The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1928-09-17
FOSTER TALKS TO
BUTTE WORKERS
Militant Miners Hail
Communist Message

Continued from Page One
from a trestle until he was dead.
During the days when the revolu-
tionary spirit was high, Butte was
an armed camp. Pacifism had no
place among the red-blooded work
ers of the copper mines.
In those days the editors of the
Butte Bulletin sat at their type
writers with their guns within
reach. There were many casualties
in this bitter class conflict and all
the casualties were not on the side
of the battling miners 1t was no
uncommon thing to read in the Butte
Bulletin that another company gun
man was found dead in such and
such place. Bill Dunno was ar
rested many times and in constant
danger of assassination by the tools
of the copper trust.
The militant spirit is not dead in
Butte The workers who attended
the Foster meeting made that quite
clear. They applauded the uncom-
prising note of class struggle in his
speech, and showed that the spirit
that defied all the power of the
mighty Anaconda was ready to be
harnessed into a disciplined battle
against the copper kings, the Re
publican and Democratic parties am
the whole capitalist system.
Speed System.
The Butte miners are in the grip
of a speed-up contract system that
is almost unbearable. The work
ers have no protection against the
terrible grind. Anaconda is getting
out more ore than it formerly pro-
duced with double the present force.
The I. w. w., once powerful in this
region, is dead.
Fosters audience listened atten-
lively while the speakers told of the
organization of the National Miners
Union, to take the place of the cor
rupt and bankrupt United Mine
Workers of America betrayed and
wrecked by John L. Lewis and his
reactionary machine. He told of
the preparations now being made by
the textile workers to organize into
one big industrial union under mill
tant and progressive leadership,
union that will fight the bosses for
better conditions instead of begging
for favors from them.
Foster Explains Program.
"The program of the Workers
(Communist) Party" Foster de-
clared, "calls for the complete over
throw of the capitalist system, and
the establishment of Workers and
Farmers Government to supplant the
present Wall Street state appara-
tus that is used to crush the work.
ers and keep their noses at the CAPT
talist grindstone. In the Soviet
Union, the workers and peasants, in
the fact of hostile capitalist world
are building up socialist society
and doing it with success. The
American workers and poor farmers
must do the same thing. There can
be no permanent improvement in
the conditions of the exploited pro-
ducing classes until they have polit
ical power in their own hands, dis
possess the parasitic masters of
land and industry and operate the
machinery of production and distri-
button in the interests of the work
ers. This is what they are doing in
the Soviet Union. This is what the
workers and subject peoples of all
the world must do. The workers
and peasants of the U. S. S. r.
have blazed the way"
Stormy applause greeted Foster
when he denounced Senators Walsh
and Wheeler, one a well known
agent of the Anaconda Mining Com
pany and the other an alleged pro-
yressive now campaigning for All
Smith, the Tammany reactionary.
There is no difference between
Wheeler and Walsh he pointed cut