ABSTRACT
The parting of the ways between William Z. Foster and C. E. Ruthenberg at the end of 1923 blighted the life of the party for the rest of the decade. The groups that formed around them congealed into fully formed factions which fought on one issue after another, exchanged places on issues, forgot what they had been fighting about, broke up partially, and formed again. The original arrangement which had brought Foster into the Communist movement seemed to have separated the two. It gave Foster command of the Communist trade-union field through the Trade Union Educational League (TUEL) with headquarters in Chicago, and it gave Ruthenberg command of the over-all political field through the Central Executive Committee with headquarters in New York. Cannon's next triumph was a tie-up with Ludwig Lore, editor of the party's German organ, New Yorker Volkszeitung, and chieftain of the German federation.
