POWERFUL LABOR POLITICAL MOVEMENT IS VITAL NEED, ACWA LEADER POINTS OUT
Powerful Labor Political Movement Is Vital Need, ACWA Leader Points Out *ff*HE speech delivered by Joseph * Schlossberg, secretary - treasurer of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, at the...
...On the faculty are Helen Hohman of Northwestern University, Arthur Weimar of the University of Chicago, and Rose Segure, graduate of the University of California...
...EDITORIAL WORKERS FINDING OUT ABOUT THE CLASS STRUGGLE By a Member Editorial workers all over the country are not taking long to find out that they are not high-falutin professionals but just plain ordinary workers...
...According to P. Fisher, temporary secretary, the workers must remain) in jail several years unlets a stiff fight is msde...
...The guild already has a membership of 8,000—a remarkable achievement for white-collar workers who have always been regarded as ragged individuals...
...INTERNATIONAL I+ADIES GARMENT WORKERS UNION, David Dubmsky, president...
...LONDON COUNCIL RALLIES LABOR TO BATTLE FASCISM LONDON.—The London Trades Council, at a meeting held recently, called upon all workers in the trade union, cooperative and political organizations to rally to fight against fascism...
...BECAUSE LABOR IS A COMMODITY, AND THE EMPLOYERS DO NOT WANT TO PAY FOR IT...
...It is his duty to administer Section 7-A in that state, and he administered it to ably and so efficiently that the strike was broken and the workers sent to jail...
...you know what is happen-, ing all through the country...
...A call has been issued> for aid...
...They were sent to jail...
...The class straggle, as ws all know, it primarily an economic straggle on the part of labor...
...for Non-Partisan Labor Defense...
...The experience of the American Newspaper Guild, organised a bare seven months ago, is teaching newspapermen a few thinsrs about the class struggle...
...The committee is distributing collection lists and will soon take other steps...
...We must fight Fascism with a real united front and our resolution methods ensure that" DEFENSE GROUP TO APPEAL CASE OF ROBINS-GRAS A united committee to appeal the case of Harold Robins and Andrea Graa, NeV York workers sent to Sing Sing on framed charges of felonious assault because of their activities in the recent New York hotel strike, has been organised with temporary headquarters at 22 East 17th St, Room 731...
...Secretary A. M. Wall of the London Trades Council, deploring the tendency to say, "Fascism will never happen here— let's forget about Mosley and his clowns," said: "That is precisely what was said in Germany...
...All trade unions and others workers' organisations are asked to aid...
...The following resolution was adopted: "The London Trades Council declares that FascismJs an instrument of monopoly capitalism designed primarily further to enslave the workers...
...Build the Socialist Party and get sobs for The New Leader to help bolld It...
...Let me present to yon this one thought before dosing...
...Your chairman reported to you yesterday what happened the night before in Toledo...
...One obstacle in its way is the NRA code for vaudeville, which has enabled employers to fores almost all salaries down to the mini—am...
...It is on the political field, where we have to fight out no wage disputes with individual employers, that we are able to see the class struggle in its true character...
...1 V Do two things...
...I belong to those who have had experience in both parts of the class struggle...
...It discovered soon enough that the daily newspaper code was just another weapon of the employers to force the employees to accept the status quo...
...For quite a while the newspapermen were torn between their blind loyalty to the publishers < which the clever publishers promptly prostituted for bigger profits) and their loyalty to tbeir fellowworkers...
...Every employer who cuts wages or who refuses decent conditions is an enemy as we see him, at the time of a strike or a walkout, and when our contest with him is over—when we are beaten and go back on the wage reduction, or when we win and go back with an understanding for better wages—our class struggle seems ended, we no longer see an enemy before us...
...It has already estabHsbed a branch in Philadelphia and ta Boston and is now working on local branches in Detroit, Milwaukee and San Francisco...
...The individual employer is the one with whom we had our dispute...
...We are looking hopefully forward that you will fully appraise your great opportunity in this momentous hour and that you will shape your policies and program to irrefutable American realities and thereby become truly and actively the political arm of the working class movement of our land...
...The class struggle is on...
...Some of us devote our time exclusively to the political field, and we see that picture, sometimes to the exclusion of the other...
...NRA "Ably Admlnlirered" The judge who aent them to jail ¦aid that the courts are not the servants of the people, and the employer in whose interest those people were sent to jail so that the strike might be broken is tb« admii.ljtrator of the NRA in the state of New Jersey, J. Lester Eisner...
...They served terms of 90 days in jail...
...Powerful Labor Political Movement Is Vital Need, ACWA Leader Points Out *ff*HE speech delivered by Joseph * Schlossberg, secretary - treasurer of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, at the Socialist national convention has aroused so much interest that we have been requested to print it in the Labor Section...
...There has (been • great deal of talk in the past year with respect to certain legislation...
...The meeting was opened by Samuel Laderman, of the International Pocketbook Makers' Union, who is chairman of a provisional committee elected at a preliminary labor college conference...
...The International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, in convention assembled in Chicago, send you greetings coupled with an earnest wish that your national convention may result in a closer bond between the organized economic forest of the working class in America and the Socialist Party...
...Then we have the section of people who would like to fight Fascism in a hysterical way in the streets, shouting and rioting—and nothing else...
...That method would probably have a result exactly the opposite to be desired...
...The classes will be held Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday 7:30, at 19 P. M., at the headquarters of the Women's Trade Union Educational League, 630 S. Ashland Blvd...
...Now I want to say just a few words in my personal capacity for I am grateful for the opportunity to speak as a Socialist to Socialists...
...The hotel bosses, however, were seeking victims, and Judge Corrigas, a steady enemy of the workers, helped see that they got them in Robins and Gras," the committee writes...
...Nature of Struggle Obscured But some of us also have had the opportunity of having contact, close contact, with workers on both fields, like your national chairman and others in the Socialist Party...
...to counteract the anti-union propaganda in the press, on the platform, and on the radio, that the worker is exposed to over 90% of his time...
...It is the struggle about work, and about hours, and about jobs, and all that Some of us devote ouf time exclusively to the industrial field, and we see best what is happening there...
...VAUDEVILLE ACTORS EXTEND ORGANIZATION The American Federation of Actors, an A. F. of L, union covering actors in vaudeville, elnbs and outdoor fields, has begun an energetic campaign to extend its power throughout this -country and alee Canada...
...Those five people were sent to jail because they took the provision in the NRA known as Section 7-A seriously and actually organised and went out on strike for better wages...
...It has been declared that labor is not a commodity, but since that solemn declaration, we have had some of the greatest industrial battles in this country...
...It Is more important now than it ever nu to build up in this country a powerful political labor movement based upon the class interests of the workers...
...The tuition fee will be fl.00 for as many courses as the student wishes...
...I hope that with the efforts now being made we shall be able to bring that about...
...Legal red-tape necessitates immediate raialng of 9400...
...At a meeting of the New York unit of the guild Sunday night in the Hotel New Yorker, the membership derided the plea made for "cooperation" with publishers by the retiring president, Allen Raymond, and then applauded enthusiastically the threat of National President Heywood Broun that newspaper workers would use the strike weapon if forced to...
...Labor College Launched In Chicago With Backing Of Unions and the Party By Mayor Haletbka I /CHICAGO...
...That dispute seems over when the strike or the lockout is finished, and it is because of that that workers frequently forget the true nature of the class struggle, that the struggle is not with the individual employers or even with individual groups of employers, but that it is with the system...
...Invitations have been sent to the Amalgamated Food Workers Union, which led the hotel strike, A. F. of L. locals in the industry, and the I.L.D...
...We can have a real fighting labor movement on the industrial field if it is supported by our work politically, and we can go out to the whole working class—not only to one group at a time—and discuss the class struggle with the whole working class and carry a message of the necessity of fighting for the new social order on issues which are not limited to an individual group here and there, but which affect the workers everywhere...
...A member of the executive committee of the Chicago Federation of Labor, she represents the Federation of Women High School Teachers...
...In this forthcoming struggle the ^workers will need the undivided support of the Socialist movement, conscious of itt mission and destiny in the American labor scene...
...The Socialist Party of Cook County, through Kathrine H. Pollack, played an important part in initiating and promo', ing the conference...
...It discovered also that publishers (despite the girrandiloquent editorials for abstract new deals) were just ordinary bosses who did the usual thing—fired men for attempting unionisation...
...Wall, in answering the opponents of the resolution, said: "If there is one workig-class party iu the world that has failed, It Is Co Communist Party...
...for a Bffolutionary Workers Party, Pool* Zion Left, and the Provisional Comm...
...Maynard C. Krueger, of the University of Chicago, chairman of the party in Cook County and member of the NEC, outlined the scope and aim of workers' education...
...and the council instructs the executive committee to make every effort to secure the practical nnity of the whole of the London labor movement with the object of rallying the support of all the workers to the principles of the movement and thus hasten the day when the nation shall be democratically governed in the interests of the people...
...However, the guild definitely began swinging left, under the pressure of events...
...It it daily becoming more obvious that the labor movement in our country will soon be confronted with a decisive battle for power with the gigantic interests of industry and finance determined to block the recent advance made by the workers on the economic front, and that thete predatory interests of reaction will stop before nothing to crush awakened aspirations of the masses...
...Mot only that, actors point out, bat the cede (bad as it it) it being openly violated everywhere, and' cempHance boards aee either helpless or unwilling to enforce it Only last week, Ralph Whitehead, secretary of the A.F.A., want to Boston and fled 11 coda com* plaints by actors samjaat theatre employer...
...Some two hundred ^ delegates representing over 76 trade unions, Socialist party locals, and other labor organisations met at the Amalgamated Center Saturday to discuss and adopt plana for the establishment of a labor college in Chicago...
...Miss Hirstein is a teacher in a Chicago junior college...
...Among them are James Mullenbach, Paul H. Douglas of the University of Chicago, and John A. Lapp, chairman of the Coal Labor Board, District No...
...to join up...
...I want to express to you our appreciation of the cooperation and help we hav« received from a large number oi members of the Socialist Party all through our work...
...As a Socialist I am more concerned about our situation now than I ever was before for the reason that there is real danger that in the next national election, which is coming this year, the labor movement will be made • tail to the kite of one of the capitalist parties...
...Comm...
...Schlossberg spoke as follows: Comrade chairman and comrades: I am grateful for this opportunity to appear before you...
...I.LG.W.U...
...THE following telegram was sent to the national convention of * the Socialist Party by the delegates to the ILGWU convention in Chicago: X "Socialist Party Convention Detroit, Michigan...
...She is a pioneer in labor education, having taught at the Bryn Mawr and University of Wisconsin Summer Schools for Workers...
...According to the RobirisGras Defense Committee, the two prisoners, when tried for beatingup a hotel straw-boss, proved alibis, were never satisfactorily identified, showed that the sole witness against them had contradicted his own testimony, and presented a number of fine character witnesses...
...He reports that It took Urn only two days to gather these complaints...
...There is one thing that should be clear to all of us, that whatever legislation we may get, whatever the motives may be on the part of some of those who played a responsible part in the legislation, the class struggle it ttill with us...
...An added feature of the summer session will be a series of lectures, on Thursday evenings, by specialists in the various fields of social and economic activity...
...Our struggle is primarily on the industrial field, but on this field we do not see the class enemy, we see individual enemies...
...The organisations making up the defense committee are the Socialist Party, the General Defense Committee, the Communist League, the Communist Party Opposition, 0 Martello, Org...
...Lillian Hirstein, who had been selected as educational director by the provisional committee, described the educational program of the college for the summer...
...It is our duty /—the duty of those who understand *the true nature of the class Strug' gle to do whatever we ean to prevent that, and carry to the workers the message of independent political action...
...A plea to unite with the Communists was turned down by an overwhelming vote...
...The Chicago Federation of Labor aided, and a large student enrollment for the summer term is certain...
...I think that wc have reciprocated in part by providing you with a national chairman...
...It is nothing new to yon, but It Is something that very frequently is forgoten...
...2. 'The conference decided that at least two-thirds of the board of directors must be trade union representatives...
...We need a labor college," he said, "to inculcate the principles of trade-unionism among the new recruits to organised labor...
...the apathy toward Hitler helped very much to get him into power...
...There has been a great deal of confusion about that, chiefly in the ranks of the workers...
...Greets S.P...
...Courses in current economic problems, parliamentary law and public speaking, the A B C's of trade unionism, and labor problems will be offered...
...A week ago yesterday a large number of Amalgamated members met at Freehold, N. J., in front of the Monroe County jail to meet two of our organizers, John Sala and Bruno Billia, who, I believe, are members of the Socialist Party...
...Three others, strikers, served terms of 80 days each...
...and to arouse the worker with the ardor to build a new society, a workers' world...
...I bring you the greetings of the members of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America...
...Imagine how many complaints have never reached the public tat,*he conclude...
Vol. 17 • June 1934 • No. 72
