The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1927-10-10
By BERTRAM D. WOLFE.


The Workers Party stands commit
ted to the use of all it's energies for
the building of an American Labor
Party on national scale Neverthe-
less, the instructions Of the Central
Executive Committee to the districts
in the 1926 campaign declared:
"There will be three forms in which
the party will go into the elections:
% Thru existing Farmer and Labor
Parties; (2) thru placing united front
labor tickets on the ballot; (3) by
placing Workers Party tickets on the
ballot"
The question naturally arises, why
this flexibility Of tactics? Why this
variety of forms?
American political conditions, I'M
like those of England, are such that
a National Labor Party tends to come
into being by the foundation of vari-
Gus local and state Labor Parties,
gradually converging towards an
American Labor Party and finally
crystallizing when the national senti-
ment for their unification and for the
creation Of a single Labor Party on
a national scale is powerful enough.
Sane in Va, Insane in N. Y.
Economically, the United States is
single unit, but because of this fed
eral system of government, the states
have widely divergent laws and dis
tinct administrations Thus, in ex-
IRENE cases, men have been known
to be divorced by the laws of one
state and yet, marrying again, become
bigamists by the laws of another.
There have even been cases, such as
the Chaloner case, where a man was
insane in New York and sane in Vir-
GINA.
When the interests of big business
require it, Estate rights" are prompt
ly forgotten and by all sorts of legal
fictions, a unified national law in a
given field is put across. Conversely,
when capital wishes to block ma
tional law, the theory of state rights
is zealously upheld and the law is
nullified and declared unconstitutional
as an interference with state sover-
eighty. In this manner, every child
labor law thus far put on the statute
books has been set aside.
The Constitution of the United
States prohibits the passage of laws
limiting or abridging freedom Of
speech, press or assemblage, or limit
ing the right of every citizen to bear
arms. But the Constitution has been
so interpreted that any state may
freely adopt criminal syndicalist laws,
laws forbidding the carrying of arms,
laws forbidding mass picketing and
other forms of free assemblage. New
ertheless, when the war broke out a
national Espionage" act was passed
which was effectively used on ma
tional scale along with the numerous
criminal syndicalist and criminal an
archy acts Of the various states.
Brakes On Progress.
The courts of the United States
have been one of the chief instruments
for blocking legislation which eX-
presses the needs of the working
class. They have always appealed to
precedents established in a period
when there was no working class and
no modern industry.
Labor protection measures, child
labor laws, regulations of the length
of the work day, minimum wage
measures, social insurance, ETC., have
been construed by the capitalist
courts as state matters and not ma
tional ones, therefore the labor
movement has had to fight in each
state separately for the passage of
such laws and consequently labor
political activities tend to be of a
local nature. 1t is only when such laws
are finally passed in given state
that the state supreme court steps
in and declares them unconstitutional,
and, as a last resort, if the bosses
lose, they appeal to the national
supreme court, which gives the final
death blow to the measure in ques-
ton. For this they use ~ 'flue pro-