The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1928-02-25
Fighting the
Frame Ub
By MAX SHACHTMAN

BEHIND the walls and bars of San
- Quentin prison in California sits
Tom Mooney. In Represa, Calf, is
his comrade Warren Billings. Further
north, in the Washington peni-
tertiary at Walla Walla are a num-
Der of l. w. w. from Centralia. All
of them are a part of the long list
of class war fighters who have been
captured by the ruling class and held
prisoners against the movement of
militant labor. Their cases are the
worst, for not only are they innocent
of any crime but their activities in
the cause of the working class, but
they must expiate this "crime" of
loyalty with lifelong sentences.
For Rest of Lives.
To the very last day of their lives
they are to remain confined in bleak
prison cells. The last breath of life
must come from their bodies on a
prison cot. Their world must remain
hemmed by four narrow stone walls
and their sight of the sky married by
the strong steel gratings of a tiny
window. That is what the judges de-
creed. The law of capitalism has.
spoken with dignified majesty and
there is no further recourse in the
courts.
RUT if there is no recourse in the
- halls of capitalism's courts, the
working class, for w m the
Moneys, Billingses, Barnetts and
Mclnerneys are imprisoned, have
other means at their disposal. The
workers have weapon that is I'M
matched in the whole arsenal Of
their enemies, and that is the I'M
broken solidarity of labor.
I ABOR can. free the class war
= prisoners if it will undertake an
intelligent and stubborn fight
against the infamous frame-up sys-
tenn which has taken these fighters
alive in it's penitentiaries. The work
ers can smash this anti-labor insti-
tuition, which imprisons and murders
the active fighters in the movement,
by grouping their forces with deter
mination and clarity. The Interna-
tional Labor Defense, which has al
ready accomplished a great deal in
the fight against the Imprisonment
Of scores of workers who are arrested
every year for their activities or
opinions in the labor movement, has
made an appeal to every worker to
join in a countrywide campaign
against the frame-up system and
for the release of all the class war
prisoners confir ID in the peni-
tentiaries of American capitalism.
TOWARDS this end, the tour of
James P. Cannon, the national
secretary of International Labor De-
tense, has been organized. The tour
will not only serve to make clear the
character and work of the frame-up
system, but will offer a program of
atcion to combat it. The first sec
ton of the tour begins in Pittsburgh,
Wednesday, Feb. 20, and will take
him to the Pacific coast and back
again to Chicago.
TOM MOONEY, Billings, Matt
: Schmidt and number of the
Centralia men have already written
that they are glad to learn of the
tour, for in the course Of it, Cannon
will visit these old fighters and dis
cuss with them plans for new cam
paign for their release
THE support of the tour in every
city where a meeting is held is
one of the means by which every
worker can help to inaitc successful
this fight against the frane-up sys-
tenn and show that he has separated
from "the apathetic throng the
cowed and the meek" and joined the
militant army of fighters that has
decided to fight obstinately with all
it's power for the vindication of the
victims Of vicious class "iustice."