Page:William Z. Foster, James P. Cannon and Earl Browder - Trade Unions in America.djvu/15

 their own journals. The I. W. W. has a press in several languages. A feature of American labor journalism is the extreme corruption afflicting it. Often this passes belief. The worst affected are those published weekly in the larger cities. These live by catering to the employers for donations and advertisements. In return they carry on a ceaseless war against all progress in the unions and they often betray the workers' strikes, In Pittsburgh, for example, there are three of such fraud labor papers. In 1919 they all openly fought against the great steel strike, one of the most crucial struggles in labor history in this country. The corruption of the labor press is one of the most striking characteristics of the unparallelled backwardness of the American labor movement.

OR the first time in the history of the American labor movement the left wing is acting as an organized body, and is carrying on its work within the trade unions according to a systematic and centrally directed plan. The name of this organization of the left wing is the Trade Union Educational League. It is led by Communists, but it is not strictly a Communist organization since it unites under its banner radical and revolutionary workers of all kinds for the common struggle against the capitalistic bureaucracy which dominates the American trade unions.

There has always been a strong radical element amongst the organized workers of America. Indeed, in the decade prior to 1890 the whole movement was dominated by a militant spirit. The revolutionaries of those days attached themselves to the established trade unions and made their influence felt upon them. The tremendous eight-hour day movement of that period, accom-