The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1926-08-20
Labor Urged to Mobile
It's Dollars in Support
of Class War in Britain
BY J. LOUIS ENoDAHL.

TT was naval wireless station dur
ing the war. Now the north
tower at the east end of the NUM-
cipal Pier houses the radio broad
casting station of the Chicago Fed
Grafton of Labor.
During the war thousands of
soldiers of all kinds, in training
while waiting to be rushed to
France, were quartered at this Chi
cago recreational spot that juts a
mile out into the lake.
Tuesday night, during the supper
hour, Paul MeKenna, executive
board member of the British Miners
Federation, with picnickers still
lingering about the pier, and ex-
cursion steamers passing in the lake
and the river, broadcasted his eager
appeal from labor's own station TO
the workers listening in their homes,
calling on them to mobilize their dol
lars and rush them to aid the strik-
ing British coal miners. A front of
the imperialist war of 1917 had given
way to a front of the class war in
1926.
sat close at McKenna's elbow as
he talked, reading carefully from a
prepared manuscript,
"This is the first time that l have
made speech this way" he had ex-
planned to the announcer, before he
started, and he had been told, Just
talk in a conversational tone, not as
if you had big audience"
But there was a large audience,
out there over Chicago, towards the
east and the west, the south and the
north. This station has been picked
up as far east as New York, but
Minneapolis and st. Paul seems to
be the limit in the west.
McKenna had half an hour. He
was thru in IL minutes. Beginning
with the greetings of the striking
British miners and ending with an
appeal to 'the American trade un-
ionists and the sympathetic public"
it is felt that he missed the ear, to
some extent, of those who were
listening to him.
He started by telling his audience
of the great profits taken by the
British mine owners, from 1913, the
year before the war, to 1925, when
the Baldwin government voted a
subsidy to the industry. He gave
the figures in British pounds sterl-
ing instead of American dollars.
This must have been confusing.
Especially when a pound sterling is
nearly five dollars, profits of 29, 80
or 40 millions lin pounds) do not
seem large to an American public,
that is accustomed to hear of but
one branch of the auto industry
General Motors, splitting stock
dividend of $600,000,0 900, while Amer
lean railroads make profits of one
billion dollars annually, with other
industries ahead or in close pursuit.
McKenna made no effort to drama
tie the figures, revealing their start
ling meaning to his American audi
ence.
McKenna then told of the history
of the struggle, from 1919, immedia-
tely after the ending Of the war, to
the substituting of the industry by
the government last year, going into
some detail to show that the subsidy
went to the mine owners and not the
mine workers. 1t was well to show
how the mine owners profltted even
during this armistice in the class
war, but McKenna, who could have
done so, did not reveal the class
nature Of this struggle.
Then came another long list OF
figures showing the huge royalties
taken from the mining industry by
the church of England, the dukes,
lords, earls and marquises, altho
these figures must have sounded
rather monotonous to an audience
continuously fed on jazz and slap
stick and not accustomed to stats
tics.