The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1927-07-09

In the development of the labor
movement, as in all other social in,
situations, certain individuals come to
personify certain stages. In the his
tory of American labor five men
stand out as embodiments of various
stages-Terence V. Powderly, Sam
uel M. Gompers, Daniel DeLeon, Eu-
gene V. Debs and G. E. Ruthenberg.
All of these men, with the exception
of DeLeon, lived through the world
war, but only one of them can be said
to have represented the interests of
the working class after the war. That
one was Ruthenberg who, at the time
Of his death last March, was the high
est type of American labor leader yet
produced in the United States. Not
only did he possess the organizational
ability, the broad experience in the,
best of the older leaders, but he pos
sessed a Marxian-Leninist knowledge
of the movement that made him the
superior of any of them.
However, we do not yield to the
illusion that it was Ruthenberg who
created the environment in which he |
worked, but that he himself was the |
best product of the new labor move
ment that arose out of the agony and
ashes of the great imperialist con-
vulsion known as the world war.
The Labor Reactionaries.
Of the five men we have chosen as
typical of certain stages and who
played prominent parts in the labor
movement the first two, Powderly and
Gompers, were avowedly reactionary
at the time of their deaths, but both |
of them had played parts at certain
stages. Powderly became the leading
figure in that anonymous mixture of
labor elements, small shopkeepers,
professionals, known as the Knights
of Labor. Defeated on the field of |
economic struggle it lapsed into weird
unscientific and utopian cooperative
ventures that were fast submerged |
by the terrific tempo of capitalist de-
velopment. In the great labor up
heavals of the SOS Powderly cut a
sorry figure in his fight against the
eight-hour movement and his own or
ganization was swept into the move
ment in spite of him.
The leader of the more advanced
forces of labor that took issue with
Powderly and the Knights of Labor
was Samuel M. Gompers, head of the
newly-created American Federation
of Labor. But the great clash of class
interests that eliminated in the Hay
market bomb disaster sent Gompers
scurrying for a safe refuge AS years
passed his cowardice in face of the
capitalist enemy changed into the
courage of a conscious lackey of the
powers that be when he was chosen
to attack the militant elements of the
labor movement. One treachery fol-
lowed upon another until early in the
nineties it was plain to every thought
full worker that Gompers was nothing
more nor less than the chief labor
lieutenant of capitalism in America.
The Socialist Leaders.
With fair understanding of Marx
ian criticism, Daniel DeLeon, leader
of the socialist labor party of that
day, assaulted both Powderly and
Gompers and for a considerable time
gained a powerful following. His in
ability correctly to apply MARKHAM tao
tics inside the ranks Of working class
soon resulted in his
playing directly into the hands of the
reactionaries by deserving the main
stream of the labor movement and
trying to organize new socialist-con-
trolled pure" unions.
Considerable impetus was given to
the agitation for dual unions by the
great American Railway Union strike
of the early nineties, under the lead
ership of Eugene V. Debs who later,
under the influences of certain social
democrats, used the organization,
after its defeat by the combined
forces of the government and the
railroad companies, as the basis for
the organization of the socialist party.
For years Debs was the principal
socialist propaganda in the country,
though he never played an important
role in the leading political and or
work of that party. In
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