The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1929-06-14
"When Rattlesnakes Shake"

and inequality to become general
within our ranks"
All of this, mind you, in a paper
which chronicles joyously on it's
front page the fact that 65 workers
are in Jail charged with murder and
attempted murder for resisting one
of whole series of attacks on their
headquarters, their persons and their
wives and children, attacks made
by the hired lackeys of the textile
barons in the most cold-blooded and
deliberate manner as part of a plan
to break the strike of workers in re-
volt against starvation wages and in
human working conditions.
The catholic church, in aiming a
shaft at the bosses of southern in
dustry, has its own AK to grind.
Catholicism does not exactly flourish
in the south-it is too exotic for the
natives and they prefer the gyra-
tons of the evangelical sky pilots
to the dogmas of the pope. The
southern clergy is subservient
enough to please the big bosses and
they are not ready to switch dope
peddlers. The press, therefore, is
not averse to trying to convince the
faithful that both Communism and
catholicism are enemies of those
bounteous charlottesville textile
barons.
Moscow and Rome against the
peace and prosperity of the Sunny
Southland! Only a southern editor
driven to desperation could conceive
of such a combination. The mill
owners are in rather bad way
when they have to depend upon the
support of such weakly vicious ele-
ments.
A Wave of Strikes.
The significance of the wave of
strikes in the textile and rayon mills
must be understood. 1t is no spor-
adic outburst. 1t is the method by
which the southern workers are COM
ing into open struggle for organi-
zation, for better wages and work
ing conditions, for more power-it is
struggle against the speed-up--
against capitalist naturalization.
1t is a revolt of workers the bosses
have hitherto looked upon as for
ever docile. They are native work
ers. The bosses and their agents
cannot blame the immigrants and
their European ideas"
Fury and fear-this is the dom
inant note in the capitalist press of
the southern textile districts follow
ing the Gastonia battle.
Gastonia marks an advance by the
battalions of the working class-an
advance from which they will no.
retreat in spite of the fury and
frame up which will undoubtedly
take heavy toll from the ranks of the
National Textile Workers Union.
The Communist members will be
picked out for the most intense per-
secution. The main task now is to
build the strongest possible defense
to make the Gastonia frame-up an
issue in the entire labor movement
and at the same time to build the
union solidly in every mill town in
the Southland North.
1t is to prevent this that the tex
tile barons and their hirelings are
going to such desperate lengths. |
They are trying to close the breach |
in the fortified front of the textile
industry, which the workers made in
Gastonia, with the bodies of the
militant union men and women they |
now hold in half-a-dozen different |
jails.
This they must not be allowed to
do.
Speaking of rattlesnakes, since the
press of the textile barons has
raised the question, it will do no
harm to remind them that the revo-
lutionary flag of the ancestors of
these mill workers carried the pic
ture of coiled rattlesnake with the |
motto: Don't Tread on Me!' sss,s