Montana labor news., 1937-07-01

guilty by excluding the evidence,
so can Norman Thomas today give
the same verdict to Trotzky upon
similar principles. As John Marshall
saw fit to attend a banquet in honor
of Burr on the eve of his trial, so
Thomas can appear in a public meet
ing on behalf of Trotzky on the eve
of the Moscow trial. But no one
can disguise the political character
of both these parallel actions, as
equally a service to reaction and
treason.
The bred Scott Decision and
the Civil War
The governmental system of the
United States was originally built
upon a compromise between the COM
mercial and industrial Northeastern
states, hostile to slavery, and the
agrarian plantation Southern states,
based upon Negro slavery. Despite
constant conflict of interest and con-
slant friction in government, this
compromise was continued and ex-
tended from 1776 until the 1850's.
In the middle of the nineteenth
century, this system of compromise
came to a crisis. It broke down I'M
der the rapid opening up of the
tremendous territories of the West
following the discovery of gold in
California and other Western terri
tories. The famous gold rush" to
the West of 1848 changed the course
of American history, and affected
the whole world, as was shown most
clearly in the writings Of Marx ard
Engels at the time. The rapid occu-
patton of a new continent, and the
erection of a whole series of new
sovereign states" to take their place
within the existing union of states,
Immediately raised the slavery issue
as one that could no longer be settled
by compromise. If slavery was in
troduced into the new territories,
that would mean that control went
to the South and with it control of
the federal union so long as slavery
existed. If, on the other hand, slav-
cry was prohibited in the new terri
tories, that would neal that control
went to the commercial and indus
trial (capitalist) Northeastern states,
and with it ruling power over the
federal union. For the slave-owning
South the issue was further sharp
ened by the urgent need of ever new
lands upon which to constantly ex-
tend the plantation system, if slavery
was to continue at all, even in its old
territories, because its backward
agrarian system was rapidly ex-
hausting the lands of the original
slave states. The struggle for the
West would necessarily decide the
issue of the continuance of slavery
or its abolition.
Into this struggle entered the Su-
preme Court, then as always the
tried and trusted instrument of the
most reactionary social and political
forces in the land. In its famous de-
cision in the case involving the run
away slave, bred Scott, it revived
the forgotten doctrine of John Mar
shall in the case of "Marbury versus
Madison" 1t declared that the insti-
tuition of slavery, because it existed
before the Constitution and the I'M
ion of states, could not under the
Constitution be restricted by the gov
eminent of the federal union, either
in the established slave states or in
the new states to be created. If this
decision remained as the law of the
land, then the victory of the South
and of slavery over the whole coun-
try was assured.
Both the two major parties, Wing
and Democratic, split on this issue
in the 1860 election, and a new party,
the Republican, formed in 1856,
forged to the front on the issue of
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