The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1914-07-16

Editor The Pslladium-In reading
the editorial headed Strange, Isn't
IT," In Mondays Palladium, l was
reminded for the hundredth time that
your editorial writer has that bore
some habit of all reformers, that is,
he merely scratches the surface.
This time he refers to the coal min
ers' strike around Bellaire, Ohio, men,
tioning the obvious facts, "the strikers
are foreigners, taken advantage of by
the companies, forced into peonage,
etc"
Thus the operators forced these men
to combine for selfpreservation. They
are ready for anything; they have
been victims of the worst kind of an
archy and are willing to retaliate. An
organizer comes to help them get to-
gether, to solidify them, to unionize
them. This time he happens to be an
I. w. w., none other than Joseph Ell
tor, whom the wooden mill operators
of Lawrence, Mass, tried to send to
the gallows couple of years ago,
which action terminated in an expose
of a frame-up, conviction of poor
tool Green, the school directory OF
planting dynamite, and the suicide of
a "higher-up" when called to testify.
Again Ettor is branded an agitator
and a firebrand, and though I have no
sympathy with the tactics of the l.
w. W., l want to say the same things
United Mine Workers Of America or
any other man or woman who came in
there to help these Ignorant foreign
ers."
The Bellaire trouble is only Skin
mish in the worldwide class struggle
between the owning or capitalist non
producing class and the prolatarian
producing class. And the fact of the
strikers being foreigners and I. w. w.
makes not the slightest difference In
the world.
It is brutal struggle for the pro-
duct Of the workers. The capitalist
has every advantage, chief among
which is control of the governing pow.
ers, backed by the militia, and, if need
be. by the federal troops.
Second to this, and making his hold
on the first more secure, he controls
the news associations and newspapers
excepting only an occasional old party
paper and the Socialist press. He car
| poison the minds of the community OF
the state and of the nation against
the intruding "firebrand" and the riot
ing. destroying, ignorant foreigners
When we read Of the New Haver
road paying $4,000 to a Boston paper
to stimulate it in forming public opin
ion, when we who read widely know
! SO many papers policy" depends OF
who are it's large advertisers, wher
we know that the continuation of THU
robber capitalist system depends en-
tirely on the ignorance of the workers
| hot hof
about "agitators' is made of the Who'll,
cloth?
Why do not more people who know
that these conditions will continue 81
long as one man or set of men are al
| lowed to own or control the means o
life of another man or set of men, com
out squarely for abolition? Abolition
of wage slavery through socialize
ownership and democratic manage
ment of industry, Of the means of life
Why hang on to the coat tails of tn
parasites, a parasite on parasite
when it must be self-evident to all tina
this rotten old capitalist system is jus
now in it's death struggle?
Evolution is bringing on revol,
ton, and never again will the prom
Use of full dinner pail, of the fire
c"in"ge Of silver, of high or Of Low
tariff, of this reform or that reforl
excite the workers.
They have hitched their wagon to
star, and though progress is slow it
always progress, and through strikes
lock-outs, riots, hanging, burning {
women and children and worse, tn
working class will continue to struggl
toward political and economic freedom
and even now the dawn of a brighte
day is breaking.
A few years ago Clarence Darro,