The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1927-08-06
The Problem Of Organizing the Unorganized

the participants; meeting separately in small groups
of or and be very careful whom they admit into
these groups. An illustration of the effectiveness
of such group work can be given from secret
union group in parts of members in each part
formed in the various departments in the Durant-
Hunt, Hays Radiator plant in New Jersey. This
group published a four page plant paper which was
distributed in front of the gates by workers not
working in the plant The first distributors were
Immediately arrested so were the second then the
company began to discharge wholesale suspicion,
but missed all the group members except two, one
of which rehired. Then the company stool
pigeons distributed circular calling the workers to
strike figuring that the radicals world respond first
and thus get discharged. The secret machine inside
fooled this maneuver and only q few stool peons
began to walk out. All tins tr12 the factory paper
appeared regularly with a circulation of nearly
1000 The company got par lcky and forced a lock-
out Of all the workers in the plant then rehirng all
individually. 1t missed most of the members
of the group and the paper kept appearing with
inside information about the happenings in the
plant This time the company called to it's assistance
Hilfers, then state secretary of the A. F. of L. in
New Jersey to get in touch with the union group,
which sent a committee to see him, as they con-
sidered the time ripe for strike move Immediately
after this conference with Hfers many of the in
side group got discharged. Again the A. F. of L.
leadership proved its value. 1t saved the company
from the 'reds." Had the strike really come police
injunctions, gangsters with riot guns and tear gas
deputIzed by the Sheriff would have repeated the
Passaic stuff.
No matter how difficult this and other instances
show the semi-secret secret work to be there
ways to carry on. The greatest obstacle is really
not the terrorism inside The factory the threat Of
DISCHARGE ETC. but the political nterferences of the
authorities in behalf of the employers and against
the workers. ANY attempt at organization of anv
Importance at all meets Immediately with the most
repressive measures. It becomes at once political
struggle with all the blows aimed at the workers
We need but remind ourselves of the march of the
West Virginia miners to organize the open shop
mines. Then the federal injunction against the min
under n2-agherty more recently the Passaic DO
lice brutalities and the thousands of arrests in the
recent garment strikes down to the nunctions for
bidding attempt at organization, such as
the injunction obtained bv the New York traction
trusts forbidding the union from doing ANYTHING
that NAV tend towards organization of the sub
way workers.
Civil liberties established by the constitution BY
law and made part of every day life by custom are
being ignored by the authorities in nnumerable in
stances when labors interests involved For the
past few years laws are being put on the statute
books to Cypress labor like the numerous anti
syndicslist laws There is the Watson Parker law
the railroads outlawing strikes There is the u S
supreme court decision outlawing sympathy strike
like in the Stone Cutters Union case. The police
judicial state and federal authorities in actual prac
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