The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1928-04-07
DEMAND SPECIAL
CONVENTIONS TO
GUST OFFICIALS
Returning Delegates to
Show Way

Headquarters OF the National Save
the-Union Committee at 526 Federal
st. are still a scene of tremendous
activity, tho the delegates who made
up the Save the-Union Conference are
streaming back over hundred roads
to the utmost provinces of the coal
empire.
Their task is to spread crganiza-
tion. Word already reaches Pitts
burgh that they are electrifying the
communities through which they go.
Little impromptu mass meetings
spring up in the coal towns where
the delegates stop to talk. Little or
ganizations are left behind in the
territory through which each delegate
passes, on his way to his assigned
task. The movement to Save-the-
Union spreads as if by contagion, from
| each of these new centers. Centers
already organized catch quickly the
general outlines of policy decided by
the conference.
Main Task.
The greatest organization task Is
the creation of special district con-
ventions to elect new officers in the
districts. Almost all of the districts
of the miners union have provisions
in their constitutions for special con-
ventions to be called either by the
executive boards of the districts
/ (Which in this case will never be
done) or, after a specified time, after
a certain number of local unions have
passed resolutions in favor of con-
ventions, or after a certain percentage
of the membership has signed a petit
tion for special convention. The
rules differ from district to district,
and the machine, which fears special
conventions on principle, but dares
not abolish them altogether, has made
them very difficult to call. It will
refuse to accept the petitions because
of technicalities, it may expel locals
about to pass resolutions to call spe-
cial conventions, it will miscount the
number of locals voting for conven-
tons, and in the final analysis, it will
abrogate, by fiat, the right to call
conventions, or will postpone the date
for a year or so.
All Expected.
All this is known and expected by
the Save-the- Union Committee. The
526 Federal Street Office is now busy
sending out instructions and answers
to quiries about these technicalities.
The plan is to proceed along "legal"
forms as long as that is possible, and
until it is thoroly demonstrated to
every member in the district that the
officials will not and do not intend
to grant any democracy Then the
Save-the- Union Committees of the
districts will call conventions. Some
conventions can be expected within q
month.
The National Save the Union Com
mittee is the centralizing force, the
general staff, of war on thirty-one
fronts, thirty-one districts of the min
ers' union.
Lewis, First Enemy.
The most immediate enemy is the
Lewis administration in the miners
union. Its ally is the organized force
of operators. The weapon of the
enemy is terrorism, hunger, cold and
starvation. Men prominent in the
Save the Union movement are ex-
PEELED; which means that they must
go without work, or work in unor-
ganized fields. Families of men
prominent in the Save the Union
work are threatened with eviction
now from the poor barracks, across
the street from their houses, out of
which they were evicted by the COM
panies.
Local unions that resist the expul-
sion orders of Lewis and his lieuten-
ants, or local unions that have recog-
nized the leadership of the Save the
Union Committee, are to be cut off
the relief list Of the United Mine
Workers of America. An attempt to
lash the men into line with a reac-
tionary class collaboration policy,
leading straight to chattel slavery as
a logical onclusion-through the
suffering of their families, deliber-
ately inflicted. The law allows it
and Lewis DEGREES it.
The miners, the Save the Union
Committee, and its district and local
organization reply with an offensive.
The word has gone out that local
unions are not to recognize expul-
sion orders. Already a half dozen
unions in Illinois, others in Indiana
Continued on Page TWol