William
Zebulon Foster was
born in Taunton, Massachusetts, on 25th February, 1881. The family
moved to Philadelphia, and at the
age of ten Foster was forced to leave school in search of work. He
travelled the country working in a variety of unskilled jobs.
Foster joined the Socialist Party in
1901 and eight years later the Industrial Workers
of the World (IWW). He was involved in the free
speech campaign and was imprisoned after a demonstration in Spokane.
Foster gradually emerged as was one of the leaders of the movement
and in 1911 represented the IWW at the International Union Conference
in Budapest. When Foster returned he argued that the IWW should disband
so that its members could join and eventually capture the American
Federation of Labour. When this was rejected, Foster left the
IWW.
After the war, Foster, a railway car inspector in Chicago,
joined the American Federation of Labour.
He moved up the hierarchy and by 1920 he managed to persuade the AFL
annual conference to pass a resolution in favour of government ownership
of the railroads. The following year he supported John
L. Lewis when he challenged Samuel Gompers
for the presidency of the AFL.
Foster joined the American Communist Party
and in 1924, 1928 and 1932 ran for the presidency. In 1932 he suffered
a serious heart attack and Earl Browder
replaced him as leader of the party. However, in 1945, he was once
again elected as chairman of the Communist Party.
Foster was a loyal supporter of the leadership of the Soviet Union
and refused to condemn the regime's record on human rights. After
Foster failed to criticize the Soviet suppression of the Hungarian
Revolution, he was removed from power. William Zebulon Foster died
in Moscow on 1st September, 1961.
(1)
Los Angeles Illustrated Daily News (29th June, 1932)
William Z. Foster,
Communist candidate for president, and nearly a score of persons seeking
to hear him speak, were arrested yesterday by the police red squad
as the leader attempted to address a political meeting at the Plaza.
Of those seized, only Foster and
three companions were held.
Foster was booked on suspicion of criminal syndicalism.
With him were Edward W. Sandler, accused of disturbing the peace;
Ezra F. Chase of the Sawtelle Soldiers' Home, and Raymond Lugo, 33,
of the Midnight Mission, both booked on suspicion of criminal syndicalism.
Later in the day, Superior Judge Elliot Craig signed
a writ of habeas corpus for Foster's release. Bond was fixed at $10,000
on the writ, which was made returnable today at 3:30 p.m.
Although Foster's sympathizers milled about the
city for several hours, demonstrating against the arrested, violence
was confined to the throwing of a few gas bombs by the police squad.
Local communist leaders had announced that they
would hold a meeting at the Plaza in defiance of police orders, after
a similar meeting in a hall on Broadway had been broken up by police.
In addition to its political significance, the meeting was to protest
the recent shooting of a member of the Unemployed Council in a police
raid on an open meeting in a private home.
(2) C.
H. Garrigues, Los
Angeles Illustrated Daily News (30th June,
1932)
The politico-economic
warfare which has engulfed the western world is already in America
taking its final form — a battle to the death between communism
and fascism, in the opinion of William Z. Foster, Communist candidate
for president, who got out of jail early enough yesterday to give
a brief interview before flying to Phoenix for a speaking engagement.
Neither socialism nor democracy, he declared, exists today
as a living force; each constitutes only a moribund body of doctrine
from which the rival forces are seeking to draw recruits. Each has
lost, not numbers of lip-servers, but the once firm faith of its adherents
that through one or the other doctrine lies salvation.
Socialism, he intimated, has been captured bodily
by industrial leaders, now advancing theories half-socialist, half-fascist.
Democracy is being attacked from without by communism, while its own
leaders bore from within, seeking to undermine its walls and capture
the citadel in the name of fascism.
The wave of contumely, contempt and ridicule directed
at Congress during recent months is a deliberate attempt to destroy
the confidence of the American people in representative government,
clearing the way for a dictatorship, he says.
Even to one accustomed to finding the devil considerably
less black than he is painted, the Communist leader proves a figure
of disturbing contrasts. The blue eyes are mild, gentle, almost dreamy.
He smiles quizzically as he talks, so that little laugh wrinkles appear
about the corners. The lean, rugged fighter's
jaw is in startling contrast.
One looks in vain for a sign of the zealot, the
fanatic, the bigot. Foster, it seems, approaches the religion of communism
not in the spirit of a missionary or a Savonarola, but as a priest
celebrating its rites before the altar. When the time is ripe, the
worshipers will come. Meanwhile, it is his duty to keep the font filled
and the altar swept.
He disagrees with many non-Communists that the
police departments' policy of suppression is helping the Communist
cause.
"It changes the direction; that's all,"
he says. "Makes the workers more determined; induces the fallen
ones to answer force with force. But it doesn't help us, nor hurt
us.
"Tear bombs can't unmake Communists because
you can't fill a man's stomach with tear gas. Nor would it help the
capitalists to let our leaders talk because campaign oratory can't
fill a man's stomach either. The capitalists are damned if they do
and damned if they don't. They know it and are afraid. That's why
they hire policemen to beat us up."
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