The labor journal. [volume] (Everett, Wash.) 1909-1976, 1922-01-06
AMERICANISM
AND WAR
(By Robert Bridges)
Continued from last week.


About three years ago the churches
of America formed an alliance for
various beneficent purposes; and
among other things those churches
investigated the famous steel strike,
and gave a very elaborate report,
made after thorough investigation.
That report was strongly in favor of
the strikers. 1t said that the condi-
ton of the workers in the steel in
dustry was very bad, and that the
mill owners were absolutely in the
wrong and that the strike was a
just strike.
Well, what happened? Did you
ever read that report? No, don't
think you have, simply because its
circulation was so greatly restricted
that you might say it was repressed.
Not single great paper in America,
so far as | know, ever mentioned it.
Even the book stores would not car
ry it.
On the contrary what did you
read? You read great lying and
abusive articles of what a bad man
William z. Foster was! Foster was
the leader of the strikers. They
discovered that he was a very bad
man. Of course that is lie. Foster
is a good man, a laborer that had
ability and climbed UP in his unions.
But what if he were a real bad man
with horns on his head. What of it?
Would that have anything to do with
the strike and with the strikers de-
mands? Would that answer the
charges of the inter-church report
condemning the mill-owners
Does that answer the cold fact
that the strikers were beaten up, de-
ported, locked up. their homes in
vaded, floors broken down and the
most pitiless cruelty practised of
which you never read one line in the
newspapers that print "all the news
that's fit to print"
Now, returning to Judge Ander-
son: Someone asked him after he had
signed his injunction preventing the
miners from using their own money
what he intended to do. He replied,
make them go back to work" Some
one then asked him, "Well, judge,
what if they refuse?" He replied:
eve will make them go back"
Slavery in America? Peonage in
America! Doesn't that look like it 4?
Could YOU imagine an old Southern
slave owner before the Civil war US
ing the lash on the negro slave as
more a slave driver than Judge An
derson attempts to be?
And on Thanksgiving day, 1909,
the United States troops at Sheridan,
Wyoming. rounded up the striking
coal miners and threatened them
with Imprisonment and violence if
they did not go back to the mines
and dig coal. When Secretary Baker
heard of this he said it was abso-
lutely inconceivable that such tyran-
ny could prevail in this country. Yet
it is conceivable and it did occur
here in the Land of the Free and
the Home of the Brave.
1t reminds me of nothing so much
as the efforts to suppress the aboli-
ton movement here in America. The
utmost violence was used to destroy
it; and when George Thompson, the
famous English abilitionist came to
America the people of Boston threat
enou MIN WIFI QSdLL IL nG ODtutd
his mouth. He was called a "Red''
| suppose, a dangerous agitator, and
a man of vile character.
But those methods did not get rid
of abolition. The movement to de-
stroy property in a human body went
right on to the end-the tragedy
ending of the great Civil war.
Let our capitalists and plutocrats
profit by these historical examples.
We fought war to make the world
safe for democracy, and it is only
right that the millions who have
suffered should expect that the
promise should be fulfilled. The
people are going to have a democ-
racy. And they are going to have
it in industry as well as in politics
The divine privilege of voting is not
enough. 1t does but little good to
vote if man has to be idle and halt
starved between elections.
The worker of America demands