Page:William Z. Foster, James P. Cannon and Earl Browder - Trade Unions in America.djvu/35

 liminary 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.