The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1927-08-27
By BERTRAM D. WOLFE

lengths will it not go against the workers if they
attempt to abolish the capitalist system? Any one
who cannot see the character of the American ru-
ing class and its of government must be blind
indeed. American labor history is full of bloody
pages and it has not yet challenged the capitalist
system in serious combat The Colorado massacre,
Centralia, Homestead, McKeesport, Gary West Vir-
ginia Lawrence, Ludlow, Lowell, San Pedro, Ever
EFT, Butte, Calumet-to any industrial
ter is to call up visions of a bloody battle in which
workers attacked by armed force not for
challenging the capitalist system but merely for
asking for the right to organize to receive some
thing approximating living wage. Our ruling class
is more arrogant and more brutal than most and
will surrender its privilege and power with
out struggle.
5. WHILE USING EVERY LEGAL RECOURSE
WE MUST BUILD UP A MASS MOVEMENT FOR
devotion and self-sacrifice of the and women
who made up the Sacco-VanZetti Defense Commit
tee of Boston must not be permitted to blind US to
fatal and fundamental mistake that they made
in their conduct of the We must draw all the
lessons SO that such tragedies will be combatted
more effectually and prevented in the future That
mistake was a too great and exclusive dependence
upon the legal processes of the courts and a de-
iberate effort at discouraging demonstrations and
mass protests in America. They had seven years
in which to build up powerful mass movement
which would have terrified the Massachusetts Of
ficials and their masters and stayed the hand of
the executioner They did not sufficiently under
stand the class mechanism involved, did not see
the lesson of the Mooney case, the Centralia case
and thousand other frame-ups. They confidently
counted upon abstract classics ''iustice" and
nourished too many illusions in the legal processes
of the capitalist courts They kept the workers be-
living that the courts would give justice that the
governor would give justice For seven years when
they might have been building a powerful mass
movement to Sacco and Vanzetti they discour.
aged the building OF such movement Only after
Fulers decision few weeks ago, did they perceive
their mistake Tor rather exhaust their illusionsl
when it already too late and only few weeks
remained to build up a mass movement to arouse
the popular will and our two comrades. 1t is
correct to and exhaust every legal process that
capitalist procedure allows but militant workers
can expect justice from capitalist courts except
where the courts dare not carry thru the act of in
justice. The only protection for militant workers
is the organized power Of the working class and
all its allies and sympathizers 1t was mass pro-
test that saved Tom Mooney from death. Had we
begun seven years ago, we could have built such a
movement for Sacco and Vanzetti that they would
not have dared to kill them.
6. A PERMANENT DEFENSE COMMITTEE
is NEEDED. The -Vanzetti case is not an
isolated Acts of injustice, arrests for labor
activity, frame-ups, occur in every strike and in
every struggle. Dramatic cases ONCE THEY HAVE
BEEN SUFFICIENTLY DRAMATIZED can and