Where the News Ends
CHAMBERLIN, WILLIAM HENRY
Where the News Ends By WILLIAM HENRY CHAMBERLIN A Breath of Fresh Air GEORGE ? LA NY, 8*cretary-Treasurer of th* American Federation of Labor, deserves a risina; vote of thanks from friends of...
...The implication ia that American work...
...at the British Trades Union Congress in Blackpool, it would have been easy for him to have uttered platitudes and, steered away from controversial subjects...
...Among them are disreputable-looking figures labeled Italy, France, India, Kngland...
...The Red Army was a considerable aid in setting up satellite, Moscow-oriented regimes in Kastern Europe...
...One feels confident thst a people capable of such sn achievement can never be held in permanent subjection...
...That is bad enough, sufficiently disgusting as a way of representing our allies...
...In a recent column Mrs...
...A. Editorial— The Campaign Against Labor HERE is swinging into, action today...
...Arid this action may be a foretaste of what is later to happen to the Full Employment Bill...
...On our side, peasants and newly-freed prisoners tilled the fields and peacefully tended their herds of rattle...
...Well, this sort of thing means trouble...
...In a recent ropy of The New York Herald-Tribunt one of our most distinguished cartoonists, Ding, draws" for us a winding column of lousy-looking mendicant...
...The first was the prolonged defense of Warsaw after the Polish armies in the field had been hopelessly defeated...
...Until that time there can be no genuine unity, no true community of interest between Ute free trade-union movement of the West and an official Soviet trade-union movement that is simply part of the governing .apparatus of the totalitarian state, One thing free labor cannot compromise Or condone, both for humanitarian and for practical reasons, is the establishment, under any form or any name, of peonage or slavery...
...On the other side, what little you saw on wheels was always Rutsisn...
...If workers have wages too email to permit them to buy, the manufacturer and farmer cannot sell—then we have depression...
...When American labor receives authentic news that Soviet trade unions have demanded, under threat of strike action, ths about ion of the forced labor system, it will be proud to extend a hand of fellowship to a truly free Russian workers' movement...
...During the late war, there were three unforgettable manifestations of this traditional militant revolutionary spirit...
...are aliens, that Uncle Sam is business America snd that they have no right to make requests of him...
...It Alls s conspicuous gap in American social history...
...Austrians, when they trsveled at all, did so on foot...
...It does mean that government, employers and union officials should sit down together like civilized persons and consider all side) of the matter on their merits...
...remsin human, this sort of thing will happen...
...But the prodigious amount of organized and unorganized looting of everything from the factory equipment on which the national livelihood of the occupied , countries depends to the peasant's cow, the worker's bicycle, the watch or fountain pen of the man on the atreet has not been calculated to win friends or to influence people favorably...
...Now tht war is ended, the men have been released from the pledge, All the irritations that have boiled up while the lid was being held down are exploding in the open an...
...Here ia what he says about the contrast between American and Soviet zones in Austria: "In our ares, roads were crowded with trucks, cars, bicycles, carts and baby buggies...
...According to the AP report, there were cries of "shsme" and "tommyrot," no doubt from Communists snd fellow-travelers in the audience...
...In this, as in many other features, the state and party-controlled trade-union movement in the Soviet Union has s record very similsr to that of ths Nasi Labor front or of Mussolini's hand-picked labor syndicates...
...This affected the psychology of Polish Socialism, both before and after the establishment of sn independent Poland in 1918, . Nowhere wan the barricade technique of nineteenth century revolutionary groups to carefully cherished and so often practiced ax in Poland...
...The Polish industrial workers, as they emerged on the political scene in the latter part of the nineteenth century, inherited the insurrection tradition of the Polish nationalists...
...Meany posed the issue about the true character of the Soviet trade unions very clearly when he said: "The so-called trade unions actively support the Soviet system of worker blacklists and deportations to labor camps and have resulted in virtual enslave ment for millions of peasants, workers, and professional people who are confined to labor camps with no protection from exploitation and compulsory labor...
...On the economic aide th* case to be made in f*vor of increased wage rates is convincing to anyone who has brains enough to see that workers are consuman...
...For these demand* and strikes there are two sorts of explanations, the psychological and the economic.' The union members have been held back for nearly few years by the no-strike pledge which wss given by their officials...
...But, ss he said after his speech: "It would be rather silly to come 8,400 miles and then go home without ssying what is on your mind...
...slouching forward to present their capacious basket...
...Speak ins...
...To be sure, it had never been very credible in the light of the tremendous exodus of Germans from th* area under Russian occupation...
...Backward politicians, belligerent employers, even their apologists among the editorial writers, should be able to understand a simple mathematical problem like this...
...Msterisl about Poland is scanty, about the Polish labor movement almost non-existent...
...Equally, clear with the existence of an enormous forced labor system in Russia is the failure of the Soviet trade unions to utter even the mildest protest against it...
...The latest news from the national capital is |* the effect that the Senate voted 61 to 29 against tht 125.00 maximum for* unemployment insurance...
...The organized workers are Americans...
...The strikes in Michigan and other states are the ether side of the picture...
...Those of them who took a conscious part la political life always dreamed of an uprising that would bring their country both national freedom and social justice, snd their underground organizations often assumed ? military character...
...Aa long as humsn beings—workers or employer...
...of tU most vicious anti-labor campaigns in a generation...
...It does mean, moreover, that the campaign of slander now being conducted against organised labor is a hindrance to reconversion snd to the building of s better sort of country...
...And the last beggar of all, complete with tin can und unruly beard, is a tramp asking for guaranteed jobs for all...
...But abuse cannot alter the factual truth of what the American labor representative said...
...A certain type of "mind'.' in this country may be expected to denounce Mr...
...The author shows how, because of the partition of Poland, nationalism and Socialism became fused in the consciousness of many Polish workers...
...The testimony of foreign correspondents about the ruthlessness of Soviet occupation is unanimous, and perhaps the most convincing bit is furnished by Edgar Snow, who can hardly be suspected of anti-Soviet sympathies...
...The third was the almost incredible saga of Warsaw in August and September, J944, when the Polish Underground Army, after five years of ruthless Gormen occupation, was able to recruit enough men and enough weapons to fight a powerful German garrison for two months...
...The story of this uprising, with its hope for aid that never came in adequate amount, that was sabotaged for political reasons, is fully and movingly told...
...This1 is the nub of the whole matter...
...Unless President Truman and Secretory of labor Schwellenbach are able to induce the employers to carry on this struggle in a civilized and constructive manner, we shall soon be catapulted into a fight which will make what happened after the First World Wir look like a picnic...
...e The Polish Labor Movemenf usee IHR POLISH WORKER," by Feliks Gross (Roy Publishers, 18.00), is...
...Roosevelt argued: "It is fiu...
...Since that time there has been an increasing trickle of eye-witness testimony which knocks this legend effectively on the head...
...Deprived of their traditional weapon, they were exasperated by the long drawn-out proceeding* before the War Labor Board...
...It would be simply absurd to reject the eye-witness evidence of these men, some of whom are well-known figures in the international labor and radical movement, as a collection of pathological falsehoods...
...They are Uncle Sam's good right arm...
...The evidence that an extremely cruel system of forced labor, indistinguishable from human slavery, is practiced on a very wide scale in the Soviet Union is overwhelming and indisputable...
...Any groups which try again to force tht» bark into the mendicant class will have a fight on their hands...
...to produce more things than ever before, but in doing so the employee mult benefit as well as the employer: We must . . . permit him to have the things which ht makes at lower cost and to continue to have the waget which make it possible for him to be a consumer...
...One need only refer to the detailed and specific testimony of the Russisn scientist, Vladimir Tchernavin, who escsped from one of the more notorious slave camps on the Solovetsky Islands, of the former Yugoslav Communist Ciliga, of Victor Serge, of the Bundist Lucien Blit, who was himself sent to a camp where there were tens of thousands of slave laborers, and of many others...
...Mr...
...This m a straight jab at President Truman's reconversion program...
...The book contains s detailed analysis of the composition of the Polish working class and describes wages which, whils considerably below American or West European standards, were higher than was th* esse in the Soviet Union, Hungsry and the Balkans « · · A Legend Disproved About the time when the European war came to an end, a legend began to take form in the utterances of commentators who rely heavily on inner -consciousness for interpretation of European events, il'his wss ? ? the effect that the Soviet military and civil authorities would be humane and enlightened in their treatment of Germans and Austrian*, in happy contrast to Anglo-American behavior...
...and bowls to Uncle Sam...
...Meany as "prejudiced" and "a Russia-hater...
...At the end of the procession comes a fat and importunate person bearing a plackard in favor of the 40-hour week and the <>»r minimum wage...
...The second was the tragic and heroic uprising in the doomed Ghetto...
...vote of thanks from friends of freedom everywhere for his courageous and clear Statement of the reasons why Soviet trade unions, in their present form, have no place in any free international labor movement...
...The demands of the Steel Workers, Auto Workers and Oil Worker* also fit in...
...Thott who are trying to destroy organized lalmr are alte destroying themselves...
...They have seen wages held down while there was no ceiling on profits...
...On the Russian side, when you passed cows at all, they were being driven off under guard...
...This does not mean that 307« or whatever other increase is demanded is justified...
...a valuable and comprehensive sketch of the history of the Polish labor movement...
Vol. 28 • September 1945 • No. 38
