The Washington times., 1922-08-26

number all the
way down to the
~ last figure in 1t
~ during the steel
- .sss,.,.sss1VSS strike. report
ed the steel
WILLIAM HARD strike and him.
He was in Pittsburgh. He used
to spend his time till late at night
In a little office In a downtown
Pittsburgh office building filing
thousands of pieces of paper into
classified packages and pigeon
holes with his own hands. These
pieces OF paper were the records
of the admissions of the strikers
the most passionate filler and ciassi.
fier perhaps in the world.
He Reads and Works.
He is thin and his shoulders have
q slight stoop and his face Is pale.
He has a low voice. He can file and
write letters while loud-yoiced
orators come into the office and
make speeches at the tops Of their
lungs. Foster files and writes and
reads.
He reads innumerable books,
especially IL written by people like
Herbert Spencer and other heavy
weights; and he makes notes on
them.
He is about as violent as a college
professor putting cards into the col.
lese library card catalogue. All the
detectives OF the United States Steel
Corporation tried to fasten some act
OF violence to him during the steel
strike and couldn't. He had a peace.
ful record and he ran a peaceful
strike.
His present organization - the
Trade Union Education League
has a purpose totally distinct from
the purposes of examinations like
, the so-called Workers Party" The
Workers Party Is for communism
| and II is political. Fosters league
is for trade union organization and
II Is not political at all and has
nothing to do with capturing the
| Government"
Foster has Just one idea today. He
things that every industry ought to
be unionized, and that II ought to be
unionized into just one union.
II he ever killed anybody he would
file the murder with date and place
of burial of the corpse.
The serious fact Is that this man
is a perfectly tame citizen who once
in his youth wrote one pamphlet
which was wild.
He came from New England, Of
regular New England stock, and he
had a tough-luck time of IL in his
youth. He wandered about on the
under-side of American industries,
and he got a lot of sore spots all
over him, and he wrote that one wild
/ hn ont
body some day would strike and that
then IL anybody went and got hurt.
well, what difference did II maker
That pamphlet has been chasing
Bill Foster ever since. Whenever
he gets nicely settled down into a
| new place peacefully organising a
union, some thoughtful employers
get hold of an old copy of that old
| pamphlet and reprint II in large
| numbers Just to show what kind OF
a guy this guy Foster is.
Always Peaceful Actor.
In the meantime Foster has
grown up and has got TO be as
tame in his writing as, he always
was In his actions. He was always
a peaceful actor even when he was
wild writer. Now for years he
has been perfectly peaceful even
with his pen. But II won't do
any good.
Learned agents Of the Department
of Justice, and ambitious prosecuting
attorneys will now hitch themselves
onto the notoriety of Fosters name
and will start going shining through
the public mind for thirty days say
ing the country from Fosters bombs,
The fact Is, he hasn't any. II Is all
one big, long fake.
And now I'll say what the real
trouble is that's underneath all this
fake
A One Union Man.
Bill Foster thinks that IN every In
dustry there should be lust one
union---like the United Mine Work
ers In the mining industry. Sam
Gompers thinks that II Is perfectly
all right to have as many different
unions in an industry as there are
now--for instance--in the railroad
Foster would put all the railroad
unions into, one united railroad
union. Gompers would let them stay
separate.
That's the fight. And so uom.
pers calls Foster "a radical and
gets off q lot of deep dark stuff
| about Foster and bolshevik horrors,
and the bloodhounds Of Justice start
on the trail to find Foster numbering
a capitalist, and they never come
back with any corpse,
Then they do II all over again and
get paid for barking,
In the meantime the only reason
| I know for thinking that Foster
may be devil is that he has SLOW,
mild, sweet, angelic smile and such
small teeth that they look as II they
would hardly be dangerous to a
pie.