CHAPTER V.
The Trade Union Educational League
The new movement of militants working within the trade unions is centering around the Trade Union Educational League. This body is the descendant of two forerunners, the Syndicalist League of North America and the International Trade Union Educational League. The first of these was organized in 1912. As its name indicates it was Syndicalist in tendency, and it was largely influenced by the French labor movement, then in its glory. The S. L. of N. A. had the same general working principles as the present T. U. E. L. It flatly opposed dual organization and advocated the organization of revolutionary nuclei in the mass unions. For a time it made quite a stir, securing a grip in the labor movements of many cities. In Kansas City in particular the Central Labor Council fell into the hands of the rebel elements, who actually drove the leading labor fakers out of the city. The organization had four journals: The Syndicalist of Chicago, The Unionist of St. Louis, The Toiler of Kansas City, and The International of San Diego. A feature of the movement was an extended trip through the United States by Tom Mann, who endorsed its program wholeheartedly. Another was an attempt of the Emma Goldman Anarchist group of New York to steal the thunder of the movement by launching a national Syndicalist league of their own. But the Syndicalist League of North America was born before its time. The rebel elements generally were still too much infatuated with dual unionism to accept its program. Particularly was this true because just about that time the I. W. W. made a great show of vitality, carrying on big strikes in Lawrence, Akron, Paterson, Little Falls, etc., etc. After about two years' existence the S. L. of N. A. died.
The next effort to organize the radicals within the mass unions took place in 1916, when the International Trade Union Educational League was founded. This body set up a few groups here and there, but it found a poor soil to work in. The war situation was at hand and the rebels, still badly afflicted with dualism, would have nothing to do with the ultra-patriotic trade unions. Hence it never acquired even as much vigor and influence as the earlier Syndicalist League of North America. It expired in 1917.
