The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1930-05-10
BY JOHN STEEL.

MAY LIST 1880 marked the first
AVE- openly admitted fascist anti
working class mobilization of the
American Fascist.
Always before these forces of re-
action have masked their attacks un-
der cloak of impartiality, as the
support of claw and ORDER, such as
the American Legion in the Kansas
coal fields and the New York Long
shoremens strike, etc.
May LIST the Veterans Of Foreign
Wars, under the guidance of Rus
sian Czarist emigres, whose sole
qualification for American citizen
ship is their rabid hatred for the
working class, modified every ele-
ment of reaction they could muster
for a counter-revolutionary demon
stration.
SOcial-Fascists.
1t is significant of the entire So
cialist role that the Y. F. w, or
ganized in the trenches Nov. II,
1918 as a working class, socialist
service mems organization should
take the lead in this open establish
ment of fascism as an eXtra-legal
force of American imperialism.
Four days later, at second dem
onstration of the fascist, Major
Curtis, condensed his eulogy of Grant
who was himself a worker military
genius, bribed, misled and betrayed
| by capital, to a renewed TRADE
against the class conscious workers
The dream and hope for Major
Curtis and his ilk is to unite the
scattered forces of fascism to pre-
sent a united front against the work
ing class and to prepare for blood
bath next May or sooner if he can.
The bourgeoisie has forgotten -
or perhaps they remember too well
- the spirit of revolt prevalent
among the soldiers who returned
from France in 1919 and 1920. How
then every soldier cursed the army,
the war and everything connected
with it.
Feared Ex-Servicemen.
At the close of the war the bour-
geoisie, fearing this widespread
discomfort, and the consequences
should the veterans ever unite, split
them into numerous societies, in
stead of one great mass organiza-
ton, after the age-old tactic of
splitting the enemy and pitting him
against himself.
The American Legion proved the
most docile and bourgeois of these
organizations and was used for the
first attacks on the working class
as in the Centralia massacre, but
always under the sham of impartial
support of law and order.
The last few years, however, have
seen an element of workers drawn
into the American Legion by the
huge membership drives, and these
workers created somewhat of a
proletarian strata among the de-
crepit lieutenants and officers that
had comprised its membership.
This working class element
proved reluctant to join the Gar
ist-fascist May Day march which
Major Curtis hoped to be a murder
march.
The American Legion is the only
veterans organization which can
claim to have anything like a mass
following. Out of the 100000 of
men drafted into the last war, only
an approximate million are organ
lied and the American Legion
claims 100000 of these.
Major Curtis and his crowd could
only muster scant handful, so they
called on the Czarist scum Il the
Sikorsky plant of Connecticut. Mr..
Whalen and the city government
were then kind enough to lend the
veterans, working in the civil SER
vice, for a day.
These poor wretches, fearful of
losing their jobs, assembled with the
Czarist ofal and militarist swine
all told to the number of a couple
of thousand.
Miserable Fiasco.
The loud-mouthed threat to march