It is doubtful if the older and wiser among the union chieftains would have forced the issue at the time they did had they been left to their own decisions. But they were not. They had the radical element to reckon with.
It is perhaps unnecessary to explain that organized labor in the United States is divided into two parts: On the one hand, there is the American Federation of Labor, headed by Samuel Gompers, and including the great majority of unionized workers. This organization recognizes property rights and is loyal to the principles of American government. But its leaders, being only human, are apparently determined to bring all industry under its sway and are impatient of the ideas of those workers who prefer to stand on their own feet.
On the other hand, there is a smaller organization, the Industrial Workers of the World, better known as the I. W. W. or, sometimes, the “I Won’t Works.” “The wobblies,” as they prefer to call themselves, are as bitterly opposed to the principles of the larger Federation as they are to capital. Chief among their tenets is the Marxian fallacy that labor produces all and capital nothing and that, therefore, capital must be abolished.
Some years ago there arose to prominence in the councils of the I. W. W. one William Z. Foster, a man of unquestioned ability but of principles dangerous and subversive to government. These principles he set forth in a book on “Syndicalism,” a book which constitutes one of the most extreme examples of anarchistical literature. Foster characterizes the wage system as “the most brazen and gigantic robbery ever perpetrated since the world began.”
Although advocating the most drastic measures for the overthrow of capital, Foster was apparently sufficiently astute to realize that a vast majority of the American people, and even of organized labor, would not and could not accept his views, and that the I. W. W. which did was not a powerful enough weapon with which to achieve his ends.
He believed, however, and events proved that he was not mistaken, that the American Federation of Labor could be inoculated with radicalism if the poison were spread from the inside. He therefore publicly advocated what he described as the process of “boring from within,” urging that the radicals join the more conservative Federation and, once inside that body, disseminate their vicious doctrines from within.
Not long after this we find Foster a member of the Federation, ostensibly converted from his I. W. W. leanings, enjoying the confidence of Gompers and his co-workers, and high in their councils. His “boring” process had met with eminent success.
Meanwhile, the World War was approaching its end, leaving in its wake a world-wide wave of industrial unrest. Russia was being misgoverned by its most radical element, who held their power in the midst of a sea of blood. Communistic doctrines were being preached, openly or sub rosa, in every land and clime. American labor was restless, and the foreign element, particularly, showed that it had been infected with the fever of anarchism that was rampant in parts of Europe. The time had come for the radicals to strike, for the “boring-from-within” process to bear fruit.
In the early summer of 1918, only a few months before the war ended, the American Federation of Labor held its annual convention at St. Paul, Minn., and there passed a resolution offered by Foster for the organization of the steel industry. A committee was appointed to take charge of the work and the converted radical, Foster, was made a member of this committee.
For a full year the committee’s work was carried on quietly. At the next annual convention of the Federation, this time at Atlantic City, N. J., John Fitzpatrick, one of Foster’s associates, reporting to the Federation, claimed that 100,000 steel workers had affiliated themselves with one or other of the unions belonging to the Federation.