The labor world. [volume] (Duluth, Minn.) 1896-current, 1916-11-04
BA|Y0NlE TROUBLE.
FAULT | Or OIL Co.
SAYSFRANk WALSH

NEW YORK, Nov. 2.-'Wherever
there is big Rockefeller interest,
there you find brutal slave driving
methods In the treatment of underpaid
workers." declared Frank P. Walsh,
chairman Of the Committee on Indus
trial Relations, in New York, at the
height OF the Bayonne strike.
''The most dangerous as well as
brutal feature Of the Rockefeller treat
ment of labor, is the close controlthat
the Rockefeller concerns gain over
the police and other public authori-
ties. With the mayor of Bayonne con-
Tossing that he is a hired attorney for
the Rockefeller interests. and with the
police department using it's full force,
and hundreds Of special deputies to
beat and kill the revolving strikers,
the American public has it's latest
demonstration Of what Rockefeller
ism means
Can't Break Spirit.
LET me call attention here to the
fact that just a few days ago on the
very site of the Ludlow massacre. 500
and more unafraid coal miners for
the Colorado Fuel Iron Company "a
Rockefeller corporation) Joined in a
union affiliated with the United Mine
Workers Of America. That splendid
fact proves that Rockefeller cannot
break down the spirit of his workers,
however much he may be able to BEAT
them back into sullen subsection, as
he has done in Bayonne.
'The breaking Of the strike of I'M
organized and helpless Polish men and
women was brought about by such
complete brutality that every news
paper in New York constrained to
publish articles in protest. Many Of
these newspapers, in fact. most will
ingly, condemned the methods of the
police. Just what these methods were
can be partly surmised from the fol-
lowing statement of the chief inspec-
tor of police, who worked for the
Rockefeller, interests precisely as if
he were their hired man. Inspector
Cady was quoted in the New York
Evening Post in these words:
"'How the blank can you expect
to deal with these blankety-blank-
blanks, unless you can go after 'em
right? The only way is to shoot on
sight whenever they try to make
trouble. They're just a lot Of Hunks,
and they think strike is war, and
they don't understand anything but
bullets. Shoot 'enl-that's the only
way
Police In Control.
I'm a letter to the New York news
papers after the strike had been in
progress three or four days, Dante
Barton, representing the Committee
on Industrial Relations, wrote:
"Permit me to say in your paper,
after personal investigation in Bay
onne that the conditions there are the
usual ones where a great number Of
unorganized and underpaid workers
break forth in revolt. The conditions
there are that the great crowd of the
strikers are like a. crowd of sheep, in
furiated, even as sheep can become,
and opposed to them is a disciplined
number of policemen, special deputies
and private gunner. The control Of
the situation at every moment, so far
as there was control, lay with the
police and gunner. The only unsafe
portion of Constable Hook for me to
visit was that portion in the actual
possession of the police. Three min
utes before I reached street inter-
section, a woman had been killed in
a second story window, near that
crossing, and from half a dozen to a
dozen persons wounded, some se-
riously, by shots fired by the police
and guards
"Mr. Amos Pinchot, representing
the National Labor Defense Council,
has Joined me- in sending to the De-
partment of Labor. the following .ele-
gram:
1--WE respectfully urge the Depart
ment of Labor to send conciliators or
mediators Immediately to Bayonne.
Something should be done son to stop
the killing and. wounding of strikers
by policemen, deputies and gunner In
the employ of the Standard Oil. Per-
sonal investigation warrant: this
statement. Believe you can do much
good to avert a reign Of terror among
thousands of workers who are being
both terrorized and Infatuated by such
legalized Injustice
II believe it will not forbid your
publication of this statement, that
those of lis who rarm the Committee
on Industrial Relations, and the Ma
tiona1 Labor Defense Council, ap-
proach all industrial disputes from
the standpoint Of sympathy with the
workers who have the ambition to
try for better conditions in life.
Police Goad Strikers.
1T is. of course, inevita BILE that
when q great crowd of undisciplined
workers break out, in an ambitious re-
volt against conditions that have
stunted and oftentimes brutalized
them, that then there should be on
their parts, acts Of violence and re-
sentiment, but I give personal testi-
mony that the brutality Of repression,
the absolute cruelty and wontonness
of the police and gunner in this
second recent big Bayonne strike was
enough to road any set of men into
acts Of violence. It is both pitiful and
terrible. that men and women who
are forbidden the right to organize to
ret het+"" WAGES and better living
In an orderly way, are Immediately
dubbed, shot and terrorized, when
they try through the only way which
is permitted to them, to better heir
condition in life.