syndicalists nevertheless carry on working class political action. They use the
unions as their party, and instead of electing re;- into the Ciovernments,

they bring direct industrial pressure to beat on them.

4 BANKRUPTCY OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT

"rewarding their friends and punishing their enemies." Everywhere
else the labor movements have outgrown this obsolete policy from 15
to 50 years ago.

By preserving in this primitive and outworn political method
American Labor has been reduced to practically a political zero.
Our labor movement has little or no real influence in the affairs of
the State. One aspect of its powerlessness is its almost complete
lack of representation in the various legislative bodies. Outside of
a few nondescript "card men" here and there who are often even
more corrupt and treacherous than the capitalist politicians them-
selves, Labor has no spokesmen whatever in the local, state, and
national legislative assemblies. The whole law making and law en-
forcing mechanism is in the hands of the enemy, who do as they
please with it.

Compare this situation with that prevailing in Europe, for in-
stance, where the workers have understood to build themselves class
political organizations. There Organized Labor is a great political
power, and one which must be reckoned with on all vital issues. In
Germany the workers' parties control 42% of the members of the
Reichstag, in Austria 387c, Checho-Slovakia 36%, Belgium 35%, Den-
mark 34%, Italy and Bulgaria 25%, Norway, Holland and Switzerland
22%, in their respective national parliaments. In Great Britain many
experts look for the Labor Party to be the dominant one after the
next general elections. Politically the workers of Europe are a real
power.

Another aspect of American Labor's political weakness is the
reactionary course of labor legislation in the United States. In 1909,
after his visit to Europe, Mr. Gompers had this to say:

"We are, in the United States, not less than two decades be-
hind many European countries in the protection of life, health,
and limb of the workers . . . We are behind England 10 years.
We are behind Germany 20 years." *

In the 13 years that have elapsed since this comparison was
made the situation has become much more unfavorable for the United
States, because during that period, and especially since the war,
nearly all the European countries have made great strides forward
in labor legislation while this country has gone steadily backward.
All over Europe the workers have been able to wring ©ne political
concession after another from the capitalists, whereas here the cap-

'Charges Against the National Association of Manufacturers, etc." P. 2532.

BANKRUPTCY OF THE LABOR MOVIMK.VI

italists have stripped the workers of many of their most fundamental
rights. Free speech and free press have been largely abolished by
the multitude of anti-syndicalist laws, and hundreds of labor men,
arrested merely for expressing their opinions, have been given prison
sentences so severe as to shock the civilized world. The right of
assembly has degenerated into little more than a privilege, dependent
upon the whims of the American Legion, the Ku Klux Klan, or cor-
rupt local officials. The right to strike has been abridged by Esch-
Cummins laws, industrial courts, and the injunction abuse, which
flourishes now as never before. Even the fundamental right of pop-
ular representation has been invaded by the refusal to seat regularly
elected workers' candidates, and by millionaires flagrantly buying
their way into Congress. Hardly a month passes by but what some
hard-won piece of legislation is destroyed. The Sherman Anti-Trust
law, with its fancy Clayton Amendment, has become a laughing-
stock by being used only against Labor, the very one it was supposed
not to apply to. The Seamen's Act has been rendered inoperative,
and the noble Supreme Court has declared the Federal Child Labor
Law unconstitutional. Likewise, this august body, in the Coronado
Case, has delivered itself of an American Taff-Vale decision against
the unions. And now comes Judge Wilkerson with his injunction,
denying the right to strike to 400,000 shopmen ,and making outlaws
of them. Almost any one of the workers' political rights may go next.
And in the face of all this disaster, the labor movement flounders
around helpless to stop the rout. Mr. Gompers' pet policy of re-
warding the workers' "friends" and punishing their "enemies" has
made a political nobody of American Labor.

Besides robbing the workers of representation in the legislative
bodies and stripping them of all political power, Mr. Gompers' polit-
ical policy directly corrupts and weakens the trade union movement
itself. By opening the organizations to capitalist party representa-
tives, posing as "friends" of Labor and seeking endorsement, it has
made the workers' unions convenient nesting-places for all sorts of
political crooks. These sharpers, in turn, have poisoned the selfish
individuals in Labor's ranks to such an extent that in many localities
selling out Labor politically for cold cash has become a regular pro-
fession of alleged labor leaders. Much of the bribe-taking from em-
ployers for industrial "favors" that curses our labor movement de-
rives from the same source; for once labor officials become accustomed
to betraying the workers politically it is an easy step further to

6 BANKRUPTCY OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT

betray them industrially. The shocking Mulhall exposures of a few
years ago gave barely an indication of the extent to which capitalist
politicians have poisoned the labor movement, because its doors are
open to them.

But, worst of all, American Labor's political policy directly checks
the growth of class consciousness among the workers and retards
the intellectual development of the labor movement. The acceptance
of the capitalist parties as the political expression of the working
class necessarily carries with it also the endorsement of their general
capitalist point of view. Logically enough practically the whole bat-
tery of our trade union officials and labor papers express almost
identically the same social conceptions as the capitalists and join hands
with the latter in suppressing all activity tending to give the work-
ers a clear understanding of the class nature of present society.
Only when the workers organize politically as a class do they break
with capitalist concepts and develop class consciousness.

For many years the British labor movement went along pretty
much as we are doing now, a political cipher in the service of the
capitalist parties. With most of its leaders preaching purely capital-
istic economics, naturally class consciousness made slow headway.
But when finally, as a result of the Taff-Vale Decision in 1901, the
movement was driven to independent political action arid to organize
the Labor Party, these very leaders, in the nature of things, were
compelled to advocate, to a greater or lesser extent, class solidarity
and class action. This broke the ice, and henceforth proletarian in-
vestigation and education found a more congenial atmosphere. The
supposedly unshakably conservative British workers began to be-
come class conscious. From that time to this they have made won-
derful strides towards acquiring a revolutionary point of view. Amer-
ican workers will do the same once they break with the capitalist
parties and set up a class party of their own. With its present policy
of rewarding its "friends" and punishing its "enemies," the American
labor movement is still in the political kindergarten.

Weak and Primitive Unionism
In harmony with its undeveloped social viewpoint and its in-
fantile political organization, American Labor's trade unions also are
in a very backward state. Whether considered from the standpoint
of numerical strength, type of structure, or general spirit^ of prog-
ress, they fall far behind the unions of many other countries. Even

BANKRUPTCY OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT 7

a casual glance over the world's labor movement confirms this state-
ment.

Regarding the question of numerical strength: At present there
are, including all independent unions, not over 3,500,000 trade union-
ists in this country, or about 1 unionist to each 31 of the general
population of 110,000,000. Compare this, for example, with the situa-
tion in the two other leading industrial countries, Germany and Eng-
land. In Germany there are somewhat over 12,000,000 trade unionists
out of a total of 55,0000,000 people, or about 1 to each 4%; while in
England the trade unionists number approximately 6,000,000, or 1 to
each 7M> of her population of 44,000,000. In other words, the German
trade unions, considering the difference in the population of the two
countries, are numerically about 6 times as strong as ours, and the
English about 4 times. For our unions to be as large proportionally
as those in Germany they would have to have no less than 24,000,000
members. Compare this giant figure with the paltry 3,500,000 mem-
bers that our unions now possess and a fair idea is had of how far
behind the American labor movement is in this respect. In Germany
and England (not to mention other countries) the great mass of the
working class has been organized, but here in the United States
barely a start has yet been made.

Structurally our trade unions make an equally poor showing.
Whereas in all other leading countries the main labor movement,
accepting the logic of capitalist consolidation, have quite generally
endorsed the principle of but one union for each industry and are
making rapid strides towards its realization, the American labor move-
ment still clings firmly to the antiquated principle of craft unionism.
Throughout the rest of the world there are many single unions — such
as building, metal, railroad, general transport, printing, etc. — that
have been built up recently by amalgamating the original craft organ-
izations. Others are being constantly created. In England the giant
new Transport and General Workers' Union has just been formed;
the Amalgamted Engineering Union is making steady headway to-
wards its avowed goal of one union in the metal industry; likewise
the National Union of Railwaymen, the Federation of Printing and
Kindred Trades, the Federation of Building Trades Operatives, etc.,
in their respective fields. Strong amalgamation movements are afoot
in every industry. In addition plans are now being discussed to lash
all the national unions together and to develop the whole labor move-
ment into one gigantic machine. In Germany a similar process of

8 BANKRUPTCY OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT

consolidation goes on constantly. Already many large industrial un-
ions have been constructed from the old craft organizations. The
best-known of them is the famous Metal Workers' Union, with 1,700,-
000 members. Gradually the entire labor movement is being developed
into one organization.* In Belgium the original welter of craft unions
has been hammered together into about a dozen industrial organiza-
tions, and plans are now being carried through to unite all these
into one body. In Australia the largest unions in the country have
declared for a complete amalgamation of all the workers' labor or-
ganizations into a single departmentalized union to represent the
whole working class. In Norway there is now a committee at work
devising ways and means to reorganize the entire craft union move-
ment into a series of industrial unions, all of which shall be locked
together.

So it goes all over the world except in the United States; every-
where else the workers are making rapid progress in the necessary
work of transforming their primitive craft unions into moden indus-
trial organizations. But here we are still floundering in the mud of
craft unionism, and progressing at only a snail's pace. Disregarding
the rapid consolidation of the employers and their wonderful increase
in strength, American Labor plods along with the 19th century con-
dition of from 10 to 15 autonomous craft unions in each industry,**
and considers such a primitive state of unorganization as the acme
of trade union accomplishment. There is hardly a breath of progress
anywhere. Though our movement is threatened with extinction be-
cause of its lack of solidarity and centralization, the man who pro-
poses a sensible plan of amalgamation is harassed and persecuted by
the highest officials as a fanatic and a disruptor. At its Cincinnati,
1922, Convention, the A. F. of L. repudiated the principle of amalga-
mation and endorsed the Scranton declaration of 21 years ago, which
was written before the great modern capitalist combinations were

*In Germany the General Federation of German Trade Unions (Socialist), com-
prising about two-thirds of the whole labor movement, has 8,000,000 members. These
are combined into 49 national unions. On the other hand, the A. F. of L., with
fewer than 3,000,000 members, is split up into no less than 117 national organiza-
tions. The average membership of the unions in the German Federation is approxi-
mately 163,000, while that of the A. F. of L. unions is less than 24,000. This
illustrates the much greater consolidation and concentration of trade unions in
Germany than in the United States.

"The one exception is in the case of the United Mine Workers of America,
which, at least so far as its structure is concerned, will compare favorably with any
coal miners' union in the world.

BANKRUPTCY OF THE LABOR MOVEMEN1

formed. On the other hand, the progressive German unions, which
are much further advanced than the A. F. of L., and by no means
as hard pressed by the employers, at their 1922 Leipzig Convention
went on record for amalgamation generally and laid plans to re-
organize the whole labor movement on an industrial basis. In the
United States, where capitalist organization has reached the highest
known type, the trade unions should lead the world in the matter of
numbers and structure. In point of fact, however, they are not be-
yond the point reached generally by European trade unions 15
years ago.

Invariably American labor leaders, when confronted with irre-
futable facts demonstrating the numerical, structural, and intellectual
inferiority of our labor movement as compared with that of Europe,
attempt to wave aside the unfavorable comparison by making the
broad assertion that trade unionists enjoy better conditions in this
country than any where else in the world. So far as wages are con-
cerned this is undeniably true. But it is idle to say that such is the
case because American labor is better organized or more ably led
than European labor. Without belittling the accomplishments of our
unions, it is safe to say that the determining factor in the matter is
that the United States, as compared with Europe, has long been a
bonanza country. Enormously rich and getting from 2 to 20 times
greater production from their employees, the capitalists in this coun-
try are much more inclined to yield a bit on the wage scale of the
workers, unorganized as well as organized, than are the employers
in poorer and slower-going Europe. Unquestionably European work-
ers have to fight much harder for wage increases than we do.

Nevertheless, up to the outbreak of the war at least, the European
unions were able to make a surprisingly creditable showing in wages.
During a debate in 1909 between Karl Legien and Karl Kautsky this
was strikingly illustrated. In his paper, Die Neue Zeit, Kautsk)
sought to prove that trade union action had little value. To back
up his assertions he cited official A. F. of L. statistics which showed
that the wage increases secured by its affiliated unions from 1890, to
1907, had barely beat the advancing cost of living. Legien took ex-
ception to this argument, and refused to consider the accomplishments
of the A. F. of L. organizations as exhausting the possibilities of
trade unionism. In a pamphlet, Sisyphusarhcit oder positiv Erfolg,
he demonstrated that the German unions had made a much better

io BANKRUPTCY OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT

showing with regard to wages, compared with the rising cost of living,
than had the American organizations.

But in any event, even if our wage standards are somewhat higher
than those in other countries, certainly we have little to brag about.
In the March, 1922, wage hearing before the Railroad Labor Board,
B. M. Jewell, President of the Railway Employees' Department of
the A. F. of L., stated that in 1921, the full-time wages of railroad
shop mechanics could purchase only 64% of the meat, fish, milk, and
eggs; 77% of the cereal foods; 91% of the vegetables; and 71% of
the butter, fats, and oils necessary to maintain their families at the
lowest level of safety. The Department of Labor family budget calls
for an expenditure of $2,303.99 per year; whereas the wages of the
shop mechanics, counted at full-time basis and totally disregarding
the terrific unemployment, amounted only to $1,884.90. And since
then their wages have been slashed again about 10% on the average.
With strategically situated mechanics in such a condition, the deplor-
able state of the unskilled, who get hardly half as much wages, can
better be imagined than described.

"But a far better criterion than wages to judge the strength of a
labor movement is the more vital matter of the shorter workday. In
this respect American Labor is behind the rest of the modern indus-
trial world. In Great Britain, Australia, Italy, and New Zealand,
the 8-hour day has been quite generally established by trade union
agreements, and in the following countries national 8-hour laws have
been enacted for industrial workers :

Austria Jugo-Slavia Poland

Checho-Slovakia Luxembourg Portugal

Denmark Mexico Russia

Ecuador Netherlands Spain

Finland Norway Sweden

France Panama Switzerland

Germany Peru Uruguay *

Compare this wide-spread application of the 8-hour day with the
situation in the United States. Many, if not most of our industries,
still have- the 9 and 10-hour day, not to mention the barbaric 12-hour
day of the steel mills. Despite the United States' great industrial ad-
vantages over all its competitors, which should have greatly facili-
tated the unions in winning shorter hours, this country remains pre-

"For comparisons between these laws and the limitations of each, see U. S.
Dep't of Labor Monthly Labor Review, P. 184. April, 1921.

BANKRUPTCY OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT n

eminently the long hour work-day nation of the world. This is indeed
a poor recommendation for the prowess of our labor movement.

Another matter which is vital in determining the real strength
of all labor movements, and in which ours is sadly lacking, is trade
union control over industry. In many European countries the trade
unions are so thoroughly established in almost every branch of in-
dustry that the employers have come to accept them practically as
permanent institutions. In such lands trade unionism has become
recognized as an inevitable factor in industry. So well are the work-
ers organized that scabs are almost a thing of the past. This is not-
ably the case in England and Germany. In the latter country the
trade unions have agreements covering every industry. No sane
employer hopes to dislodge them, much less break them up. Conse-
quent upon this firm grip on industry, which encourages them to
look forward to the time when the mills and factories will be demo-
cratically owned and operated, the European unions have worked
out elaborate systems of factory councils, guilds, etc., to take over
the management of industry, and they have made substantial progress
in establishing these organizations.

But things are profoundly different in the United State. Here the
unions have such a slight grip upon industry that they hardly dream
of such things as factory councils and guilds. Indeed, outside of the
clothing industry, very few of our labor leaders would even know
what such things are. The nearest approach we have had to such
a movement was the one centering around the Plumb Plan, and
Mr. Gompers neatly smothered that. As yet our trade unions have
hardly won a semblance of recognition. Constantly they have to
fight for their very existence. In not a single industry have they been
able to force the type of recognition that is common in many Euro-
pean countries. The closest there is to such recognition is in the
case of the four railroad train service organizations, and even these
are constantly threatened. America is peculiarly the land of the
"open shop." The "American Plan" is the correct name. Nowhere
else but here is such an abomination to be found. With the great
industries almost totally unorganized, and with vast armies of scabs
available, the employers of this country have contempt for the trade
unions. They look upon them as a passing phase, as presumptuous
organizations which must and will be eliminated at the first oppor-
tunity. The present wholesale smashing of unions, which threatens

12 BANKRUPTCY OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT

the life of the entire labor movement, is the most eloquent testi-
monial to the weakness of American Labor.

International Relations, Journalism, Co-operative.-
In no other phase does the unparalled conservatism and back-
wardness of the American Labor movement come to light more
strikingly than in the latter's relations to the labor organizations of
other countries. At present there are two great world labor move-
ments ; one, the International Federation of Trade Unions, with head-
quarters in Amsterdam, and the other, the Red International of Labor
Unions, with headquarters in Moscow. The former is passive and
reformist, the latter is militant and revolutionary. All the impor-
tant labor movements of the world are affiliated to one or the other
of these two— that is all except ours. The American trade union move-
ment stands aloof altogether, on the ground that both are too revo-
lutionary. According to Mr. Gompers, who pulled the A. F. of L. out
of the Amsterdam International a couple of years ago, even that yellow
organization, whose leaders undoubtedly stopped the world revolution
and saved capitalism during the big labor upheavals in Germany,
France, Italy, etc., after the war, is much too radical for American
workingmen to associate with. This withdrawal from Amsterdam
has made us the laughing stock of the international labor world,
reformist and revolutionary alike. To the militant unionists of other
countries it is a profound mystery how, in this land of advanced and
aggressive capitalistm, the labor movement can be so spineless intel-
lectually as to fear affiliation with even the timid Amsterdam Inter-
national.

In the matter of a labor press the American working class is
particularly weak. As for the A. F. of L. itself, its journalistic efforts
are deplorable. On the one hand it gets out the hard-boiled American
Federationist, with its news and editorial columns filled with reac-
tionary attacks upon everything even mildly progressive, and its ad-
vertising space littered up with scab advertisements; and on the
other hand, the anaemic A. F. of L. News Letter, with its poor attempt
at being a news service for the labor press generally. Likewise the
international journals, with rare exceptions are dry as dust and reac-
tionary. Rigidly censored by the controlling officials, there is no
freedom of discussion in their columns. They sound no real proletar-
ian note, nor do they carry on vital educational work. Their tech-
nical trade education and constant repetition of stereotyped petty

BANKRUPTCY OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT 13

capitalist ideas might well be left for the employers to propagate.
Nor are the local papers as a rule any better. Many of them are con-
temptible grafting sheets, the like of which cannot be fcund in any
other country. Such parasitic papers, almost always stout defenders
of Gompersism, make their living by campaigning against everything
healthy in the labor movement. Their favorite method is to print
vicious attacks against all progressive movements in the trade unions
and then, on the strength of these, "sandbag" the employers into
giving them advertising and flat donations of money. There are scores
of such "rat" sheets, some operating independently and some with
the endorsement of local central labor councils, pouring a flood of
poison into the trade union movement. Nearly all important industrial
centers are infested with them. Pittsburgh, for instance, has three,
viz.: National Labor Journal, Labor World, and National Labor Tribune.
All of them joined hands with the employers to defeat the great steel
strike of 1919. And the worst of this journalistic shame, which could
exist in no other labor movement, is that the A. F. of L. officialdom
makes no effort to obliterate it. But this officialdom spares no effort
to crush the revolutionary press. Characteristically just now it is
engaged in a war against the Federated Press, the best labor news
gathering agency in the world and one of the few institutions of
which our labor movement may be really proud.

In the field of co-operative enterprise the American labor move-
ment makes the same poor showing that it does in so many other
phases of labor activity. All over Europe, in England, Germany,
France, Italy, Scandinavia, "Belgium, Holland, etc., the co-operative
movement is vast and vigorous and a real institution in the life of the
people. It involves great armies of members and hundreds of mil-
lions of capital. But in the United States the movement is just be-
ginning. This country has long been the despair of earnest co-oper-
ators. An apparently incurable blight, traceable to the ignorance,
cupidity, and indifference of our labor leaders, has cursed and ruined
their efforts. Only within the past few years, with the development
of co-operative stores among the miners, the founding of the labor
banks, and occasional other ventures here and there, has any real
headway been made. Compared with that in Europe, the co-oper-
ative movement in the United States is still in its swaddling clothes.

Reactionary Leadership

The prevailing type of American labor leadership is a sore afflic-
tion upon the working class. Our higher officialdom swarms with

i4 BANKRUPTCY OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT

standpatters and reactionaries such as would not be tolerated in any
other country. Mr. Gompers himself personifies the breed. He is
the arch-reactionary, the idol of all the holdbacks in the labor move-
ment. Possibly, as some allege, he was a progressive at the time the
A. F. of L. was formed, but now he is the undisputed world's prize
labor reactionary. In many respects he is even more reactionary than
the very capitalists themselves. A case in point is his present atti-
tude towards Russia. In that distressed country millions of people,
famine stricken, are dying of starvation. The labor movement and
the liberals of the world, forgetting political differences, are rallying
to their support by sending food and money. Even the cold-hearted
capitalistic United States Government, not to speak of various other
bourgeois organizations, was moved to make a substantial contribu-
tion. But in the face of all this bitter need Mr. Gompers, a bound
slave to his insane hatred for everything radical, stands unmoved.
The cries of millions of starving women and children go unheard by
him. Not a word has he spoken in their behalf, not a dollar has his
organization raised to relieve their sufferings. Mr. Gompers would
starve Soviet Russia into re-establishing capitalism. This brutal pro-
gram, now frankly abandoned even by most capitalistic politicians,
is on a par with that of Kolchak and Semenoff. American Labor's
policy towards Russia, dictated by the blind hatred of Mr. Gompers,
is a disgrace which should make every workingman bow his head in
shame.*

American Labor leadership has displayed crass incompetence in
organizing the masses industrially. The relatively small number of
trade unionists in the United States is ample proof of that. As a
shining example of our movement's weakness in the organizing de-
partment let us again cite Mr. Gompers. Considered as a labor organ-
izer he is a first class failure. Because of his incompetency much of
the blame for the unorganized state of the working class attaches to
him personally. Never during the long tenure of his office, at least
not since the "stormy '80's," has he developed, or allowed anyone else

*On a par with Mr. Gompers' reactionary Russian policy was his attitude towards
the infamous "red" raids engineered by Attorney-General Palmer. Never was a
more dastardly crime committed against the rights of the workers. But Mr.
Gompers made no protest. Quite evidently Mr. Palmer was a man after his own
heart. Characteristic enough it is that on May 1st, 1922, with Mr. Palmer in political
limbo and even the reactionary Republican politicians refusing to stoop to such con-
temptible artifices, it was Mr. Gompers who issued the flaming warnings in the
capitalist press against the impending red peril.

BANKRUPTCY OF THE LAHOR MOVEMENT 15

to develop a comprehensive plan to organize the masses of the work-
ers. Opportunity after opportunity he has allowed to slip by unused,
to the sad detriment of the labor movement.

Consider the war situation for example: That was a marvelous
chance to organize the great body of the working class and to un-
shakably intrench the trade unions. The workers were most stra-
tegically situated and enjoyed wonderful political and industrial
power. Had there been even a mediocre organizer, instead of a
"labor statesman," at the head of our movement, great armies of toilers
could have been drawn into the labor organizations. A general na-
tional organization campaign should have been mapped out and in-
tensive, systematic drives for members started in all the industries.
Given even ordinarily competent direction, such a movement would
have achieved tremendous success. But of course, nothing of the kind
was done. The intellectually sterile Mr. Gompers failed utterly to
perceive the needs and opportunities of the situation. He was too
busy winning the war and making the world safe for democracy. Flat-
tered by great capitalists and basking in the sunshine of a fickle pub-
lic opinion, he completely neglected the vital business of organizing
the workers and spent his time with such questionable affairs of state
as putting across the Versailles Treaty. He worked out no general
strategy, no unified campaign of organization for the labor movement.
And no one else was in a position to do so. Consequently the various
organizations had to go ahead as best they could. Everybody started
whatever he pleased. While Mr. Gompers dallied with his capitalist
friends, the Chicago Federation of Labor was compelled to launch
the great drives in the packing and steel industries. To organize such
movements was clearly the duty of Mr. Gompers' office, and if it
failed to do so he alone was to blame. The situation, from an organ-
izing standpoint, was chaotic. Little substantial was accomplished.
With the general result that, because of Mr. Gompers' inefficiency,
because he had no inkling of what should have been done, the great
masses of the workers were not organized during the golden oppor-
tunity presented by the war time. And now we are paying the pen-
alty in the great "open shop" drive that is smashing the unions. Had
the workers been organized during the war, and they easily could
have been, the "open shop" drive would never have started agair.st
the deeply rooted trade unions. Had Mr. Gompers been even a third
rate organizer it would have changed the whole face of industrial
America.

16 BANKRUPTCY OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT

All over the world the labor movement suffers grievously from
unscrupulous, self-seeking leaders, but nowhere so much as in the
United States. Here we are infested with breeds of them entirely
without parallel anywhere else. Only in Amrica can be found known
crooks and convicted criminals functioning as labor officials, many
of whom have become enormously wealthy through robbing both
employers and workers. This condition is a world scandal; the active
unionists of other countries simply cannot comprehend it. They have
their reactionaries a-plenty. But such open thievery is peculiar to
the United States alone. It is a drastic proof of the low level of our
labor leadership.

But worse even than the plain grafters are the large body of
leaders who, destitute of all idealism and real proletarian feeling, look
upon the labor movement simply as a convenient means to well-paid
jobs of power and influence. They kill all life and progress in the
workers' organizations. Mr. Gompers is the undisputed king of this
type. He is the champion office-holder of them all. The way he has
hung on for forty years is a world marvel. And the labor movement
has paid dearly enough for it. Mr. Gompers has never considered any
movements of the workers from any other angle except what effect
they will have upon his tenure of office.

Like all other labor politicians, but much more pronouncedly,
Mr. Gompers shirks responsibility. No matter how burning the need
for vigorous action to save some critical situation, he will initiate
nothing. The labor world may tumble about his ears, but to protect
his own interests, he stands pat. With him everything is all right
so long as he does not have to assume responsibility that may breed
him enemies. His philosophy is, better to lose a thousand strikes and
organizing opportunities through inaction than to risk one aggressive
movement, the failure of which might enable someone to "get some-
thing on him." He moves ahead only when pushed. This negative
attitude, this habitual refusal to initiate anything or to assume any
responsibility caused the failure to organize the workers generally
during the war; this it was that made Mr. Gompers sabotage the steel
campaign from beginning to end, when it got under way in spite of
him. And this do-nothing policy it is which constantly paralyses the
labor movement in its brain and heart and reduces its vitality to the
vanishing point. It is a policy fatal to Organized Labor; but it is
good for Mr. Gompers' own personal ends, and that to him, is of
course supreme justification for it.

BANKRUPTCY OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT 17

More than simply failing to initiate progressive movements, Mr.
Gompers is actually a valiant fighter for things as they are in the
labor movement. A curious twist of this policy mak<'s him play the
role of a sort of weak king among powerful nobles. The international
union presidents are the nobles. Things have conspired to make them
into petty despots in their respective spheres. They are little nabobs.
With unlimited autonomy and points of view to correspond with their
narrow craft interests, they naturally carry on a wrangling, unsoli-
daric movement fatal to the interests of the working class as a
whole. The great need of the labor movement is that the power of
these nabobs be clipped, and that it be absorbed by the general organ-
ization, the A. F. of L. The national movement, as such, must be
strengthened. But it is exactly this that Mr. Gompers fails to do.
On the contrary, he defends the vicious nabob system even more
militantly than the nabobs themselves. He fights every attempt to
strengthen the A. F. of L. or to make it function as an effective cen-
tral organization. He battles to preserve all the privileges of the nabob
international presidents, disastrous though these may be to class soli-
darity and progress. This has given him wonderful prestige with the
nabobs as a "safe" man. Thus, strangely enough, by keeping his own
organization — the A. F. of L. proper — weak and functionless he per-
sonally waxes great and powerful. And again, for his advancement,
the labor movement pays a bitter price. The labor politician, of
which Mr. Gompers is the shining example, is the old man of the sea
of American Labor.

Severe though many of the foregoing criticisms of American
Labor may be, no truth-seeking worker, free from chauvinistic bias,
can deny their correctness. Although the American labor movement
has some admirable qualities (which will be indicated as this pamphlet
progresses), nevertheless, in the main, it is miles and miles behind
the labor movements of other important capitalist countries. Our
labor movement's non-revolutionary outlook, its lack of social vision,
is unique in the international labor world ; likewise its want of an or-
ganized, mass working class political party. Our trade unions are
primitive to a degree in their structure and they cling tenaciously to
the antiquated craft form, discarded by workers in other countries;
they are exceedingly weak in numbers, encompassing only a small
body of workers, instead of the great mass, as in Germany, England
and elsewhere; they have not succeeded, as compared with European

18 BANKRUPTCY OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT

unions, in winning the shorter workday and in establishing the foun-
dations of democracy in industry; the breath of progress is not in
them. The international policy of our movement is a joke, when not
a tragedy. Our labor journalism is colorless, stupid, and often corrupt;
our co-operative movement is in its infancy; our labor leadership is
incomparably reactionary. While the labor movements abroad, keep-
ing pace with a growing capitalism, have gone ahead developing new
conceptions, consolidating their organizations, and winning new con-
quests, we have practically stood still, stagnant, unresponsive, un-
progressive. Finally we have arrived at the paradoxical situation
where, apparently in contradiction to economic principles, the United
States has at once the most highly developed industrial system and
the weakest working class organization of the modern capitalist
world. So decrepit and unfit is our labor movement that, unless ways
are found to revive and re-invigorate it, it is actually threatened with
extinction by the employers in the present great "open shop" drive,
The American labor movement is bankrupt.

BANKRUPTCY OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT 19

CHAPTER II

Cause of the Bankruptcy

The weakness of the American labor movement, its lack of social
vision and its general backwardness politically and industrially, as
compared with the labor movements of other countries, has long been
a matter of common knowledge. It cannot be denied or disputed, nor
do real labor students try to do either. Their aim is to explain it, to
find out the reasons for the paradoxical situation of the world's most
advanced capitalistic country possessing such a primitive working
class movement. Two explanations for this condition, widely accepted
among labor men and students generally, are (1) that the influx of so
many millions of immigrants, with their innumerable racial, language,
national, and religious differences, has enormously complicated the
problems confronting the labor movement and hindered the work of
unionization and education by bringing together a practically unor-
ganizable mass in the industries, and (2) that the workers of America,
because of the existence of the free land for so long and the opportun-
ities presented by the unexampled industrial expansion, have been
better able to make a living, and consequently have not felt the need
for organization and a revolutionary spirit to such an extent as the
oppressed workers of Europe. Or, in other words, that too many im-
migrants and too much prosperity are to blame for the extreme back-
wardness of Organized Labor in the United States.

Foreigners As M ilh wis

Regarding the first of the explanations: Although, undoubtedly,
the presence of so many nationalities in the industries makes the
problem of organization more difficult, it is by no means an insur-
montable obstacle. The situation is not nearly so bad as it has beei.
painted. The "unorganizability" of the foreign-born workers is a very
convenient cloak for labor leaders to cover up their inefficiency and
the weaknesses of an unfit craft unionism. The fact is, the immigrant
workers are distinctly organizable, often even more so than the native
Americans. This has been demonstrated time and again in strikes
during the past 10 years. In the big Lawrence strike of 1912 it was
the immigrant workers, a score of different nationalities, who were
the backbone of the great struggle. Likewise in the packing house

20 BANKRUPTCY OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT

movement of 1917-21, the whole thing centered around the foreigners,
mostly Slavs. They organized the unions in the first place (the Amer-
icans quite generally refusing to come in, until after a settlement had
been secured), and they are the ones who made the final desperate
fight. The same experience was had in the great 1918-19 organizing
campaign and strike in the steel industry. Although in some mills
there were as many as 54 nationalities, they joined hands readily and
formed trade unions. There was much more difficulty in organizing
the minority of Americans than the big majority of heterogenuous
foreigners. And when the historic struggle with the steel trust came
the foreign workers covered themselves with undying glory. They dis-
played the very highest type of labor union qualities.

The majority of the membership of the United Mine Workers of
America are foreigners. Yet that is one of the very best labor organ-
izations in this country. Indeed, one can search the world's labor
movement in vain to find a union with a more valiant record. But the
best illustration of the organizability of the foreigners is to be found
in; the clothing trades. In that industry the unions are made up of a
general conglomeration of nationalities, principally Jews, Poles, Ital-
ians, and Lithuanians. The Americans form but a small minority of
the membership and almost nothing of the administration. Yet the
unions, all of them, are miles in advance of the ordinary American
trade union. In fact, they will compare with the average European
labor bodies. Most of the criticisms of the American labor movement,
outlined in Chapter I, do not apply to these organizations, made up
chiefly of immigrants. They are the one bright spot in a generally
dismal movement.

Again it must be said that, although somewhat complicating the
problems of the labor movement, the immigrant workers cannot be
seriously blamed for its present deplorable condition. Intellectually
they are radical and receptive of the most advanced social programs
If they, making up the bulk of the working forces in the great indus-
tries, have not been organized industrially and politically before now
it is immediately because of the utter sterility and incompetence of
the Gompers regime.

Prosperity Not a Deterrent
To urge the comparative prosperity of the American working class
as an' explanation of the backwardness of our labor movement is just
as futile as to blame it upon the foreigners. The fact is that excep-

BANKRUPTCY OF THE LABOR MOVEMEN1 21

tional prosperity, instead of being a deterrent, is a direct stimulus to
labor organization and radicalism. The worker? progress best, intel-
lectually and in point of organization, under two general conditions
the antipodes of each other, (1) during periods of devastating hard-
ship, (2) in eras of so-called prosperity. When suffering extreme pri-
vation they are literally compelled to think and act, and when the
pressure of the exploiter is light, during good times, they take courage
and move forward of their own volition. The static periods, when
very little is accomplished in either an educational or organizational
way, are when times are neither very bad nor very good. Then both
factors for progress, heavy pressure and stirred ambitions, operate at
a minimum.

Russia and Germany, in their revolutions, gave conclusive proofs
of the tremendously rapid spread of labor organization and radicalism
when the workers are under terrific pressure from the exploiters, and
many years' experience all over the world has demonstrated that the
labor movement also makes good progress under the very reverse
conditions of "prosperity." Australia is a classical example. That has
long been a land of "good times" and "opportunity." An abundance of
cheap land has been constantly at hand, labor has always been scarce,
and unemployment practically nonexistent. If there were anything to
the theory that prosperity kills the militancy of the workers then
certainly the Australian labor movement might be expected to be
weak and insipid. But in reality it is one of the most advanced work-
ing class organizations to be found anywhere in the world, and it has
been such for many years past. This is no accident or contradiction.
Australian Labor is strong, not in spite of the prevailing "prosperity."
but because of it. It is exactly since opportunity is plentiful and
labor scarce, which means that the employers are to some extent de-
prived of their powerful ally unemployment, that the workers' fight
is easier and they are encouraged to make greater and greater de-
mands upon their exploiters. Germany, before the war, was another
typical example of the working of this principle. It was by far the
most prosperous country in Europe, and consequently it also had the
best organized and most intelligently radical working class.

Even in the United States can be traced the benefits conferred
upon Organized Labor by "opportunity" and "prosperity." The West
has always been the land of opportunity, the traditional place of labor
shortage and high wages in this country; and likewise it has ever been
the natural home of militant labor unionism and radicalism in general.

22 BANKRUPTCY OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT

It is in the East, where labor has been most plentiful, wages lowest,
and opportunity scarcest for the worker of small means, that labor
organization and revolutionary understanding have made slowest prog-
ress. By the same token, when hard times prevail over the country
the labor unions become weak, and the workers, defeated, grow pessi-
mistic and lose all daring and imagination. But when the hard times
are succeeded by a wave of "prosperity" the workers' cause picks up
at once; the unions, victorious, grow rapidly and, having had a taste
of power, they are ready for further conquests, no matter how rad-
ical. This tendency was well illustrated during the war and the boom
time following it. Never were the workers more prosperous, never
were wages higher, job conditions better, and working hours shorter
than in this period. But the prosperity, instead of injuring the labor
movement, gave it the greatest stimulus, physically and intellectually,
in its history. The workers, acting as they always do under such
favorable circumstances, poured into the organizations by hundreds
of thousands. Then the latter, tremendously invigorated by this
enormous influx of new strength and finding the capitalists' fighting
ability greatly handicapped because of the labor shortage, insisted
upon concessions and conditions such as they hardly dared dream of
in pre-war times. A basic radicalism developed throughout the work-
ing class, not the classic Marxian revolutionary understanding, it is
true, but a closely related deep yearning and striving for more power
over industry and society generally. Naturally enough also it was in
1919, when the railroad unions were at the very zenith of their power
and influence, that they announced the Plumb Plan to take the rail-
roads out of the hands of their present owners.

The workers, particularly in a backward labor movement like ours,
learn by doing. It is just when they enjoy greatest power and well-
being, in times of prosperity, that they are most stimulated to desire
and demand more. Because this is the case, because the workers
habitually take advantage of every lessening of the pressure upon
them by expanding their organizations and increasing their demands,
periods of abounding prosperity are periods of danger to capitalism.
They are eras of genuine progress to the working class, even as are
the times of unbearable hardships. The explanation that the back-
wardness of American Labor is due to too much prosperity will not
stand up. The workers as a class do not become enervated by pros-
perity, they are energized by it and developed into militancy. Be-
cause American workers have been comparatively well off is a reason,

BANKRUPTCY OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT 23

not that they should have a weak labor movement, but that their
organizations, political and industrial, should be powerful, and revolu-
tionary.

The Real Cause, Dual Unionism

The American labor movement is in its present deplorable back-
ward condition not because of the reactionary influence of the immi-
grant workers, or because of the stultifying effect of the higher
standard of living prevailing in this country. This is plain when a
serious study is made of the matter. Under certain circumstances
both of these forces, particularly the former, may exert a hindering
influence on the development of labor organization, but at most they
are only minor factors. The real cause of the extraordinary condition
must be sought elsewhere. And it is to be found in the fatal policy
of dual unionism which has been practiced religiously for a genera-
tion by American radicals and progressives generally. Because of this
policy thousands of the very best worker militants have been led to
desert the mass labor organizations and to waste their efforts in vain
efforts to construct ideally conceived unions designed to replace the
old ones. In consequence the mass labor movement has been, for
many years, systematically drained of its life-giving elements. The
effect has been shatteringly destructive of every phase and manifest-
ation of Organized Labor. Dual unionism has poisoned the very springs
of progress in the American labor movement and is primarily respon-
sible for its present sorry plight.

In order to appreciate the destructive effects of dual unionism it
is necessary to understand the importance to Labor of the militant
elements that have been practically cancelled by the dual union policy:
Every experienced labor man knows that the vital activities of the
labor movement are carried on by a small minority of live individuals,
so few in number as to be almost insignificant in comparison to the
organization as a whole. The great mass of the membership are slug-
gish and unprogressive. In an average local union of 1,000 members,
for example, not more than 100, or 10% of the whole, will display
enough interest and intelligence even to attend the regular meetings.
And of this 100 usually not more than half a dozen will take an active
part in the proceedings. In other words, the actual carrying on of the
real work of the labor movement depends upon a minority, which in
the present state of things, does not exceed 1% of the mass.

This militant minority is of supreme importance to every branch

24 BANKRUPTCY OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT

of the labor movement. It is the thinking and acting part of the
working class, the very soul of Labor. It works out the righting pro-
grams and takes the lead in putting them into execution. It is the
source of all real progress, intellectual, spiritual, and organizational,
in the workers' ranks. It is "the little leaven that leaveneth the whole
lump." The militant minority, made famous by the Russian revolu-
tion as the "advance guard of the proletariat," is the heart and brain
and nerves of the labor movement all over the world.

The fate of all labor organization depends directly upon the effec-
tive functioning of these militant, progressive spirits among the ig-
norant and sluggish organized masses. In England, Germany, and
other countries with strong labor movements the militants have so
functioned. They have remained within the old trade unions and acted
as the practical teachers, stimulators, and leaders of the masses there
assembled. Consequently they have been able to communicate to these
masses something of their own understanding and revolutionary fight-
ing spirit, and to make their movements flourish and progress. But
in the United States dual unionism for years destroyed this natural
liason between the militants and the masses, which is indispensible
to the health and vigor of Organized Labor. It withdrew the mili-
tants from the basic trade unions, and left the masses there leaderless.
This destroyed the very foundations of progress and condemned every
branch of the labor movement, political, industrial, co-operative, to
stagnation and impotency. Dual unionism, so to speak, severed the
head from the body of American Labor.

History of Dual Unionism
Before indicating more directly the devastating effects of dual
unionism it will be well for us to glance for a moment at the histor-
ical development of that tendency in this country : Dual unionism is
essentially a product of utopianism ; it is the result of a striving to
reach the revolutionary goal by a shortcut of ready-made, perfec-
tionist organizations. In the early days of our labor movement, 30
to 40 years ago, it played little or no part. Then the militants, not
yet having worked out the fine-spun union theories and cartwheel
charts of our times, accepted the primitive mass unions of those days
as their working organization. Consisting principally of Anarchists
and Socialists, these early fighters took a very active part in the
everyday struggles of the organized workers. They sought diligently,
not to coax the workers to desert one set of supposedly unscientific

BANKRUPTCY OF Till-: LABOR MOVEMENT 25

unions and to join another set supposedly perfect, but to give vigor
and intelligence to the fight of the primitive organizations. Without
realizing it they acted in harmony with the most modern militant tac-
tics. The result was that the workers responded to their efforts, and
our trade union movement speedily took its place, as a progressive,
fighting organization, right in the forefront of international Organized
Labor. Though free land and opportunity were much more prevalent
then than now, they were powerless to stem the radicalism of the
working class.

During the '80s, when the revolutionists were particularly active
in the old unions, the American labor movement was an inspiration
to the workers of the world. The Knights of Labor were radical and
aggressive. Most of the leaders were Socialists. Even Gompers pa-
raded as a revolutionary. In 1887 he said: "While keeping in view
a lofty ideal, we must advance towards it through practical steps,
taken with intelligent regard for pressing needs. I believe with the
most advanced thinkers as to ultimate aims, including the abolition
of the wage system.' * The trade unions were also radical. It was not
the K. of L,. as many believe, but the Federation of Trades and Labor
Unions (later the A. F. of L.) that called and engineered the great
general strike of 1886. This historic movement entranced the work-
ing class rebels all over Europe, not only because it was the first
modern attempt to win the universal 8-hour workday, but especially
because it marked the first successful application of their beloved
weapon, the general strike of all trades in all localities. In after years
they named as Labor's international holiday the day, May 1st, upon
which the strike began. In those stirring times our labor unions stood
alone in the world for militancy and fighting spirit. This the inter-
national labor movement looked upon as perfectly natural. The pre-
vailing conception was that inasmuch as the United States (even in
those early days) had the most advanced type of capitalism it was
bound to have also the most advanced labor unions. The common
expectancy was that this country would be the first to have a work-
ing class revolution.

Even after the unsatisfactory outcome of the great 8-hour strike
and the execution of the rebel leaders, Parsons, Spies, Fisher, Engel,
and Lingg in connection with the Haymarket riot, the Socialists and
other radicals enjoyed great power and influence in the trade unions
for several years. They were on friendly terms with the leaders of

*J. R. Commons, History of Labour in the United Stairs Vol. II. I'. 458.

20 BANKRUPTCY OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT

the Federation and constantly making headway with their program.
Yet they had a steady fight to make with the reactionary elements.
This was being carried on successfully until the appearance of Daniel
DeLeon as a power among the radicals. DeLeon, with his dynamic
personality and alluring program of separtism, was quickly able to
put a stop to the work in the trade unions and to start the rebel
movement definitely upon the road to dual unionism.

DeLeon and Dual Unionism

Few men have made a greater impression upon the American
labor movement than Daniel DeLeon. His principal accomplishment
was to work out the intellectual premises of dual unionism so effect-
ively as to force its adoption and continuance as the industrial pro-
gram of the whole revolutionary movement for a generation. He was
an able writer, an eloquent speaker, a clever reasoner, and a domi-
nant personality generally. But despite his brilliance he was essen-
tially a sophist and a Utopian. He particularly lacked a grasp of the
process of evolution. He made the fundamental mistake of consider-
ing the old trade unions as static, unchangeably conservative bodies,
and in concluding that the necessary Socialist unions had to be cre-
ated as new organizations. He did not know that the labor movement
is a growth, intellecually from conservatism to radicalism, and struc-
turally from the craft to the industrial form. DeLeon's industrial
program of dual unionism was merely the typical Utopian scheme of
throwing aside the old, imperfect, evolving social organism and striv-
ing to set up in its stead the new, perfect institutions.

DeLeon came to acquire considerable prestige in the radical move-
ment about 1888. Of a hasty, impulsive, and autocratic nature, he
soon fell foul of the two great branches of the labor movement, the
American Federation of Labor and the Knights of Labor. He broke
with the A. F. of L. over a skirmish which occurred in 1890 between
that organization and the New York Central Labor Federation. The
latter body, controlled by the Socialists, accepted the affiliation of a
local branch of the Socialist Labor Party. But when its delegate,
Lucien Sanial, appeared at the following convention of the A. F. of L.
he was denied a seat. Unquestionably Gompers was right in this con-
troversy, for until this day labor organizations, no matter how radi-
cal, do not permit the direct affiliation of political parties. But the
affair embittered the hasty DeLeon, who repudiated the A. F. of L.
and turned his attention to the then decadent Knights of Labor. In

BANKRUPTCY OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT 27

that organization, grace to his great activity and natural ability, he
soon acquired substantial power. At the 1894 General Assembly of
the K. of L. he joined forces with Sovereign against Grand Master
Workman Powderly. Together they overthrew the latter, but the
victorious Sovereign, disregarding his political bargain, refused to re-
ward DeLeon for his assitance by appointing Lucian Sanial editor of
the official national journal. This provoked DeLeon's bitter ire, and
he broke with the K. of L. These experiences, first with the A. F.
of L. and then with the K. of L., convinced him that neither of these
organizations were fit material wherewith to build up the Socialist
labor movement he had in mind. Therefore, in the following year,
1895, he launched the Socialist Trades and Labor Alliance, a radical
organization designed to supplant the whole conservative labor move-
ment. In the past there had been dual unions organized in opposi-
tion to the old trade unions (witness for example the American Rail-
way Union founded by Eugene V. Debs), but the S. T. & L. A. was tht-
first of a general character and a revolutionary makeup. Its founda-
tion clearly marked the embarkation of the radical movement upon its
long-continued and disastrous program of dual unionism.

Of course, DeLeon did not draw his dual union program simply
out of thin air. Naturally there were present many factors which
made it seem the plausible, if not inevitable, method to follow. De-
spite their militancy, the trade unions of the time (while not worse
than those of England, where dual unionism got no footing) were
comparatively weak in numbers, stupid in their philosophy, and in-
fested with job-hunters and reactionaries. To the rebels of those days,
impatient and inexperienced as they were, it looked an unpromising
task to convert these primitive groupings into Socialist organizations.
It seemed much simpler to start the labor movement all over again,
this time upon "scientific" principles. At that early date, because of
the youth of the movement, they knew nothing of the unworkability
of dual unionism. In 1895 DeLeon's plan, new discarded as Utopian,
seemed logical and practical, almost an inspiration, in fact.

Scores of Dual Unions

The Socialist Trades and Labor Alliance was still-born. It never
amounted to more than a handful of militants, the masses refusing
to rally to its standard. The same forces that ruin all such unions
effectively checked its growth. But if the S. T. & L. A. failed as an
organization the idea behind it, of revolutionary dual unionism, made

28 BANKRUPTCY OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT

steady headway. More and more the radical movement, from left to
right, became convinced that the trade unions were hopeless, more
and more it turned its attention to dual unionism. DeLeon himself
was a powerful factor in this development.

In 1899 the Socialist Labor Party split, largely because of the trade
union question, and gave birth to the Socialist Party. For a time it
looked as though the new body might declare definitely for the trade
unions and aganist dual unionism. But it soon developed a powerful
left wing, led by Debs, Haywood and others, who advocated dual
unionism as militantly as DeLeon himself had done in the old party.
In the meantime, the dualist concept had become enlarged from that
of simply a separate Socialist labor movement to that of a separate
Socialist labor movement with an industrial form. Revolutionary dual
unionism became revolutionary dual industrial unionism. Sympa-
thizers multiplied apace.

Soon the whole revolutionary and progressive movements became
impregnated with the dual union idea. Even the right wing elements,
who had previously fought against DeLeon over the matter, largely
adopted it. Dual unions in single industries sprang up here and there.
But it was in 1905 that the movement came to a head. The S. T. &
L. A. being hopelessly moribund, a new general dual union organiza-
tion was deemed necessary, so, with a great fanfare of trumpets, the
whole radical movement gathered in Chicago to launch it. There were
Socialists, Socialist Laborites, Anarchists, Industrialists, and Pro-
gressives. The result of their historic convention was the Industrial
Workers of the World, an organization devised to supplant the whole
trade union structure and to realign the labor movement upon a new
revolutionary basis.

The I. W. W. went forth the embodiment of great hopes and ab-
sorbing the efforts of the best workers in the country. But, never-
theless, it could not triumph over the obstacles ever confronting such
dual organizations. The workers simply refused to quit the old trade
unions that had cost them so much trouble and strife to build. After
several years, therefore, the I. W. W. was quite generally recognized
as a failure, and the rebel elements began to turn away from it. But
the peculiar thing was its failure did not discourage the dual union
idea, anymore than had the downfall of the S. T. & L. A. On the
contrary, that idea grew and flourished better than ever.

Strangely enough, the longer the dual union policy was followed,
the more logical it seemed, notwithstanding its failure to build any

BANKRUPTCY OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT

new unions of consequence. This was because of the fact that as the
revolutionary elements continued their tactics of quitting the old
unions the latter, suffering the loss of their1 best life's blood, withered
and stagnated. More and more they became the prey of standpat-
ters and reactionaries; less and less they presented an aspect calcu-
lated to appeal to revolutionaries. Dual unionism became almost a
religion among rebels. No longer would they even tolerate discussion
of the proposition of working within the old unions. The Workers'
International Industrial Union, the One Big Union (both of which
aimed at covering all industries) and scores of dual unions in single
industries were launched later to put the beloved program into effect.
Though all of them failed almost completely, still the separatist
policy maintained its ground with wonderful vitality. The whole rad-
ical and progressive movement, from the extreme left to the liberals,
was shot through and through with it.

This widespread devotion to dual unionism, which has never been
equalled in any other country, lasted until about the middle of 1921.
At that time a bright light broke upon the rebels. All of a sudden they
became aware of the fallacy of withdrawing from the organized
masses. The intellectual structure of dual unionism fell to the ground
with a crash. With a profound change of tactics, which for swiftness
has never been paralleled in world labor history, the bulk of them
repudiated the separatist policy they had followed so loyally for a
generation and turned their attention to developing the old trade
unions into modern, aggressive labor organizations. But of this re-
markable shift we will say more further along.

30 BANKRUPTCY OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT

CHAPTER III.

Ravages of Dual Unionism

Dual unionism is a malignant disease that sickens and devitalizes
the whole labor movement. The prime fault of it is that it wastes the
efforts of those vigorous elements whose activities determine the fate
of all working class organization. It does this by withdrawing these
rare and precious militants from the mass trade unions, where they
serve as the very mainspring of vitality and progress, and by mis-
directing their attention to the barren and hopeless work of building
up impossible, Utopian industrial organizations. This drain of the
best blood of the trade unions begins by enormously weakening these
bodies and ends by making impotent every branch of the labor move-
ment as well ; for the welfare of all Organized Labor, political, indus-
trial, co-operative, educational, depends upon the trade unions, the
basic organizations of the working class, being in a flourishing condi-
tion. Dual unionism saps the strength of the trade unions, and when
it does that it undermines the structure of the entire working class
organization.

The Dual Union's Fail

Since the dual union program was outlined almost thirty years
ago by DeLeon it has wasted a prodigeous amount of invaluable
rebel strength. Tens of thousands of the very best men ever pro-
duced by the American labor movement have devoted themselves to
it whole-heartedly and have expended oceans of energy in order to
bring the longed-for new labor movement into realization. But they
were pouring water upon sand. The parched Sahara of dual indus-
trial unionism swallowed up their efforts and left hardly a trace be-
hind. The numerically insignificant dual unions of today are a poor
bargain indeed in return for the enormous price they have cost.

Consider, for example, the Industrial Workers of the World: The
amount of energy and unselfish devotion lavished upon that organiza-
tion would have wrought miracles in developing and extending the
trade unions; but it has been powerless to make anything substantial
of the I. W. W. Today, 17 years after its foundation, that body has
far fewer members (not to speak of much less influence) than it had
at its beginning. The latest available official financial reports show a

BANKRUPTCY OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT 31

membership of not more than 15,000, whereas in 1905 it had 40,000. Even
its former revolutionary spirit has degenerated until the organization
has now become little more than assort of league to make war upon
the trade unions and to revile and slander struggling Soviet Russia.
The I. W, W. is a monument to the folly of dual unionism.

The One Big Union of Canada is another example of rebel effort
wasted in dual unionism. Four years ago it started out with a great
blare of trumpets and about 40,000 members. Its advent threw dis-
sension into the old trade unions and shattered their ranks. They lost
heavily in membership, the militants pulling out the more active ele-
ments on behalf of the O. B. U. Yet, today, this organization, de-
spite the great effort put into it, has but an insignificant membership,
not over 4,000 at most, and its constructive influence is about in pro-
portion. It was a costly, ill-fated experiment, and in the main has
worked havoc to Canadian labor. The Workers' International Indus-
trial Union, another universal dual union, has occupied the attention
of the Socialist Labor Party's active spirits for 14 years, but now it
can muster only a few hundred actual members. Similar records of
disastrous waste of rebel effort are shown by the dozens of dual unions
started in the various single industries, all of which literally burned
up the energies of the militants. Except for those in the textile, food,
and shoe industries, which have secured some degree of success, these
dual unions have all failed completely. They have absorbed untold
labor of the best elements among the workers and have yielded next
to nothing in return. Dual unionism is a useless and insupportable
squandering of Labor's most precious life force. It is a bottomless
pit into which the workers have vainly thrown their energy and
idealism.

Devitalizing the Trade Unions

The waste of rebel strength, caused so long by dual unionism,
has reacted directly and disastrously upon the trade unions. For
many years practically all the radical papers and revolutionary
leaders in this country were deeply tinged with dual unionism. In
their program the ideas of secessionism and progressive unionism
were welded into one. The consequence was that as fast as the
active workers in the trade unions became acquainted with the
principles of revolutionary unionism they also absorbed the idea of
dualism. Thus they lost faith and interest in their old organiza-
tions, either quitting them entirely for some dual union, or becoming

32 BANKRUPTCY OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT

so much dead timber within them. The general outcome of this whole-
sale turning away of the progressive minority was to divorce the
very idea of progress from the trade unions. It nipped in the bud
the growing crop of militants, the only element through which virile
life and development could come to the old organizations. Dual union-
ism dried up the very spring of progress in the trade unions, it con-
demned them to sterility and stagnation. It was a long-continued
process of slow poisoning for the labor movement.

A disastrous effect of this systematic demoralization and draining
away of the militants is that it has thrown the trade unions almost
entirely into the control of the organized reactionaries. In all labor
movements the unions can prosper and grow only if the progressive
elements within them organize closely and wage vigorous battle all
along the line against the conservative bureaucracy. The militants
must build machines to fight those of the reactionaries. But in the
United States dual unionism has prevented the creation of such pro-
gressive machines. By its incessant preaching that the trade unions
were hopeless and that nothing could be done with them, it dis-
couraged even those militants who did stay within the unions and
prevented them from developing an organized opposition to the bur-
eaucrats. Poisoned by dual union pessimism about the old organiza-
tions and altogether without a constructive program to apply to them,
the militants stood around idly for years in the trade unions while
the reactionary forces intrenched themselves and ruled as they saw
fit. Because of their dualistic notions the militants practically de-
serted the field and left it to the uncontested sway of their enemies.
If the American labor movement is now hard and fast in the grip
of a stupid and corrupt bureaucracy, totally incapable of progress,
dual unionism, through its demoralization of the trade union opposi-
tion, is chiefly to blame.

During the great movement of the packinghouse workers the in-
difference of the radicals towards the old unions wrought particular
havoc. A handful of rebels, free from dual union ideas, were pri-
marily responsible for the historic movement. Soon they found them-
selves in a finish fight with the conservatives for control of the newly
formed unions. Occupying the strategic position in the organizations,
especially in the Chicago stockyards, they begged the dualistic radi-
cals, who worked in the industry, to come in and help them control
the unions, offering to place them in secretaryships and other im-
portant posts. Had this offer been accepted, it would have certainly

BANKRUPTCY OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT

resulted in the big packinghouse unions, then numbering over 100,000
members, coming entirely under progressive leadership. But so
strong was the spirit of dualism at that time, in 1919, that the out-
standing rebels, mostly extreme left-wingers, would not participate
constructively in the trade unions even under such exceptionally
favorable circumstances. They refused the invitation with insults
and contempt. The consequence w?s that the few militants within
the old unions were swamped by the reactionaries, who soon wrecked
the whole organization by their incompetence and corruption. It
was a splendid opportunity lost. Similar opportunities existed in
other industries. It is safe to say that if the radicals had been free
of dual unionist tendencies during the war period and had been active
in the trade unions, the great bulk of the working class would have
been organized, instead of the comparatively few that were gotten
together by the reactionaries, who controlled the unions.

Disruption Through Secession

Dual unionism's steady drain upon the vitality of the trade unions
by withdrawing and demoralizing the militants piecemeal has been
ruinous enough, but the many great secession movements it has
given birth to have made the situation much worse. It is the partic-
ular misfortune of the American labor movement that just when
some trade union is passing through a severe crisis, as a result of
industrial depression, internal dissension, a lost strike, or some other
weakening influence, the dual union tendency breaks out with unusual
virulence and a secession movement develops that completes the
havoc already wrought. Exactly at the time the militants are needed
the most to hold the organization together is just when they are
the busiest pulling it apart. In such crises those who should be the
union's best friends become its worst enemies. This has happened
time and again. During the past two years, for exemple, the long-
shoremen and seamen have had bitter experience with such break-
away movements. Both organizations had lost big strikes, and both
were in critical need of rebuilding and rejuvenating by the progressive
elements. But just at this critical juncture the latter failed, and, in-
stead of strengthening the unions, set about tearing them to pieces
with secession movements. Four or five dual unions appeared, and
when they got done attacking the old organizations and fighting
among themselves all traces of unionism were wiped out in many

34 BANKRUPTCY OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT

ports. Similar attacks are now being directed against the weakened
railroad shopmen's unions.

A great secession movement, typical for its disastrous effects,
was the famous "outlaw" strike of the switchmen in 1920. That ill-
fated movement began because of a widespread discontent among the
rank and file at the neglect of their grievances by the higher union
officials. It was a critical situation, but had there been a well-organ-
ized militant minority on hand the foment could have been given a
constructive turn and used as a means not only to satisfy the demands
of the workers but also to defeat the reactionaries. But the long-
continued dualistic propaganda in the railroad industry had effective-
ly prevented the organization of such a minority. Hence, leaderless,
the movement ran wild and culminated in the "outlaw" strike. Then,
as usual, the secessionist tendency showed itself and a new organiza-
tion was formed. The final result was disaster all around for the
men. The strike was lost, many thousands of active workers were
blacklisted, the unions were weakened by the loss of their best men,
and the grip of the reactionaries on the organization was strength-
ened by the complete breakup of the rebel opposition. The "outlaw"
strike of 1920 was one of the heavy penalties American workers have
paid for their long allegiance to Utopian dual unionism.

Likewise typical of the ruin wrought by dual unionism was the
movement that gave birth to the Canadian One Big Union in 1918.
Freeing themselves for the moment from the dual union obsession, the
rebels had raised the banner of industrial unionism in the old trade
unions, and the workers, seeing at last an escape from reactionary
policies and leadership, responded en masse. Union after union passed
into revolutionary control, and the movement swept Western
Canada like a storm. It seemed that finally an organization of mili-
tants, without which there could be no progress, was about to be
definitely established in the trade unions. But just when the move-
ment was most promising the dualists got the upper hand and steered
the whole business into the quagmire of secession by launching the
O. B. U. as a new labor movement. Havoc resulted. The new union,
of course, got nowhere, and the old ones were split and weakened by
dissensions and the loss of many thousands of their very best work-
ers. But, worst of all, the budding organized minority within the
trade unions was wrecked, and the organizations passed completely
into the control of the reactionaries. The O. B. U. secession set back
the whole Canadian labor movement for years.

BANKRUPTCY OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT 35

Breaking ihh Western Federation of Miners

One of the great tragedies caused by dual unionism was the
smashing of the Western Federation of Miners. This body of metal
miners, organized in 1893, was in its early days a splendid type of
labor union. Industrial in form and frankly revolutionary, it carried
on for many years a spectacular and successful struggle against the
Mine Owners' Association. Brissenden says that its strikes in Coeur
d'Alene, Cripple Creek, Leadville, Telluride, Idaho Springs, etc., were
"the most strenuous and dramatic series of strike disturbances in the
history of the American labor movement." Time after time the miners
armed themselves and fought it out with the gunmen and thugs of
the mining companies. Their valiant battles attracted world-wide
attention. *

But this great organization, unquestionably one of the best ever
produced by the American labor movement, has long since been
wrecked both in point of numbers and spirit. Insignificant in size,
it has also become so conservative as to be ashamed of its splendid
old name. It is now known as the International Union of Mine, Mill
and Smelter Workers. This pitiful degeneration of the Western Fed-
eration of Miners was caused directly by dual unionism. Some detail
is necessary in order to show how it happened:

To begin with we must understand that in its best days only a
few of the W. F. of M. membership, not over 5% at most,** were
active and revolutionary. This small minority, highly organized, oc-
cupied all the strategic points of the union. Thus they were able
to communicate something of their own revolutionary spirit to the
mass as a whole. The organized rebels literally compelled the W.
F. of M. to be a virile fighting organization.

In 1905, the W. F. of M. was one of the unions that formed the
I. W. W. It remained part of that organization for about two years,
when it withdrew. The militant elements, the ones who had made
the W. F. of M. what it was, were bitterly opposed to the with-
drawal. For the most part they stayed in the I. W. W. and allowed
the W. F. of M. to go its way without them. Hundreds of the best
men, including such fighters as Haywood, St. John, etc., deserted the

•The history of the W. F. of M. gives the lie direct to tin- argument thai pro*
perity kills the militancy of the workers. That union was made up mostly of Amen
can horn workers and operated in what was then the most prosperous section of the
country, the Rocky Mountain district.

••Estimated by Vincent St. John, former \V. 1". of M. militant.

36 BANKRUPTCY OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT

old organization, either by quitting it altogether or by becoming neg-
ative factors in it. The passage of the W. F. of M. through the I.
W. W. served to sift out the active workers, to rob the W. F. of M.
of its very soul. The W. F. of M. went into the I. W. W. a revolu-
tionary organization; it came out of it, if not actually conservative,
then at least definitely condemned to that fate.

After the W. F. of M.'s withdrawal from the I. W. W. its mili-
tants, all become ardent dual unionists, declared war to the knife
against it. The organization which had previously absorbed so much
of their unselfish devotion was thereafter the object of their bitterest
attacks. Once the very backbone of the W. F. of M., the militants
now became its deadliest foes. Under these circumstances it was not
long until the degeneration set in which has reduced the once splen-
did Western Federation of Miners to its present lowly status.

Among others, the writer was one who pointed out the folly of
rebels destroying an industrial union like the W. F. of M., simply
because it had withdrawn from the I. W. W., and who likewise urged
that a campaign be started to take control of the union again. But
the answer always given was that the Moyer machine, especially be-
cause it controlled the big Butte local union, was unshakably in-
trenched. And when it was proposed to capture the Butte local this
was declared impossible. But the fallacy of this objection was made
apparent in 1914 when, as a result of insupportable grievances, the
rank and file of the Butte organization rose up, drove their officials
from town and took charge of the situation. This put Butte, the cita-
del of the reaction, squarely in thej hands of the militants. Had they
but stayed in the W. F. of M. and carried on a campaign in the
other locals the whole organization would have been theirs for the
taking. But they were so obsessed with the dual unionism prevailing
generally among rebels, and so blinded with hatred for everything
connected with the A. F. of L., that they seceded at once and formed
a new union. This went to smash, as such organizations almost al-
ways do. The only practical effect of the whole affair was to deal a
death blow to W. F. of M., already weakened and poisoned by the
desertion of its former militants.

It is one of the saddest facts of American labor history that the
Western Federation of Miners was finally destroyed by the very men
who originally built it and made it one of the joys of the working
class. What the Mine Owners' Association, with all its money and
power, was unable to accomplish, the militants, obsessed by dual

BANKRUPTCY OF THE LABOR MOVEMEN1 37

unionism, brought about with little or no difficulty. Their allegiance
to an impractical theory has broken up all organization among the
metal miners. And the ravages that were made upon the W. F. of M.
have been visited to a greater or lesser extent upon every other trade
union in the United States, for all of them have had to suffer the
loss of their most active workers and to confront as bitter enemies
those very fighters who should be their main reliance.

Downfall of tiik Socialist I'artv

A striking example of the destructive influence of dual unionism
upon other working class organizations besides trade unions, was the
ruin it wrought to the Socialist Party. For many years the S. P. was
the chief vehicle for revolutionary thought in this country. Gradually
it grew and expanded until, in 1912, it reached a total of 118,000 mem-
bers. It appeared to be flourishing and destined for a vigorous future.
But all of a sudden it began to wither and disintegrate, a process
which went on until now the S. P. has less than 10,000 members.

This quick collapse of the Socialist Party was one of the most
remarkable events in modern labor history. It seemed that the very
bottom fell out of the movement. The first immediate cause was the
passage, at the 1912 national convention, of the famous Art. 2, Sec. 6,
of the party constitution, stringently prohibiting the advocacy of
sabotage, and other forms of direct action. This measure, amounting
in effect to an anti-syndicalist law, greatly antagonized the left-wing
elements and drove many of them from the party. The next blow
came when the United States entered the great war. The party
adopted an anti-war resolution, only to find itself confronted with
a labor movement and a working class generally stricken by war
fever. Result, further great losses in membership and prestige. The
final stroke came with the Communist split in 1919. This pulled
away at least half of the remaining party membership, and the rest,
demoralized, have been unable to recover and to rehabilitate the or-
ganization. Since then the S. P. has diminished constantly in strength
to its present low level.

The three above-mentioned causes for the breakdown of the So-
cialist Party, despite their importance, were only of a surface char-
acter. The real reason lies deeper. It is to be found in the organ-
ization's faulty economic policy, in the dual unionism which has af-
flicted it ever since the party's foundation. All working class polit-
ical parties, whether Labor, Socialist, Communist, or whatnot, must

38 BANKRUPTCY OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT

be organized with the trade unions as their foundation. This is be-
cause the trade unions are the basic institutions of the working class.
The fact that they carry on the everyday struggle of the workers
for better conditions gives them enormous prestige and numerical
and financial strength, all of which labor parties must utilize in their
political work. It may be accepted as an axiom that whoever con-
trols the trade unions is able to dictate the general policies, economic,
political and otherwise, of the whole working class. All over the
world the strength of the workers' political parties is in direct ratio
to the amount of control they exercise over the mass trade unions.
Such a thing as a powerful labor party, whether conservative or rad-
ical, without strong trade union backing, is impossible. Therefore,
one of the very first tasks of every working class political organiza-
tion must be to establish its influence in the trade unions.

The Socialist Party has never understood these cardinal facts.
Its working principle, real enough even though unexpressed, has al-
ways been a presumption that it could secure its membership and
backing from the citizenry generally. It has not realized that all
labor parties must have as their foundation not only the masses, but
the masses organized in the trade unions. Because of the tendency
of its predecessor, the Socialist Labor Party, to split away the rebels
from the trade unions, the thing that the S. P. necessarily had to do
in order to succeed was to carry on an intense campaign against dual-
ism and to intrench its active workers in* the strategic positions of
the labor organizations, where they could educate the masses and
utilize their industrial, financial, and other strength to further the
cause of the whole Socialist movement. But because it did not clearly
understand the importance of the unions as such it failed to map
out such a positive industrial program, indispensable to its life and
progress. It allowed all its industrial work to be thwarted by a dual
unionism which infected the party deeply from its inception.

Although when the Socialist Party developed as a split-off from
the old Socialist Labor Party one of the issues it dissented upon
was the latter's policy of dual unionism, it was not long until it, too,
was in the grip of the same disease. A powerful left-wing, bitter
haters of the trade unions and ardent advocates of a dual labor move-
ment, rapidly developed. The right-wing favored active participation
in the trade unions, chiefly for vote-catching reasons, while the left-
wing proposed the destruction of the trade unions. The party as a
whole, seeking a false harmony, straddled this vital question. Its

BANKRUPTCY OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT 39

general attitude was to favor industrial unionism, but not to tell its
members how to achieve this form of organization, whether through
the development of the old unions or the establishment of new ones. *
As an organization it carried out no serious work to build up the
necessary .labor union foundation. Each wing of the party applied
its own particular industrial policies. For some years the right-wing
attempted to capture the old unions, and with considerable success
in the Machinists', Bakers', Clothing Workers', Miners' and other
unions, but on the whole, the left wing, by a bitter warfare against
the trade unions, sabotaged such work most effectively.

Because of this negative attitude the Socialist Party never won
for itself the support of the labor organizations, without which it
could not possibly succeed. Its members never were encouraged to
occupy the tremendously important strategic posts, such as executive
officers, editors, etc., in the trade unions, which could have been
used to enormous advantage for the party. On the contrary, these
posts remained uncontested in the hands of the conservatives, who
used them most effectively to poison the masses against Socialism.
When, for example, the party adopted the anti-war resolution it
would have been comparatively simple to secure the support, or at
least the toleration, of the working class for that measure, had the
radicals been strategically intrenched in the unions. But with the
Gompers crowd in complete control the latter were able to sway the
whole trade union movement, and with it the working class in gen-
eral, against the Socialist Party and its anti-war attitude. In this
instance the party reaped the whirlwind that it had been sowing for
so many years by its failure to conquer the trade unions, a task which
it could have easily accomplished had it but freed itself from dualism.
In Europe the Socialist Parties of the various countries have suf-
fered many heavy blows since the beginning of the world war. But
they have stood up under them far better than the American Social-
ist Party. This is because, being deeply rooted in their respective
trade unions, there is some structure and fiber to them. Consider
the Social Democratic Party of Germany, for example. That organ-
ization openly betrayed the workers all through the war and the rev-

•A classic example of this negative policy was the famous industrial resolution
adopted in the 1912 S. P. convention. This resolution, accepted unanimously by
dual unionists and trade unionists alike, was nothing more than an agreement be-
tween the two factions that the party in general should actively support neither the
trade unions nor the dual unions, in other words, that it should have no industrial
program at all.

40 BANKRUPTCY OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT

olutionary period. It forfeited its right to represent the working
class. In consequence it was subjected to several great splits and
innumerable desperate assaults from without by the left-wing ele-
ments. But it has maintained itself with a vigor not even remotely
shown by the Socialist Party in this country. The explanation for
this was its firm control over the German trade union movement.
Having in its hands practically all the executive positions of the
unions, it was able to control the masses even under the most trying
circumstances. Had the left-wingers been able to break this trade
union control, the S. D. P. would have collapsed even as our Socialist
Party did. The degree of success of the German Communist Party
in its present struggle against the Social Democratic Party is in direct
relation to its ability to win the trade unions away from S. D. P.
domination.

The Socialist Party in this country collapsed because it was built
upon talk, instead of upon the solid foundation of the trade union
movement. Because it did not have the labor unions behind it the
organization had no real stability. Hence, when it was put to the
test, as noted above, in 1912, 1917, and 1919, it went to pieces. Dual
unionism kept the Socialist militants out of the organized masses and
thus directly prevented the winning of the working class to the be-
ginnings of a revolutionary program. Moreover, it made of the S. P.
itself a formless, spineless movement, which was shattered at the first
real shock. Dual unionism ruined the Socialist Party.

Further illustrations might be cited almost indefinitely to show
the baneful effects of dual unionism upon various working class or-
ganizations. By pulling the militants out of the trade unions and
wasting their energies on futile Utopian separatist organizations, dual
unionism has robbed the whole working class of progressive leader-
ship. It has thrown the great labor unions almost entirely into the
hands of a corrupt and ignorant bureaucracy, which has choked out
their every manifestation of real progress. And in stultifying and
ruining the trade unions, dual unionism condemned to sterility every
branch of the entire labor movement, industrial, political, and other-
wise; for if the workers in general have not been educated to an
understanding of capitalism and the class struggle, if they have not
developed a revolutionary ideal, if they have not yet organized polit-
ically on class lines, if they have not yet produced a powerful co-
operative movement — in every instance the cause may be directly

BANKRUPTCY OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT 41

traced to the paralyzing influence of the reactionary trade union
bureaucracy, which dual unionism intrenched in power. The persist-
ence, for a generation, of the fatal dual union policy is the true ex-
planation of the paradoxical and deplorable situation of the United
States, the most advanced capitalist country in the world, having the
most backward labor movement.

42 BANKRUPTCY OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT

CHAPTER IV.

New Realism vs. Old Utopianism

But the American labor movement is at last freeing itself from the
dual union tendency which has sucked away its life blood for so many
years. During the past 18 months whole sections of the militants
have undergone an intellectual revolution, repudiating their historic
policy of building independent idealistic labor organizations, and turn-
ing with remarkable rapidity and unanimity to the work of revamping
and revolutionizing the old trade unions. Practically every branch
of the radical and progressive movements has been effected by this
unprecedented tactical about-face. The Communist groups, viz.:
Communist Party, Workers' Party, and Proletarian Party, have been
particularly influenced. Made up of elements to whom dual union-
ism was almost a religion for many years, they have now turned
entirely against that policy and are working diligently within the
old unions to revive and re-invigorate them. Quite evidently those
parties are determined not to make the fatal mistake, which ruined
the Socialist Party, of failing to establish their militants in the stra-
tegic positions in the organized masses. The Farmer-Labor Party
militants, always active in the unions, have had their work clarified
and intensified. The Socialist Party, the I. W. W., the O. B. U., and the
various single industry dual unions have also been greatly touched by
the new viewpoint. Large numbers of the latters' most active spirits
have come out openly for consolidation with the trade unions. It is
the most complete change of tactics that has ever taken place in any
country in the world in so short a time. Dual unionism has been dealt
a death blow.

The Cause of the Rennaissance

The new movement is crystallizing in the Trade Union Educa-
tional League; but before describing this organization it will be well
for us to consider the origin of the profound and remarkable tactical
reversal and the differences between the old Utopian dual unionism
and the new realistic industrial program:

The repudiation of dual unionism in the United States and Can-
ada was precipitated as a result of the Russian revolution. When the
Communists of the world, shortly after the revolution, organized their

BANKRUPTCY OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT 43

political party, the Third International, one of the first great organ-
izational problems to confront them was that of the trade unions. In
order to succeed in its immense task of overthrowing capitalism gen-
erally, the new International was compelled to have the backing of
the masses. organized industrially. But the difficulty was how to se-
cure this support. Everywhere the trade unions were in the hands
of reactionary leaders, and the question was whether the Commun-
ists should stay in the old unions and launch a bitter struggle to
control them, or withdraw from them, smash them up, and start dual
labor movements in the various countries.

For a time the dualistic conception prevailed, particularly in the
programs for Germany and the United States. But the keen Russian
leaders at the head of the Third International were quick to perceive
the folly of such a course. Zinoviev, Radek, and others began to
combat the separatist tendency and to urge penetration of the trade
unions. Lenin himself was especially militant in this respect. In his
famous booklet. The Infantile Sickness of 'Leftism' in Communism,
he says :

But the German 'Left' Communists commit the same stupid-
ity when, because of the reactionary and counter-revolutionary
heads of the trades unions, they, through some inexplicable mental
process, jump to the conclusion that it is necessary to quit these
organizations altogether! To refuse to work in them! To in-
vent new workingmen's unions ! This is an unpardonable blunder
which results in the Communists rendering the greatest service to
the bourgeoisie ... A greater lack of sense and more harm
to the revolution than this attitude of the 'Left' Communists can-
not be imagined . . . There is no doubt that Messrs. Gompers,
Henderson, Jouhaux, Legien, etc., are very grateful to such 'Left'
revolutionaries who, like the German opposition-in-principle ele-
ments, or as so many among the American revolutionaries in the
Industrial Workers of the World, preach the necessity of quit-
ting reactionary trade unions and refusing to work in them.

Losovsky, head of the Red International of Labor Unions and
also of the General Council of the All-Russian Trade Unions, was
another who inveighed heavily against dual unionism. In his pamphlet.
The International Council of Trade and Industrial Unions, and speak-
ing of the formation of that body, forerunner of the present Red
International of Labor Unions, he says :

All this evidence of the invincibility of the trade union bur-
eaucracy (advanced by the I. W. W. dualists) created a curious
impression. On the one hand these comrades were preparing to

44 BANKRUPTCY OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT

bring about a social revolution in their country — and on the other
hand they speak of Gompers with such holy horror as if to drive
Gompers and the other traitors out of the trade unions was a
much more difficult task than overthrowing the mighty capitalist
class of America ... To leave the trade unions and to set up
small independent unions is an evidence of weakness, it is a policy
of despair and, more than that, it shows lack of faith in the work-
ing class . . . The motto put forth by the Communist Inter-
national, and which is our motto also, is : 'Not the destruction, but
the conquest of the trade unions.'
At the 2nd congress of the Third International, held in Moscow
in 1920, heavy blows were dealt the dual unionists by the realistic
Russian leaders. Radek in particular waged war against them. He
tried, but without much success, to have the American delegation
adopt a trade union policy. The congress finally condemned dualism
in principle. But a definite stand was not taken on the matter until
the congress of 1921. In the year that had passed the problem of
dual unionism had become a burning issue in many countries. It
had to be settled, and the congress handled it without gloves. As a
result the dualists were overwhelmingly defeated and the tactics of
participation in the trade unions was endorsed and adopted. In the
trade union theses outlining the general policy of the Third Inter-
national it says :

During the next epoch the principal task of all Communists
will be to concentrate their energy and perseverance on winning
over to their side the majority of workers in all labor unions.
They must not be discouraged by the present reactionary ten-
dency of the trade unions, but take active part in the struggles of
the unions and win them over to the cause of Communism in
spite of all resistance.

Dealing directly with the industrial program to be applied in
America, the theses say:

Communists must on no account leave the ranks of the re-
actionary American Federation of Labor. On the contrary, they
should get into the old trade unions in order to revolutionize
them.

Following closely after the 3rd congress of the Third International
came the 1st congress of the Red International of Labor Unions. In
that body also the advocates of breaking up the old unions and
starting the labor movement all over again were routed completely.
The general theses on the subject say:

BANKRUPTCY OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT 45

The task of the revolutionary elements in the trade unions
does not consist in wresting from the unions the best and most
class conscious workers in order to create small independent or-
ganizations. Their task should be to revolutionize the unions, to
transform them into a weapon of social revolution by means of
the everyday struggle in favor of all the revolutionary demands
put forth by the workers within the old trade unions ... To
conquer the unions means to conquer the masses, and these can
only be conquered by a systematic campaign of work, setting
against the policy of class collaboration that of our steady line
of revolutionary action. The slogan, "Out of the Trade Unions"
prevents us from conquering the masses for our cause and re-
tards the advance of the social revolution.

The R. I. L. U. program for America says :
The question of creating revolutionary cells and groups within
the American Federation of Labor and the independent unions is
of vital importance. There is no other way by which one could
gain the working mass in America, than to lead a systematic
struggle in the trade unions.
This categoric condemnation of dual unionism by both branches
of the Communist International, political and industrial, produced a
profound effect in America. The left-wing elements who for so many
years had accepted industrial dualism as a self-evident necessity, in
fact, almost as a religion, were literally shocked into a re-valuation
of it. Their eyes were opened all of a sudden to its disastrous conse-
quences. Then they repudiated it and began their present great drive
back to the old trade unions. To the Third International, and partic-
ularly to the Russians at the head of it, is due the credit for breaking
the deadly grip of dual unionism in the American labor movement.

Old Viewpoints Discarded

With the repudiation of dual unionism, the militants have also
cast aside many of the theories they once held regarding the unions
and have adopted new and different conceptions. In the past, blinded
by the glittering dual union Utopia and embittered by organization
chauvinism, they developed many bizarre notions about the trade
unions in order to justify the dualist policy. In the iight of recent
events these theories seem ridiculous. The real meaning of the labor
movement escaped the dual unionists altogether. Besides ascribing
the most extravagant virtues to their Utopian dual organizations, they
lashed the old trade unions with criticisms which, for wildness and
vitriolic sharpness, have never been equalled in any other country.

46 BANKRUPTCY OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT

They looked upon the trade unions as a sort of conspiracy carried
out by the employers against the working class,* as capitalistic or-
ganizations which, yielding no benefits to the workers now and utterly
incapable of evolving into genuine labor unions, had to be ruthlessly
destroyed. The following list of miscellaneous quotations from well-
known militants illustrates typically the long prevailing intense hatred
and contempt for the trade unions:

The American Federation of Labor is not now and never can
become a labor movement. **

The United Mine Workers is a capitalist organization just as
much as the standing army of the United States, t

The 28,000 local unions of the A. F. of L. are 28,000 agencies
of the capitalist class, tt

When it comes to strikebreaking the A. F. of L. has Farley
beaten 1,000 ways. X

'Dual unionists commonly make the charge that the A. F. of L., backed by capi-
talist money, was organized to destroy the Knights of Labor, and then, with charac-
teristic inconsistency, they claim the success of the A. F. of L. as proving the
feasibility of the dual union program. But the fact is the A. F. of L. was not or-
ganized as a rival organization to the K. of L. When the A. F. of L. was founded
in 1881 it had 40,000 members (out of a total of 200,000 trade unionists in the
whole country) whereas the K. of L. at that period had only 20,000 members. Only
for a couple of years, when it was at its peak, did the K. of L. exceed the trade
unions in numerical strength. Generally speaking the trade unions represented the
skilled workers, and the K. of L. the semi-skilled and, unskilled. At first no rivalry
existed between the two movements. They maintained friendly relations until 1884,
when the K. of L. began its rapid growth and hectic career. Needing the skilled
workers in its bitter battles against the employers, the K. of L. embarked upon a
militant campaign to absorb the trade unions. This started the fight. John R. Com-
mons, iri his History of Labor in the United States, P. 386-411, says: "The conflict
was held in abeyance during the early eighties. The trade unions were by far the
strongest organisations in the field (Italics ours) and they scented no particular
danger when here and there the Knights formed an assembly either contiguous to
the sphere of a trade union or even encroaching upon it." But with the great
expansion of the Knights, beginning about 1884, the jurisdictional war began in
earnest. "In nearly every instance the Knights were the aggressors." Finally, at
their General Assembly in 1886, the Knights declared war against the trade unions.
This aroused the latter to self-defense. They opened peace negotiations with the
K. of L., but as these failed, "Thereupon the Federation declared war upon the
Knights and announced the decision to carry hostilities into the enemy's territory."
In view of these, facts it is idle to assert that the A. F. of L. was a capitalist con-
spiracy, or even a dual union, against the Knights of Labor.

**Vincent St. John, in speeches.

tjames P. Thompson, Everett, Wash, 1911 convention of International Union
of shingle Weavers.

ttWm. D. Haywood, in speeches.

t James P. Thompson, Everett, Wash., 1911.

BANKRUPTCY OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT 47

The American Federation of Labor is neither American, nor a
federation, nor of labor. *

There is no case in the history of bygone organization in the
labor movement where existing organizations have changed to
meet new conditions. ••

The first duty of every revolutionist is to destroy the A. F.
of L. There can be no revolutionary organization so long as it
exists.t

We simply have to go at them (the trade unions) and smash
them from top to bottom, tt
I would cut off my right arm rather than join the A. F. of L. t

We don't want to save the Federation any more than to save
the nation ; we aim at destroying it.tt

The A. F. of L. never won a strike, the I. W. W. never lost
one. §

If any officer of a pure and simple trade or labor organization
applies for membership in the Socialist Labor Party he shall be
rejected. §§

It has been said that this convention was to form an organiza-
tion rival to the A. F. of L. This is a mistake. We are here for
the purpose of forming a labor organization. IF

This wornout system (trade unionism) offers no promise of
improvement and adaptation. There is no silver lining to the
clouds of darkness and despair settling down upon the world of
labor. IH

It might as well be said if the fine energy exhibited by the
I. W. W. were put into the Catholic Church (instead of the trade
unions) that the result would* be the workers' control of in-
dustry, fl
Through the foregoing intensely hostile criticisms, which truly
reflect the viewpoint held generally by rebels for many years regard-

*Danitl DeLeon, 1905 I. VV. W. convention.

••Vincent St. John, Why the A. F. of L. Cannot Become an Industrial Union.

tjoseph J. Ettor, Samuel Gompers Smascherato.

ttTom Hickey, cited by Brissenden, History of the I. W. W., P. 49.

JYVm. D. Haywood.

ttjoseph J. Ettor, cited by Brissenden, History of the I. W. W., P. 303.

SJames P. Thompson, in speeches.

|§Socialist Labor Party convention, 1900.

HWm. D. Haywood, 1905 I. W. W. convention.

^Manifesto °f conference forming I. W. W., 1905.

ifVVm. D. Haywood, International Socialist Rcziew, March, 1914.

48 BANKRUPTCY OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT

ing the trade unions, run the conceptions that the trade unions are
essentially capitalistic in nature, and that they cannot develop into
bona fide revolutionary organizations. But the militants of today,
since their great change in opinion and tactics, no longer accept these
far-fetched and unjustifiable conclusions. They see the trade unions
for what they really are, primitive but genuine attempts of an ignor-
ant working class to organize and fight the exploiters that are harass-
ing it. If the organizations are afflicted by all sorts of capitalist ideas
and notions it is because the workers as a whole suffer from them
also. Timid and muddled trade unions are a logical throwoff of a
timid and muddled working class. But as the workers gradually be-
come educated, and especially as a more militant and intelligent ele-
ment achieves leadership among them, the trade unions will constantly
take on higher forms and a more advanced psychology, until finally
they develop into scientifically constructed, class conscious weapons
in the revolutionary struggle.

In the era just past the militants made much of the fact that the
trade unions demanded only "a fair day's pay for a fair day's work,"
claiming this slogan showed conclusively that they were wedded to
the perpetuation of the capitalist system. It was one of the prime
reasons why the Socialists did not invade the A. F. of L., depose the
Gompers regime, and change the whole face of the labor movement
twenty years ago. But the militants are no longer deceived by this
and similar slogans. They see that little or no attention is paid to
such doctrines in real practice. The unions know no such thing as
"a fair day's pay for a fair day's work." Consciously or unconsciously,
they have used that device as camouflage to conceal from the capital-
ist enemy the aggressive character of their movement. In reality there
is no set limit to their demands. Notwithstanding the hamstringing
effects of their conservative bureaucracy, and of their own ignorance
and weak organization, the unions constantly improve working con-
ditions and screw up wages as much as they can. Their unwavering
method is to sieze from the exploiter all they have the understanding
and power to take. This is a distinctly revolutionary proceeding. And
the modern militant knows that, so far as the industrial part of the
class struggle is concerned, his task is to broaden, deepen, clarify, and
hasten this natural revolutionary trade union tendency until it culmi-
nates in the final abolition of capitalism.

BANKRUPTCY OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT 49

Industrial Unionism a Growth

Especially 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. As
against the old idea that the inevitable industrial unions have to be
created out of the whole cloth, by fiat as it were, the new movement
holds that they are coming as a result of an evolutionary process, by
a constant building-up, re-organization, and consolidation of the prim-
itive craft unions. This conception is borne out by world-wide labor
history.

In the development of industrial unionism out of the original un-
organized condition of the working class the labor movement passes
through three distinct phases, which may be roughly designated as
isolation, federation, and amalgamation. In the beginning the workers
almost always organize by crafts. These primitive unions, knowing
little or nothing of broad class interests, fight along in a desultory
battle, each one for itself. This is the period of isolation, or pure and
simple craft unionism. But after a greater or lesser period it finally
ends: the crafts in the various industries, seeing that the employers
play their organizations against each other and thus defeat all of
them, learn something of their common interests and set up alliances
among themselves along the lines of their respective industries. This
brings them into the second, or federation, stage of development.
Their evolution goes right on : for the same forces that necessitated
the craft unions federating eventually compel them to consolidate
these federations into actual industrial unions. Thus they arrive at
the final stage of amalgamation. The resultant industrial unions then
pass through a similar process of integration. First they fight alone,
then they strike up federations with allied industries, and finally they
amalgamate with them. Industrial unionism comes, not as a new
system suddenly applied to the labor movement, but as the culmina-
tion of a long and elaborate evolution from the simple craft unions
to the complex organizations necessary for the modern struggle.

Practically all the great industrial unions in the world have been
built by this evolutionary process. In England, the National Union
of Railwaymen, the Amalgamated Engineering Union, the Miners'
Federation, and the Transport and General Workers' Union are
amalgamations of many craft and district unions. In Germany, the

50 BANKRUPTCY OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT

Metal Workers' Union, the Building Workers' Federation, etc., etc.,
were built up the same way from original craft unions. These big
organizations, and dozens more in other countries, have all passed
through the three stages of isolation, federation, and amalgamation.
That is the normal mode of labor union progress. And despite the
efforts of the dualists to prove them static and unchangeable, Amer-
ican trade unions are travelling the same evolutionary route that the
foreign unions have taken, although very much slower and more la-
boriously. At present they are quite generally in the federation stage
of development. That is the meaning of the many alliances among
them — the railroad federations, the printing, metal, building, and other
trades councils — that exist in the various industries. The task of the
militants is to develop the trade unions into the next stage, amalgama-
tion ; to speed on the present natural evolution until these bodies cul-
minate in industrial unions.

The Militants in the Masses

The new movement now crystallizing in the Trade Union Educa-
tional League also differs widely in tactical conceptions from those
of the dualists. The essence of the program of the latter was to set
up labor unions upon the basis of their several political and industrial
theories and then to try to educate a backward working class into
joining them. This was a violation of the first principle of labor
unionism. The workers organize in the industrial field not because
they hold certain elaborate social beliefs jointly, but because through
united action they can protect their common economic interests. La-
bor unions are built upon the solid rock of the material welfare cf
the workers, not upon their acceptance of stated political opinions.
In the very nature of things labor unions at present must consist of
the many sects and factions that go to make up the working class,
Republicans, Democrats, Socialists, Communists, Anarchists, Syndical-
ists, Catholics, Protestants, etc., etc. The natural result of the dual-
ists' attempt to organize labor unions around their theories was a
whole crop of new labor movements. As fast as new conceptions,
political and industrial, developed, their proponents organized separate
labor unions to give expression to them. In some industries there
were as many as five of these dual movements, each representing a
different tendency and each engaged in the hopeless task of con-
verting the masses to its particular point of view. Dual union-
ism, with is program of labor organization along the lines of

BANKRUPTCY OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT 51

fine-spun theory, not only devitalized the trade unions by robbing
them of their best blood, but it also degenerated the revolutionary
and progressive movement into a series of detached sects, out of touch
with the masses and the real struggle and running off to all sorts of
wild theories and impractical programs.

But the militants in the Trade Union Educational League rigidly
eschew this sectarian policy. Their program is the very reverse, to
keep the militants in the organized masses at all costs. Instead of
setting up intellectual and organizational barriers and then coaxing
the worker to break through them, they carry their propaganda right
into the very heart of the workers' organizations and struggles. The
Russian revolution has taught them that the great masses will prob-
ably never become clear-headedly revolutionary, but that they will
follow the lead of an organized conscious minority that does know the
way. The League militants conceive the question of labor organiza-
tion to be largely one of leadership, and they aim to secure the back-
ing of the mass of organized workers by taking the lead in all their
battles, by showing in the crucible of the class struggle that their
theories, tactics, and organization forms are the best for the labor
movement. Thus will be broken the grip of the revolutionary bur-
eaucracy who now stultify and paralyse the labor unions, and the con-
trol of these organizations thereby gradually pass into the hands of
the militants who will stimulate and develop them.

In the past the militants have voluntarily isolated themselves
from the organized masses, which was very convenient indeed for the
labor bureaucrats. But now these active spirits fight desperately
against such isolation. They realize fully that their place is in the
big trade unions. And when the controlling reactionaries, who in-
stinctively know that the rebels are dangerous to them only if in the
unions, expel individuals and local unions, the latter must fight their
way back in again. Such a policy however, does not mein that the old
organizations must be maintained at any price. In extreme cases se-
cession movements may be unavoidable through the reactionaries' re-
fusing to obey the mandates of the rank and file. But when such splits
occur the militants must have so maneuvrcd as to keep the mass of
the membership on their side. Otherwise disaster will come upon
them and the labor movement. The winning combination for the
rebel movement, the typical situation that the Trade Union Educa-
tional League is trying to create everywhere, is for the militants to
function aggressively as a highly-organized minority in the midst of

52 BANKRUPTCY OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT

the great unconscious trade union mass. The heart of the League's
tactical program is that under no circumstances shall the militants
allow themselves to become detached from the unionized section of
the working class. "Keep the militants in the organized mass," is the
slogan of the new revolutionary movement.

The Amalgamated Clothing Workers

An excellent illustration of the effectiveness of the "keep the mil-
itants in the organized mass" method advocated by the Trade Union
Educational League was the birth of the Amalgamated Clothing
"Workers of America. Characteristic of their general misinterpreta-
tion of labor history in favor of their policy, the dual unionists have
cited this powerful independent union time and again as the one con-
vincing proof of the correctness of the dual union program, and few
indeed have contradicted them. All of which qualifies the Amalga-
mated so much the better to show the difference in principle and re-
sults between the old and the new methods of the militants.

The Amalgamated Clothing Workers was not built by dual union
methods. It developed out of the work of an organized minority
within the old United Garment Workers. The traditional way of dual
unionism and the very essence of its program, is for the handful of
militants to devise ideal unions, set them up in competition with the
old trade unions, and to engage with the latter in an open struggle
for control of the industry, a process which almost always results in
simply stripping the old unions of their militants and leaving those
organizations in the hands of the reactionaries. But nothing like that
occurred in the case of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers. The
militants in the men's ready-made clothing industry had no dual un-
ion. * They accepted as their organization the United Garment Work-
ers of America, and they planned to make it into a virile fighting
union capable of playing a worthy part in the class struggle. To this
end they organized themselves, in harmony with League principles, to
defeat the controlling reactionaries and to make their own policies
prevail.

The struggle between the progressives and the reactionaries in
the United Garment Workers went on for a number of years. The
rebel elements, utilizing every mistake or crime of the officialdom,

*The needle trades generally have been unusually free from dual unionism, a fact
which no doubt has had a great deal to do with the advanced types of organization
prevailing in that industry.

BANKRUPTCY OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT 53

gradually extended their organization and influence with the rank and
file. The sell-out by Rickert in the great Chicago strike of 1910
strengthened their grip. Then came the bitter New York strike of
1913, with its record of treason by the old officials. This was the final
blow. On the basis of the resultant discontent the militants, now or-
ganized nationally through a rank and file committee (exactly the
same as the League is at present setting up in the various industries)
elected an overwhelming majority of delegates to the approaching
1914 convention in Nashville.

This brought the situation to a crisis. The militants had the rank
and file behind them, but Rickert, in a desperate attempt to save
himself, ruled out enough of their delegates to leave him in control.
At this all the rebel delegates withdrew and re-organized themselves
into another convention. Then they gave an eloquent proof that they
were not dual unionists. Even after Rickert's outrage they refused
to secede, but claimed to be the genuine United Garment Workers.
It was only when the A. F. of L. convention, shortly afterward, denied
this claim and recognized Rickert that they launched out as an inde-
pendent union.

To call such a proceeding dual unionism is nonsense. It had ab-
solutely nothing in common with the customary dual union policy of
sucking the militants out of the old unions. The very heart of the
campaign cited, and the reason it succeeded, was that it kept the mili-
tants in the organized mass and united them there so that they could
beat the old machine. The split at Nashville was a minor phase. No
matter whether it took place or not, the militants had won the rank
and file. Regardless of Rickert's antics, the organized men's clothing
workers had definitely accepted the leadership of the men who later
made their organization such a brilliant success. Instead of being an
endorsement of dual unionism, the rise, of the Amalgamated Clothing
Workers is a striking justification of the "stay with the organized
masses" policy advocated by the Trade Union Educational League.

54 BANKRUPTCY OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT

*

CHAPTER V.

The Trade Union Educational League

The new movement of militants working within the trade unions
is centering around the Trade Union Educational League. This body
is the descendant of two forerunners, the Syndicalist League of North
America and the International Trade Union Educational League. The
first of these was organized in 1912. As its name indicates it was Syn-
dicalist in tendency, and it was largely influenced by the French la-
bor movement, then in its glory. The S. L. of N. A, had the same
general working principles as the present T. U. E. L. It flatly op-
posed dual organization and advocated the organization of revolu-
tionary nuclei in the mass unions. For a time it made quite a stir,
securing a grip in the labor movements of many cities. In Kansas
City in particular the Central Labor Council fell into the hands of the
rebel elements, who actually drove the leading labor fakers out of
the city. The organization had four journals : The Syndicalist of Chi-
cago, The Unionist of St. Louis, The 1 oiler of Kansas City, and The
International of San Diego. A feature of the movement was an ex-
tended trip through the United States by Tom Mann, who endorsed
its program wholeheartedly. Another was an attempt of the Emma
Goldman Anarchist group of New York to steal the thunder of the
movement by launching a national Syndicalist league of their own.
But the Syndicalist League of North America was born before its
time. The rebel elements generally were still too much infatuated
with dual unionism to accept its program. Particularly was this true
because just about that time the I. W. W. made a great show of vital-
ity, carrying on big strikes in Lawrence, Akron, Paterson, Little Falls,
etc., etc. After about two years' existence the S. L. of N. A. died.

The next effort to organize the radicals within the mass unions
took place in 1916, when the International Trade Union Educational
League was founded. This body set up a few groups here and there,
but it found a poor soil to work in. The war situation was at hand
and the rebels, still badly afflicted with dualism, would have nothing
to do with the ultra-patriotic trade unions. Hence it never acquired
even as much vigor and influence as the earlier Syndicalist League of
North America. It expired in 1917.

BANKRUPTCY OF THE 1 \li()K MOVEMENT 55

The present Trade Union Educational League was organized in
Chicago in November, 1920. For about a year it lingered along more
dead than alive, due as usual to the dualistic attitude of the militants
generally. But in the latter part of 1921, after the Third International
and the Red International of Labor Unions had condemned dual un-
ionism so categorically and advocated the organization of nuclei with-
in the mass unions, it took on sudden vigor and importance. With
the hard shell of dualism broken, the militants, particularly those in
the extreme left wing, came with a surprising change of front to see
in it exactly the type of organization they needed. One after another,
the Communist Party, the Workers' Party, the Proletarian Party, and
the United Toilers went on record officially in favor of its general
policy. Hence the League rapidly extended its organization and sphere
of influence. In the early part of 1922 it put on a drive, sending out
an elaborate series of circular letters to hundreds of militants (later
blasted by Mr. Gompers as the "1,000 secret agents" seeking to de-
stroy American civilization) in that many towns, calling upon them
to organize groups of rebel unionists in their respective localities. As
a result branches of the League were set up in all the principal un-
ions and industrial centers of the United States and Canada. In March,
1922, The Labor Herald, monthly official organ of the League, was
launched.

Program ok thk League

The working theory of the Trade Union Educational League is
the establishment of a left block of all the revolutionary and pro-
gressive elements in the trade unions, as against the autocratic ma-
chine of the reactionary bureaucracy. Thus, so that these various
elements of the different political persuasions can co-operate together,
the policy of the organization must be essentially industrial in char-
acter. Except for condemning the fatal Gompers political policy and
advocating the general proposition of independent working class
political action, the League leaves political questions to the several
parties. Its work is primarily in the industrial field.

At its first National Conference, held in Chicago, August 26-27,
1922, the League laid out a broad revolutionary industrial policy, upon
the basis of which it is uniting the militants and carrying on its edu-
cational work in the unions. Of this program the principal planks
are: (1) abolition of capitalism and establishment of a workers' re-
public, (2) repudiation of the policy of class collaboration and adop-

56 BANKRUPTCY OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT

tion of the principle of class struggle, (3) affiliation of the American
labor movement to the Red International of Labor Unions, (4) whole-
hearted support of the Russian revolution as "the supreme achieve-
ment of the world's working class," (5) industrial unionism, (6) com-
bating of dual unionism, (7) shop delegate system in the unions, (8)
independent working class political action.

In a statement of its program and principles issued in February,
1922, the aims of the League are stated as follows :

The Trade Union Educational League proposes to develop the
trade unions from their present antiquated and stagnant condition
into modern, powerful labor organizations, capable of waging suc-
cessful warfare against Capital. To this end it is working to re-
vamp and remodel from top to bottom their theories, tactics,
structure, and leadership. Instead of advocating the prevailing
shameful and demoralizing nonsense about harmonizing the in-
terests of Capital and Labor, it is firing the workers' imagination
and releasing their wonderful idealism and energy by propagating
the inspiring goal of the abolition of capitalism and the establish-
ment of a workers' republic. The League aggressively favors or-
ganization by industry instead of by craft. Although the craft
form of union served a useful purpose in the early days of capital-
ism, it is now entirely out of date. In the face of the great con-
solidations of the employers the workers must also close up their
ranks or be crushed. The multitude of craft unions must be amal-
gamated into a series of industrial unions — one each for the metal
trades, railroad trades, clothing trades, building trades, etc. — even
as they have been in other countries The League also aims to put
the workers of America in co-operation with the fighting trade
unionists of the rest of the world. It is flatly opposed to our pres-
ent pitiful policy of isolation, and it advocates affiliation to the
militant international trade union movement, known as the Red
International of Labor Unions. The League is campaigning against
the reactionaries, incompetents, and crooks who occupy strategic
positions in many of our organizations. It is striving to replace
them with militants, with men and women unionists who look
upon the labor movement not as a means for making an easy liv-
ing, but as an instrument for the achievement of working class
emancipation. In other words, the League is working in every di-
rection necessary to put life and spirit and power into the trade
union movement.

Organization of the League
The Trade Union Educational League is what its name implies,

BANKRUPTCY OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT 57

purely an educational organization. It carries on an aggressive cam-
paign of instruction and stimulation in every stage and phase of the
labor movement. It is in no sense a dual union. It is an auxiliary of
the labor unions proper, not a substitute for them. It collects no dues
or per capita tax, nor does it accept the affiliation of any labor or-
ganization whatsoever. It issues no membership cards or charters.
Those wishing to become members must fulfill the following condi-
tions: (1) belong to a recognized trade union,* (2) subscribe to
The Laror Herald, official organ of the League, (3) satisfy a local
membership committee that they accept the general program of the
League. The revenues of the organization are derived from the sale
of The Labor Herald and pamphlets, collections at meetings, and dona-
tions of members and sympathizers to the Sustaining Fund. The
League proposes to hold national conferences yearly. Between these
conferences the organization is directed by the National Committee,
at present consisting of five members, but which will finally be ex-
tended to fifteen, including a Secretary-Treasurer, and fourteen sec-
retaries of the National Industrial Sections of the League, as follows :
Amusement Trades, Building Trades, Clothing Trades, Food Trades,
General Transport Trades, Lumber Trades, Metal Trades, Mining
Trades, Miscellaneous Trades, Printing Trades, Public Service Trades,
Railroad Trades, Textile Trades, and Local General Groups.

The organization plan of the Trade Union Educational League is
to follow with its militant groupings all the ramifications of the labor
union movement. To this end it sets up its educational organizations
in all localities, crafts, and industries. The local General Groups are
made up of militants from all trades. Their function is to carry on
the local work generally. They are sub-divided into Local Industrial
Sections, one for each broad industry. Then there are state organiza-
tions to correspond to the State Federations of Labor. These local
and state groups are in turn being combined into four districts, Can-
ada, Eastern States, Central States, and Western States.

A most important part of the League are the National Industrial
Sections. These are being organized in all the big industries, as spec-
ified above. They are each headed by a National Committee, selected
either by correspondense or at national conferences, and representing

#By "recognized" unions are meant those organizations, independent and A. 1 .
of L. alike, which in the judgment of the League can be adapted to amalgamation.
Some, particularly the universal dual unions claiming rights over all industries, will
have to be openly opposed as impossible to link up with the general labor movement.

58 BANKRUPTCY OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT

all crafts, A. F. of L. and independent, in their respective spheres.
These National Committees map out educational programs for their
whole industries and create Local Industrial Sections to carry them
into the local unions everywhere. The effect is that even in an in-
dustry with 20 or 30 craft unions the militants function on an indus-
trial basis. No matter whether it is a rebel section hand in San
Diego, California, or a militant engineer in Portland, Maine, all rail-
road members of the League are working upon a common industrial
program and seeking in their many organizations to make it prevail.
In the amalgamation movement, for example, with the militants in
the several craft unions of a given industry definitely agreed upon
creating an industrial union and working in unity to break down the
walls between their respective organizations so that all may be com-
bined into one body, the get-together effect is irresistable. Gompers
and all his reactionary henchmen will never be able to withstand it.

The League at Work

Although the League has been active but a few months and has
hardly made a start at creating its machinery, and notwithstanding
the fact that the militants, because of their long connection with dual
unionism, have but slight prestige in the trade unions and know very
little about how to work effectively in them, nevertheless the organ-
ization has made wonderful headway. The workers are responding
to its efforts in a manner which is a delight to the militants and the
despair of the reactionaries. Already the League has demonstrated
beyond question that the rank and file of Labor are ready for a rad-
ical program of action.

In advocating the various planks of its platform the League has
developed a series of movements within the trade unions, all of which
have shown a surprising vitality. An important one was the demand
for a general strike of all workers throughout the country as a pro-
test against the Daugherty injunction and other tyrannies of the em-
ployers. This movement was initiated in Omaha when League mili-
tants introduced the general strike resolution into the Central Labor
Council. The resolution was adopted and ordered sent to all central
bodies, with the result that hundreds of organizations endorsed it.
Mr. Gompers himself stated publicly that he had 200 demands for
nation-wide action and that never in the history of the labor move-
ment had there been such a wide-spread sentiment for a general
strike. The educational effect of the movement was great.

BANKRUPTCY OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT 59

A large body of sentiment has also been created in favor of affili-
ation to the Red International of Labor Unions. Handreds of local
unions and dozens of central labor councils have endorsed the propo-
sition. The Detroit and Seattle central bodies have sent delegates to
Moscow, and District No. 26, United Mine Workers, has voted to
affiliate. In the prevailing strike of railroad shopmen and miners the
League has also taken an active part, its speakers encouraging and
assisting the workers everywhere. In the Miners' Union the League
is particularly effective. At present it is putting up progressive tick-
ets, with excellent chances for victory, in many districts and sub-
districts which have been used for years as pawns by the corrupt in-
ternational administrations. A great service was the League's check-
ing of the outburst of dual union sentiment that developed through
the brutal expulsion of Alexander Howat and the Kansas District.
A year before such an outrage would have surely split the Miners'
Union. But as it was, the League, through its constant hammering
against secessionist^ had been able to drive home to the rebels some
understanding of the disaster of dualism, and aided by the splendid,
common-sense attitude of Howat, was able to prevent them from
organizing breakaway movements. At least two districts were held
in the U. M. W. A. directly through the League's efforts and serious
splits were avoided in many more. This work of solidarity was a
great achievement for the League and the labor movement at large.
It probably saved the whole coal miners' organization; for had a bad
break occurred over the Howat case, and it would have done so with-
out the League's influence, the union never could have weathered the
great storm then about to descend upon it, the national general strike
of 1922.

But the issue with which the League has scored its greatest suc-
cess is that of industrial unionism through amalgamation. This move-
ment to combine all the craft unions into a series of industrial organ-
izations it as present sweeping the country like a prairie fire. The
workers realize that the death knell of craft unionism has sounded
and that the way to a higher form of organization lies through amal-
gamation. Men and organizations, who a year ago were entirely
untouched by industrial union ideas, are now lining up for the project
enthusiastically and in wholesale fashion. The "old guard'' of the trade
union bureaucracy are alarmed as never before in their experience.
The amalgamation movement proper got under way in the latter
part of March, 1922, when the Chicago Federation of Labor adopted

60 BANKRUPTCY OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT

its now famous resolution calling for the consolidation of all the craft
unions into industrial unions. Led by Mr. Gompers himself, the re-
actionaries declared war against the movement. But to no avail,
amalgamation sentiment ran on like a flood everywhere. Since then
(this is being written in October, 1922) thousands of local unions,
scores of central labor councils, and five international unions, * Rail-
way Clerks, Maintenance of Way, Butcher Workmen, Fire Fighters,
and Amalgamated Food Workers, have adopted and endorsed general
amalgamation projects. The State Federations of labor have been par-
ticularly responsive. During the past four months thirteen of them
have acted upon the proposition and in eleven instances, viz. : Minne-
sota, Washington, Utah, Colorado, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Michigan,
Indiana, Oregon, South Dakota, and Ohio, the amalgamationists won
out overwhelmingly in spite of desperate resistance from the reaction-
aries. And in the two failures, California and Illinois, the craft union-
ists secured the victory only by narrow margins. The movement for
solidarity is irresistible.

A high point in the campaign was the Detroit convention of the
Maintenance of Way, when the 1,500 delegates not only endorsed
amalgamation on five separate occasions, but they also cleaned out
19 of 21 of their general officials, including the President, Grable.
Even the independent unions have been deeply affected by the amal-
gamation movement. A year ago the whole tendency was for them
to split and split again, but now they are exhibiting strong get-
together movements. In the boot and shoe and textile industries
amalgamations of the independents are now under way, and further
consolidations may be looked for in the near future. The amalgama-
tion campaign, now sweeping victoriously onward, will culminate in-
evitably in a profound re-organization of the labor movement. It is
a veritable triumph for industrial unionism, and the Trade Union
Educational League is the heart of it all.

In Conclusion

The American labor movement is bankrupt. With its reactionary
bureaucracy and antiquated political and industrial policies and organ-
izatien, it is altogether unfit to cope with the alert, highly-organized
capitalist class. Politically it has long been a cipher, and now it is in

*At its May, 1922, convention the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America
also reiterated more strongly than ever its demand for amalgamation of all the
unions in the clothing industry.

BANKRUPTCY OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT 61

grave danger of extinction industrially also. During the recent past
the capitalist class has discovered a new aggressiveness and developed
a powerful organization. It is no longer the same class which, before
the war, was semi-tolerant of trade unionism. Now it is determined
to root out every vestige of Organized Labor. The "open shop" em-
ployers have dealt the unions shattering blows in practically every
industry, including printing, building, meat packing, steel, railroad,
general transport, coal and mining, etc. Consequently the entire trade
union movement has suffered disastrously. During the last three
years it has lost fully 50% of its entire membership. The whole fabric
of Organized Labor is bleeding. The labor movement is in a most
critical state. So critical, in fact, that it will never be able to recover
unless it quickly and radically changes its policies. The American
working class is now imminently confronted with the tragic menace
of having its trade union movement obliterated.

There are still some revolutionaries, unfortunately, who would
welcome the elimination of the old craft unions, believing that with
them out of the way a new and better movement would speedily
take their place. But this is a fatal delusion. We may absolutely
depend upon it that should the capitalists, in their great "open shop"
drive, succeed in breaking the backbone of the trade union movement
they would make all labor organization illegal and repress it with an
iron hand. American labor would be reduced to the status of Russian
Labor in Czarist days; it would be forced to the expedient of setting
up revolutionary nuclei in the industries in preparation for some
favorable opportunity when the masses could be stirred to action. In-
deed, even as it is, this system will doubtless have to be applied in
some of our industries if they are ever to be organized. The mass
trade unions are the only protection for the workers' right to organ-
ize; the only bulwark against a general flood of capitalist tyranny.
They must be defended and strengthened at all costs.

In this grave crisis of the labor movement no relief may be ex-
pected from the trade union bureaucrats in high official place. With
the rarest of exceptions, they are dominated entirely by the intellectu-
ally dead Gompers. Apparently they would slavishly follow him over
the precipice to destruction. They are hopelessly self-lashed to the
chariot of conservatism. Even now, in this hour of need, they resist
with desperation the mildest reforms in the movement's policies and
structure. The further the capitalists push them back the more timid
and reactionary they become. They are mentally frozen over solid.

62 BANKRUPTCY OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT

If the labor movement is to be saved the regenerating force must come
from the organized rank and file militants. They must surge up from
the bottom and compel the static leadership into vigorous, intelligent
action, or remove it drastically.

It is fortunate, indeed, that just in this critical situation, when
their services are so badly needed, the militants are at last freeing
themselves from the dual unionism which has cursed them and the
whole labor movement for a generation by keeping the reactionary
elements in power. They are organizing for action in the Trade Union
Educational League, and they are finding the American working class,
naturally militant and aggressive, more than eager to accept their
program. Now the key to the situation is for the revolutionaries and
progressives generally to rally around the League and to carry on a
vigorous campaign for its policies of industrial unionism through
amalgamation, independent workers' political action, affiliation with
the Red International of Labor Unions, and all the rest. If this is
done it will not be long until the death clutch of the Gompers bur-
eaucracy is broken and the American labor movement, undergoing a
profound renaissance, takes its place where it properly belongs, in the
vanguard of the world's workers.

THE END

Militants!

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and Labor's progress generally.

D

This pamphlet should be in the hands of
every worker.

D

Every local union should order copies for its
entire membership. See that this is done.

D

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Be our representative in your town.

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