The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1926-09-18
Communists Are Striving
to Put Toledo, Ohio, on
Map for Working Class
BY J. LOUIS ENoDAHL.

Especial to The Daily Worker)
TOLEDO, Ohio-(By MaiD-When
i the traveller gets off his train
here at the New York Central Sta
ton he is greeted by an unusual
broadside of billboards. The loudest
blare comes from one display declar-
ing this to be:
"Toledo-The Home Of Overland
and Willys-Knight."
It is taken for granted that every
one knows that Overland" and
Knight are the names of
two makes of automobiles, just as
the names Valentino, Dempsey,
"Trudie" Ederle and Babe" Ruth
are supposed to be recognized with
out any additional description.
Elsewhere over the city one finds
other displays proclaiming big
Price Reductions" in these same
makes of automobiles.
Henry Ford, in his alleged auto
biography, declares that the only
time he cuts the price of his flivvers
is when business is slack and he
wants to encourage buyers, so that
he can keep his fiivver factories
going, 1t being cheaper to continue
running at small loss than to close
down completely. So / concluded
that the advertisements proclaiming
big price reductions for the Over
land and the Willys-Knight cars
meant that business was not good
here in Toledo. This was borne out
by the facts.
| found that where $4,000 workers
are usually employed turning out the
Overland and Willys-Knight ma
chimes, only about half that number
are now on the job, with some de-
partments knocking off work at
three o'clock in the afternoon.
1t was between five and six o'clock
toward evening when / arrived In
Toledo. There were no rushing
homeward throngs. No crowds pour
ing out of the Office buildings. 1t was
easy to get seat in the street cars.
The stores were almost empty. Bust
ness isn't good in Toledo.
The water isn't deep in the
Maumee River and the Maumee
Bay into which 1t flows. If it had
been deep the story of Toledo
might have been different. 1t might
have been a great metropolis like
Cleveland, not far away, like Buffalo,
at the other end of Lake Erie, or
Detroit, to the north, that harbor the
great freight ships of the inland
seas. But the river is shallow and
the government refuses to deepen
it, with the result that the popula-
ton of Toledo stands at a mere
quarter Of million, while its sister
cities are rapidly striding toward the
million mark.
1t was in 1874, some years after
TIC AOfOlubAOudly Wal, LudL LeQeIdl
Mad Anthony" Wayne was fighting
Indians along the shores of Lake
Erie. He came to the mouth of
Swan Creek and the Maumee River
where he ordered the building of a
stockade. 1t was built so rapidly
that he called it Fort Industry" an
indication of what was expected
from Toledo workers in the century
ahead. One of the aids of Mad
Anthony" was Lieutenant William
Henry Harrison, later to become the
ninth president of the United States.
Toledo was successfully under the
colonial rule of Spain, France and
Great Britain, and when 1t became
a part of the United States. the
states of Ohio, Michigan and In.
diana, not yet part of a consolida-
ted federal government, fought for
1t. Michigan finally got the rich
iron and copper ore territory Of its
northern peninsula while Toledo