The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1926-09-29
Minnesota Republicans
Import Schwab in War
on Farmer-Labor Party
BY J. LOUIS ENcDAHL.

business on big scale as a means
of reducing expense and increasing
efficiency"
That is supposed to be all very
well for the railroad, the mining
and steel industry. But according
to Schwab and his republican allies,
1t Is wrong for the workers and
farmers to organize. 1t is wrong
for the workers to build their trade
unions. 1t is wrong for the farmers
to support their cooperative pur-
chasing and marketing organiza-
tions. And worst of all, 1t Is wrong
according to Schwab's press and
Schwab's republican party for the
workers and farmers to unite in a
Farmer-Labor Party, as they have
done in Minnesota, to protect their
interests as the great capitalists are
doing thru the republican party.
Evidently fearing that the Mimi
esota workers and farmers were fed
up on this sort Of buncombe,
Schwab got sentimental in another
part Of his speech and painted this
freside picture:
Money means nothing except
enough to keep a person in comfort
in his old age" he said ION our
estate at Loretta, Pa, l have built
little cottage and no one ever
gets inside it except my wife and
myself. There We go, from time to
time, to play at being the poor folk
we were 40 years ago."
Evidently Schwab expects the
struggling workers and farmers of
Minnesota to sympathize with him
in his senile old age when he is
returning to his second childhood
and playing doll house once more.
Minnesota labor, however, will real
lie that the joke is on the workers
and farmers who have failed to
build their own class power, these
many years, and protect their own
interests and provide for their own
old age as the capitalist masters
have done.
Schwab did not urge the manufac-
turing interests of Minnesota to
raise the wages of the workers, nor
did he tell the food profiteers on the
Minneapolis chamber of commence
to cease robbing the farmers. in
order that city and land labor might
feed, house and clothe its own in
decency and comfort. Not at all.
The business interests would have
run him out Of town if he had even
attempted it. Instead. the steel
magnate painted the iudicrous and
impossible picture of success" that
showed all the workers and farms
ers in Minnesota becoming Schwabs,
either as multi-millionaire bankers,
landlords, industrialists or specula-
tors, "if they worked hard enough"
They know that they work hard
enough. They are just discovering
that the trouble is they are not their
own bosses.
Schwab spoke for his class in
Minnesota. He gloried in its
achievements, and o. B. McClintock,
president of the Manufacturers AS
ISOLATION, thanked him and called
him brother" McClintock added,
"The banks feel better, and when
they feel better we (meaning the
manufacturing interests) should
feel BETTER" with the workers and
farmers, of course, playing the role
Of Lazarus at this capitalist feast.
Just by way of showing the unity
OF the republican party in Mime
sofa, the banquet was attended by
both the republican governor, Theo-
dore Christianson, and the republi-
can mayor of Minneapolis, George
Z. Leach.
Instead Of salving over the class
struggle and covering up the
wounds of the class war, Schwab's
speech should reveal to Minnesota
labor, clearer than ever the class
issues raised by the steel profiteer,
whose party spent millions of dol
lars in his home state of Pennsyl-
vania in the recent primaries to
corrupt and confuse the working
class voters Of that state. Schwab's
speech at Minneapolis should help
rather than hurt the Farmer-Labor
Party campaign In that state.