Pages From a Worker’s Life
My studies have provoked in me a keen interest in the Trade Union Education League, and its founder, William Z. Foster. The T.U.E.L. was a rank and file movement in the 1920’s to organize millions of workers in the basic industries along industrial lines (that is, in “one big union”). Where this differed from the Industrial Workers of the World was a dogged insistence on working within the existing AFL craft unions and “amalgamating” them. Foster seemed to be a tireless organizer as well as a savvy strategist, but his own beliefs eventually became muddled by the Stalinist party line so that the “real” Foster, in his later years, is something of an enigma. I sought out Foster in his own words. The only book of his that remains “in print” is “Pages From a Worker’s Life,” from International Publishers. One of the great things about International is that the […]