He spent the next year and a half studying the French syndicalist union, attending its 1910 Toulouse congress and actively participating in a CGT railroad strike.
He also studied the labor and socialist movements in Germany and tried (without success) to represent the Industrial Workers of the World at the August 1911 Budapest congress of the International Secretariat of National Trade Union Centres.
Seeing that they could not carry the convention, and fearing that if a "boring form within resolution" were defeated it would squash their momentum, Fosters sympathizers decided to "campaign" for the idea among the membership, including running for editorship of an important Wobbly newspaper.
However the successful Lawrence strike in January 1912 revitalized faith in the IWW's dual unionist policy and support for a radical change of direction within the group declined.
[3] The circles set up by Foster began to secede from the IWW and enter the mainstream unions on their own; the first group to do so being the local in Nelson, British Columbia, headed by Jack Johnstone.
While most of these chapters were composed of ex-Wobblies, the SLNA also included a group of ex-Anarchists who had previously been residents of a Utopian commune called Home in Washington state.
[8] Foster and Fox set up "headquarters" at a rooming house run by Lucy Parsons at 1000 South Paulina St., in a heavily Slavic district of Chicago's near west side.
[9] In Chicago, the group maintained a presence within the Brotherhood of Railway Carmen of America, which Foster belonged to, as well as the painters, barbers and retail clerks union, laying the basis for the progressive element which would lead the packing and steel organizing campaigns in subsequent years.
The Syndicalist league took an active part in this strike while it existed and in its leaders, Carl E. Person, defense after he shot a company agent in self-defense.
[12] During the brief time of its existence, the KCSL exercised influence in the Cooks, Barbers and Office Workers unions and, according to Foster, controlled the local Central Labor Council.
[13] Tom Mooney was a member of the SLNA in 1912, and met Foster at the organization's "headquarters" that year en route to an International Molders and Foundry Workers Union of North America convention in Milwaukee.