The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1925-03-08
The Phone Trust Takes
$1OO,OOO,OOO in Profits
from UnorganizedL Labor
BY J. LOUIS ENoDAHL

TO-DAY, and every day, snap minds 60 wrong
explorations lash drives armies Of harred girls still in
their early youth to put thru the nations 45000000
daily phone calls Similarly the men, stringng and repairing
the millions of miles of wire, from pole pole in the open
tes cold and summers heat, suffer the fate of all
gained workers-the long, fe-sappng murderous cond-
tons OF labor, wages that provide bare subsistence
But what contrast is furnished by the monster
poyer OF these Workersthe American Telephone and Tel
egraph Company 1t has just totaed its net income for
1924 and it reaches the staggering sum Of ss1o4O321
nearly hundred million dollars years profits its
outstanding stock of $o1744s71 1871 per cent div
dend.
Poverty wrecked bodies, shattered nervous systems
minds destroyed for the workers. fabulous riches for the
stockholders for the American Telephone and Telegraph
Company feels that its special field Of exploitation
fertile that plans increase its capital stock from bill
lion dollars to and half billion dollars making it the
greatest American corporation not the worlds largest
monopoly.
This brutal picture of unorganized workers, mostly
girls ptted against highly organized capital that outstrps
in the proportions of its pile the United States Steel and the
General Motors Corporations.
The phone monopoly has put an individual Bell instru
men at the disposal OF an average of every
but the main point stressed in its annual report not how
to distribute the $1oooooooO in profits among its wage
slaves thru increased wages in lettering their conditions
of rates. is argued that the dollar is lower in val
than the prewar dollar when the profit rate about
equal to what Therefore, In order to make up for
the shrinking dollar the phone trust demands higher rates.
in order to take Of its stockholders No mention is
made of the dire straits faced by the worker who must meet
the higher of living only with his shrinking dollar
but with his shrinking pay envelope nit by wage cuts.
There have been spontaneous strikes phone operators
in isolated sections of the country. But these have been
short lived Child slavery continues under capitalism
dorsed almost unanimously by the capitalist law making boz
dies in the states and armies of young and healthy
girls 5 16 and II years DID, crowd each other the doors
Of the phone exchanges they do at the cotton mills the
department stores and elsewhere, seeking employment The
organization of the youth workers is of the least worries
of the American labor This in face OF the fact
that the few electrical workers organized within the realms
of the phone trust have been mostly wiped out.
80
The phone trust hungry new worlds to conquer.
On CooIdges Inauguration day sent the first inaugural
pictures by we The American Telephone and Telegraph
Company of the corporations named in the socaIed
trial of the alleged radio monopoly before the federal trade
commission But the attorney for the A. T. T. Co. is
other than John Wastreet" Davis recent candidate for
president the democratic ticket 1t safe from harm.
Large sections of the Gompers' wing of the American
Federation Of Labor supported this lawyer, Davis attorney
for the anunon phone trust in last falls elections. Let
phone workers know that it is the left wing alone that
fights such casscoIIaborating labor leadership.
is enough that the slaves of the phone trust de-
eide organize. They must build the right kind foganiza
tons unions that ready all times to enter the class
fight against the oppressors of labor The phone workers
need organization. They only get it thru enlist
ing the banners of the left wing of organized labor
inspired by the Communist principles that will lead to final
victory only the phone trust but capitalism
itself.