The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1931-05-21

NEW YORK-A letter to all district and
local Trade Union Unity Leagues, and to all
Unemployed Councils and branches has been
sent bv the national office of the TUUL out
lining the next steps and clarifying the policy
in the fight against starvation The letter Is
signed bv VIM g. Foster, general secretary of
the TUUI, Il relates particularly to the city
conventions on unemployment which will be held
in all industrial cities within the next six weeks
1t says:
1T is already an established fact that in the
past few months there has been q leSSening
of even the measly relief and charity handout
hitherto given to the unemployed, But this
vas not reflected in our recent activities, I'm
auestionably the little relief given due large
" to the pressure of the masses of unemployed
led by our movement. Similarly the attempts
to take this relief away from the unemployed
not meeting with organized resistance and
struggle from us is going forward in almost
all cities and municipalities. When We first raised
the issue of relief and organized huge actions
the major one Of which took place on March g.
the bosses either ignored completely the exist
ence of the millions of unemployed or through
their spokesman in the government bodies claim
ed that they could do nothing because they either
lacked the funds or the legal authority But the
pressure of the unemployed led by us in strug-
giles succeeded in making them see things
little different.
"At the present time most of the city relief
bodies and charity organizations connected with
the cities, state that they have come to the end
of their rope. They claim to have had only so
much to give and hoped that soon things would
be better Now they pretend to be helpless.
What should be our answer. Even bigger strug-
giles can be organized against the taking away
Of relief than at first to compel this relief. But
we have not reacted this, with the result
that everywhere the masses of unemployed are
left starving and no voice Of protest and struggle
is heard. Nor do we react to the fake news about
returning prosperity and fake relief proposals let
loose by the bosses side by side with their lessenng
relief This is serious indictment of our work
1t shows that we have not yet learned how to
lead the unemployed movement through the var
ious stages and utilize every situation to advance
the interests of the unemployed and the move
ment generally.
What is the reason for this situation? Here
we will not attempt to review all of our &C
Invites in the unemployed work for the last Is
months or to restate the general policy and pro-
gram sent you in detail only recently. We will
only take up recent manifestations of one side
edness and the failure to properly execute the
correct policies laid down.
When it became clear that all our work was
limited to occasional demonstrations organized
on a national scale and that this did not result
in the steady building of the organization of the
unemployed, we, after an analysis of the causes
for this came to the conclusion, that our work
must be better organized and that it must be-
come more concrete; that we must fight for the
relief Of the unemployed on a more concrete
basis and not even shrink from organizing relief
for the unemployed through the Unemployed
Councils. This whole program was contained in
a document sent you under the title Next Steps
in Our Unemployment Work Now after two
months when we examine the work carried on
by the unemployed branches and councils what
do we see? First we see that the carrying
through of the work as outlined in Next Steps Is
proceeding very slowly; that we are still at the
stage of investigations which in many cases are
disconnected from the struggle for relief from
the government but become isolated investiga-