Page:William Zebulon Foster - The Bankruptcy of the American Labor Movement (1922).djvu/33

 28 steady headway. More and more the radical movement, from left to right, became convinced that the trade unions were hopeless, more and more it turned its attention to dual unionism. DeLeon himself was a powerful factor in this development.

In 1899 the Socialist Labor Party split, largely because of the trade union question, and gave birth to the Socialist Party. For a time it looked as though the new body might declare definitely for the trade unions and aganistagainst [sic] dual unionism. But it soon developed a powerful left wing, led by Debs, Haywood and others, who advocated dual unionism as militantly as DeLeon himself had done in the old party. In the meantime, the dualist concept had become enlarged from that of simply a separate Socialist labor movement to that of a separate Socialist labor movement with an industrial form. Revolutionary dual unionism became revolutionary dual industrial unionism. Sympathizers multiplied apace.

Soon the whole revolutionary and progressive movements became impregnated with the dual union idea. Even the right wing elements, who had previously fought against DeLeon over the matter, largely adopted it. Dual unions in single industries sprang up here and there. But it was in 1905 that the movement came to a head. The S. T. & L. A. being hopelessly moribund, a new general dual union organization was deemed necessary, so, with a great fanfare of trumpets, the whole radical movement gathered in Chicago to launch it. There were Socialists, Socialist Laborites, Anarchists, Industrialists, and Progressives. The result of their historic convention was the Industrial Workers of the World, an organization devised to supplant the whole trade union structure and to realign the labor movement upon a new revolutionary basis.

The I. W. W. went forth the embodiment of great hopes and absorbing the efforts of the best workers in the country. But, nevertheless, it could not triumph over the obstacles ever confronting such dual organizations. The workers simply refused to quit the old trade unions that had cost them so much trouble and strife to build. After several years, therefore, the I. W. W. was quite generally recognized as a failure, and the rebel elements began to turn away from it. But the peculiar thing was its failure did not discourage the dual union idea, anymore than had the downfall of the S. T. & L. A. On the contrary, that idea grew and flourished better than ever.

Strangely enough, the longer the dual union policy was followed, the more logical it seemed, notwithstanding its failure to build any