The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1931-08-24
How We Must Celebrate the 10th
Year OF the WIR

affiliations. Two outstanding weaknesses again
confronted us with failure First, we paid too
little attention to establishing permanent mem
berShip branches and securing the utilization of
workers organizations, and conducted the cam
paign simply from the standpoint of raising
funds for strike relief. Second the leaders and
workers as well as the organizations active in
the campaign, we're permeated with the con-
ception that the WIR was a fifth Wheel useless
except in emergencies of struggle, a conception
readily understandable in the light of our re-
peated failure to secure permanent organization
out of our former immense relief movements,
our failure to organize the WIR in struggle The
few branches that were organized went to smash
a few months after the Gastonia strike
And thus in 1881, ten years after we organized
our first proletaIian relief organization, coal
miners numbering 10000 went on strike against
starvation under the leadership of the RILU,
the TUUL and N;Iional Miners Union Again
we organized an extra relief committee and as
signed a secondary role to the WIR. Again we
are going forward in the relief campaign upon
the basis of delegate united fronts for the col
lection of funds without organizing any perma-
nent membership branches of the WIR or VIM
ming our contacts for the policy of permanent
relief organization. Weeks have passed since we
decided that the Pennsylvania Ohio West Vir-
ginia -Kentucky Striking Miners Relief Commit
tee shall be transformed into permanent WIR
organization
The miners strike has already changed its
base and tactics due to a back to work move
ment of the strikers. AT the same time, how
ever, the relief campaign is to be intensified,
broadened, improved, because the fight of the
miners against starvation has as its perspective
the broadening of the struggle, the intensified
ton of the battle against the coal barons in the
strike area and spreading it into other mining
territories involving more thousands upon thou
sands of coal diggsrs.
Exactly at this time, while the relief cam
paign is still travelling towards it's peak, must
we transform the extra miners relief commit
tee into a permanent WIR machine The Or
ganization of membership branches of the w.
I.R. must proceed at once. Acquainting the
workers and their organizations with the pro-
gram of the WIR in the field of strike relief,
aid in catastrophies, proletarian culture, aid to
proletarian children, development of proletarian
films, must proceed without delay. And of ex-
IRENE Importance is also the Qualification before
the working class of the role of the WIR in
the unemployed movement
The delegates from the United States to the
International Congress of the WIR, to be held
in Berlin in october, where ten years of exist
ence and proletarian accomplishments of the
WIR in all countries will be celebrated, must
be in position to report that the United States
section of this important workers organization
is at last forming upon a mass scale, with
permanency, to live and grow. Numerous and
militant struggles of the workers in this coun-
try, against deep wage cuts and backbreaking
speed up are in perspective. Already many
strikes are occurring among textile and other
workers. The steel mills are rumbling with dis
content. We must be ready to bring all Strug-
giles the solidarity of the great mass of work.
ers, sympathizers, poor farmers This will be
possible if we build the WIR at once
Begin organizing permanent mass w. L R.
today" must constitute the slogan of every re-
volutionary and sympathetic worker All COM
rades must help in this task