The Daily Worker Newspaper, September 11, 1926, Page 12

—— z= ay ae ‘ Joseph Manley OE was a worker, a proletarian and a militant fighter, When a man like him dies\the lahor movement sus- tains a great [tw s. He was only 39 years old. Still young and energetic and with a fu- ture of struggle in the cause of labor which would have placed him among the best and most valuable leaders in the international working class move- ment. But fate and the damnable capitalist system willed differently. And Joseph Manley is no more, On August 26, 1926, the life of Jo seph Manley came to an end. His death resulted from internal injuries sustained in a fall from a building in Brooklyn, New York, on August 24, upon which he was employed as an iron worker. ees ROM what I know of Joseph Man- ley, that was not the way he would haye. liked to die. Joe was a born proletarian revolutionist. He had it in his blood to hate capitalism and capi- | talist oppression. His whole makeup was that of challenge, resistance and struggle. And nothing would have suited Joe ‘better than to lay down his life—when the time came—in the working class struggle for power and for a new order of society, OSEPH MANLEY was born on July | 26, 1887, in Dwblin, Ireland. His father was a physician and an ex- -plorer, but most of his mother’s family were workers employed in the making of casks, barrels and tubs. That is probably the reason why ten-year-old Joe was made a cooper’s apprentice when the time came around for him to begin making a living. At about the same time Joe became a member of his trade union. He emigrated to Canada in 1907 and soon afterwards came to the United States. Here he joined the Western Federation of Miners. Dur- ing 1907-8-9 he worked in Butte and in Cobalt. In 1910 he became a bridge- man and joined the Bridge and Struc- tural Iron Workers’ Union, of which 19oheowas‘a member (16 years) until his death. The political and intellectual devel- opment of Joseph Manley is interest- ing and “instructive in many respects. The road of Manley was traveled by many American workers. Some of them, along with Manley, have gone the whole length and have come to be Communists and active members of ihe Workers (Communist) Party. Others have stopped in the middle of the road and are ‘still wavering be tween the deadening conservatism of Gompers and the invigorating, promis- , ing creativeness of Communism. Still others have turned back on their mili- tant past and have become satisfied with merely vegetating and slowly dying away either fm the folds of Gomperism or in the morass of im- potent futility of anarchism, syndical- ism, ete, Manley started out on the field of class struggle as a trade unionist, Ten years of age he became a cooper’s ap- prentice in Dublin, Ireland, and joined the union. A European worker of his type might have started out as a s0- cialist, but for a militant working class youngster in Great Britain (or in the United States, for that matter) a quarter of a century ago the natural and possible thing was to enter the class struggle thru the trade union. Why? Because there, unlike many countries on the European continent, it was not socialism but trade union- ism that stood at the cradle of the class struggle. But when Manley came to Canada in 1907 he was already mature for a fuller understanding of and participa tion in the class struggle. He joined the socialist party of Canada and later, when he came to the United States, the socialist party of America, This was no accident. During the decade (1897-1907) of work, struggle and union membership in Ireland Man- ley had learned things. His liking for books and reading, together with a more than ordinary faculty for think- ing and reasoning had made Joe Man- ley, around the twentieth year of his life, a conscious opponent of capital- ism and a determined fighter for so- clalism, The great crisis of 1907, the unemployment and suffering of large 1asses Of workers, which met Manley om hig arrival im the United States | must have exerted a powerful infiu- ence upon his intellectual and politi- cal development. However, Manley did not stay long in the socialist party. He was ex- pelled from its Washington state or- ganization in 1909, together with a whole group of left wingers, among them William Z. Foster, with whom Manley collaborated later in many outstandiig events in the American labor movement, As a member of the socialist party of America Manley was a left wing socialist, Tho he couldn’t very: well, as far back as 1909, have crystallized a consistent revolutionary working class philosophy like the one repre- sented by the Communist Interna- tional, yet he was proletarian revolu- tionist enough to rebel against the anti-proletarian, opportunistic and compromising policies of the socialist party leadership. For this he was ex- pelled, but it did not hurt him. On the contrary, since then Manley's in- tellectual life became more intense. He became deeply occupied with the basic problems of the proletarian class struggle. At first he joined the In- dustrial Workers of the World. Like many another militant worker of those days, this was Manley’s way of challenging the reactionary bureau- cracy of the American Federation of Labor and their opportunistic counter- part in the socialist’ movement, Joe was in search of a revolutionary pro- letarian organization and he thought he had found it in the I, W. W. One must remember that that was the period before the world war and the Russian revolution, before Lenin as the world proletarian leader and before the Communist Interna- tional. Now it is easier for a militant worker in America to find his way, but it was not so when Manley was grop- ing toward a revolutionary working class organization. Disgusted with the reactionaries and opportunists of the “official” labor family, Joe later on switched off toward syndicalism and became active in the Syndicalist League of North American, led by Foster. The world war and the collapse of reactionary syndicalism, along with opportunist socialism; the futility of traditional dual unionism as a means of revolutionizing the American labor movement; the great and obvious need of a political mass party of the workers which became so pronounced since about 1912; all these develop ments have brought Manley back into the main stream of the American la- bor movement, Together with Foster, Johnstone and several more revolu- tionary trade unionists, Manley be- came actively engaged in large organ- ization campaigns within the Amert- can Federation of Labor. Chief among those were the organization of the stockyard workers in Chicago and the organization of the steel workers, {tionaries in the unions. y line of reasoning that made Manley By Alex Bittelman which resulted in the great steel strike, Tn the steel campaign Manley has been closely associated with Foster. During 1918-1922 Manley was an ac- tive member of the national commit- tee for the organization of the steel industry, functioning there as the rep- resentative of his union, the Bridge and Structural Iron Workers’ Union. Later he was directing the campaign of his union to organize the non-union bridge shops, During thissperiod of his life, when he was actively engaged in large or- ganization campaigns within the A. F. of L., Manley already had a clear con- ception of the wider meaning of these activities. He realized quite definitely that the way to revolutionize the A. F. of L. is to bring into its ranks the large masses of the unskilled unor- ganized workers, to build an effective left wing movement in the organiza- tion and thus seek to defeat the reac- It was this one of the leading spirits of the Trade Union Educational League led by Wm. Z. Foster. It was at about the same time, and ‘ because of these activities, that Man-. ley became a prominent figure in the Chicago Federation of Labor. That was the time when Fitzpatrick and | Nockels still had in them the genuine spark of loyalty to the workers and a | good measure of militancy in fighting for their ideas against the opposition of Gompers and his machine. Due to the general progressiveness of Fitz- patrick and Nockels, reinforced by the effective work of Foster, Manley, Johnstone and other left wingers, the Chicago Federation of Labor was then holding the place of the most pro- gressive center in the American labor movement, Manley’s horizon was continually growing wider. His conceptions of the class struggle were beginning to approach those of the most advanced section of the world labor movement— the Communist International. The Russian Revolution undoubtedly had a profound effect upon his whole make- up. His revolutionary working class: instincts at last found a concrete po- litical, expression. His sympathies were all with the proletarian revolu- tion, During the famjne in the Soviet Union Joseph Manley joins actively in relief work and becomes the secretary of the Trade Union Committee for Russian Relief. At that time Manley was so close to the Communist movement ideologi- cally that his actual membership in the party became a practical question. And when Joe had realized this fact he made the logical conclusion. In 1921 Manley becomes a member of the Communist Party of Amertea, From that time on and until about a year before his untimely death Man ley is to be found in the front ranks of every progressive and militant step in the American labor movement. As one of the founders of the Trade Union Educational League, Manley carries on active work for the build- ing of a left wing in the trade unions in the capacity of eastern district or- ganizer of the T. U, H. L. With the |, Sweep of the farmer-labor party move ~ ment in 1922-23 Manley becomes ong of the most active Communists in the movement. So much so that when the federated farmer-labor party was formed in July, 1923, Manley was elected national secretary-treasurer of the organization. In this work he was greatly aided by the experiences that he gathered in previous years as a leading spirit of the farmer-labor party of the United States led by Fitzpatrick. As he grew in political maturity and Communist Party experience, he also became an influential man in the party. During 1923-25 he stood very close to the central leadership of the Workers (Communist) Party of Amer- ica and was later made a candidate of its central executive committee. Un- fortunately, the sharp internal strug- gles in the party had the effect of weakening his ability for active party work and even moved him to complete abstention from participating in polit- ical and party life. But that was a frame of mind which could not have lasted very long with Joseph Manley. He was too proletarian, too ardent a revolutionist and follower of the Com- munist International to be satisfied with the role of mere onlooker in the class struggle for any length of time. Comrades that have been close to Manley are quite positive in saying that shortly before his death he was beginning to chafe under the position of inactivity and was seriously consid- ering the question of actively re-enter. ing party life. The labor movement and our party have lost in the death of Joseph Man- ley a valuable comrade in arms. His proletarian past, revolutionary tem- perament and his rich experiences in the class struggle and in the trade union movement would have made Manley an outstanding leader in the revolutionary struggle of the Amert- can working class, Let this short and by no means ade- quate recital of Manley’s lMfe serve as a tribute to his memory and as a reminder to the working class mili- tants still on their way to hasten their movements, to come into our party and help build the power that will lead the American workers to their final liberation, THE TINY A Weekly WORKER Edited by Beckie Yudman, Los Angeles, Cal. Johnny Red, Assistant. Vol. 1. BACK AGAIN! Now you are Saturday, September 11, 1926 back in_ school. The teachers will tell you that Washing- ton never told a He, that Wilson was a great man, that every boy can become president and a lot of other fairy tales. WRITE in to the pay ® — ae “The Bunk In His- tory” that are wir You 7iuiNie Te ae =m¥.m [ie muck batter LE a sey WAR IS DECLARED ees bee | insists that prieats TRA! ‘The | onag Com, should get a six Some little fighter sent us the poem | rade. months ve is sure to provoke a war, | Came home I TWICE a year in don’t send us any more poems | ™Y father if some other coun- | about fights because if we print them | Could get a sub- try. ‘8 a good Mable to get in them and sarpticn 08 Be Sea eS. Ae oie | Swat ce The Red Chinese like in this poem: i Ae = oe ge ged oe re ket au mny lage and and ‘the Big Powe With al hig mont to. belong. to Servoce alas 1 grand haptee elie, ob Liha rae Canton! 1 ould 7 NEXT WEEK a belo The yon ae Boo Dorothy Red (what's that ioe to fight for @ Joins a union helps girl's name?) of Minneapolis better living for All workers, Does will have a dandy story called all workers. your father belong “The Red Flag.” —Beckie Yudman to a union? ty