The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1928-05-01
WORKING WOMEN
AID THE MINERS
By JULIET STUART PoYNTz

women of America fighting in the
vanguard of every great struggle
of labor today. In the mining
mills of New England, the needle
trades shops of New York, hun
dreds of thousands of working wo-
men are putting up a terrific re-
sistance to the efforts of the bosses
to crush the labor movement and
slavery.
Heroic Fight of Mine Women
The heroic endurance and fight
ing spirit of the miners wives in
the great British miners strike Of
last year finds counterpart in the
women's struggle in the American
coal-fields today.
A new chapter in the struggle has
opened in every mining camp and
barracks in the strike area, a period
in which the women are coming for
ward and manifesting their deter
mination that the union must be
saved, the strike must be won. The
miners wives who at the start of
the strike were hardly seen at meet
ings, almost never on the picket
line, who suffered and endured pa
tiently at home but hardly came out
in the open or in united action, are
today new women, awake and fight
ing, throwing their whole strength
and force into this desperate
struggle against bosses and union
misleaders.
Militancy Grows
Every mining camp and barracks
is town under siege with the enemy
at the gates and the race with star
walton by the forces within. Here
the miners wives are the center of
organization for the resistance,
somehow scratching together food
enough to keep their children alive,
arranging the miserable sheds they
have been forced into in some sem
blance of home, battling for
health and cleanliness against filth
and disease, keeping up the courage
of the men to continue the struggle,
going out on the picket line and tax
ing up the cudgels against troopers
and scabs. They are fighting for
their very lives and those Of their
children in this desperate struggle |
and they know it. AS mothers they
must fight their way through and
save themselves and their children
from hunger and misery and their
men from the slavery that waits for
the miner that loses his organiza-
ton.
The women of the miners In their
effort to save the strike and save the
union are drawn directly into the left |
wing movement.
The women are fully alive to the |
fact that nothing but the fighting |
policy of the left wing can save the
union. Mass picketing, violation of |
the fight against the ma
chine, these are the only way out as
the women know from bitter expert
ence. Upon them falls directly the
weight of the new offensive of the
Lewis misleaders. The eviction and
starvation campaign of the Lewis
machine follows that of the bosses.
Out of the company houses! Out of
the barracks! Off the company
stores! Off the U. M. w. relief! To
the women of the mining camps, the
bosses and the Lewis henchmen are
identical parts of the same destruc-
tive force that is taking the roof
from over their heads and plunging
heir children into starvation, and de-
stroying the only protection of their
men against slavery.
The women of the coal-fields are
ready for cold, starvation, violence
from the police and prison in the
struggle which is their fight and
that of their children as well as the
men. Many who hardly left the
kitchen before are meeting, picket
ng, marching, demonstrating, organ-l
zing relief committees and Save
the Union committees, sending dele
everywhere to put up a real fight.
The women delegates at the Save
the Union Conference on April LIST,
though few in number, were the van
guard of great fighting women's
army back in the camps.
Struggle in Barracks.
In the barracks the struggle is on
between the right and left wing of
he women. The aristocracy of the
barracks, the small group support
ng the Lewis machine is bitter and
'ullen at the prolonged struggle. {
They do not understand it. They
weep and wall. Why should they,
patriotic, God-fearing s
md boss-fearing, have to endure {
old and hunger along with foreign t
RS and radicals? They have been
orced into the struggle, dragged t
york indefatigably for years, nayYs
ven for decades. t
ri