The Cordova daily times. [volume] (Cordova, Alaska) 1914-1947, 1919-04-18


sought an adjustment when they dis
covered how little public opinion
sympathized with the strike. But the
amazing thing is that, being intelli-
gent, they ever should have been
misled. The foreign agitators were
basing their appeals on conditions
which did not exist. They were spout
ing and haranguing about economic
conditions and class hostilities which
they had remembered from their
European days.
The chief complaint Of labor in this
country has been that the rise In
wages has not kept pace with the
increase in living costs. The foreign
agitators employed that hardship to
talk socialism and communism and
harp on the undying conflict between
capital and labor There is no such
conflict in this country. There are
points of difference-big ones, in fact
but the revolutionary conflict to
which the foreign firebrands alluded,
the conflict which strives for the
complete destruction of an old
system, was practically non-existant.
There is danger that the revolu-
tionary spirit will spread unless the
intelligence of American labor is as
high as it is rated by Samuel Comp
ers. If ignortant, low-browed savages
from the slums of Europe can take
our intelligent laboring men by the
noses and lead them at will into
Bolshevist follies then there is danger
of class conflicts which cannot be
suppressed without violent revolution.
There is something ferociously,
Enthusiastically laughable about the
propaganda of these foreign agitators
who come here to urge Bolshev1sm,
"the dictatorship of the proletariat'
on American labor. 1t is almost as II
they were. trying to persuade Amerl-
can labor to adopt free love, dirt and
coolies as DdLLle cry.
The spouters who talk about apply
ing Russian communism to America
forget to say that communism was
prevalent in Russia even under the
car Even before the revolution the
peasants had a form of communistlc
government. 1t was form adapted to
conditions of life wholly unfamiliar to
us in this country.
Our industrial development, COM
pared with which Russian develop
ment is as pigmy to giant despite
the fact that Russia's population is
twice our own, was the result OF
cooperation between intelligent labor
and intelligent capital. If We should
pull down that structure about our
ears we would produce chaos COM
pared with which the Russian chaos
would be as Russia is to hell.
Bolshevism has made even the in
sufferable conditions of Russia more
intolerable. Think what it would do
were it able to hurl to the earth the
American indutrial structure which,
for magnitude and efficiency-as the
war has proved-has no equal.
We are prompted to make this COM
parison because, in our larger cities
and in great Industrial centers, bar
reared amid conditions of which we
had small knowledge until they
brought them into our midst and who
imbibed the poisons of class hatred
amid degradations unimaginable to-
Americans who had passed their lives
in Gods open spaces, are agitating for
revolution, crying down with the
American government" and escaping
punishment. How long can that go on
without disaster?
But we cherish the hope that Mr..
Gompers is right-that American
labor and the American people gen.
orally are too intelligent to trade their
democracy and the titanic machinery
of production which democracy has
produced for communism and the
ramshackle industrial system OF
Russia.
We think we have made it clear in
our criticism of North Dakota solons
that we do not think much of their
venture into socialism, of their laws
which tend to cripple private bust
ness, but we desire to point to one
elemnt of hope in the North Dakota
experiment 1t was bloodless revo-
luton. 1t was achieved by the ballot,
in an orderly fashion. The American
political system operated smoothly
and effectually to accomplish the ends
sought by the voters. In that sense 1t
was triumph for our representative