The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1934-09-19
Writer Cites Driv e
Against Wages and
Living Standards
By Bill Dunno

One of the reasons Of the bold
ness and ferocity with which the
e Employers, their government
agencies, police, troops and hordes
of specially armed thugs attack
strikers, as in the textile areas at
present, in coal and steel, in the
maritime strike and the Bay Coun-
ties general strike in California, is
their knowledge, gained from eX-
perience in dealing with the rec
ognized sane and conservative labor
leaders," that they are corrupt, cow
ardly, and, as far as the upper
hierarchy is concerned, totally de-
void of loyalty to the working class
and even to members of their own
unions.
Their first moves are always to
prevent the profit interests OF the
employers from being jeopardized
seriously, to keep all demands and
struggles within the narrow and
inadequate bounds of so-called
legitimate trade unionism, to boost
the interests of the leading fake
friends of labor in the capitalist
parties, to prevent revolutionary po-
litical conclusions being drawn from
the bitter class battles by the work
ers involved, to divert attention
from the anti-working class char
acter Of the government and its
acts, to preserve the fiction of gov
eminent impartiality, to protect the
general interests of monopoly CAPT
talism and its government at all
costs.
The deeper the crisis, the more
difficult the position of capitalism,
the more the demands and strug-
giles of the working class for i'm
proyement of their living standards
assume therefore more revolution
airy significance, the more strenu-
ously does A. F. Of L. officialdom
work to head off these struggles or
to behead them when they develop
in spite of their efforts.
Bosses Trust OfficialdOm
The employers feel confident that
as long as the leadership rests with
these officials, workers are half
licked before a struggle starts. The
capitalists and their advisers have
learned over long period, and
especially have they learned in the
last two years, that the Tuning,
fumigating, grandiose threats and
even the revolutionary phrases they
use at times, are all said and done
with tongue n-cheek, that they
constitute just SO much stage play,
that they have just as much to do
with the actual policy, program and
tactics of these high-salaried Of
ficials as do the ferocious defies
hurled at each other by two prize
fighters on the outcome of COM
ing brawl that is already in the
bag.
AS the head of the Southern Coal
Operators Association, himself a
former official of the United Mine
Workers, said to one of the chief
officials of that union at a public
h e airing in Washington, D. c.:
you've had your belly up to the
pie counter for Is years and in
that time you've got NOR dough
from us than you did from the
men you're supposed to represent"
When all A. F. of L. leaders are
upholders of capitalism, when the
capitalists are fully conscious that
these leaders will do anything neces-
sary to suppress all challenge by
workers to the system, when, as
German, head of the strike COM
mittee of the United Textile Work
ers, said the day before yesterday
in reference to the bloody military
onslaught on workers in Rhode
Island: 1--WE will join with any
body to fight the Communists"
when, as the employers know, GER
tain labor officials receive subsidies
in one form or another from the
slush funds of various capitalist or
CARNATIONS, they feel that they are
fairly safe, at least for the time
being, in going just about as far
as they like with their offensive
against the living standards and
elementary political rights of the
working class.
Employers Fear Ranks
This is one reason why the big
associations obviously
have decided to make the textile
strike "a Showdown with union
labor" They see the new leader