The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1929-07-15
WORKERS MUST
ACT FOR MILL.
BOSSES VICTIMS
Workers Must Awaken
to Danger

Continued from Page One)
1917 won the eight-hour day in the
woods. The Cheswick trials lat
first murder charge, and now,
with Accorsi arrested, again a
murder case) grew out of Sacco-
Vanzetti meeting of militant strik-
ing miners, one of the biggest
strikes ever known. Joe Hill was
shot for the songs that strikers
sang; the Zeigler frame-up found
the misleaders of labor helping the
prosecution, and the Greece GARLIC
case had an international fascist
angle.
These were all quite famous muir
der trials. There have been any
number of lesser frame-upS. The
employers strategy has now been
worked out in detail.
Four Types of Frame-up.
The frame-up falls into distinct
classes. The Mooney-Billings, Sacco-
Vanzetti, Joe Hill, Haywood type
might be called the frame-up pure
and simple. In this the employers
want to get labor leader, and they
pin on him the guilt of whatever
murder or other crime happens to
have been committed anywhere, re-
lying on sheer perjury and mass
hysteria to turn the trick.
At the opposite extreme, in one
respect, might be considered the at
tempt to convict a striker who has
kil' an employers thug, admits
he did it and pleads self-defense,
though, in this case, too, perjury and
publicity are the big arguments for
hanging or electrocution. The near
est to pure case of this type is
probably the Homestead frame-up,
following the battle of Homestead.
But the boss usually, where some
company gunman has been justifi-
ably killed by workers, cannot let
pass the opportunity to arrest some
leaders who could not possibly have
4 Rad anything to do with the actual
killing, and usually tries them all
] together with someone he accuses of
really firing the shot.
This is the classical, normal type
of frame-up. 1t is the case in Gas
tonia Even the prosecution is not
going to say that little 17-year-old
Sophie Melvin fired a shotgun at
Chief Aderholt. But it is appa-
rently going to say that she con-
spired to have him shot, and, follow
ing the precedent of the famous
Haymarket case, that she "advised
large classes of people, not particu-
lar individuals, but large classes, to
commit murder, and had left the
commission, the time and place and
when, to the individual whim."
Gastonia is Classical.
The Gastonia case is this mixed
type, like that of Centralia, and the
prosecution will use the Hayn1arket
precedent against some of the de-
PENDANTS, and will probably try to
show by perjured evidence that
l other defendants really fired the
Il shots.
] Presumably there may be some
time another case in which the
prosecution, as at the Haymarket
case, does not claim that any of the
defendants killed anyone, and hangs
them merely on their teachings.
No Evidence Too Shaky.
The prosecution in every case re-
lies on quantity rather than quail
ity of evidence. The employers use
their superior finances to pile up
testimony, however shaky. They
rely on widespread publicity cam
paigns, especially during a war or
near war period, to brighten the
jury. Two-thirds of the jury in the
Centralia case have signed state
ments to the effect that they said
guilty." not because they were con-
WINGED, but because they were
scared. All forces of press, pulpit
and public speakers, economic pres
sure, mobilization of troops and
gunner are regularly utilized to
produce q state of mind in the jury
in which the rotten prosecution evil
dence seems sufficient, and ter
ror in the community which pre-
vents defense witnesses from COM
ing forward.
Once the first conviction is Sc
cured, the employers rely chiefly on