Page:William Zebulon Foster - The Bankruptcy of the American Labor Movement (1922).djvu/63

 58 all crafts, A. F. of L. and independent, in their respective spheres. These National Committees map out educational programs for their whole industries and create Local Industrial Sections to carry them into the local unions everywhere. The effect is that even in an industry with 20 or 30 craft unions the militants function on an industrial basis. No matter whether it is a rebel section hand in San Diego, California, or a militant engineer in Portland, Maine, all railroad members of the League are working upon a common industrial program and seeking in their many organizations to make it prevail. In the amalgamation movement, for example, with the militants in the several craft unions of a given industry definitely agreed upon creating an industrial union and working in unity to break down the walls between their respective organizations so that all may be combined into one body, the get-together effect is irresistable. Gompers and all his reactionary henchmen will never be able to withstand it.

Although the League has been active but a few months and has hardly made a start at creating its machinery, and notwithstanding the fact that the militants, because of their long connection with dual unionism, have but slight prestige in the trade unions and know very little about how to work effectively in them, nevertheless the organization has made wonderful headway. The workers are responding to its efforts in a manner which is a delight to the militants and the despair of the reactionaries. Already the League has demonstrated beyond question that the rank and file of Labor are ready for a radical program of action.

In advocating the various planks of its platform the League has developed a series of movements within the trade unions, all of which have shown a surprising vitality. An important one was the demand for a general strike of all workers throughout the country as a protest against the Daugherty injunction and other tyrannies of the employers. This movement was initiated in Omaha when League militants introduced the general strike resolution into the Central Labor Council. The resolution was adopted and ordered sent to all central bodies, with the result that hundreds of organizations endorsed it. Mr. Gompers himself stated publicly that he had 200 demands for nation-wide action and that never in the history of the labor movement had there been such a wide-spread sentiment for a general strike. The educational effect of the movement was great.