In this book, Gus Tyler—the assistant president of the International Ladies Garment Workers’ Union and the director of its Department of Politics, Education, and Training—replies to the critical attacks on the complacency, stodginess, and decline of vision of the labor movement which have in recent years been launched by such men as Paul Jacobs, Harvey Swados, and Solomon Barkin. The author’s heart is in the right place, and one may well sympathize with his effort, but the result, it must be said, is far from convincing.
Throughout these pages, the term “revolution” appears with a kind of obsessive repetitiveness. It almost seems as though Mr. Tyler were attempting to revive the flagging spirit of the unions by the stimulant of word magic. In fact, however, there is no new, let alone revolutionary, thought in the house of labor—or in this book. We are merely served up all the old clichés, spiced with a sauce compounded of unwarranted optimism and pious hopes.