The labor journal. [volume] (Everett, Wash.) 1909-1976, 1916-11-17
CONDITIONS PRODUCED
BY ROCKEFELLERISM
A Story of Wrong, Injustice and
Inhumanity
(FrOm Committee on Industrial Re
latiOnS)
BY DANTE BARTON

latiOns)
BY DANTE BARTON
wherever there is a 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
Industrial Relations, in New York, at
the height of the Bayonne, New Jer
sey, strike
The most dangerous as well as
brutal feature of the Rockefeller
treatment Of labor is the close control
that the Rockefeller concerns gain over
the police and other public authorities
With the Mayor of Bayonne confessing
that he is 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 its demon
stration of what Rockefellerisf means.
Let me call attention here to the
fact that just few days ago on the
very side of the Ludlow massacre, 500
and more unafraid coal miners for the
Colorado Fuel & Iron Company Ga
Rockefeller corporation) joined in a
union affiliated with the United Mine
Workers of America. That splendid
fact proves that Rockefeller cannot
l. tI,A irit Nf Ii nrly
however much he may be able to beat
them back into sullen subsection, as
he has done, and is doing now in
Bayonne.
THE breaking of the strike of un-
organized and helpless Polish men and
women was brought about by such
complete brutality that every news
paper in New York was constrained
to publish articles in protest. Many
of these newspapers, in fact, most
willingly condemned the methods of
the police. Just what these methods
were can be partly surmised from the
following statement of the chief in
Rockefellers precisely as if he was
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
lot of Hunks, and they think
strike is war, and they don't
understand anything but bullets.
Shoot em-that's the only way"
In 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
Bayonne, 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 disciplined
number of policemen, special deputies
and private gunner. The control of
the situation at every moment, as far
as there was control, lay with the
portion of Constable Hook for me to
visit was that portion in the actual
possession of the police. Three min
utes before reached street intersec-
ton woman had been killed in a
second story window, near that cross
ing, and from half dozen to dozen
persons wounded, some seriously, by
shots fired by the police and guards"
Mr.. Amos Pinchot, representing the
National Labor Defense Counsel, has
ioined me in sending to the Depart
ment of Labor the following telegram:
1--WE respectfully urge the De-
partment of Labor to send con-
ciliators or mediators Immediately
10 Bayonne. Something should be
done soon to stop the killing and
wounding of strikers by police
men, deputies and gunner in the
employ of the Standard Oil Per
eonal investigation warrants this
statement. Believe you can do
much good to avert a reign of
terror among thousands Of work
ers who are being both terrorized
and infuriated by such legalized
injustice"
81 believe it will not forbid your
publication of this statement, that
those of us who form the Committee
an Industrial Relations and the Ma
tional Labor Defense Counsel ap-
nroach all industrial disputes from the
standpoint of sympathy with the
workers who have the ambition to
trv for better conditions in life.
at is, of course, inevitable that