The Bundists incorporated in 1905 in New York an organization known as “The Workmen’s Circle” and “swelled the ranks of the Jewish trade unions,” to quote the Kehillah’s Register. After a brief attempt to propagate Socialism without reference to the Jewish Question, it was given up, and in 1913 a resolution was adopted declaring that the whole purpose of the work was Jewish. This is attributed, in the Kehillah record, to the spread of “the idea of Jewish nationalism.”
Now, care would have to be exercised to avoid confusion between the Hebrew labor unions, radical as they are, and the avowed communistic bodies, if it were not the fact that the unions and the Communists are so inextricably interlocked as to make distinctions unnecessary.
That this is not a judgment dictated by mere adverse attitude may be seen from the following facts:
The Workmen’s Circle has 800 branches throughout the United States and is officered by Jews throughout. The membership is 98 per cent foreign-born and is Jewish in like proportion.
Among the higher officers of this organization are Joseph Schlessinger, Sydney Hillman, Benjamin Schlossberg, Sam Feinstein and J. B. Salutsky. The names will probably have become familiar to the reader by this time. They form part of the interlocking directorate so commonly found among Jewish organizations, a system which finally heads up in the executive committee of the Kehillah which also composes the leaders of the American Jewish Committee, of which the great public lights of Jewry are members.