The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1924-10-07
SOLVING the Class Struggle

Warren Stone, head of the Locomotive Engineers
Union, is to be congratulated he has proved,
without any wish to do so, that a union which
conducts capitalist enterprise is no different from
any other capitalist concern
He has refused to sign an agreement with the
United Mine Workers of America governing the
mines in which members of the Brotherhood of
Locomotive Engineers are the sole stockholders and
in giving thereasons for his refusarepeats the same
accusations against the United Mine Workers voiced
by the other coal operators of West Virginia He
denounces the check-off and the no discrimination
clauses and announces the intention of his com
pany to hire and fire whom it pleases.
In the correspondence that has taken place
between Stone and the United Mine Workers of
cials the latter have had all the best of it because
they have stuck to the plain facts of unonism They
have placed Stone in the position of the steel trust
property heads the matter of a reduction of
miners wages and he even raises the old familiar
issue undesirable agitators" among the miners
which his company locked out and which the union
has been forced to support.
No one can accuse of undue affection for the
Lewis machine that has largely wrecked the once
militant and powerful U. NJ of A. but in this par
ticular controversy they should have the sympathy
IL.
be possible that the Lewis machine is being used by
the steel trust operators to check unwecome com
petition from the mines of the brotherhood but
competition is one of the fetshes of Stone and his
followers and of the risks that all capitalists
must take. The labor movement is interested only
in seeing that the Brotherhood properties operate
a union basis.
Stone is the petted darling of the socalled liber
al element. His financial achievements have been
the subject of many long and enthusiastic articles
written in the best Brookwood College-Nation
Labor Age style The entry of unions into bank
ing and other enterprises has been hailed as the
long-waited solution of the labor-capital problem
and it has been held by most of the enthusiasts
that here is complete refuation of the theory of the
class struggle and the necessity for the dictator
ship of the working class advanced by the Com
munists.
We willing to let the case for the class strug
gle in the coal mines owned by the Locomotive
Engineers be presented by Messrs Lewis, Murray
and Green of the United Mine workers. AS is well
known, their love for the Communists is not suf-
fcently ardent to prejudice them in this matter
The only evidence they need to present is the fact
that Stone closed his unionowned mine rather
than sign a union agreement.
The Chicago Tribune is in high spirits over the
controversy between Stone and the United Mine
Workers and not the least important of the indict-
Ihents that can be brought against Stone and his
followers is the opportunity they have given the
capitalist sheets to ridcule the labor movement In
this the guilt is sharedby all the tribeof trade union
bankers, b. and O. planners class colaborationists
and capitalist tools generally who have made of the
labor movement timid, confused and ineffective
thing that the bosses neither fear nor respect
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