Trade Unions in America/What the Left Wing Has Accomplished
What the Left Wing Has
Accomplished.
By EARL R. BROWDER
IN drawing up a balance sheet for the first three years of organized activity of the left wing of the American trade unions, represented by the Trade Union Educational League, we cannot content ourselves with a bare recital of the various battles, lost and won, nor even pay much attention to separate struggles except as they illustrate a point or mark a new turn of events. What we want most of all, is some definite conception of what the situation in the trade union movement was three years ago, what were the conditions under which it worked for the past three years, what part was played by the reactionary officialdom and by the left wing in the events of that period, and where we are at today.
Economic Conditions of the Period
Conditions of industry were prosperous (using the word in the economic sense of comparatively high production and brisk movement of commodities and not as indicating the actual condition of the workers) during most of the three years. The year 1922, when the T. U. E. L. began its wide-spread activity, was the year of recovery from the 1920–21 depression; 1923 was the peak year of the boom; 1924 witnessed a decided downward trend but, on the average, kept very close to the previous year.
It would be a mistake, however, to draw the conventional conclusions regarding the condition of the labor movement on the basis of the general industrial prosperity. It is usual to look for organizational extensions of the trade unions, and some sort of progress in the way of higher wages and better working conditions, during periods of prosperity; while the times of industrial depression have ordinarily been marked by stagnation or decline in the trade union movement. This has not been the case during the period with which we are dealing.
During the three years the American Federation of Labor lost more than a million members, declining from around 4,000,000 to 2,865,979; unions independent of the A, F. of L. followed much the same course.
Wages advanced slightly during the first part of the period, but declined in the latter part, wiping out the gains. Exceptions to this are more than compensated for in the industries where wages were hardest hit.
Working conditions declined sharply in this period. While some improvement is noted, for example, in the steel industry due to the partial introduction of the 8-hour day, in others the gains of years of organization and effort were wiped out. Thus in the railroad shops, the unions have been almost destroyed by the unsuccessful strike of 1922, wages have declined, working rules have been altered against the interests of the workers. In the mining industry, the three-year agreement signed by the union had only the effect of restraining strike action by the miners, but has not prevented the mine owners from wiping out the working rules that were supposed to protect the miners. Accumulations of grievances of this kind have been so great that, in the anthracite fields, there have been great "outlaw" strikes.
The economic consequences of the period, in their effect upon the working class, may be illustrated in the following brief items:
| Production of commodities | Index number |
| October, 1923 | 123 |
| October, 1924 | 122 |
| Number of workers employed | |
| October, 1923 | 92 |
| October, 1924 | 81 |
(Figures of the U. S. Dept. of Labor, "Review of Current Business.")
In short, ten per cent less workers have been employed, but the intensity of their exploitation has been increased so that they produce approximately the same as the number formerly employed. At the same time the total amount of wages paid has decreased sharply.
Officials Betrayed the Labor Movement.
The explanation of this unexampled collapse of the labor movement, its complete failure to protect the gains of past years altho conditions were exceptionally favorable for struggle, lies in the systematic betrayal of the labor organizations by the officials.
This betrayal is not an accidental thing, a matter of the personal corruption of individuals, but arises out of the very life and material conditions of the working class and their organizations, which developed this officialdom into a special class. During the period of expansion of American capitalism, this officialdom found that it could obtain concessions of a minor nature from the employers by entering into close collaboration with them. These concessions to the workers, in the way of slightly higher wages out of the abundant riches flowing from the tremendous natural resources of America under the highly developed industry, were sufficient to keep the labor officials in power; while they were made the basis for establishing a tradition of immensely high salaries for these same officials from the unions. Added to their high salaries was the graft that unprincipled officials could extort from the employers. But more important than all was the opportunities given to the labor officials to make money "on the side" thru speculation, etc., which came from their association with the employers. It is much simpler to give a tip on the stock market than to give a bribe, as the employers soon learned. The net result of all these influences, the effect of which was multiplied tenfold during the war period, was to produce in the officialdom of the labor movement of America a definite sub-class of the bourgeoisie, a bureaucracy which had become a distinct instrument of the ruling class of America. Long before 1920 it was the usual thing for "labor leaders" to become wealthy, to leave the labor movement in order to head large industrial corporations, or to enter capitalist political life. What was true of the higher strata was true in a smaller way of the lower grades. Labor leadership had become a lucrative profession, vying with capitalist law and politics.
Then came the world-wide capitalist offensive against the labor movement. American capitalism, establishing its imperialist hegemony abroad, also proceeded to intensify exploitation at home. The labor movement had been sufficiently corrupted and weakened that the unions could be safely disregarded. Wage slashes and union-smashing campaigns became the order of the day. And, under the leadership of the corrupted bureaucracy, under the systematic betrayal of their own leaders, the unions suffered demoralization and disaster.
The Rise of the Left-Wing Movement.
It was at this point in the history of American labor that the Trade Union Educational League, organ of the fighting left wing of the labor unions, began its active operations. The conditions described above furnished the basis and generated the motive force of this left wing movement. The T. U. E. L. gave, for the first time, a national direction and a rallying center to the class conscious elements in the trade unions. The growth of the left wing as a result has been phenomenal.
William Z. Foster was the organizer and directing head of this great movement. For many reasons he was particularly fitted for his task, only one of which shall be dealt with here, the part he played in the two great organization campaigns which brought the packing house workers and the steel workers into the unions and in leading the great steel strike of 1919–20. The two organization campaigns which Foster conceived, organized, and executed, marked the highest point in the American labor movement and were the last great effort along the lines of strictly trade union endeavor to save the unions from degeneration. The steel strike was not alone a struggle of half a million workers against the steel corporation, it was at the same time the supreme effort of the proletarian forces in the American labor movement to break the strangle-hold of the bureaucracy, which was choking the life out of it, by means of action along the traditional lines of trade unionism. The failure of these efforts, with the black reaction that followed, laid the basis for the modern left-wing movement, while the experience of Foster in these struggles and his outstanding leadership in them, made him the logical leader of the new movement.
The Sweep of Amalgamation.
Characterizing the first period in the work of the Trade Union Educational League, leading the militant rank and file of the unions, is the tremendous sweep of sentiment and demand for amalgamation of the antiquated craft unions into powerful industrial unions one of the basic slogans of the T. U. E. L. This was the period of agitation and education, the preparation of the ground for real work to come, for organization and struggle. It was the most dramatic phase of the left-wing movement in the last three years.
In March, 1922, the famous Chicago Amalgamation Resolution was adopted by the Chicago Federation of Labor.
Immediately Gompers sounded the alarm. He opened a barrage of abuse and denunciation against Foster and the Trade Union Educational League in his own press, and in the capitalist daily papers. He traveled over the country, rallying the cohorts of the bureaucracy to combat this new "menace." The issue of "Amalgamation" became the most talked of subject thruout the labor movement almost overnight.
But the bureaucrats, unfit for any kind of struggle because of their soft and parasitic existence, could not even struggle effectively against the amalgamation movement. In the four months, June to September, 1922, the left wing had swept thru seven state conventions with the amalgamation program, carrying them by huge majorities. These states were Minnesota, Wisconsin, Washington, Indiana, Nebraska, Utah and Michigan. Dozens of the most important city central councils, particularly in the West, fell into line. The Moulders, the Typographical Union, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, with several independent unions, also joined in the demand for amalgamation. The great railway workers' movement was launched, co-incident with the collapse of the shopmen's strike, carrying with it thousands of local unions. By October four more state federations, Ohio, Oregon, South Dakota, and Colorado, also went on record for amalgamation, and shortly after Montana and Pennsylvania. The great convention of the railway maintenance men in Detroit, with over a thousand delegates, overwhelmingly adopted the measure. In all sixteen state federations and fourteen international unions endorsed amalgamation during the campaign. It was a veritable landslide.
The Railroad Amalgamation Movement.
An oustanding achievement of this period was the great movement among the railroad workers. At the convention of the Railway Employes' Department of the A. F. of L., held in Chicago in May, 1922, the left wing delegates had presented a resolution for amalgamation as the first necessity to win the shopmen's strike then looming up. They actually convinced a majority of the delegates, but the officialdom coerced enough of them into line to defeat it by a small margin. The necessity for rank and file pressure to force any action from the official machinery of the unions was apparent.
This task was taken up by the Railway Shop Crafts' Legislative Committee, of St. Paul, Minnesota, of which Otto Wangerin was the secretary and leading spirit. This body adopted a comprehensive plan of amalgamation, published it as a leaflet, and sent it out with a ballot to every local union of railroad workers in the United States and Canada.
The "Minnesota Plan," as it is called, was greeted with enthusiasm. The plan was first published in July, 1922. Within a few months more than a thousand local unions had adopted it. The committee then called a conference of delegates from local nuions, to consider ways and means of bringing amalgamation about, and to set up the necessary organizational machinery. This conference met in December, 1922, in Chicago. There were over 400 delegates in attendance, from all over the United States and Canada, from as far south as Birmingham, west to the Pacific coast, and east to the Atlantic. Every union of railroaders was represented. It confirmed the Minnesota Plan, set up an organization known as the International Committee for Amalgamation in the Railroad Industry, and launched a paper, the Amalgamation Advocate. Within six months the Minnesota Plan had been endorsed by 3,377 local railroad workers' unions in the United States and Canada.
How the bureaucracy damned up this flood of amalgamation sentiment, and defeated the will of the rank and file, is illustrated by the case of the Brotherhood of Railway Carmen. The laws of this union provide for a referendum vote on propositions submitted by five locals in as many different states. An amalgamation proposition was adopted under this referendum law, supported by more than fifty local unions. It was thrown out by the executive of the union without the slightest pretext of legality. The referendum was tried again, with even more local unions in support. Again it was thrown out. Then a vote was taken on whether a convention should be held. The reactionaries defeated the calling of a convention by making the ballots in such a manner that to vote for a convention required also voting for an assessment of $5, altho the union had in its treasury more than two millions of dollars at the time.
The situation in the railroad unions was paralelled to a greater or lesser extent, in practically every union and industry in the country. The rank and file was overwhelmingly in favor of amalgamation. But their organizations were in the hands of the corrupt labor bureaucracy, agents of the enemies of the workers, and the rank and file had not yet forged the instruments of struggle necessary in order to take possession of their own organizations and make of them fighting instruments against the capitalist class.
The Labor Party Campaign.
Early in its organized activity, the left wing began to understand from experience and from the propaganda of the T. U. E. L., the absolute necessity of clearly combining labor union and industrial struggle with political struggle in its widest sense. At the same time a movement, vague and undefined but with large potentialities, for a labor party based upon the same general lines as that of Great Britain, was taking shape and expressing itself in America. There was an opportunity, by working within this movement and hooking it up with the more immediate and acute struggles of the workers, to direct it toward the class struggle and develop the political consciousness of larger masses of workers. The T. U. E. L., acting in agreement with the policy of the Workers (Communist) Party, launched a great campaign along this line. The labor party campaign of the left wing had a deep effect for the time upon the trade unions.
In December, 1922, the T. U. E. L. issued a statement entitled "A Political Party for Labor," in which it laid down a program for drawing the trade unions directly into the political struggle against the capitalist state in alliance with the Communists. It called upon all its followers to carry out a campaign of education and organization along the lines laid down.
In March, 1923, the league conducted a referendum on the question in a circular letter and ballot sent to 35,000 local unions in the United States, accompanying the letter with a copy of the league statement. The response was wide-pread and resulted in intense agitation and discussion, in which the idea of a labor party received wide acceptance, and the impulse toward political action was stimulated greatly.
A reflex of this stirring appeared in May, in a call for a national farmer-labor convention, issued by the Farmer-Labor Party of which John Fitzpatrick was the head, for July 3, in Chicago. The left-wing elements supported this call and made of the convention a great gathering of over 600 delegates from all over the country.
The tremendous left-wing sentiment at that gathering, on the one hand, and the collapse of the so-called progressive leaders who bolted and returned to the Gompers camp, on the other hand, presaged the acute struggle that was ahead, and the realignment of forces that would be necessary before any effective left wing, industrial or political, could forge ahead.
The T. U. E. L. participated actively, thereafter, in the building up of local and state labor parties, and in the preparation of the convention of June 17, 1924, at St. Paul, which it was hoped would put a working class ticket in the presidential election and unify wide masses of workers in the political struggle. But the LaFollette illusion, which blinded the eyes of the backward workers and enabled self-seeking leaders to break up the support of the ticket elected at St. Paul, finally destroyed the farmer-labor party movement and liquidated it into the petty-bourgeois class collaborationist movement of LaFollette. The Workers (Communist) Party nominated Foster and Gitlow, and the T. U. E. L. supported the Communist campaign with all its power.
During the two years of its participation in the political struggles and education of the workers for a labor party the T. U. E. L. achieved one great thing: It learned, and it made clear to the class conscious workers, that there is only one working class party, and that is the Workers (Communist) Party.
The Bureaucrats Resort to Expulsions.
We in America were not to be spared the experience of all left-wing movements the world over in the struggle against class collaboration—the experience of expulsions of militants from the unions by the bureaucracy in order to prevent the winning of the rank and file.
In the second year of the league these began as a systematic campaign, as a definite policy of the reactionaries. Already there had ben resort to this weapon, as © early as the spring of 1922, by John L. Lewis, when he expelled Howat from the Miners' Union to prevent that sturdy battler from winning the miners to a policy of struggle. The storm broke in the summer of 1923, immediately after the split with the fake progressives in the farmer-labor party convention in Chicago.
Logically enough, in spite of the seeming contradiction, the first campaign of expulsions against the left wing came in one of the more "advanced" unions, the International Ladies' Garment Workers. Dominated by yellow socialists, the union learned from the Amsterdam fakers more quickly, being also spurred on by the more active, better organized and intelligent, left wing in the union thru which that organization was rapidly being won over to the left wing policies. The reactionaries kept their tight grip upon the treasury of the union by drastic expulsions, discriminations, and "re-organizations" thruout the country, culminating in the Boston convention, May, 1924, which spent nine of its ten days exorcising the Communists by means of a reactionary majority built up from appointed delegates, delegates from "newly organized" locals, etc. The left wing was checked in its outward manifestations of power, but in its deep, quiet, intensive work among the rank and file it was tremendously strengthened, so that today the left wing in the I. L. G. W. U. is so firmly rooted and well organized that it is a permanent factor in the life of the union.
It was in the course of this struggle, in August, 1923, that an attempt was made upon the life of William Z. Foster. Three shots were fired at him by a gunman, while he was on the platform speaking to a mass meeting in Ashland Auditorium, Chicago, held in protest against the expulsion of left-wingers.
From the garment industry, the game of expulsion against the left wing spread to other unions, until today there are expelled militants battling for re-admittance to the unions in almost every industry, particularly among the miners, machinists, carpenters, and in the city central bodies.
The official sanction to expulsion as the reactionaries' chief weapon to silence the left wing was given in the dramatic expulsion of Bill Dunne from the Portland convention of the A. F. of L., 1923, which was approved by Sam Gompers and engineered by his successor, William Green. Dunne's speech on that occasion, circulated by the T. U. E. L. thruout the labor movement in more than a hundred thousand copies, has become the classic indictment of the trade union bureaucrats.
The Progressive Miners.
Undoubtedly the most bitter and deep-going struggle during the whole second period of the left wing development has been in the United Mine Workers' Union. This struggle has crystallized around the Progressive Miners' International Committee, of which the T. U. E. L. militants and the Communists are the leading spirits.
When Lewis succeeded in fraudulently expelling Howat, in the convention of March, 1922, just before the last great miners' strike, the lines within the union were not yet clearly drawn. At that time the oustanding champion of Howat's rights in the union was still Frank Farrington of Illinois, an arch-faker who was using Howat's case as a club in his fight for position against Lewis. The beginning of clarification came in the latter part of 1922, after the main strike was settled, and Lewis betrayed the miners of Fayette County, Pennsylvania. This began a big struggle in which the T. U. E. L. militants were the only organized leadership of the left wing in the U. M. W. A. During that period, also, the miners of District 26, Nova Scotia, Canada, elected a complete left-wing slate of officers and engaged in a bitter struggle against the mine operators, the British Empire Steel corporation.
A tendency among hot-headed and impatient elements in the rank and file to split away from reactionary unions has been one of the things the left wing has had to fight against everywhere. This fight has been very successful so that today the only splitters of any influence are the reactionary bureaucrats. In the beginning of the miners' left wing a serious struggle was required against the splitting idea, however, and it was the T. U. E. L. that carried it out successfully. A threatening split in the anthracite region in 1923 was overcome by the T. U. E. L. influence; while in Canada the pernicious influence of the O. B. U., a small dual union, has been successfully overcome.
The Progressive Committee, the center thru which the striggle has been carried on for a fighting miners' union and to correct the mistakes of the militants and unify them upon a realistic program, was launched at a conference in Pittsburgh, Pa., in February, 1923. This preliminary gathering called a larger conference from all over the continnent, in the same city, in June. At these gatherings the left wing was definitely unified thruout the United States and Canada.
The result was instantaneous. Not only were the left-wingers clarified, but also the reactionaries. Lewis immediately expelled Tom Myerscough, secretary of the Progressive Miners. In a dramatic reconciliation, Farrington and Lewis, the two biggest bureaucrats in the union who had been calling one another thief, traitor, and skunk for years in public print, suddenly found that they really loved one another very much, and that the "red menace" made it possible for them to co-operate together in a common fight against the left. Lewis heaped more fuel upon the fires of revolt, by suspending the Nova Scotia miners to force them to bow to their corporation masters, and to force reversal of a vote to affiliate to the Red International of Labor Unions. Lewis further intensified the struggle by his betrayal of the anthracite strike in October, and by his collusion in the jailing of Jim McLachlan in Canada for his left wing leadership.
Behind the reactionary struggle against the left wing was a definite economic program—based upon the elimination of 200,000 miners from the industry as "unnecessary" to the employers, and upon collaboration with the bosses.
It was in February, 1924, when the U. M. W. A. met in convention in Indianapolis, that the left wing entered the stage of official national gatherings for the first time with a clear-cut program that drew a sharp line that no one could mistake—class struggle on one side and class collaboration on the other. It was a bitter battle and the young left wing made a magnificent showing. On the issue of the reinstatement of Howat, the left had won a large majority of the delegates, and the bureaucrats saved their skins only by adjourning the convention in disorder.
The outlaw strikes in the anthracite region of Pennsylvania at the close of 1924 and beginning of 1925 are but symptoms of the deepening resentment at the systematic betrayal that grows more intense daily thruout the miners' union. Leading the struggle there as everywhere else are the T. U. E. L. militants with the program of the Progressive Miners' Committee.
Trade Union Elections.
Living and glowing manifestations of how deeply the left wing movement has penetrated the masses are now being given in trade union elections wherever these are taking place. Outstanding among these, and constituting one of the greatest achievements of three years of struggle and organization, is the results of the election in the United Mine Workers.
In the election, running against Lewis and Murray the reactionary bureaucrats who control unlimited financial resources and the machinery of the union, were three unknown rank-and-file Communists, George Voyzey, Arley Staples and Joseph Nearing. The Progressive Committee was so poor that it couldn't even send out an organizer or speaker. It had to content itself with circulating 65,000 copies of its program—among the 400,000 members of the union. It was up against the most notoriously corrupt election machinery in the labor movement.
In spite of these and a thousand other handicaps, the progressive forces were so strong and their vote so big, that even the official returns, certied to by the reactionary bureaucrats themselves, are as follows:
Lewis, 136,209; Murray, 126,800; Green, 138,977.
Voyzey, 62,843; Staples, 66,038; Nearing, 51,686.
It was a tremendous achievement for this ticket of Communist rank and filers to force the corrupt Lewis to count more than one-third of the total vote for it. There is no question that thousands of left wing votes were stolen, and experience has demonstrated many times the ability of these bureaucrats to cast the vote of hunreds of local unions for themselves when these locals exist only on paper and have not paid a cent of per capita into the union for years. An honest election would probably have shown the Communists elected at the head of the mine workers' union. The election was a profound demonstration of the spirit of class struggle among the miners, of the deep roots of the left wing among them, and the inevitable victory in the not distant future of the program of the Trade Union Educational League.
One more election that is of profound significance as demonstrating the progress of the left-wing in the American labor unions. That is the election in the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, one of the oldest and most reactionary organizations in the labor movement. Not only is this organization dominated by a most corrupt and reactionary leadership and tradition, but it is also in the buliding industry, which is one of the most prosperous fields of activity today in America, with high wages and comparatively favorable conditions for continued bureaucratic rule.
Yet even in this stronghold of reaction, where there has never before been a left wing, the rank and file are in such revolt against the sickening betrayals and class collaboration of the officialdom, that Morris Rosen, an unknown left winger of New York, was credited with almost 10,000 votes by the official election machinery, against the incumbent Hutcheson, and with another candidate, who traded on left wing sentiment by labelling himself "progressive," also in the field.
The Red International of Labor Unions.
The Trade Union Educational League has done even more than to organize and lead the militant workers in the American trade unions for the immediate struggle. It has also inspired them with a revolutionary goal. And above all, it has given them a living connection with the revolutionary labor unionists of the entire world thru the Red International of Labor Unions, of which the T. U. E. L. is the American representative.
Representative delegations of American unionists have been present at the three congresses of the Red International at Moscow. They have participated in formulating the policies and tactics for the world movement, and, in turn, have brought back to America the benefit of the experience of the entire world movement. The T. U. E. L. has, in its magazine and papers, and in numerous pamphlets, brought the Red International intimately into the life of the American left wing.
The Pan-American Left Wing.
Already this international connection and inspiration has broken down the insularity of the American trade union left wingers. Internationalism upon a true working-class basis is already finding practical expression. This was shown when a Pan-American left wing was formed in Mexico City on the occasion or the congress of the Gompersian instrument of American imperialism, the Pan-American Federation of Labor ruled formerly by Gompers and now by his Mexican prototype, Morones. At that gathering the left wing delegates, together with representatives of the Trade Union Educational League, the Workers (Communist) Party of America, the Mexican Communist Party, and the Mexican Committee for the Red International, formed the Pan-American Anti-Imperialist League.
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Three years of organization, education, and struggle are now behind the Trade Union Educational League. These years have demonstrated beyond doubt to every serious-minded revolutionary worker that the forces have finally been crystallized that will re-make the labor movement of America into the instrument that will, under the leadership of the Communist International, carry on successfully the fight against capitalist exploitation and the capitalist dictatorship, for its final overthrow, and for the establishment of a workers society under the dictatorship of the working class.