For Forty-Five Years The U.H.T. Has Upheld the Torch
Panken, Jacob
For Forty-Five Years the U.H.T. Has Upheld the Torch Born in the Early Days of Jewish Immigration, Inspired by Heroes of Labor and Socialism, May It Continue to Uphold Its Noble Ideal I By...
...With the exception of a handful of loyal comrades in Dayton and Cleveland and in a few other places, our movement had all but disappeared...
...The lesders enjoyed the faith and confidence of the masses and they deserved it, for they gave of themselves without stint...
...Though physically inferior, the Jewish worker tended to be spiritually superior...
...What is, if it Is unworthy, should be eradicated, erased completely out of our midst...
...continue as follows: Detroit...
...it has brought no better wages, no more jobs, and no vn ran tee of the right to organise...
...He immediately assimilated the ideals of the labor I movement and added his own...
...I v I What a resolute group of comrades have been able B-V M <<> accomplish would make n grand epic...
...Meanwhile, families of three, four and five persons are supported on weekly wages of $7 to $7.60, and the workers know that the blue eagle here is dead...
...The Communists then annihilated each „ other with split after split and they are now WKfjS^T^^^/L practically non-existent in Ohio...
...I had a good meeting in East Cleveland, a suburb, and got acquainted with the membership of a new and promising branch...
...elssabua...
...Lansing, January 2-8...
...The mercenary found his way into our movement and that translated itself into the rank and file...
...So far I have gotten 116 New Leader subscribers since I am on tour, and tho hundreds of sub blanks and sample copies given out at my meetings should bring in more...
...With its attractive headquarters In the center of the city, a good weekly forum and study classes, the local Is msklng good strides and work Is being done to build several more branches...
...Then csme the war and its aftermath...
...Dl-17...
...11-12...
...The Daily Worker is to soon Issue a tenth anniversary number and It is arranging for messages from official Communist parties to run in that Issue...
...Rockland County was one of the havens for these runaway shop owners...
...Then to Massillon and Akron...
...The only relief will come from strong union organization and worker control of the government, yet when union organizers appeared they were run out of town by the local police, and warned not to return...
...In company with our very active State Secretary, Sidney Yellen, I visited a number of trade union offices and marveled at the excellent relationship we have established...
...Every living movement goes through, I suppose, that sort of condition...
...Minneapolis, tlnnstl, 18-19-20...
...While our Cleveland movement suffers from all sorts of difficulties, its pains, I really believe, are growing pains, and only an outsider like myself who has so often visited Cleveland in the last twenty years can more clearly see a relatively good growth in our party in this large city...
...Two New Yorkers, Carl Cummings and John Davidson, are hero—and howl The National office hss sent an energetic young couple, Comrades Dillny, to work here and they should help matters considerably...
...The leadership in the Jewish -labor movement served in response to a call that would not be denied...
...That period in our movement quickened the blood and made the heart beat faster...
...Then, at last, in 1933 came the cheering hope that the owners, who immediately signed the blanket code and hung the emblem of the blue eagle in their factory windows, would have to pay better wages and establish shorter hours...
...And worse, poisonous lying of the fanatic...
...Ohio is a huge Mft** I territory to cover and its reactionary election law MPAJ presents u difficult obstacle for a minority party...
...Then some of the shops moved out to nearby non-union territory, where young boys and girls could be hired for a dollar a day...
...I was booked here on the most unfavorable dates in the year, December 24, 26 and 26, and this daring bunch actually arranged meetings for these dates, and my first one ou the 24th drew a capacity crowd...
...Notable Battle...
...The local NRA board believes that it can do 'no more...
...The first organization of women workers was in the waist industry...
...Omaha, 21 22-18: l.hv ttl-27-28...
...Attempts were made late in 1931 to unionize two of the Nyack shops, but apathy of the workers, a hostile public, and intimidation by the bosses defeated every effort...
...Claessens' Tour r"ln- 24 Kansas City, 28-27-28...
...Cahan., Hillquit, London, Zametkin, Felgenbaum, Weinsteln, Pine snd dozens of others— Schleslnger, Sigmsn and msny, many others were /'<> yea know of any oases e/ •taMtng at tkr NRA in a code av duitrgt We recently os...
...And although I csme '^s'""""""™ 5B In .luring the worst time for public meetings, the August Claessens we*K before Christmas, a number were surprisingly successful...
...Month Bead, Graad Rapids, 6-7...
...Because of its inactivity, its unwillingness to enforce the law against the employers, and because oi its hostility to labor unions, the local NRA board has been completely discredited among informed workers in the county...
...The pockctbook and leather goods industries centering in New York City once paid its skilled union employees in the city wages of $30 and $46 a week...
...Has Upheld the Torch Born in the Early Days of Jewish Immigration, Inspired by Heroes of Labor and Socialism, May It Continue to Uphold Its Noble Ideal I By Jacob Panken TTIIK history of the United He- 4 * brew Trades is more than • chronicle of achievements by itself and its affiliated unions...
...Not only is the blue eagle dead here, but, indeed, it never lived...
...od our readers to report eases of violations...
...China, Cuba, the Philippine Islands, Great Britain and other countries will bo represented...
...Investigations were made and the employers asked for an exception to the code requirements—this was denied...
...For ten years after the war many believed that prosperity never would pass away...
...The worker or leader did not serve...
...That also had its effect upon the character of our movement...
...Flint, 4 6; cago, 8-9-10-11-12...
...We want the facte...
...Complaints were made to the local NRA committee...
...Three of them settled in the village of Nyack and one in Spring Valley...
...Men did not work in the labor movement for the salaries they received, or even for honor...
...14-26...
...Though themselves belonging in many instances to the opposite group, spiritually and psychologically they were with the proletariat...
...The strikers, now disillusioned, are continuing their 14-week strike...
...It is unfortunate...
...Let me conclude hy wishing that the spirit which brought the United Hebrew Trades into being may be recaptured...
...Madison...
...The reaction following ths war and the destructive woik of the Communists had completely wrecked our party...
...The faith and confidence in our movement, the hope in it was uudermined and destroyed...
...DestrucHve Foreei Then came that worst of all destructive forces, the venom of the traducer, of the skeptic md cynic, of the fanstlc...
...Meetings for Comrade Claessens {•*•"•¦ a,»' 29'80J 8»- ''°"J...
...These things are now only memories, but glorious memories...
...real heroes of labor...
...hrtiary I 2 8-4 b, 30 31, January 1. Hprln»h>ld, February 6-7...
...He gave the labor movement new form...
...The facts were sent to Washington, but the violations continue...
...Wages of seven dollars a week continued as the rule, and in two cases hours continued to exceed the legal limit...
...There was the strike of the cloakmakers in 1910, and the general strike of the tail- j ors In 1912 and 1918...
...There was the first strike of waistmakers, 25,000 of them, in 1909, the first effective general strike of Jewish workers...
...There was a selflessness not only in the masses but in the leadership...
...that the will to fight which attended its first two or three decades of life be reborn with a greater force...
...Our ideals should have built fortifications against the penetration of the gangster element into our ranks...
...They worked because of a desire to make the world better, because of a love for the helpless and the down-trodden...
...Dayton...
...A few weeks ago Maxim Litvlnov and President Roosevelt signed a certain agreement...
...Then there is a One crowd of newer and younger members splendidly active...
...The labor movement to him was more, than a mere instrument to get 1 more leisure or food or clothing...
...Often a union of Jewish immigrants would be organized because of intolerable conditions and immediately would go on strike, without a penny in their treasury and dispossessed and braving not only the rigors of nature but the brutality of the gangster and the police and the courts...
...Here are a few reporte from the NRA front...
...The capitalist order of society is crumbling...
...But the Russian Communist Party is not listed...
...Had a grand meeting there...
...Sioux 28...
...Comrade Kotofsky of the Cleveland I.L.G.W.U...
...Do not rely on gossip and do net exaggerate...
...What the pioneers of the United Hebrew Trades foresaw In the '90s and In the beginning of the'20th century has come to pass...
...they came themselves...
...was not necessary to call the workers...
...Do you wonder why I am enthusiastic about our new Ohio movement...
...It gave me a grand BBBBBBkffFjJ^| lhr111 '<> one splendid local after another ^nl during this past week and meeting the many fine Ff^H new Socialist...
...Another case: In an attempt to settle a strike of silk mill workers in Nanuet, the board sided o.i every point with the employers, denying the workers the right to organize into their oivn union, and asking them to go back under the same conditions they left...
...For the last ja4, dozen years it has been a discouraging Job for our | 'PW faithfuls to rebuild our party...
...There was the birth of the Amalgamsted Clothing Workers of America down in Nashville...
...Next to Cleveland...
...The movement became a battlefield upon which those of th1) Kxtreme I.eft and those of the Kxtreme Right fought for supremacy, and too often, the fight was carried on by nasty and contemptible methods, and at times by forces that had no right to be in the labor movement, by gangstercontrolled groups...
...Ixraking hack to the middle Wh of the last century and then through the first fifteen or twenty years of the twentieth century it is not easy to pick upon any particular battle as outstanding...
...Pittsburgh, City, 18-IP...
...I am meeting fair-sized audiences, collections are very good considering the severe economic conditions, and the local are generally covering the expenses...
...And now for a busy week in Michigan...
...Since then the Daily Worker has been deprived of the usual "Down With" and "Up With" from the "fatherland...
...Tha old stalwarts like Wheeloek, Yellen, Wcintraub, Martiuek and others are on the job...
...It should have been avoided...
...Milwaukee, 8- 18-14...
...At any other time these two would head the list, but they arc not even mentioned now...
...To the Jewish workers the labor movement became a religion...
...The struggle between labor and capital has become more Intensified snd there Is a greater need ACROSS NORTHERN OHIO By August Claessens WHEN last 1 toured Ohio with Comrade Thomas in 1928 we found only u bare skeleton organisation...
...Garment Trade* Trade unions were organized in the industries in which the Jewish imigrant found employment—shirtmakers and cloakmakers, tailors' union and bakers...
...Every year, and every day in those years was replete with activity...
...The Jewish immigrant coming here in large masses almost immediately saw the need of fashioning an instrument to give him a chance to stand up and fight his battle on the economic field...
...Indianapolis, 15-16-17...
...There was such faith and confidence in the purposes of the movement, in its alms and objectives...
...A record of the struggle of each one of the locsl unions connected with the United Hebrew Trsdes, and a notation of the battles in which the i parent body itself was engaged, are an interpretation of the history of the Jewish people in the United Stales since 1HH9...
...the labor movement was the medium through which he expressed himself...
...The workers waited patiently for the expected improvement—but it never came...
...That the selflessness its leadership displayed come bark again and that its affiliate bodies may again take the lead in the American labor movement for idealism, loftiness Ulld i igll mindcdncss There is sorrow in the camp of Stalin's followers in this country...
...Our old pioneers in these Industrial centers have gathered around themselves scores of new and active members, I am now in Toledo, and I have not seen so excellent a local here since 1912...
...Paul...
...The high purpose of our cause should have been a sufficient guarantee sgainst the poison...
...What hss been should be forgotten...
...In many cities I have found comrades who will hustle for subs and act as New Leader agenj...
...in every city...
...21 2218-14-16...
...pledged 100 subscriptions hy Janusry 15th, and Ux-al Cleveland will also match this pledge in their own drive...
...Fine new headquarters, study classes and successful forums In both places...
...No sacrifice was too great to be made in the cause of labor, and so all their strikes were carried on with super-human sacrifices...
...la9-11...
...E-affl gtowing, vlrll and active...
...The economic field was the I battle ground...
...for a class-conscious spirit, for sacrifice, for organization, for the will to fight and the will to win...
...In I that he had the guidance of rcvo| lutiunary refugees from Czarist I persecution...
...Remarkable party growth in both cities...
...Spoke at one branch, again at a local meeting of the Ladles' Garment Workers and finally at a well-attended banquet arranged by the county organization...
...Neither is the Communist International...
...e • Blue Eagle Prove* to Be Bird of Prey Serving Runaway Shop Exploiter* Hy T. W Davis pi'llAHl.Y insufficient as they * are, the minimum wages guaranteed under the NKA codes seemed like a promised gift from heaven to the workers in the sweat shops of Kockland County, N. Y., and oppressed workers who had toiled during the depression years for ten hours a day and for a daily wage as small as eighty rents looked to the Recovery Administration and its local committee with great hope...
...Life was worthwhile...
...The instrument they j fashioned was found in the trade union...
...Here there is still much need for improvement...
...In Ashtabula, I found the best local, two branches and a third one in making...
Vol. 16 • December 1933 • No. 27
