The daily worker., 1931-08-04
Preparing the Hoover Coal
Conference

ciety and denunclatlon of Communists in gen.
eral, we will deal with the more specific strike
breaking line of the editorial and show that the
same line is now very concretely expressed by
the press, courts and armed forces throughout
the strike fields
Il They picket mines with which the United
Mine workers have reached agreement, and call
the latter "strikebreakers," which they not"
OF course. if signing agreements for a far low
er wage than $4,000 strikers are demanding, far
lower wages then they received before the strike
without their consent driving miners back to
work with the help of police terror if acting as
slave drivers for the coal operators organizing"
with the open aid of the robbers and oppressors
of The miners, is not strike breaking, then the
UMWA officials are not strikebreakers.
p They make demands upon coal operators
that are absolutely impossible
Now we are getting down to the nub of the
question. The poor operators-they find it "ab-
soutely impossible" to pay 55 cents per ton
$555 for day work, to pay for all dead work, to
allow checkweighmen to be elected by the min
ers and end the daylight robbery on the scales
recognition of the union and mine committees
Let it be understood that decisive sections of
the coal industry are owned by the big bandits
of America-Andrew Mellon SchWab, Farrell
insult, Rockefeller Morgan These are the op-
orators who find the above demands "abso-
luteIy impossible" these are the poverty strick-
en- billionaires who own and rule America. The
steel trust, electric light and power trust, the
big railroads, Standard Oil finance-capital-
these are the poor operators for whom the press
pleads. 1t is truly liberaI-With the labor power
of the miners.
- CThey are) '"enemies of every stable ele-
ment in our present society, enemies of the best
kI,o 1Ja f1,Iyr and
mics especially of the Pittsburgh District, which
has so much 10 gain from peace and prosperity
in the coal fields, and so much to lose from
continued disorder"
While the miners we're starving in the mines,
and women and children we're hungry with
miners working one to three days per week for
coolie wages, there was a condition of peace
and prosperity in the coal fields" There was
no disorder" Everything was normal-unor-
ganized, robbed hungry, the workers were 81
lent. Then came the Communist party and the
National Miners Union-and the miners were
no longer silent about hunger, they were no
longer unorganized, they began to fight robbery
and robbers, they cast out the UMWA traitors
there was disorder.
q There can be no settlement of our coal
problem until this element is eliminated until
the haIf-starved men and women who follow its
leaders realize they are being led, not to the
high road but into an endless swamp of diff
Guilty, desperation and pauperisrn"
This is a CALL hardly disguised for smashing
the strike and for the determination of the
Miners Union. In other words, in order to keep
the miners and their families in IAN endless
swamp of difficulty, desperation and pauperism"
it is necessary to destroy the leaders and the
mass organization which fights robbery pauper-
ism and starvation. Only if this can be accom-
plished successfully can the next step of organ
izing slaves for slavery be carried through. SO
the Press editorial concludes:
81 "And one of the first and most direct steps
toward happier conditions is the cooperation
between operators and miners, through the Of
ficials of the regular miners union, now pro-
posed by the Hoover administration program for
conferences to settle common problems cf the
industry"
Here is the program: First, determination of
the leadership and destruction of the militant
organization of the miners, second "co-opera-
ton" between slaves and masters on the basis Of
uncomplaining submission of the slaves.
Is this merely the program Of The Pittsburgh
Press? Every recent development in the strike
areas shows it is the general program put for
ward, and acted upon, in preparation for the
Forthcoming conference of masters and their
slave drivers-coal operators UNfWA officials
and government
ITO BE CONTINUED