The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1928-02-04
LITTLE CAESAR"
OF ELECTRICIANS
POSES AS ANGEL
Fails to Mention Own
Naughtiness

the meeting of the Central Trades
and Labor Council, speech was de-
livered to the delegates Of that body
by H. H. Breach, International vice
president of the electrical workers.
1t was an unusual speech, most
unusual. The delegates did not wish
to hear Breach speak yet they had
invited him there. For over a year
he had bided his time for this oppor-
tunity, yet when it was first offered
him, he postponed its acceptance. l.
this not strange!
Works With Bosses.
At this moment the labor movement
Is in the greatest crisis in its history
Everywhere the employers, taking adj
vantage of their strengthened posi-
ton, are waging war to the death
against the trade unions. Yet on
Thursday evening, Breach was able to
report that he was conducting most
successful campaign against the en-
ployers of his trade--against the small
j shops, the large manufacturers, the
big jobbers, the non-union corpora
lions, the towering public utilities
ALL
Eve have put on the screws here, "
he reported. "We have cracked the
whip there; we have twisted tail
in another place. And the employers
have come cringing to u.s."
What manner of wonder is this
man, Breach?
Labor Takers.
For nearly two hours, under a
tongue lashing, now open, now indi-
rect, at times bitterly sarcastic, at
others, overwhelmingly pleasant, the
delegates to this most openly reac-
tionary, this most cynically corrupt
central labor body in the world,
! writhed and squirmed in silence, sui
len and startled.
And at the end they applauded!
Step by step Breach traced the de-
velopments during the year of his
3 battle against the crooked O'Hara
group which he had cleaned out of
Local 8. He told of the opposition he
had met from the employers, from
the courts, from the city officials,
from the Building Trades Council,
from the Central Trades and Labor
Council. He referred poiutedly to the
friends of these men who still sit
in this body"
Corruption.
DEPRESSING times apparently
without reason-he went out of his
way to call attention to the ineffici-
ency of the central body, of its meth
DDS, "well-known among US trade
unionists." "Yet l am no reformer,"
he affirmed. "No puritan"
Referring to the fight that the
Building Trades Council had staged
in support of the corrupt O'Hara
gang, he said with tender irony: "Of
course, they did not understand the
situation as you here didn't understand
the situation" At one time, merely
as an incidental remark, he announ-
ICED: "All central bodies are worth
less, paper organizations, anyway"
At another, becoming bitter, he
charged that "ro real stand was be-
ing taken on the injunction menace
which is facing the laoor movement
You hear all this talk about fighting
the injunction in the courts. What
hypocrisy! These legal gestures!
When did labor ever get anything
through the courts? Everything we
have ever gained has been won
through battle and not by means of
the lawyers and their advicew
Nor was this all. He pictured in
detail how he had rescued the cleo
trical workers union, instituted an or
ganization drive, raised the wages of
the men, smashed down opposition Of
the open shop employeTs--i,i his owe
words, "crea.ed an efficient, forcaf.l
union, business-like in every respect"
Not penny Of graft was being taken
in his union, he announced.
A Trade Union Angel.
And all this before the Tamnany-
controlled union officials of the Cen
trail Trades, the most corrupt labor
fakerdorn in the world!
Such figure, you viii say, must
stand out as some shining angel Of
the labor movement, voice crying
in the wilderness.
What is wrong with this picture?
Is this not the same Breach who
no more than four weeks ago before
the Industrial Survey Commission ad-
mitted to playing the game of the bic
EMPLOYERS in the industry, not "the
carpet baggers," he stated. "but those
that really counted in the trade"
And when he spoke so frankly"
before the Central Trades, did he not
omit the mention of more than a few
facts which are of the greatest sig
nificance to the members of his
union?
We might ask him for the explana-
tinr of same Of thnsa nliastions.