The Daily Worker Newspaper, February 14, 1925, Page 7

“The idea becomes power when it pene- trates the masses.” —Karl Marx. SPECIAL MAGAZINE SUPPLEMENT THE DAILY WORKER. February 14, 1925 SECOND SECTION This magazine supple ment will appear every Saturday in The Daily Worker. WILLIAM F. DUNNE Communism is ‘Catching’ *““""™ “They poison the well-springs of our democracy with the virus of Communism.” — From the speech of Samuel Gompers delivered at every A. F, of L. convention for the last three years. > * * * * * “Every trade union leader who has come to public notice has been ‘vilified by the Communist machine and the campaign goes on. * * * * One of the favorite practices of the Communists every- where is*to denounce the elected leaders of the trade union movement: In the United States the - death of Samuel Gompers was hailed by the Communists as ‘the passing of America’s arch labor : ewek fe —William Green, in the February number of the American Federationist. a * ® * * a cee. 8 : : ee These: Communists are smart enough to always fight. on fundamental issues.’ : er —John Fitzpatrick, president of the Chicago Federation of Labor in a-speech at one of its regular dnbetie: * * * * ? e “The trade unions are the basic organs of the class struggle.” 'O pass a motion unseating Com- munist delegates in the Seattle Central Labor Council it was neces- sary for the officialdom to bring into the council delegates from unions so isolated from the general labor move- ment and so reactionary that they had been unaffiliated for two years, T was also necessary for the secre- tary of the building trades depart- ment of the American Federation of Labor and Officers of international unions to- spend most of their time for a week organizing the drive against the Communists. HE Seattle struggle is an almost perfect example of a process that is. taking place in the labor move- ments of all. capitalist countries in Europe, a process that is now pre- ceptible in the United States since the rise of the Communist Party and the left wing movement it organizes and leads. Its workings are as fol- lows: HE most class conscious organized workers join the Workers (Com- munist) Party and bring its program to the unions. The work and pro- gram of the Communists attracts mili- tant organized workers and they too become party members. Around them gather the sincere trade unionists who see the need for struggle against the capitalists. 'HE officialdom of the unions fight the Communists and their pro- gram and the growth of the circle of rank and file supporters of the Com- munist program is checked some- what but continues to enlarge. EFORE the active, informed and honest union members the union officials are unable to defend their po- sition. They then begin to organize a counter-offensive against the Com- munists and they bring to their assist- ance by economic pressure, by appeal to ignorant prejudice, religious hatred and social-patroitism, elements of the organized working class that have seldom if ever taken an active part in |’ the general work of the labor move- ment. These elements are found prin- cipally in certain unions that are con- trolled by one of the other of two religious fraternal organizations—ma- sons or knights of columbus—and which are entirely middle class in out- look, N the manner outlined above more and more workers are brot into the struggle. They are compelled to listen to new and to them startling and disturbing theories ‘f the role of the labor movement. They hear the policies of their hitherto unchallenged leaders assailed by the Communists. They become angry—but they begin to think. The result is that the mass of workers to whom the Communist program is made known becomes ever larger. . | Democracy Illustrated THE FAT ONE: “You must admit we all have the same vote, we all have the same laws, we all have the same rights...” THE LEAN ONE: “And how about the same chance to eat?” Democracy claims to bide tg chasm between those that pro- duce nothing and own everything and those than own nothing and produce everything, and to establish equality. But even a good bourgeols editor whose business it is to peddle that fairy tale of “equality” has his moments when the ridiculousness of this sermon of “equality” strikes him so force- fully that he cannot help but burst out laughing. In such an unguarded moment the editor of a French bourgeois paper permitted the above cartoon to slip Into the columns of his sheet. against democracy. We reproduce it as expert testimony b ige- Communists may be-and quite often are—as in the Minneapolis, Seattle, Los Angeles and Detroit Cen- tral Labor Councils unseated as dele- gates. Some of them may be and quite often are expelled from the unions as in the International Ladies’ Garment Workers, the Machinists, the Carpen- ters and the United Mine Worke: but others remain—it is impossible to expel them all. Terror and intimida- tion are exercised ‘by the union bu- reaucrats, they co-operate with the department of justice in denouncing and jailing the Communists and with 1 the police in raiding meetings, they make it difficult for them to secure and hold jobs—their press carries on LL of this is grist to the Commun- ist mill. Hundreds of thousands of workers who have never heard of the Communists, their program or of the Communist International, have these brot to their attention; not cas- ually, but as issues around which a bitter struggle is being fought—as is- sues that are linked up with both the —Nikolai Lenin. most commonplace and the most im- portant union affairs. ITHOUT controlling a single one of the official labor journals the Communists have, simply by their activity and the iron logic of their program, forced a discussion of mat- ters never before mentioned in the conservative, deadly dull and provine- ial American labor press. The united front, amalgamation, the dictatorship of the proletariat, Communism, the Communist International, Lenin as the personification of the world revo- lutionary movement, the Red Interna- tinoal of Labor Unions, criminal syn- dicalism laws, imperialism—all of these strange matters are denounced at length in the press of the Ameri- can Federation of Labor"ame i ated unions. .f.4 = ONG quotations from speeches and articles, from theses and manifes- tos of the R. I. L. U. and the Com- munist International are printed to prove the assertion that the Commun- ists in the labor movement stand for revolution, that they are against Am- erican capitalist government, that they are for the confiscation of fac- tories, mines, etc., and that they be- lieve the unions should be in the first line of the struggle against the op- pression of capitalist government. ABOR ‘union officialdom believes with all the unthinking faith of ignorant devotees that these “dis- closures” and “exposures” will exor- cise the Communist devil. They have been ready now for three years to sing a hymn of thanksgiving over a labor movement purged of the evil spirit that has driven the Russian workers and peasants, like the Gad- arene swine, down the precipice of . revolution into the bog of the dicta- torship. Alas, and a Couple of alacks! The stubborn Communists at the head of the Russian government have gone calmly on forcing recognition from na- tions whose rulers hate them just as viciously as the well-paunched Amert- can labor officials do. 'HE Red International of Labor Un- ions appeals so successfully to the working masses of the world with its program of trade union unity that the English labor movement endorses it, the Communist International loses its great leader Lenin but comes out of its Fifth Congress stronger than ever before; to make the cup of the bureaucrats more bitter even than gall and wormwood it is plain as the alco- holic shine on their faces that recog- nition of Soviet Russia by the Ameri- can government cannot be withheld . much longer, UST as the support of the right wing MacDonaldites in the Brit ish labor party comes more and more from the element of backward and hitherto politically and industrially organized workers who have been (Continued on Page 5.)