The Daily Worker Newspaper, July 9, 1927, Page 10

The Industrial Scuad—The Bosses’ Cossacks (Continued from Page One) and they know how the game is played. Lately this bunch of plug uglies was amalgamated with another gang of cutthroats, called the Bomb Squad. This also was a post-war innovation, created for the purpose of harrassing the political labor move- ment. The Industrial Squad employes a lawyer who handles their business and there surely is plenty of graft. Here is how it works. The squad has its ears to the ground on any organization drive or strike that is about to happen. Connections are made with the employers’ association and any employer who want police protection are recommended to this squad, If the employers are wise then an adequate financial contribution will do a great deal to get the proper “service.” Here is what is meant by “proper service.” This is one of the cases that became notorious during the last strike of New York subway motormen. The Interborough Rapid Transit Company decided to terrorize the strikers in order thus to perhaps crush the strike. Hence one bright day as the strikers, many of whom are good fighting Irishmen, were leaving their strike hall, they were pounced upon by the sluggers of this big traction company, lead by the Industrial Squad. The strikers were black- jacked right and left, kicked and stabbed, and one had to be earried away in an ambulance with a broken skull. Uniformed police were standing by in case the striking motormen should get the upper hand, ready to use their clubs on them. The strilk- ers, however, who had just held a peaceful meeting, were taken so completely by surprise that they hardly resisted and in a jiffy several of them were laying around in the gutter wounded by the blows of these legalized sluggers. Those who put up a resistance were picked out and finally arrested. Needless to say the gunmen of the company were not caught. Suppose the Industrial Squad had not been in exist- ence? The company sluggers, if they had dared to do a job like this, would not have had such nicely arranged police protection and leadership. The mo- tormen might have put up a good fight and the police might have even made some “mistakes” and arrested the real offenders. A whole number of things might have gone wrong. In fact, as it was, it was a badly put up job. The usual method of procedure is that the Indus- trial Squad organizes, protects and in many ways leads the activities of the gunmen and sluggers of the employers and having command of the uni- formed police in this work gives them virtually a free hand to do as they please against the union’s pickets, organizers or special committees. The In- dustrial Squad sees to it that the union’s special committee carries no weapons of any kind, while the bosses’ gunmen are free to carry guns, knives, black- Th Knights of Labor In Belgium HE “Knights of Labor” in Belgium, originating after the great miners’ strike of 1921, as a re- sult of the reformist policy of exclusion from the unions of all revolutionary elements, has ‘set itself the task of struggling for the unity of the trade union movement in Belgium. The “Knights of Labor” has at present about 9,000 revolutionary miner-members and is affiliated to the RILU. The “Knights of Labor’ have made several applications to the reformists, and to the re- formist miners’ union in particular, proposing to amalgamate. They are ready for complete fusion with the reformist union so long as this will not be accompanied by any onerous conditions for them- selves. But the reformists have no desire for this. They demand that the Knights of Labor should only join them individually and not collectively and that Communists should not be allowed into the reform- ist unions. Once more the reformists show how they are saturated with disruptive tendencies. In the reformist unions themselves the policy of excluding Communists is systematically observed. On the basis of the notorious “Mertens Resolution,” Communists are barred from all responsible posts in the trade unions. But this is not all: if a worker so much as. dares to vote at municipal elec- tions for a Communist candidate he is immediately expelled from the urtion. Of late, however, the broad masses have begun to show their indignation at this policy of the reformists and in many places the expulsion of Communists is not aliowed. 2 - IRONY « ‘all spires benignly stabbed the sky And @ sign over the doorway said: “Suffer the little children to come unto me!” But a gutter snipe died on the steps | Looking at the frozen stars. . . ‘ JAMBA A so eR, jacks, etc. If any member of the union committee puts up a fight, he or she is promptly arrested and sentences are handed out as in the Rosalsky cases, with the bosses’ gunmen escaping, and even if caught red-handed and a formal arrest must be made for appearance sake, the gunman is gotten out with very little trouble to himself. The reader may have been wondering up till now what this article has to do with the title. And will perhaps be surprised to be teld that all the ma- ehinery of “law” and the underworld thus described, plus the employers’ associations, who are all solid with Sigs.:an and Company, these are the real back- bone and represent Sigman’s strength against ,the lefts. All this machinery of the employers is at the disposal and is being actively utilized by Sigman and Company against the left wing. We should re- member that originally the Industrial Squad was ereated during the post-war open shop drive to fight the unions. But since nowadays the only unions who do put up a fight against the employers for improvement of conditions for the workers are unions led by the left wing, the Industrial Squad appears to be a creation for their special benefit. The first entry of the Industrial Squad against the left wing was about two years ago, when A. Beckerman, manager of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers’ Joint Board of New York, or rather the Industrial Squad in his name prevented the left wing from holding mass meetings. A meeting they busted up in Cooper Union is the most outstanding illus- tration. Their method is to search any left winger You have life! You imperturbable, Reaper of destinies! Terrible penalties. Frenzied, fanatical, Moulding their lives in a Religious dementia! Daily you swallow them, Daily you vomit them; - Planning monstrosities; Placid, inscrutable. CITY Were swung thick-moving Atop the steaming street. poe” ae OFFICE BUILDING Fiery hard! You perpendicular rush of ribbed steel and stone! Stolid externally, inwardly hot-cratered You, like another God, scourge your creators with The brand of your deity burns deep your worshippers— yawningly empty-mawed, Then you rest bloated, like idol of orient, Then you rest cat-like, an Old-China mandarin— Sun saturated air, and somnolent, Slow-strolling, sun-drenched mass. The glare of noon, Shed by facade, recoiled, hung in festoon, Arose in enervating wreaths, and sent Its seeping languor through all things replete With life. From hips that swayed as weighted clods Cloyed with excess of grease. Convulsed with heat-cramps, writhed and oozed its pain In clinging, glistening gelatin. Lean forefingers of buildings opened all Their panting, sucking ventricles to drain ‘The heat of stifled air. The sky,. sun-curled, Lay, like imprisoning lid on boiling kettle, Clamped tight its searing blight on all the world. who looks like a fighter for weapons, but the gang- sters, led by Jack Noy could have carried machine guns under their overcoats without the Industrial Squad noticing it. It is thus that Beckerman for a while became the tin Mussolini in the needle trades, for which honor Sigman is now the candidate. In the present struggle between the left and right in the needle, trades if a worker is discharged for opposition to Sigman and a scab takes his place, this scab is taken down to the union office during work hours by the union’s picket committee. Sig- man just calls up the Industrial Squad and the de- tectives rush up the Joint Board offices and taka the scab down and reinstate him in the shop as if they were Sigman’s business agents. If there are any pickets in front of that shop next day they run the risk of being beaten up by Sigman’s gangsters under the supervision of the Industrial Squad. This is the farce of “socialism” in the trade unions in New ¥ork nowadays. Indeed workers by this time need not be surprised at Sig- man and Company using the tools of the enemies of labor against the militant local unions that would dare to challenge his rule. Anyone who knows of his treacherous activities during the strike will look upon these methods as the logical outcome of a completely degenerated trade union bureaucracy. It is no wonder, of course, that the employers who control these tools and use them against the labor movement take full advantage of the situation, and the agreement that’ was fought out in one of the bitterest strikes in the needle industry is not being observed by the employers. Workers are being dis- charged, overtime pay is not being paid, workers are speeded, and the situation in the shops is pretty much as if there was no agreement. Sigman, of course, is getting the services of the Industrial Squad and the underworld from the bosses, not to maintain unionism but to destroy it. Rule or ruin is Sigman’s motto. He is getting this help for de- livering these workers to his class enemies on the economic and political field. ie It is the employers’ associations and Tammany Hall that will be the masters of the needle trades unions, if Sigman and Matthew Woll wins. To get to that point, however, is a long, long way off in the needle trades, even after the exhaustion of a 5-months strike. Needle workers cannot thus be brow beaten for any length of time. Injunctions and court orders and Industrial Squads will not impose Sigman’s leadership upon these workers and before this fight is through there will not only be a com- plete defeat for the Sigman type of leadership, but we wilt be so much nearer te a powerful Labor Party movement in New York that will make it possible to uproot Industrial Squads, injunctions and all these practices with which the labor bureaucracy in co- operation with the gangsters attempts to control the trade unions of New York. matrix of clamping —LAURENCE S. ROSS. HEAT limbs, like piston rods The brick-tarred street, The tall, Its scorching metal LAURENCE S. ROSS.