Page:William Z. Foster, James P. Cannon and Earl Browder - Trade Unions in America.djvu/26

 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.

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,