that organization, grace to his great activity and natural ability, he soon acquired substantial power. At the 1894 General Assembly of the K. of L. he joined forces with Sovereign against Grand Master Workman Powderly. Together they overthrew the latter, but the victorious Sovereign, disregarding his political bargain, refused to reward DeLeon for his assitance by appointing Lucian Sanial editor of the official national journal. This provoked DeLeon's bitter ire, and he broke with the K. of L. These experiences, first with the A. F. of L. and then with the K. of L., convinced him that neither of these organizations were fit material wherewith to build up the Socialist labor movement he had in mind. Therefore, in the following year, 1895, he launched the Socialist Trades and Labor Alliance, a radical organization designed to supplant the whole conservative labor movement. In the past there had been dual unions organized in opposition to the old trade unions (witness for example the American Railway Union founded by Eugene V. Debs), but the S. T. & L. A. was the first of a general character and a revolutionary makeup. Its foundation clearly marked the embarkation of the radical movement upon its long-continued and disastrous program of dual unionism.
Of course, DeLeon did not draw his dual union program simply out of thin air. Naturally there were present many factors which made it seem the plausible, if not inevitable, method to follow. Despite their militancy, the trade unions of the time (while not worse than those of England, where dual unionism got no footing) were comparatively weak in numbers, stupid in their philosophy, and infested with job-hunters and reactionaries. To the rebels of those days, impatient and inexperienced as they were, it looked an unpromising task to convert these primitive groupings into Socialist organizations. It seemed much simpler to start the labor movement all over again, this time upon "scientific" principles. At that early date, because of the youth of the movement, they knew nothing of the unworkability of dual unionism. In 1895 DeLeon's plan, new discarded as utopian, seemed logical and practical, almost an inspiration, in fact.
Scores of Dual Unions
The Socialist Trades and Labor Alliance was still-born. It never amounted to more than a handful of militants, the masses refusing to rally to its standard. The same forces that ruin all such unions effectively checked its growth. But if the S. T. & L. A. failed as an organization the idea behind it, of revolutionary dual unionism, made
