The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1935-02-26

DOUBT II William q. Foster
1 pauses on his birthday to look
back over the past; he is too closely
preoccupied with the urgent prob
lens of the present, the day-to-day
struggles of the working class. to
take any great interest in personal
"reminiscences.
When one reviews the events of
Fosters career, one is struck by the
fact that there is very little of a
personal nature to report. I think
the finest thing one can say about
Foster is that it is difficult to write
about him as an individual. His
story is, in the deepest and
simplest sense, the story of the
American labor movement. His
life is significant not solely be-
cause he has been a great leader
and fighter-but because for forty
years his thoughts and actions
have expressed the revolutionary
development of his own class. Fos-
ter's history is the history of Amer
lean labor
He was born in Taunton, Mass,
on Feb. Is, 1881. In 1887 his fam
lily moved to Philadelphia. During
his childhood, the class struggle
was developing to new phase of
intensity. The fight for the eight
hour day was at its height. In
1888, a Massachusetts, judge issued
the first labor injunction ever is
sued in this country. In 1892, the
embattled steel workers made their
first heroic stand against the steel
trust in the bloody Homestead
strike, In 1894 the Pullman strike
was defeated by government forces
in association with a hired army
of thugs, gangsters and cut-throats.
Homestead and Pullman ushered
in the modern stage of industrial
warfare open collaboration Of the
state and big corporations, the use
of lying publicity, military force and
brutal murder for the suppression
of workers organizations.
wage slave al age OF ~
In 1896, Foster took his first mill
tant step in the class struggle. At
fifteen he had already been a
worker for five long years, his fam
ily's desperate poverty having forced
him to begin wage-slavery at the
age of ten, after three years of
schooling.
The Philadelphia street car work
ers were on strike in 1896. The
fight was bitterly contested and the
whole working class was stirred to
active participation. At the height
of the struggle, protest march of
strikers was organized.
Foster was in the crowd which
cheered the men as. they marched
down Market Street to the City Hall,
wearing their working uniforms
and carrying brooms. The brooms
were a popular political symbol,
meaning I'VE intend to make a
clean sweep" Police were hiding
in the courtyards on either side of
the street; armed with blackjacks
and clubs, they made a sudden at
tack on the marchers. A bloody
battle followed; the workers, after
a stiff resistance, were forced to
retreat into side streets and alleys.
Foster, with some other workers,
was cornered in a hallway and
dubbed numerically.
On the following day the fifteen
year-old boy watched fight raging
around trolley car. He realized
the necessity of solidarity among
all workers in preventing the activ-
ity of scabs. He organized twenty
other youngsters. The group Sc
lected corner and waited for
street car. The car was manned
by scabS and protected by the po-
lice. But the boys stopped it, Half
an hour later, police reserves had
been called into the battle and ten
thousand workers were holding the
street. For six hours the prole-
tartan army kept complete control
of the thoroughfare.
This was Fosters first step. The
quality which he showed at that
time, the readiness to get into
fight and stay in it, has marked
every action of his career.
A Family of Fighters
He came of the sturdy stock of
toilers. His father was an Irish
peasant, who had taken an active
part in the Fenian movement and
was forced to flee to America when
the attempted rebellion failed. His.
mother was born in Carlisle, Eng
land, textile town near the Scot
fish border. She was a weaver, and
her family had been weavers for
generations. Fosters grandmother
on his mothers side had been a
leader of the textile workers in
those bitter uprisings in which the
workers blindly destroyed the new
machines which they thought were
responsible for their suffering.
In Philadelphia Fosters father
worked as washer of hanson cabs
in livery stable. The large fam
lily lived on the very edge of star
Walton. At nine, little William
went to Wannamaker's Department
Store in search of job as an
errand boy. They sent him away,
because they thought the pinched,
undernourished child was lying
when he claimed to be nine years
old.
However, he found a job the next
year. He went to work for a stone
cutter, where long hours, staggering
work and an atmosphere of chok-
ing dust neGted him wage Of one