Page:William Z. Foster, James P. Cannon and Earl Browder - Trade Unions in America.djvu/20

 made in 1923 in Chicago, during a severe struggle against expulsions in the garment unions. But it is of no avail. The net result of it all is to draw the militant workers in very great numbers around the league.

The organizational structure of the league is similar to that of the "Revolutionary Syndicalist Committees," which existed in the C. G. T. of France prior to the split but it is not an exact duplicate. In all phases of its work the league has borrowed from all hitherto existing left wing trade union movements in all parts of the world and introduced many new features of its own. The old methods and the new ones are blended together into a unified plan to fit the American situation. The league is characterized by a great flexibility of form and method and it is constantly adjusting itself to meet new problems. It has out-maneuvered the reactionaries at every turn so far; mobilizing the full force of the militants for every fight and extracting the utmost advantage from every situation.

In its form of organization, the league represents a bloc of all progressive and militant workers in the unions who are willing to join in the common fight for the betterment of the unions and the overthrow of the Gompers' machine. It is bringing together the trade union militants of almost every faction of the left wing. The report of its First National Conference shows that there were present as delegates members of the Communist Party, farmer-labor party, socialist party, proletarian party, syndicalists, anarchists, and honest trade unionists unaffiliated to any faction. The leadership is in the hands of the Communists, but this is only because they have as a rule shown the most ability and energy. In many localities the Communists are a minority, and in some places flourishing branches of the league exist where there is as yet no Communist Party organization at all; experience has shown, however, that the leading spirits everywhere gravitate more and more toward the Workers