The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1928-03-13
By JOHN L. SHERMAN.

The call by the Save-The- Union
Committee for a conference of dele
gates representing 100000 organized
and unorganized coal miners is mes
sage not alone to the mine workers
but to the whole labor movement.
Upon the outcome of this confer
ence at Pittsburgh on April 1, will de-
pend in great measure what course
will be taken in the immediate future
by three millions of workers who still
answer to the name of organized.
Upon its accomplishments in perhaps
even greater measure will depend the
direction and immediate destiny of
score of other millions of unorganized
workers.
Trumpet Note of Struggle.
This is by no means an exaggera-
ton. For just as the present seri-
Gus crisis in the labor movement
comes at the end of definite histor-
ical period in American development
so the call from within the ranks of
the largest militant section of that
movement comes as the trumpet note
to the opening of an entirely new
period.
If we should make the mistake for
a moment of regarding the miners
call merely as the message Of the
Save The Union Committee, or if we
should fall into the error of conceiv-
ing it in the narrow sense as a move
ment against corrupted and treach-
erous leadership, we shall Tail to
make the necessary preparations for
its success and shall lose for the mo-
ment the opportunity of directing
those forces which in the near future
are destined to rcmake the American
labor movement.
Energies of Struggle.
Those forces are already in motion
Large-scale and countrywide I'M
employment, rapidly on the increase,
is creating energies of the greatest
power for the development of the
working class. Unemployment brought
about by the large-scale destruction
of capitalistic instruments of produc-
ton and their replacement by an
other more efficient set, has, more
ever, become a permanent fact in
American economic development The
capitalist system in the United States
has reached the point where it can
10 longer create new industries for
the absorption of RAPIDLY increasing
armies of unemployed thrown out by
tho naturalization of other indus
tries.
The pressure upon the capitalist
class, forced by European competi-
ton, to lower the production costs Of
commodities and to depress wage lev
els is the creator of additional ener-
gies of struggle on the part of the
working class. This factor, too, viii
remain permanent one.
The government is forced more and
more TO expose itself as the tool Of
the big business interests. In the
events on the international scene no
more than in the incidents at home;
in the sending of marines to Nicarag-
ua no more than in the carefully
yelled proceedings at the senate mine
investigation now being conducted at
Washington.
In the one case the enlightened"
Bornh sanctifies because of a previ-
cusly made agreement" with the
Nicaraguan liberals" the imperial
list policies Of the black reactionary
Mellon; in the other case Secretary
of abor Davis in an aside during the
first session of the senate hearings,
blurts out his anger at the testimony
of that outstanding radical" John
l.. Lewis "What do these fellows
want? In Penrose's time they would
rot even have got hearing"