The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1924-04-15
Industrial Unionism and War

rations to militarize the industries goes on mer
rilly just the same @
A recent bulletin of the Eighth Army Corp
Area shows that the transportation industry il
in process, Of preparation for what is euphemisti
cally called national emergency" and that tn
superintendent and other classes of lackeys vii
function in wartime just as they do in peace
as the drivers and herdsmen for the capitalist
and their government.
The bulletin, issued from Fort Sam Houston
Texas, is as following:
THE Reserve Railway Battallons recently author
ICED by the War Department have met with very
hearty approval and cooperation the part Of the
railroads. In the Eighth Corps Area nearly all the
officers personnel has been obtained for the three
Battalons alocaed to that territory but there are
still some vacancies in the various non-oonnnls
stoned officer grades which to be filled by quail
fled men, The following gives the necessary quail
cations for the respective grades: Assistant Chief
Dispatcher, Round House Foreman and Wreeking
Foreman eligible for grade Of Master Sergeant;
Assistant Yardmaster, Bridge Foreman, Car Repair
Foreman Track Foreman, Chief Clerks and Assist
ant Chief Clerks for Technical Sergeants; Chief
Clerk and Assistant Chief Clerks for list
Serreants; Road Foreman, Yardmaeter, Master
Carpenters, Dispatchers, Master 5Iacksrths, In
speetors Locomotive Engineers, Station Agents,
and Travelling Foreman for staff Serpeants; Car
penters, Conductors Crane Operators, Fireman
Station Agents, Line Fcremen photographers, Me-
chancs, Masons Structural IronWorkers AlrbFakc
Experts, BacksmIths, Boer-makers, Electricians,
Machnlsts, and Clerks for Sereeants; Conductors,
Crew Dispatchers, Station Agents. Alrbrake men,
BIaeksmiths, RoiIer-makers Machnlsts, Car lnspee-
tors, Carpenters Crew Dispatchers, Painters, Wreck
ers Tower men, Line and Clerks for corporaIs.
Any patriotic railway employees who are inter-
ested and desire to become affiliated with these or
ganlzations requested to communicates with the
Officer in Charge Of Organized Reserves Eighth
Corps Area, Fort Sam Houston, Texas.
There obligations exaeted from members
of these organizations except in case OF National
Emergency. Attendance at Summer Training
Camps 10 optional.
Aside from the interesting information that the
railroad companies have given this scheme of the
militarists every hearty approval and coopera
tom there is that important fact which the lis
discloses in naming the quality Of the personne
required l. e. that modern warfare is largely {
process and cannot be fought with
out the aid of large masses of workers, skilled
and unskilled, behind the lines.
In a great industrial nation like America it il
in the power of the workers to prevent war; were
the workers organized in industrial unions II
would be still easier but even with their Graf
unions as they now exist organized labor can, i
it is so minded, wreck all war plans of American
Imperialism.
The last adventure in behalf of the House O
Morgan was successful only because the official
dom of the organized labor movement went ovel
neck and crop to the program Of mass murder
launched under the guise of making the world
safe for democracy by i; even under their persona
direction in close alliance with the department
of justice and the army intelligence service
which many a labor leader joined to spy upon hii
own membership-there was considerable but
rather muffled protest from the masses.
The railway unions alone, if determined and
could stop or at least seriously cripple
any war engineered by the ruling class. 1t il
probably for this reason that special effort is
being made to make their memberships part of the
capitalist war-machine
Peace societies and detailed descriptions of the
horrors of war circulated by kindhearted persons
are all very well, but the murder of the masse:
to extend the empires of their rulers will cease
only when the labor organizations refuse first tC
wage war and then, when confronted with the
bloodthirsty special suppressive agencies of CAPT
talist government, use their organized might II
strip the exploiters of all economic and politica
power.
It can be said here that the opposition in indus
trial unionism by all agencies Of the employer
and fnance-capitalists springs not alone from
their fear that higher wages, shorter hours, i'm
proved conditions, would cut down their profits
the intelligent section of the capitalist class
realizes that the immensely augmented knowledge
of their power that this form of organization
gives the workers would tend to increase tn
danger of challenge to capitalist industry anC
government all along the line to extent Of makin
successful majo; war impossible.
War is as necessary to capitalism in its presen
imperialistic stage as profits and there is consc
quently a direct connection between the hug