The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1926-05-20
PASSAIC POLICE
ATTACK WORKERS
AT union HALLS
Assault Strikers as They
Leave Meeting

PASSAIC, N. j., May II. - Crowds
of orderly strikers, proceeding from
their meeting halls to their homes
were brutally attacked by police and
more than a hundred strikers beaten.
Many received serious injuries and
we're sent to hospitals.
There was not even the excuse of
a picket line with which the police
could whitewash their inexcusable
brutalities. Old men, young children,
a woman about to become a mother,
dozens of people were attacked indis-
criminately and beaten TO the ground
by policemen's clubs.
Need Medical Aid,
Strikers who had been injured pour
ed into headquarters all evening to
give their names and to ask for medi-
cal aid. Union doctors were kept busy
caring for other cases too painful to
be brought to the office.
The strikers were going from two
meeting halls toward their homes
when they were attacked. Some OF
them were on the way to the Forst-
mann-Huftmann plant in Clifton where
a test picket line was being success
fully carried on. They were stopped
near the Botany mill and assaulted.
Garfield Police Club Strikers.
In Garfield, police beat several strik-
ers and made few arrests ON similar
pretexts. Jack Rubenstein received a
sa,yora hno4{,a and mas Iotar orrac4ad
on charges of melting to riot, and
taken to Jail.
Brutal Scenes Enacted.
1.-THE terrible beatings which the
police of Passaic gave to innocent
strikers and passersby was one of the
most brutal scenes that has yet been
enacted here. This time the police
were even so bold as to rush right
into the houses, dragging out people
from their homes and beating them
mereilessly. One woman, it is report
ed, who is about to give birth to a
child, was beaten so very badly that
involuntary cries of rage and protest
burst forth from those who witnessed
the attack,
clamor for Retaliation Grows.
"All over the strikers are clamor-
ing for retaliation, and the union has
had hard time to restrain and calm
the people. We can do nothing to pro-
tect our workers. When we had a
mass picket line many people believed
the mill owners propaganda that mass
picket lines stood for violence. There
was no mass picket line today. Our
people were merely going home from
the meetings when they were assault
ed. Now the honest people of Passaic
can see that mass picket line or no
mass picket line, the violence of the
police goes on unchecked and un-
abated with the addition that the
scabs, acting under instructions, grow
holder under police protection and
participate in the attack against the
workers.
Protest MIIl-owners TerrorI
1.-THE whole city of Passaic must
unite in a cry of protest against these
outrages of the police and the mill
owners who have bought them. The
people of Passaic must not allow the
condition that there is no protection
for the strikers but that they are to
be dubbed and dubbed until they are
dubbed back into the mills. If no
protection is afforded the strikers and
If these entirely unprovoked beatings
continue, the union will find it harder
and harder to restrain and calm those
workers, who having been beaten in
violation of the law and having no
practical redress given them, against
the instructions of this union, pursue
their own methods of redress against
their cossack oppressors."