Montana labor news., 1938-06-02
LADOR'S BOOK Shelf

tween them and their employees,
and spend huge sums on spies to
prevent unions from growing, and
on tear gas and grenades to bust
them up when they do grow and act.
Detective agencies are sometimes
combined with munitions plants, and
this, when it occurs, is a happy cir
cumstance. The agency sends its
spies to foster trouble in a certain
industry. If there is no union, the
spies will organize one, and manage
to get it into trouble with the man
agement. They will see to it that
an ill-advised strike is called. The
detective agency's smoothest sales
man then calls on the plant owner
and sells him a large order of tear
gas, guns, and ammunition. When
the strike has been broken, the
agency urges the industrialist to
take out permanent anti-union in
surance in the form Of a spy system
That is neat work. It enriches a
few top-ranking labor spy officials
at the expense of the labor union
movement, the common peoples
greatest democratic weapon in the
class war. But it is not so cute as
the tricks pulled by employers as
~sociations in their war against not
only the labor unions but the whole
working class. Such big outfits as
the National Association of Manu-
facturers and the National Metal
Trades Association are organizations
of employers who are very realistic
about the reasons for their existence.
Their purpose is to prevent union
organization. Such a group of en-
ployers "is very much concerned
about the liberty and freedom Of the
workers in its member plants-it de-
tends to the last these workers in
alienable right to choose not to be-
long to a real union"
And when strikes break out, these
employer associations stoop to
nothing so crude as sending com
pany men to shoot and beat strikers
and use vomit gas on them. Not
directly at any rate. No, they or
ganize public sentiment" Almost
without exception, Citizens Com
mittees, Law and Order Committees,
and all forms of ~vigilante groups are
organized, directed, and financed by
employers associations. Because Of
their extensive control over mediums
of communication and education
the press radio, moving pictures,
public meetings, and outdoor adver-
tising-the employers are able to do
this so effectively and SO subtly that
it is hard to realize, without probing
as the LaFollette Committee probed,
the vicious and anti-social nature of
the employers activities.
Leo Huberman says of his book:
1T is a shocking story. It is a story
which should shame our industrial
lists and arouse our workers. It is a
story which should cause all fair
minded Americans to rise up in their
wrath and demand that immediate
steps be taken to prevent what has
happened here from ever happening
again"
Calloused by shock and outrage
by the time he has finished this
book, the reader yet finds himself
shocked again when he reflects that
all labor-spy activity, all union pre-
vention and union smashing, is not
only monstrous on the face of it,
but clearly illegal in these United
States. Those steps, then, of which
Mr.. Huberman speaks, go in two
directions. All citizens must urge
the restraint of understanding
practices under existing laws. All
workers must enlist in a nationwide
march of labor toward complete and
powerful organization. Only SO may
American industry as we'll as Amer
lean labor be freed.
Mr.. Huberman closes his book
with a quotation from Henry De-
marest Lloyd: "a spy at one end Of
an institution proves that there is