Omaha daily bee. (Omaha [Neb.]) 187?-1922, 1920-01-13
Skill as q Bar to the Reds
From the New York Times.

Out Of the stereotyped revolutionary patter
Of the latest communist manifesto, one signiti-
cant sentence energies: "The older unions con-
sist primarily of skilled workers. whose skill is
enough for the reds to berate the bourgeois
| and bomb the capitalist The American FEEDER.
alton of Labor also is anathema. It possesses
| an asset-skill, and the sense to make use OF it.
Therefore, it is allied with the fell powers. OF
property. 1t is reactionary;" it "merges in inn
| perialsm."
No one who followed the steel strike will be
likely to underestimate the potentialities OF syn
dcalist propaganda. In its brief day, it over
ruled the saner counsels of the Federation of
appreciably retarding the rehabilitation of a
world sorely vexed What it will do in the fu-
ture is still to be determined. The war is not
merely war of the "have-nots" against the
"haves." 1t is a war of the confessedly
ignorant and unskilled against those whose
minds are fixed upon the realities of life. 1t has
often been said that no one who owns an acre
or has an account in the savings bank can be
willing victim of bolshevism. The manifesto
OF the communists now adds a category, and a
most interesting category, to the incorrult-
bles.
This does not, however, abate the perplexi-
ties of the acting commissioner of immigration,
which also have more than a suggestion of
opera bouffe. Confronted with flow of new
Immigration WHICH the industries OF the COuH-
try sorely need, his quarters on Ellis Island are
tllled to over1owing with the emigrant reds.
What was built as one-way avenue is threat
ened with turmoil and congestion. In this sore
trial Mr.. Uh pleads for one of the abandoned
army contonments, to be used as a communist
concentration camp The idea has possibili-
ties, but it seems likely that, in his wholly COM
prehensible confusion, the commissioner has got
it wrong end to. No let or hindrance should be
interposed to the speedy election of the reds.
That will command universal assent As for
the immigrants, it is daily becoming more evil
dent that we are too casual in the matter of
their welcome.
Those who have considered the problem
most deeply recommend program of "selectve
immigration and scientific distribution" For
the proposed process of selection, through
trained and responsible agents abroad, we are
not yet equipped. But with our own end of the
difficulty we can easily deal. At only slightly
greater expense than would be necessary to
concentrate" the reds, we could hold all i'm
migrants under observation while data were COL
lected as to their character and capacities. Thus,
when they were turned loose upon the country,
they would go where they were most needed,
and where they would come most Immediately
and wholesomely in contact with the spirit of
our Americanism. This spirit means, among
other things, the ownership of land and of bank
accounts the love of craftsmanship and the de-
light in its useful employment Few among
those who come to US are so ignorant or per-
verse that they cannot learn to appreciate and
to love nation in which Skill is in itself a
form of property" The most hopeful of all
bars to the propaganda of the reds is free scope
to the workman's delight in his craft.