Twin city review. [volume] (Champaign, Ill.) 19??-1929, 1923-09-28
TRADE UNION PLAN
LEADS SAFELY ALONG
ROAD OF PROGRESS
BY VICTOR 4. OLANDER,
Secretary. Illinois I ederation of Labor.

By International Labor News Service
Here in Chicago and in Illinois, in
the heart of America, our movement
as elsewhere, is facing a bitter at
tack. In front of US is the army OF
reactionary employers, seeking to use
the forces of government TO stay our
advance. You are all acquainted
with that enemy and | shall devote no
further attention to him. But turn
your eyes to the flanks of our move
going on. On one side a group il
being organized among professional
men, politicians and others, which has
for its announced purpose-sOme-
what camoufaged, however, re-
striction of the rights and liberties
we insist are ours.
They say that in the interest of
the whole people il is necessary that
the trade unions in at least some of
their activities be curbed. On the
other flank is another-and what to
me is far more dangerous group
than the other two, because they ap-
pear in the guise of comrades and
friends. They, too. are directing
sneers and ridicule and criticism
against the legitimate trade union
movement and are insisting that the
whole arrangement is wrong.
Some men say that the motives Of
this third group are far different
from the motives of the employers
who stand on our front, or from the
Fascist movement that has appeared
on our right, neither of which claim
they have any particular interest in
the workers. But tine third group
on our left insist that their ridicule,
their fault-finding, their suspicion and
their accusations are intended for
our good.
How Three Groups Work.
How do they carry out their pro-
gram? Let US take, for instance,
great strike. Representative of this
third group appear, as do also repre-
sentatives in one form or another of
the other two groups. The employer
points to the officers of your organi-
cation when he seeks to secure deser-
tons from your ranks and says:
They are not to be trusted, they
are misleading you, they are not do
ing right" And he has a great in
dustrial spy agency with hundreds
and thousands of operatives covering
every part of the country whose duty
ii is to come into our midst on such
occasions and there destroy our con-
fidence in one. another and convince
people-how they do not care-that
something is wrong with our methods,
something is wrong with our leaders,
something is wrong with our organ
ization.
And on the right flank comes this
other movement, echoing the en-
ployer, with the same kind of argu-
ment the same kind of fault finding.
And on the left flank come the men
who parade as communists, if that
that does not suit them they talk of
amalgamation and so on. They use
the same tactics to arouse suspicion
in our ranks that the other two move
ments do. Men under such circum-
stances may come to me and say
their motives are different. | say
do not care what their motives are
when their act is the same and the
effect will be the same, and if we
listen il will be our destruction in
either of the three cases.
| am referring to the third group
with the greatest emphasis because
they give me the greatest concern;
not because they are the strongest,
but because there are things in their
philosophy and in the position they
occupy in our movement which make
some of even the most intelligent
among us give ear to their blanish-
ments. 1t is the talk of the One Big
Union, that it is impossible for COM
paratively small groups of individuals
to move forward; that humanity is a
huge mass of clay that must be fash
Toned by the fingers of the more in
telligent among us. That is the
theory upon which the Kansas Indus
trial Court is based. That institu-
ton is organized for the alleged
benefit of society and it is held the
individual interests of the workers
must be subordinated when in any
way they clash with what for the mo-
ment appears to be the public God.
That is the underlying thought in all
this organization