The potters herald. [volume] (East Liverpool, Ohio) 1899-1982, 1940-12-05
The Cherry Tree
Where We Hdtchet Out
The Truth
. APPEASEMENTs TALK
. NOT OVER YET
. NEITHER IN AMERICA
. NOR IN BRITAIN

Democracy versus dictatorship will
continue to be an issue for some time
to come. There will be Americans who
will be willing-as they have been
for long time-to make terms with
the dictators.
There is strong smell of appease-
ment in the direction of Wall Street.
England has gone through the battle
with the appeasers. 1t isn't over yet,
but the British people have become so
nearly united that it is much tougher
going for appeasers there than it is
here.
The argument is something like
this: We've got lot of money and
lot of factories. We put them into
war production and have to give up
our regular markets. When war ends
the Germans will grab our markets
and where will we be?
The idea, thus, is to make peace with
the Nazis and keep the commercial
pathways clear.
Another appeaser statement goes
as crazy as people think he is"
X X X
Now if you value money and busi-
ness more than you value liberty and
the right to look guy in the face
and tell him to go to hell, why then
maybe the appeasers have something.
Quite possibly they have. But it's
4 Lo l., nd <>f hot o1r oI
Americans are willing they should
keep. It's very smelly something
that could we'll be taken out in the
backyard and buried.
In this conflict between dicta-
torship and democracy the labor
movement will have very i'm
portant part to play, just as it
is to hold those first lines for de-
mocracy.
| Nobody needs democracy and free
dom and liberty quite as much as the
workers. They lose most when free
dom goes out the window.
And in America today they have
more real freedom than they have
ever had.
X X X
Workers need kinds of freedom and
groups of rights that don't mean
thing to bankers and corporation Of
| fcials. The right to organize is just
one of these Don't we remember that
it was just few years ago that John
l.. Lewis and his organizers couldn't
| ;,%o fo
and the miners who lived there didn't
dare join.
There were plenty of deaths to
prove that certain liberties didn't ex-
list.
| Oldsters will remember Mother
Jones and her battles-also tall John
Brown.
And Homestead and Bayonne and
the California hop fields.
For those who want to pursue the
matter further, there is Bill Mahon
who can tell many yarns about the
brutalities of traction companies
whose officials believed freedom was
a one-sided proposition.
But even with all those shortcom-
ings of the earlier days, America still
had democracy, which means it had
the tools with which to make repairs
to the social and economic structure.
And today, as result, it is better
than ever.
X X X
The labor movement, to do this job
of torch bearing and trench holding,
needs to have its own house in the
best possible order.
1t needs unity. 1t needs an
end to the chickering's that keep
it split. 1t needs physic that
will get the racketeers out. 1t
needs purgative that will spew
out the Communists and the
Nazis, where they exist.
These publications are needed, for
the labor movement needs clean body
for the tremendous job at hand.
It's no use to say that everything
is all right. 1t isn't. The main body
is all right, but there's a peppering
of sore spots.
It's time to clean house and close
ranks.
Because it is very likely that the
main job of protecting democracy and
keeping it fully alive and functioning
will fall on the shoulders of the or
ganized labor movement. That's the
way it has been; that's the way it will
be.-CMW.