The Jeffersonian. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1907-1917, 1916-11-09
Thursday, November o, 1916.

if they animals. Even the police have
a personal antipathy toward the "hunkies.''
The reason for this universal dislike is tribute
to the diplomacy of the Standard Oil Company
and the stupidity of the American working class.
/ talked with German-American mechanic
''Why have no sympathy with these menu he
said. ''It is because they scabs You know
it is the law that must be paid time and
half for time work. Well, sometimes the
foreman comes around and says: If you want
to work overtime without extra pay, weH stay
open couple of hours more; but if you want
time and half we can't afford it. and must shut
down. Now, won't work overtime for
straight time-but these damned hunkies, they
say All right And that makes the eight-hour
day a joke He thought for minute. and
then they take away white mems jobs. Now, take
for example ppe-fftter, working in the yards.
Before last years strike he got $3.50 day, and
they'd put in a Polak as pipe-fitter's helper at
81 ga day. 1t is easy to learn pipe-fittng;
pretty the pipe-fitter would get fired and
the Polak got his place, with his wages raised to
$3.50 day..
AS for the police, great illumination burst on
me while talking with Inspector Dan Cady,
known Fighting DAM who efficient
in last years strike that he was held for the
grand jury on the charge Of killing striker.
Cady telling what vicious, violent class
CT men these "hunkies'' were, when he suddenly
burst out:
"The whole CUTS of the business is, those
damned foreigners here and took away
white mems jobs. My father and the fathers of
many officers the force, used to work in the
Standard Oil, years ago. 1t was the hunkies that
was brought in to scab on Them and took their
places"
What irony! Because the Standard Oh. Com
pany starved out Americans and filled their
places with ignorant immigrants just landed from
Europe, the Americans fight to uphold the
Standard Oil Company when it does the
thing to the immigrants, driven to blind despera-
ton at last The public will remember that the
Colorado strikers were also the men who had been
brought in by the mining companies to fill the
MIC 0fI o01ic h
wages.
1t was the common laborers, the hunkies who
struck following the walkout of several hundred
men in the paraffine department-the pressmen.
The final demands of more than 1000 men were
L. Increase in wages in all departments
cept the still-cleaning department. 80 per in
crease to men making less than So a day, and 20
per cent. to men making So a day or more.
2 An eight-hOur day to be the basis through
out.
3. Fairness to be exercised in discharging
men; no man to be discharged without just
cause.
and supervisors instead of the brutal kicking and
punching we now receive.
5. Twenty minutes time for lunch in the
press department.
Think of it! After 23 per cent wage increases
the average Standard Oil aborer gets 20 a day
and he only got that after striking or threat
ening to strike. $40 day makes little more
than $500 year-and The New York Tribune of
October %, points out the fact that these So 20
men work only five months out of the year. Last
year, when the cost of living was over 20 per
cent lower than it is now, the United States Gov
eminent Bureau of Public Health stated that $500
o year was the least family of average size could
i've on decently. And the families of the Bayonne
strikers are far above average size-thanks to the
Roman Church and to the taboo against birth
control.
Between Nineteenth Street and Twenty-fifth
and from Avenue e to the tip of Constable Hook
IS the dWelllng place of these people. They live
packed in ramshackle tenements, many of them
wooden, in three and four-room flats for which
they pay outrageous rents Often a man wife
'bOardarS' will in