The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1926-04-03


own statement, baruained and sold
the union miners to political party
for an empty promise, the results Of
which have served to destroy the
U. M. W. of A., shaekIe the miners
in the union, and pass to non-union
coal producers the greatest era Of
prosperity and output Of tonnage in
the history of the non-union field"
(4) That Lewis and the bureaucracy
violated the constitution by refusal to
send out the election returns of the
last national election. That fields for
merly controlled by the union no
longer exist, the men having returned
to the mines, non-union, as protest
against the national and district Of
ficials. That northern West Virginia,
once union, is lost forever to the U. M.
w. of A. That southern West Vir-
ginia and Kentucky are producing tre-
mendous tonnage under non-union con-
ditions. That central Pennsylvania is
non-union, and lost to the U. M. w.
of A., while the miners in Ohio and
Indiana are in a critical condition.
90 That the strike in the anthra-
cite region, involving $4,000 men, was
a well-laid scheme of the national Of
fcials to extricate themselves from the
political laundering into which Presi-
dent Lewis entered to sell and bargain
the mine workers of America to a po-
litical party for vague, empty, mean
ingless, worthless and Improbable so
called wage scale.
No Justification.
UNFORTUNATELY many of the
- charges against Lewis are true.
Assuming that all the charges against
the national and district officials were
true, that does not justify the dualists
attempting to break up the United
Mine Workers of America.
In most of the dual union move
ments of the past the workers have
been generally militant members of
the union attempting to better the
wages and working conditions by a
short cut, but this dual union in Penn
sylvania was entirely different. 1t
had as its main proposal reduction
of wages, and loss of working condi-
tions. Its slogan was shack to the
Il 917 wage scale, to enable US to COM
pete with non-union COAL"
March Backward.
- made no difference to the dualists
that the 1917 scale was One-third
less than the 1924 scale, that even tho
the non-union miners were working
more days than the union men they
were in debt to the coal owners at the
end of the pay. 1t made no difference
to these company union tools. that the
miners in the non-union fields were
existing in a stage of peonage, that
their constitutional and natural rights
were held in allegiance, that the imme
date remedy was organization of the
unorganized. ALI they wanted was a
new union"-with the coal compa
MES tools at its head and tortuous
march backwards to 1917, bring
ng the hellish wages and conditions
of West Virginia and Kentucky into
he Pittsburgh district.
Shames Officials.
IONE more dual union gone. One
~ more attempt of the open-shoppers
and the degenerate tools to break the
morale of the miners has failed. and
one more brilliant, victory for the pro
gressive miners of District 5, and one
more cause for shame to the treacher
Gus officials of the U. M. w. of A.
MisIead MiIitants.
lHOW much longer are the workers
IL going to permit themselves to be
mislead by this folly-dual unionism
The lessons to the workers from this
curse has been many, yet the dualists
unfortunately, find ready response
among some of our most militant bui
1mislead members in the labor move