Gompers was reelected the
next year and the Federation seemed definitely shut to socialism. DeLeon
was now ready to go to the limit with the Federation. If the established
unions refused to assume the part of the gravediggers of capitalism,
designed for them, as he believed, by the very logic of history, so much
the worse for the established trade unions.
Out of this grew the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance as a life and
death rival to the Federation. From the standpoint of socialism no more
unfortunate step could have been taken. It immediately stamped the
socialists as wilful destroyers of the unity of labor. To the trade
unionists, yet fresh from the ordeal of the struggle against the Knights
of Labor, the action of the socialists was an unforgivable crime. All
the bitterness which has characterized the fight between socialist and
anti-socialist in the Federation verily goes back to this gross
miscalculation by DeLeon of the psychology of the trade union movement.
DeLeon, on his part, attributed the action of the Federation to a
hopelessly corrupt leadership and, since he failed to unseat it by
working from within, he now felt justified in striking at the entire
structure.
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