Page:William Zebulon Foster - The Bankruptcy of the American Labor Movement (1922).djvu/66

 Rh grave danger of extinction industrially also. During the recent past the capitalist class has discovered a new aggressiveness and developed a powerful organization. It is no longer the same class which, before the war, was semi-tolerant of trade unionism, Now it is determined to root out every vestige of Organized Labor. The "open shop" employers have dealt the unions shattering blows in practically every industry, including printing, building, meat packing, steel, railroad, general transport, coal and mining, etc. Consequently the entire trade union movement has suffered disastrously. During the last three years it has lost fully 50% of its entire membership. The whole fabric of Organized Labor is bleeding. The labor movement is in a most critical state. So critical, in fact, that it will never be able to recover unless it quickly and radically changes its policies. The American working class is now imminently confronted with the tragic menace of having its trade union movement obliterated.

There are still some revolutionaries, unfortunately, who would welcome the elimination of the old craft unions, believing that with them out of the way a new and better movement would speedily take their place. But this is a fatal delusion. We may absolutely depend upon it that should the capitalists, in their great "open shop" drive, succeed in breaking the backbone of the trade union movement they would make all labor organization illegal and repress it with an iron hand. American labor would be reduced to the status of Russian Labor in Czarist days; it would be forced to the expedient of setting up revolutionary nuclei in the industries in preparation for some favorable opportunity when the masses could be stirred to action. Indeed, even as it is, this system will doubtless have to be applied in some of our industries if they are ever to be organized. The mass trade unions are the only protection for the workers' right to organize; the only bulwark against a general flood of capitalist tyranny. They must be defended and strengthened at all costs.

In this grave crisis of the labor movement no relief may be expected from the trade union bureaucrats in high official place. With the rarest of exceptions, they are dominated entirely by the intellectually dead Gompers. Apparently they would slavishly follow him over the precipice to destruction. They are hopelessly self-lashed to the chariot of conservatism. Even now, in this hour of need, they resist with desperation the mildest reforms in the movement's policies and structure. The further the capitalists push them back the more timid and reactionary they become. They are mentally frozen over solid.