Page:William Zebulon Foster - The Bankruptcy of the American Labor Movement (1922).djvu/10

 Rh italists have stripped the workers of many of their most fundamental rights. Free speech and free press have been largely abolished by the multitude of anti-syndicalist laws, and hundreds of labor men, arrested merely for expressing their opinions, have been given prison sentences so severe as to shock the civilized world. The right of assembly has degenerated into little more than a privilege, dependent upon the whims of the American Legion, the Ku Klux Klan, or corrupt local officials. The right to strike has been abridged by Esch-Cummins laws, industrial courts, and the injunction abuse, which flourishes now as never before. Even the fundamental right of popular representation has been invaded by the refusal to seat regularly elected workers' candidates, and by millionaires flagrantly buying their way into Congress. Hardly a month passes by but what some hard-won piece of legislation is destroyed. The Sherman Anti-Trust law, with its fancy Clayton Amendment, has become a laughing-stock by being used only against Labor, the very one it was supposed not to apply to. The Seamen's Act has been rendered inoperative, and the noble Supreme Court has declared the Federal Child Labor Law unconstitutional. Likewise, this august body, in the Coronado Case, has delivered itself of an American Taff-Vale decision against the unions. And now comes Judge Wilkerson with his injunction, denying the right to strike to 400,000 shopmen and making outlaws of them. Almost any one of the workers' political rights may go next. And in the face of all this disaster, the labor movement flounders around helpless to stop the rout. Mr. Gompers' pet policy of rewarding the workers' "friends" and punishing their "enemies" has made a political nobody of American Labor.

Besides robbing the workers of representation in the legislative bodies and stripping them of all political power, Mr. Gompers' political policy directly corrupts and weakens the trade union movement itself. By opening the organizations to capitalist party representatives, posing as "friends" of Labor and seeking endorsement, it has made the workers' unions convenient nesting-places for all sorts of political crooks. These sharpers, in turn, have poisoned the selfish individuals in Labor's ranks to such an extent that in many localities selling out Labor politically for cold cash has become a regular profession of alleged labor leaders. Much of the bribe-taking from employers for industrial "favors" that curses our labor movement derives from the same source; for once labor officials become accustomed to betraying the workers politically it is an easy step further to