The Daily Worker Newspaper, April 25, 1925, Page 11

The _ Trade Gnitins iad LE Saeco the period since 1920, when wages were being forced down and hours were being lengthened and standards of living were being re- @uced, the labor movement of the United States had two choices,—to fight or to yield. The American labor Movement chose to yield rather than to fight. Consequently, since 1922 there has been no considerable labor struggle in the United States. Labor has chosen to yield, and this yielding has taken the form of investment and banking activities, b arerngee GREEN, president of the A. F, of L., in a speech delivered at Harvard University on March 20, is reported to have said that labor. has passed through the fighting period and is now in a period where it must ton- fer. He said that workers must, concede “the right of, employers to. control, direct. and manage industry,and. to receiye fair, return .upon. invested capital,” and, that . ‘“modern . trade unionism. is opposed”. to the, two ex- tremes of “hostile employers” on the one hand and “the workers’ revolu- tionary group” on the other. Accord- ing to this statement, Green has be- come an arbiter between capital and labor. : HAT fact suggests the conclusion that craft unionism is in itself a method of collaboration, and that those of us who have looked to craft unionism for revolutionary ideas have been trying to gather figs from this- tles. Wherever one goes in the United States one encounters a lively: in- terest in labor banking. The first’ of these banks, the Brotherhood of Loco- motive Engineers National Bank, started in Cleveland in 1920 with a capital of one million dollars; its de- posits, to date, amount to 23.6 million dollars. It has property valued at about 15 million dollars, besides other important assets. .There are, now thirty labor banks in the United States, all but two of which have sprung up in 1923-1924. LE ereweng the years of the steel strike of the injunction against the min- ers, and of the initial stages of the open-shop drive (1919-1920), American labor faced a difficult crisis, and labor leaders had to make a definite deci- sion. One road led toward industrial conflict and the other toward the -en-. trance of labor into business. ° The labor executives decided that it was better to lead their organizations into the banking -business. than to. fight. “We cannot fight against the govern- ment,” said Lewis, and-so he became the president of the Indianapolis labor The arguments for labor banking are very obvious and very old. If a labor organization deposits a million dollars in a capitalist bank it delib- erately strengthens the hands of its economic enemies... «= BB if it organizes its own bank it hot only keeps control of its own million dollars, but it has a loaning power of four or five times that amount, and when labor wants to bor- row money in times of need and crisis it can go to its own bank. But going into the banking busi- ness ties up the labor banker with other elements in ‘the community. First, the boards of directors of most of the banking organizations are com- posed principally of business and pro- fessional men; second, the banking officials are not labor men,—they are in the banking business and must un- derstand the banking game; third, the labor banker must conform to the va- rious laws. and codes of the banking world. There are 30,000 banks in the United States, thirty of which ‘are labor banks; if these latter do not conform they cannot bank, LABOR BANKER” contains articles by Warren Stone, presi- dent of the largest labor bank in the country; by Daniel Willard, and by Charles EB. Mitchell, president of the National City Bank of New York, in which all agree that labor banking will teach thrift and investment and will therefore bring working people into a more sympathetic relationship with the capitalist class. If this is correct, the labor bank furnishés the economic foundation on which class collaboration can develop. In a recent controversy between John Lewis and Warren Stone in regard to the Coal River Collieries, Stone uses all of the old stock phtases, “Labor” Banking such as “professional agitators,” work- | mines, factories, stores.and other en- ers “living in our houses,” “to pro- tect the interests of our stockholders,” etc, The moment a magnate gets into the investment business he be- terprises, most of which in the Unit- ed States are necessarily nonunion. Labor ‘banking involves’ labor invest- ment and investment is a’ method~by comes interested in stockholders, agi-| which one man takes ‘a part of the tators, and the like, and that is what labor banking means—getting into the investmgnt business and running wot story writer. . “An oppressed. people is erying for a deliverer today. Never in the whole course of our history has there been a more wonderful example of patient heroism than is being manifested by the thousands of men, women and children in Cape Breton at the present time.” Steady there, steady, hold "We perish, we perish, but ‘The battle is Man's and ’ NS Sigel Th a ba Ta CARA REN LOND?” Je lanes maces pommel ~ THE BATTLE OF GLACE BAY This poem. was written in connection ‘with the Besco strike in Nova Scotia by the son of Charles G:-D. Roberts, the poet and animal The battle thickens, the foes ring round, Closer and closer, death’s in our face. Each in his place, lads, each in hig Place, Who will say that we have not fought well, Armed with pick and shovel and bar, Blackened and burned in the fires of hell The rank and file of a Holy War? Courage, then, comrades, lest we forget The World's my country, my brother Man; Though the feos increase we will see it yet— The fields grow green where the red blood ran. The little ones cry, the mothers are still, But their crying, their stillness, rings over the Bay; I can see the red banners like dawn on the hill— The hosts of Humanity march our way. Close up your ranks there, steady your eyes, It is better to struggle though the ground runs red Than falter one step from the ultimate prize " In the Battle of Bread, lads, the Battle of Bread. The women are weary but steady, but steady, 108 , The babies are dying the hot tears blind; © 9" Tomorrow. perhaps we will hear the sound _ Of &@ great Voice ringing across the land; . Today,-the fierce foes ring us round— _ Stand to your faith, lads, stand! One of Capitalism’s Clubs Ven, Archdeacon Scott, your ground, the peace Mankind’s, eee ~dLioyd Roberts. product of another man’s labor, [HAT does this mean for the future? The membership in the American Federation of Labor is steadily de- clining, while the organized business interests are gaining, particularly in their economic position, Also, the organized employers of the United States have adopted the policy of going out to meet .organized labor with welfare work, profit sharing and stock ownership schemes. Organized labor officialdom is mov- ing definitely into the camp of the organized employers. In the first place, the high salaries paid to the leaders lift them automatically eut of “the proletarian group; second, through labor banking the leaders are accepting the formulas of business and are making good investments; third, they have gone into co-operative housing: Labor officials are adopting the em- ployers’ psychology and automatieal- ly, therefore, are becoming protectors of the established order. HERE must be a_ co-operative move—housing, banking, retail, wholesale—but it will be essentially committed to the established order. Perhaps it is not the business of the A. F. of L. to fight; perhaps it is their business to go into labor bank- ing. If that is the case, American workers must build a fighting organi- zation on the economic field. There are two functions here. One is the function of the co-operative—to build around the present order, to get in- vestments and keep them; the other is a definite struggle to take over the machinery of society in the interest of the working class—to destroy the system on which investment is based. inaliogmat Student Solidarity” binoda us Defeats Reaction Control of College TOLEDO, Ohio, April 24.—A united front of students and faculty defeated reactionary directors at Toledo uni- versity and Stowe was forced to re- sign as president because of this sol- idarity. The three professors whom the board of directors threatened to re move in retaliation, because of the demand by the students for the resig- nation of Stowe will stay. The board accused Bradley, Nurse and Jones of being the agitators who caused the removal of Stowe. The board also accused the three named professors of being rebels and anarch- ists and insited that they go with Stowe. The students were much incensed when they leagned of the action pro- posed by the board and called a mass meeting protesting against the intend- ed dismissal of the three faculty mem- bers. A petition was circulated by the students on which they secured 540 signatures. When the board of direc- tors saw the solidarity that manifested itself among the students and faculty members they decided to let the three professors stay. It is well known that an insidious movement has been going on for some time to destroy Toledo University, which is much too democratic to suit the Toledo Commerce Club, and which is attended by some young men and women who are of the working class. It might be mentioned that this unt- versity. boasts of two debating teams, one of which has been meeting col- leges of neighboring towns and taking the affirmative to limit the power of ithe supreme court... ). bara tes , i) tice FF ; a5 oF : Bolivian Astray in Washington, . WASHINGTON, April . 24:—Diplo- » matic circles» were stirred today by - the arrest of Senor Don Jorge Blacud Jofre, attache of the Bolivian em- basgy following a free for all fight witl) a policeman. een | i 4 1 ’