in the act of going to war would reduce the democratic nations themselves to reactionary dictatorships. Tyler declared that the only course for the Socialist Party was to organize the dissident forces created by a new war in order to "smash the capitalist system." He condemned the ongoing agitation for collective security against fascism being preached by the Communist Party and many liberals, as "asking the working class to sign a blanket check even before a war, endorsing support in the event of war." The Socialist Party imploded in a frenzy of factional warfare during the second half of the 1930s, with the party's Old Guard right wing leaving to form the Social Democratic Federation (established in 1936) and the Trotskyist left wing expelled en masse to form the Socialist Workers Party (established in 1938). With its membership and funds depleted, many activists in the Socialist Party were forced to turn their efforts elsewhere. Union career Tyler's intelligence and commitment seems to have caught the attention of International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU) president David Dubinsky.<ref name=Lazar>Robert E. Lazar, [http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/ead/htmldocs/KCL05780-052.html "Guide to the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. Gus Tyler. Assistant President's records, 1952-1980,] Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives, Cornell University Library, 1981.</ref> Despite the fact that Dubinsky was himself a stalwart of the Socialist Party's Old Guard, Tyler was offered a staff job with the ILGWU in its education department. Tyler held a succession of positions in the union rising in 1945 to the post of Assistant President, a position he held until his retirement in 1989. In an autobiographic essay, Tyler once noted that his career in the ILGWU was interrupted by the war. "When I returned from my stint as an aerial gunner, I suggested to Dubinsky that the union create a full-time political department. He argued that no union had such a department. I told him he had a reputation as an innovator. He was flattered. I got the job." Tyler later worked with the ILGWU's successor union, UNITE, as an assistant to the president, and for many years hosted his own radio program on station WEVD (a radio station owned by The Forward Association and named after Eugene Victor Debs) in New York. When the English-language version of the Forward launched in 1990, Tyler began writing for the publication, penning a weekly column in the paper until 2006. Tyler authored several works of