The Connecticut labor news., 1923-10-06
TRADE UNION PLAN LEADS SAFELY ALONG
 ROAD OF PROGRESS
By VICTOR A. OLANDER, Secretary, Illinois Moderation of
 Labor.

| By International Labor News Service.
 Here in Chicago and in Illinois,
 in the heart of America, our move ment, as elsewhere, is facing bitter attack. 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 1 shall devote no further attention to him. But turn your eyes to the Hanks of our move ment and there you also find attacks going on. On one side a group is l being organized among professional men, politicians and others, which has | for it's announced purpose-somewhat camouhaged, however, restriction of the rights and liberties we insist are ours. They say that in the interest of the whole people 1t is necessary that hte trade unions in at least some of their activities be curbed. On the other flank is another-and what to me is a far more dangerous group than the other two, because they appear in the. guise of comrades and friends. They, too, are directing sneers and ridicule and criticism against the legitimate trade union movement and are insist ing 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 the 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 example, great strike. Representative of this third group appear, as do also repre- sentatives in one form or another of points to the officers of your organi- zation when he seeks to secure deser- tions from your ranks and says: They are not to be trusted, they are misleading you, they are not do ing right" And he has. great in dustrial spy agency. with hundreds and thousands of operatives cover ingevery part of the country whose duty 1t Is to come into our midst on such occasions and there destroy our confidence in one another and con- vince people-how they do not care that something is wrong with our methods, something is wrong with our leaders, something is wrong with our organization.
 And on the right flank comes this other movement, echoing the em- ployer,, with the same kind of argu- ment, the same kind of fault-hndi1g And on the left flank comes the men who parade as communists, if that word suits them, or l. w. w., or If that does not suit them they talk of amalgamationi and so on They use the same tactics to arouse suspicion in our ranks that the other two move ments do Men under such circuIn- stances may come to me and say their motives are different. l say l do not care what their motives are when their act is the same and the effect will be the same, and if we listen 1t will be our destruction in either of the three cases.
 I 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