unauthorized strike took place against the will of the lawful labor leaders. The printers' strike and longshoremen's strikes in New York City are examples. "Red" labor leaders and revolutionary propaganda ruined the cause of the steel strikers.
The American Federation of Labor cannot afford to harbor Socialists and members of the I. W. W. It is doomed to shipwreck if it does not rid itself of Marxian agitators. The vast majority of the American people will not tolerate a revolutionary American Federation of Labor any more than they will tolerate a revolutionary I. W. W. If the principles of the American Federation of Labor become radical like those of the I. W. W., the Socialists, Communists and the Bolsheviki, the name "American" and past conservatism will never save our greatest labor organization from ruin. The greater part of the country is rapidly lining up against unreasonable demands made in the name of organized labor, millions of farmers taking the lead. Extreme advantages to city workingmen would spell ruin to the farmers. Millions of others of the middle class in our cities will also soon unite with the farmers, for they are getting tired of the endless and costly series of unreasonable strikes.
The Socialists and agents of the I. W. W. have for years been "boring from within" the A. F. of L. In other words, these Marxians, though members of the A. F. of L., are undermining its conservatism, discrediting and seeking to displace its less radical leaders, changing its policy of co-operation between capital and labor into one of class hatred between employee and employer, and attempting to reorganize it along industrial lines, rather than along those of the various craft divisions of each industry, with a view to making strikes more widespread and dangerous for our Government. In a word, they are seeking to turn the A. F. of L. into a second I. W. W., destined to join forces with Haywood's discredited industrial union of rebels.
William Z. Foster, national leader of the steel strikers in the fall of 1919, affords us an example of an I. W. W. agent "boring from within" the A. F.