The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1927-04-18

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they have secured the underworld for
gangsters whose word is worth moth
ing anywhere except in trial where
lies and SANDER are given preference,
they have tried to appear as friends
in order to betray.
NEVER in the history of the Amer
~ lean labor movement has there
been court proceeding of the charac-
ter of that staged in Mineola. The
history of the American labor move
ment does not contain too many
bright spots but until now it has not
been blackened by the spectacle Of
the heads of the trade unions pro-
curing the prosecution of workers for
the crime of winning a strike.
We repeat again that this is the
chief reason why Gold and his COM
rades are on trial. Revolutionary
workers who have little or no connec-
tions with the trade union member
ship, whose knowledge of the labor
movement is academic, who have no
mass following, who are unable to
give the practical direction necessary
to workers struggles for better. living
standards, who do not know how to
take advantage of every loophoie in
the dcfenses of the capitalists to
strengthen the position of the work
ing class, have little terror for the
Civic Federation type of labor leader.
QUT when revolutionists show SUI
- periority over the old type Of trade
union leader even in the daily strug-
gle, then it is something else again.
1t is then there is real alarm in the
camp Of the capitalists and their
agents. What is to become Of Amer
lea if Communist trade union leader
ship can take the bosses to a clean
ing? Even tho it demonstrates its
ability in comparatively small strikes
like Passaic and in the fur industry,
it is a forerunner of what the future
holds. That future is not pleasing
to a labor officialdom which bases
its claim to leadership upon the close
and friendly relations it maintains
with the enemies of the working class
and its unquestioning support of the
domestic and foreign policies of
American Imperialism.
THIS labor officialdom has decreed
that Communists and left wing
trade unionists who organize, lead
and win strikes shall go to Jail.
The price of liberty, Of honor and
ease, of a seat high in the councils of
official labor, of patronizing smiles
from the hard-faced and soft-paunch-
ed dictator of the Civic Federation,
is betrayal of the workers.
Ben Gold and his fellow workers
will not pay this price.
That is why they are on trial while
the Greens, Wolls, Sigmans, Fraynes
and McGradys stand whispering their
advice into the ears of the prosecutors
to the tune of applause from the Civic
Federation and the Union League
Club.
THE "Citizens Committee" which
Vol has organized, undoubtedly
has as its first order of business the
extension of prosecutions and pros
ecutions to broader field than the
needle trades unions. 1t will endeavor
to use the machinery that Woll has
set up to Jail militants in other sec
tions of the labor movement with
especial emphasis on Communist
workers.
Labor officialdom has powerful
backing but it has one ,weakness-its
open adoption of the role of champion
Of the bosses interests, its brazen
united front with individuals and in
terests which American workers
know are symbols of complete reac-
ton, tends to widen the breach be-
tween it and the rank and file.
AT the end of the Judas trail which
~ American labor officialdom is fol-
lowing is dungeon and a gallows.
They are there to imprison and hang
the revolutionary elements in the
American labor movement. For
while they may fulfill this function.
But surely as sunlight dispels noxious
odors will the glazing betrayals of
all the old honest traditions of Amer
lean labor by the Greens, VOLS, etc.
dispel all illusions among the work.
ers as to the part they play in the
drive of the capitalists against the
labor movement.
To believe otherwise is to believe
that the workers who make up the
American labor movement want to
have the Civic Federation become
synonymous with the American Fed
Grafton of Labor, to believe that there
Is no spark of working class integrity
eft in the American labor movement.
WE know better than this. We
" know that the memory of Home
stead of Virden, of Paint Creek, Of
Lawrence, Of Occur D'Alene, of Nc
KEGS Rocks, of Mesaba, of Bisbeq, of
Butte, of the A. r. U. strike, of Hay