To Build Our Party for The Days Just Ahead
Graham, James D.
To Build Our Party for The Days Just Ahead By James D. Graham i President Montana Federation of Labor | ABOR DAY this year witnesses* an upward swing in the organization of the workers. The...
...They did not want to vote upon ratification...
...This does not mean that the men <ind women of America are besotted drunkards...
...The depression is still with us and millions of workers are unemployed, still the workers are organizing, laying plans for the shorter work-week without a reduction in wages...
...While the workers are actively organizing on the economic field they must not forget the political movement...
...There is a sufficient knowledge ot Socialism, and , enough Socialist sentiment in this country to warrant the casting of five million Socialist votes and the election of one hundred Socialists to Congress...
...It had never been dona in just that way...
...It came up for ratification in the New York legislature...
...Bitter struggles and hard-fought strikes will take place...
...But let aa strive so that they prevail tinder ths auspices of those rightly entitled to carry them out...
...The workers must be represented in Congress to consolidate the gains the next two years...
...The country was at war...
...A resolution came up calling for ratification...
...NRA at best is only a makeshift and will not end the exploitation of the workers...
...Organization of the workers into a political party of their own is all that is needed...
...We have no mandate either from our party or our constituents on ratification...
...matters of cosmic Importance, and again and again they are ignored...
...We do believe that the election returns from state after state indicate that millions of people are sick and tired of certain aspects of old party politics...
...Wages have been cut, good working conditions have been slipping...
...The Socialists, however, were neither Wet nor Dry Some of them were total abstainers, all were temperate...
...And it wa* applied democracy...
...Now it is twenty-three and twenty-four...
...ths old party backs wanted to be relieved of sn issue that ended many a promising political career...
...Wets and Drys were lined up, Republicans and Democrats on each side, held in line in ways that have since become pretty well known...
...While the NRA makes an attempt to dispel the depression, it is, generally recognized that its gains will not be permanent unless some fundamental changes are made...
...We were not elected on that issue," said August Claessens, "That issue did not exist when the election was held...
...For ten year* and mora the issue hold on when everybody wanted to get rid of it, until at last tha Great Collapse and other matters of colossal importance came before tha people and they gratefully west bask to the suggestion of ths Socialists so many years before...
...The Socialist...
...There was precedent against the motion...
...We see It everywhere...
...Great and stirring times are ahead of us...
...Let us postpone action one year," he said...
...But they did not know how to go about It...
...It is quite probable that America will witness a general strike of gigantic proportions in the not distant future...
...Let ua vote to have the issue of ratification placed squarely before the people in November, separate and apart from all other issues...
...Indeed, (he one state where Repeal had a narrow squeak was Tennessee, and the section that roiled up a heavy dry majority that nearly overcame the Repeal majority in the cities was just the mountain region where the moon is said to shine and where total abstainance is—let us put it diplomatically— far from universal...
...Within the next two years the class struggle will be intensified...
...But the old party hacks were not through...
...The membership of the unions has been at a low ebb for twelve years...
...We will then be on the highway towards freedom...
...For that is what tha successive state referendum- can be said to be...
...There were ten Socialists there, elected a month before the amendment had been passed by Congress...
...To Build Our Party for The Days Just Ahead By James D. Graham i President Montana Federation of Labor | ABOR DAY this year witnesses* an upward swing in the organization of the workers...
...And so Marty Medio and Walter Scott McNab, Wet and Dry leaders, got together and jointly moved that, the motion be tabled j and that wa* that Many time* sines then the old parties hsve wiihed they had taken the sdvice of the .Socialists to take the issue out of party politics...
...Ths Socialists were sincere in wanting to concentrate upon vital issues...
...Again and again the Socialist* say their say on...
...The present come-back of organized labor is staged under rather unique conditions...
...Let us pledge the Legislature next year to vote solidly, 100 per cent, as instructed by the people...
...A Good Idea, But...
...When the membership reaches ten or twelve million America will be a fit land for the workers to live in...
...All things change, the old passing away giving place to the new...
...The arguments of Louis Waldman, Abe Shlplacoff, Claessens, Joe Whitehorn and the others were so compelling that the resolution actually carried...
...a Republican whose illustrious name eludes the memory at the moment, thereupon secured a printed copy of Claessens' resolution, tore off the top, scribbled his own name on it and sent it in as his own resolution...
...We have a platform of such importance that we resent anything that diverts our attention from It...
...The Repeal Parade is not a parade of legislatures but rather of citizens voting directly for the first time upon a Constitutional Amendment...
...Let us go on...
...Organization of the Socialist party should proceed step by step with the organizing of the unions...
...Ths Best Minds think it over, and usually make a ghastly mess of it...
...So let us be of good cheer...
...Wa have more important things to think about...
...Hundreds of thousands are voting Repeal who are not drinkers, and there is every reason to believe that hundreds of thousands who oppose Repeal are by no means total abstainers who seek to prevent their fellow-citizens from partaking of the hellish stuff...
...And that evokea the memory of something that occurred in the long-ago days of the Spring of 1918 that will illustrate the point of these choice remarks...
...Organized Labor has been taking the gaff...
...not so much to repeal Prohibition a* to dear the decks for Important business...
...Were Right "THIS story should be known by all Socialists, for it is of * mors than passing importance...
...Claessens thereupon proposed a popular referendum...
...and In our tims, before it il too late for even Socialist ideals to salvage the wreckage...
...paet twenty yeare and more would have come to pass...
...Ths capitalist system is crumbling, tha co-operative system must bi built up...
...Present indications are that the membership of the A. F. of L. will be increased by one million this year...
...and then at last, at long last, they get around to consider what the Socialists proposed In the first place.- As they are doing now...
...It wa* a Socialist idea...
...Let ua not forget: // the world had followed Socialist guidance, not one of the tragedies of the...
...Congress had passed th* Eighteenth Amendment and had sent it along for ratification to the state legislatures, as all amendments have been —twenty in all...
...not Claessens', you under* stand, but the resolution of the Forgotten Republican...
...Soma day our Ideals will prevail...
...The exploiter will not give up without resistance and will use all the powers of wealth and government at his command to defeat the workers...
...IT seemed like a good idea, but no old party statesmen was * willing to support a resolution sponsored by a Socialist...
...Wa are right—eternally right...
...Lot us this Labor Day resolve to work harder than we have ever done in the past to organize and build up the Socialist Party to be a power for good in the iandl As the Wet Parade Goes On, a Story of Fifteen Years Ago Gomes to Mind •THE parade of states voting ratification of the Repeal * Amendment goes on...
...The Big Parade DUT we do not here purpose to discuss the habits of a people so much as the habits of American political parties...
Vol. 16 • September 1933 • No. 10
