The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1930-07-07
By LOUIS GIBARTI.

THE First National Conference of the Work
4 ers' international Relief in the United
States will take place on July in Chicago.
This date must become a landmark in all eff
forts aiming towards the establishment of
broad basis in the masses for the support OF
strikes and significant class battles In Amer
lea.
-. l. r. Born From the Solidarity to the
Soviet Union.
1t is nearly ten years ago that the young
Russian Soviet Republic faced particularly
critical and dangerous situation. To the I'M
paralleled destruction of the imperiallst world
war, and to the effects of the armed interview
tions of the International bourgeoisie, ma
tural catastrophe added new dangers. The
complete failure of the harvest of the lower
VoIga regions in the dry year of 1921 en-
dangered the lives of 100000 workers and
peasants The International bourgeoisie be-
lieved that the time had come to organize new
armed interventions and to mobilize its Char
ity" agencies to disintegrate the ranks of the
masses engaged in the struggle for the de-
tense of the Russian Revolution. The League
of Nations FASTENED to appoint the French
General Noulent as "relief commissioner" in
order to organize this new offensive against
the Soviet Union.
The workers in all countries, however,
saw the danger clearly. They realized that
the alliance of imperialist bayonets and Char
ity" preachers is a new and more effective
form of the International conspiracy and at
tack against the First Workers State. The
workers, therefore, created in every country
their own relief committees. Everywhere,
from Australia to Argentine, from Europe to
the UniteI States of America, spontaneously
and enthusiastically, a huge worldwide move
ment started to remove the danger of bour-
10
stand by in brotherly solidarity to the Russian
workers and peasants.
The Workers International Relief thus came
into existence practical expression of the
solidarity and revolutionary determination of
the workers of all lands to defend and help
the Socialist Fatherland. Food shipments,
relief materials, drugs, clothes, had been sent
for millions of dollars to the Soviet Union.
Soon the first model estates had been created
with industrial machinery and agricultural
implements donated by the workers of every
country.
The w l. R. as Commssary Dept of the
Class Battle
The heroism of the Russian workers and pea
SAINTS and the solidarity of the World Prole-
tarat defended and consolidated the historic
work of the Russian Revolution. The follow
ing years saw an unparalleled effort of social,
ist upbuilding and a steady rise of the living
standard of the laboring masses in the Soviet
Republic.
TIE following years, however, also saw the
ruthless attack of master classes on the toilers
of factory and farms in the capitalist coun-
tries, striving to place the burden of all war
devastations on their shoulders During this
attack the reformist socialists and trade union
leaders split the ranks of the International
workers army helping the capitalist master
classes to establish a partial and temporary
"stabiliZation" of their economic and social
system. This sterilization meant chronical I'M
employment, slave-working conditions and saw
age oppression for the workers all over the
world, excepting Russia.
In this situation, after conveying the soli-
darity of the World Proletariat to the Russian
workers, the W. /. r. was confronted with the
task to organize and express the same solidar-
ity in mass strikes and struggles in the cap
itast countries. 1t still attended natural catas-
trophies in many instances like in Japan after
the earthquake Of 1928, and in the famine of
western Ireland in 1925. The chief aim of the
w. l. r. activities, however. became increas-
ingy the support of the strikes For
never before the tide of huge class
flicts, industrial and political strikes as high
- m this postwar period Never before was
at the same time the splitting of the workers
ranks by the reformist trade unions and So
cialist leaders and their open activity for the
victory of the master classes general and
decisive as in this epoch.
The w. l. R. accordingly had as its main
task to mobilize and organize the Solidarity
of Deeds around every nationally and inter
nationally significant class battle, strike strug
gle, to unite in maximum effectiveness the
moral and material support of the laboring
masses of all lands for the strikers of the
most endangered sections. This support on a
mass basis was needed For characteristic for
the major postwar strikes was that their sup
port superseded the possibilities and power of
one individual union or even groups of unions.
The united effort of huge masses of the work
ing population and at certain instances Of the
whole world proletariat needed.
Support of strikes, relief in industrial strug-
giles, is, of course, in the first place the task
of the trade union movement. The WIR. never
tried to substitute this function of the trade
unions. 1t, however, supplemented the trade
union relief by its broader appeal, reaching
all strata of the laboring masses, thus giving
additional strength, additional relief, which