Page:William Z. Foster, James P. Cannon and Earl Browder - Trade Unions in America.djvu/19

 Educational League like soil to the plow.

The first big organization campaign began in February, 1922. The method employed to establish the league organizationally was a marvel of comprehensiveness and simplicity; a broad, sweeping movement combined with the most painstaking attention to all technical details. All plans were carefully worked out beforehand, and after the most thorough preparation, circular letters were send to militant workers in all parts of the country, outlining the aims of the league and giving precise and detailed directions as to how to proceed. The militants in every city were called upon to organize a local group of militant unionists on a given date. The response was magnificent. Branches were set up in all principal unions and industrial centers of the United States and Canada. The organizational base of the league was established at one stroke. In March, 1922, the , monthly official organ of the league, was launched.

The capitalists and their labor lieutenants were not slow to sense the danger of this new organization. Gompers denounced it at once as a diabolical plot of the Russians to break up the American Federation of Labor and overthrow the United States government. He declared Foster to be an agent of Lenin who had been supplied with unlimited funds for the purpose of establishing "a thousand secret agents in a thousand cities." In the fall of 1922 the United States government struck a blow at the league, raiding the national office and the national conference. The attempt to railroad Foster to the penitentiary in Michigan was a boomerang. The jury disagreed, and the case was utilized to the utmost for propaganda purposes. The reactionaries, thoroughly alarmed, are doing everything they can do against the league and against Comrade Foster. The Amsterdam tactic of expulsions is beginning to be employed in several unions and the slander campaign against Comrade Foster has reached a height unparalleled in the history of the American movement. An attempt to assassinate him was