The failure of American radicals to build up a strong movement is in part due, of course, to the natural difficulties of the social and economic situation, but it is also due to the mental traits which usually accompany remoteness from reality. This is illustrated in the history of the I.W.W., if we accept William Z. Foster’s acute analysis. The regular trade-union movement, slowly evolving towards a goal but half consciously realized, overcoming practical obstacles painfully and clumsily, as such obstacles usually are overcome, was too halting for these impatient radicals. They withdrew, and set up rival, perfectionist unions, founded in uncompromising revolutionary ardour. These organizations were often unable to serve the rank and file in their practical difficulties, and consequently could not supplant the historic labour movement. But they did draw out of that movement many of its most sincere and ardent spirits, thus depriving it of the ferment which was necessary to its growth. The I.W.W., for their part, failing to secure any large grip on reality, regressed into quarrels about theory, suffered divisions of their social personality, and at length--except in the far West--became little more than economic anchorites. As Foster says, “The I.W.W. were absolutely against results.” Too much of American radicalism has been diverted to the easy emotional satisfaction which is substituted for the arduous process of dealing with reality. We suffer a restriction of the personality, we cry out against the oppressor, we invent slogans and doctrines, we fill our minds with day dreams, with intricate mechanisms of some imaginary revolution. At the same time we withdraw from the actual next step. Here is the trade-union movement, built up painfully for over a century, a great army with many divisions which function every day in the industrial struggle. How many radicals know it in any detail? How many have paid the slightest attention to the technique of its organization, or have devoted any time to a working out of the smaller problems which must be worked out before it can achieve this or that victory? Here are our great industries, our complex systems of exchange. How many radicals really know the technique of even the smallest section of them? Radicals wish to reorganize the industrial system; would they know how to organize a factory?