The Daily Worker Newspaper, July 9, 1927, Page 5

THe NEw MAGAZINE _ Section of The DAILY WORKER SATURDAY, JULY 9th, 1927. The Industrial Squad—The Bosses’ Cossacks This Magazine Section Appears Every Saturday in The DAILY WORKER. By JOSEPH ZACK rT war has brought many innovations in its wake, various adaptations of fascism according to the varied needs the employers have in each country. In New York we have in the city’s police force an institution called the Industrial Squad. This force is. supposed to preserve “law and order” in indus- trial disputes and has under its authority the uni- formed police whenever its activities call for it. Perhaps many workers don’t know that the under- world, that is that part of the population consisting of gangsters, thieves, murderers, etc., have anything to do with-strikes, with’ employers’ associations, or with anti-labor law enforcement and nowadays even with control of unions. If the workers don’t know this they had. better get acquainted, as this is the outfit that plays a very important role in all strike- breaking combinations. The Industrial Squad fits into this like a head into a body. The law permits picketing, it permits organizing, but just try and do it and you will find your pickets arrested under all kinds of subterfuges, restrictions will be imposed, the pickets will be clubbed or even gassed, as in Passaic. Injunctions or no injunctions, law or no law, the employers in control of the local and state or federal government will find a way to do it brutally and thoroly enough by indirect ter- rorization and if necessary, laws are passed or in- Junctions issued for the purpose. Quite often they do the job even without these formalities. The usual procedure in important strikes in big cities is in many ways different from methods used in smaller localities. Let us give a brief illustration of what takes place: When a strike is brewing in any trade’ in New York the employers’ association thru its law department gets in touch with certain detective agencies and the police captain of the territory. These detective agencies have their connections with organized professional bands of gangsters, who for the proper amount are ready to do al! kinds of jobs on the pickets, the mildest being a plain ordinary beating. Stabbing, breaking arms, nose, jaw, or fing- ers have their extra prices. To break a workérs’ -perienced patrolmen—this is the outfit. neck, smash his skull, or murder him, are specialties priced accordingly. Quite often the bosses’ associa- tion is in direct touch with the gangs, without any intermediaries. Here is how a job is done. The police having been properly instructed by “higher ups” and for special consideration given the cop on the beat, the eyes of the law enforcers look the other way or take a walk. Gangsters in automobiles come upon the scene, bounce on the pickets, slash, stab and leave them laying there bloody. Quite often such jobs are made one after the other. The gang in machines disappear as quickly as they come. Sometimes in the dark of night and quite often in open daylight and even in the most congested parts of the city, such jobs are done. If the pickets are not enough intimidated by this and if they still insist, there is the injunction, like in the last cloakmakers’ strike, with wholesale arrests and open suppression of picketing by uni- formed police. Arrests, fines, ete. do a great deal to empty the union’s treasury. All this used to be done in the past in an unsys- tematical, accidental and inefficient way. More- over, the unions under reactionary leadership used to hire professional underworld gangsters to counter- act the terrorizing tactics of the bosses. Quite often the bosses’ gangsters were bought by the union or vice versa. In many cases on record the gangsters took pay from both sides. A regulator had to be put on this business, Particularly so with the rise of militant unionism the underworld arm of the bosses had to be systematized and made more reli- able. Hence our bourgeois city fathers created this new institution, the Industrial Squad. Big strapping fellows, comparable only to cos- sacks, with murky animal faces, guerillas in human ‘form, some of them formerly union officials, other shady underworld characters, sluggers, former ex- They are familiar with the underworld and know the leading gangsters that sometimes work for the union’s side, “the Frenchies,” “little Augies,” “Jack Noys,”-o<., (Continued on Page Six) ALEX BITTELMAN, Editor EDITOR’S NOTES By ALEX BITTELMAN eer OOLIDGE is wooing the farmers. Like a real practical man, he is combining pleasure with business. He has transferred his headquarters to South Dakcta and is carefully spreading a net of political manipulations to catch the farmers’ votes in the coming presidential elections. There is, of course, a good deal of comedy in all this business. His political sermons, his fishing expeditions, his little interviews with so-called “dirt” farmers, the whole pastoral and idyllic atmosphere that has been created around the summer White House—all this presents excellent material for a first class humorist. But it would be a serious mistake to dismiss the entire matter as mere Coolidgeism. Because what is now taking place in South Dakota is a real political struggle, a class struggle, in which big capital is leading the offensive against the poor and working farmers cf the United States. * * % There are really two big objectives that the Cool- idge administration has set out to achieve throuzh the president’s expedition into South* Dakota. One is to break down the farmers’ opposition to €oolidge and the other is to kill the Lowden boom or the possibility of any other so-called western candidate against Coolidge. If the present incumbent of the White House succeeds in this, he and the republican party will undoubtedly receive the support of large sections of big and medium capital in the coming elections. If he fails, several things are likely to happen, none of which will be any too pleasing to Coolidge and to the present republican machine. Coolidge must therefore work hard. And so he does. He is pursuing his old strategy of dividing the farmers by trying to conciliate the rich at the expense of the poor and middle farmers. He dangles before the eyes of the well-to-do farmers the prom- ise of government aid to cooperative marketing so- cieties and the extension of credit terms for market- ing surplus crops. But he continues to resist stub- bornly any of the basic provisions of the McNary- Haugen bill. He does so for the reason that the capitalist class is opposed to these provisions, In fact, the capitalists of the United States would resist any legislation tending to curb or even seri- ously regulate the handling of agricultural products on the home and world markets. All the friendly talk of Coolidge about cooperative marketing is hollow and meaningless because the basie condition that he attaches to it is that the grain speculators and big bankers continue to dominate the trade and its fortunes. And as long as this condition pre- vails, no real farm relief is possible. Lowden’s flirtations with the farmers are pretty nearly of the same kind as those of Coolidge. With this important difference that Lowden’s agreement with the MecNary-Haugen bill shows him to be more consistently in favor of the-rich farmers than Coolidge is. In other words, the well-to-do ele- ments among the farmers have in Lowden a more reliable friend than they can ever expect to find in Coolidge. Thus, as far as the rich capitalist (Continued om Page Two) Now HIRAM, ALLS YOUGOTTA DO Ig GUESS WHIdH- THE LD ARMY GAME iN THE BLACK HILLS “>