Twin city review. [volume] (Champaign, Ill.) 19??-1929, 1923-12-28
Comment and Criticism
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Observation-Disclosures.
After the progressives had held up
organization of the House for two
days, demanding revision of the rules,
the old guard announced that it had
all along intended a revision.
The queer part of it all is that it
seemed not to occur to anybody TO
make this fact public until organiza-
ton had been blocked for two days
and the progressive determination
full shown.
As an abb artist the old guard Is
at least lacking in finesse.
Beet sugar interests are among the
worst exploiters of child labor. Now
it develops that these same interests
have an air tight monopoly in the
principal beet raising states. Mon
opolizing profits on the one hand,
they fatten their profits out of the
labor of children.
It's the same old story. Most mine
disasters occur in non-union mines,
where the safety regulations de-
manded by the union are flouted by
autocratic bosses.
Sweatshops exist where employers
succeed in preventing union organ
ization.
The industrial disgrace of our
country are found where there are
no unions, or where the unions are
too weak to offer resistance to injus-
tice. In union there is more than
strength-thefe is moral and indus
trial decency.
Important news comes from Mos
COW this week. The control commits
sion of the communist party has re-
iterated that it will not countenance
any internal factions and has ex-
PEELED twelve labor organizers who
are said to have developed left
tendencies"
The communists didn't like the ex-
pulsion of Dunno at Portland, but
their highest authority proceeds now
to do exactly likewise, carrying out
what has been its fixed policy all
along, though expulsion is gentle
treatment when compared to the usual
The communist olgarchy in Mos
cow takes mighty good care that only
are allowed inside.
Interesting, in the same connection,
is the recent declaration of Frossard,
the former secretary of the United
socialist party of France, who led the
section of that party in
the famous division that brought
about the establishment of the French
section of the red International. Not
long after that division Frossard saw
the terrible error of his course and
turned about to lead those who de-
clined to follow implicitly the orders
Of Moscow.
Writing now in "L'Egalite" Eros
sard thus bitterly reproaches himself
for his former pro-communism:
II carry with me, burning with re-
morse, the pang of having contrib
uted by culpable blindness to the pass
ing success of disastrous adventure
which among the ruins of the work |
lng-class movement marches under a |
flag where the red of hope has be-
come the red of shame. 1t should be |
recognized that for nearly a year | |
have used all the energy of which
am capable to redeem what my ex-
perience has taught me-"
The world-renowned moderate"
Socialist leader, Professor Sidney
Webb, who until recently was Chair
man of the British Labor Party,
claims that his party is democratic
and moderate.
lnnumerable writers, both in Eng
land and America, heralded the new
Labor Party constitution of 1918 as
showing the beginning of a demo-
cratic tendency by admitting brain
workers with the same voice as man.
ual labor into the movement.
As Webb himself admits, this was
the first time-after twenty years of
party history-that "all workers by
hand of by brain" were publicly in
vited in. The Party had been built up
as an alliance of labor
unions and Socialist intellectual sects. |
Brain workers had been invited, but
only Socialist brain workers-and
they had entered in large numbers,
taking full advantage of their special
privilge. Non-Socialist labor union
lists had been admitted but not ron
Socialist brain workers. 1t was only |
after the party machinery was firmly |
in the hands of Socialist brain work
ers" and the party tied firmly to So
cialism, that it opened the doors to
other intellectuals.
Moreover the change made in 1918
was only on the surface. The old
constitution (before 1919 provided
for a joint labor union and Socialist
control and the new constitution con-
tinued the same control. Mere men,
bers of the Labor Party. "brain
workers" who do not belong to the
Socialist sects and cannot belong to
the labor unions are now allowed to
vote for five, but only for five, out of
twenty-three members of the Execu-
tive Committee, namely, the members
allotted to local constituency organ
izations." The labor unionists and
sectarians, moreover, have a double
vote because they can also vote for
these same five representatives-an
as a matter of fact, being in the ma
iority in the local constituencies"
nearly always elect them. A sectar-
ian who is at the same time a labor