The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1926-05-19
Especial to Tho DaIIy workorl


NEW YORK, May 1.-THE general
strike committee leading the fight of
the New York furriers for a wage
increase and a forty-hour work week
have begun a nationwide movement
for forty-hour week for all workers.
This may we'll mean the beginning of
struggle comparable to the famous
battle Of the eighties when the Amer
lean workers united to fight for the
eight-hour day.
The following call for support in
this drive is being sent to all labor
organizations turnout the country:
Fellow Workers.:
We, the Fur Workers of New York,
have been on strike for 10 weeks. We
have shown our employers a solid
wall of working class unity. We have
repealed all the open and secret at
tacks upon our ranks. Our demands
for the improvement of our working
and living conditions have concen-
trated around this, the most vital and
far-reaching demand: the forty-hour
week.
We are fighting for five eight-hour
days and two full free days a week.
This demand has become the storm
center of our strike. The Fur Work
ers will utilize all their energy, sol
idarity and endurance to see that the
forty-hoQr week becomes a fact.
Blaze New Path.
In this way, fellow workers, the Fur
Workers of New York are blazing a
new path for the labor movement as
whole A victory for the forty-hour
week will open a new chapter in the
history of the workers struggle for
liberation from under the capitalist
yoke.
Need we, fellow workers, emphasize
the great significance of forty-hour
week? Need we mention the facts of
physical and mental exhaustion and
degradation caused by shop work
facts engraved in your own bodies
with signs of fatigue and sickness?
Need we remind you that only since
the working class has wrung out of
the. capitalist class shorter labor
hours, could it organize to fight for a
better life?
,rr Means Less Misery.
1 d -hnJr
shop misery, less foul air, less weaken
ii ing OF the body. less ailments. The
forty-hour week means rising of the
workers to a higher standard of liv-
ing. The forty-hour week will make
it possible for the worker to enjoy
the, higher things Of life which he is
entitled to as a man and creator of
the, nations wealth. The forty-hour
week will give the workers the time
required to interest themselves in the
affairs of their country and to organize
for the defense of their interests not
only in the economic but also in the
political field. The forty-hour week
will make it possible for the worker
to. become a better man, more en-
lightened member of his union, his
political party, his class.
New Declaration of Independence.
The forty-hour week thus marks the
beginning of a new declaration of in
dependence of the American working
class. We, the Fur Workers of New
York, are writing the first lines of this
declaration with out heart blood, with
long and weary months of suffering
in one of the fercest labor struggles.
Fight as Class.
We have stood firm. We have been
dubbed by police, beaten by EN-
ployers' guerrillas, attacked by strike
breakers, dragged to police stations.
Six hundred of us were arrested in
those months of struggle, many were
sentenced to long terms of imprison-
ment, many were injured. We have
stood it all. We have not fiinched. We
are fighting not for ourselves alone,
but for the working class as whole.