The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1931-07-25
Program OF Unity and Action tor
All Nine Workers

ADOPTED BY THE NATIONAL UNITED
FRONT CONFERENCE OF MINERS
Consisting Of 6S5 Delegates from N. M. u,
U. M. w. A. Locals and Unorganized Mines
Held in Pittsburgh, Pa, July 1916, 1881.
THE FIGHT AGAINST STARVATION
IN recent months the coal industry is marked
by rising wave of mass strikes-the Glen
Alden and Shenandoah strikes In the Anthra-
cite, the bitter struggle in Kentucky, and the
strikes in Illinois, Indiana and Southern West
Virginia. The most important of all these strikes
is the present strike of 10000 miners in Penn
sylvania, Ohio and the West Virginia Panhandle.
being waged under the leadership of the mill
tant National Miners Union. More than 10000
men, women and children of the coal fields are
involved in the struggle.
These strikes are all fights against the grow
ing starvation conditions in the coal industry
Unemployment exists on a mass scale, wages
have been cut to the bone union conditions have
been destroyed, terrorism by the operators and
the government is widespread, poverty and des-
titution are the lot of the miners and their
families
1t is the task of this national conference con-
sisting of delegates from the National Miners
Union, UMWA locals and minorities, rank and
file strike committees etc. to strengthen these
local strike struggles, to unite them, and upon
the basis of common program of demands, to
develop them into general struggle against
the operators and their labor leaders.
Betrayal by the U.M.W.A
The operators are deliberately reducing the
miners to slavery conditions, so that we may be
still more ruth1essly exploited. Their most dan
gerous instrument for this purpose is the UNI
Wa which is completely dominated by the
Lewis clique of fascist takers, gangsters and
oIro rrIo1 TT M Wy
to cut wages and to break the resistance of the
miners. Lewis and Co., with their policy Of
collaboration with the bosses, have betrayed the
miners thousand times, including the present
bitter Kentucky strike. In the Pennsylvania
Ohio-West Virginia N.M.U. strike, the UNI WA.
with the help of gunner, deputy sheriffs, state
police, mine bosses, capitalist newspapers, ETC..
is herding scabs and trying openly to break the
strike under scab agreements providing for con-
ditions worse than before the strike.
Auxiliaries of the Lewis machine are unreliable
elements such as Howat in Illinois, Keeney in
West Virginia. and Maloney in the Anthracite.
These people, with show of progressive phrases
to cover up their reactionary policies. place them
selves at the head of the workers in revolt
against Lewis and then betray them to the
operators and Lewis at the first opportunity,
as Howat did in Illinois by his alliance with the
IdkeTS, r1SuWlCk, harrington ana WdlkeT.
The UMWA. held in the death clutch of the
Lewis machine, no longer represents the inter-
ests of the workers 1t is tool of the bosses
That's why the operators in the bitunlinous
fields are now so eager to rebuild it. That's why
the anthracite operators have established the
U.M.W.A. check-off. That's why every recent
strike in the coal industry is directed against
the Lewis UM.W.A. as well as against the coal
operators
Government Terrorism and Strike Breaking
The local, state and national government is
the enemy of the miners and the tool of the
coal operators. Every strike of the miners
against starvation at once has to confront
armies of police, deputy sheriffs, state police,
and troops, as well as injunctions mass arrests,
etc. In Pennsylvania Governor Pinchot hypo-
critically speaks Of "fair deal' for the miners,
while at the same time he floods the strike area
with armed police thugs of every description and
attempts to smash the NMU and the strike.
President Hoover demonstrates the federal gov
ernment's hostility to the miners by trying,
through the recent Washington conference, to
break the strike by forcing the workers back
to work under scab UNIV. agreements.
Fake Remedies VS.. Struggle
In this crucial situation the miners have the
most urgent need for fighting policy policy
Of unity and class struggle. The bosses attempt
to argue away the slavery conditions by claiming
that the coal industry is Sick" that they are
making no profits, that they cannot pay better
wages They propose as cure the classification
of the coal industry This is also the policy OF
the government and Lewis Howat, Keeney, and
the socialist party, true to their policy of cover
ing up their program of betrayal of the miners
with radical words, are proposing this same pol
icy under the name of naturalization
We denounce this whole augmentation as
lie and the justification naturalization pro-