The labor world. [volume] (Duluth, Minn.) 1896-current, 1917-08-04
HAYWOOD'S WILD THREAT.

HAYWOOD'S WILD III REAI.
Bill Haywood threatens to call
general strike of the I. w. W.. un-
less his men who were deported from
the Warren district in Arizona are
permitted to return. Big Bill IS
strong on bluff. He states that he
can call out 100000 miners, harvest
hands and other workmen. The
threat was made in a telegram to
President Wilson, who upon its re-
ceipt turned it over to W. B. Wilson,
Secretary of Labor.
Secretary Wilson lost no time in
advising the Governor of Michigan,
where an attempt was being made to
call out the miners, as follows:
MAY I urge you to use your in
influence to induce the mine opera
tors to so arrange the wage and con-
ditions of employment that there will
be no basis for agitation. 1t should
be pointed out to the miners that
this is not a movement to improve
their conditions, but wholly intended
to coerce the United States govern
ment by interfering with the prepara-
tions for Defense"
And BILLY" Wilson knows the
labor game better than most men. It
was he who organized the anthracite
miners in Pennsylvania. He served
as secretary of the United Mine
Workers union under John Mitchell,
and he spent the bes, days of his life
in the coal mines, always consistent
ly and courageously battling for i'm
proved conditions for the miners. He
also knows and understands the phil
osophy of the American labor move
ment; he is familiar with its history,
and he is ever careful to avoid the
breakers upon which organized labor
had been frequently wrecked in
times gone by. BILLY" Wilson is
the same true blue laborer and friend
of the 1aborer as secretary of labor
that he was as an organizer for the
United Mine Workers. Behind him
is record for service and of achieve
ments equalled by but few men in
America.
On the other hand Bill Haywood
has always been a rebel in and out
of the labor movement. He all but
wrecked the Western Federation of
Miners, and his associates therein
were ultimately forced to cast him
overheard to save their ship from
sinking. His mind was poisoned
early in life against the American
Federation of Labor and he has lost
no opportunity to strike it a blow,
irrespective of the dire consequences
that followed to the great mass of
wage earners of which it is COM
posed.
Were it not for this same labor
movement he has so long despised his
bones would long ago have been dis
solved in quick lime in the state of
Idaho. His utterances and conduct
since his release from prison have re-
suited in doing more harm to Ameri-
can labor than the combined oppres-
sion of the Capitalist class. His zone
big union" dream is keeping in
state of coma great mass of work.
ers who otherwise might be enjoying
better working conditions and
greater measure of industrial liberty
were their activities in organization
applied in the right direction and in
behalf of sane movement.
He has assent led the bummery of
America into an alleged labor organi-
cation, men who seldom work them
selves, and whose chief object in pro-
,voking strikes, creating disorder and
getting few of their leaders arrest
led is to pass around the hat and get
il bunch of easy money, collected to
1.-THE tune of "Mulligan Stew" and
FHal1elujah, I'm a Bum" A few Sc
elect idealists, high brows and INTEL
nectuals are admitted into the COM
pany as matter of policy to give the
organization" standing.
! When they leave a strike field
(which they have completely ex-
plotted, the real workers, the men
who made the sacrifice, are thrust as
battered mortals back on their own
individual resources, there to face
the bitterness left by the conflict,
poorer but wiser laborers, while the
strike exploiters seek new fields to
'''work," pausing for while to COM
rare notes with their industrial pro-
.totypes, the professional strikebreak-
ers, in a night or two of revelry on
Halstead street.
II; Their methods and tactics disgust